  Free will and the ability to exercise conscience are also key concepts underlying Gassendi's views on society and the body politic. Gassendi agrees with Hobbes (and shares a Lucretian inspiration (Sarasohn 1996)) that individuals in a pre-social setting are motivated by fear and desire for betterment, which leads them to join in a commonwealth and concede at least some rights. For Hobbes, this motivation is driven mechanically, and the commonwealth entails foregoing individual rights in return for security. For Gassendi, on the other hand, the motivation is driven by irreducible reasoned consideration, in favor of the stability of social convention. Further, this social contract leaves intact at least those freedoms and liberties which, to begin with, figured in rational choice of the contract over the state of individual insecurity. Gassendi veers from a strict physicalism, proposing that societies are organized by social agreements chosen through operations of the immaterial animus (O II 795a).