 Shaftesbury’s argument is in the form of a dilemma. Either promises in the state of nature have obligatory force, or they do not. If promises in the state of nature do have obligatory force, then Hobbes can account for our obligation to obey government but only by abandoning his story about a state of nature in which violence toward others is not wrong. For someone who acknowledges that promises are naturally obligatory will have no grounds for denying that other things are naturally obligatory as well: “If in original and pure Nature, it be wrong to break a Promise, or be treacherous; ‘tis as truly wrong to be in any respect in human, or any way wanting in our natural part towards human kind” (C 1.110). If, on the other hand, Hobbes claims that promises do not have obligatory force in the state of nature, then he has to abandon his account of our obligation to obey government. For if a promise in the state of nature has no obligatory force, and if the only difference between a knave in the state of nature and knave in the commonwealth is that the latter made a promise in the state of nature, then the commonwealth-knave is no more in violation of his obligations than the nature-knave.