In "On Poetry: A Rhaposdy", written in 1733, Jonathan Swift argues that Hobbes proved that all creatures exist in a state of eternal war and uses predation by different animals as evidence of this: "A Whale of moderate Size will draw / A Shole of Herrings down his Maw. / A Fox with Geese his Belly crams; / A Wolf destroys a thousand Lambs." Voltaire makes similar descriptions of predation in his "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster", published in 1756, arguing: "Elements, animals, humans, everything is at war". Voltaire also asserts that "all animals [are] condemned to live, / All sentient things, born by the same stern law, / Suffer like me, and like me also die."
