Hobbes

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

A
* ,

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS

HOBBES

BY

SIR LESLIE STEPHEN

; UNIVERSITY

gotfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1904

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1904.

Nortooott

J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

LIFE ......•••••

CHAPTER II
THE WORLD 70

CHAPTER III
MAN 114

CHAPTER IV
THE STATE 173

INDEX ......... 239

HOBBES

CHAPTER I

LIFE

THE biographer of the present day knows not whether
to envy or to pity his predecessors in the seventeenth
century. The increased advantages bring responsi-
bilities. The materials available were formerly of
manageable bulk ; nor was it thought necessary to
emulate scientific procedure by minutely investigating
a man's " environment " and tracing all the influences
which moulded his character or the character of his
ancestors. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, author
of the Leviathan, was the most conspicuous English
thinker in the whole period between Bacon and Locke,
and his long career, described on the modern scale,
would certainly have filled at least a couple of portly
volumes. The actual accounts fill only a few pages.
They tantalise the reader by many glimpses of a very
interesting personality. Yet, brief as they are, they
give perhaps as distinct an impression of the main
outlines of a notable figure as could have been pro-
duced by far more elaborate detail.

Hobbes himself was obviously convinced — I have
reasons for hoping that his conviction was well founded

B I

2 HOBBES [CHAP.

— that a distant posterity would thirst for information
about him. At the age of eighty-four he wrote an
autobiography in Latin elegiacs. Two years later
Anthony Wood published his book upon the history
and antiquities of the University of Oxford. Through
John Aubrey, their common friend, he obtained for
it an autobiographical notice from Hobbes. Unluckily
Dr. Fell, Dean of Christchurch, who bore the expense
of publishing, claimed also the right of editing the
work. Hobbes's statement that he had spent a certain
period in scribendo librum, qui nunc non soltim in Anglia
sed in vicinis gentibus notissimus est nomine Leviathan
was amended by inserting monstrosissimum after librum,
and jmblico damno before notissimus. Hobbes was in-
formed of this and other changes in the same spirit,
and printed a remonstrance. Fell replied (what it was
hardly for him to say) that an old man, with one foot
in the grave, ought not to trouble himself and the
world about such trifles, and printed at the end of
the book a contemptuous reply to irritabile illud et va-
nissimum animal Malmesburiense. The original auto-
biography fortunately remains ; it was printed soon
after Hobbes's death along with the poem, and a Vitce
Hobbiance Auctarium (by a Dr. Blackbourne) contain-
ing some further information. The Auctarium was
founded upon the collections of Aubrey, made for the
benefit of Wood's later book the Athence Oxonienses.
Aubrey was a personal friend of Hobbes, who came
from the same county, and did his best to anticipate
Boswell, though his aspirations fell far short of such
success.1 From these and sundry incidental refer-

1 Aubrey's Brief Lives, containing these notes, have been care-
fully editr- ' by Mr. Andrew Clarke. 18(J8.

i.] LIFE 3

ences, we derive such knowledge of Hobbes as we
possess ; and in his case, as decidedly as in that of any
philosopher, a knowledge of the man is very important
to a fair appreciation of the work.

In the year 1588 a Thomas Hobbes was vicar of
Westport, adjoining Malmesbury, and of the neigh-
bouring parish of Charlton. He married, we are told,
". . . Middleton of Brokinborough (a yeomanly fam-
ily) " : but with that information students of heredity
must be content. The vicar was " one of the ignorant
Sir Johns of Queen Elizabeth's time : could only read
the prayers of the Church and the homilies, and dis-
esteeined learning as not knowing the sweetness of
it." Another anecdote declares that he was a "good
fellow," and that after playing cards all Saturday
night, he went to sleep in church, and in his dreams
announced to the congregation that clubs were
trumps. Mrs. Hobbes heard rumours of the Spanish
Armada, and apparently thought that Malmesbury
would be the natural " objective >; of an invading
force. The result was the premature birth of her son
Thomas, early in the morning of the 5th of April
1588. According to Aubrey the time was well chosen,
as the child's horoscope, like that of Oliver Cromwell/
indicated future eminence. Hobbes himself says that
he and terror were born twins. Characteristically he
speaks of his timidity with a certain complacency, and
to it he attributes his hatred of his country's foes and
his love of peace, with the muses and friendly com-
pany. Not long after his birth his father, " a choleric
man," was provoked on purpose at the church door by
"a parson (which, I think, succeeded him at West-
port)." So Hobbes the elder struck him ^nd was

4 HOBBES [CHAP.

forced to fly for it. He retired to a vague region
" beyond London," and there disappears from history.
Mrs. Hobbes was left at Malmesbury with three
children, including John, Thomas's senior by two
years, and a daughter. Fortunately a childless uncle,
Francis Hobbes, glover and alderman of Malmesbury,
took charge of the deserted family. Thomas was sent
to school at Westport church at the age of four, where
he learnt reading and arithmetic. Thence he passed
to a school in Malmesbury, and afterwards to one kept
by a Mr. Latimer, " a good Grecian, and the first that
came into our parts hereabout since the Reformation."
Latimer delighted in his scholar, and used to teach him
with " two or three ingeniose youths more " till nine
in the evening. Under this excellent master, Hobbes
worked to such good purpose that at the age of four-
teen he had translated the Medea of Euripides into
Latin iambics. He was " playsome enough," though
he had even then a " contemplative melancholinesse " :
and he was nicknamed " the crow " on account of his
black hair.

The promise which he had shown induced his uncle
to send him to Magdalen Hall at Oxford. He
apparently began residence in the beginning of 1603
(when he would be just fifteen) but was not admitted
to his B.A. degree till February 1608. At Oxford he
can scarcely have fulfilled his uncle's expectations.
He was one of the many eminent men who acknow-
ledge but a small debt of gratitude to their university.
Long afterwards (in his Behemoth) Hobbes intimates
that the parliamentary commissioners, for whom he
had otherwise little enough affection, did some good
by purging the university of men morally unworthy,

i.] LITE 5

as well as of those opposed to them in theology.
Many parents, he says, had reason to complain that
their sons were allowed to fall into vicious practices,
and taught by incompetent tutors little older than
themselves. The discipline and the studies at the
Oxford of that period seem, in fact, to have been in
much need of reform. Hobbes, however, writing in
his old age, had other causes of quarrel with the
universities, which he had come to regard as the
strongholds of obscurantism ; and it does not appear
that, while himself a student, his eyes had been open
to the evils which he afterwards recognised.

Magdalen Hall was, during the early part of the
century, the favourite resort of the Puritans. But
there is no symptom that Hobbes was at the time
either attracted or repelled by the religious views of
his teachers. His account of his studies suggests the
probable state of the case. He was admitted, he says,
to the class of logic, and listened eagerly to the dis-
course of his beardless teacher. He was put through
the regular Barbara celarent, learnt the rules slowly,
and then cast them aside, and was permitted to prove
things after his own fashion. Swift, long afterwards,
speaks in much the same way of his logical studies
in Dublin. Then he was taught physics ; the tutor
explained that all things were composed of matter
and form; that "species," flying through the air,
impressed the eye and ear; and attributed much to
sympathy and antipathy. Hobbes found such things
above his understanding ; but it did not apparently
occur to him till a later period that they were unintel-
ligible because nonsensical. Like many other lads, in
fact, he found his lessons tiresome ; and he returned to

6 HOBBES [CHAP.

reading the books of which he had already an im-
perfect knowledge. He took a particular pleasure in
maps of the world and the stars ; he liked to follow
the sun in fancy, and to trace the voyages of the great
circumnavigators, Drake and Cavendish. " He tooke
great delight" as Aubrey says, "to goe to the book-
binders' shops and lie gaping on mappes " ; but it
does not appear that the records of the Elizabethan
sailors inspired him with the usual boyish ambition
of running away to sea. Aubrey records one other
amusement. Hobbes told him, in order to prove the
sharp-sightedness of jackdaws, how he used to tie
" leaden-counters J; with pack-thread, smeared with
bird-lime and baited with cheese parings. The jack-
daws would " spy them at a vast distance up in the aire
and as far as Osney Abbey " and strike at the " baite."
Athletic sports had not yet organised idleness, but
Hobbes seems to have found sufficient excuses for not
attending lectures. The results of his university
career were so far negative ; but an incident which
happened soon after his degree, seems to show that
the authorities thought well of him : well enough, at
least — for such inferences are not always very safe —
to declare him fit to be employed by somebody else.
The principal of Magdalen Hall recommended him to
William Cavendish, afterwards first Earl of Devon-
shire, and Hobbes formed a connection with the
Cavendish family which was of vital importance to
his whole career.

The first conspicuous Cavendish, the Sir William
who was employed in the visitation of monasteries by
Henry VIII., and had certain pickings from their
estates, married Elizabeth, a rich heiress in Derby-

i.] LIFE 7

shire, generally known as " Bess of Hardwick." She
was an imperious lady, who induced her husband to
settle in Derbyshire, where she built great houses at
Hardwick and Chatsworth. She had determined, it
seems, not to die as long as she could build ; and it
was only a hard frost, suspending her building opera-
tions, which induced her to leave the world in 1608 at
the age of ninety. She had before that time married
two other husbands, the last being the Earl of Shrews-
bury, the host or gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots. All
her fortune, however, went to her second son, William
Cavendish, who also inherited at a later period the
estates of his elder brother, and was thus one of the
richest men in England. In 1618 he became first
Earl of Devonshire, having bought the title for £10,000
from James I. In 1608, when Hobbes was leaving
Oxford, he was father of a son William, afterwards
second earl, two years younger than Hobbes. Ac-
cording to Aubrey, the younger William (possibly his
father), "had a conceit that he should profit more in
learning if he had a scholar of his own age to wait on
him than if he had the information of a grave doctor."
Hobbes became "his lordship's page, and rode a hunt-
ing and hawking with him and kept his privy purse."
The " learning " seems to have been neglected : Hobbes
almost forgot his Latin; but bought a few books,
especially a Caasar, which he carried in his pocket and
read in the lobby "while his lord was making his
visits." Another note gives a rather unpleasant aspect
of Hobbes's first position. "His lord," says Aubrey,
" who was a waster, sent him up and down to borrow
money and to get gentlemen to be bound for him,
being ashamed to speak himself." Hobbes, we are

8 HOBBES [CHAP.

told, " took cold, being wet in his feet (then were no
hackney coaches to stand in the streets), and trod both
his shoes aside the same way ' (whatever that may
indicate). Notwithstanding, adds Aubrey, he was
loved for his facetiousness and good-nature. Young
Cavendish had been married to Christiana, daughter of
Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinross. James L, who had
been served by Lord Bruce in the negotiations with
Cecil which secured his accession to the throne, gave
the bride £5000. She was only twelve years and
three months old at her marriage, and the bridegroom,
who was eighteen, was, for the present, more in need
of a tutor than a wife.

In 1610 the two young men made the grand tour,
visiting France and Italy. No record of their adven-
tures is preserved, but Hobbes says that he brought
back some knowledge, both of the modern languages
and of men and manners in the countries visited. It
was the year in which Henry IV. fell by the knife
of Ravaillac ; Hobbes mentions the murder once or
twice in his works ; but it was so apt an illustration
of his view as to the relation between kings and priests
that no personal memory need be implied. He brought
back one lesson of importance. He discovered that
the scholastic doctrine, of which he had acquired a
smattering at Oxford, was everywhere treated with
contempt by the intelligent, and was passing out of
fashion. He continued to live with the pupil who
had now become a friend. For the next eighteen years
Hobbes was a member of the Cavendish family. These
years, he says, were by far the pleasantest of his life,
and still (that is when he was eighty-four) revisited
him in his dreams. His patron allowed him leisure

i.] LIFE 9

and provided him with books of all kinds for his
studies. There was no one, says Hobbes, in whose
house a man would less need a university. Having
thrown aside his philosophy, Hobbes began by rubbing
up his old classical knowledge. He read poets and
historians with the comments of grammarians, in order
to acquire the art of writing a clear Latin style, then
a matter of practical importance for a man of letters.
He does not mention another study which occupied
part of the time. Aubrey tells us that he repented
of having spent two years in reading romances and
plays, and often lamented this waste of time. It
might, as Aubrey suggests, " furnish him with copie
of words." Anyhow, he undertook another task
which, one can well believe, helped him to acquire
the clear and forcible style of his English writings.
This was his translation of Thucydides. He said
long after that he had learnt from. Thucydides how
much wiser one man is than a body of men, and
meant to warn his countrymen against trusting
popular orators. It must be admitted that this
method of meeting democratic tendencies was de-
cidedly roundabout. Few people could be expected
to read the translated book, and those who did, might
fail to draw the desired inference. Hobbes was pro-
bably crediting himself with intentions suggested by
later experience. The introductory remarks show his
admiration for the skill with which Thucydides has
made his narrative pregnant with wisdom without/
digressing into lectures. He ridicules the ancient
critic who assumed that the " scope of history " should
be "not profit by writing truth, but delight of the
hearer as if it were a sonff." He could not have

10 HOBBES [CHAP.

offered better advice to some modern historians.
Hobbes, we may suppose, was not very much im-
pressed by the weighty political utterances of the
great historian, but felt a certain congeniality to his
own intellectual tendencies. Anyhow the attempt to
straighten out Thucydides' tough sentences into clear
English was as good practice as could be desired.
Hobbes had not received such training as is generally
requisite for fine scholarship, and Jowett, in his
preface to his own version, says that his predecessor's
work is very rough and inaccurate, and has been
praised beyond its merits. I cannot dispute the
verdict of so high an authority. My readers may
judge from a short specimen. It is part of the passage
containing Thucydides' reflections upon the seditions
in Corey ra. They would have a special interest for the
author of the Leviathan.

,.$ " And many and heinous things happened in the
cities through this sedition, which though they have
been before, and shall be ever as long as human nature
is the same, yet they are more calm and of different
kinds according to the several conjunctures. For in
peace and prosperity as well cities as private men are
better minded because they be not plunged into
necessity of doing anything against their will. But
war, taking away the affluence of daily necessaries, is
a most violent master, and conformeth most men's
passions to the present occasion. The cities therefore
being now in sedition, and those that fell into it later
having heard what had been done in the former, they
far exceeded the same in newness of conceit both
for the art of assailing, and for the strangeness of
their revenges. The received value of names iin-

i.] LIFE 11

posed for signification of things was changed into
arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness was counted
true-hearted manliness ; provident deliberation a
handsome fear ; modesty, the cloak of cowardice ; to
be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything. A
furious suddenness was reputed a point of valour. To
readvise for the better security was held for a fail-
pretext of tergiversation. He that was fierce was
always trusty ; and he that contraried such a one was
suspected. He that did insidiate, if it took, was a
wise man ; but he that could smell out a trap laid, a
more dangerous man than he. But he that had been
so provident as not to need to do the one or the other,
was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that
stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that
could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or
that could persuade another thereto that never meant
it, was commended."

Such are the evils, Hobbes would have said, which
follow when men's passions are let loose by the
destruction or dislocation of a settled sovereign
authority. He did not, however, at present set forth
his own views, and the translation remained for some
time unpublished. The years that he passed with the
Cavendishes, the years so fondly remembered, must
have been in the main devoted to thinking and read-
ing in the intervals of the duties, whatever precisely
they may have been, imposed upon him by his relation
to his patron. His position enabled him to make
acquaintance with some of the most famous men of
the day. When Aubrey first met him a few years,
later (1634), his talk ran a good deal upon Ben Jonson'
and Sir Robert Ay ton. Jonson, of course, was then!

12 HOBBES [CHAP,

the most far shining of literary lights ; and though

4 A^ton, who was related to the wife of Hobbes's patron,
has fallen into obscurity, he was then regarded as
an eminent critic and poet. Hobbes submitted his
Thucydides to these two. A much more interesting

1 connection was that with Bacon. Aubrey tells some
anecdotes which suggest certain chronological diffi-
culties. Bacon, he says, "used to contemplate in his
delicious walks at Gorhambury." When a notion
darted into his mind, he would have it set down by
one of his attendants, and he often said that Hobbes
was qiiicker than any one else at catching his meaning
and putting it down intelligibly. Aubrey says also
that Hobbes helped to translate some of Bacon's
essays, notably that upon the greatness of cities, into

\ Latin : the Latin translation was published posthu-
mously in 1636. Hobbes, too, is Aubrey's authority
for the familiar story of Bacon's death being caused by
the experiment of stuffing a fowl with snow. Bacon
knew something of Hobbes's patron, and there is
nothing improbable in the other statements. The
time at which the meetings took place was probably
between Bacon's loss of office in 1621 and his death in
1626. The amount of intercourse must be doubtful.
One point however is clear. Bacon and Hobbes

v were alike in rejecting the old scholasticism, and in
being profoundly impressed by the early stages of the
modern scientific movement. But in other respects
the relation is one of contrast. Bacon's great aim was
o extend the physical sciences by systematising ex-
perimental methods. Hobbes, though he incidentally
notices one of Bacon's experiments, has, as Groom
Robertson put it, " nothing but scorn for experiment

i.] LIFE 13

in physics." His own method is essentially deductive,
and he takes no notice of what is called " Baconian
induction." Hobbes's political theories have no exact
counterpart in Bacon. Bacon embodied in his various
writings much statesmanlike reflection, showing the
deep insight of a keen observer profoundly interested
in the affairs of the day. Hobbes, as we shall see,
also watched the political movement of the time, but/
as an outside spectator ; and he constructs an abstract

^/"

theory as dogmatically as his successor and, in some
degree, his disciple, Eousseau. The contrast of style
was well put by Sprat, in answer to Sorbiere. who had
mentioned the personal relation, and inferred an intel-
lectual affinity. " Bacon," he says, " is short, allusive,
and abounding in metaphors : Hobbes, round, close,
sparing of similitudes, but ever extraordinarily decent
in them. The one's way of reasoning proceeds on
particulars and pleasant images, only suggesting
new ways of experimenting without any pretence
to the mathematics. The other is bold, resolved,
settled upon general conclusions, and in them (if
we will believe his friend) dogmatical." Hobbes
may doubtless have received from his intercourse
with Bacon some impulse towards his philosophical
enterprise, but as yet there is no proof of his having
undertaken to be a philosopher at this early moment
in his career, and the impulse, when it came, was
derived from other sources. Other friendships, which
I shall have to mention, may have begun at this
period ; but for the present Hobbes had made no
attempt to impress the world, and would only be
known to others than his immediate friends, as the
secretary of the Earl of Devonshire.

14 HOBBES [CHAP.

In 1626, on the death of the first earl, Hobbes's
patron succeeded to the peerage, but died in June 1628.
During the interval Hobbes wrote a Latin poem,
giving an account of a short tour in the Peak, made in
company with the second earl. It was, it appears, a
new year's gift to his friend, who rewarded him with
a present of £5. The De^Mlrabilibus^Pecci Carmen
begins with a description of the beauties of Chatsworth,
and the early landscape-gardening of " Bess of Hard-
wick," where "art, dissimulating art," has produced
sham rocks and streams and fountains. Then he
describes the ride, in the course of which he and his
companion see the seven wonders of the Peak : Chats-
worth itself, the cave called after the devil, Mam Tor,
Elden Hole, the hot spring, Pool's Cavern, and Buxton
Well. Hobbes, it is needless to say, does not antici-
y pate the Wordsworthian cult of Nature ; but he is
a very good specimen of the early sightseer. Elden
Hole, it seems, was already famous in the days of Queen
Elizabeth. The Earl of Leicester of that time caused
a man to be let down into it hanging to a rope, and
then to drop stones to estimate the remaining depth.
When drawn up again he was too horror-struck to
speak intelligibly, was seized with a frenzy, and died
in a week. I regret to see that recent explorers have
not spared the romance even of Elden Hole. It is
only two hundred feet deep, with an inner cave of less
than a hundred. The party slept at Buxton, where
they had two baths and a very poor supper (such
descriptions are an essential part of all mountaineering
literature), and returned next day to Chatsworth.
The excursion was, we may guess, one of the incidents
which revisited Hobbes in the dreams of his old age.

i.] LIFE 15

Unfortunately the poet, while describing the wonders,
does not condescend to report the conversation of the
travellers.1

The death of the second earl had serious effects for
Hobbes. In the " Epistle Dedicatory " prefixed to the
Thucydidas. Hobbes tells the young heir that he is
bound to dedicate his labour to " rny master now in
heaven." The panegyric upon the dead man which
naturally follows is honourably free from the exces-
sive adulation of such documents. Hobbes's sincerity
is unmistakable. He speaks of the earl's liberality to
himself, his good sense and freedom from factious
motives. He gave sound advice and was " one whom
no man was able to draw or jus tie out of the straight
path of justice. Of which virtue, I know not whether
he deserved more by his severity in imposing it (as he
did to his last breath) on himself, or by his magna-
nimity in not exacting it to himself from others. No
man better discerned of men : and therefore was he
constant in his friendships, because he regarded not
the fortune nor the adherence but the men, with whom
also he conversed with an openness of heart that had
no other guard than his own integrity and that nil
conscire. To his equals he carried himself equally, and
to his inferiors familiarly ; but maintaining his respect

1 De Quincey in his Essay upon Murder as one of the Fine
Arts, quotes from an anonymous tract of 1670 (" The creed of
Mr. Hobbes examined "), by Thomas Tenisou, afterwards
archbishop. It describes a meeting with Hobbes at Buxton, to
which place Hobbes's poem had attracted the author. Hobbes
has a long dialogue with a student of divinity, and is
thoroughly confuted. Tenison however states that the intro-
ductory circumstances as well as the dialogue are purely
fictitious.

16 HOBBES [CHAP.

fully and only with the native splendour of his birth.
In sum, he was one in whom it might plainly be per-
ceived that honour and honesty are but the same thing
in different degrees of persons." The earl had shown
some independence during his short tenure of the
peerage by opposing the Duke of Buckingham. He
had, however, spent his large revenues too lavishly
and been obliged to get a private act of Parliament to
enable him to sell some entailed estates. His death,
20th June 1628, was said to have been hastened by
"excessive indulgence in good living." Hobbes
naturally does not mention this in his dedication ; but
he suffered from the consequences.

The widowed countess, left with three children,
the eldest son eleven ( years old, set about regulating
her affairs as became her Scottish descent. She was
an intelligent and energetic woman, admired in later
years by Edmund Waller and others, and on friendly
terms with Hobbes. The retrenchments, however,
which she thought necessary, involved his leaving his
old situation, and he had to look out for other means of
support. He accepted the position of travelling tutor
to the son of Sir Gervase Clinton, of an old Notting-
hamshire family. A letter from WQ-frton^ to Sir
ThjomjLSLffientworth (4th April 1628) mentions the lad :
"Pray tell him (Sir G. Clinton) that when he sent his
son hither (to Eton of which Wotton was then provost)
he honoured, and when he took him away he wounded
us. For in this Royal Seminary we are in one thing
and only one like the Jesuits, that we all joy when we
get a spirit upon whom much may be worked." We
may hope, therefore, that Hobbes had a satisfactory
pupil. They were abroad for eighteen months. An

j.] LIFE 17

undated letter mentions an intended visit to Venice,
probably prevented by war. Hobbes was now forty, a
time by which a man's intellect is generally ripe and
his aspirations tolerably fixed. He had passed years
in quiet study, and must have been interested in the
political questions which were becoming daily more
pressing in England. He must, one supposes, have
had comparisons suggested to him by the state of
things in France, where Richelieu was building up the
great state which most nearly represented his own
ideal " Leviathan," while in the country of Machia-
velli he would be led to observe the famous con-
stitution of Venice, admired by so many of his
contemporaries as the highest achievement of political
architecture, and would have his own thoughts about
the great spiritual power which now occupied the seat
of the Roman empire. Hobbes's method, however,
involves little appeal to observation of particular
events or to his own personal experience, however
deeply they may have impressed him. He tells us,
on the other hand, of one discovery which was cer-
tainly borne in upon him during this journey, while
another may probably belong to it or to his next visit
to the continent. The incidents might as well have
occurred at London as in Paris. The first is best
told by Aubrey : " Being in a gentleman's library
Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the 47th EL
libri I. He read the proposition. ' By God,' sayd he,
' this is impossible ' ' (he would now and then swear by
way of emphasis, as Aubrey apologetically notes). " So
he reads the demonstration of it which referred him
back to such a proposition : which proposition he read.
That referred him back to another, which he also read.

18 HOBBES [CHAP.

Et sic deinceps that at last lie was demonstratively
convinced of that truth. This made him in love with
geometry." The knowledge, it must be admitted, came
rather late, and the ignorance is not to the credit of
his early instructors. As I shall have to say, however,
the effect upon his later speculations was of singular
importance. The second incident, whenever it hap-
pened, was equally fruitful. He was at a gathering of
u learned men," where something was said about sen
sation. One of them asked, as in contempt, what was
sense ? Hobbes thereupon wondered how it happened
that men who took such pride in the title of " wise '
could be ignorant of the nature of their own senses.
Thinking over the matter himself, he remarked that
if all things were at rest or all moved alike, there
could be no difference of things and consequently no
sense. He inferred that the cause of all things must
be sought in the difference of their movements. This
again threw him back upon geometry, and led him to
what he took to be his great discoveries. Such is the
difference, is his comment, between those who seek for
truth by their own genius, and those who seek it by
consulting authority or for purposes of gain. What-
ever may be thought of his principles, he is certainly
a remarkable instance of an active mind set at work
by remarks which others pass by as common-places. I
shall have to speak hereafter of the essential part which
these two doctrines played in his later speculation.1

1 There are certain difficulties about the date of the conver-
sation "with learned men" : and the discovery by Dr. Tunnies
of a MS. treatise in Hobbes's hand, giving an early version of
his doctrine, rather complicates the question as to the evolution
of his thought. I need not, however, go into these details. See
Robertson, p. 35 n.

i.] LIFE 19

It is for the present enough to observe that we may
consider Hobbes as engaged in the elaboration of his
philosophy from this period. He had hitherto, after
learning the futility of the Oxford scholasticism, been .
interested in literature and especially in the historians,
with reference, no doubt, to the political questions of
the time. He now took up philosophy again from the
scientific and mathematical side, and elaborated the*
ambitious scheme of which I shall speak presently.
It implied, as we shall see, that he cast aside authority
and considered himself to be capable of founding a
new system of thought by his own unaided genius.
For a while, however, he had- employment which
must have occupied much of his time. In 1631 he
was invited to return from Paris to superintend the
education of the third Earl of Devonshire, the son of
his old patron or pupil, now about fourteen years of
age. He was beginning to be absorbed in his new
studies, but accepted a task which would still leave
him some leisure, and to which he thought himself
bound by gratitude to the family. He taught the boy
industriously, seeking to imbue him " with all such
opinions as should incline him to be a good Christian,
a good subject, and a good son." The lessons included
Latin composition, astronomy, geography, logic, and
law. An abstract of Aristotle's Rhetoric, which appears I
in his works, was dictated to the pupil in Latin. The
boy was docile and intelligent, and in later years
revered and protected his teacher. The recall of
Hobbes by the countess shows that his discharge had
not implied disapproval. In later }Tears the son, upon
coming of age, was dissatisfied with some of his mother's
dispositions of the estate. Hobbes went into the

20 HOBBES [CHAP.

matter with the son and helped to arrange terms of
agreement. He persuaded the young man to give up
the intention of legal proceedings, and to remain in
his mother's house. In the document which records
the result, he notes that he has not acted for a reward,
but simply as discharging the duty of a faithful tutor.
/To this period belongs a correspondence with anoiJier
member of the family, William Cavendish, Earl and
afterwards Duke of Newcastle, son of a third son
of " Bess of Hardwick," and first cousin therefore to
the second Earl of Devonshire. The duke's claim to
literary glory is founded upon his books upon horse-
manship, though he also wrote comedies, and colla-
borated with his second wife, the famous and eccentric
Margaret, in some of her voluminous plays. He was
a man of considerable intelligence, who is said to have
been a patron of Descartes and Gassendi, as well as
of Hobbes. Hobbes writes to him in January 1633
about an expected work from Galileo, which he has
endeavoured to procure for the earl in London.
Later correspondence shows that Hobbes was employed
in elaborating his philosophy and counting upon New-
castle's sympathy.

In 1634 Hobbes started for his third visit to the
continent, accompanying his pupil on the usual grand
tour. They were at Paris in October, and afterwards
visited Italy, returning again to Paris. This tour
marks Hobbes's first recognition by philosophical con-
temporaries. He was at Florence in April 1636,
anxious, as he says in a letter, to read Heylin's History
of the Sabbath, and Seldeu's Mare Clamum. At this
time, too, he saw Galileo, who had lately made his
famous recantation, and was living near Florence as a

i.] LIFE 21

prisoner of the Inquisition. He was admitted to the
friendship of the great man, whom he mentions in his
books with profound respect. "Not long afterwards,
Galileo had another remarkable English visitor, John /
Milton. What he thought of them we unfortunately'
do not know ; but each of them carried away character-
istic impressions. During this whole journey Hobbes's
mind was always employed upon one topic. Whether
he was in a ship or a carriage or on horseback, he was
meditating upon the nature of the world, and working
out the idea which had struck him at that " meeting of
learned men." There was, he held, but one real thing
in the world, the basis of all that we falsely take to be
things, and which are mere phantasms of the brain.
The one reality is motion, and to study the modes of
motion is therefore the necessary condition for all
successful researches in science. Full of this thought,
he reached Paris and communicated it to a remarkable
man who approved and brought it to the notice of
others.

Hobbes was fortunate in his new acquaintance.
Marin Mersenjie, a man of his own age, belonged to the
Friars Minim of the Franciscan Order, and was living
in a monastery near the Place Royale. Before leaving
the college of La Fleche he had known Descartes, his
junior by eight years, who had entered the same college
and already shown his precocity. Some years later
the acquaintance was renewed, and Mersenne encour-
aged Descartes to devote his life to study. He became
Descartes's most trusted and ardent friend, and acted
as his " plenipotentiary ' when Descartes retired to
Holland. He accepted his friend's doctrines, defended
him against accusations of heterodoxy, attracted dis-

22 HOBBES [CHAP.

. *~

ciples, and effected reconciliations (when possible) with
enemies. Mersenne was himself on friendly terms
with thinkers of opposite schools. He had some
scientific ability, and had lately published a transla-
tion of Galileo's Mechanics, which made the author's
reputation in France. He appears to have been a man
of singular simplicity and kindliness of nature, and his
cell in the monastery became the place of meeting for
the savants of Paris, and for distinguished strangers.
He discharged, as Baillet (the biographer of Descartes)
put it, the same function in the republic of letters as
the heart discharges in the human body. Hobbes says
that his cell was preferable to all the schools of philo-
sophers. The star of every art (he becomes quite
poetical in his enthusiasm) revolved round Mersenne
as the axis of its orbit. The little constellation of
shining lights, who in those days were dispelling the
old darkness and revealing the foundation of modern
science, was widely scattered, and often its component
stars were isolated. They had, it is true, the advan-
tage of a common language ; but there were no
scientific societies or journals, and to facilitate their
intercourse, and make each aware of what was being
done by others, was a valuable service for which
Mersenne was especially qualified. Hobbes was wel-
comed by him, and began, as he puts it, "to be
numbered among the philosophers." He thus received
a kind of honorary diploma entitling him to speak
with authority. He was not loath to accept the
position. That a man who had not seen Euclid till he
was forty, and had only taken up philosophy at a later
period, should claim before he was fifty to be on terms
of equality with the leaders of thought throughout the

i.] LIFE 23

whole range of human knowledge would now seem
preposterous. But physical science was still in its
germ, and philosophy, making a fresh start, was pro-
nouncing study of the old doctrines to be rather an
encumbrance than an advantage. The field to be
covered was so small that Hobbes, like Bacon or
Descartes, might claim to survey the whole intellectual
world and lay down the law upon things in general.

Henceforth Hobbes was a man with a mission. He
had still to elaborate the details of his creed, but the
first principles were already clear to him. Before
dealing with his career as the expounder of a philo-
sophy, I may make one remark suggested by his
alliance with Mersenne. Hobbes's ethical theories have
been condemned as egoistical and cynical ; and it might
be inferred that these unpleasant qualities were the
reflection of his personal character. Of the ethics I
shall speak hereafter; but the inference as to char-
acter requires, to say the least, very important
reservations. It would be altogether unjust to
down Hobbes as a man of cold nature. Whether he
was a man to make any romantic sacrifice to friendship^
may indeed be doubted. Retired philosophers may
congratulate themselves that they are seldom exposed
to such trials, and in Hobbes's life the case did not
occur. But everything goes to show that he was a
man of kindly, if not of ardent affections. Few men
appear to have won so many friends or to have retained
them so permanently. His long connection with the
Cavendish family proves the existence of a mutual
esteem creditable to both sides. His language about
Mersenne is as warm and sincere as his language about
his early friend the second earl. The friendship with

24 HOBBES [CHAP.

Mersenne led to an equally warm friendship with
Gassendi and with many distinguished men. Hobbes
got into plenty of controversies, and the philosopher was
assailed more bitterly than any thinker of his time. It
is the more remarkable that no serious imputation is
made upon the man. Clarendon, when confuting his
abominable doctrines, declares that Hobbes was one of
his oldest friends, and emphatically asserts the personal
esteem entertained by himself and others for his antag-
onist. Hobbes seems to have been personally attractive
to everybody whom he met. He was a pleasant com-
panion, and clearly had wit enough to be acceptable in
every circle. But no spiteful sayings are attributed to.
him, and, although he quarrelled over geometry, he
excited no personal antipathy. Certainly we cannot
claim for him the posthumous affection which is
bestowed upon men of the heroic type like his con-
temporary Milton, or of the saintly type like Arch-
bishop Leighton. But neither of those eminent
persons made any mark in philosophical speculation.
We must admit the excellence for its own purpose of
more than one type. A man who is above all to be a
cool reasoner and to shrink from no conclusion forced
upon him by his logic, is a very valuable person, and
may be forgiven if his spiritual temperature does not
rapidly rise to boiling-point and obscure his clearness
of vision. Hobbes, if one may venture to say so, had
probably quite as much benevolence as was good for a
metaphysician.

Hobbes returned to England in 1637, and began at
once to compose his exposition. He was still em-
ployed by his pupil, who came of age in 1638, and in
1639 he was helping to arrange matters between the

i.] LIFE 25

young earl and his mother. To this time also must
be chiefly referred his intercourse with the remarkable
group, affectionately commemorated by Clarendon.
Its most attractive member was LordJFalkjand, who
has won the regard of posterity by the charm of his
character rather than by any special achievement. He
lived at Tew, a few miles from Oxford, and, according
to Clarendon's account, kept open house for all the
most distinguished members of the university. Among
the men who could drop in and make free use of his
table and library, were the divines, Sheldon and
Morley, afterwards bishops, and Hammond and
ChilliogBtorth, who died before the Restoration, while i
occasional wits and poets came over from London. I
Whether Hobbes was ever of the party does not
appear. Falkland, however, according to Aubrey, was
"his great friend and admirer"; and besides Claren-"'
don himself, one who afterwards gave substantial
proof of his regard was Sidney GodQlphin, a. pnpt of
some reputation. If Hobbes joined the circle, he
would not find its opinions altogether congenial.
There was not much love lost between him and actual
or potential bishops ; and Morley, Sheldon, and Ham-
mond would be too strictly orthodox for his taste.
Falkland, Chillingworth, and their friend, the "ever
memorable'' John Hales, represented a rationalising
movement within the church, and were suspected of
" socinianism." Of one of them, Hobbes made a char- *•**
acteristic remark to Aubrey. He commended Chilling-
worth for a very great wit : " But, my God, " said he
(swearing by way of emphasis again), " he is like some
lusty fighters that will give a damnable back-blow
now and then on their own party." Chill in gworth's

26 HOBBES [CHAP.

vigorous logic shows an intellect congenial to that of
Hobbes himself; but Hobbes would no doubt think
that his rationalism logically led to opinions lying
beyond the borders of orthodoxy. In politics there '
was a similar relation. Falkland was taken by Matthew
Arnold as embodying the sweet reasonableness which
condemns extremes on all sides. We hear him still
" ingeminating peace '; after swords were drawn — a
most amiable but unfortunately a rather futile pro-
ceeding. He and Clarendon were constitutionalists,*/
opposed equally to the extreme claims of king and
parliament, though when it became necessary to take a
side, they preferred the royalist cause. A character-
istic passage in the Behemoth speaks of the bad advice
given by men — Hobbes declines to revive old bitter-
ness by giving their names — who believed in "mixed
monarchy," which in reality is pure " anarchy."

Hobbes might be contrasted with Falkland. Though /
Falkland was moderate enough to see faults on both
sides, he was ready to fight and indeed to throw away
his life for the side which was least to blame. Hobbes
had no doubt upon political or any other questions ;>/
but he was quite clear that he would fight for neither
side. Fighting he might fairly urge had never been
his trade, and he was clearly too old to take it up.
Meanwhile political controversy was raging with in-
creasing bitterness, and must have occupied the
thoughts of every one with whom Hobbes might con-
verse. No doubt eager discussions were going on in
the Falkland circle. Hobbes conceived that he had
something to say of considerable importance, and pro-
bably exaggerated the attention which logic was likely
to receive in the disturbed atmosphere.

i.] LIFE 27

The exaction of ship-money in 1637 had led to—
the famous proceedings against Hampden, and the
decision against him in 1638. The Scots were be-
coming restive under the imposition of the new
liturgy ; they were swearing to the covenant in 1638 ;
and in 1639 a Scottish army was successfully resisting
the king, and receiving the sympathy of the popular
party in England. Charles was forced to appeal to a
parliament in April 1640, after eleven years, during
which that troublesome body had been suspended.
Men were discussing fundamental political principles,
and ready to settle them by an appeal to the sword.
It was time, thought Hobbes, to speak out. He had
formed and begun to execute a remarkable plan. He /
intended, like a sound logician, to lay down the firsti
principles of all scientific inquiry, to apply them to
what we should now call psychology, setting forth the
laws of human nature, and finally to found upon this
basis a science corresponding to modern sociology. He
now dropped the first part and wrote a little treatise in
two sections, omitting the first principles, but giving
first a summary of his psychology, and secondly his
political doctrine. The treatise was circulated in
manuscript and occasioned much talk of the author.
Had it not been for the dissolution of the Short
Parliament, it would, as he thought, have brought him
into danger of his life. The Long Parliament, how-
ever, which met in November, ready to fall upon
Strafford, might find time also to deal with the author
of this treatise.

Hobbes, " doubting how they would use him, went
over into France the first of all that fled, and there
continued eleven years, to his damage some thousands

28 HOBBES [CHAP.

of pounds deep." It does not appear how lie arrived
at this estimate. Few other men would have prided
themselves on being the first to run away, and it
may be doubted whether it proved, as he apparently
thought, his foresight, or implied an erroneous appre-
ciation of the danger. The treatise is undoubtedly a
remarkable book, and gives the pith of his most/
characteristic teaching. Still he avoids so carefully
any direct reference to any passing event that it \
might have failed to attract notice. Hobbes might [
surely have given credit to members of parliament for
sufficient stupidity to overlook logical implications.
If indeed they thought him worth punishing, no weak
crotchet about liberty of the press would have re-
strained them. The House of Commons was quite
ready to suppress objectionable writers. Hobbes him-
self says he was preaching the same doctrine as^Bishop
Manwarhig. Manwaring had been a victim of the
parliament of 1628, for sermons attributing absolute
authority to the king. When the parliament was
dissolved the king had pardoned and preferred him,
and the Short Parliament found time to fall upon him
again and send him to the Tower. Hobbes's treatise
argues that the "sovereignty" is one and indivisible,
and necessarily carries with it the right to make peace
or war and to levy taxes. Sovereignty, as he truly
says, was then admitted to be in the king, and it
follows that Charles could raise ship-money or what-
ever taxes he pleased. If parliament were equal to
drawing that inference, and thought Hobbes's treatise
of sufficient importance, they would have little scruple /
about applying the arguments directed against Man-
waring.

i.] LITE 29

Hobbes's political theory was fully formed before
the outbreak of the war. He watched the events
with interest, but of course knew beforehand that
they would only confirm his theory. That result is
sufficiently set forth in the Behemoth - - a history of
the period, written in 1668, to explain the causes of,
the rebellion. The book has a certain interest at this
point in throwing some light upon Hobbes's sympa-
thies when the war was actually raging. Hobbes was
not yet a historical philosopher to the point of scien-
tific impartiality. He too often, like many better
historians, finds it enough to explain events by the
wickedness of the other side. That agreeable theory
is an excuse for not attempting to discover the causes,
of discontent ; a wicked man wants no cause. He
gives occasionally a quaint enough argument. The
king's soldiers were as stout as their enemies, but
could not fight so keenly "because their valour was
not sharpened so with malice." To this he adds the
additional reason that there were many raw London
apprentices in the parliamentary army " who would
have been fearful enough of death approaching visibly
in glistening swords ; but, for want of judgment,
scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a
bullet, and therefore were very hardly to be driven
out of the field." Hobbes had clearly not been under
fire.

He had plenty to say that is more to the purpose,
and expressed with his usual terse and pointed style.
One line of remark is characteristic. A letter to the.
Earl of Devonshire, in August 1641, discusses a peti-
tion against bishops. Hobbes thinks that it proves
the existence of many abuses, and heartily approves

30 HOBBES [CHAP.

of a proposal to give more authority to the laity.
" Ministers," he thinks, " should minister rather than
govern." Experience teaches that "the dispute
between the spiritual and the civil power has of late,
more than anything in the world, been the cause of
civil wars in all places of Christendom." He already
holds the view which becomes prominent in the
Behemoth. He starts with a long comparison of the
claims of the Papacy and their evil results ; only at
the end he remembers that, however many crimes the
popes may have committed, they are scarcely to be
accused of having prompted the Puritan revolt. The
Papists, he has to explain, would not be sorry for
disorders that might possibly clear the way for the
restoring of the pope's authority. The Puritans are
most clearly responsible. " After the Bible was trans-
lated in English, every man, nay every boy and1
woman, thought they spoke with God Almighty and
understood what He said, when by a certain number
of chapters a day they had read the Scriptures once or
twice over." They lost their reverence for the bishops,
and were supported by the gentry, who desired popular
government in civil matters as non-conformists did
in ecclesiastical. Thus supported, the presbyterian
preachers went on to declaim against tyranny. They
played the part of " right godly men as skilfully as
any tragedian in the world." They took care indeed
not to inveigh against the lucrative vices, such as
lying, cozening, and hypocrisy, "which was a great
ease to the generality of citizens and the inhabitants
of market towns, and no little profit to themselves."
" The inhabitants of market towns ' were already
fertile in the Stigginses of the period. Hobbes detests

i.] LIFE 31

the Presbyterians more than the Independents ; for
the Presbyterian claimed a spiritual authority over the
State for his own church; still his preaching led to
the multiplication of sects. " There was no so
dangerous an enemy to the Presbyterians as this
brood of their own hatching." The Rump, he observes,
voted liberty of conscience to the sectaries and so
" plucked out the sting of presbytery," a feat which
was personally useful to Hobbes himself. Meanwhile
the established church had its faults. The clergy in
general thought that the pulling down of the pope
was the setting up " of them in his place." Their
doctrine of apostolical succession implied that their
"spiritual power did depend not upon the authority
of the king but of Christ himself." He admits that
Laud was a " very honest man," but intimates that he
was a very poor statesman for mixing state affairs
with his " squabblings in the university about free
will, and his standing upon punctilios concerning the
service book and its rubrics."

Though an absolutist in politics, Hobbes can cor-
dially denounce persecution. "A state can constrain
obedience but convince no error, nor alter the mind of
them that think they have the better reason. Sup-
pression of doctrines does but unite and exasperate :
that is, increase both the malice and the power of them
that have already believed them." Persecution results
from the desire of the spiritual power to enforce the—
dogmatic systems learnt in the schools. "Religion
has been generally taken for the same thing withV
divinity (that is, with metaphysical theology), to the
great advantage of the clergy." Though the translan
tion of the Bible did mischief, he approves of it on the '

32 HOBBES [CHAP.

•

whole. The Bible teaches good morality in the easiest
words. The mischief resulted from the use of the,
Scriptures in controversies over mysteries. It is only
when the State is subordinate to the Church that
abstract dogmas will be enforced by law, and it is only
in Christian countries that there have been wars of
religion, because there men have been encouraged to
wrangle and harangue upon such points. The intro-
duction of this scholastic dogmatism is a main count
in his indictment against the universities. " The
universities have been to this nation as the wooden
horse was to the Trojans." They are the "core of
rebellion." It might have been said that the revival
of classical literature was a point in their favour. But
that only suggests another charge. They taught men
to argue "for liberty out of the works of Aristotle,
Plato, Cicero, and Seneca, and out of the histories of
Koine and Greece " — not, it would seem, paying proper
attention to Thucydides. Things will never be well
till they are reformed and made to teach absolute
obedience to the laws of the king " and his public
edicts under the great seal of England " : that is, as
one of his opponents sneered, till the Leviathan has
become the accepted text-book.

Hobbes on reaching Paris had renewed his old rela-
tions Avith Mersenne, and his first bit of work was a
return to purely philosophical activity. Descartes had
published his famous treatise on Method in 1637, andl
was now about to follow it up by the Meditations.\
Mersenne had submitted the book before publication
to various learned men who were to offer criticisms
which, with Descartes's replies, might be expected to
throw light upon any obscurities in the new system'

i.] LIFE 33

Hobbes came just iu time to join in this operation.
He put certain objections briefly and bluntly, and
they are of much interest as illustrating his own rela-
tion to Descartes. But they did not answer the
intended purpose. Descartes had expected, and he
more or less received from others, the rare and useful
kind of criticism which comes from thinkers who are
sufficiently in sympathy with their author to draw
from him additional explanations of his thought and
help him to round off and perfect his exposition. But
Hobbes differed radically. The controversy very
rapidly reached the point at which flat contradiction
takes the place of friendly argument, and Descartes
did not like contradiction for its own sake any more
than any other philosopher. Instead of a partial ally
he found a dogged opponent, and one who thought
himself entitled to speak with fully equal authority.
Descartes naturally became convinced that Hobbes
was a very poor philosopher. There was not, he said,
a single sound conclusion in the objections. Matters
did not improve when Mersenne forwarded to Des-
cartes certain objections to his Dioptrique. In order to
secure a fair hearing, Mersenne concealed the fact that
these objections also were made by Hobbes. Descartes
did not suspect the little artifice, but did not like the
new objections any better. He would, he said, have
nothing more to do with the Englishman. At a later
period Descartes admitted that Hobbes was a more
competent writer upon political problems than upon
metaphysical and mathematical questions, although
his political principles were morally objectionable.
He held that all men were wicked and gave them
ground for wickedness. Hobbes on his side, according

D

34 HOBBES [CHAP.

to Aubrey, had a " high respect " for Descartes, but /
thought that " his head did not lie for philosophy " :
he ought to have confined himself to geometry. He
could not pardon him for writing against his con-
science in defence of " transubstantiation in order to
please the Jesuits." This unsatisfactory encounter did
not long detain Hobbes. His interest in the political
issues of the civil war continued, and his thoughts
were for ten years "much or almost altogether
unhinged from the mathematics." The first result of
his meditations was the De_ Give, (1642) t which is sub-
stantially a remodelling of the political part of the
"little treatise." It was written in Latin, by way
apparently of implying that it was intended for the
philosophical world of Europe, and only a small
number of copies was printed.

Hobbes then began the composition of his most
famous work, the Leviathan. This time he used hisy
native language, and meant, it is to be presumed,
to catch the attention of the politicians who were
remoulding the constitution of his own country. The
Leviathan, like the early treatise, covers the second
and third parts of his general plan, the first principles
being again postponed. It is always easy to supply
first principles when you have settled your conclusions.
One characteristic may be noted. In the first treatise^
he had asserted his principle of the subordination of
the Church to the State. This argument, however,
was greatly expanded in the De Cive, and now in
the Leviathan fills a still larger space. For whatever
reason, Hobbes's antipathy to the claims of the spiritual
powers, whether Catholic or Presbyterian, had been
growing in intensity. The Leviathan, which Hobbes

i.] LIFE 35

hoped, and not without reason, would make an epoch
in political speculation, was carefully and slowly
written. Aubrey describes his method. " He walked
much and contemplated ; and he had in the head of
his staff a pen and ink horn ; carried always a note-
book in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted,
he presently entered it into his book, or otherwise he
might perhaps have lost it. He had drawn the design
of the book into chapters, etc., so that he knew
whereabouts it would come in." The composition took
some years, during which, one would suppose, Hobbes
must have been often in financial straits. Mersenne's
failure to bring him into friendly relations with
Descartes did not prevent the continuance of his
own friendship. Another conspicuous member of the
Mersenne circle, held to be only second to Descartes,
was Gassendi. He settled in Paris as professor of
mathematics in 1645, and became a warm friend.
Hobbes called Gassendi the " sweetest-natured man in
the world," and Gassendi expressed the highest ad-
miration for Hobbes's writings. A less distinguished
acquaintance, Sorbisre, was rather a hanger-on than a
member of the circle. He wrote books upon medical
topics, and vainly tried to get patronage from the
pope for his conversion from protestant error, but
neither the pope nor other observers seem to have
considered him as particularly edifying. Meanwhile
he boasted of his friendship for Gassendi, whose life
he wrote. He also professed admiration for Hobbes,
who allowed him to publish a definitive edition of the
De Give at Amsterdam. It was delayed until 1647,
when it came out accompanied by two most enthusi-
astic letters of commendation from his friends Mer-

36 HOBBES [CHAP.

senne and G-assendi. Of one other friend and warm
admirer we know little. This was Pu Yerdus, a noble
of Languedoc. They had become so intimate that
Hobbes was about to give up all hopes of returning
to England, and to settle with Du Verdus in the i
country, when a new career seemed to open for him J
on the arrival of the Prince of Wales in Paris.

English refugees had been following the first fugi-
tive. The Cavendish family had taken the royalist
side. Hobbes's pupil, the third earl, had been im-
peached in 1642, and escaped to the continent. He
returned to England in 1645, submitted to the parlia-
ment, and lived in retirement at Latimers in Bucking-
hamshire till the Restoration. His younger brother,
Charles, had distinguished himself on the king's side
at Edgehill, but was killed in an encounter with
Cromwell in 1643. Their mother, Christiana, remained
in England, and her house was a meeting-place of
the royalist party, by whom she was fully trusted.
Their cousin, the Earl of Newcastle, commanded the
king's forces in the north, and when his army, then
led by Prince Rupert, was crushed at Marston Moor,
he left England and reached Paris in the spring of
1645. He stayed there three years, and his presence
was, no doubt, important to Hobbes. His wife repeats
a conversation between them, at which Newcastle
spoke sceptically of witchcraft, and according to
her, suggested a passage to the same effect in the
Leviathan. Possibly the lady was claiming a little too
much for her husband. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry,
had escaped with Newcastle, and had a discussion with \
Hobbes about free will at the house of the marquis /
(as he had now become). Each of the disputants

i.] LIFE 37

afterwards put his arguments in writing ; but Hobbes
desired that his paper should be kept private. He
had allowed a copy to be taken for a friend, which
was afterwards published without his consent, with
results to be presently noticed. IJldnmnd Waller told
Aubrey that he had met Plobbes, Gassendi, and
Descartes dining together at the marquis's table in
Paris. With the marquis at this time was his
brother. Sir Charles Cavendish, who had been pre-
vented by deformity from bearing arms, and had
taken to mathematics. He collected, says Aubrey, as
many mathematical MSS. as filled a hogshead, intending
to publish them. But he died " of the scurvy con-
tracted by hard study," and his papers, falling into
ignorant hands, were sold by weight to the paste-
board makers. Petty mentions Hobbes's kindness in
introducing him to the two brothers. Petty, most
versatile and ingenious of men, was thirty-five years
younger than Hobbes. He was precocious from
childhood, and at this juncture was in Paris with
an introduction to Hobbes from the English mathe-
matician Pell. Petty helped Hobbes by drawing
figures for his optical propositions ; and the two
joined in reading Vesalius's anatomy. Petty was soon
afterwards lecturing on anatomy at Oxford. The
economic writings by which he is remembered, show
marked traces of Hobbes's political influence. About
this time, 1646, Clarendon, writing at Jersey on his
way to Holland, sent a message to Hobbes asking for
the De Cive, and told him that their common friend,
Sidney Godolphin, slain at Chagford in the beginning
of 1645, had left him a bequest of £200. Hobbes
received £100, with a promise of the rest from

38 HOBBES [CHAP.

Godolphin's brother, to whom, though personally
unknown, he dedicated the Leviathan in gratitude.
At the end of the book he makes a striking reference
to his friend. " I have known clearness of judgment
and largeness of fancy, strength of reason and grace-
ful elocution, a courage for the war and a fear for the
laws and all eminently in one man ; and that was my
most noble and honoured friend, Mr. Sidney Godol-
phin, who, hating no man, nor hated of any, was
unfortunately slain in the beginning of the late civil
war, in the pubjic quarrel, by an undiscerned and
undiscerning hand." The bequest must have been
welcome. It was not so easy to make communications
or send remittances, and Hobbes only heard of his
legacy by the accident of Clarendon's letter, some
little time after Godolphin's death. The Cavendishes
had plenty of calls upon their money, and had other
things to think of than Hobbes's fortunes.

The gathering of the exiles at Paris naturally led
to Hobbes's appointment to be mathematical tutor to
the Prince of Wales. It was, we may suppose, not a
very splendid post if regarded from a pecuniary point
of view. Newcastle had been for a time the prince's
" governor," and had drawn up a paper of instructions,
superfluously advising that the boy should not be too
devout, " and should be very civil to women." He
might now naturally recommend his friend Hobbes,
whose qualifications were indeed ample. Mersenne
had published some of his scientific speculations.
Pell had at this time confuted one Longomontanus,
who claimed to have squared the circle ; and Hobbes
was invited along with Descartes and other leading
mathematicians, including Sir Charles Cavendish, to

i.] LIFE 39

pronounce an opinion upon the controversy. How
far he succeeded in impressing the prince with his
reverence for Euclid does not appear. At a later
time the conjunction was regarded as fraught with
disastrous consequences. Burnet scented a diabolical
plot. The Duke of Buckingham, such was the sug-
gestion, desired to corrupt Charles's morals and
principles. Buckingham would be in no need of help
in the moral department, but he introduced Hobbes
to inculcate " political and religious schemes," which
made a deep impression upon the pupil, " so that the
main blame of the King's ill principles and bad morals,
was owing to the Duke of Buckingham." As a matter
of fact, Hobbes states in a letter to Sorbiere that he
was confined to mathematical teaching, the prince
being too young for philosophy. It would be more
plausible to attribute to his influence Charles's most
creditable peculiarity — a certain interest in science.
Ill principles were abundant enough in the atmo-
sphere of the court. The connection lasted at most
for two years, as Charles came to Paris in 1646, and
left it for Holland in the spring of 1648. He retained,
however, a friendly feeling for his tutor. The new
edition of the De Give was now on the point of publi-
cation, and Sorbiere, in 1647, proposed to describe
Hobbes on the title-page as tutor to the Prince of
Wales. Hobbes objected in a remarkable letter. The
connection of the writer may do harm to the prince,
as suggesting that he approves Hobbes's principles.
Courtiers may accuse him of vanity. Finally he may
think of returning to England if peace is established
in any way. He did not, he said, belong to the house-
hold, and apparently found it already uncongenial.

40 HOBBES [CHAP.

Hobbes's teachersliip was interrupted, if not ter-
minated, by a severe illness which brought him to the
point of death in 1647. He gives a characteristic
anecdote in regard to it. Mersenne was called in by
a common friend, who feared that Hobbes would die
outside of the Roman communion. Mersenne accord-
ingly came and began a discourse upon the power of
his church to remit sins. "Father," said Hobbes, "I
have long gone over that question in my own mind.
You have something pleasanter to say. When did
you see Gassendi ? ' Mersenne dropped the subject.
Soon afterwards Co sin, afterwards Bishop of Durham,
offered his services, and Hobbes received the sacrament
from, him according to the Anglican rite : a great
proof, he observes, of his reverence for the episcopal
discipline. Aubrey gives a very different version of
the story. When divines came to him in this illness,
he said, " Let me alone, or else I will detect all your
cheats from Aaron to yourselves." But Hobbes's own
account must be preferred. Mersenne died in Sep-
tember 1648, after great suffering under the hands of
blundering surgeons. Hobbes continued to work at
his political writings. In 1650 he published or
allowed the publication of the little treatise which had
remained for ten years in manuscript, and in 1651 he
published an English translation of the De Cive. The
poet WaJIej? had offered to translate it before, but
having asked Hobbes to translate part by way of
model, declined to undertake a task which, as he
sensibly judged, could be executed by no one so well
as the author himself. These two books were fore-
runners of the Leviathan, which was printed in London,
and appeared in the middle of 1651. In August

i.] LIFE 41

Hobbes had another illness, of which the shrewd and
learned physician, Gui Patin, gives a lively account.
He was called in to see Hobbes, whom he describes as
stoical, melancholy, and outre cela Anglais. Naturally,
therefore, he had been thinking of suicide ; Englishmen
have a turn that way. He refused to be bled : the
remedy for almost all diseases according to Patin.
Next day, however, he gave in, to his great benefit.
They at once became camarades et grands amis ; and
Patin allowed him to drink as much small beer as he
liked. Hobbes was in the habit of saying that he
would prefer an old woman who had been at many bed-
sides to the " learnedst young unpractised physitian."
The fate of his friend Mersenne ma}T have weakened
his faith in the faculty. Two months after his re-
covery Charles reached Paris after his final defeat at
Worcester, and Hobbes speedily presented him with a
manuscript copy of the Leviathan, " engrossed in vellum
in a marvellous fair hand." It is now to be seen in
the British Museum.

The immediate consequence was that Hobbes had
to retreat to England, and became the object of
accusations which require notice, not because they
are plausible but because they illustrate his position
at the time. Wallis, in a controversy with Hobbes
after the Restoration, declared that the Leviathan
was "writ in defence of Oliver's title." Claren-
don reports that he talked with Hobbes shortly
before the book was published. Hobbes showed him
some sheets and spoke of his opinions. Clarendon
asked how he could publish such doctrine ? After a
" discourse between jest and earnest," Hobbes replied :
"The truth is I have a mind to go home." Conver-

HOBBES [CHAP.

sations between jest and earnest reported twenty
years later are unsatisfactory evidence, and it is more
likely that the grave Clarendon failed to see a joke
than that Hobbes meant to make such a confession.
To Wallis he made a sufficient answer. Cromwell
did not become protector till 1653, and it could
not be known in 1650 that he was the right person
to flatter. But besides this the argument of the
Leviathan was certainly not modified in order to
please either Cromwell or the Rump, to which for
the present he was subordinate. The principles are
identical with those of the early treatise and the
De Give written long before; and since they were
L<not modified at all, they were not modified in order
to curry favour with anybody. Things, it is true,
had changed, and it might be suggested that the
defence of the absolute power of the sovereign was
applicable to parliament, when it became sovereign,
as it had once been applicable to the king. But
parliament would certainly not admit that only by
success were its claims justified, or approve of a
doctrine which condemned the whole rebellion. In
any case it is scarcely fair to blame Hobbes, who
laid down a perfectly consistent doctrine from first to
last, if a change of circumstances made the doctrine
agreeable to a new order. The truth is, I take it,
that his view was one which could not be openly
avowed even by Cromwellians or by royalists. The
more they might act in accordance with it, the more
anxious they would be to disavow it.

There was, however, one part of the Leviathan

I which might be a stumbling-block. In a Review
and Conclusion he briefly considered the question,

i.] LIFE 43

at what time does a subject become obliged to a
conqueror ? He answers that " it is when the means
of his life are within the guards and garrisons of
the enemy." Submission, therefore, to a de facto
government is right ; and Hobbes adds that such
submission is not even an assistance to the new
power, which would otherwise confiscate an oppo-
nent's whole property instead of taking a part. This
was a convenient argument. In 1656 Hobbes could
take credit for the influence of the Leviathan in
framing "the minds of a thousand gentlemen to a
conscientious obedience to the present government
(Cromwell's), which otherwise would have wavered
in that point." In 1662 he looks at the question
from the other point of view, and remembers that
by "compounding'3 they diminished the plunder of
the usurper, and in due time would be better able
to serve the king. That was the case of many
honourable persons, including, it may be observed,
Hobbes's own patron the Earl of Devonshire. No
moralist, I suppose, would deny that such submission
becomes right in time. Nobody could blame an
elderly scholar, who had no position under the
exiled king, for settling down quietly in his native
country and justifying the same action in his friend's
case. No doubt, however, the doctrine gave offence
to those who held out. "Mr. Hobbes," writes Sir
Edward Nicholas in February 1652, "is at London
much caressed as one that hath by his writings
justified the reasonableness and righteousness of their
arms and actions." Hobbes had certainly not done
that ; but the royalist might be scandalised when an
eminent writer, who had previously been the king's

44 HOBBES [CHAP.

tutor, defended submission to the powers in existence,
and so far admitted the cause to be hopeless. How
far he was " caressed " does not appear. He certainly
got nothing from the government, and he had very
sufficient reasons for leaving France.

Nicholas was then in Holland and previous notes
of his are significant. "All honest men here/7 he
says in January, "are very glad that the K. hath
at length banished from his court that father of
atheists, Mr. Hobbes, who, it is said, hath rendered
all the queen's court, and very many of the D. of
York's family atheists, and if he had been suffered,
would have done his best to have likewise poisoned
the king's court." A very few days later he regrets
that Papists " (to the shame of the true Protestants)
were the chief cause that that grand atheist was
v/sent away." He mentions, but declines to believe,
a report that the Marquis of Ormonde was very
slow in signifying the king's command to Hobbes
to forbear coming to court. Clarendon, who seems
to have had some part in the expulsion, had now
read the printed book and told Hobbes that " such a
book would be punished in any country in Europe."
He says that Hobbes had to "fly secretly, the justices
having endeavoured to apprehend him." Hobbes him-
self says that the Anglican prelates had found fault
with the theology of his book, and that he was in
fear of the Catholic clergy, whose church he had
certainly attacked. Whether Hobbes could rightly
called an atheist is a question to be noticed here-
after. His friend Mersenne had declared some years
before that there were some 50,000 atheists in Paris
alone, and that twelve might be often found in one

i.] LIFE 45

house. As there was no religious census at the time
the numbers must be considered as distinctly con-
jectural. " Atheism," however, is a word which could
be and was used simply as a missile to be hurled
at anybody morally or philosophically objectionable.
Both Hobbes's friends, Gassendi and Mersenne, were
Catholic ecclesiastics who discharged their functions
regularly, and Gassendi maintained that his admira-
tion for Epicurus was consistent with thorough
orthodoxy. Hobbes can hardly have talked atheism
to them, and the anecdote about Mersenne and Bishop
Cosin, to which he refers so complacently, seems to
imply that he was as reticent as might be expected
from his timidity. Perhaps he had been more out-
spoken among the courtiers, and, at any rate, the
attacks upon the spiritual power in his two last
books meant an attitude towards the Church which
might well suggest "atheism," as Mersenne under-
stood the word, even to candid critics. Certainly
he had said enough to shock the Catholic authori-
ties, and his fear of their action was natural. Besides
this, he tells us that he was frightened by the murder
of the two English envoys in Holland and Spain,
Dorislaus and Ascham. He was in an awkward
position. Charles, he admits, was set against him.
The young king "trusted in those in whom his
father had trusted," says Hobbes. Hobbes was
hardly called upon to stay in a place where his
countrymen and the native authorities agreed in
considering him to be an atheist, and held atheism
to be not only damnable but criminal.

He was glad to escape to England in a severe
winter, and suffering from his infirmities, and to

46 HOBBES [CHAP.

settle among old friends in a land where he was at
least permitted to publish his writings. Three months
later (as he declared) he went more than a mile to
take the sacrament according to the Anglican rite.
He made his submission to the Council of State and
remained for the rest of his life in England. In 1653
he again became a member of the Earl of Devonshire's
family. The earl, though living in retirement at
Latimers in Buckinghamshire, also occupied "Little
Salisbury House '; in London. Hobbes complained
that, although the earl had a good library and pro-
vided his old tutor with all the books he wanted, a
country life gave small opportunities for "learned
conversation." One's understanding, Aubrey said, as
Johnson might have said, " grows mouldy." He
appears to have spent most of his time in London,
and, as at all periods of his life, cultivated the
friendship of the most distinguished contemporaries.
He was on intimate terms with the best known poets,

Davenant. IVIilton would not

be a congenial friend. TnTiis last year at Paris he
had been very intimate with Davenant, who was then
writing the first cantos of his ponderous epic Gondibert.
He submitted it as it was written to Hobbes, and
addressed a very long preface to his friendly critic.
Hobbes replied in a letter which was printed as an
appendix to the preface. It is superfluous to say that
each expresses a very high opinion of the other's
merits. I need not dwell upon Hobbes's aesthetic
doctrine. " A poet," he says, " ought to know well,
and to know much " : a sign of the first is " perspi-
cuity, propriety, and decency " ; a sign of the second
is " novelty of expression, which pleaseth by excitation

i.] LITE 47

of the mind, for novelty causeth admiration and
admiration curiosity, which is a delightful appetite
of knowledge." He ends by a spirited protest against
Davenant's depreciation of old age as second child-
hood. ".That saying, meant only of the weakness
of the body, was wrested to the weakness of mind by
fro ward children, weary of the controlment of their
parents, masters, and other admonitors." The dotage
of age is " never the effect of time but sometimes of
the excesses of youth." " Those who pass their youth
in making provision only for their ease and sensual
delight are children still at what years soever : as
they that coining into a populous city, never going
out of their inn, are strangers still, how long soever
they have been there." There is, moreover, "no
reason for any man to think himself wiser to-day than
yesterday, which does not equally convince he shall
be wiser to-morrow than to-day." Davenant will love
to change his opinion when he becomes old, and
" meanwhile you discredit all I have said before in
your commendation because I am old already."
Hobbes was not quite sixty-two when he wrote this
and was to live nearly thirty years longer. He did
his best to act up to his encouraging but rather
questionable doctrine, and took the approach of old
age with all possible gallantry. Old age was then
considered to begin at a comparatively early period,
and Hobbes, in spite of the antagonism which he
excited, enjoyed some of its privileges. Cowley's
ode to him. written some years later touches the
point :

"Nor can the snow which now cold age does shed,
Upon thy reverend head

48 HOBBES [CHAP.

Quench or allay the noble fires within,

But all which thou hast been

And all that youth can be thou' rt yet,

So fully still dost thou

Enjoy the manhood and the bloom of wit

And all the natural heat but not the fever too."

A phenomenon which is accounted for in the familiar
lines :

" To things immortal time can do no wrong,
And that which never is to die for ever must be young."

Cowley says that the scholastic philosophy, of which,
as his poems show he had made some study, was now
dead, and that Hobbes is the great " Columbus of
the golden land of new philosophies." Hobbes' s three
poetical friends had probably all known him in France.
Waller had an unfortunate facility for turning his coat,
and came back about the same time as Hobbes ; he
was pardoned and then patronised by Cromwell, and
afterwards reconciled himself to Charles II. Davenant
finished his Gondibert in the Tower, but was after-
wards allowed to revive theatrical performances before
the Restoration. Cowley, who had been trusted in
confidential employment by Henrietta Maria, was
suspected, like Hobbes, of a disposition to reconcile
himself to the actual authorities, but seems to have
been a consistent royalist.

Hobbes had two other remarkable friends. One was
Harvey (1578-1657), whose great discovery of the
circulation of the blood had been first published in
1616, and of whom Hobbes always speaks with pro-
found admiration. Harvey is said to have left him
£10 in his will.1 The other was John Selden (1584-

1 Aubrey reports that Selden, like Harvey, left £10 to his
friend, but this seems to be au error.

i.] LIFE 49

1654). Their acquaintance began by Hobbes sending
him a copy of the Leviathan, after which, says Aubrey,
there was a strict friendship between them. The con-
versations between the authors of the Leviathan and
the Table Talk would no doubt be worth hearing, and

<~ * /

Selden's Erastian views would be thoroughly acceptable
to Hobbes. Baxter, however, reports, on the authority
of Sir Matthew Hale, that Selden attacked Hobbes's
sceptical opinions so forcibly as to drive him out of the
room. Another of Aubrey's stories is that Hobbes
dissuaded Selden from sending for a clergyman when
he was dying. " What," he is supposed to have said,
" will you that have wrote like a man now die like a
woman ? ' As a contradictory account is given of
Selden's death, and as Hobbes certainly acted on the
opposite principle when he was himself in danger, we
may probably assume that the anecdote represents not
what actually happened, but what somebody thought
would naturally be done by an "atheist."

Meanwhile Hobbes was, as he says, in a country
where every one might write what he pleased. Free
from fear of priests and with some gratitude to
sectaries, he could sit down to finish his philosophy.
He had sufficiently expounded his political theories,
and they were provoking some controversy. Filmerj
(best known from Locke's attack upon his posthumous
book, the Patriarcha) criticised Hobbes in 1652, along
with Grotius and Milton. Alexander Ross, whose
memory is preserved only by a rhyme in Hudibras as
to the "philosopher who had read Alexander Ross
over," animadverted on the Leviathan next year. But
they were opponents who might be neglected by a
writer who had now achieved so high a position.

£

50 HOBBES [CHAP.

Hobbes sat down to finish his work by completing
the exposition of first principles, from which he had
been distracted by his interest in the parliamentary
struggle.

He was presently interrupted. The anonymous
person to whom he had entrusted a copy of his dis-
cussion with Bramhall was now induced to publish
the piece in which, as he said in a preface, the author
of the Leviathan had solved a question over which
divines had wrangled so long and so fruitlessly.
Bramhall naturally supposed that Hobbes, who had
stipulated at the time for privacy, was responsible for
the publication. He therefore published all that had
passed, with his rejoinder to Hobbes. Hobbes replied
in 1658, and Bramhall two years afterward came out with
Castigation of Mr. Hobbes's Animadversions, together
with an appendix called The Catching of Leviathan the
Great Whale. This was meant to expose the atheistical'
doctrine embodied in Hobbes's chief work. Bramhall
died in 1663, and Hobbes, who declares that he had not
heard of the attack for ten years, now made a reply
which did not appear till after his own death. The
controversy brought out some of Hobbes's most vigorous
writing, and gives an important part of his philosophy,
of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Hobbes
meanwhile had finished the book which was to give the
foundations of his system. It was published in Latin
as De Corpore in 1655. An English translation (only
superintended by himself) appeared in 1656.

This book contains a very important exposition of
Hobbes's general principles. It also includes certain
very unfortunate speculations which led to one of the
most singular tangles of controversy in which a philo-

i.] LIFE 51

sopher ever wasted his energies. I have already noted
Hobbes's condemnation of the universities, which hadx
found sufficient expression in the Leviathan. Accord-
ing to him, they still taught nothing but the old
scholasticism, corrupted youth by classical republi-
canism, and were ignorant of modern science. He was
not aware, it seems, of the remarkable change which
had come over his own university. In 1619 Sir
Henry Savile had founded professorships of geometry
and astronomy. Until that time, according to Hobbes,
many people regarded geometry as "art diabolical,"
and its professors, as Wood says, were taken to be
" limbs of the devil." Mathematical studies were now
gaining respect, and by the time of Hobbes's return to
England, Oxford had become the meeting-place of a
remarkable number of eminent and energetic teachers.
Never before — perhaps one might add, not often after-
wards— was the university so important a focus of
scientific illumination. Oxford (alternately with Lon-
don) was the headquarters of the remarkable group of
men who founded the Royal Society after the Restora-
tion. Young men destined to become famous, Robert
Boyle and Christopher Wren and Hobbes's friend,
Petty, and others less generally known, were of the
number. Boyle, the eldest of the three, was thirty-nine
years and Wren forty -four years younger than Hobbes.
They represented the new generation, eager to enter
into that promised land of science of which Bacon had
caught " a Pisgah sight." The two Savilian professors,
both some years older, were men of mark. Seth Ward
(1617-1689) had been appointed professor of astro-
nomy in 1649, though previously ejected from Cam-
bridge for refusing the covenant. He was already

52 HOBBES [CHAP.

known as an able mathematician though after the
Restoration he left science to rise in the Church and
become ultimately Bishop of Salisbury. John Wallis
(1618-1703), the professor of geometry from 1649,
was a man of singular acuteness, and one of the first
mathematicians of his day. His Arithmetica Infinitorum,
published in 1655, was the greatest step towards the
development of the differential calculus, elaborated by
Newton and Leibnitz in the next generation. Oxford
while represented by such men could certainly not be
condemned as behind the time in science. Hobbes,
who specially claimed to represent the scientific move-
ment, should have recognised the men who were its
most efficient organs. Unluckily for him things fell
out very differently. Ward replied to Hobbes in an
appendix to a book mainly directed against another
assailant of the universities.1 In an earlier essay he
had professed a high opinion of that " worthy gentle-
man," Hobbes ; but he now felt bound to expose the
worthy gentleman's arrogance and ignorance. Backed
by a letter from the famous John Wilkins. at this time
warden of Wadham, and afterwards the first secretary
of the Royal Society, he accused Hobbes of plagiarism,
and taunted him in advance. Whenever Hobbes pub-
lished his geometrical discoveries (of which he had
apparently been boasting) he would find that they
were only too well understood at Oxford.

These discoveries saw the light in the De Corpore.
Hobbes had squared the circle : and though the sub-

1 John Webster, known also from his Displayinc) of Supposed
Witchcraft (1677), directed against Henry More and other
credulous persons : and not the famous dramatist, as others
have had to prove.

i.] LIFE 53

ject was strictly irrelevant, he could not refrain from
introducing a chapter into his book by way of showing
his capacity. He had solved the problem which had
baffled all previous geometers from Archimedes down-
ward. No man ever made a more unlucky boast.
Ward and Wallis agreed to make an example of the
rash intruder who had given himself into their hands.
Ward wrote against the general philosophy ; in that
department nothing could be done beyond repeating
familiar arguments. Wallis, who undertook the
mathematics, had a more satisfactory task. Mathe-
matical controversies have the peculiarity that they
lead to definite issues, in which one side must be
entirely in the right, and the other entirely in the
wrong. Hobbes had or had not squared the circle, and
his success or failure could be clearly demonstrated to
all competent people. As a matter of fact, of course, he
had failed egregiously. Not only so, but he had made
successive attempts ; falling out of one blunder into
another, he had left traces of the process by cancelling
sheets, and he had shown a strange incapacity for even
appreciating the conditions of strict mathematical
proof. All this Wallis explained in an Elenchus
Geometries. Hobbiance, adding reproof and ridicule to
poison the wound to his victim's vanity. Hobbes was
too incompetent even to know that he had been refuted.
With a courage worthy of a better cause he defended
his own errors, and gave fresh proofs of incapacity by
attacking Wallis's real discoveries in Six Lessons for the]
Oxford professors. Wallis in return gave Due Correc-l
tionfor Mr. Hobbes in School Discipline for not saying his
Lessons right. The language became worse, and diverged
into irrelevant topics. Wallis charged Hobbes with

54 HOBBES [CHAP.

confusing the Greek words ^ny^y and
Hobbes's next book was therefore headed "

Ayeco/zerptas, 'Aypoi/a'a,?, 'Ai/TivroAiTeias, *A/xa$e«xs OT

Marks of the absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish
Church Politics, and Barbarisms of John Wallis"

"When the Royal Society was founded, 1662, Hobbes
was naturally not invited to join a body of which his
antagonists were leading members. He showed his
anger by attacking Boyle's account of his experiment
with the air-pump. He often said that if people who
tried such a farrago of experiments were to be called
philosophers, the title might be bestowed upon apothe-
caries and gardeners and the like. Besides stating that
the Society was on the wrong tack and would learn
nothing till they adopted his principles, he indulged
in a personal fling at Wallis. Wallis replied in the\
Hobbius Heauton Timoroumenos, which seems to have
been the most complete exposure of Hobbes's manifold
blunders. It gave Hobbes, however, his one telling
retort. Wallis made the accusation of disloyalty already -
noticed. Hobbes defended himself, and pointed out
that Wallis had deciphered the king's despatches taken!
after Naseby, and had boasted of the fact. If Wallis
now said (as he seems to have done) that he did it to
the king's advantage, that would only show that he
cheated his employer, excused treason with treachery,
and was a double spy. To this awkward thrust Wallis
did not reply. But it did not prove that Hobbes had
squared the circle.

The battle was not yet ended. Four years later
(1666) Hobbes came out with a new treatise, in which
he admitted that all geometers were against him;
either he alone must be mad or he alone not madj

i.] LIFE 55

unless indeed they were all mad together. He was now
seventy-eight, but still wrote treatises to which Wallis
punctually replied until 1672, when Hobbes was
eighty-four. Wallis then dropped off, but Hobbes
published yet another treatise in 1674, and fired a
final shot called the Decameron Pliysiologicum in 1678,
at the ripe age of ninety.1

There is something pathetic as well as comical in
this singular history. Hobbes told Sorbiere in 1656
that he attacked the professors mainly because they
represented the clergy and universities. That was a
very bad reason for assaulting his opponent's strongest
side. The old gentleman certainly wasted a great
deal of time and temper, and showed an amazing
degree of self-confidence. Still he was near seventy
when the fight began, and to a man of that age some-
thing should be forgiven for intellectual energy, even
in a mistaken cause. One remark may, I suppose, be
made. A man who attempted circle-squaring at a
later period proved himself to be hopelessly at sea.
Many such adventurers are described in de Morgan's
very amusing Budget of Paradoxes. But in Hobbes's
day the enterprise was not so clearly perceived to
be hopeless. He was called in, as we have seen, to

*A full account of this controversy is given in Groom
Robertson's IL>bbcs, pp. 167-185. I have been content to
follow him, and have not even seen Wallis's pamphlets, which
have become rare, as he declined to print them in his works
after Hobbes's death. Robertson was far more competent than
I could be to give an opinion upon the merits of a controversy,
which in any case would not deserve any lengthy discussion in
the present book. Dr. Tunnies thinks Robertson rather hard
upon Hobbes, and unjust to the historical significance of this
controversy.

56 HOBBES [CHAP.

arbitrate in one case of circle-squaring, and his friend
Mersenne had a controversy about the same time with
the Jesuit, St. Vincent, " the best of circle-squarers."
To square the circle, or in other words to find the
ratio of the radius to the circumference, was of course
a rational problem, though, I suppose, that the proper
treatment could not be applied till the development of
the methods adopted by Wallis, and so unfortunately
misunderstood by Hobbes. He persistently protested
against the application of algebra to geometry : that
is against the most essential step in advance that was
being made in his day. He consequently made an
attempt in which failure was inevitable. De Morgan,
however, seems to feel a certain compunction in
classing him with the circle-squarers, and says, that
in spite of his blunders he shows great ability in his
remarks upon the general theory of mathematical

reasoning.

The moral is, I suppose, that a man ought to read
Euclid before he is forty. He will assimilate the
principles better, and he will also be made aware of
the danger of mistaking blunders for original dis-
coveries. That is an error of which he will be cured
by examiners. Anyhow, besides wasting his energy,
Hobbes had put himself in a curiously uncomfortable
position by the time of the Restoration. Intellectual
audacity combines awkwardly with personal timidity.
The poor old gentleman, aged seventy-two, whose
great aim was to keep out of harm's way, had stirred
up an amazing mass of antipathies. His political —
absolutism was hateful to constitutionalists like
Clarendon as well as to the more popular politicians :-s.
to the two parties, that is, which were about to become

i.l LIFE 57/

v — S

tories and whigs. Anglican bishops and non-con-
formist divines agreed that he was an atheist, and ^
what was to some almost as bad, a hater of all ecclesi-
astical authority. His political views might suit the
courtiers, but no one could be more hostile to their
leanings to Borne. Political absolutism and religious
scepticism made a creed which could not be openly
avowed, though it might and did excite some tacit
sympathy. He had, however, spoken with a certain
authority as a representative of science. Now the
scientific and philosophical world had ostracised him.
They had pronounced him to be a charlatan. A man
who could make such a mess of squaring the circle was
presumably a paradox-monger in philosophy. His
opponents would taunt him with a failure admitted by
every one but himself. It is true that popular opinion
looks upon philosophers with a dash of amused con-
tempt. Like Shakespeare's fools they are allowed a
certain license. Their queer opinions, even if atro-
cious, are so far removed from practical business as to
be harmless and rather amusing playthings. Person-
ally Hobbes was generally agreeable ; and so venerable
in appearance that one would prefer to leave him in
quiet. He had some anxious moments, but on the
whole was tolerated.

Hobbes had spent the winter of 1659 in Derby-
shire, when Aubrey wrote to beg him to be present
at the king's arrival in London. Hobbes was
standing at the gates of Little Salisbury House
as his majesty's coach drove through the Strand.
Charles recognised his old tutor, took off his
hat and greeted him kindly. A week afterwards
Hobbes attended when Charles was sitting for his

58 HOBBES [CHAP

portrait to the famous miniature painter, Samuel
Cooper, and diverted the sitter by his "pleasant dis-
course.'7 Charles gave orders that he should always
have access to the court — the royal taste was good in
the matter of " wit and sharp repartees." When
Hobbes appeared, the king would say : " Here comes
the bear to be baited ; ': and the courtiers did their
best. Hobbes feared none of them, being " marvellous
happy and ready in his replies." He took care, how-
ever, to avoid serious topics. During the following
period, Hobbes spent most of his time in London.
Our next glimpse of him is given by the French
ambassador, the Comte de Corainges. Louis XIV. had "
at this time resolved to become the patron of learned
men throughout Europe. Cominges was directed to
inquire what men worthy of this exalted patronage
were to be found in England. He made the dis-
couraging reply that arts and sciences had chosen
France as their sole abode. In England men still
remembered Bacon, Sir Thomas More, and Buchanan,
but the only living author of reputation was "un
nomme Miltonius" : an infamous person whose writings
would not be to the taste of the great king. Shortly
afterwards he discovered Hobbes, and invited him to
dinner along with the famous mathematician, Christian
Huygens, and Hobbes's old friend Sorbiere. The
"bonhomme" Hobbes speaks enthusiastically of Louis,
and he might truly be called " assertor regum " (a title
which " Miltonius r> clearly did not deserve) and
Cominges would be very glad to be the means of
obtaining a pension for him. Never, he says, " will
any favour have been better placed." The application
was favourably received at first, but nothing seems to

I.] LIFE 59

have come of it. Perhaps on inquiry somebody
remembered that Hobbes had left France in bad odour
with the priests, to say the least ; or Huj^gens, upon
whom a pension was bestowed, may have given a
confidential opinion about the squaring of the circle.
Hobbes's friends anyhow denied at his death some
report of a designed or actual pension. Charles, how-
ever, had given him a pension of £100 a year. An
undated petition shows that it had been stopped for
some time along with others ; but Hobbes says he
had enjoyed it to his great comfort for many years.
He mentions arrears in his will (1677). Sorbiere next
year wrote an account of his travels with due compli-
ment to Hobbes. The third earl, he says, " loves and
reveres " his old tutor. He applies Charles's saying
about baiting the bear to the clergy ; and adds : " I
know not how it comes to pass, the clergy are afraid
of him."

Hobbes was certainly afraid of the clergy. The
years 1665 and 1666 were marked by the plague and
the fire of London, which naturally startled contempo-
raries. The fire of London might perhaps be set down
to the Papists, as was recorded on the monument, but
they could hardly have been responsible for the plague.
That was doubtless a manifestation of Divine wrath ;
and to the question, what had provoked it? the
obvious answer was, Hobbes. A bill was brought into
parliament for the suppression of atheism and pro-
faneness, and a committee was instructed to receive
information about " Mr. Hobbes's Leviathan" With I
him was joined an eccentric Catholic priest, Thomas/
White (or Albius), known at the time as a contro-f
versialist. White was suspected of heresy. He had,'

60 HOBBES [CHAP.

it seems, denied the " natural J: immortality of the
soul. Hobbes and White were doubtless not the only
offenders. The court was not perfectly pure. The
bill passed the House of Commons but was ultimately
dropped. Hobbes was frightened, and not without
reason. Aubrey mentions a report (probably referring
to this time) that some of the bishops made a motion
" to have the good old gentleman burnt for a heretic."
Hereupon, he says, Hobbes put some of his papers in
the fire. Hobbes wrote an essay concerning heresy to
prove that he could not be legally burnt, and protested
in an appendix to a Latin translation of the Leviathan.
The essay was not published, and Hobbes probably
depended for safety less upon his logic than upon
the favour of Charles and of Arlington. Arlington,
the secretary of state, was a concealed Catholic.
There were plenty of " Hobbists " at the court at this
time, as Clarendon and Burnet sorrowfully confess.
Arlington possibly preferred them to the Anglican
bishops who were more dangerous enemies of his
church. Hobbes, at any rate, addresses Arlington as
the special protector of his old age. The first result
was that Hobbes was not attacked but forbidden to
give further utterance to his views. Charles forbade
the publication of the Behemoth, written in 1668; and-
Pepys wishing to buy the Leviathan, " which is now
mightily called for" (3rd September, 1668), found that
he had to pay twenty-four shillings for a second-hand
copy; whereas it had theretofore been sold for eight
shillings. It is now, he adds, sold for thirty shillings.
The bishops would not allow it to be reprinted.

A year latter, one Scargill, a fellow of Corpus
College, Cambridge, having maintained some theses in

I.] LIFE 61

which phrases from the Leviathan were twisted to an
offensive meaning, was expelled from the university,
and induced to make a public recantation. He had
gloried in being a Hobbist and atheist, and attributed
his moral ruin to Hobbes's principles. After this
alarm, says Kennett, Hobbes went more regularly to
the earl's chapel, though he would not go to the
parish church. He did not care for sermons. They
could teach him nothing but what he knew. His fame
meanwhile was spreading abroad. In 1669 he was
visited several times by the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
who took away a portrait and works of the philoso-
pher, to be preserved among the most precious jewels
of the Medicean library.

In 1668 Hobbes reached his eightieth year, and
might have had other motives for silence than pro-
hibitions by authority. He preserved his intellectual
activity, however, almost to the last. Besides the
books mentioned, he had, about 1659, according to
Aubrey, and about his eightieth year according to his
own account, written a Latin poem of more than two
thousand elegiacs, versifying the Historia Universalis
of Cluverius, and describing once more the usurpations
of the spiritual power. In 1664 Aubrey begged him to
write about law, when he answered that he could not
count upon life enough. Few men could become law
students at seventy-six. Aubrey, however, sent him
Bacon's Elements of the Common Laics; whereupon he
set to work, and produced a Dialogue between a Philo-
sopher and a Student of the Common Laics of England.
His especial aim was to confute Coke, as the wor-
shipper of precedent. The dialogue was not finished ;
but it is noticed by Maine as showing that Hobbes

62 HOBBES [CHAP.

had anticipated many of the legal reforms afterwards
advocated by Bentham. A few years later he retired
from controversy — not to silence, but to a new literary
employment. In 1673 he published the Voyage of
Ulysses : a translation into English quatrains of Books
IX.-XII. of the Odyssey. This, it seems, was by way of
experiment ; and a year later he produced a complete
translation both of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nobody
has yet, I believe, discovered that the work is a worthy
rival of Chapman or Pope : a task which might per-
haps have charms for some literary revivalists. The
severest critic might be touched to silence at any rate
by Hobbes's own apology : " Why did I write it ? Be-
cause I had nothing else to do. Why publish it ?
Because I thought it might take off my adversaries
from showing their folly upon my more serious writ-
ings, and set them upon my verses to show their
wisdom. But why without annotation ? Because I
had no hope to do it better than it is already done
by Mr. Ogilby." It was at least a creditable occupa-
tion for a man of eighty-six. I will content myself
with quoting the passage which has often been quoted
to prove that Hobbes could deviate into a really
poetical phrase. It is from the famous meeting of
Hector and Andromache:

" Now Hector met her with their little boy
That in the nurse's arms was carried,
And like a star upon her bosom lay
His beautiful and shining golden head."

In 1675 Hobbes left London finally, to pass the last
four years of his life at Chatsworth and Hardwick.
He was still at work ; his last scientific paper appeared

i.] LIFE 63

when he was ninety, and on the 18th of August 1679
he tells his publisher that he is writing somewhat to
print in English. In October he was attacked by a
complaint incurable at his age. " I shall be glad," he
said upon learning it, " to find a hole to creep out of
the world at." At the end of November the family
moved from Chatsworth to Hardwick, and Hobbes
declining to be left behind, was put upon a feather-bed
in the coach. The journey was too much for his
strength ; an attack of paralysis soon followed, and he
died on December 4th. He was buried at the parish
church of Hault Hucknall. The family and neigh-
bours who attended were "very handsomely enter-
tained with wine, burnt and raw, cakes, biscuits, etc.,"
and a slab of black marble was placed upon his
grave. In the inscription he is called " Vir probus et
fama erudition-is domiforisque bene cognitus" He had
amused himself, it is said, by allowing his friends to
prepare epitaphs, and the design which pleased him ,
most was a gravestone inscribed : " This is the true
Philosopher's Stone."

Hobbes left nearly £1000, "which," says Aubrey,
" considering his charity, was more than I expected."
He had given a piece of land to a nephew, and paid
off a mortgage of £200 with which the nephew had
encumbered his estate. Aubrey collects a few bits of
information, with provoking gaps, as to his appearance
and manners. This is a tantalising statement for
phrenologists : " His head was . . . inches in com-
pass (I have the measure) and of a mallet form
(approved by the physiologers)." He was unhealthy
in youth, but grew strong when about forty, and had
a fresh ruddy complexion. He had an ample forehead,

64 HOBBES [CHAP.

and " yellowish-reddish whiskers, which naturally
turned up, a sign of a brisk wit." He shaved close,
except a little tip under his lip - - " though nature would
have afforded a venerable beard," he abandoned that
ornament to avoid affectation of philosophic dignity.
" He had a good eye, hazel coloured, which would
shine when he became eager, as though there were a
bright live-coal within it." Various portraits, one at
the National Portrait Gallery, and two in the rooms of
the Eoyal Society,1 show a head which is marked both
by acuteness and singular dignity of expression.
Hobbes might have sat for a portrait of Plato, and is,
I think, the best looking philosopher known to me.

The following account of his habits refers pre-
sumably to his last years. He rose about seven, and
breakfasted on bread and butter, then he walked and
meditated till ten, he dined at eleven, as his stomach
could not bear waiting till the earl's dinner at two.
After dinner he took a pipe of tobacco and a nap, and
in the afternoon wrote down his morning's thoughts.
He had been much addicted to music in his youth, and
practised on the bass viol. He had always books of
" prick-song " lying on his table, such as Lawes's songs,
and at night when he was in bed, and the doors made
fast, so that he was sure of being unheard, he would sing
aloud for his health's sake. He denied the common
report, that he was afraid to be alone on account of
. ghosts. He was not afraid of spirits, but of being
knocked on the head for five or ten pounds. Hobbes
was evidently careful about his health, and a believer
in bodily exercise. He played tennis " twice or thrice

1 A photograph from one of the last is prefixed to Robertson's
monograph.

i.] LIFE 65

a year" according to Aubrey — once a week says
Sorbiere — when lie was well over seventy. He illus-
trates more than one argument in the Leviathan by
reference to the game. In the country, where there
was no tennis-court, he walked up and down hill
till he was in a great sweat and then had himself
rubbed down. "'Tis not consistent with an harmon-
ical soul," as Aubrey observes, " to be a woman-
hater, neither had he an abhorrescence to good wine."
Kennett speaks of a natural daughter, whom he called
his delictv.m juventutis, and for whom he provided. But
if he had been habitually immoral, his respectable
opponents would hardly have refrained, as they in fact
did, from any accusation of the kind. He calcu-
lated that he had been drunk one hundred times in the
course of his life : which, says Aubrey, " considering
his great age, did not amount to once a year." The
arithmetic is erroneous ; but twice a year would hardly
bring him up to the average of his time. He could
never endure habitual excess, as Aubrey testifies, and
after sixty he drank no wine. He had some more
attacks of illness (a dangerous one in 1668) besides
those mentioned before, and his hand began to shake
about 1650. About 1665 his writing became illegible.
Hobbes had few books in his chamber; but1
"Homer and Virgil were commonly on his table;
sometimes Xenophon or some probable history, and
Greek Testament or so " — which seems to be a pretty
good selection. " He was wont to say, that if he had
read as much as other men, he should have known no
more than other men." He appreciated, that is, the
truth that it is more important to assimilate than to
accumulate materials of thought. Descartes, like

66 HOBBES [CHAP.

Hobbes, insisted upon, and exaggerated his ignorance
of previous authors. He had read nothing, as Voltaire
put it, pas meme VEvangile. The attitude was natural
in men who were deliberately rejecting the established
doctrines of their time, and trying to substitute a new
scheme of thought built upon entirely new foundations.
The man, as Kobertson remarks, who began his career
by translating Thucydides, and ended it by translat-
ing Homer, cannot be taken as a simple contemner of
literature.

Aubrey was properly anxious to collect some of his
hero's good sayings. If he did not succeed in making
a long list, his fate was that which befalls most such
enterprises. He should, like Boswell or like Hobbes
himself, have carried a note-book in his pocket. One
characteristic saying may be quoted. "He was," says
Aubrey, "very charitable to those that were true
objects of his bounty. He gave sixpence one day to
a poor beggar in the Strand. Whereupon a divine
asked him : ' Would you have done this if it had not
been Christ's command?' 'Yea,' said he. 'Why?3
quoth the other. ' Because,' said he, f I was in pain to
consider the miserable condition of the old man, and
now my alms, giving him some relief, doth also ease
me.' ; This shows perhaps that his practice was better
than his ethical theory.1

1 Hobbes received £50 a year from his patron besides
occasional presents, such as £40 for the dedication of the De
Corpore. He speaks (in the life) of his indifference to gain.
No avaricious man, he declares, ever achieved a noble work.
He had lived to study, and he condemns those who study for the
sake of gain. His boast seems to be fully justified. His life
was worthy of a philosopher, in spite of trifling foibles, due
to temper or timidity. It is to the credit of the British

i.] LIFE 67

Before considering his theories, however, something
may be said of the view taken of him by his contem-
poraries. I do not speak at present of the more
serious antagonists who wrote upon his philosophy.
It is enough to say here that they attacked him with
remarkable unanimity. His predecessor, Bacon, was
cited on all sides as a venerable authority. His
successor, Locke, was adopted as a leader by the great
majority of the younger thinkers. Hobbes impressed
English thought almost entirely by rousing opposition.
Possibly his opponents had more or less to modify their
own position in order to meet his arguments ; but to
them at least it seemed that Hobbism was the upas
tree to be cut down root and branch. The Auctariumv
gives a long list of contemporary writers upon Hobbes ;
but can only mention a solitary work done in his
defence, and that anonymous. He was the typical
atheist. " Atheism," no doubt was a name bestowed
upon a phase of sentiment common enough at the
court of Charles II., as it had been, according to
Mersenne, in Paris. The religious controversies ofj
the Reformation period had naturally led to a " scepti-
cal spirit," such as found utterance in Montaigne's
immortal essays. The endless war of dogmas revealed
the folly of dogmatism. Montaigne, though disclaim-
ing philosophical pretensions, suggested philosophical
problems to great thinkers like Pascal ; but he was
acceptable to less serious minds. The so-called

aristocracy of those days — who do not generally get many
compliments — that one of them gave to the hated sceptic a
support which made him virtually independent enough to de-
vote his powers to philosophy, while he deserved it hy honourahle
service.

68 HOBBES [CHAP.

" libertins," it seems, would alternately attack and
humble themselves before the priests, as they objected
to any moral police, or thought that, after all, absolu-
tion might be convenient. They could profess scepti-
cism under cover of more serious thinkers, and then
make edifying ends to clear their scores. Probably
that was true of many Hobbists. Eachard, best known
by his book on the causes of the contempt of the clergy,
wrote in 1672 two very smart dialogues in ridicule of
Hobbes. He divides the followers of Hobbes into pit,
box, and gallery. The pit was filled by the sturdy
sinners who welcomed him as an ally against morality
in general ; the gallery by fine gentlemen anxious to
show their wit ; and the boxes by men of gravity and
reputation whose approval was more cautious. The
" Hobbist " was generally taken to be the shallow
infidel, who still figures in edifying tracts. The
character of the "town-gallant" (1680) says that "he
swears that the Leviathan may supply all the lost
leaves of Solomon, though, for anything that he has

*

read himself, it may be a treatise on catching sprats.
He has only learnt through the rattle of coffee-houses ;
but the book maintains that there are no angels except
those in petticoats ! A tract of 1686 describes the
" town-fop " as equipped with three or four wild com-
panions, "half-a-dozen bottles of Burgundy, and two
leaves of Leviathan" In Farquhar's Constant Couple.
(1700), the hypocrite pulls out of his pocket a book
supposed by his friends to be full of "pious ejacula-
tions," while he remarks to himself : " This Hobbes is
an excellent fellow." The only concrete instance of
such a Hobbist mentioned is Charles Blount (1654- .
1693), the unfortunate deist, who killed himself because '

i.] LIFE 69

he was not allowed to marry his deceased wife's sister.
He published various tracts, including a sheet of say-
ings from Hobbes's works, and a tract borrowed from
Milton's Areopagitim, and deserved to be regarded as
something more than a " town-fop." According to
Aubrey, Dryden greatly admired Hobbes, and in his
plays made use of some of THobbes's doctrines. I am
not aware of any coincidence in confirmation of this.
Dryden says himself that he was sceptical by nature,
and before his conversion he may have sympathised
with Hobbes's hatred of priestcraft; but his poems
on religion do not seem to imply any familiarity with /
the Leviathan. Hobbes ceases about the end of the
century to be the butt of all orthodox controversialists.
In the following generation, Toland and Collins, who
professed to be applying Locke's philosophy in the'x
interests of free-thinking, became the regular objects
for attacks, and Hobbes passes out of notice. War-
burton, who loved acute paradox, notices the change,^
and speaks of Hobbes with a certain admiration ; but
he shared the fate of all his contemporaries, as the
eighteenth century came to think the seventeenth
hopelessly old-fashioned.

CHAPTER II

THE WORLD 1

1. Hoobes's starting-point and aims

I REMARKED, superfluously perhaps, that the circum-
stances revealed by Hobbes's biography had an impor-
tant bearing upon an appreciation of his philosophy.
The two incidents to which he gives a place in his own
life, the sudden revelation of the charms of Euclid
when he was forty, and the conversation upon the
nature of sense-perception, mark the impression made
upon him by movements in the contemporary world
of scientific and philosophic thought. On the other
side, his position in the family of a great noble en-
couraged a keen interest in. the controversies which
distracted the political world. His own intellectual
and moral idiosyncrasies of course determined his spe-
cial attitude towards the great issues involved in both
cases. Hobbes's idiosyncrasies are sufficiently obvious.
He was, in the first place, a born logician. He loved
reasoning for its own sake. His great aim was to be
absolutely clear, orderly, and systematic. He desired,

1 The De Corpore, which is the chief authority for the follow-
ing chapter, is in the first volume of the Latin works in Moles-
worth's edition. An English translation, superintended, but not
written, by Hobbes and containing some curious mistakes, forms
the first volume of the English works.

70

CHAP, ii.] THE WORLD 71

in modern phrase, to effect the thorough unification of
knowledge. Euclid fascinated him as constituting a
complete chain of demonstrable propositions, each
indissolubly linked to its predecessor, and every one
confirming and confirmed by the others. A complete
theory of things in general should, he thought, be a
philosophical Euclid; and he hoped to lay down its
fundamental principles and its main outlines. He
shrank from no convictions to which his logic appeared
to lead him ; and he expounded them with a sublime
self-confidence, tempered, indeed, by his decided un-
willingness to become a martyr. Of course, like most
men in whom the logical faculty is predominant, he
was splendidly one-sided. When things seemed clear
to him, he could not even understand that any diffi-
culties existed for any one. That difficulties did in
fact exist is plain enough to his readers, if only from
the curious devices by which he is sometimes driven
to meet them. But though to others he may appear
to be evading the point, or adopting inconsistent
solutions, to himself he always seems to be following
the straightforward path of inexorable logic.

One-sidedness is a most valuable quality. It means
willingness to try intellectual experiments thoroughly.
A man who sees the objections to an hypothesis, is
tempted not to give it a fair trial ; the man who sees
no objections, is tempted to force all doctrine into his
own preconceived framework ; but, on the other hand,
he is more likely to bring into relief whatever truth
it may really contain. He may at times show that
what seemed to be merely paradox is an important
element of the whole truth. More frequently, no
doubt, he may enable others to perceive the precise

72 HOBBES [CHAP.

points at which his system breaks down. One-sided-
ness, it need hardly be said, implies defects. Hobbes,
for example, was not a poet ; he had no sympathy for
the imaginative and emotional thinkers ; he would
have been the last man to lose himself, like his con-
temporary, Sir Thomas Browne, in an 0 Altitudo, or to
soar into the regions in which the mystic is at home.
For him those regions were simply the habitat of
absurd chimeras, to be exorcised by downright hard-
hitting dialectics. He loved to be in broad daylight,
to base himself on the tangible facts which undoubtedly
must be recognised in a satisfactory system. Mystery
for him means nonsense, and is to be excluded from
all speculation whether upon geometry or religion.
Invaluable services are rendered by the active appli-
cation of such an intellect; but clearly its possessor
is likely to say a good many things which will shock
people of a different turn, and his want of sympathy
with their sentiments may lead him to dismiss con-
temptuously and abruptly opinions which may conceal
important truth under vague imagery.

I must endeavour to set forth Hobbes's main positions
impartially, without attempting to go far into problems
which since his day have been discussed by generations
of philosophers, and which, I fancy, are not as yet
quite settled.

One point may be noticed at starting. Hobbes
gave his views of both " natural " and " civil " philo-
sophy, to use his own terms. He has been criticised
both as a natural and as a civil philosopher, and
the one or the other part of his work has been made
most prominent according to the special purpose
or personal taste of the critic. This suggests the

ii.] THE WORLD 73

inquiry, whether his interest in physical science or in
the nature of men and institutions gave the real start-
ing-point of his speculation. A decisive answer can
scarcely be given, and an answer is of the less impor-
tance because his most characteristic point is precisely
his conviction that the two inquiries are inseparably
connected. Hobbes appears to have been the first
writer who clearly announced that "civil philoso-
phy" must be based upon "natural philosophy," or,
in other words, that a sound "sociology' must be
based upon scientific knowledge. He may be called
a Herbert Spencer of the seventeenth century, and
in spite of very wide differences, there is a certain
resemblance between the two thinkers. Each of them
aims at exhibiting a complete system in which the <^
results of the physical sciences will be co-ordinated with
ethical and political theory. Hobbes's attempt was of
necessity premature ; the essential data were not in
existence. Physical science was still in its infancy ;
and Hobbes's own scientific knowledge was necessarily
as crude as that of his contemporaries, and had special
defects of its own. The political philosophy, again,
however acute, was stated in terms of speculations
which have long become obsolete. The Leviathan,
once so terrible, may be taken for an intellectual fossil
— a collection of erroneous assumptions and sophistries
w*hich are confuted in a paragraph or two of the
students' text-books. Perhaps our descendants may
be equally dissatisfied with systems which bulk very
largely in our eyes, though we may hope that they
will make allowance for our inevitable ignorance.

If, however, thinkers did not break ground by fram-
ing " premature ' schemes of doctrine, they would
y

74 HOBBES [CHAP.

never advance to riper and more durable schemes.
Great thinkers at least do something to test the solidity
of the old structures, and here and there lay a founda-
tion-stone or two, which will be built into the more
comprehensive edifices of the future. We are not
ourselves so far advanced in the social sciences that
we can afford to judge our predecessors with the con-
fidence of men who have reached a definitive system.
The tentative gropings of a great man, trying to secure
a starting-point, are always instructive, and Hobbes
may at least show us what were some of the besetting
fallacies at an early stage of speculation. He certainly
has such merits in a high degree, though, as I think,
more decidedly in "civil" than in "natural " philosophy.

Hobbes succeeded in working out a legal or political
theory, which had a very genuine and powerful effect
upon the course of speculation. Few people accepted
the political doctrine generally attributed to him, and
most people repudiated it with indignation. Still it
influenced men, if only by repulsion, while much of
his argument has been adopted by others, and occasion-
ally reappears in curiously different combinations. I
consider this to be the most important aspect of
" Hobbism." It may be said, too, that whatever was
his real starting-point — whether he began with political
opinions and then tried to bring them into connection
with his scientific views, or followed the reverse pro-
xjess — it was certainly the political doctrine which he
/ / expounded most thoroughly and consistently. His
teaching, whatever its faults, has evidently been traced
out carefully and patiently, and is a complete elabora-
tion of certain leading principles.

It is, however, essential to consider his views of

ii.] THE WORLD 75

"natural philosophy." He contributed nothing to
the special sciences. His expositions of first principles
show inconsistencies which suggest that he had not
considered them with the sustained attention which
he devoted to his political writing. Nor does it appear
that he had so important an influence upon succeeding
schools of thought in this as in the other direction.
But he at any rate laid down in a most unflinching
and vigorous fashion certain doctrines which, to say
the least, startled his contemporaries, and so far must
have done them good. Theologians and moralists
paid him the compliment of taking him for their
most serious opponent. He was regarded as the
type, though almost a solitary instance, of inter-
necine hostility to established beliefs. Upon him,
•we may say, were concentrated the various anti-
pathies which in the nineteenth century were pro-
voked by evolutionism, agnosticism, materialism, and
destructive criticism. That is to say, he personified
the tendencies of thought which are supposed to
result from the study, or the too exclusive study, of
the physical sciences. I express no opinion as to
the merits of the question involved. Everybody
admits that the physical sciences embody a vast
amount of definitively established truth, and that, so
far as they are true, they cannot be inconsistent with
any other truths. The problem is whether the alleged
incompatibility between the conclusions of legitimate
science and those of the accepted theology is really
insuperable, or only appears to be insuperable when
the man of science reads a false interpretation into
his doctrines.

Now Hobbes, according to the judgment of con-

76 HOBBES [CHAP.

temporaries, interpreted the scientific principles of
his day in a sense which made them totally irrecon-
cilable with orthodox belief, and anticipated with
great penetration some inferences which in later
years have shocked and alarmed believers. How far
Hobbes himself admitted or denied this will appear
presently. In any case he represents the first definite
emergence in English thought of an antagonism which
in later generations was to develop and to acquire an
absorbing interest. The scientific impulse of the time
had found its English prophet in Bacon. Whatever
his failure in the attempt to lay down the true
scientific method, his surpassing literary power en-
abled him to make a most imposing forecast of the
coming empire of man over nature. The men who
founded the Royal Society could appeal to Bacon's
vast reputation as sanctioning their enterprise. Now
they could do so without incurring any suspicion as
to their orthodoxy. Boyle, for example, one of the
chief leaders, was as conspicuous for his piety as for
his scientific zeal. There was nothing objectionable
in the precepts which direct a careful and methodical
study of phenomena in order to discover their laws.
" Baconian induction " implied no conception either of
the heterodox or of the orthodox variety. It rather
suggested that we should attend to facts and leave
ultimate principles to take care of themselves. Bacon
denounced the old scholastic subtleties which had
shown their futility in dealing with the physical sciences,
and by so doing he might in some degree discredit the
dogmatic system of theology associated with the old
philosophy. That, however, so it seemed to the more
liberal thinkers of the time, did not imply an attack on

ii.] THE WORLD 77

natural theology, but rather the need of disengaging
its truth from the scholastic logomaehfes by which it
has been overlaid. The ablest English divines of the
next generation sympathised with that doctrine.

In Hobbes the spirit of science first becomes
dogmatic and aggressive. He lays down with the
utmost calmness and confidence the most startling
principles. He thinks them so reasonable and obvious
that you might expect even a bishop to accept them.
They are demonstrated once for all. The point of
view from which he started is indicated by his two
significant anecdotes. The scientific method which
impresses him is that of which Euclid gave him the
typical instance. It is a deductive method, which
develops all its conclusions from undeniable first
principles. He scorns the accumulation of experi-
ments. The difficulty which impresses him, is not
that we have not sufficient data, but that we do not
reason upon them with rigorous accuracy. In the
second place, the one universal phenomenon is motion.
We see things changing their positions relatively to
each other, and in the last analysis, that is really all
that we can know or measure./ Contemporary develop-
ments of science have impressed these convictions upon
him. His view of them is sufficiently indicated in the
" Epistle Dedicatory " to the De Corpore. He is struck
by the novelty of science. The ancients, indeed, had
done much in geometry, and left in it " a most perfect
pattern " of their logic. Astronomy only began when
Copernicus revived an ancient opinion which had been
" strangled by a snare of words." Copernicus led to
Galileo, whose discovery was the " first that opened
to us the gate of natural knowledge universal, which

78 HOBBES [CHAP.

is the knowledge of the nature of motion." The
" science of man's body ' was first discovered with
" admirable sagacity " by Harvey — " the only man I
know that, conquering envy, has established a new
doctrine in his lifetime." Extraordinary advances
have been made by Kepler and by Hobbes's " two
friends, Gassendi and Mersenne," to whom he would
have no doubt added Descartes, had Descartes been
equally friendly. " Civil philosophy is much younger,
as being no older (I say it provoked, and that my
detractors may know how little they have wrought
upon me) than my own book De Give.7' "There
walked in old Greece, indeed, a certain phantasm
for superficial gravity, though full within of fraud
and filth, a little like philosophy ; ': this was adopted
by the first doctors of the Church, who thus " be-
trayed the citadel of Christianity." Into it there
entered a theory called school divinity, walking on
one foot firmly, which is the Holy Scripture, but
halting on the other rotten foot, which the Apostle
Paul called vain and might have called pernicious
philosophy; for it has raised an infinite number of
controversies in the Christian world concerning re-
ligion, and from these controversies, wars. It thus
resembles the Empusa of the comic poet, having one
brazen leg, and the other the leg of an ass. By
putting into a clear shape the " true method of
natural philosophy ' he will drive away the meta-
physical confusion, " not by skirmish, but by letting
in the light upon her." The "Empusa" is to be
exorcised because she has strangled the infant science
by words. But what we have to do is not to follow
her through the monstrous labyrinth of sophistry

ii.] THE WORLD 79

which she has spun over the world, but simply to
use our eyes and to look at the plain facts.

We have raised a dust, as Berkeley said afterwards,
and complained that we cannot see. Philosophy is now
among men, is the opening remark of the De Corpore, as
corn and wine were in the world in ancient time. There
were always vines and ears of corn ; but as they were
not cared for, men had to live upon acorns. So every
man has natural reason ; but for want of improving it,
most men have to be content with the acorns of " daily
experience." They show sounder judgment than those
who (like the schoolmen) " do nothing but dispute and
wrangle like men that are not well in their wits."
Hobbes proposes to "lay open the few and first ele-
ments of philosophy in general as so many seeds from
which pure and true philosophy may hereafter spring
up by little and little." He will show how to culti-
vate the corn and wine. Science, we have been told,
is nothing but organised common-sense. And Hobbes
anticipates this dictum.

Thus Hobbes' s method is to be that which has
already borne fruit in the hands of the great thinkers
of the time. Geometry has already made a fresh
start. Copernicus has shown how the stars move.
Galileo will enable us to explain how each movement
is determined by previous movements. The science
of astronomy will thus be constituted by the help of
geometry. Then Harvey's great discovery suggests
that the human body also is a mechanism, the various
movements of which must be explicable on the same
principles. The circulation of the blood, like the
revolution of the planets, is simply a case of motion ;
and when we have the facts and the laws of nature,

80 HOBBES [CHAP.

we shall be able to deduce all physiological pheno-
mena, like all astronomical phenomena, by the help
of geometry. Hobbes assumes also that the same
methods will enable us to construct his " civil r'
philosophy.

Meanwhile we see the general impression made
upon Hobbes by his studies in Euclid, and by his
doctrine that motion is the universal fact. It means,
in short, that he holds that the aim of all philosophy
is to give a mechanical theory of the universe. That,
again, is to say that he sees clearly what is in fact
the ultimate aim of all the physical sciences*. The
scientific inquirer endeavours as far as possible to give
the rules embodied in all physical phenomena in terms
of time and space. He imagines a bewildering dance
of innumerable atoms, lying somehow behind the
visible world, moving in different directions, colliding,
combining and separating and going through the most
complicated evolutions. Perhaps the ignorant person,
or the profound metaphysician, may decline to believe
that there are any such things at all, or, at any rate
to believe that they are the only realities. But even
if they do not exist, they have to be invented. Our
justification for creating them is that they enable us
to state the rules by which, from a given state of
things, we can accurately foretell the future or go
back to the past. They may be only a working
hypothesis, or may be realities which might con-
ceivably become visible or tangible. The method,
however, in any case, implies that the ultima.te
problem is, as Hobbes said, one of geometry. The
atoms have no properties, except the property of
embodying certain laws of motion ; and the whole

ii.] THE WORLD 81

problem becomes that of stating how one state of
motion will pass into another. That is to say, it is
ultimately a problem of geometry or the measurement
of spaces. So far Hobbes agrees with Descartes :
" Give me space and movement, and I will make
the world." Toute ma physique n'est autre chose que la
geometric. Hobbes undoubtedly was not so good a
geometer as Descartes ; but they fully agree in prin-
ciple. " They that study natural philosophy," says
Hobbes, " study in vain, except they begin at geo-
metry ; and such writers and disputers thereof as are
ignorant of geometry do but make their hearers and
readers lose their time." Civil philosophy must, as he
adds, be based upon physics, and therefore upon geo-
metry. Both Hobbes and Descartes accepted Harvey's
discovery as giving a mechanical explanation of physio-
logical phenomena. Descartes's doctrine that animals
are automatic was equally applicable to the working
of the human body, and Huxley has set forth with
his usual vigour and clearness the importance of this
doctrine in the development of physiology.

Upon such questions I can say nothing ; and Hobbes
did not distinguish himself in that direction. Bat the
next peculiarity of his philosophy is marked by his
divergence from Descartes. In his objections to the
Meditations, Hobbes criticises the famous "je pense :
done je suis" " I think '; and " I am thinking," he
says, mean the same. Therefore the conclusion is
good : " If I think, I am." But it does not follow that
" I " who think am a spirit or a soul. On the contrary,
he declares, it would seem to follow that a thing which
thinks is something corporeal. I do not think that I
think, I simply think ; or thought and its object are

G

82 HOBBES [CHAP.

one. Descartes complains that Hobbes has not
attended to a later passage in the Meditations, which
proves that the soul or thinking thing cannot be
corporeal. I need not go into the arguments. The
difference is indeed of that radical kind in which
argument rarely produces agreement. Descartes con-
ceives himself to have proved that the soul and the
body are of diametrically opposite natures, and though
he believes in both, thinks that our conviction of the
existence of the soul is more fundamental than our
conviction of the existence of the body. The complete
antithesis between the spiritual and the natural world
became of course a cardinal point of his system, and
generations of metaphysicians were to puzzle them-
selves over the nature of the intimate relation which,
as he also held, binds them in inseparable unity.

Hobbes, on the other hand, seems simply to ignore
this contrast. He takes for granted, for he scarcely
argues the question, that the material world is the
only world. In a later Objection, he gives it as his
own opinion that spirit is nothing but a movement
in certain parts of the organism. In other words,
thought, as well as every physical process, is a species
of the universal genus " motion." Hobbes is so far a
simple and thoroughgoing materialist. That of course
simplifies things. The whole of knowledge represents
for him an extension of the physical sciences. The
theory of the human body and the theory of the
political body are more complicated than the theory of
the stars ; but we still have to do with nothing but
motion, though in forms more intricate and difficult to
measure. " The whole mass of things that are," he
says in the Leviathan, " is corporeal, that is to say,

ii.] THE WORLD 83

body ; and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely,
length, breadth, and depth ; also every part of body is
likewise body, and hath the like dimensions ; and con-
sequently every part of the universe is body, and that
which is not body is no part of the universe ; and
because the universe is all, that which is no part of
it is nothing, and consequently nowhere. Nor does it
follow from hence," he adds, "that spirits are nothing :
for they have dimensions and are therefore really
bodies, though that name in common speech be given
to such bodies only as are visible and palpable, that is,
that have some degree of opacity." The last sentence is
required by a consideration which frequently hampers
his utterance. He is bound to admit that spirits exist,
for spirits are mentioned in Scripture, and, for what- ^
ever reason, he will not contradict Scripture. But
no proof can be given of existences of which it is
impossible to have " natural evidence." All evidence
appeals to the senses ; but a spirit is taken to be that
which does not " work upon the sense," and is there-
fore not " conceptible." When we use such words as
" living, sensible, rational, hot, cold, moved, quiet," as
he calmly remarks, the word " matter " or " body " is
understood, all such " being names of matter." In
" natural discourse," therefore, a " spirit ' means a
phantasm — a dream mistaken for a reality. The
spirits mentioned in supernatural discourse must
exist ; they must therefore be bodies, for nothing
exists except bodies ; but they can be kept out of
harm's way. As bodies they must be space-filling ;
but they are made of such subtle materials that they
cannot act upon other bodies. They cannot make
their existence known, for they cannot affect motion.

84 HOBBES [CHAP.

Motion is the cause of all things : " all mutation is
motion ; motion can have no cause except motion ; "
and these flimsy entities are in the universe without
taking part in it. For us they are nonentities. If
motion can be caused by motion alone, that motion
can cause nothing but motion. Hobbes's opponents
inferred that, as thought is not motion, it must
have some other cause, or inhere in a subject which
is not material. Hobbes infers that as nothing
can exist which is not material, thought must itself
be motion.

This is really Hobbes's starting-point and guiding
principle. Man is an automaton ; thought is a motion
in his brain ; all his actions can be explained by the
laws of motion, like the motion of a clock or of the
Chatsworth waterworks. In the attempt to carry out
this conception thoroughly, Hobbes gets into various
difficulties. A modern materialist may perhaps urge
that the difficulties can be surmounted by a fuller
knowledge of physical science. The opposite explana-
tion is that the initial assumption is radically false,
and that Hobbes's merit, as Professor Hoeffding says,
is that his consistent adoption of it brings out the
inevitable failure of a thoroughgoing materialism.

To understand him we must begin by granting his
postulate. Let us admit provisionally that man is
simply an automaton and yet that he can somehow
think, feel, reason, and become a philosopher.

First of all, however, Hobbes explains what is the
aim of his philosophy. Philosophy, according to him,
means a knowledge of the effects which will be produced
by given causes, or, conversely, of the causes which have
produced given effects. We may trace the working of

ii.] THE WORLD 85

the mechanism in order to make use of it for our own
purposes. Philosophy then is strictly " practical " or
" utilitarian," to use the common phrases. The " in-
ward glory and triumph of niiiid'' arising from, our
mastery of some abstruse question would not of itself
repay the pains necessary to obtain the result. " The
end of knowledge is power : " a phrase which recalls
Bacon's famous saying.1 Both Bacon and Hobbes desire
knowledge to enable men to rule the forces of nature.
The utility of " natural philosophy " appears in such
arts as navigation, architecture, and so forth ; and we
may see what they have done for mankind by com-
paring the civilised races of Europe with the Americans
and " those that live near the poles." Since all men, as
Hobbes assumes, have the same faculties, the whole
difference is due to philosophy. "Moral and civil
philosophy," however, is equally useful, though its
utility must be measured not by the commodities which
it gives but by the calamities which it obviates. The
worst of calamities is war, especially civil war. From
war proceed " slaughter, solitude, and the want of all
things." All men know these to be evil. Why then
do wars continue ? Because men do not know the
causes of war and peace. Few men, that is to say,

!" Knowledge is power," as Hamilton points out (D.
Stewart's Works, v. 38), is a running title in the Advance-
ment of Learning and may not be Bacon's own phrase. How-
ever, in the Meditationes Sacrae we may see in a theological
context ipsa scientia potestas est : and this in the translation
becomes "knowledge itself is power." See Bacon's Works,
ed. Spedding, vii. 241, 253. It has often been denied that
Bacon used the words, as in Bulwer's My Novel, where the
wise confute a young man who has rashly adopted them. Any-
how, as Hamilton says, they clearly represent Bacon's meaning.

86 HOBBES [CHAP.

have learnt the " duties which unite and keep men in
peace." Now "the knowledge of these duties is moral
philosophy." Hobbes thus holds substantially a doc-
trine which was characteristic of a later period and
was vigorously expounded by Buckle. The growth of
civilisation means essentially the growth of knowledge.
Knowledge will not only enable us to apply mechani-
cal inventions, but will show the identity of human
interests and lead to the extirpation of war. Hobbes's
view of the methods by which this consummation
was to be reached differed materially from that of the
Utilitarians of the middle of the nineteenth century,
but the general conception is the same.

He proceeds to define the " subject " of philosophy.
It has nothing to do with theology (for pretty obvious
reasons), nor with the doctrine of angels, nor of things
(if such there be) which are not bodies, nor with
revelation which does not appeal to reason, nor with
astrology and other " divinations which are not well
grounded " ; nor with the doctrine of " God's worship,"
which is the " object of faith, not of knowledge."
Moreover it excludes " history as well natural as
political, though most useful (nay necessary) to philo-
sophy " ; for such knowledge is " but experience or
authority, and not ratiocination." Philosophy deals
exclusively with the " generation and properties " of
the two chief kinds of bodies — the natural body, a
work of nature, and the commonwealth, the body
made by the agreement of men. " Civil philosophy,"
which deals with the last, is divisible into two ;
" ethics," which deals with human nature, and
" politics," which deals with men as citizens. The
treatise, therefore, which gives the general principles

ii.] THE WORLD 87

applicable to all philosophy is called De Corpore, since
" body " includes all that is knowable.

2. Logic

The world is made of unchangeable but moving
bodies. All that happens is the transformation of one
set of motions into another according to certain fixed
laws. Somehow or another we can ascertain these
laws, and, when duly systematised, they become "phi-
losophy," or a statement of necessary truths. What
then is truth ? Hobbes observes that " truth is not an
affection of the thing, but of the proposition concern-
ing it." The word " true " is often, but inaccurately,
opposed to " feigned.'7 But, properly speaking, if we
say that a ghost or the image in a mirror is not a man,
we do not assert that the ghost is " false," but that the
proposition " a ghost is a man " is false. " A ghost is
(still) a very ghost." Truth and falsehood belong to
the reasoning process which is peculiar to man, upon
whom it confers the privilege of framing " general
rules." This privilege, indeed, is " allayed by
another " ; and that is by the privilege of absurdity,
to which no living creature is subject but man only.
And of men "those are of all most subject to it that
profess philosophy." Nothing, as Cicero said, can be
so absurd as not to be found in their books. Hobbes
will explain the source of their errors.

Meanwhile we have a problem. Eeality belongs to
bodies ; truth to propositions or thought. What then
is that which thinks ? Hobbes has replied that it is
body, and thought is a movement in the body. But it
is plain that if this be true, the thinking thing does

88 HOBBES [CHAP.

not directly perceive its own nature. Thought does
not present itself as a movement. We are not con-
scious of the physical processes which somehow con-
stitute or underlie the thinking process. It follows
that as thoughts are not bodies, they are unreal — mere
nonentities or " phantasms/' as Hobbes generally puts
it. Reality thus seems to be entirely divorced from
truth. The thought-process may be determined by
motion , but, as immediately known, it is a set of
imaginary phantasmagoria playing over the surface of
things but itself unreal. The " soul '; is real in so
far as it is material ; but the ideal world made of
phantasms is unreal. Yet somehow the soul manages
to reason by help of the phantasms, and to discover
the rules of bodily movement. The problem remains,
how this process is to be explained. Hobbes's answer
gives his theory of logic, and forms the first part of the
De Corpore. The title Computatio sive Logica indicates
his peculiar view. All ratiocination, he declares, is
computing. Reasoning is addition or subtraction.
Arithmeticians add or subtract numbers ; geome-
tricians add lines and figures ; logicians add names to
make affirmations ; affirmations to make syllogisms ;
and syllogisms to make demonstrations. The type of
reasoning for him is still Euclid. Adding and sub-
tracting suggest the process by which the square on
the hypothenuse in his favourite proposition may be
cut up and put together again so as to form the
squares on the two sides. He had a prejudice against
the new methods by which algebraic calculation was
being substituted for the direct intuitive methods of
geometry, and to the arithmetic which, in the hands
of the detestable Wallis and his like, was leading to

ii.] THE WORLD 89

humbug about infinitesimals. Arithmetic, however,
seems best to illustrate his view. Number, as he
would say, is not "an affection of the thing." The
same thing may be one or twelve, as we count in feet
or inches. The unit is arbitrary. And yet number-
ing enables us to state the most essential properties of
things. Ten or a hundred by itself is a mark of no
particular body, and is therefore a nonentity. But it
meant something very real that Hobbes's hundred a
year came to just ten times ten pounds. Reasoning
in general is counting with names or numbers.
" Words," as he says, in one of his pithiest aphorisms,
" are wise men's counters ; they do but reckon with
them, but they are the money of fools." The remark
has a wide application ; and, in this case, the " fools '
are those who talk scholastic jargon. But it states
his general principle. The " use of names in register-
ing our thoughts," as he remarks elsewhere, "is in
nothing so evident as in numbering." Once men
could not count, except on their fingers, as is shown
by the decimal notation. The names learnt in the
right order enable us to perform all the operations of
arithmetic.

Since the names are thus the counters, out of which
we frame propositions, we have to ask wrhat is a
name ? Hobbes gives a famous definition. "A name
is a word taken at pleasure, to serve for a mark which
may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought
we had before, and which being (disposed in speech
and *) pronounced to others, may be a sign to them of
what the speaker had or had not before in his mind."
Names are thus " marks to ourselves." " How incon-
1 Omitted by error in the English version.

00 HOBBES [CHAP.

stant and fading men's thoughts are, and how much
the recovery of them depends upon chance, there is
none but knows by infallible experience in himself ! '
No man remembers numbers without the names of
numbers disposed in order and learnt by heart. The
name recalls not only the thing but the general rule.
The results given by reasoning without such helps
will presently slip from us. We should get on very
slowly if we had to find out the multiplication table
every time we did a sum. " Marks " are thus neces-
sary to recall thoughts, and become " signs " when we
teach them to others, which is an essential condition
of the preservation and growth of science. To serve
as signs, again, it is necessary that names as marks
should be " disposed and ordered in speech." To
speak rationally, you must not only renew the memory
of a thing, but say what you are thinking of its rela-
tion to other things. For that purpose, again, words
may be useful which are not names of things, but only
of " fictions and phantasms of things." That words are
an essential instrument of thought which, without
them, could not, to say the least, get beyond rudi-
mentary and vague inferences is, I take it, a very
sound doctrine. Hobbes did good service by directing
attention emphatically to it. He managed, however,
to give it a strange twist. Signs, he remarks, may be
" natural ' or " arbitrary." The cloud is a natural
sign of rain ; a bush at a tavern door is an arbitrary
sign of wine to be sold. Now words are clearly
" arbitrary," as was signally proved in the Garden
of Eden, and again, at the Tower of Babel. This
is of course obvious. If " homo r meant in Latin
what "man" means in English, it is plain that the

ii.] THE WORLD 91

sound employed as a mark varies "arbitrarily." But
Hobbes sometimes speaks as if, because language is
the instrument of reasoning, and yet uses arbitrary
marks, reasoning gives arbitrary results. So, he says
in his fourth objection to Descartes, reasoning
may be simply an assemblage and concatenation of
names by the word "is."1 If that be so, he says,
reason does not conclude to the nature of things, but
only to their names ; that is, it shows whether we are
connecting them according to the conventions which
we have made at fancy about their significations.
Descartes naturally replies that we reason about
things, not names; and that a Frenchman and a
German may have the same thoughts though they
express them in entirely different words. Three and
two, says Hobbes elsewhere, make five, because men
have agreed that "five" shall be the name of as many
units as there are in three and two. That explains
why we say " two " and " three '; instead of " deux "
and " trois," but does not prove that we can alter the
truth expressed by arbitrary sounds. Definitions are
" truths constituted arbitrarily by the inventors of
speech, and therefore not to be demonstrated." We
make such truths ourselves (vera esse facimus nosmet
i2)si) by our consent to the use of names.

The doctrine, so stated, seems too absurd even for a
philosopher (as Hobbes would have said), and certainly
does not correspond to his own conviction of the in-
fallibility of his demonstrations. It is inconsistent too

1 He is careful to point out that the copula is not necessary,
and that the meaning might he expressed hy simply putting
two names together. A mistake on this point leads to the inven-
tion of such scholastic terms as " entity."

92 HOBBES [CHAP.

with much that he says elsewhere. It seems to be a
trick played upon him by his logic, for trying to give
a fall to his antagonists he loses his own balance. His
general line of thought is intelligible. Philosophy, we
see, according to him, is formed by a chain of true
propositions, linked or (as he puts it) added together.
Each link is a syllogism ; and reasoning demonstrates
that, if the first propositions be true, all the dependent
propositions must be equally true. Language is the
essential instrument of the process, though language,
as he admits, is not necessary to thought, only to the
articulate thought which leads to science. We make
inferences from " natural signs " ; rain, for example, is
suggested by clouds, though the inference is often
erroneous, and no experience can be demonstrative.
Again, a man though deaf and dumb may observe
that the angles of a particular triangle are equal to
two right angles ; but only the man who has the use
of speech can prove that the property is necessarily
true of all triangles. " Experience concludeth nothing
universally." It tells us that day and night have
always followed each other ; not that they always will
follow.

Now, though " experience r suggests a kind of
reasoning, it is only with the use of language that
" ratiocination '; properly begins. Science embodies
" ratiocination." The validity of ratiocination depends
entirely upon the correct use of its essential instru-
ment, language. This, as Hobbes expresses it, means
that the whole process is dependent upon definitions.
If definitions were arbitrary, all science must be
arbitrary. Nothing could be further from his mind
than this conclusion, and what he really means may

ii.] THE WORLD 93

be gathered from the purpose of his argument.
Philosophy aims first at deducing effects from causes.
Definitions are "the primary propositions'" from
which this process starts. The definitions, therefore,
of " all things that are caused, must consist of such
names as express the cause or matter of generation."
When we have defined the circle as the figure made
by " the circumduction of a body whereof one end
remains unmoved," we can deduce all the properties
of the circle. Geometrical relations enable us to
determine the motions of the body, and therefore the
relations of cause and effect. Theories of motion, of
" physics," and ultimately of ethics and politics, are
founded upon geometry, and geometry itself follows
from the definitions. Euclid, it is true, lays down
certain axioms, but Hobbes argues that the axioms
themselves follow from the definitions. He deduces
the axiom, for example, that " a whole is greater than
any part thereof ' from the definition of " greater."
Demonstration requires ratiocination, and ratiocination N
is only possible when we start from definitions which \
are " nothing but the explication of our simple con- /
ceptions." The "principles of ratiocination consist in
our own understanding, that is, in the legitimate use
of such words as we ourselves constitute." The
meaning seems to be that geometrical truths owe
their peculiar certainty to the fact that geometry is
through and through an intellectual construction.
We can understand it, because in some sense we make
it. The definitions, then, are not " arbitrary " in the
sense that any other combination of words would do
as well, or that the properties of a figure would alter
if we defined it differently. By " arbitrary " he means

9i HOBBES [CHAP.

rather " artificial," or somehow made by us and not
by the things. The words are mere counters, or
instruments for calculating which we devise for the
purpose. We make them as a workman makes keys
for opening locks. He may make what tools he
pleases, but it does not follow that they will serve his
purpose equally well. We make the key ourselves,
but all keys will not open the lock.

We may define a figure by any of the properties
peculiar to it ; we may regard a circle as made by the
revolution of the radius or as the figure which will
enclose the maximum area by its circumference. But
we must somehow find the mode which will actually
generate it. The definition marks the point at which
we have got hold of the thing by its right end, or have
so organised our " simple conceptions ': that they ex-
plain the " generation ' of the more complex. The
mind must find the appropriate instruments, though
when Hobbes thinks of them as of simple creations out
of nothing, he uses " arbitrary " in an apparently absurd
sense. His theory thus becomes feasible, and suggests
a real answer to the problem as to the special pre-
rogative of mathematical proof. How far it contains
truth is a question which I must leave to writers who
can walk confidently in the perplexing border region
between mathematics and metaphysics.1

1 One remark may be made parenthetically. Dugald Stewart,
in a passage which had a great effect upon J. S. Mill (as Mill
tells us in his autobiography), takes Hobbes's view of definitions
in geometry. Definitions serve generally to prevent ambiguity,
and in geometry they serve as the real principles of our reason-
ing. He then remarks that Condillac has said that propositions,
equations, and judgments are at bottom the same thing. This
he ridicules, observing that Coudillac would be surprised to

ii.] THE WORLD 95

To complete our sketch of his logical scheme we
must glance at the process by which we get from the
definitions to the demonstrated truths. Names are put
together to form propositions and propositions to form
syllogisms. Hobbes accepts the ordinary rules about
syllogisms, of which he gives a brief summary. The
question remains what, according to him, is the
ultimate nature of the process. Why is the syllogism
demonstrative ? Now, in the first place, as a thorough
nominalist, he denies the existence of any " universals ':
except names. Man is the name of Peter, John, and
so forth, but there is no such thing as an universal
man. We have an " idea " of one man, for every idea
is one and of one thing. There is no " idea " of man.
in general, and the mistake arises from supposing that
what is true of the name is true of the idea. In
" nature," that is, there are only individuals, not classes.
Now in the syllogism we seem to learn something from
referring the individual to a class. Since Peter is a
man, he has the properties of a man. What, then, is
the implied logic ? Hobbes's answer is simple. A
proposition is true " when the predicate is the name of
everything of which the subject is the name." "Man
is a living creature," is true, "because everything
that is called man is also called living creature." The
syllogism carries us a step further by " adding " an

find that he was reviving the " obsolete conceit >:I of an old
English writer, i.e., Hobbes. Evidently, the De Corpore had
fallen into oblivion in Britain, though in Stewart's time, if
not in Condillac's, it was exciting great interest in France.
Stewart himself, it would seem, had hardly got beyond the first
chapter, or he certainly would have been candid enough to
mention that he too was reviving a doctrine of the old
writer.

96 HOBBES [CHAP.

affirmation. Take, for example, " every living creature
is a body ; man is a living creature ; therefore man
is a body." The minor premise is true, if the predi-
cate " living creature ': is a name of the same thing
as the subject (man). The major premise is true if
the predicate (body) is a name of the same thing as the
subject (living creature). Therefore " the three names
are also names of the one and the same thing," or
" man is a body " is a true proposition. He goes on to
explain what " passes in the mind " when we syllogise.
We " conceive the image of a man speaking ': and
remember that " what so appears is called man " ; we
have the image of the same man moving, and remember
that what so appears is called " living creature " ; and
finally the image " filling space '; is called " body."
Thus the three names are names of the same things.
Hobbes has told us before that the proposition " man is
a living creature '; is true because it pleased man to
impose both these names on " one thing," and declares
that the truth is therefore " arbitrary."

This queer doctrine still entangles him. If we only
call a thing a " man ' which we also call a " living
creature," the proposition " man is a living creature "
must be verbally true. We have agreed to put a mark
only where there is another mark. But that does not
explain why " man ' applies to John, Thomas, and
Peter, not to a stick or a dog, nor what is meant by
calling these three men " living creatures." Hobbes's
account of what passes in the mind implies indeed
that the words are in some way defined. WTe call
that " man " which has the faculty of speech, and that
" living creature '; which moves ; and possibly by
remembering Hobbes's doctrine as to definitions we

ii.] THE WORLD 97

may attribute to him a more rational meaning. He is
always thinking of his Euclid. The definition of a
circle tells us how it is generated, and enables us to
deduce all its properties, or to infer that a figure which
has one property has also the others. The different
names describing the properties apply to the same
thing, though the "thing" is not a mere simple unit
but a complex of relations. If then " man '; and
" living creature '; are modifications of " body," and
if we could tell how they are " generated '; in con-
formity with certain laws of motion and of various
combinations of matter, we could deduce all the pro-
perties of the species from simple definitions, and see
how one attribute such as "speaking" was a product
under certain conditions of "moving" or "living."
The premises of the syllogism would express the rela-
tions between the various classes thus formed. The
whole proceeding is for Hobbes "arbitrary," because
the process is carried out in the world of " ideas " or
" phantasms " which we make or organise for ourselves
— for thoughts are not "things," but unreal entities,
which for some reasons that he has not explained,
correspond in some way to the facts. Moreover, in
the case of 'l syllogising," we come to a difficulty of
which he will, as we shall see, try to find some solution.
A phenomenon is presented to us in the concrete, and
we do not know the underlying process by which it
has been evolved out of the simpler elements. We
cannot in the least say how faculty of speech is related
to life in general. We can only say that somehow or
other, one thing or one name includes the other : and
that appears to be an " arbitrary " assumption made to
enable us to reason.

H

98 HOBBES [CHAP.

3. Physical Science

Whatever is the explanation of Hobbes's strange
assumption that names must be "arbitrary' in order
that reasoning may be demonstrative, we have the old
difficulty. Certainty belongs to the world of thought;
but thought is " unreal " and the words which are its
tools can be put together at pleasure. Keality belongs
to fact which is hidden behind the phantasms. How
do we get across the chasm which divides them ?
What are the " things '; which lie behind the veil
of thoughts ? This leads to a further speculation.
Hobbes tells us that the things to which we give names
are of four kinds : bodies, phantasms, " accidents," and
names themselves. I need say nothing of the " acci-
dents," an irrelevant intrusion which bothers him a
good deal. The real distinction is between bodies and
phantasms, and the question is how they are related.

Here we come to a remarkable result. Hobbes seems
to be diverging from his thoroughgoing materialism.
Geometry and the laws of motion will not be sufficient
for the problems that meet him. Having expounded
his logic, he comes in the second part of the De Cor-
liore to the first grounds of philosophy. It is rather
startling to find this rigid materialist declaring that
time and space are, as we now say, "subjective."
Descartes begins by doubting whether our sensations
really prove the existence of an external world, and
finds doubt insuperable. Hobbes begins by asking
what would happen if we supposed the whole external
world to be annihilated. He answers that it would
make no difference. We should still have our " ideas
of the world.7' They are mere "phantasms, happen-

ii.] THE WORLD 99

ing internally to him that imagineth," but will still
appear to be " external " and independent of the mind.
Moreover, even if outside things are taken to remain,
" we still compute nothing but our own phantasms."
We mark out our measurements of the stars and the
earth " sitting still in our closets or in the dark."
Space is not an affection of the body. Otherwise when
a body moved, it would carry its place away with it.
Time is equally a phantasm. A year is time, and yet
nobody thinks that a year is, " the accident or affection
of any body." The past and future do not exist, and
consequently days, months, and years must be "the
names of computations made in our minds." He
therefore defines space as the " phantasm of a thing
existing without the mind simply," and time as " the
phantasm of before and after in motion." When space
and time are thus declared to be mere " phantasms,"
and therefore to have no existence outside of the
mind, and when, moreover, we are told that our reason-
ing depends entirely upon them, we are well on the way
to Berkeley's idealism or Hume's scepticism. " Phan-
tasms " or " ideas " — he uses both words — are the ulti-
mate elements of our thoughts ; and it would be the
next step to declare with Berkeley the non-existence of
matter, wrhile Hobbes already agrees with Hume that a
soul is a superfluity. With Hobbes, however, body, it
appears, is still the reality and the only reality. Space,
he has told us, is "imaginary because a mere phantasm,
yet that very thing which all men call so." Now sup-
pose the thing previously annihilated to be created
over again. Then it must, in the first place, fill some
part of the imaginary space and, in the second place,
must have " no dependence upon our thought."

100 HOBBES [CHAP.

Hence he defines body to be " that which having no
dependence upon our thought is coincident or co-
extended with some part of space." A body, he tells us
afterwards, has " always the same magnitude, but does
not keep the same place." " Place is nothing out of
the mind, nor magnitude anything within it." " Place
is feigned extension, but magnitude true extension."
Place is immovable, whereas bodies move. It appears,
therefore, that there is real space by which the
magnitude of any body is measured, and space is imag-
inary. It must, so it seems, be both purely objective
and purely subjective. Though the phantasm is unreal,
it somehow enables us to know the realities.

The peculiarity of Hobbes's position is just this,
that he does not perceive that any problem is
raised by the contrast between soul and body — the
world of thought and the world of things. He does
not seek for any hypothesis, such as Spinoza's
one substance with infinite attributes, intended to
bring the two worlds into unity. Bodies are still
independent of thought, and are the sole and
absolute realities. Thought is a mere play of phan-
tasms, which are unreal because only in the mind.
Yet the phantasms give us knowledge of the bodies
which go on placidly moving outside of thought ; and
the mind, which knows only its phantasms, is aware
of the outside world, and is itself a set of motions in
that world. That, it seems, must be simply taken for
granted and no explanation is required. It never
suggests any scepticism as to the possibility of know-
ledge. Hobbes will be as dogmatic as if no difficulty
existed. Nobody, as is already sufficiently evident,
could be more profoundly impressed by that conception

ii.] THE WORLD 101

of the universe which, is indicated by such phrases as
the "reign of law" and the "uniformity of nature."
All phenomena without exception present themselves
in conformity with certain general rules. The future
could be absolutely foreseen and the past recalled if
we had the required knowledge. From the existing
state of the solar system, the astronomer could say
what it was at any preceding, or what it will be at any
succeeding epoch. These powers indeed are limited
by the enormous complexity of the calculations and of
the facts to which they are applied. Other sciences are
less perfect because they have to deal with more intri-
cate problems, but not because any science includes
a really arbitrary element. From the minutest to
the most universal phenomenon, everything that will
happen is already predetermined. The fall of a leaf
or the explosion of a world is equally part of the
single unalterable system of things. Spinoza was to
give the most impressive version of a theory which
may be appalling to some minds, and simply self-
evident to others ; but Hobbes was not less possessed
with the conviction than his greater follower.

This mode of interpreting the universe is implied by
the theory of cause and effect which he now expounds.
As we have sufficiently seen, " all mutation is motion,"
and the changes of motion are simply the modification
of previous motions. Cause, he says, is the aggregate
of all the accidents of the agent and the patient. Omit-
ting his technical word "accident," we may say that
whatever motion takes place in a thing, is determined
by the whole set of previous conditions. If all the
conditions necessary for a given effect are present, it
will " necessarily ' happen ; and if one of them be

102 HOBBES [CHAP.

absent, it will necessarily not happen. Whatever
happens has a " necessary cause," looking backwards,
and looking forwards a necessary effect. " Causation
and the production of effects," he adds, " consist in a
certain continual progress." Causation, that is, is not
with him a mere sequence of disconnected phenomena,
but a continuous process, in which one set of motions
is always being transformed into another. We may
"in imagination" divide the process into two parts at
any assumed instant ; we shall then call the preceding
part the cause, and the succeeding part the effect.
The same causes will of course always produce the
same effect, since they differ in nothing but time.
The conception of power again suggests different ways
of looking at the same process. The "power of the
agent '• is what is called the " efficient cause." We
use the word " power " when we are thinking of the
future, and " cause ' when we are thinking of the
effect as already produced. The power of the patient,
again, is what is called the "material cause," with
reference to the effect which will be produced by the
"efficient cause," and both together are the entire
cause. Besides these the traditional scheme recognised
also "formal' and "final7 causes. The "formal,"
according to Hobbes, are superfluous. " When it is said
that the essence of a thing is the cause thereof, as
to be rational is the cause of man, it is not intelligible ;
for it is all one as if it were said, to be a man is the
cause of man, which is not well said." A " final cause,"
again, "has no place but in such things as have sense
and will," and in that case, as he undertakes to prove,
it is an " efficient cause."

The rejection of " final causes," Bacon's " barren

ii.] THE WORLD 103

virgins," is inevitable. It is indeed obvious that the
conception is altogether out of place from Hobbes's
point of view; that is, from a thoroughgoing
mechanical explanation of the universe. What we
have to do is to trace the series of movements of the
whole set of interacting bodies. At every stage the
motion of each body is the resultant of its own pre-
vious movement and of the movement of the various
bodies which have come into contact with it. Why
does a projectile move in a certain direction and with
a certain velocity ? The answer is given by its pre-
vious state, and the explosive or restraining forces
which have modified that state. Each of these forces
means that other bodies have come into contact with
it and modified its conduct in accordance with the
laws of motion. So far, obviously, we have nothing
to do with " end r> in the sense of purpose. We are
tracing a single process backwards and forwards. If,
again, we take a mechanism, such as the clock, which
plays so conspicuous a part in the illustration of " final
causes," we explain the movement of the hands by
the various wheels, chains, and so forth which trans-
mit motion from the weight or spring. If we trace
the process backward, we come to the point at which
the clock itself was put together. The cause then
is the set of processes, including on the one hand the
muscular movements of the clockmaker, and on the
other, the movements impressed upon the materials.
All that man does is to move one bit of matter to or
from another. The clockmaker's actions, again, are
determined by his purpose, by his "end," and the
means which his calculations prescribe for securing the
end. But now, according to Hobbes, the clockmaker

104 HOBBES [CHAP.

is just as much an automaton as the clock. His per-
ceptions, calculations, and motives are movements in
his brain, due to the impact of external bodies upon
the organs of sense and the reaction which takes place
in the brain. They are the " efficient cause " of the
clock, and the so-called " final cause " is merely a name
for the same set of processes absolutely determined by
the preceding processes. The man desires and expects,
but the senses and expectations are themselves part of
the movements implied. It is clear that from Hobbes's
point of view, the so-called " final cause 7 is a mere
name for the efficient cause, considered in one relation,
and that the whole series of events is purely mechanical.
Hobbes, it is true, professes to believe in a Creator
who once put the world together and must have
intended whatever comes to pass ; but science can only
trace the series of events and ask what was the pre-
ceding state from which any given state is generated.
The fact that everything was intended does not ex-
plain how everything comes to pass ; and to diverge
from the question how things actually happen to the
question why they should happen, is to leave the
ground of science and to get merely nugatory answers,
diverting us from the right line of real investigation.

One other point is characteristic of Hobbes's system.
Whatever happens, he holds, happens necessarily.
Moreover, whatever does not happen is impossible.
" Every act which is not impossible," as he puts it,
" shall at some time be produced." There is no
such thing as contingency. " That is called contin-
gent," he says, " of which the necessary cause is not yet
perceived." That is to say, it is not only " necessary '
that, if the solar system was put together in a certain

ii.] THE WORLD 105

way, certain results should follow, or that if a sparrow
is shot, he should fall to the ground; but it is also
necessary that the solar system should be just what it
is, and that the sparrow and the shot should have
come into collision just when they actually did.

Omitting certain deviations into mathematical specu-
lation and circle-squaring, we come in the last part of
the De Corpore to an important step towards the
solution of a difficulty already indicated. We have
now to consider " Physics or the phenomena of nature."
He gives theories of light, the tides, and gravitation,
and it is needless to say that upon such matters it
was impossible for him to reach any valuable results.
His view of the proper method of treatment, however,
implies an important doctrine. " Philosophy," as we
have seen, may either deduce effects from causes or
causes from effects. Hitherto he has confined himself
to the first — the deduction of effects from causes. He
has been able to start from definitions — from the
truths which we " create ourselves r — and he has, as
he maintains, affirmed nothing except the definitions
themselves, or the propositions which can be logically
inferred therefrom: that is to say, "nothing which
is not sufficiently demonstrated to all those that agree
with me in the use of words and appellations ; for whose
sake only I have written the same." But now we
have to change the method. We start from " the
appearances of nature," which are known to us by
sense. Our first principles are not such as are im-
pressed by definitions, " but such as being placed in
the things themselves by the author of nature, are by
us observed in them ; and we make use of them in
simple and particular, not universal propositions."

106 HOBBES [CHAP.

The senses, as we have already seen, give only empirical
knowledge, which is made up of merely probable
statements, such as " clouds are a sign of rain," and
cannot reveal those necessary truths of which alone
science consists. This would be the point at which
we might expect something about the Baconian
methods of induction. Hobbes takes a different line.
We are to reason about phenomena : and " of all
phenomena or appearances which are near us, the
most admirable is apparition itself, TO <jf>cuVeo-0ai :
namely, that some natural bodies have in themselves
the patterns almost of all things, and others of none
at all." By the patterns (exemplaria) he means the
" phantasms " which exist only in the thinking bodies —
in men, not in stones. What then is the cause of these
"ideas and phantasms which are perpetually generated
within us " ? Since they are continually changing,
they must be due to some change "in the sentient."
Since all change is motion, again, this implies that the
senses are due to motion in the organs of sense. The
object is some "remote body," from which pressure is
propagated to the organ, and the consequent endeavour
or reaction of the organ. " Endeavour " he has defined
in a previous passage to be "motion made in less time
and space than can be given ; or motion through the
length of a point, and in an instant or point of time."
Sense, then, is the phantasm made by the " endeavour '
outward in the organ, which is reaction against the
endeavour inwards from the object. Something very
like this may be read in modern books, which tell us
how the stimulus to the nerve transmits molecular
movement to the brain, and sets up a reflex action.
Hobbes, however, could only speak very vaguely, and

ii.] THE WORLD 107

takes for granted much now exploded physiology. He
is a little doubtful about one point. Some philosophers
have maintained that "all bodies are endued with sense."
If sense were made by reaction alone, their argument
would be unanswerable. It is, however, the possession
of organs by living bodies which makes the difference.
The organs preserve the motions set up in them :
whereas in inanimate bodies the motion or reaction
must cease as soon as the external pressure ceases,
and the phantasm which it causes vanishes instantane-
ously. Sense, to be of any use in giving knowledge,
must be accompanied with memory, for the knowledge
which it gives depends upon the comparison of the
phantasms. This suggests one of his significant
phrases. " It is almost all one for a man to be always
sensible of one and the same thing, and not to be
sensible at all of any things," or, in his pithier Latin,
" sentire semper idem et non sent ire ad idem recidunt"
Imagination, again, is " nothing else but sense decay-
ing or weakened by the absence of object." The dif-
ficulty remains, how memory, which is thus necessary
for the comparison of phantasms and all knowledge
derived from the senses, can be interpreted in terms
of motion. It seems as if we still required a mind
different from the organ to look on and compare the
decaying senses. Self-consciousness remains a mystery.
Hobbes answers Descartes's "Je pense" by saying
that we cannot have a thought of a thought; but he
holds that memory is a feeling of a feeling. Sentire se
sentisse, meminisse est.

This involves another remark. Hobbes insists em-
phatically that the phantasm is somehow quite different •
from the motion by which it is caused. He had already

108 HOBBES [CHAP.

pointed out in the Human Nature that people easily
fancy that colour and shape belong to the object, or
that the sound is in the bell. The opinion has been
so long received that the contrary must seem a para-
dox. Yet the common view involves the introduction
of the old " species visible and intelligible " : it is " worse
than a paradox — an impossibility." The colour and
" image " are " nothing without us." They are appari-
tions due to the motions in the brain.1 The senses are
deceptive, as when men "divers times'1 see objects
double, or take a reflected image for a reality, or see
a flash of light from a blow on the eye. The same is
true of the other senses. Smells and tastes vary from
man to man. The heat which we feel from the fire is
manifestly in us and not in the fire, for it gives pleasure
and pain, " whereas in the coal there is no such thing."
The "paradox" is now a familiar truth. Hobbes
seems to go beyond^ his immediate successors. They
would admit that the so-called " secondary qualities,"
colour, and so forth, are purely subjective; but the
primary qualities, space and solidity, seemed to have
superior claim to " objective reality." Hobbes observes
that place and time, that is to say, magnitude and
duration, " are only our own fancies of a body simply
so called ; " that is, of a body considered without refer-
ence to its other properties.

All our knowledge of phenomena depends upon the
senses, and what the senses present to us are simply
the unreal phantasms, upon which, it would seem, no

1In a dedicatory letter of an imprinted treatise upon optics,
he says that he had stated this theory to Newcastle about
1630; and appeals to him as a witness: the same doctrine
having heen since published by another.

ii.] THE WORLD 109

real science or body of demonstrable truths can be
erected. The cause of the phantasms, again, is the
"endeavour" of the organ — infinitesimal movements
which take place within the length of a point. Hobbes
here denies emphatically that " infinite " has any real
meaning beyond " indefinite," whether indefinitely
great or small. Men who profess to reason about the
infinite and eternal are " not idiots, but, which makes
the absurdity unpardonable, geometricians, and such
as take upon them to be judges." They get entangled
in words to which there is no corresponding idea, and
"are forced either to speak something absurd, or,
which they love worse, to hold their peace." No
limits, however, may be assigned to possible greatness
or smallness. Microscopes now show things a hundred
thousand times bigger than they appear to bare eyes,
and might be made so as to magnify each part a
hundred thousand times more. So we now know that
the distance from the earth to the sun is but as a point
in comparison with the distance from the sun to the
fixed stars. Hobbes was impressed by these recent
revelations of the enormous vistas opened by early
science, which have become still more impressive as
science has grown. They suggested to him the im-
possibility of building up scientific knowledge 011 the
direct basis of observation. Everything depends upon
motion ; but the motions which are causes of the phan-
tasms or of natural phenomena are too infinitesimal
to be perceived. Their existence may be inferred, but
their precise nature can only be guessed. When,
therefore, we proceed from the phenomena given by
sense to the causes, we can no longer start from the
definitions which, in the previous inquiry, state our

110 HOBBES [CHAP.

first principles. We have instead of that method to
start from hypotheses. Hobbes aims at showing some
" ways and means by which they (appearances) may
be, I do not say they are, generated." He ends his
discussion of the phenomena by declaring that the
hypotheses which he has assumed are " both possible
and easy to be comprehended," and that he has reasoned
rightly from them. " If any other man will demonstrate
the same and greater things from other hypotheses,
there will be greater praise and thanks due to him
than I demand for myself, provided his hypotheses
are conceivable." At any rate he has got rid of
empty words, such as " substantial forms," " incorpo-
real substances," " antipathy," " sympathy," and
" occult quality."

So far it seems that Hobbes's method was that of
modern sciences. Their aim, like his, is to give a
mathematical theory of the various natural forces,
such as heat, light, and electricity. They begin by a
hypothesis about atoms and molecules which must be
conceivable, and represent such properties of matter
as we know to exist, although no direct observations
can reveal them. If, again, these assumptions enable
us to formulate the observed " laws," and to predict
what will happen in other cases, and if no other
assumptions can satisfy the conditions, we regard the
successful assumptions as proved, or at least as pro-
visionally established, though, it may be, in need of
modification or of some further assumptions which
may make them more complete. The difference is
that the vast improvement both in instruments of
observation and in methods of mathematical calcula-
tion enable us to apply incomparably more searching

ii.] THE WORLD 111

tests to our hypotheses, as well as to gain confidence
from the reciprocal support given to each other by
different departments of investigation. Hobbes had
to be vague and audacious, and make erroneous physi-
cal assumptions. He was still in the period of Des-
cartes's vortices, and could not anticipate Newton's
theory of gravitation.

His physical speculations have therefore no interest,
except as specimens of the early guessing with which
men had to be content at the dawn of science. The
general conception of the possibility of working out
mathematical theories of physical sciences shows that
he was fully awake to the most important movement
of thought in his own day, and ready, in spite of his
odd misconceptions, to adopt the results of the great
teachers, such as Galileo and Harvey. But we have
now to look at another point. The " motions r or
" endeavours " in the bodily organs which generate
the phantasms of the senses, generate also, as he
remarks, " another kind of sense . . . namely, the
sense of pleasure and pain," which he fancies to pro-
ceed from, the action of the heart. This doctrine he
takes to be favoured by Harvey's discovery. It is
clear, however, that here we come to a difficulty.
What we know directly are the phantasms : the sensa-
tions of light, heat, and so forth, or the pleasures and
pains which are indissolubly connected with certain
sense-given phenomena. Now if we could discover
what are the motions which take place when we see
or hear or feel pain or pleasure, there is still a gap,
corresponding to his remark about the TO <f>a.iveo-0ai.
Why a sensation of light should follow a motion in
the optic nerve, or pain or pleasure be connected with

112 HOBBES [CHAP.

certain changes in the organism, remains a mystery.
That, in fact, is the difficulty which has been awaiting
him all along. When he comes to his theory of human
nature, he still tries to connect his doctrine with his
general theory of motion in the nerves, but is forced
to rely to some extent upon empirical psychology. He
knows how men will act in given circumstances, not
because he can deduce the action from any theory
about the bodily organism, but because he observes
that, as a matter of fact, such and such things are
painful or pleasurable and lead to aversion or desire.
He puts the case himself in a remarkable passage.
The natural philosopher, as we have seen, must begin
from geometry; " civil and moral philosophy" properly
depend upon natural. But, he says, " the causes of
the motions of the mind are known, not only by ratio-
cination, but also by the experience of every man that
takes the pains to observe those motions within him-
self." Therefore we may either take the " synthetical
method," and from " the very first principles of philo-
sophy " deduce " the causes and necessity of "creating
commonwealths " ; or, even without knowing geometry
and physics, we may attain the principles of civil
philosophy by the " analytical '; method. The syn-
thetical method proceeds from " motions of the mind " ;
the knowledge of these motions, again, follows from
knowledge of " sense or imagination," and ultimately
depends upon geometry. But the analytical method
starts from a knowledge of law as dependent upon
" power " : of power as derived from the wills of the
men " that constitute such power," and that again
from a knowledge of men's appetites and passions.
That knowledge is to be derived from every man's

ii.] THE WORLD 113

experience if lie will but "examine his own mind."
That is fortunate. If we had to deduce the nature of
government and of right and wrong from geometry
or physics, we should have to wait a long time
for a.ny satisfactory results. The materialist theory
remains in Hobbes's mind as a self-evident truth,
and has a very important influence upon his specula-
tions. But his real method is different. That will
appear hereafter.

CHAPTER III

MAN1

1. Psychology

MAN is a body with certain organs. Other bodies
coming into contact with the organs of sense pro-
pagate motions through the nerves to the brain and
heart. The reactions or " endeavours " set up in the
central organs generate the sensations or phantasms
which constitute the whole mental world. We are
directly conscious of nothing else, although they
enable us to perceive what happens "outside of the
mind." The laws of motion, again, tell us that a thing
once in motion " will be eternally in motion unless
somewhat else stay it." Whatever hindereth it will

1 The second part of Hobbes's philosophy considered in this
chapter is expounded in the early chapters of the Leviathan
(vol. iii. of English works) and the Human Nature. The last,
originally published in 1650, consists of the first thirteen
chapters of the treatise written in 1640. The later part of the
same treatise also appeared in 1650 as De Corpore Politico.
These two form the fourth volume of the English works. A
later treatise, De Ho mine, in Latin, appeared in 1658, but adds
nothing to the earlier books. Hobbes never found himself
able to give the fuller exposition which he had intended of
the doctrines summarised in the Human Nature and the
Leviathan; but he states the essence with sufficient terseness
and clearness.

114

CHAP, in.] MAN 115

take some time to destroy the motion. " Though the
wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long
time after ; so also it happeneth in that motion which
is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he
sees, dreams, etc." The " image " thus formed remains
for a time after the object is removed, and the faculty
of retaining such images is therefore called " the
imagination." Imagination is therefore " nothing
but decaying sense." All knowledge and thought
thus correspond to the action and reaction between
the living body and the bodies which impinge upon
it. Knowledge, therefore, is entirely constructed from
experience, or from the action set up from outside,
although the organised body has the power of reacting
and so generating the phantasms which compose the
"imaginary" or mental world. The problem which
Hobbes now considers is how the mind or brain coines
to systematise this varying play of imagery and to
acquire both general truths and rules which govern
conduct. We have already seen what is the logic
which is worked out by the help of language ; but we
have also to consider man as an acting and feeling
being. We must understand not only his methods of
reasoning but the motives which govern his conduct.
Although Hobbes holds that the phantasms are
caused by the internal motions, this cause does not
really help us much to explain the effect. We have to
look at the phantasms themselves. Hobbes is naturally
much interested by the phenomena of dreaming, for
dreams are entirely made up of phantasms. We catch
the phantasms, so to speak, by themselves, shifting, com-
bining, and behaving according to their own purpose.
Sleep is a " privation of the act of sense." The power

116 HOBBES [CHAP.

to feel remains, but its activity is suspended for the
time. Consequently the phantasms are not suppressed
or modified by the intrusion of images from without.
They are made up entirely of past images, though
combined in new and apparently arbitrary ways.
Sometimes they continue the train of images of the
waking state, but they also seem to spring up of
themselves. The explanation is that there is a
reciprocal action between the vital organs and the
phantasms. " Sad imaginations nourish the spleen,
and a strong spleen reciprocally causeth fearful
dreams." When we are awake fear causes cold, and
when we are asleep cold causes fear, and therefore
" dreams of ghosts." This leads to an important
result which will meet us again. Fear, " helped a
little with stories of such apparitions, causes guilty
men in the night and in hallowed places to see terrible
phantasms which they mistake for real ghosts and
incorporeal substances." Our dreams are thus the
reverse of our waking imaginations : the motion when
we are awake beginning at one end, and when we
dream at the other. The absence of interfering sen-
sations, again, makes the phantasms as clear as the
waking impressions, and as they appear to be always
present and we do not remember or reflect, strange
things in dreams cause no wonder. Finally, the inco-
herence of our dreams distinguishes them sufficiently
from the phantasms which, when we are awake, inform
us of a present reality. When dreaming we do not
know that we are not awake, but when we are awake
we are quite sure that we are not dreaming. " We do
not dream of the absurdities of our waking thoughts,"
but when awake we perceive the incoherence of our

in.] MAN 117

dreams. In dreams "our thoughts appear like the
stars between flying clouds, not in the order in which
a man would choose to observe them, but as the
uncertain order of flying clouds permits."

What is it, then, that gives this colouring to our
waking thoughts ? " Not every thought to every
thought succeeds indifferently." Our images are
relics of past sense impressions, and, moreover, they
succeed in the same order in which their originals
succeeded. One follows the other " as water upon
a plane table is drawn which way any one part is
guided by the finger." But we have experience of
images succeeding in the most various orders. There
is, therefore, no certainty as to what image will succeed
another at a given time, although it is certain that
the order is one in which we have previously experi-
enced them. Thus thoughts seem "impertinent to
one another " as in a dream. Yet even in this " wild
ranging of the mind ' we may often perceive the
guiding cause. "For in a discourse of our present
civil war what could seem more impertinent than to
ask, as one did, what is the value of a Eoman pcni,y.
Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For
the thought of the war introduced the thought of the
delivering up of the king to his enemies ; the thought
of that thought brought in the thought of the deliver-
ing up of Christ ; and that again the thought of the
thirty pence, which was the price of that treason ; and
thence easily followed that malicious question, and all
this in a moment of time, for thought is quick." This
passage, quoted by all critics of Hobbes, is a fine speci-
men of his pregnant style. G. H. Lewes remarks that
a popular rhetorician would have expanded the last

118 HOBBES [CHAP.

four words into a paragraph. A Scottish professor
would have proceeded to quote Akenside. It is also
remarkable as an illustration of the doctrine of the
" association of ideas " which was to become so pro-
minent with Hobbes's successors. It has been pointed
out, indeed, that Hobbes was not the first person to
notice a phenomenon which had already been observed
by Aristotle. ISTor has it with him the importance
which it assumed in later years. Hume declared
that the association of ideas was in mental phenomena
what gravitation was in astronomy, and Hartley's later
application of the doctrine to the moral as well as
the intellectual nature, became the guiding principle
of the later empirical school in England. Hartley's
" vibrati uncles ': play the same part as Hobbes's
" endeavours," and in both cases the physiological
theory, which professes to give the ground of the
phenomena, is rather deduced from the phenomena
themselves than independently ascertained. The
" association of ideas ': remained when the vibrati-
uncles were dropped. To Hartley's followers it
scenic ,1 that the whole theory of knowledge depended
upon a thorough carrying out of this principle. Logic
in general seemed to them to be derivable from "asso-
ciation of ideas." Though Hobbes certainly did not
foresee this application of his statement, his use of the
observation is important. The " trains of thoughts,"
as he says, are of two kinds : the first is "unguided" ;
when thoughts are directed by association, and the
succession appears to be as casual as in a dream : the
second is " regulated by some desire or design." The
unregulated give us the kind of knowledge which
would be described by Hume as attributable to the

in.] MAN 110

association of ideas. We remember things as ante-
cedent and consequent, and this remembrance is an
" experiment," whether made voluntarily, as when we
put a thing in the fire to see what will happen, or
" not made," as when we remember a fair morning
after a cold evening. When we have often observed
such a sequence we expect its repetition, and from
this comes the kind of knowledge which we call
" prudence." If the sign has preceded the event in a
required number of cases, it may justify us in betting
twenty to one that an event will happen, but never
justifies a certainty, which belongs to science alone.

At this stage, then, cause and effect are represented
simply by sequence — the sole meaning, according to
the later empiricists, of cause and effect. Now when a
man desires some end, he thinks of the means which
will produce it. This kind of thinking Hobbes takes
to be common to man and beast, though it is man
alone who is capable of following the reverse method
of deducing effects from causes. That method is
peculiar to truly scientific reasoning. The " discourse
of the mind," when directed by design, may lead to
either process. A man has lost something, and his
mind runs back from place to place and time to time
to find when and where he had it, for he knows the
place in which he is to seek, and " his thoughts run
over all the parts thereof in the same manner as one
would sweep a room to find a jewel, or as a spaniel
ranges a field till he find a scent, or as a man should run
over the alphabet to start a rhyme." In other cases a
man comes to know what event will follow an action.
He wishes to know, for example, what will be the
consequence of committing a crime. He assumes that

120 HOBBES [CHAP.

like events will follow like actions and so he thinks
of the sequence of "the crime, the officer, the prison,
the judge, and the gallows." That is a course of reflec-
tion which, as Hobbes undeniably says, is likely to
result in "prudence." Here again Hobbes emphasises
a distinction between " prudence " and " science," or
between merely empirical and necessary truth. He
therefore introduces at this point his theory of names
and " computation " — the method by which science is
elaborated. But when he is taking the psychological
rather than the logical view, and considering how as a
matter of fact knowledge is developed, he makes the
distinction less absolute. Science " after all ' is a
development of "prudence."1 Both kinds of know-
ledge, he says in the Human Nature, " are but experi-
ence," though science depends upon the " proper use of
names in language." This, however, implies the " con-
comitance of conception with words : for if words
alone were sufficient, a parrot might be taught as well
to know truth as to speak it. Evidence is to truth, as
the sap to the tree, which so far as it creepeth along
with the body and branches keepeth them alive ; where
it forsaketh them, they die ; for this evidence, which
is meaning with our words, is the life of truth." So
in the Leviathan he remarks that children before they
can speak are not properly reasonable, and most men
are little better. Having no science or knowledge of
consequences, they still resemble children, who are
made to believe that their new brothers and sisters
are found in the garden. Such natural "prudence,"
indeed, is better than false rules. "The light of

1 See chapter vi. of Human Nature, and chapter v. of
Leviathan.

in.] MAN 121

human reason is perspicuous words, but by exact
definitions first snuffed and purged from ambiguity.
Reason is the pace; increase of science the way; and
the benefit of mankind the end." The ability of the
man who has natural dexterity with his weapon is to
the ability of the man who has thoroughly acquired the
art of fencing, as prudence to "sapience" (sapientia,
that is, or science). "Both (abilities) are useful; but
the latter infallible." Those, meanwhile, who trust to
books and follow the blind blindly are "like him that,
trusting to the false, rules of a master of fence,
ventures presumptuously upon an adversary that
either kills or disgraces him." Thus in any business
where we have no " infallible science," it is better to
follow our "natural judgment than to be guided by
general sentences read in authors." Politicians love
to show their reading in councils, but very few do it
in their domestic affairs: having prudence enough at
home, though in " public they study more the reputa-
tion of their own wit than the success of another's
business." The accurate knowledge which comes with
a " proper use of names " is therefore, as it would seem,
not dependent upon "arbitrary conventions'" as to
names, but a refinement and articulate organisation of
the simple conceptions out of which mere prudence or
a system of empirical knowledge is constructed.

Another point has now to be considered. Trains of
thought are "'regulated" by the presence of some aim
or desire. The wild ranging of the mind represented
by dreams or mere " association of ideas ': is then
directed to a single end. We have noticed sequences,
such as the crime, the prison, the gallows; and when we
desire, we think of the means which will produce the

122 HOBBES [CHAP.

desirable result, and then of the means to those means.
What then is a desire ? All conceptions and appari-
tions are really " motion in some internal substance of
the head." The motion " not stopping there but pro-
ceeding to the heart, of necessity must there either help
or hinder the motion which is called vital: when it
helpethit is called delight, contentment, or pleasure, which
is nothing really but motion about the heart, as con-
ception is nothing but motion in the head." When, on
the contrary, the vital motion is hindered, the hindering
motion is called pain. The physiology is of course
absurd, but the theory thus accepted is remarkable.
The same doctrine appears in Spinoza's Ethics, where
it becomes the foundation of his famous account of
the passions, held by many critics to be his master-
piece. Sir F. Pollock in his admirable exposition
observes that, according to Spinoza, " Pleasure marks
the rising and pain the lowering of the vital energies."
That phrase would serve equally as an equivalent
for the words just quoted from Hobbes. Sir F.
Pollock points out, again, that this doctrine has
been accepted by Mr. Herbert Spencer and other
modern thinkers. That pleasure and pain must in
some way correspond to heighten or lower vitality is
a doctrine which in some form or other becomes more
essential with the acceptance of evolution. It is quite
clear that while animals, human or other, seek for the
pleasurable and avoid the painful, a being which acted
upon the opposite plan would be in a very bad way.
A race which hated food and took delight in being
eaten would speedily be extinguished in the struggle
for existence. Spinoza bases his theory upon his
general principle — everything that is endeavours to

m.] MAN 123

persist in its own being " in suo esse perseverare co
natur" Hobbes's acceptance of the law that the
motion of a thing will persist unless altered by some
other thing, implies a perception of the same principle.
Meanwhile he insists (in the Human Nature) upon
another point of great importance.

" Ends," he says, may be near at hand or further off :
those which are nearer are called " means " to the
further. " But for an utmost end, in which the
ancient philosophers have placed felicity, there is no
such thing in this world, nor way to it, more than to
Utopia : for while we live we have desires, and desire
presupposeth a further end." There can, he infers,
" be no contentment but in proceeding." We are not
to marvel, therefore, when we see that as men attain
to one end, "their appetite continually groweth" and
they pursue some other. " Of those that have attained
to the highest degree of honour and riches, some have
affected mastery in some art ; as Nero in music and
poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator ; ' some
kind of diversion, whether in play or business, is still
required; and men justly complain of a great grief
that they know not what to do. " Felicity, therefore,
by which we mean continual delight, consisteth not in
having prospered but in prospering." This states a
really valuable doctrine. Everything we have seen is
motion: knowledge implies perpetual motion, the
whole world-process is a continuous transformation of
one system of motions into another ; and life, of
course, is essentially motion. To wish, therefore, for
" Utopia," which excludes change, is to wish for some-
thing inconsistent with life and radically inconceivable.
Hobbes constantly ridicules the scholastic doctrine of

124 HOBBES [CHAP.

eternity as a " nunc stans," a state which has no rela-
tion to time. That is one of his favourite illustrations
of the use of meaningless words. 'The universe is
change. He answers by anticipation an argument
which finds favour with modern pessimists. Life, they
suggest, is essentially misery, because we are always
desiring, and desire implies want. The inference
involves a fallacy. Time never stands still, and we are
always moving on. We cannot sit down upon a solid
lump of pleasure outside of time and change. We
cannot imagine such a thing, for the words have no
real meaning. ((Every end is also a beginning, and to
think of the future is to desire. But desire is not
necessarily painful. It does not imply dissatisfaction
with the present, but only a hope that the change
may lead in a certain direction. If the conditions of
future fruition appear to be present, the expectation
of change is itself delightful. We have in Hobbes's
language appetites and aversions. Appetite is an
endeavour towards an " object which delighteth."
" Pleasure, love, and appetite are divers names for
divers considerations of the same things." Opposed
to " appetite " is " aversion," which " moves us when
the object displeaseth." Happiness implies, therefore,
such a process as involves a continuous activity of the
vital powers and not an impossible and inconceivable
state of changelessness. We cannot arrest time or
cease the change, but we may be continually moving
along the line of greatest vigour and happiness. This
again seems to be often overlooked by Hobbes's
disciples, the later utilitarians. Bentham is apt to
talk about " lots" of happiness, as if happiness were a
solid thing capable of being accumulated like coins in

in.] MAN 125

a bag. Life is a continuous process in which pain or
pleasure may predominate, but its value is to be
measured, not by the sum of things possessed, but by
the nature of the energy evolved in possessing them.

This leads to Hobbes's theory of the passions, which,
though characteristic, can hardly be described, like
Spinoza's, as a "masterpiece." He has denned passion
as "the motion about the heart," which is a consequence
of " the motion of the brain," which we call conception.
He has therefore " obliged himself to search out and
declare from what conception proceedeth every one of
the passions which are commonly taken notice of."
The course of this inquiry is curious. He begins by
a brief account of the sensual pains and pleasures.
Among them are the pleasure of hearing. Galileo
has done something towards explaining the pleasures
of harmony; but "I confess that I know not," says
Hobbes, " for what reason one succession in tone and
measure is more pleasant than another." He con-
jectures that some airs imitate and revive a former
passion • " for no air pleaseth but for a time, no more
doth imitation." There is, however, " another delight
by the ear," peculiar to musicians, namely, a " rejoicing
of their own skill." Of this nature he says " are the
passions of which I am to speak next." He is really
dropping the attempt to give a scientific classification
of the passions in order to dwell upon certain
emotions interesting for the purpose of his political
theories.

He begins from a sufficiently wide proposition.
The expectation that anything will happen hereafter
implies the knowledge that there is something present
which has power to produce it; that knowledge being

126 HOBBES [CHAP.

derived from our remembrance of the past. " Where-
fore all conception of the future is conception of power
able to produce something. Whoever, therefore, ex-
pecteth pleasure to come must conceive withal some
power in himself by which the same may be attained.'7
When we desire a pleasure, we no doubt conceive our-
selves to have the power of enjoying it. We may
perhaps desire something, while recognising that under
the circumstances it is impossible, as according to the
poet, the moth may desire the star. But desire as
determining action, "the beginning of animal motion
towards something that pleaseth us," supposes that we
can enjoy and that we can act so as to procure the
enjoyment or the chance of it. This, however, does
not appear to throw much light upon the nature of
desire or of the special passions. Hobbes proceeds to
explain that by " power " he means all the faculties of
body and mind, and, besides these, all such further
power as is by them obtained, such as riches, authority,
friendship, and good fortune. However little the
general position can help us in " searching out " the
nature of the various passions, it shows what really
is in Hobbes's mind. Since man is a desiring animal,
and reaches one end only to anticipate further ends,
he seeks not only to gratify some particular passion,
but to obtain whatever may enable him to gain pleasure
and avoid pain of all kinds. He has various capacities
for enjoyment, and necessarily desires all the power
which may enable him to go on enjoying as much as
possible. " Favour," riches, and so forth, are means
towards continuing a pleasant life. He adds a signifi-
cant remark : " And because the power of one man
resisteth and hindereth the effects of the power of

in.] MAN 127

another, power simply is no more but the excess of the
power of one above that of another; for equal powers
opposed destroy one another, and such opposition is
called contention" It is clear that the meaning of
" power " has become restricted. It no longer means
anything which enables us to enjoy or to secure the
means of enjoyment, but that kind of power which
enables us to get a larger share than our neighbours.
He is not thinking, for example, of the power of per-
forming on the lute which gave him enjoyment when
he was locked up in his bedroom, but of the power
which enabled him to have a room to himself and keep
out the burglars who might have knocked him on the
head. Power is the ability of the individual to get as
large a share as possible of the good things that may
be going.

He proceeds to give definitions of a great number
of painful and pleasurable emotions. What we obtain
from him, however, is not properly a general theory
of the passions, but a not very systematic list of the
various emotions as determined by the relations be-
tween a man and the society in which he lives. Such
as it is, however, his list suggests to him a number
of characteristic and pungent sayings which have a
bearing upon his political theory, and are often, it must
be admitted, more forcible than edifying. The order
of exposition, I may remark, is clearer in the Human
Nature than in the Leviathan.

Since all desire implies desire for "power," the
recognition of the power belonging to ourselves or
others is an essential element in our relations to each
other. The "acknowledgment of power is called
" Honour" and to honour a man is to conceive that he

128 HOBBES [CHAP.

has an "excess of power above him with whom he
contendeth." All the signs of " power " are therefore
honourable. Beauty of person or " general reputation
among those of the other sex ' is honourable as an
indication of personal vigour. Actions which show
strength of body, as victory in battle or duel, are
honourable. Avoir tue son homme is an honour. So
is a readiness to great exploits, for confidence gives
a presumption of real power ; and to teach is honour-
able as a sign of knowledge ; and riches as a sign of
the power that acquired them ; and authority as a sign
of the strength, wisdom, favour, or riches by which it
is acquired. Good fortune is honourable because a
sign of the favour of God, to whom is to be ascribed
all that cometh to us by fortune, no less than that we
attain unto by industry. Gravity is honourable when
a sign of " a mind employed on something else," em-
ployment being a sign of power. It is dishonourable
when affected. For the gravity of the former kind
is like a ship laden with merchandise, but of the latter
like the steadiness of a ship ballasted with sand and
other trash. Honour is the manifestation of the value
we set on one another. The value or worth of a man
is, as of all other things, his price : that is to say,
as much as would be given for the use of his power ;
and therefore this value is not absolute, but a thing
dependent on the need and judgment of another. So a
good soldier is more valuable in war than in peace, while
the reverse is true of a learned and uncorrupt judge.
As in other things, so in men, not the seller but the
buyer determines the price. For, let men, as most
men do, rate themselves at the highest value they can,
yet their true value is no more than it is esteemed

in.] MAN 129

by others. Moreover, honour consisteth only in the
opinion of " power." If an action be great and difficult
and therefore a proof of great power, it matters not
whether it be just or unjust. The ancients thought
they were honouring their gods by ascribing to them
great though unjust acts ; as in the Homeric hymn,
Mercury's greatest praise is that " being born in the
morning, he had invented music at noon, and before
night stolen away the cattle of Apollo." Piracy was
thought honourable by the Greeks, and at the present
time "private duels are and always will be honour-
able, though unlawful, till such time as there shall be
honour ordained for them that refuse, and ignominy
for them that make the challenge." Duels often show
courage, and therefore " strength and skill, which are
power," though for the most part, he admits, they are
the effects of rash speech and the " fear of dishonour."
iHobbes was the last man to insist that duelling should
be honoured ; but that it was honoured is indisputable,
and he is simply considering the fact.

The desire for power implies the desire for honour :
the recognition of power by ourselves or others, for
that is itself power. We have next to notice the
passions which correspond to honour. The first is
" glory or 'internal gloriation or triumph of the rnind."
This means the conception of our own power as com-
pared with the power of " him that contendeth against
us." " By those whom it displeaseth this passion is
called pride ; by those whom it pleaseth it is called a
just valuation of oneself." When the "imagination of
our power " arises from experience of our own actions,
it is just and well-grounded, and prompts aspiring to
higher degrees of power. When it arises from the

130 HOBBES [CHAP.

trusting other people's opinions, it becomes u false
glory," and leads to mistaken ambition. Sometimes
glory depends upon fiction, as when we imagine our-
selves to be the hero of some romance. This begets
no aspiration, and is " vain glory ' when, " like the
fly on the axletree, a man exclaims, < What a dust do
I raise.' He illustrates it elsewhere from the gallant
madness of Don Quixote, " which is nothing else but
an expression of such height of vain glory as reading
of romance may produce on pusillanimous men." It
is shown by " affectation of fashions," and " usurping
the signs of virtues " not really possessed. The oppo-
site passion to glory is called " humility " by those by
whom it is approved, and by others " dejection." " If
well-grounded, it produceth fear to attempt anything
rashly ; if ill, it utterly cows a man, that he neither
dares speak publicly nor expect success in any
action."

Another passion of which Hobbes takes himself to
have given the first explanation is marked by that
" distortion of the countenance which we call laughter."
The cause of laughter is not wit, " for men laugh at
mischances and indecencies wherein there lieth no
wit nor jest at all." What moves laughter must be
something " new and unexpected." Men, especially
if " greedy of applause," laugh at unexpected success
in their actions and at their own jests. They laugh
again at jests which elegantly discover the absurdity
of another man. They do not laugh when they them-
selves or their friends are the objects of jesting.
Laughter, then, is caused by " sudden glory " : the
discovery of some superiority in ourselves to other
people. The popularity of this phrase shows, I fancy,

in.] MAN 131

that Hobbes has more or less hit the mark.1 It is
only fair to add his remark that the passion "is
incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest
abilities in themselves ; who are forced to keep them-
selves in their own favour by observing the imper-
fections of other men. And therefore much laughter
at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity.
For of great minds one of the proper works is to
help and free others from scorn, and compare them-
selves only with the most able." We should only
laugh "when all the company may laugh together,"
as "at absurdities abstracted from persons." That
is a fair test of the innocence of laughter, with which
Chesterfield might agree.

The attempt to analyse the passions into some form
of the desire for power or honour has less edifying
consequences. Hobbes, we discover, is the most
thoroughgoing of egoists, and not only admits the
universality of self-love, but speaks as though this
were one of the obvious truths which require no
proof or explanation. " Pity," he observes with super-
lative calmness, is imagination or fiction of future
calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of
another man's calamity. We pity those who suffer
an undeserved calamity, " because then there appeareth
more probability that the same may happen to us :
for the evil that liappeneth to an innocent man
may happen to every man." That is why men pity
those whom they love ; for whom they love they think
worthy of good and therefore not worthy of calamity.
This may suggest the question, "What is the meaning

1 It is discussed by Professor Sully in his recent book upon
humour.

132 HOBBES [CHAP.

of love ? J; He discusses this in the Human Nature,
though he apparently does not think it worthy of con-
sideration in the Leviathan. Love in the most general
sense means simply the " delight " caused by an object
which helps the vital motion, hatred having the corre-
sponding relation to pain. This, he says, sufficiently
explains the love which men have to one another, or
the pleasure which they take in each other's company,
which entitles them to be called " sociable." To love
men means that we think of them as useful. Of love
in the narrower sense, or the passion which is " the
great theme of poets," he observes that, in spite of
their " praises," it means the lover's " need," not any
special quality in the object beloved. " Those are
most successful in love who care least, which not per-
ceiving many men cast away their services as one arrow
after another till, in the end, together with their hopes
they lose their wits." Hobbes is not very clear at this
point — perhaps he was a little shy of " the poets " —
but he does not appear to take a romantic view of the
question. Another variety of love is more properly
called " good will or charity." This is a modification,
again, of the desire for power. Nothing can convince
a man of his own power more completely than the
discovery that he is able not only to accomplish his
own desires but also to assist other men in theirs.
This is the secret of " the natural affection of parents to
their children (which the Greeks call crropy^)," as also
of the affection implied in " assisting those who adhere
to us." When, however, men bestow benefits upon
strangers, they do not act from charity ; but either
seek to " purchase f riendship J: by contract, or seek
peace from fear. We act for the good of others, it

in,] MAN

seems, either from the complacency derived from
the evidence of our own power, which is properly
" charity/' or in order to buy their services. Hobbes
speaks as if his view were not only obvious, but
edifying — as though he were simply elaborating St.
Paul's famous description of the Christian virtue of
charity.

Another passion is more intelligible to him. Since
" knowledge is power," we naturally desire to extend
our knowledge. The corresponding passion is called
" admiration," and the " appetite " is " curiosity." Its
existence, like the faculty of language, marks the point
at which we part company from beasts. The beast
flies from or approaches a new object, only considering
whether it will " serve his turn." The man endeavours
to discover the cause. Hence arises all philosophy,
which is, as we know, the theory of consequences in
general. A man in chase of riches or power ("which
in respect of knowledge are but sensuality ") does not
care about the motions of the stars : it is only a few,
as he remarks elsewhere, who appreciate science, " for
science is of that nature as none can understand it to
be, except such as in a good measure have attained
unto it." The military arts are of obvious utility and
their possessors are powerful. " Though the true
mother of them be science, namely the mathematics;
yet because they are brought into light by the hand of
the artificer, they be esteemed (the mid-wife passing
with the vulgar for the mother) as his issue." Hobbes
can preach with feeling on the superiority of philo-
sophical inquiry to the mere bread-winning studies.
Meanwhile " curiosity is delight ; therefore also
novelty is so; but especially that novelty from which

134 HOBBES [CHAP.

a man coiiceiveth an opinion true or false of bettering
his estate ; for in such case they stand affected with
the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are
shuffling." That no doubt expresses a very genuine
sentiment. Though science is power, he would say,
the man of science has very little honour, unless he
can apply his science to generally intelligible ends.
" Curiosity " and reason distinguish man from beasts ;
" which makes me, when I hear a man upon the dis-
covery of any new and ingenious knowledge or inven-
tion ask gravely, that is to say scornfully, what 'tis
good for, meaning what money it will bring in, to
esteem that man not sufficiently removed from,
brutality." Love of philosophic truth, one is glad to
observe, appears to Hobbes to be admirable for itself,
though perhaps at some cost of consistency.

The curious argument which follows is of some
interest. What, he asks, is the cause of the great
difference between men's capacities ? It cannot be a
difference in the " natural temper of the brain," for, if
so, the difference would show itself " in the senses " ;
whereas wise men and foolish have (as he assumes)
equal senses. Imagination being " decaying sense,"
the imagination ought to be equal. The difference is
therefore owing to the differences in the constitution
" of the body." What helps the " vital constitution '•
in one man, and is therefore pleasurable, hinders it in
another, and is therefore painful. He discusses the
" intellectual virtues '; — meaning, the qualities which
are desired " for eminence " and are gauged by " com-
parison"; for "if all things were equal in all men,
nothing would be prized." The great difference
between men's wits is due to a difference in " quick-

m.] MAN 135

ness," or " swift succession of one thought to
another/' and in " steadiness of direction to some
approved end." A defect of quickness is " dullness or
stupidity " ; and the difference is due to the difference
of the passions. Desire for power, riches, knowledge,
or honour (the last three being modifications of the
first) is thus the great cause of the " difference of wit."
A man who has no great passion for any of these things
may be good in the sense of inoffensive ; " yet he can-
not possibly have either a great fancy or much judg-
ment. For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts
and spies, to range abroad and find the way to the
things desired — all steadiness of the mind's motion and
all quickness of the same proceeding from thence ; for
as to have no desire is to be dead, so to have weak
passions is dullness ; and to have passions indifferently
for everything is giddiness and distraction " ; while
abnormal vehemence of passion is madness. That
intellectual excellence is dependent upon the character
and the strength of the emotions is a doctrine upon
which Hobbes rightly and impressively insists. Fancy,
according to him, means quickness in perceiving " simili-
tudes," and judgment or "discretion" quickness in per-
ceiving "dissimilitudes." Fancy must be "eminent"
in poetry, though judgment is required ; while in his-
tory fancy is wanted only to " adorn the style." In
demonstration, "judgment does all," except that "an
apt similitude " may be required to open the under-
standing. " Discretion " is required in poetry ; an " an-
atomist or physician " may speak of " unclean things " ;
" but for another man to write his extravagant or
pleasant fancies of the same is as if a man from being
tumbled in the dirt should come and present himself

136 HOBBES [CHAP.

before good company." This is a doctrine for which
Hobbes might have found plenty of contemporary
and other illustrations. An excessive "mobility of
mind," again, maketh men depart "from their dis-
course by a parenthesis, and from that parenthesis by
another, till at length they either lose themselves, or
make their narration like a dream or some studied
nonsense." He would not have enjoyed Sordello.
" Madness " is a general name for " all passions that
produce strange and unusual behaviour." It is espe-
cially conspicuous in a multitude, he says, answering by
anticipation a famous query of Bishop Butler. " For
what argument of madness can there be greater than to
clamour, strike, and throw stones at our best friends ?
Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do.
For they will clamour, fight against and destroy those
by whom all their lifetime before they have been pro-
tected and secured from injury. And if this be mad-
ness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular
man." Each particle of water "contributes as much
to the roaring of the sea" as any other drop, and the
same is true of the "seditious roaring of a troubled
nation."

Such remarks, though characteristic, are more or
less digressions from the main purpose, to which he
returns in a chapter upon " the difference of manners ':
in the Leviathan. By manners, he tells us, he does not
mean " points of the small morals " — social etiquette —
but the qualities of mankind that concern their living
together in "peace and unity." In other words, he
will ask how the passions of the individual bear upon
the political order. Since felicity, as we have seen,
" is a continual progress of the desire from one object

in.] MAN 137

to the other," all men desire both to procure and
assure a contented life. Unluckily they differ as to
the way, from the diversity of passions or difference
in knowledge. In the first place, therefore, he will
"put for a general inclination of all mankind, a per-
petual and restless desire of power after power, that
endeth only in death." It is not that a man can
always hope for a greater delight, but because he can-
not be assured of " the means to live which he hath
at present without the acquisition of more." " Com-
petition of riches, honour, command, or other power
inelineth to contention, enmity, and war ; because the
way of one competitor to the attaining of his desire is
to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other." Par-
ticularly " competition of praise (as he rather oddly
adds) inelineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men
contend with the living, not with the dead ; to these
ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the
glory of the other." Desire of " ease " disposeth men
to obedience, and so does desire of knowledge and the
arts of peace, for such desire " containeth a desire of
leisure." Desire of fame " disposeth to laudable actions,"
even of " fame after death." For though after death
we have no sense of praise on earth, men have a
present delight therein from foresight of it, and of
the benefit to their posterity ; which though they see
not, yet they " imagine," and everything that is a
pleasure to the sense, the same also is pleasure in the
imagination. Receiving benefits from an equal " dis-
poseth to counterfeit love, but really secret hatred ;
and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor
that, in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitly
wishes him there where he might never see him more.

138 HOBBES [CHAP.

For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom ; and
an unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which
is to one's equal hateful.'' Obligation to a recognised
superior, however, "inclines to love," for it can be
requited by gratitude, and so long as there is a hope
of requital, we are disposed to love even an equal
or inferior benefactor ; the obligation is then mutual ;
" from whence proceedeth an emulation of who shall
exceed in benefiting; the most noble and profitable
contention possible ; wherein the victor is pleased
with his victory, and the other revenged by confessing
it." Ignorance " disposeth men to take on trust not
only the truth they know not, but also the errors and,
which is more, the nonsense of them they trust."
Ignorance of the nature of right, in particular, " dis-
poseth a man to think that unjust which it hath been
the custom to punish, and that just, of the impunity
and approbation whereof they can produce an example
or, as the lawyers, which only use this false measure of
justice, barbarously call it a precedent." Such men " set
themselves against reason as often as reason is against
them; which is the cause that the doctrine of right
and wrong is perpetually disputed both by the pen
and the sword ; whereas the doctrine of lines and
figures is not so." Truth in geometry " crosses no
man's ambition, profit, or lust." "For I doubt not but
if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of
dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion,
that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two
angles of a square, that doctrine should have been, if not
disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry
suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was
able."

in.] MAN 139

The quaint passage in the Human Nature which
concludes this account of the passions sums up his
view. Life, he says, may be compared to a race —
a race which has no other " goal " or " garland " than
"being foremost." " In it to endeavour is appetite; to
be remiss is sensuality: to consider them behind is
glory : to consider them before is humility : ... to fall
on the sudden is disposition to weep : to see another
fall is disposition to laugh : to see one outgone whom
we would not is pity: to see one outgo whom we
would not is indignation : to hold fast by another is
love: to carry him on that so holdeth is charity: to
hurt oneself for haste is shame : . . . continually to be
outgone is misery : continually to outgo the next before
is felicity : and to forsake the course is to die."

Life, we see, is essentially competition, though as
yet the struggle for existence is regarded as only
affecting the individual. Hobbes, it will probably
appear to most people, takes a sufficiently cynical view
of human nature. He has been compared to Roche-
foucauld, though he does not represent the epigram-
matic skill which is gained in highly polished society.
He has frequented Mersenne's "cell," not the courtier's
salon. His opinions might be compared to the so-called
Machiavellianism of Bacon's essays — the concentration
of the experience of the statesman and lawyer, who
wishes to see things as they are and to get rid of
humbug and conventional gloss. Hobbes, however,
has a more distinctly scientific aim, and wishes at least
to connect his remarks with psychological theory. He
would defend himself against the charge that he is tak-
ing an "unworthy" view of mankind by appealing to
plain facts. Men, he would say, are stupid and selfish.

140 HOBBES [CHAP.

That, no doubt, is not the way to be popular. The
" idealist " often takes a more painful view of men as
they are, than the poor " cynic " ; but he atones for it
by an enthusiastic view of what they may become, and
his readers catch the contagion of his enthusiasm.
Their perception of the general corruption convinces
them that they at any rate are of the salt of the earth,
and this is comforting. If Hobbes's cynicism meant
simply that he recognised the great part played by
dullness and selfishness in human affairs, and the
futility of overlooking that fact in political theories,
we might say that he was applying a wholesome
corrective to extravagant belief in millenniums.

It must be granted, however, that he goes beyond
this. His quiet resolution of all the virtues into forms
of egoism was of course condemned by the respectable.
In our eyes it may be redeemed by the charming
simplicity and utter unconsciousness of offence with
which he propounds his atrocious theories. He be-
comes unintentionally humorous. We must, how-
ever, notice the nature of the reasoning which leads
him to such conclusions. That is implied by one
characteristic doctrine. Every man, he says, calls that
which pleaseth him. good, and that which displeaseth
him evil. Since men differ in " constitution," they
differ as to what is good and what is evil. There is
no such thing as " absolute goodness considered with-
out relation." Even God's goodness means his good-
ness to us. The words "good" and "evil," he says
elsewhere, " are ever used with reference to us." No
" common rule " can be taken " from the nature of the
objects themselves." Such a rule must be made by
the man himself, or by the " commonwealth," or by

in.] MAN 141

some arbitrator set up by consent. It is indeed quite
clear that from Hobbes's point of view the abstract
words " good J; and " evil ': could have no meaning.
As " man " only means John and Thomas and Peter, j
" good " only means what John and Thomas and Peter
like, and " evil ' what they dislike. Moreover, if
psychological and ethical theories are to be based upon
experience, we must begin by studying the likings and
dislikings of human beings. Science must start from
the actual, not from the ideal. [A scientific theory of
human nature begins from the question, what passions
do in fact govern, not from the question what passions
ought to govern, human beings. ' Now in fact men
have various passions and desires which lead them to
break as well as to obey rules of morality. In a
dozen men we may find a Judas Iscariot as well as a
St. John ; and we have to account equally for both.
As a physiologist has to deal with the morbid as well
as the healthy, so the psychologist has to deal with
the traitor as well as the saint, and with all the com-
plex play of good and bad impulses, which make saints
and criminals and men of every intervening shade.
He will of course admit that, as a fact, a certain moral
code comes into existence, conformity to which is
regarded with approval by the average man. How it
comes to be formed, and what is the nature of its
authority, are questions to which Hobbes addresses
himself in the political treatises, and of which he offers
a very remarkable solution.

Hobbes can only say at present, that since each
man is governed by his own passions and desires,
the formation of the "common rule' supposes some
" arbitrator " or central authority. His uncompro-

142 HOBBES [CHAP.

mising egoism is an inevitable consequence of his
position. It is assumed by the moralists whom he
attacked that there is some ultimate and absolute
good: an ideal law revealed through reason and
equally binding upon all men. It determines con-
duct, since the will always chooses the "apparent
good." Reason is itself virtue, and vice means igno-
rance, for it is only from a mistaken view of what is
really good that men fail to do right. Hobbes might
agree with the doctrine that man always chooses the
apparent good; but he denies that the really good is
knowable. The doctrine therefore means for him
that each man will do what is pleasant to himself.
He is governed exclusively by his own desires, and it
would be as absurd to speak of a man acting from
another man's motives as to speak of his body being
nourished by another man's food. Now it must be
observed that later thinkers, who profess equally to
base ethical theories entirely upon experience, will not
admit this conclusion. They hold that sympathy is a
genuine and ultimate emotion; and that man can so
identify himself with the society of which he forms a
part, that public spirit or patriotism or philanthropy
or family affection may be as genuine a motive as the
animal appetites. They hold, and, as I think, rightly,
that an empirical theory of morality does not really
involve the acceptance of a selfish or egoistic doctrine.
But it is undeniable that this interpretation is plausible.
The utilitarians could argue with great force that a
tendency to produce the " greatest happiness of the
greatest number " gives the true criterion of morality.
But as an historical fact, they found their greatest
difficulty in reconciling this with their other assump-

in.] MAN 14^

tion, that each man seeks his own happiness. They
tried to explain " altruism ' by " association," at the
risk of making it a kind of desirable fallacy, or else
they tried to show — what unfortunately cannot be
shown — that self-sacrifice is always repaid, or, in other
words, is a sham sacrifice.

Hobbes had not to bother himself about such con-
ciliation. He was perfectly content to profess the
most unblushing egoism and carry it out consistently.
His essential aim was to be scientific, to accept the
obvious facts, and to carry out the conclusions logi-
cally. His nominalism naturally went with individual-
ism. Each man obviously is a separate thing which
must be explained by its own properties, and not by
reference to any mysterious bond of unity with other
things. Unfortunately there is selfishness enough in
the world to give much plausibility to some of his
statements, and to admit of their being often approxi-
mately true. Finally, his thorough materialism seems
to make the assumption of selfishness inevitable. If,
indeed, it be possible to regard man as a mere mechan-
ism, worked by the laws of motion, and yet to regard
him as a self-conscious, reasoning, and remembering
animal, it may also be possible to regard him as
sympathetic and unselfish. Still it is difficult to see
how the actions of a mere automaton affected only by
the pressure of bodies in contact with him, can be
really determined by the conditions of other automata.
He may be so constituted as to preserve his own
equilibrium ; but his relation to his like would seem
to be limited to the cases in which two automata knock
their heads together. Hobbes, however, had no diffi-
culty in altogether denying the existence of sympathy.

144 HOBBES [CHAP.

The desire for self-preservation was quite enough to
provide the working force for his scheme ; and he
propounds his theory with the straightforward blunt-
ness which has the charm of obvious sincerity.

2. Theology

We are now pretty well prepared to proceed to the
third part of Hobbes's philosophy; but there are two
other applications of his first principles which have a
bearing upon his political doctrine, and which also
deserve consideration for themselves. We have seen
what Hobbes thought of bodies ; we may ask what was
his creed as to the creator of bodies and the relation
of the creator to man ? His arguments upon theology
and upon the problem of free-will excited the keenest
antagonism among his contemporaries. His position
in both cases is remarkable, if only as illustrating the
stir which he gave to thought in general. Whether
his teaching was right or wrong, or a little of both, it
at least caused his opponents to look into the founda-
tions of their own creed.

Hobbes steadily denied that the name " atheist ':
properly applied to him. He calls himself not only a
theist, but a Christian, and even a faithful member of
the Church of England. Some of his critics accept
his assurances so far as to hold that he only meant to
reject scholastic dogmas or "incrustations," and did
not get beyond what is vaguely called Socinianism, or,
perhaps, " unsectarian Christianity." Tn such discus-
sions two distinct questions are apt to be confounded.
The question, that is, what a man really believed, is
identified with the question what were the logical conse-

in.] MAN 146

quences of his belief. It is undeniable that a man often
rejects, and sometimes rejects with horror, doctrines
which to others seem to be inevitable inferences from
the first principles which he explicitly affirms. It is
therefore " unfair," we are told, to attribute to a man
the beliefs which, to our minds, he was logically bound
to hold. It is certainly unfair so far as it is false. If a
man repudiates a doctrine, the repudiation should be
noted, even though we may think that he is under a
delusion, which amounts to a concealment of his own
opinions from himself under a jugglery of words.
Sometimes, indeed, we are only "unfair " in the sense
that we are paying him too high a compliment by
supposing that he saw the full bearing of his argu-
ments. It is no doubt unfair again to impute opinions
which a man disavows, when they are opinions which
will incur odium, or perhaps involve a probability of
being burnt. If the bishops, of whom Hobbes was
afraid, had refused to take notice of his repudiation of
atheism, they would certainly have been unjust. We
have not now, however, to consider whether Hobbes
deserved either burning or damnation. The devoutest
of bishops would not have the least wish to burn
him at the present day, and we generally admit that
opinions, honestly entertained for their supposed reason-
ableness, do not justify moral reprobation. Our duty
to Hobbes personally is simply the duty of ascertain-
ing what, as a fact, he did think, or thought that he
thought. It is of some importance to know what he
thought if we wish to estimate his character for
honesty and courage. But for us the more important
question is what were the true logical bearings of his
position, whether he perceived them or not. Those

146 HOBBES [CHAP.

were what really affected the thought of his time.
When you have once started an argument, you cannot
tell what effect it will have upon others. You are
firing a charge of dynamite, and the explosion will act
irrespectively of the man who set it going. The first
and most important question is what " Hobbism r
means, whether Hobbes meant it or not. When we
know that, we can draw such inferences as seem
reasonable as to his personal character.

In his Objections to Descartes, Hobbes indicates
very plainly his position in regard to theology. He
criticises Descartes' s famous argument that the "idea"
of God as a perfect being necessarily implies also
God's existence. Hobbes replies summarily that we
have no " idea " of God. An idea according to him is,
as we have seen, nothing but " decaying sense." It is
a fading picture of some object previously perceived
by the hands, eyes, or ears. Now nobody, of course,
could ever have supposed that " God " could be per-
ceived in that way. Descartes answers that by
" idea " he means something entirely different from
Hobbes's " idea." What he meant need not be inquired,
and Hobbes did not take the trouble to inquire. He
takes it for granted that all knowledge of facts comes
to us through the senses, and that the a priori method
without appeal to experiences must be sterile. That
is to him too obvious to need proof. If so, it would
seem that demonstrations of the existence of God are
impossible. " Knowable " means visible or tangible,
and God is admittedly neither. Hobbes, however,
does not admit this conclusion. After discussing
man's knowledge and passions as related to " natural
things," he assumes that we also give names to (that

in.] MAN 147

is, reason about) " things supernatural," that is God
and spirits. Such names ought to correspond to some
reality, and their meaning will explain in what sense
we use the phrases ascribing certain attributes to the
beings named. The belief in things supernatural is
produced by "curiosity,'7 that is, as he explains, "love
of the knowledge of causes." This leads a man to ask
the cause of an effect ; " and, again, the cause of that
cause ; till of necessity he must come to this thought
at last that there is some cause, whereof there is no
former cause, but is eternal ; which is it men call God;
so that it is impossible to make any profound inquiry
into natural causes, without being inclined thereby to
believe there is one God eternal." God is the first
" power of all powers, and first cause of all causes."
The name implies " eternity, incomprehensibility, and
omnipotency." Incomprehensibility is explained by
an analogy. A man born blind, when he warms him-
self by the fire, may convince himself that there is
something there which is called fire by his companions,
and which is the cause of the heat which he feels.
But he cannot have any such " idea r} of it as those
have that see it. " So also by the visible things in
this world, and their admirable order, a man may
conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God,
and yet not have an idea or image of him in his mind."
The attributes of this Being must also be inconceiv-
able. We speak of God as " seeing, hearing, speaking,
knowing, loving, and the like," names which have a
meaning as applied to men, but mean " nothing in the
nature of God." It is " well reasoned, shall not the
God that made the eye see, and the ear hear ? ' But
it is also well reasoned " if we say, shall God which

148 HOBBES [CHAP.

made the eye, not see without the eye; or that made
the ear, nor hear without the ear ; or that made the
brain, not know without the brain ; or that made the
heart, not love without the heart." The attributes of
God signify " our incapacity ' or " our reverence " :
our "incapacity when we say incomprehensible and
infinite; our reverence when we give him those names
which amongst us are the names of those things we
most magnify and commend, as omnipotent, omni-
scient, just, merciful, etc."

This may remind us of many controversies in which
some orthodox divines have agreed with Hobbes. It
recalls, for example, the agnosticism which Mr. Her-
bert Spencer professes himself to have expanded from
Sir William Hamilton 5 while Mansel used the same
doctrine in defence of orthodox creeds. So far
Hobbes might have agreed with Mansel rather than
with Mr. Spencer, and might have believed his creed
to be susceptible of an interpretation reconcilable
with orthodoxy. His position, however, depends
upon his theory of causation. Although he speaks
of the " admirable order " of the world, he emphati-
cally rejects the doctrine of final causes. We are not
to infer from the eye or the ear any likeness between
the Creator and his creature ; but only some inscruta-
ble cause. And if we take into account what Hobbes
meant by cause we come to a difficulty. The whole
" world-process," according to him, is simply a series
of changes in motion : when we inquire into the cause
of any event we are really asking what was the pre-
vious state of things from which the succeeding was
developed by a continuous series of change accord-
ing to purely mechanical laws. The "cause"1 of the

in.] MAN 149

present arrangement of the stars is simply their pre-
ceding arrangement. The argument, therefore, for a
first cause means, on his interpretation, that we can-
not continue this inquiry indefinitely. Instead of
saying "this state implies a preceding state," we
must say " this state implies that it was put together
super naturally . ' '

Now in the De Corpore he criticises this argument
himself. A man will be " wearied," he says, in tracing
back the series of cause and effect, and " give over ?;
inquiry. " But whether we suppose the world to be
finite or infinite, no absurdity will follow." " As it is
true that nothing is moved by itself, so it is true also
that nothing is moved but by that which was already
moved." That implies an indefinite regress. " I can-
not therefore commend," he says, "those that boast
they have demonstrated by reasons drawn from natural
things that the world had a beginning. They are con-
temned by idiots because they understand them not ;
and by the learned, because they understand them ;
by both deservedly." " They are entangled," he says,
" in the words infinite and eternal, of which we have
in our mind 110 idea but that of our own insufficiency to
comprehend them," and thus they are forced " either
to speak something absurd, or, which they love worse,
to hold their peace." Infinite, in short, means simply
indefinitely great. Hobbes, therefore, will be content
'< with that doctrine concerning the beginning and
magnitude of the world which I have been persuaded
to by the Holy Scriptures, and fame of the miracles
which confirm them ; and by the custom of my coun-
try and reverence due to the laws."

These may be excellent, but are scarcely philo-

150 HOBBES [CHAP.

sophical reasons. Bramhall, when he accused Hobbes
of atheism, refers to this passage. Hobbes, he says,
denies that there is any " argument to prove a Deity,"
except the creation of the world, and that the question
whether the world had a beginning must be settled
" not by argument, but by the magistrate's authority."
Hobbes replies that it may be settled " by the Scrip-
tures." " As far as arguments from natural reason,"
he adds, " neither you nor any other have hitherto
brought any, except the creation, that has not made
it more doubtful to many men than it was before."
He then repeats the passage just quoted from the
De Corpore, and adds : — " This, doctor, is not ill said,
and yet it is all you ground your slander on, which
you make to sneak vilely under a crooked para-
phrase." " These opinions (about the beginning of
the world, apparently) are to be judged by those to
whom God has committed the ordering of religion;
that is, to the supreme governors of the Church ; that
is, in England, to the king." Charles II. apparently
was to decide whether the world had a beginning.

Putting aside for the moment this quaint transi-
tion from reason to the British Constitution, it is to
be noticed that Hobbes had expressed himself unequi-
vocally in the De Give and the Leviathan. By God, he
says, is understood the cause of the world. " To say
the world is God, is to say there is no cause of it, that
is, no God. ... To say the world was not created but
eternal, seeing that which is eternal has no cause, is
to deny there is a God." It is plain then that if we
may put these statements together, Hobbes declares
that the only proof of God's existence is the creation
of the world, and that we cannot possibly know

in.] MAN 151

whether the world was or was not created. In any
case, as we have seen, Hobbes always asserts most
emphatically that we really know nothing of God's
attributes, except his existence. Other attributes are
negative or metaphorical or signs of " honour." We
know nothing of God's "natural kingdom' except
"from the principles of natural science, which are so
far from teaching us anything of God's nature, as they
cannot teach us our own nature nor the nature of the
smallest creature living. And therefore when men
out of the principles of natural reason dispute of the
attributes of God, they but dishonour him ; for in the
attributes which we give to God we are not to consider
the signification of philosophical truth, but the signifi-
cation of pious intention to do him the greatest honour
we are able." Existence indeed implies something
more. Hobbes, as we have seen, denies that spirits are
" incorporeal " ; to say that a spirit is an " incorporeal
substance J: is to say that there is no spirit at all.
Bramhall says that the same would apply to God.
Hobbes replies that the true question is " whether
God be a phantasm (id est an idol of the fancy, which
St. Paul saith is nothing) or a corporeal spirit, that is
to say, something that has magnitude." He therefore
holds that God is a "most pure, simple, invisible,
spirit corporeal." He illustrates this by a strange
analogy. He has seen " two waters, one of the river,
the other a mineral water, so like that no man could
discern the one from the other," and yet when mixed,
the whole was indistinguishable in appearance from
milk. "If then such gross bodies have so great
activity, what shall we think of spirits, whose kinds
be as many as there be kinds of liquor, and activity

152 HOBBES [CHAP.

greater ? " (How does lie know that ?) " Can it
then be doubted that God, who is an infinitely fine
spirit and withal intelligent, can make and change
all kinds of bodies as he pleaseth ? ': God, then,
like other spirits, is corporeal, though he rnay be
called " incorporeal " to imply that he is " something
between infinitely subtile and nothing: less subtile
than infinitely subtile, and yet more subtile than a
thought." It would be superfluous to examine this
singular hypothesis to which Hobbes is driven by his
desire to reconcile his materialism with his theology.
It is enough to remark that his system would clearly
be more consistent and intelligible if he simply omitted
the theology altogether.

Meanwhile Hobbes has another doctrine about
theology which is of more interest and more in accord-
ance with his general theories. Religion, he says, is
peculiar to man, and its " seed " is therefore in some
quality peculiar to him. Such a quality is his curios-
ity as to causes ; and though men vary, all men are " cu-
rious in the search of the causes of their own good and
evil fortune." When he cannot discover true causes,
a man supposes such as are suggested by his fancy.
Meanwhile his desire for security puts him in a state
of " perpetual solicitude." He resembles Prometheus
on the Caucasus, " a place of large prospect," though
far from comfortable. He hath " his heart all the day
long gnawed on by fear of death, poverty, or other
calamity ; and has no repose nor pause of his anxiety
but in sleep." The fear creates its object, as it does
according to his previous remark, in the case of
dreams. Men ignorant of causes have to invent " some
power or agent invisible." It is thus true that the

HI.] MAN 153

gods of the Gentiles " were at first created by human
fear." Men could not, again, make any other guess
as to the substance of these agents than that it was
" the same with that of the soul of man," and that
the soul of man was of the same substance with that
which appears in a dream to sleepers or in a looking-
glass to men awake. These they took for " real
external substances," and called them ghosts, that
is " thin aerial bodies " — for nobody could think
them really " incorporeal." This ignorance, again, led
them to guess at omens and prognostics when they,
observed accidental coincidences which they took to
imply real connections. Naturally they guessed these
agents to resemble themselves, and pacified them by
gifts and prayers. Hobbes has already noted that
from the difficulty of distinguishing "dreams and
other strong fancies from vision and sense " arose the
old worship of satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and the like,
and nowadays the opinion that rude people have of
fairies, ghosts, and goblins, and the power of witches.
(Witches, he has to interject, are rightly punished
because they believe in their own power of doing
mischief, not that "witchcraft is any real power.")
Belief in fancies and ghosts is inculcated to keep, in
credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water,
and other such inventions of "ghostly men." "In
these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of
second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and
taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth
the natural seed of religion" The seeds have been
cultivated by "two sorts of men": by founders of
commonwealths and the lawgivers of the Gentiles on
the one hand, who " used their own invention," and

154 HOBBES [CHAP.

on the other by " Abraham, Moses, and our blessed
Saviour/' who acted by " God's commandment and
direction." Both desired to make men more apt to
obedience, laws, peace, charity, and civil society ;
though in one case religion was part of " human
politics," and in the other of "divine politics." He
has then no difficulty in showing what grotesque
results followed from the Gentile religions ; and when
Bramhall founds upon this passage a charge of
atheism, he can reply that his account of the origin
of religion tells against the Gentile superstitions alone.
The savage people feared " invisible powers," that is,
something which they took to be gods ; so that the
fear of a god, though not the true one, was to them
the beginning of religion, as the fear of the true
God was the beginning of wisdom to the Jews and
Christians.

The political aspect of his theory which makes
legislators the founders of religion will be noticed
presently. In the Leviathan he gives some remark-
able definitions : " Fear of power invisible feigned
by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed
— Religion ; not allowed — Superstition ; and when
the power imagined is truly such as we imagine —
True Religion." " True religion," it may be inferred,
when not publicly allowed, is superstition. Whether
Hobbes wishes to draw that inference we need not
decide, nor need we ask how far he was quite con-
vinced that the history of the Jewish belief presents
so complete a contrast to the history of the religions
founded by other legislators.

It is enough to say that Hobbes is here on the way
to much later speculation. A hundred years afterwards

in.] MAN 155

Hume in his Natural History of Religion treated the
same topic with his usual acuteness, and suggested
theories afterwards taken up by Comte. Later
students of the science of religion have enormously
extended the range of the inquiry and accumulated
vast masses of evidence for various theories. In
Hobbes's time, or, indeed, in Hume's or even Comte's,
it was not possible to get beyond general conjectures.
Hobbes knew next to nothing of the savage peoples to
whom he refers, and can only guess as to their probable
mode of thought. He is thinking chiefly of the
classical mythologies, where he can find plenty of
examples of grotesque and vicious deities. All that
can be said is that he saw clearly the importance of
the problems as to the growth of religions, though, in
the absence of the requisite knowledge, he could only
make a few very acute and pithy suggestions.

If we now come to the question what was Hobbes's
real position in regard to theology, I think that there
can be only one answer. It is quite clear that his,
like other materialistic systems, is incompatible with
anything that can be called theism. His argument
comes merely to this, that if the world was created -
a point which, we see, he admits to be doubtful — the
Creator must have been a Being of stupendous power,
but one of whom we are unable to say anything else.
The doctrine that he is " corporeal " or an infinitely
" subtile " matter occupying space is merely a quaint
attempt to evade the more natural inference that he is
simply outside of all knowable relations. A religion
of this kind is not likely to give much trouble to
anybody ; and Hobbes's opponents were right in
regarding him as virtually opposed to all possible

156 HOBBES [CHAP.

theology. What Hobbes himself thought is not quite
so obvious. There is a presumption, indeed, that so
bold a thinker must have seen the plain inferences
from his principles. If he did not see them for him-
self, they were pointed out by antagonists ; and though
Hobbes, like most people, was apt to think that
antagonism means misrepresentation, he could scarcely
fail to see that they had in his case some ground for
their comments. His answers, indeed, seem less to
meet the arguments than to be ingenious devices for
shifting the question. Hobbes certainly made his re-
serves. When Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
appeared in 1670 he said to Aubrey that Spinoza
" has cut through me a bar's length, for I durst not
write so boldly." It would indeed be difficult to blame
a timid old gentleman for not courting martyrdom.
The blame for reservation belongs to the persecutor
more than to the persecuted. It is, I think, far more
remarkable that Hobbes spoke so frankly than that he
did not reveal his whole mind. What he actually did
was to use language which, though it caused general
antipathy, and had implications quite clear to the
qualified reader, would have been difficult to cite as
proofs of punishable opinions in a legal indictment.
Every one is agreed to admire the admirable candour
and love of truth of Spinoza. Yet I think that the
meaning attached by Spinoza to the word " God ' is
quite as unlike the ordinary meaning of theologians
as the meaning attached to it by Hobbes. Both have
defined their meaning quite frankly. If I say that an
object is white and add openly that by white I mean
what most people call black, I cannot be accused of
deception, though I may be taking advantage of the

in.] MAN 157

verbal ambiguity which more or less binds the hands
of my enemies. It might be pleasanter to drop all
disguise, but I am simply playing the game on the
terms which they themselves have chosen. I do not,
indeed, feel certain that Hobbes admitted even to
himself the true nature of his position. He may have
retained some of the horror for " atheism r in which
he had been educated and thrown dust in his own
eyes as well as in other people's. My chief reason for
doubting is that, as we shall presently see, he relies in
his political writings upon certain doctrines as to
" the laws of God," which are apparently essential to
his argument, and which could hardly be used by one
to whom the words meant nothing. It is true that
they do not in any case mean very much ; still it is
possible that Hobbes retained certain prepossessions
which, as it seems to me, were really incompatible
with his first principles.

3. Determinism

I must now speak of Hobbes' s position in regard to
the free-will controversy.

To mention the topic is enough to give the alarm
to all readers who are not in love with metaphysical
hair-splitting for its own sake. It has become the
type of fruitless controversy. Milton, in a familiar
passage, intimated that the argument was only suitable
to beings who had an indefinite amount of time on
their hands and to whom any distraction would be
agreeable. At times, indeed, the popular niind is
startled by some supposed consequence of " deter-
minism." It is supposed to imply the existence of a

158 HOBBES [CHAP.

Fate which forces people, whether they like it or not,
to commit so many murders in proportion to their
population, or forces a sober person to take to drink
because his grandfather was a drunkard. I am not
about to argue the question, nor to follow in detail
the brisk controversy between Hobbes and Braonhall.
It will be enough to indicate briefly the position taken
by Hobbes in regard to the contemporary phase of a
perennial discussion. Milton's view was no doubt
natural in the days of the Synod of Dort and the
Westminster Assembly. The controversies between
Catholics and Protestants necessarily involved conflicts
over the free-will problem. In the Catholic doctrine
the church is the appointed guardian of morality,
conceived as a system of divine laws. The sacraments
supply the means by which men may obtain grace to
obey the law and receive forgiveness for transgressions.
The whole system supposes that men have " free-will ';
and acquire " merit." They can either obey or dis-
obey the law, and therefore they can deserve reward
or punishment. The Protestant revolt against the
authority of the Church led to the assertion of prin-
ciples which when logically developed struck at the
root of the whole system. A man can acquire no
" merit," that is, no claim upon his Creator, for his
obedience to the law. God, it must be supposed,
approves a man for what he is, not for what he has
done. One man may forgive another for an injury
when compensation has been made. But the divine
forgiveness can only mean that the will to do wrong is
destroyed. Salvation must be gained, not by giving
satisfaction for wrongs, but by the conformity of the
man's nature to the divine order. The sinner must

in.] MAN 159

change his heart, not balance his accounts with his
creditor. To the Protestant, therefore, the vital point
became regeneration or conversion, and the sacraments
have at most a secondary importance. But it then
becomes difficult to admit " free-will." Man clearly
cannot make himself. He cannot even contribute to
the work of divine grace ; for to allow him a share in
the process is to admit some claim to "merit." Con-
version, therefore, must be supernatural and the man
merely passive.

While the Catholic divines were elaborating systems
of casuistry and turning morality into a code of laws
analogous to human legislation, the Protestants were
endeavouring to form theories as to the action of
divine grace upon the human heart. They discussed
the " Five Articles " at the Synod of Dort, laid down
dogmas as to predestination, election, the atonement,
the corruption of human nature and its various conse-
quences. The metaphysical controversy was continued
with attempts to accept compromises with the old
systems, and to find a sanction for every dogma in
the Bible, regarded as a supernatural act of parlia-
ment, of which every word was divinely inspired. The
discussion, instead of tending to unity, seemed to be
only producing a ramification into diverging sects and
conflicting dogmatisms. It might be shrewdly sus-
pected that the reasoners were getting out of their
depth, and it was clear that they were reaching some
shocking results. When free-will has disappeared, it
seems hard that a sinner should be tortured endlessly
for doing what he was predestined to do. But how
is the difficulty to be met ? A century later Jonathan
Edwards was led by his stern Calvinism to write one

160 HOBBES [CHAP.

of the acutest of all treatises upon free-will, and to
expound the doctrine of " determinism/' or, as it was
called, " philosophical necessity." For the present,
the discussion was mixed up with heterogeneous ele-
ments, derived from the traditional dogmas. Hobbes,
though he cared little for theological dogmas, was
interested in the metaphysical part of the controversy.
He is very little given to quote authorities ; but in his
discussion with Bramhall, he claims to be supported
on one essential point by Luther, Calvin, the Synod
of Dort, and other Protestant authorities. "All the
famous doctors of the Reformed Churches," he says,
" and with them St. Augustine, are of the same opinion."
The problem was in the air.

In England, Calvinism was going out of fashion.
The rationalist, disgusted by endless and fruitless
controversy, hoped that unity might be reached by
confining the creed to those points (if any) upon which
all Christians, or perhaps all religions, were agreed.
The metaphysical subtleties might be left to amuse
professors in their studies. The Anglican divines had
accepted Calvinism during the heat of their contro-
versy with Rome. They were now opposing Calvinism
on one side as much as Rome on the other. " What
do the Arminians hold ? All the best preferments in
England," was the famous quibble which marked the
changed attitude. The Church of England, claiming
to be the legitimate continuation of the mediaeval
church, inherited the old theories as to the claims and
functions of the priesthood, which necessarily involved
a doctrine of free-will and a rejection of the Calvinism
which had for a time found acceptance. Bramhall was
a man of great vigour, who has been recently called by

in.] MAN 161

a competent critic, " one of the ablest champions ';I of
the Church of England. He represented one special
antipathy of his opponent. Hobbes was never tired
of denouncing the "jargon" of the schoolmen, and
regarded their doctrines as the great obstacle in the
way of all intellectual progress. At the universities,
however, the schoolmen were still held in honour and
supplied the weapons for theological controversy.
Bramhall had sufficient training in the art to wield
their writings with familiarity and no little skill of
fence. When Hobbes speaks irreverently of these
authorities, Bramhall seems to be as much astonished
as disgusted. It seems as if he were quite unaware
that a revolt against the whole system had long been
in progress. He had obviously taken no interest in
the scientific movement represented by Bacon or
Hobbes. " It troubles him to see a scholar who hath
been long admitted into the innermost closet of nature
and seen the hidden secrets of more subtle learning,
so far forget himself as to style school learning no
better than a plain jargon, that is, a senseless gibberish
or a fustian language like the chattering noise of
sabots. " Hobbes, he thinks, objects to scholastic dis-
tinctions, because a sore eye is offended by the sight
of the sun. Are all terms of art to be given up ? Is
the moral philosopher to " quit his means and extremes
. . ., his liberty of contradiction and contrariety " ?
Must the " natural philosopher give over his intentional
species . . . his receptive and eductive power of the
matter, his qualities infusce or influxce, symbolce or dis-
symbolce, his temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam,
. . . his sympathies and antipathies, his antiperi stasis,
etc. ? Are the astrologer and the geographer to leave

M

162 HOBBES [CHAP.

their apogceum and perigveum, their arctic and antarctic
poles, their equator, zodiac, zenith, meridian, horizon,
zones, etc. ? ': Hobbes will find that such things are
necessary in every art. Let him go on shipboard and
the mariners will not leave their starboard and larboard
because he accounts it gibberish. Hobbes is quite
ready to part with some of these words. Terms, he
thinks, should be thrown away when they cannot be
understood, and, when they can, should be used rightly.
The astrologer (unless the bishop means astronomer1)
had better throw away his whole trade; but to the
astronomer "equator," "zodiac," and so forth, are as
useful as saw or hatchet to a carpenter. The " meta-
physician " should quit both his terms and his profes-
sion, and the divine use only such words as the hearer
can understand.

Bramhall therefore takes the airs of a philosophical
expert dealing with a coarse ignoramus. He may be
compared to a profound Hegelian lecturing a disciple
of J. S. Mill or Mr. Herbert Spencer. The scholastic
terminology appears obscure to Hobbes only because
the subject-matter is difficult and the listener stupid.
We do not now despise each other so heartily or express
our contempt so frankly. Bramhall claims the victory
with a confidence which is shared by his last editor,
who only regrets that he should not have met with an
antagonist "more worthy of him," and should have
wasted time in replying to " peevish and feeble
crotchets." I fancy that Bramhall is better remem-
bered as Hobbes's opponent than Hobbes as Bramhall's ;

1 Bramhall had some belief in astrology. "All judicious
astronomers hold that the stars ' incline ' though they do not
'necessitate' the will."

in.] MAN 163

but they represent modes of thought so different, that
it is easy to understand how each should be triumphant
in the eyes of his own side.

Hobbes's main purpose is obvious. He aspires to
apply scientific methods to what we now call psycho-
logical and sociological problems. This leads him, like
many of his successors, to deny altogether the possi-
bility of "free-will." Free-will, as he understands it,
means the presence of an essentially arbitrary factor
in human conduct. If we knew the whole character
of a man and all the motives that act upon him, we
should still, if free-will be a reality, be unable to predict
his action. Everything else being the same, his choice
is indeterminate. No one, of course, supposes his choice
to be absolutely arbitrary ; but, so far as the arbitrary
element remains, scientific certainty is impossible.
Science, according to Hobbes, means the deduction
of effects from causes. Free-will supposes the so-called
chain to be broken. Given the cause, the effect may
be this or that. If this be really implied in the con-
ception of free-will, it is obvious that if it does not
destroy the possibility, it limits the field of moral
science. Hobbes's whole doctrine is radically opposed
to this theory. Man, he has told us, is moved by
" appetites " and " aversions." On one side these
appetites are literally " motions J: in the physical
organism : reactions set up by contact with outside
things, following as necessarily as the motion of the
hands of the clock follows from the descent of the
weight. On the other side they appear to us as
phantasms — as hopes of good and fears of evil ; good
being the same as the pleasurable, and evil as the pain-
ful. When we have alternating and conflicting hopes

164 HOBBES [CHAP.

and fears, we call the process " deliberation." The
resultant which determines the action is the last
appetite, or, as we call it, the will. The " passions/7
appetites, aversions, hopes, and fears do not, he says,
proceed from, they are the will. In his discussion with
Bramhall, Hobbes does not lay stress upon the physical
aspect. We know, he says, by reflecting on ourselves,
that "deliberation or choice'11 means simply consider-
ing the good and evil consequences of our actions. Re-
flection will also convince us that nothing can begin
without a cause. Everything is caused : our actions
are caused by our expectations of good and evil, or
(which is identical) of pleasure and pain. Whether
we take it physiologically or psychologically, all con-
duct is determined, or, as he calls it, " necessary."
Freedom has still a precise meaning. It means the
"absence of all impediments to action that are not
contained in the nature of the agent." Thus defined,
freedom is compatible with " necessitation." I am free
when my action is necessitated by my own desires,
not by external conditions. I am not free to walk out
when the door is locked ; I am free when it is open.
But I am "necessitated to use my freedom by the
desire which causes me to walk out or not to walk
out " ; only in this case the necessity is in my own
nature, not in the surroundings. Freedom, therefore,
as he constantly insists, means freedom to do what I
will ; but freedom to will what I will is nonsense. A
man, in his illustration, may be free to eat if there is
no obstacle between him and his food. But he is not
free to have or not to have an appetite for his food.
That is settled by his organism. His will is the
appetite. The " freedom " of the will, understood as

in.] MAN 165

denying causation, is an illusion. When we do not
know the causes of volition, we assume that it is
uncaused. Chance usually means our ignorance.
Everything, he infers, is necessary. He ought rather,
I think, to have argued that "necessary," like "pro-
bable," " possible," and so forth, really refers to our
knowledge, and means no more than " certain."
His use of the word seems to imply that besides the
man and his circumstances, there is an external fate
which coerces him.

So far, Hobbes is saying what has been said by
later " determinists." Bramhall calls him the " ring-
leader of a new sect, or rather the first nominal
Christian who has raised from its grave the ' sleeping
ghost ' of the Stoics' fate." Hobbes, if Bramhall is
correct, may be credited with giving the purely
scientific version of the doctrine more or less implied
in the Calvinist theology. To Bramhall it naturally
appears monstrous and unintelligible. He holds it to
be as clear that " there are free actions which proceed
merely from election without any outward necessita-
tion " as that there is a sun in the heavens. That is
the usual appeal to our consciousness of free-will.
Hobbes, however, might accept the phrase, if amended,
by the admission that there is " inward necessitation."
They agree that voluntary action implies " delibera-
tion." Hobbes considers that deliberation is as much
determined or necessitated as any other natural process.
Bramhall replies by one of the distinctions which to
Hobbes were meaningless "jargon." The "motives'1
and "passions," he says, only move the will morally;
they do not determine it naturally. Moral determina-
tion, according to Hobbes, is still determination. The

166 HOBBES [CHAP.

will, says Bramhall, hath a free dominion over itself;
she is the mistress of human actions ; the understanding
is her trusty counsellor which she can consult or not
as she pleases. Bramhall talks, says Hobbes, as if the
will and the other faculties " were men or spirits in
men's bellies." It is the man and not the will who
decides. In this case Hobbes hits the mark. Bram-
hall seems to accept a kind of psychological mythology
in which abstractions like " the will " are personified,
and logical distinctions made to imply different
faculties in the concrete individual. Freedom no
doubt is a rational concept, for it does not imply con-
tradiction. But it does not follow that because a
thing can be rightly described by an indeterminate
phrase, a concrete indeterminate thing can exist. I
will not, however, go into the argument. Bramhall, I
take it, cannot confute the theory that conduct is
caused, because there are no arguments by which it
can be confuted. It is consistent in itself. Whether
it can be proved or whether it is opposed to our
immediate consciousness are other questions which I
leave to those who are amused by them. Neither
need I speak of other arguments, which fill a large
space in the dispute, such as the argument from texts :
whether the famous passage in the Epistle to the
Romans denies free-will ; or the question to the
paralytic person, " wilt thou be clean,'7 implies that he
had free-will. Nor will I speak of the puzzles about
reconciling the divine prescience to "indeterminism" ;
or the difference between admitting that the Creator
permitted sin, and admitting that he caused it. The
arguments are familiar, and to Hobbes, Bramhall
seems to be constantly evading them by verbal dis-

in.] MAN 167

tinctions. It is a fight between a man of science look-
ing at the facts, and a skilful dialectician dodging them
under shelter of irrelevant concepts.

The horror felt for determinism is due to what
Hobbes calls " certain inconveniences " supposed to be
its consequences. For that reason Hobbes wished, he
says, to keep discussion private. A sinner might
excuse himself — however illogically — by saying that
his sin was predetermined. He did not want a
murderer to say, " Mr. Hobbes tells me that I couldn't
help it."

Now a rational theory of determinism may be, as I
think that it is, free from that objection. But Hobbes's
version leads to consequences which are startling to
the moralist and significant of his general attitude.
Bramhall, as his opponents hold, confuses determinism
with fatalism. He therefore argues that necessity
makes laws unjust, and all advice, praise, blame, books,
doctors, and tutors absurd. If the future is determined
by " unalterable necessity, whether we be idle or
industrious, why do we labour " ? The answer is of
course obvious. The end is not determined irrespec-
tively of the means. To say, " If I shall live till to-
morrow, I shall live though I run myself through with
a sword to-day," is absurd ; for if I am fated to live
till to-morrow, I am also fated not to run myself
through to-day. It is not absurd to make a law
against crime, for the law alters the conditions, by
affecting the will. A man, it may be, cannot refrain
from murder when there is no law, but can when he
knows he is to be hanged for it. Murderers, says
Hobbes, are killed because they are noxious, not
because they are " not necessitated." Hobbes, that is,

168 HOBBES [CHAP.

accepts the purely deterrent theory of criminal law.
You are not hanged for stealing sheep, as the judge
said, but hanged in order that sheep may not be
stolen. Bramhall, he says, " takes punishment for a
kind of revenge." Hobbes, on the other hand, denies
that any good man will afflict another, except to reform
the will of the criminal or other men. " Nor can I
understand, having only human ideas, that that
punishment which neither intendeth the correction of
the offender nor the correction of others can proceed
from God ? ' Hobbes, I take it, would in this be ap-
proved by all rational law reformers. Punishment is
justifiable so far only as it tends to diminish crime, and
not because it gratifies a desire for vengeance which
prompts the infliction of superfluous suffering. Most
people, however, feel that his statement is insufficient.
We have a right to destroy " all that is noxious," saj^s
Hobbes, " both beasts and men." We kill the murderer
as we kill the wolf ; and we kill the wolf "justly when
we do it in order to our own preservation." The
theory seems to omit an essential element in the case.
When we say that punishment should be "just " do we
not imply that there is some essential difference between
killing a wolf and hanging a murderer ? But Hobbes
is forced by his logic to take up one very questionable
position. Bramhall asks him what, upon his theory, is
the meaning of praise and blame ? If all actions be
necessary why are they praiseworthy or blameworthy ?
We blame people, says Hobbes, "because they please
us not." Blaming means the saying that -a thing is
imperfect. A man is a fool or a knave even if he
cannot help it. When it was said that Cato was
good by nature, etquia aliter esse nonpotuit, he surely

in.] MAN 169

received very high praise. If necessity does not make
praise meaningless, why, asks Bramhall, do we not
praise fire for burning ? Men are the tennis-balls of
destiny, and are good and bad only as a ball is good
or bad. Hobbes replies that we do blame fire or
poison as much as we do men. We do not seek to be
revenged on them, "because we cannot make them ask
forgiveness, as we would make men to do when they
hurt us." The blame is the same in both, " but the
malice of man is only against man."

When Hobbes was pressed by a reductio ad absurdum
he generally had the courage to swallow the absurdity.
In this case his logic had put him in an awkward
place. Accepting his materialism and his thorough-
going egoism, two men in opposition appear to us
simply as two tennis-balls coming into collision. The
man, no doubt, might be more consistently mischievous
than the ball, as he is supposed to be malicious. The
ball might sometimes give an impulse in the right
direction, while the wicked man will always aim at
doing injury. Still so long as a man considers his own
feelings exclusively, the difference between blaming a
poison and blaming the poisoner seems to be one of
degree rather than of kind. The determinist may hold
that Hobbes's error lay not in assuming that human
motives act regularly, but in failing to take into
account the man behind the thing, and those emotions
of love and hatred which imply sympathy and a direct
interest in the happiness or sorrow of others. The
difficulty comes out when he is arguing the question of
divine justice. Of God, according to Hobbes, we really
know nothing, except that he is omnipotent. It is,
then, only from that attribute that we can derive his

170 HOBBES [CHAP.

justice. Beasts are subject to death and torment ; yet
" they cannot sin." It was God's will it should be so.
" Power irresistible justifieth all actions, really and pro-
perly, in whomsoever it be found." It is, he adds, to
be found in God only. " God cannot sin because his
doing a thing makes it just and consequently no sin ;
and because whatsoever can sin is subject to another's
law, which God is not ; and therefore it is blasphemy
to say God can sin." Hobbes, it would seem, would
have been more consistent if he had left out "justice ':
altogether. His God — the creator of the physical
universe — is the author of what the man of science
calls "the laws of nature." But they are simply the
mechanical laws. It is not " just " that weights should
balance each other when they are proportioned in a
certain way to the length of the arms of a lever ; it is
simply a fact. Morality has nothing to do one way
or the other with the motions of the planets or the
"laws of gravitation." The physical system of the
universe is morally neutral. Morality can only begin
with the conscious and sentient being. The assump-
tion, however, that a "law of nature" means the same
in both cases becomes very important in Hobbes's
theory of the State, where we shall meet it again.

Meanwhile it may be remarked for the old gentle-
man's credit that he is shocked by one inference drawn
by others. Bramhall has argued from " eternal tor-
ments " : their existence proves liberty. " To take away
liberty hazards heaven but undoubtedly it leaves no
hell." Some people might consider that consequence
to be a partial compensation. Bramhall, however, has
no doubt about hell ; and the Calvinists, though they
took away liberty, were quite convinced that the

in.] MAN 171

eternal torment of sinners was just. Hobbes was so
far with them that he was bound to admit the justice
of any actually existing arrangement, but he refuses
to admit the existence of hell. Though God may
"afflict a man, and not for sin, without injustice, shall
we think him so cruel as to afflict a man, and not for
sin, with extreme and endless torment ? Is it not
cruelty ? No more than to do the same for sin, when
he that so doeth might without trouble have kept him
from sinning." He asks, however, where the Scrip-
tures say that " a second death is an endless life ? Or
do the doctors say it ? Then perhaps they do but say
so and for reasons best known to themselves." " It
seemeth hard to say," he observes elsewhere, " that
God, who is the father of mercies, that doth in heaven
and earth all that he will, that hath the hearts of all
men in his disposing, that worketh in men both to do
and to will . . . should punish men's transgressions
without any end of time and with all the extremity of
torture that men can imagine and more." Hobbes
managed to reconcile his theory to the orthodox view
in a rather singular fashion. But modern divines
will not quarrel with him for declining to believe in
the old doctrine of damnation.

One other remark must be added. Hobbes is not
content with resolving the divine justice into power.
Human justice is equally the creature of power.
Natural goodness differs, he says, from moral. A
horse has natural goodness if he is strong and gentle
and so forth ; and if there were no laws, there would
be as much " moral good" in a horse as in a man. It
is the law which makes the difference. Law-makers
may err ; but from obedience to the law, whether

172 HOBBES [CHAP. in.

made in error or not, proceeds " moral praise." Since
oar notions of good and bad are relative and mean
simply what pleases or displeases us, we can only get a
common rule by subjection to the law. " All the real
good, which we call honest and morally virtuous, is
that which is not repugnant to the law, civil or natural ;
for the law is all the right reason we have, and ... is
the infallible rule of moral goodness.'' Our fallibility
compels us to " set up a sovereign governor " and
agree that his law shall be to us in the place of right
reason. He illustrates this principle from card-
playing. When men have turned up trumps, " their
morality consisteth in not renouncing," that is, in
observing the rules of the game ; and so " in civil
conversation our morality is all contained in not dis-
obeying of the laws."

This doctrine — not at first sight very satisfactory —
will be more intelligible when we have considered the
Leviathan.

CHAPTER IV

THE STATE1

1. Contemporary Controversies

WE come now to the third part of Hobbes's philo-
sophy. He is to base a science of politics upon the
doctrines already expounded. We become aware that
there is a certain breach of continuity. To understand
his line of thought, it is necessary to take note both
of the problems in which he was specially interested,
and the form into which the arguments had been
moulded by previous thinkers. He applies to the
questions of the day certain conceptions already
current in political theory, though he uses them in
such a way as materially to alter their significance.

Hobbes's theory in the first place involves the
acceptance of a so-called " Law of Nature." " Nature,"
as we know, is a word contrived in order to introduce
as many equivocations as possible into all the theories,
political, legal, artistic, or literary, into which it enters.

1 Hobbes's political theory is given in three books : the
De Corpore Politico, which was the second part of his first
treatise, and is reprinted in the fourth volume of the English
works ; the De Give, which is in the Latin works, vol. iii.,
and an English translation of which, by Hobbes himself, forms
the second volume of the English works ; and the Leviathan,
which forms the third volume of the English works.

173

174 HOBBES [CHAP,

The " Law of Nature," as writers upon jurisprudence
tell us, was invented by Eoman lawyers with the help
of Stoic philosophers. The lawyers, having to deal
with the legal systems of the numerous races which
came into contact with Rome, were led to recognise a
certain body of laws common to all. Such law came
to be considered as laid down by Nature. It was a
product of the human nature common to Greeks and
Komans, and not affected by the special modifications
by which Romans are distinguished from Greeks. It
belonged to the genus man, not to the species nation.
The philosopher, meanwhile, took the Law of Nature
to be law imposed by the divine author of nature, dis-
coverable by right reason, and therefore common to
all reasoning beings. The law in either case is
" natural " because universally valid. But this may
cover two diverging conceptions. To the man of
science " nature " means everything actually existing.
One quality cannot be more " natural " than another,
though it may be more widely diffused. A scientific
investigator of jurisprudence would inquire what sys-
tems of law prevail in different countries, and would
seek to discover the causes of uniformity or difference.
The inquirer is so far simply concerned with the ques-
tion of fact, and to him the exceptional is just as much
a natural product as the normal legislation. The
scientific point of view is that from which one might
expect Hobbes to treat the question. He accepts,
however, the Law of Nature in another sense.
It meant an ideal, not an actual law, and tells
us what ought to be, not what is. There may of
course be a presumption that a law (if there is such
law) which is universally accepted is also dictated by

iv.] THE STATE 175

reason ; or a state may be so happily constituted that
the perception that a law is reasonable may involve
its acceptance in the actual system. But in any case
the Law of Nature is supposed to be the type to which
the actual law should be made to conform, and there-
fore implies a contrast and occasional conflict between
the two systems.

Hobbes's view implies another distinction. Every
one admits that laws may rightly vary according
to circumstances within certain limits. There are
laws, we may say, which it is right to obey because
they are the law, and others which are the law because
it is right to obey them. In England the law of the
road tells carriages to keep to the left, and in France
to keep to the right. We clearly ought to obey each
rule in its own country. But there are other cases.
In some countries the law permits or enforces rules of
marriage which in other countries are held to be
immoral and revolting. Is it true in this case also
that each law is right in its own country, or is one set
of laws to be condemned as contrary to the Law of
Nature ? Given the Law of Nature, that is, how are
we to decide what sphere of discretion is to be left to
the legislator ? Can he deal with the most vital as well
as the most trivial relations, or how is his proper sphere
of authority to be denned ? Where does " positive '
law begin and natural law end ? This involves the
problem, how far does the power of the legislature
extend, or what is the relation between the sovereign
and the subject. That was a problem which had not
been discussed in the classical philosophy. Man as a
" political animal '; was so identified with the State
that citizenship was an essential part of him. Different

176 HOBBES [CHAP.

forms of government might be compared, but the
individual could not be conceived as existing indepen-
dently of the State. To Hobbes the State had become
an " artificial " construction, and therefore its relation
to the units of which it was constructed had to be
settled and was vitally important.

The theory of sovereignty had become interesting
when there were rival claimants to sovereignty. The
Christian Church, beginning as a voluntary association
outside the State, and appealing to men in their
individual capacity, had become a gigantic organisation
with an elaborate constitution and legal system. It
had come into collision, alliance, and rivalry with the
empire. According to the accepted theory, both
powers had legitimate claims to allegiance. Pope and
emperor were compared to the sun and moon, though
it might be disputed which was the sun and which was
the moon, or whether they were not rather two inde-
pendent luminaries. In the great controversies which
arose, the Church had an obvious advantage. It
derived its authority from direct revelation. It
represented on earth the supreme Being, and was
entrusted by him with power to enforce the moral laws
which coincide with the Law of Nature. As the empire
could claim no special revelation, the advocates of its
claims had to find some independent support for them
in the Law of Nature. To the question, then, whence
is derived the obligation to obey the State, or rather
the ruler, there was but one obvious answer. " All
obligation," says Hobbes, " derives from contract."
It is part of the Law of Nature that man should
observe compacts. If therefore the relation between
sovereign and subject depends upon a compact, there

iv.] THE STATE 177

is a sufficient obligation to obedience though the ruler
has not a special commission from God. It could
not, it is true, be proved that such a compact had
ever been made, nor that, if made in one generation,
it would be binding on the next, nor was it possible to
say what were the exact terms of the supposed com-
pact. But such cavils were trifles. They could be
met by saying that there was an " implicit " contract,
and that it, no doubt, prescribed reasonable terms.
This theory was gradually developed in the middle
ages, and when Hobbes was a young man it had
acquired especial currency from the great book in
which Grotius had adopted it, when applying the Law
of Nature to regulate the ethics of peace and war.1

This set of conceptions gives Hobbes's starting-
point, though in his hands the Law of Nature and the
social compact received a peculiar development, or,
indeed, seemed to be turned inside out. He applied
them to the great controversies in which he and his
contemporaries were specially interested. The com-
plicated struggles of the Reformation period had
raised issues which were still undecided. Church and
State, whatever the theory of their relations, were so
closely connected as to form parts of one organism,
and a separation of them, such as is contemplated
by modern speculation, was unthinkable. If the two
bodies had conflicting claims, they were also recipro-

1 A very remarkable book, the Politics of Johannes Althusius
(1557-1636), that appeared in 1603, anticipated much that Hobbes
afterwards said, and played a considerable part in the evolu-
tion of the theory of " Naturrecht." Professor Gierke's most
learned and interesting book upon Althusius gives a full
account of his doctrine and of his relation to Hobbes among
many others.

N

178 HOBBES [CHAP.

cally necessary. Their systems of legislation were not
independent, but interpenetrating. Each implied the
other, and the State was bound to suppress heresy, as
the Church to condemn rebellion. The disruption of
the old system implied both civil and foreign war.
The lines of cleavage ran through both Church and
State, and in each fragment the ecclesiastical and
secular system had to readjust their relations. When
in England Henry VIII. renounced the authority of
the pope, he had to become a bit of a pope himself.
In Scotland the Church, though it might suppose that
it had returned to primitive purity, could not be
expected for that reason to relinquish its claims to
authority over the laity. In the famous " Monarcho-
machist" controversy, Jesuits agreed with Scottish
Protestants and French Huguenots in defending
tyrannicide. They had a common interest in limiting
the claims of the secular power. Jacques Clement
and Ravaillac gave a pointed application in France to
the Jesuit doctrine ; and the Scots had to make a
case against Queen Mary. Meanwhile the claims of
the Catholic Church were the cause or the pretext of
the warfare which culminated in the Spanish Armada.
The patriotic Englishman regarded the pope as the
instigator or accomplice of the assailants of our national
independence. Persecution of priests seemed to be
necessary, even if cruel, when priests were agents of
the power which supported hostile fleets and inspired
murderous conspiracies. Throughout the seventeenth
century the protestant Englishman suffered from
" papacy " on the brain, and his fear flashed into panic
for the last time when Hobbes was dying. During his
youth the keenest controversy had been raging over

iv.] THE STATE 179

the claims of the papacy. Jarnes I. himself and his
most learned divines, such as Andrewes and Donne,
were arguing against the great Catholic divines,
Suarez and Bellarmine. The controversy turned
especially upon the imposition of the oath renouncing
the doctrine of the right of the pope to depose kings.
To that right was opposed the "divine right of
kings " : thereby being meant, not that kings had a
" right divine to govern wrong," but that the king's
right was as directly derived from Heaven as the rights
of the Church.

Hobbes, as we shall see, was deeply impressed by
these problems. The power of the Catholic Church to
enforce its old claims was rapidly disappearing; but
men are often most interested in discussing the means
of escaping the dangers of the day before yesterday.
While Hobbes was elaborating his system, great polit-
ical issues seemed to turn upon the relation between
the spiritual and secular authority. Meanwhile the
purely political were inextricably mixed up with
ecclesiastical questions. James's formula, " no bishop,
no king," expressed the fact. The Church of England
was in the closest alliance with the royal authority ;
"passive obedience 7; to the king became almost an
essential doctrine, even with liberal Anglican divines ;
and the rebellion was the outcome of the discontent in
both spheres. In England the claim of parliament to
a share of power came first, but the power was to be
applied on behalf of religious Puritanism. In Scotland
the Church question was most prominent ; but the
Church, in the rule of which, as James complained,
Tom, Dick, and Harry had claimed to have a voice,
also represented the aspirations of the nation. The

180 HOBBES [CHAP.

political problem was equally important, whatever
might be the motives for demanding political power.
The question in England was whether the ancient
parliamentary institutions were to be preserved and
developed, or to be allowed to fall into decay as in
other European countries where the State was being
organised on different lines. In later days, writers,
who held the British Constitution to be an embodi-
ment of perfect wisdom, naturally venerated the
Hampdens and Eliots as representatives of the ulti-
mately victorious, and therefore rightful cause.

As Hobbes altogether condemned their principles,
we must remind ourselves how things appeared at
the time. To men who desired a vigorous national
government — which is surely a very reasonable desire
— the claims of the parliamentary party appeared to
be a hopeless obstacle. All men admitted that the
king was to have the fullest authority over the
national policy ; he might make war or peace without
consulting anybody ; and if he could make it at his
own expense, parliament had no ground for inter-
ference. The only thing which it could do was to
refuse money if he wanted it for a policy which it
disliked. It was as if the crew of a ship of war gave
the command unreservedly to the captain, but, if
they disliked the direction in which he was steering,
showed disapproval by turning off the steam. That
obviously would be a clumsy method. Parliament did
not superintend or give general directions, but could
throw the whole system out of gear when it pleased.
We know, of course, how the struggle resulted in the
supremacy of parliament, and of that party organisa-
tion which enabled it to act as a unit, and to regulate

iv.] THE STATE 181

the whole national policy with a certain continuity of
purpose. In Hobbes's time not only could such a
system, as historians agree, occur to no one, but if it
had occurred it would have been impracticable. To
be efficient it required, not merely an exposition of
principles, but the development of a mutual under-
standing between the different classes, which was not
less essential because not expressed in any legal docu-
ment. The art of parliamentary government has to
be learnt by practice.

Another remark is now pretty obvious. The British
people managed to work out a system which had, as
we all believe, very great advantages and may justify
some of the old panegyrics. Men could speak more
freely — if not always more wisely — in England than
elsewhere, and individual energy developed with many
most admirable, if with some not quite admirable con-
sequences. But the success was won at a cost. The
central authority of the State was paralysed ; and
many observers may admit that in securing liberty at
the price of general clumsiness and inefficiency of all
the central administrative functions, the cost has been
considerable. It is desirable to remember this point
when we come to Hobbes's special theories. To him
the demands of the parliamentary party appeared to
imply a hopeless disorganization of the political
machinery. His political writings, though professing
to be a piece of abstract logic, are also essentially
aimed at answering these questions. The vital pro-
blem involved was, as he thought, what is sovereignty
and who should be sovereign ? The State, on one
side, was struggling with the Church — whether the
Church of Rome or the Church of Scotland, — and, on

182 HOBBES [CHAP.

the other hand, the supreme power was claimed for
king alone, for parliament alone, and for some com-
bination of the two. What will a scientific analysis
enable us to say as to the general nature of the
supreme power and as to the best constitution of a
body politic. The country, as he says, for some years
before the civil war, " was boiling over with questions
concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience
due from subjects " : a state of things which " ripened
and plucked " from him the third part of his philo-
sophy before the other parts were ready.

2. The Social Contract

Hobbes's political theories are expounded in the
De Corpore Politico (the little treatise of 1640), the De
Give, and the Leviathan. The title of the last of these
works is suggested by certain words in the Book of
Job : " Non est potestas super terram quce comparetur ei."
They are printed at the head of the quaint allegorical
title-page, where a composite giant, his body made of
human beings, holds the sword in one and a crosier in
the other hand, while beneath him is a wide country
with a town, a fort, and a church in the foreground, and
below it are various symbols of temporal and spiritual
power. The great Leviathan, he tells us, is that
mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God,
our peace and defence. But he is also a machine. We
are to take him to pieces in imagination, as we actually
take to pieces a watch to understand its construc-
tion. - We have already seen the statement of Hobbes's
method. It is impossible to deduce the properties of
this complex mechanism by the synthetical method ;

iv.] THE STATE 183

but by analysing the observed " motions of the mind "
we can discover its essential principles. Justice, he
says, means giving to each man his own. How does a
man <^ie to have an " own " ? Because community of
goods breeds contention, while reason prescribes peace.
From the regulation of the " concupiscible " nature by
the " rational " arises the system of moral and civil
laws embodied in the great Leviathan. We have to
examine this process in detail. Men have, as we have
seen, " a perpetual and restless desire of power after
power.'7 In the next place, men are naturally equal.
The weakest in body, at any rate, may kill the
strongest, and there is a still greater equality in mind.
This doctrine of natural equality he tries to establish
by rather quaint arguments. " Every man," he says,
" thinks himself as wise, though not as witty or learned
as his neighbours. What better proof can there be of
equality of distribution than that every man is con-
tented with his share ?" That is hardly convincing;
but what Hobbes means to say is that no man has
such a superiority over his fellows as would make him
secure in the chaotic struggle of " the state of nature."
When two men want the same thing, therefore, each
will have a chance. Competition, diffidence (a distrust
of each other), and glory (the desire, we may say, for
prestige) are the three principal causes of quarrel.
" The first maketh men invade for gain ; the second
for safety ; the third for reputation." When there is
no common power to overawe, there will be a " war of
every man against every man." War, he explains, is
not confined to actual fighting, but exists where there
is a " known disposition thereto ': and " no assur-
ance to the contrary." So long as this state

184 HOBBES [CHAP.

continues, "there is no place for industry, because the
fruit thereof is uncertain," and (besides many other
wants) " no arts, no letters, no society, and which is
worst of all, continual fear and danger of^polent
death ; and the life of man solitary, poor, - nasty,
brutish, and short." Do you object to this account of
man ? Look at experience. Does not a man arm
himself when he is going a journey? Does he not
lock the chests in his own house, although he knows
that there are public officers to protect them ? What
opinion does that imply of his fellow subjects or of
his servants ? " Does he not as much accuse mankind
by his actions, as I do by my words ? '

Bat was there ever such a " state of nature " ? Not
perhaps over the whole world, though in America
many savages live in this nasty and brutish fashion.
If, however, that were not so with particular men,
" yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign autho-
rity, because of their independency, are in continual
jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators ;
having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on
one another - - that is their forts, garrisons, and guns
upon the frontiers of their kingdoms — and continual
spies upon their neighbours.57 The argument is
certainly not obsolete, nor the remark which follows.
" Because they uphold thereby the industry of their
subjects, there does not follow from it that misery
which accompanies the liberty of particular men."
Now where every man is at war with every man, " the
notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have
no place. Where there is no common power there is
no law ; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud
are in war the two cardinal virtues." Justice and

iv.] THE STATE 185

injustice "relate to men in society, not in solitude."
In such a state of things, there can be " no mine and
thine distinct, but only that to be every man's that he
can get and for so long as he can keep it."

"... the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can,"

as Wordsworth puts it. This is the " ill condition "
in which man is placed " by mere nature." There is a
possibility of his getting out of it, partly because some
passions, fear of death, desire of comfort, and hope of
securing it induce men to peace, and partly because
" reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace."

This is Hobbes's famous theory that the "state of
nature " is a state of war. It does not imply, he says,
that men are " evil by nature." The desires are not
themselves wicked, though at times they may cause
wicked actions. " Children grow peevish and do hurt
if you do not give them all they ask for ; but they do
not become wicked till, being capable of reason, they
continue to do hurt." A wicked man is a child grown
strong and sturdy ; and malice is a defect of reason at
the age when reasonable conduct is to be expected.
Nature provides the faculties but not the education.
The doctrine should be tested by its truth, not by its
pleasantness. Hobbes accepts in part the method of
Machiavelli, who clearly announced that he was con-
cerned with what actually happened, not with what
ought to happen. To adopt that plan is to undertake
to tell unpleasant truths, and to tell unpleasant truths
is, according to most readers, to be " cynical." Hobbes

186 HOBBES [CHAP.

incurred the blame ; but, at least, lie was so far
pursuing the truly scientific method. Up to this
point, indeed, he was taking the line which would
be followed by a modern inquirer into the history of
institutions. Warfare is part of the struggle for
existence out of which grow states and the whole
organisation of civilised societies. A modern would
maintain, like Hobbes, that in admitting the part
played by selfish force in the development of society,
he does not assert the wickedness of human nature.
He only asserts that the good impulses cannot acquire
the desirable supremacy until a peaceful order has been
established by the complex struggles and alliances
of human beings, swayed by all their passions and
ambitions. But here we come upon an element in
Hobbes's theory of which I have already spoken,
namely, the Law of Nature. The "laws of human
nature," in the scientific sense, expressing the way in
which human beings actually behave, are identified
with the Law of Nature as an ideal or divine law,
which declares how men ought to behave. Hobbes
professes to show that the sovereign has certain
" rights ' as well as certain powers ; and, moreover,
that those rights are far from being recognised in
many countries and especially in England. He is not
_ simply pointing out how it came to pass that Charles I.
and his parliament had got into conflict, and thence
inferring the best mode of settling the disputed
points ; but he desires to show that the " Law of
Nature ' decides the question of their conflicting
rights. The " Nature ): which prescribes the right
cannot be identical with the " Nature ' which gives
the power and determines the facts.

iv.] THE STATE 187

Hobbes's next point, therefore, is to show what are
the " Laws of Nature." Every man has a right, he
says, to use his own power for his own preservation.
A " Law of Nature " is a precept found out by reason,
forbidding him to do the contrary : that is, to destroy
himself or his means of self-preservation. Now, in the
" state of nature ': just described, every man has a
right to everything — even to another man's body.
He has a " right," that is, because nature makes self-
preservation the sole aim of each man, even when it
implies the destruction of others. But it is plain that,
while this is the case, no man's life or happiness is
secure. "Nature," therefore, orders men to get out
of the " state of nature " as soon as they can. Hence
we have the twofold principle. It is the " fundamental
law of nature " that every man should " seek peace and
follow it " ; and the fundamental " right of nature " is
that a man should defend himself by every means he
can. Peace makes self-defence easy. It follows that
a man should " lay down his right to all things " if
other men will lay down theirs. This is identified by
Hobbes with the " law of the Gospel " : " Whatsoever
you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them"
or (which he takes to be equivalent), " Quod tibi fieri
non vis alteri ne feceris." A man may simply renounce
or he may transfer a right. In either case, he is said to
be "obliged" not to interfere with the exercise of a right
by those to whom he has abandoned or granted it.
It is his "duty" not to make his grant void by hinder-
ing men from using the right ; and such hindrance
is called " injustice." We thus have Hobbes's defini-
tions of Obligation, Duty, and Justice. Injustice, he
observes, is like an absurdity in logic. It is a contra-

188 HOBBES [CHAP.

diction of what you had voluntarily asserted that you
would do.

From these definitions, Hobbes proceeds to deduce
other "Laws of Nature," and finds no less than
nineteen. The third law (after those prescribing
peace and self-defence) is that men should keep their
" covenants." He afterwards deduces the duties
of gratitude, sociability, admission of equality — the
breach of which is pride — equity, and so forth. If, he
says, the "deduction" seems "too subtile," they may
all be regarded as corollaries from the " golden rule."
That rule, however, is itself deducible from the rule of
" self-preservation." We do good to others in order
that they may do good to us. "No man giveth," as
he says, by way of proving that gratitude is a virtue,
" but with intention of good to himself." ..." Of
all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own
good." That, one would rather have supposed, is a
reason for not being " grateful '; to anybody. We
must interpret " gratitude " in the prospective sense —
with an eye to the favours to come. It is prudent to
pay your debts in order to keep up your credit. In
one case he seems to deviate a little from his egoism.
Justice means keeping covenants — obedience, that is,
to his " third law." A man who does a just action
from fear, as he remarks, is not therefore a just man ;
his "will is not framed by the justice, but by the
apparent benefit of what he is to do. That which
gives to human actions the relish of justice is a certain
nobleness or gallantness of courage, rarely found, by
which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment
of his life to fraud or breach of promise." He should
have held, it would seem, that the will is always

iv.] THE STATE 189

framed by the "apparent benefit." The inconsistency
(if there be one, for even this appears to be a case of
" glory ") is explicable. Hobbes has to deduce all the
" Laws of Nature " from the law of self-preservation.
That, no doubt, may show the expediency of making
a " covenant ' with your neighbours, and even the
expediency of generally keeping it. But it must also
be granted that there are occasions in which expediency
is in favour of breaking covenants. The just man, the
ordinary moralist would say, is a man who keeps his
word even to his own disadvantage. That, on the
strictest interpretation of Hobbes, is impossible. No-
body can do it. Justice, however, in the sense of
" covenant-keeping," is so essential a part of his system,
that he makes an implicit concession to a loftier tone
of morality, and admits that a man may love justice
for its own sake. This, however, seems to be an over-
sight. Hobbes is content to take for granted that
each man will profit by that which is favourable to
all, or that the desire for self-preservation will always
make for the preservation of society. The Law of
Nature, we see, is simply an application of the purely
egoistic law of self-preservation. It represents the
actual forces which (in Hobbes's view) mould and
regulate all human institutions. But in sanctioning
so respectable a virtue as "justice," it takes a certain
moral colouring, and may stand for the ideal Law of
Nature or Keason to which the actual order ought to
conform.

There is another reserve to be made : the laws of
nature are not properly laws. They are only " theorems
concerning what conduceth " to self-preservation. They
become laws proper when they are " delivered in the

190 HOBBES [CHAP.

Word of God" ; and he proceeds in the De Give to prove
them by a number of texts, and comes to the edifying
conclusion that the "Law of Nature" is the Law of
Christ. It is a theorem, for example, that to keep your
word tends to self-preservation. But law means the com-
mand of a rightful superior ; and until such a command
has been given, it is not properly a " Law of Nature ''
that you should keep your word. The laws are always
binding inforo interno : you are always bound to desire
that they should come into operation ; but they are
not always binding inforo externo ; that is, you are not
always bound to " put them in act." Self-preservation
is the fundamental law. But till other people keep
the laws, obedience to them does not tend to self-
preservation. If you are peaceful and truthful when
other men are not, you will " procure your own certain
ruin, contrary to all the Laws of Nature." That
obviously will be the case in the " state of nature ':
where fraud and force are the cardinal virtues. There
is, no doubt, a truth in this contention. The moral
law, to become operative in fact, requires a certain
amount of reciprocity. Actual morality clearly de-
pends upon the stage of social evolution. In a
primitive society, where men have to defend them-
selves by the strong hand, we can hardly condemn
the man who accepts the standard methods. Achilles
would be a brutal ruffian to-day ; but when Troy was
besieged, he was a hero deserving admiration. He
was perhaps in the true line of development. The
chief of a savage tribe is, on the whole, preparing the
way for a peaceful order. Even in the present day
a philanthropist living in one of the regions where the
first-comer is ready to shoot him at sight, might think

iv.] THE STATE 191

it right to carry a revolver in his pocket, and, if neces-
sary, to anticipate the shooting. Moral rules become
useful in proportion as society perceives their value,
and is more or less inclined to adopt them, in practice.
Otherwise, the man whose morality was of a higher
type would be thrown away or summarily stamped out.
Ought a man to be several generations in advance of
his time? That is a pretty problem which I do not
undertake to solve. In any case, Hobbes had a real
and important meaning. He saw, that is, that the
development of morality implies the growth of a
certain understanding between the individuals com-
posing the society, and that until this has been reached
ideal morality proper to a higher plane of thought is
impracticable if not undesirable. This leads to the
theory of the social contract — the mutual agreement
by which the great Leviathan is constructed.

The Law of Nature prescribes peace as a condition
of security. But the law is "contrary to our natural
passions," and " covenants without the sword are but
words and of no strength to secure a man at all." It
is therefore essential to create a common power to
keep men in awe. Such creatures as bees and ants
do, indeed, live at peace with each other and are
therefore called by Aristotle "political creatures."
Why cannot men do so ? Because men compete and
have private aims different from the common good.
Men too can talk and therefore reason ; they are
" most troublesome when most at ease," because they
then love to show their wisdom and control their
rulers. The great difference, however, is that their
agreement is " by covenant, which is artificial,"
whereas bees agree by " nature." By " artificial '

192 HOBBES [CHAP.

we must here understand what is made by reason.
Since men can live, for they do sometimes live in
a " state of nature," a political society is not essential
to man as man. It is a product of his voluntary
action, and therefore implies a conscious deliberation.
The only way, then, in which the common power can
be erected and security established, is that men should
" confer all their power and strength upon one man
or one assembly of men." Then wills will be "reduced
into one will, and every man acknowledge himself to
be the author of whatsoever is done by the ruler so
constituted." " This is more than consent or concord ;
it is a real unity of them all in one and the same
person, made by covenant of every man with every
man ; in such manner as if every man should say to
every man : ( I authorise and give up my right of govern-
ing myself to this man, or this assembly of men, on this
condition that thou glue up thy right to him, and authorise
all his actions in like manner.' The Leviathan, or mortal
god, is instituted by this covenant. He is the vital
principle of political association, and from it Hobbes
will proceed to deduce the whole of his doctrine.

Before considering its terms, one remark may be
made. It is sometimes asked whether the expounders
of the " social contract " in various forms meant to be
understood historically. Did they mean to assert that
at some remote period a number of men had held a
convention, like the American States, and signed
articles of association, to bind themselves and their
posterity? Occasionally they seem to be driven to
accept that position. Hobbes, however, can hardly
have entertained such a belief. He is as ready as
anybody to give an historical account of the origin

iv.] THE STATE 193

of actual constitutions. In his Dialogue upon the
Common Law, for example, he, like Montesquieu,
traces the origin of the British Constitution to the
forests of Germany, and the system once prevalent
among the " savage and heathen ': Saxons. He re-
cognises in the Leviathan that governments may arise
from conquest or the development of the family as
well as by " institution," and endeavours to show that
the nature of sovereignty will be the same in whatever
way it may have originated. A contract, it always
has to be admitted, may be " implicit " (that is, may
really be no contract at all), and there can be no doubt
that, in point of fact, the social contract, if it exists,
must at the present day be of that kind. Nobody is
ever asked whether he will or will not agree to it.
Men, as members of a political society, accept a certain
relation to the sovereign, and unless they did so the
society would be dissolved. That such an understand-
ing exists, and is a condition of the existence of
the State, would be enough for Hobbes, whatever the
origin of the understanding. As we shall presently
see, he would be more consistent, if not more edifying,
if he threw the contract overboard altogether.

We must look more closely at the terms of the
hypothetical contract. The first point is that Hobbes's
version differs from the earlier forms in this, that it is
not a contract between the subject and the sovereign,
but between the subjects themselves. The sovereign
is created by it, but is not a party to it. This is
Hobbes's special and most significant contribution to
the theory. His reason is plain. Men, in a state
of nature, that is, not acknowledging any common
authority, cannot make a contract collectively. They

194 HOBBES [CHAP.

are, in that case, simply a "multitude." His own
theory, he says in a note to the De Give, depends upon
clearly understanding the different senses in which
this word may be used. A multitude means first a
multitude of men. Each has his own will and can
make compacts with his neighbours. There may be
as many compacts as there are men, or pairs of men,
but there is then no such thing as a common will or
a contract of the multitude considered as a unit.
This first becomes possible when they have each agreed
that the will of some one man or of a majority shall
be taken for the will of all. Then the multitude
becomes a "person," and is generally called a " people."
One man is a "natural person," and their common
representative is an " artificial person," or, as he puts
it, " bears the person of the people." It is, therefore,
impossible to take the social contract as made between
the sovereign and the subjects. Till they have become
an "artificial person '; they cannot make a contract as
a whole. This social contract is presupposed in all
other contracts. It must be at the foundation of all
corporate action, and a compact between the sovereign
and* the subjects would suppose the previous existence
of a unity which is only created by the contract itself.
In the "state of nature" men can promise but cannot
make a binding contract. A contract means an ex-
change of promises, and in a " state of nature " neither
party can depend upon the other keeping his word.
Obligation follows security. It seems rather difficult,
perhaps, to see how you can ever get out of the state
of nature, or why the agreement of each man to take
the sovereign will for his own, is more likely to be
observed than any other agreement. Hobbes, how-

iv.] THE STATE 195

ever, assumes that tliis is possible ; and when the
Leviathan has once been constructed, it embodies the
common will. The multitude becomes a person, and
law, natural and civil, becomes binding.

3. " Tlie Leviathan "

We have thus got our sovereign. His will is the
will of all. He is under no obligation to his subjects,
but is the source of all obligation. The ultimate
justification of his existence, however, is still the desire
for self-preservation, and for peace as an essential
condition. Hence, indeed, arise the only limitations
to the power of the sovereign which Hobbes admits.
Since I aim at my own security, I cannot lay down
the right of resisting men who would kill me, or even
men " who would inflict wounds or imprisonment."
I may indeed agree that you shall kill me, but I
cannot agree that I will not resist you. A criminal
may be properly put to death, for he has agreed
to the law ; but he must be guarded on his way to
execution, for he has not bargained not to run
away. He adds another quaint exception. A man
may refuse to serve as a soldier, at least if he
can offer a substitute. "And," he adds, "there is
allowance to be made for natural timorousness, not
only to women, of whom no such dangerous duty is ex-
pected, but also to men of feminine courage." (They
may have been born in 1588.) In such cases, it seems,
disobedience does not "frustrate the end for which
sovereignty was ordained." The principle applies to
the case of de facto government — when the sovereign
cannot defend me I need not obey him.

196 HOBBES [CHAP.

With these exceptions, the power of the sovereign
is unlimited. The "mortal god" is omnipotent. The
covenant once made is indefeasible. The parties to
it cannot make a new covenant inconsistent with it.
They cannot transfer their allegiance without the
consent of the sovereign. Since there is no power of
revising the covenant, it cannot be broken without
injustice. Hobbes, we see, speaks of the sovereign
as "representing'1 the subjects. But he does not
"represent" them as a member of parliament repre-
sents his constituents, or as a delegate bound to carry
out their wishes. He " represents " them in the sense
that whatever he does is taken to be done by them.
They are as responsible for all his actions as though
he was their volition incorporated. It follows that
his power can never be forfeited. The subjects have
done whatever he has done, and in resisting him
would be calling themselves to account. The social
contract, considered as a covenant with the ruler, was
alleged as a justification of rebellion. Hobbes inverts
the argument. It can never be right to allege a
"covenant" with the ruler because that would justify
rebellion. Since there is no common judge in such a
case, this would mean an appeal to the power of the
sword, and the power of the sword is what you have
abandoned in covenanting. No individual again can
dissent. If he does, he "may justly be destroyed '•
by the rest. If he consented to covenant, he implicitly
consented to the covenant actually made. But, if
not, he is left in the state of nature and may, there-
fore, "without injustice be destroyed by any man
whatsoever."

The Leviathan, thus constituted, has therefore an

iv.] THE STATE 197

indefeasible* title and is irresponsible. He is the
ultimate authority from whom all rights are derived.
The end of his institution is peace. A right to the end
implies a right to the means. The sovereign may do
whatever promotes peace. Since men's actions proceed
from their opinions, he may suppress the publication of
opinions tending in his opinion to disturb the peace.
Since contention arises from the clashing of rights, he
must determine men's rights ; or, in other words, must
be the supreme legislator. The law means the com-
mand of the sovereign, and whatever he commands is
therefore law. He must, again, have the " right of judi-
cature " ; the right to hear and decide all controversies
arising out of the law. The sword of justice belongs
to him, and "the sword of justice must go with the
sword of war." The sovereign has to protect the
people against foreign enemies as -well as to protect
each man against his neighbour. He must decide upon
war and peace ; and when war is necessary must decide
what forces are necessary ; and, further, must decide
how much money is required to pay for them. "The
command of the militia " (the military forces in general),
" without other institution, maketh him that hath it
sovereign ; and, therefore, whosoever is made general
of an army, he that hath the sovereign power is always
generalissimo." Other powers, such as the appoint-
ment of ministers, the distribution of honours, and the
infliction of punishments, obviously follow.

The Leviathan, thus invested with fullest power of
legislature, judicature, and military command, with
authority over opinion, and right to levy taxes,
appeared to Hobbes's contemporaries to be a terrible
portent. Charles I., trying to dispense with parlia-

198 HOBBES [CHA.P.

ments, Cromwell ruling by armed force, Louis XIV.
declaring himself to be the State, might be taken as
avatars of the monster. Lovers of liberty of thought
or action were shocked by a doctrine fit only for the
graceless and abject courtiers of the Restoration. The
doctrine, however, must be considered on more general
grounds. Hobbes, in the first place, is not here arguing
for one form of government more than for another.
He prefers monarchy ; but his special point is that in
every form, monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic, there
must be a " sovereign " - an ultimate, supreme, and
single authority. Men, he says, admit the claim of a
popular State to " absolute dominion," but object to
the claim of a king, though he has the same power and
is not more likely, for reasons given, to abuse it. The
doctrine which he really opposes is that of a " mixed
government." As " some doctors " hold that there are
three souls in one man, others hold that there can be
more souls than one in a commonwealth. That is
virtually implied when they say that " the power of
levying money, which is the nutritive faculty," depends
on a " general assembly " ; the " power of conduct and
command, which is the motive faculty, on one man ; and
the power of making laws, which is the rational faculty,
on the accidental consent, not only of those two last, but
of a third " : this is called " mixed monarchy." " In
truth it is not one independent commonwealth, but three
independent factions ; nor one representative person
but three. In the Kingdom of God there may be
three persons independent without breach of unity in
God that reigneth ; but where men reign that be sub-
ject to diversity of opinions, it cannot be so. And
therefore if the king bear the person of the people, the

iv.] THE STATE 199

general assembly bear the person of the people, and
another assembly bear the person of a part of the
people, they are not one person, nor one sovereign, but
three persons and three sovereigns." That is to say,
the political, like the animal organism, is essentially
a unit. So far as there is not somewhere a supreme
authority, there is anarchy or a possibility of anarchy.
The application to Hobbes's own times is obvious. The
king, for example, has a right to raise ship-money in
case of necessity. But who has a right to decide the
question of necessity ? If the king, he could raise
taxes at pleasure. If the parliament, the king becomes
only their pensioner. At the bottom it was a question
of sovereignty, and Hobbes, holding the king to be
sovereign, holds that Hanipden showed " an ignorant
impatience of taxation." " Mark the oppression ! A
parliament man of £500 a year, land-taxed 20s."
Hampden was refusing to contribute to his own de-
fence. " All men are by nature provided of notable
multiplying glasses, through which every little pay-
ment appeareth a great grievance." Parliament re-
monstrated against arbitrary imprisonment, the Star
Chamber, and so forth ; but it was their own fault
that the king had so to act. Their refusal to give
money "put him (the king) upon those extraordinary
ways, which they call illegal, of raising money at home."
The experience of the Civil War, he says in the
Leviathan, has so plainly shown the mischief of dividing
the rights of the sovereign that few men in England
fail to see that they should be inseparable and should
be so acknowledged " at the next return of peace."

Men did in fact come to acknowledge it though not
for some generations, and then by virtually transferring

200 HOBBES [CHAP.

sovereignty from the king to the parliament. A
confused state of mind in the interval was implied in
the doctrine which long prevailed, of the importance
of a division between the legislative, executive, and
judicial powers, and in the doctrine that the British
Constitution represented a judicious mixture of the
three elements, aristocracy, monarchy, and democracy,
whose conflicts were regulated by an admirable
system of checks and balances. Whatever truth may
have been expressed in such theories, they were
erroneous so far as inconsistent with Hobbes's doctrine.
A division of the governmental functions is of course
necessary, and different classes should be allowed to
exercise an influence upon the State. But the division
of functions must be consistent with the recognition of
a single authority which can regulate and correlate
their powers ; and a contest between classes, which
do not in some way recognise a sovereign arbitrator,
leads to civil war or revolution. Who is the sove-
reign, for example, was the essential question which
in the revolt of the American colonies, and in the
secession of the Southern States, had to be answered
by bullets. So long as that question is open, there is
a condition of unstable equilibrium or latent anarchy.
The State, as Hobbes puts it, should have only one
soul, or as we may say, the political organism should
have the unity corresponding to a vital principle.

The unity of the Leviathan seemed to imply arbi-
trary power. Since the king had the power of the
sword, said Hobbes, he must also have the power of
the purse. The logic might be good, but might be
applied the other way. The true Englishman was
determined not to pay the money till he knew how it

iv.] THE STATE 201

was to be spent ; and complained of a loss of liberty if
it was taken by force. Hobbes's reply to this is very
forcible and clears his position. He agreed with John-
son that the cry for liberty was cant. .' What, he asks,
in his De Cive, is meant by liberty ? If an exemption
from the laws, it can exist in no government whatever.
If it consist in having few laws, and only those such as
are necessary to peace, there is no more liberty in a
democracy than in a monarchy. What men really
demand is not liberty but " dominion." People are
deceived because in a democracy they have a greater
share in public offices or in choosing the officers. It
does not follow that they have more liberty in the
sense of less law. Hobbes was putting his finger
upon an ambiguity which has continued to flourish.
Liberty may either mean that a man is not bound by
law or that he is only bound by laws which he has
made (or shared in making) himself. We are quite
aware at the present day that a democracy may use
the liberty, which in one sense it possesses, by making
laws which are inconsistent with liberty in the other
sense.

J The problem, so much discussed in our times, as
to the proper limits of government interference had
not then excited attention. Hobbes seems to incline
towards non-interference. Subjects grow rich, he says,
by " the fruits of the earth and water, labour and
thrift" (land, labour, and capital), and the laws should
encourage industry and forbid extravagance. The
" impotent " should be supported and the able-bodied
set to work ; taxes should be equal, and laid upon con-
sumption, which (as he thinks) will encourage saving,
and extravagance should be punished. So far his

202 HOBBES [CHAP.

principles are those which his contemporaries fully
accepted. But he adds emphatically that the laws
should not go too far. "As water enclosed on all
hands with banks, stands still and corrupts, so
subjects, if they might do nothing without the
command of the law, would grow dull and un-
wieldy.'7 They must not, however, be left too much
to themselves. " Both extremes are faulty, for laws
were not invented to take away but to direct men's
actions, even as nature ordained the banks not to stay,
but to guide the course of the stream ; it is therefore
against sound policy that there should be more laws
than necessarily serve for the good of the magistrate
and his subjects." Laws, moreover, should be clear,
simple, and directed not to revenge, but to correction.
" Leaders of a commotion should be punished ; not
the poor seduced people. To be severe to the people,
is to punish that ignorance which may in great part
be imputed to the sovereign, whose fault it was that
they were no better instructed." This is, perhaps,
the only remark of Hobbes which would be endorsed
by Tolstoi. Hobbes was in favour of a despotic rule ;
but he was anxious that it should be thoroughly
humane, and was fully sensible that the English laws
were in great need of reform.

Such questions, however, were then in the back-
ground. The real issue with his contemporaries was
different. Although his theory of sovereignty is
avowedly independent of the particular form of govern-
ment, he has a leaning to monarchy. He confesses
that he has not proved this advantage demonstratively :
"the one thing in the whole book," he adds, in regard
to which he will make that modest admission. His

iv.] THE STATE 203

grounds are mainly that a king has a direct interest
in promoting the welfare of his subjects, while popular
leaders are prompted by vain glory and jealousy of
each other, and popular assemblies are swayed by
orators, for whom he always expresses contempt. " A
democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators,
interrupted sometimes with the temporary monarchy
of one orator " : a Pym or a Gladstone. Hobbes's
dislike to popular rule may be due in part to a certain
intellectual difficulty. A sovereign must needs be a
unit. But Hobbes is not comfortable with abstractions,
or with so vague a body as the sovereign in a complex
political system. He likes to have a king — a concrete,
tangible individual in whom his principles may be
incarnated. This prevents him from recognising one
development of his theory which none the less was
implied from the first. He perceives with perfect
clearness and asserts in the most vigorous way that
the division of sovereignty was the real weakness of the
English system. His prejudices lead him to throw
the whole blame upon the popular leaders. But a man
of science should see that it is little to the purpose to
blame individuals. Their discontent is a fact : a philo-
sophical reformer should aim not at denouncing the
symptoms, but at removing the causes of discord. It
was clearly hopeless to persuade either side that it was
in the wrong; but he might have tried to give an
impartial * diagnosis of the disease. He might then
have admitted that the true solution might be, not
to give the power of the purse to the king, but to give
the power of the sword to the parliament. If he had
contemplated that proposition, he might have foreseen
(I do not mean that any human being could wholly

204 HOBBES [CHAP.

have foreseen) that his theory would apply to a
radically changed order.

In fact, Hobbes's Leviathan represents what is called
"the modern State." Supremacy of the law, absolute
authority of the governing power, and unity of the
administrative system may be most fully realised when
the " sovereign " is not an individual but an organic
body. Government represents or "bears the person
of the people," not in Hobbes's sense, that whatsoever
the sovereign wills becomes their will, but in the inverse
sense, that whatever they will becomes his will. Similar
consequences follow in either version. Hobbes, for
example, believes in the equality of man. It is one
of his laws of nature that " every man acknowledge
another for his equal by nature." Even if men were
not equal, they would only make the compact on con-
ditions of equality. Inequality of subjects, he says
elsewhere, is made by the sovereign ; and therefore
all must be equal before the sovereign, as kings and
subjects are equal before the King of Kings. Crimes
of great men are " not extenuated but aggravated by
the greatness of their persons." If they are favoured,
" impunity maketh insolence ; insolence hatred ; and
hatred an endeavour to pull down all oppressing and
contumelious greatness, though with the ruin of the
commonwealth." No subject can acquire any rights
which will impede the full exercise of the sovereign
power. The property of subjects in lands, for example,
"consisteth in right to exclude all other subjects from
the use of them, and not to exclude their sovereign,
be it an assembly or a monarch." If land is not to be
nationalised, the landowner's right is never absolute.
So in all " systems subject — that is, in all associations

iv.] THE STATE 205

of any kind — no power can be enjoyed except what the
sovereign chooses to allow." They must be thoroughly
subordinate to his will, though in practice they have
an awkward tendency to independence. Among the
diseases of a commonwealth, Hobbes reckons great
towns able to furnish an army (London, of course, is
in his mind) " as well as the great number of corpora-
tions which are, as it were, many lesser commonwealths
in the bowels of the greater, like worms in the entrails
of a natural man." The principle is evidently fatal
to privileged estates or corporations. The king or
sovereign may call in councillors ; but they must
remain councillors only. That, for example,' is the
case with the House of Commons. But the House of
Lords has no better claim. " Good counsel comes not
by inheritance." The claim of certain persons to have
a place in the highest council by inheritance is derived
" from the conquests of the ancient Germans." Their
chiefs were able to extract privileges for their posterity.
Such privileges, however, are inconsistent with sove-
reign power, and if men contend for them as a right,
they "must needs by degrees let them go," and be
content with the honour due to their natural abilities. /

This consequence of the supremacy of the sovereign
illustrates one curious contrast between Hobbes and
his opponents. The parliamentary party had to defend
privilege against prerogative ; and privilege has to be
defended by precedent. The party, therefore, which
would in modern phrase claim to be the " party of
progress," justified itself by appealing to antiquity.
When, indeed, you cut off a king's head you have to
appeal to general principles. Constitutional precedents
are not available. Milton had to claim indefeasible

206 HOBBES [CHAP.

rights for the people, and men like honest John Lil-
burne used language which anticipated Paine's Rights
of Man. But in the earlier stages of the quarrel, Coke's
gigantic knowledge of old records, and superstitious
reverence for the common law, that is, for tradition
and custom, was a stronghold of the party. Hobbes
rejects the whole doctrine. An absolute political
theory could not fit into the constitutional tradition
or justify the heterogeneous products of historical
accidents. His treatise on the common law expresses
his aversion to Coke. He had already quoted him in
the Leviathan to show how men's judgments were
" perverted by trusting to precedent." " If the man
who first judged, judged unjustly, no injustice can be
a pattern of justice to succeeding judges." No custom,
again, can justify itself. If " use obtaineth the autho-
rity of a law, it is not the length of time that maketh
the authority, but the will of the sovereign signified
by his silence." The tacit consent of a ruler may make
a custom law. But " many unjust actions and unjust
sentences go uncontrolled for a longer time than any
man can remember." Only " reasonable " customs
should be law, and evil customs should be abolished.
The sovereign must decide what is reasonable and
what should be abolished.

According to Hobbes, then, all political machinery
is absolutely subordinate to the sovereign. His power
is the sole working force, and every resisting element
must be ejected or brought under control. The law is
the expression of his will, and though he may enforce
rules which have grown up independently, they can
only exist on sufferance or by his tacit consent. In
that respect Hobbes was at one with the most thorough-

iv.] THE STATE 207

going revolutionists who ever proposed to rearrange
the political order upon an ideal plan, and to abolish
all traditional law which is not in conformity with the
dictates of reason. As a matter of fact, Hobbes's
legal doctrine came to life again in the hands of
Benthain and his follower, Austin, the legal lights of
the "philosophical radicals." Maine observes that
they had scarcely anything to add to Hobbes's analysis
of the meaning of law. Hobbes puts his theory with
all possible clearness in the De Give and the Leviathan.
" A law is a command of that person, whose precept
contains in it the reason of obedience." The "civil
law " is the command of the sovereign. We are bound
to obey it, because it is his command, as soon as we
know it to be his. It must therefore be promulgated
in order that we may know it, and have a " penalty
annexed to it " in order that we may obey it ; for
"vain is that law which may be broken without
punishment." When we are solemnly informed that
a law is a command of the sovereign, enforced by a
" sanction," the impulse of the unregenerate mind is
to reply, " that is what I always supposed." Parlia-
ment and the policeman are phenomena too obvious to
be overlooked ; the great manufactory which is always
turning out laws, and the rod which will smite us if
we do not obey are always with us. What else
should a law be than a rule made by one and enforced
by the other ? We are told in reply that great con-
fusion has arisen by confounding such laws with " Laws
of Nature," laws which are supposed to exist in some
transcendental world, and yet to supply the necessary
basis for the laws of actual life, and which have to be
applied to life by the help of such shifty and ambigu-

208 HOBBES [CHAP.

ous hypotheses as the social contract. I do not doubt
that that is true, but it suggests one question. Austin
and his disciples were always exposing the absurdity
of the Law of Nature and the social contract, and yet
their own doctrine coincides with that of Hobbes, who
professes to make these theories an integral part of
his system.

The explanation is simple, and gives the essence
of Hobbes. According to Hobbes, in fact, the
Law of Nature has a singularly limited sphere of
action. It only exists, one may say, in order to repeal
itself. Before the social contract, he says, every man
has a right to everything, which is practically equiva-
lent to nobody having a right to anything ; for if the
same thing belongs to two men, neither has a right
against the other. But the contract is itself made by
every man resigning all his rights to the sovereign. , \
When he has thus made them over, he can no longer
make any claims under the Law of Nature. The
sovereign may command him to do anything (except,
indeed, to help to hang himself) and he is bound to
obey. The Law of Nature orders him to obey the
positive law, and does nothing else. This comes,
however, of being thoroughly logical, after making
one initial error. The Law of Nature is simply the
law of self-preservation, and whatever necessarily
follows from it. But in what sense of " law " can
we call self-preservation a law ? In one sense it is
what Hobbes calls a "theorem," not a law. It is
(assuming its truth) a statement of fact. All men
do aim at self-preservation. That is their one actual
and, indeed, their one possible principle. If so, it
cannot be a "law' at all in the ethical or strictly

iv.] THE STATE 209

legal sense. It expresses an essential condition of
man's nature, and not a law imposed upon him from
without. Men act for their own preservation as stones
fall by gravitation. It is a way they have, and they
cannot have any other. Taking for granted the truth
of the "theorem," it will enable us to show how
political institutions and " civil laws " have come into
existence, but it does not show that they are right
or wrong. It is as irrelevant to introduce that con-
fusion as it would be to say that the angles of a
triangle ought to be equal to two right angles.
Hobbes's real theory comes out when we drop the
imaginary contract altogether. We assume " self-
preservation" as the universal instinct and, moreover,
we must provisionally accept Hobbes's thoroughgoing
egoism. Then so long as there is no common
superior, the instinct produces competition and war,
and implies the nasty, brutish " state of nature."
How do men get out of it ? Historically, he replies,
governments may be made by conquest or developed
out of the family, " which is a little monarchy." In
both cases sovereignty is acquired by " force " and the
subjects submit from fear. Governments, also, are
made by " institution," that is, by the social contract ;
and in this case the motive is still fear, but fear of one
another. Admitting, then, that even as an historical
fact, sovereignty has been made by " institution '• or
contract, the essential motive is still the same. Each
man sees that he will be better off, or preserve his life
and means of living better if he and his will obey a
sovereign than if they remain masterless. The hypo-
thesis that States were deliberately contrived and made
by a bargain between the separate atoms is, of course,

210 HOBBES [CHAP.

absurd historically, but is also irrelevant to Hobbes.
The essential point is simply that settled order is so
much more favourable to self-preservation than anarchy
that every one has a sufficient interest in maintaining
it. Peace, as he tells us, means all the arts and
sciences that distinguish Europeans from Choctaws.
The original contractors can scarcely be supposed to
have foreseen that. But at least it gives a very good
reason for obedience.

This comes out curiously in Hobbes's " exceptions '
to the obligation of the contract. Men are not bound
to kill themselves because the tacit " consideration '
for accepting the contract was the preservation of life
and the means of life. He was logically bound to go
further. If upon that ground they may repudiate the
contract, they may break it whenever the end is frus-
trated, that is, whenever by keeping it they will be in
a worse position. Moreover, since nobody ever acts,
except for his own good, they certainly will break it
whether it is binding or not. In other words, the
supposed contract is merely another version of the
first principle of egoism : a man will always do what
seems to be for his own interest. By calling it a
contract he gets the appearance of extending the
obligation to a wider sphere — to cases, that is, in
which a man's interest is opposed to his contract. But
it is only an appearance. It is indeed true that when
a sovereign has once been set up, fraud and force cease
to pay, as a general rule, and honesty becomes the
best policy. But that is more simply expressed with-
out reference to a contract. It merely means that the
most selfish of mankind finds that it is worth while to
have a policeman round the corner. Indeed the more

iv.] THE STATE 211

selfish he is the greater may be the convenience. By
abandoning my supposed right to all things, I get an
effectual right to most things ; and that may be called
a bargain, but it is a bargain which I shall only keep,
and indeed can only keep, according to Hobbes, so
long as the balance of profit is on my side. That is,
it is not a bargain at all.

The facts, however, remain, and Hobbes manages to
state a clear and coherent scheme. His position may
be compared to that of the old economists. They used
to maintain that in taking for granted the selfishness
of mankind they were making a legitimate abstraction.
Men, it is true, are not simply selfish, they have other
motives than a love of money ; but the love of money
is so prominent an instinct in economic masses that we
may consider it as the sole force at work, and so we
may get a theory which will be approximately true,
though requiring correction when applied to concrete
cases. Hobbes virtually considers the political system
in so far as it is based upon selfish motives and is
worked by individual interests. No doubt such mo-
tives are tolerably prevalent. The obvious and most
assignable motive for obeying the law is fear of the
hangman ; and all manner of selfish interests are
furthered by maintaining a settled system of govern-
ment. He thus obtains a clear conception of one
important aspect of the political order. It means or-
ganised force. The State is held together by armies
which protect us from invasion, and by the admini-
strative system which preserves order at home. These
are undeniable facts which it is as well to recognise
clearly, and which are most vigorously set forth in
Hobbes's Leviathan.

212 HOBBES [CHAP.

Certain limits to the value of his theory are equally
plain. In the Leviathan Hobbes says that the " public
ministers " are parts organical of the commonwealth,
and compares the judges to the " organs of voice," the
executive to the hands, ambassadors to eyes, and so
forth. The analogy between the political and the indi-
vidual organism is implied in the whole theory. But
the Leviathan is an " artificial " body, and " artificial ':
means mechanical construction. The individual is the
ultimate unit, and though he resigns his rights to the
sovereign, it is always for his own personal advantage.
The comparison to a body suggests the modern phrase
"the social organism," but the "artificial'1' indicates
that Hobbes does not really interpret the Leviathan as
an organism. It is a big machine or set of atoms held
together by external bonds. Hobbes's egoism forces
him to the doctrine that the particles gravitate to-
gether simply from fear — fear of the magistrate or fear
of your neighbour. Sympathy is ignored, and such
sentiments as patriotism or public spirit or philan-
thropy are superficial modifications of selfishness,
implying a readiness to adopt certain precautions for
securing our own lives and properties. This involves
a one-sided view of the conditions of social and political
welfare. It may be fully admitted that organised force
is essential to a civilised society, that it cannot exist
or develop without its military and judicial bodies, its
soldiers and its judges, its hangmen, gaolers, and police-
men, its whole protective apparatus. An animal cannot
live without its teeth and claws. What is overlooked
is the truth that other parts of the system are equally
essential, and that there is a. reciprocal dependence
indicated by the word " organic." Society is held

iv.] THE STATE 213

together not simply by the legal sanctions, but by all
the countless instincts and sympathies which bind men
together, and by the spontaneous associations which
have their sources outside of the political order. "It
may be granted to Hobbes that peace is an essential
condition of progress, and that the sovereign must be
created to keep the peace. It is equally true that the
sovereign derives his power from other sources than
mutual " fear ); or dread of the " legal sanctions."
Society could not get on without the policeman ; but
the policeman could not keep order by the simple force
of his truncheon. Force must be "organised," but it
cannot be organised out of simple egoism and fear.
So when Hobbes defines law as the command of the
sovereign, he is stating what in a fully developed State
is an undeniable fact. The law is the system of rules
promulgated and enforced by the sovereign power in
spite of any conflicting customs. Historically speak-
ing, laws are not the less the product of customs which
have grown up spontaneously ; they are the causes, not
the effects of the sovereign's authority ; and in the
last resort the sovereign power must still rest upon
custom ; that is, upon all the complex motives from
which arises loyalty to the State, and upon which its
vitality depends.

Hobbes's position was indeed inevitable. The con-
ception of sociology as a science, in which the political
order is regarded as only part of the whole social
system, had not yet arisen. That could not happen
until historical methods of inquiry had begun to show
their power, and the necessity of treating political
questions in connection with the intellectual or the
industrial evolution began to be perceived. The

214 HOBBES [CHAP.

" social contract " theory helped Hobbes to pass over in
summary fashion the great historical problems as to the
way in which the State has actually been developed ;
and therefore the State itself could be regarded as
held together by the purely political and legal forces.
When he had deduced the sovereign power from the
principle of self-preservation, he seemed to himself to
have explained everything. He had got to the one
force which held the units together, as gravitation
holds together the solar system. The relation between
subject and sovereign is the one bond from which all
others may be deduced. The thoroughgoing accept-
ance of this assumption leads to some of the singular
results by which he startled his contemporaries,
though he announces them with superlative calmness
as demonstrated truths.

There are, as he has to admit, two sets of laws
which may occasionally conflict with the laws of
the State. In the first place, there is the moral law.
Hobbes was perfectly well aware that a king might be
a fool or a brute. It seemed to follow that laws might
be contrary to the dictates of morality. His opponents
could point out to him that some of the Roman em-
perors had been far from model characters. Besides
their other weaknesses, they had occasionally thought
it right to give Christians to lions. Again, the Chris-
tian Church claimed obedience, and Hobbes was an
orthodox Christian. What is the subject to do if his
sovereign orders him to break the moral law or to
deny the truth of religion?

4. The Moral Law
Hobbes does not shrink from the logical result

iv.] THE STATE 215

of his principles. The moral law, he holds, is the
Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, as we have
seen, means essentially the law of self-preserva-
tion, and from that is deduced the " virtue ' of
justice, from which all other laws of nature are
corollaries. Justice means keeping covenants, which
becomes operative when a " coercive power " is consti-
tuted ; that is, at the institution of the social contract.
This contract therefore is at the base of all moral as
well as of all political relations. It is presupposed in
all particular contracts. Justice, the cardinal or rather
the sole virtue, means keeping covenants, but also
keeping the primitive contract to which all others owe
their binding force. It implies, therefore, unconditional
obedience to the sovereign who is the social contract
incarnate. The sovereign cannot be unjust to a sub-
ject ; for every subject is himself author of all that the
sovereign does. Laws are the "rules of just and
unjust ; nothing being reputed unjust that is not con-
trary to some law." "The Law of Nature and the
civil law contain each other and are of equal extent."
"Justice, gratitude, and other moral virtues'5 are
merely " qualities that dispose men to peace and
obedience" until the commonwealth is instituted.
Then they become laws, " for it is the sovereign power
that obliges men to obey them." Thus the Law of
Nature is part of the civil law, and " reciprocally the
civil law is part of the dictates of nature."

Nobody, I believe, ever followed Hobbes in this
audacious identification of law and morality. I must
try to make some apology for a most estimable old
gentleman misled by an excessive passion for logic.
In the first place, it may be held that, whatever be the

216 HOBBES [CHAP.

ultimate meaning of morality, the actual morality of a
race is evolved in constant correlation with its social
organisation. Hobbes, who substituted the social con-
tract for this process, and /regarded sovereignty as
the sole bond of union, could only approximate to this
doctrine by making moral obligations a product of the
sovereign will. It would be outrageous, no doubt, to
suppose that a sovereign could make the moral law at
his pleasure, so that lying might become a virtue or
gratitude a vice if the lawgiver chose to alter the law.
That is not Hobbes's meaning. ! Honesty, gratitude, and
the like are, we see, useful qualities and parts of the
Law of Nature as tending to self-preservation. The
sovereign of course cannot alter that fact. ,'/ What he
can do is to make them obligatory by establishing the
state of security which makes their exercise possible or
prudent for the individual. / In the " state of nature ':
the conduct would be self -destructive which, when the
commonwealth is formed, becomes self-preservative.
But, we may ask, will the power thus constituted aim
at the end for which it was instituted ? May not the
sovereign do wrong ? May he not be a brutal tyrant,
or lay down laws which are immoral, because incon-
sistent with the welfare of the people ? Is it in that
case our duty to obey them ? Must we submit to
oppression or enslave our neighbours because the
sovereign, whether king or parliament, commands it ?
Hobbes admits the possibility. " They that have the
sovereign power may commit iniquity, but not injustice
or injury in the proper signification.'7 That is, the
sovereign's immorality gives no right to the subject to
disobey or even to protest. The reason is that the
only alternative is anarchy. Bad laws are better than

iv.] THE STATE 217

no laws. " Good," as we have seen, means what a man
desires and evil what he eschews. " One counts that
good which another counts evil ; and the same man what
now he esteemed for good, he immediately after looks
on as evil ; and the same thing which he calls good in
himself he terms evil in another." There is no such
thing as absolute good. Hence it is impossible to
make a common rule from the tastes of " particular "
men. We have to consider what is reasonable ; but
"there are no other reasons in being but those of par-
ticular men and that of the city ; it follows that the
city is to determine what with reason is culpable."
We are bound to obey the laws before we know what
the laws are; for the State must precede the law.
Therefore " no civil law whatever can be against the
Law of Nature." The Law of Nature may forbid theft
and adultery ; but till we have civil laws we do not
know what theft and adultery are. When the Spar-
tans permitted their youth to take other men's goods,
the taking was not theft. In other words, all law
becomes positive law, for the Law of Nature only
orders us to obey the law of the sovereign. It has
been said that " whatsoever a man does against his
conscience is sin." That is true in the " state of
nature," where a man has no rule but his own reason.
" It is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth,
because the law is the public conscience by which he
hath already undertaken to be guided." Otherwise
nobody would obey further than it seemed good in his
own eyes.

The subject, then, hands over the whole responsi-
bility to the sovereign. Then " it is in the laws of a
commonwealth as it is in the laws of gaming; whatso-

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218 HOBBES [CHAP.

ever the gamesters all agree on is injustice to none of
them." /Are then the laws as arbitrary as the laws of
a game ? To that Hobbes has his answer : " The safety
of the people is the supreme law." The sovereign is
" obliged by the Law of Nature " to procure this end,
" and to render an account thereof to God and to none
but Him." Remembering the peculiarity of Hobbes's
theology, it may seem that this responsibility is per-
haps illusory. It is more to his purpose that, as he
puts it, " the good of the sovereign and people cannot
be separated." " It is a weak sovereign that has weak
subjects, and a weak people whose sovereign wanteth
power to rule them at his will." It is clearly to the
interest of the sovereign, as it is also his duty, to main-
tain order. But to maintain order is, according to
Hobbes, to enforce morality. The sovereign has to
instruct his people in the " fundamental rights " of his '
office. To do so is " not only his duty, but his benefit
also, and security against the danger that may arise to
himself in his natural person from rebellion." He pro-
ceeds in his quaint fashion to point out that this duty
of instructing the people is the duty of impressing
upon them the Ten Commandments. Since kings are
mortal gods, the commandments of the first table are
applicable to them as well as to the Supreme Being.
Clearly a man who proves that kings not only should
but naturally will adopt the Ten Commandments is
preaching a sound morality.

It is necessary, however, to remember Hobbes's
general ethical conception. Every man acts simply
for his own good. Every man, again, interprets
" good " as that which pleases him. Order can only be
established when every man sees that he will get more

iv.] THE STATE 219

good for himself by submitting to a common authority.
When that is securely established, the individual will
be repaid for sacrificing that right to everything
which he could not enforce. But when that is done,
the moral law is made supreme. For morality, accord-
ing to Hobbes, is summed up in justice ; that is, in
observing the general contract according to which the
distribution of good things is regulated and men are
obliged to keep their particular contracts. Equality
before the law and equality of taxation are also implied,
for inequality leads to discontent. But in other
respects every man may, and of course will be guided
by his own conceptions of "good." As I have said
before,/ Hobbes is not in favour of extending the
sphere of legislation. Laws are "like hedges," set
" not to stop travellers but to keep them in their way.
And therefore a law which is not needful, having not
the true end of law, is not good." " Unnecessary
laws are not good laws, but traps for money ; which,
where the right of sovereign power is acknowledged,
are superfluous ; and where it is not acknowledged,
insufficient to defend the people."

This, it seems, is the essential meaning of Hobbes's
identification of law and morality. They are, accord-
ing to him, different aspects of the virtue which he
calls justice. That means that a man acts morally so
far as he pursues his own ends without harming his
neighbour; and legally, so far as he obeys the sove-
reign who enforces the security without which it is
not a man's interest to act morally. No doubt this is
a totally inadequate view of morality. It is the legal
or purely external conception which supposes that the
moral, like the positive law, is satisfied by obeying

220 HOBBES [CHAP.

certain " sanctions " which make bad conduct unprofit-
able. But it does not imply that the moral law is
"arbitrary" or made at will by the sovereign. It is
the law of " self-preservation " regarded from a purely
egoistic point of view.

5. TJie Spiritual Power

Hobbes's theory may lead to some pretty problems
in casuistry. How far should a man's duty to the
state override the dictates of his conscience ? May a
soldier refuse to serve in a war that he thinks unjust ?
Or a Quaker refuse to fight at all ? May a man refuse
to pay taxes if he disapproves of the purpose for
which they are raised ? To admit such liberty un-
reservedly is to approve of anarchy, and upon that
ground some people become anarchists. The problem,
however, does not often present itself in practice.
Most laws are sufficiently in conformity with the
average morality of the people to excite no protest.
But another question was far more pressing, and to
Hobbes seemed to be the really critical question of
the day. What is to be done when the subject's
religious convictions clash with his obligations to the
State ? To that problem Hobbes gave an answer in
his first treatise, which was expanded in the De Cive,
and given at great length and with many singular
developments in the Leviathan.

His essential position is simple enough : the sove-
reign has to keep the peace. Now men's " actions
proceed from their opinions," and therefore opinions
must be governed in order to govern action, and
governed in the interests of peace. He agrees

iv.] THE STATE 221

that in speculation " nothing ought to be regarded
but the truth." True opinion, however, cannot be
" repugnant to peace." " Yet the most sudden and
rough bursting in of a new truth, that can be, does
never break the peace but only sometimes awake the
war ; '; that is, where error is already prevalent
and people are ready to fight for it. It follows that
the suppression of an opinion " repugnant to peace,"
must also be the suppression of error. He limits the
suppression, however, to the public teaching, through
books or otherwise, of objectionable opinions, for he
also holds that a man's private beliefs cannot be deter-
mined by force. The sovereign is therefore bound
to forbid the open propagation of opinions by which
his authority is subverted. The diseases which bring
about the " dissolution of commonwealths " are seditious
opinions. Besides the opinion that every private man
is to judge of good and evil, there is the opinion
that a man may claim supernatural inspiration: a
pernicious doctrine which in this part of the world
has been turned to account by "unlearned divines,"
sufficiently prevalent in the fanatical sects of the
commonwealth.

But a still more vital power is represented by the
claims of the papacy. This, in fact, means the cardinal
error of a divided sovereignty. It is a setting up of
"supremacy against sovereignty; canons against laws,
and a ghostly authority against the civil." " Now see-
ing it is manifest that the civil power and the power
of the commonwealth is the same thing, and that
supremacy and the power of making canons . . . im-
plieth a commonwealth, it followeth that where one
is sovereign, another supreme — where one can make

222 HOBBES [CHAP.

laws and another make canons — there must needs be
two commonwealths of one and the same subjects,
which is a kingdom divided against itself and cannot
stand." The "ghostly power challengeth the right
to declare what is sin/7 and therefore the right to
declare what is law, for sin is " nothing but the trans-
gression of the law." As the civil power also declares
what is law, it follows either that every subject must
obey two masters, or that one of the two powers
must be subordinate to the other. The civil authority
has the advantage of being " more visible " ; but the
spiritual, though it deals in unintelligible doctrines,
yet, "because the fear of darkness and ghosts is
greater than other fears, cannot want a party sufficient
to trouble and sometimes to destroy a commonwealth."
The spiritual power, indeed, has an advantage, "for
every man" (as he says in the De Give), "if he be
in his wits, will in all things yield that man an
absolute obedience, by virtue of whose sentence he
believes himself to be either saved or damned."
Church or State, that is, must be supreme, or there
will be a fatal disease which he quaintly compares to
the epilepsy, a " wind in the head," which makes men
fall into fire or water. When the spiritual power
moves the subject "by the terror of punishment and
hope of reward r of this supernatural kind, "and by
strange and hard words suffocates their understanding,
it must needs thereby distract the people, and either
overwhelm the commonwealth by oppression or cast it
into the fire of a civil war." Which then is to be
supreme ? A church, like a state, must be an organised
body and have a sovereign before it can be said to
"will" or "command." He defines it therefore as a

iv.] THE STATE 223

" company of men professing Christian religion united
in the person of one sovereign, at whose command
they ought to assemble, and without whose authority
they ought not to assemble.7' Now, in all common-
wealths, an assembly in order to be lawful must have
the warrant of the civil sovereign. There is no power
on earth to which all commonwealths are subject, and
the Christians in each State are subject to its sovereign
and cannot be subject to any other power. Therefore
a church is the same thing with the civil common-
wealth, which is " called a civil state, for that the
subjects of it are men, and a church for that the
subjects thereof are Christians." "Temporal'1 and
"spiritual" are "two words brought into the world
to make men see double and mistake their lawful
sovereign." Unless there is one governor there will
be civil war between Church and State — " between
the sword of justice and the shield of faith — and, which
is more, in every Christian man's own breast between
the Christian and the man."

The Church, in short, as a law-making or governing
body must be fused with the State. Otherwise we
have the fatal splitting of sovereignty. An antagonist
might have replied that the unity might be equally
secured by subordinating the State to the Church.
An absolute theocracy, such as corresponded to the
extremest claims of the papacy, would have satisfied
the condition as fully as the secular sovereignty. To
this Hobbes replies upon the historical ground. He
denies that the Church of Rome, or indeed that the
spiritual power from the beginning of the world, can
make out any title to the sovereign power. Half of
the Leviathan, namely the third part (" Of a Christian

224 HOBBES [CHAP.

Commonwealth ") and the fourth (" Of the Kingdom
of Darkness "), is devoted to this argument.

It is a most singular performance. Hobbes has to
argue from the Bible, and quotes texts as confidently
as any contemporary divine. He protests, indeed,
with an air of perfect candour, that he has only taken
the plainest sense and that which is " agreeable to the
harmony and scope of the whole Bible." But his
exegesis brings out results which nobody before or
since has ever deduced from the same authority. We
may wonder whether he is sincere or laughing in
his sleeve; whether, perhaps, he means simply an
argument ad hominem; or a tacit suggestion that any
conclusions you please can be extorted from the
documents whose authority he is bound to admit.
Our confidence is not increased by his apology for his
paradoxes. He admits that one doctrine, which he
proves, will appear to most men a novelty. " I do but
propound it," he says, l< maintaining nothing in this or
any other paradox of religion, but attending the end
of that dispute of the sword concerning the authority,
not yet amongst my countrymen decided, by which all
sorts of doctrine are to be approved or rejected."
Anyhow the results are too grotesque to be given at
length, or to be quite passed over.

His contention is essentially that there never was
a divinely instituted spiritual authority independent
of the civil authority. The civil and ecclesiastical
power, for example, were united in Abraham, after-
wards in Moses, and then in the high priests. " Who-
ever had the sovereignty of the commonwealth among
the Jews, the same had also the supreme authority in
the matter of God's external worship," though the

iv.] THE STATE 225

Jews got into many calamities from not properly
understanding the rights of their rulers. The old
dispensation, it might be supposed, was superseded
by the Christian Church, and its rulers would repre-
sent Christ on earth. But " the Kingdom of Christ '
was not of this world. That, according to Hobbes,
means that it will not be established until a new
world begins upon " the general resurrection." Then
Christ will become a King in the literal sense. The
good will come to life in their old bodies (for there
is no such thing as a separate soul) and live eternally.
They will not marry or be given in marriage, for
otherwise the earth would obviously not be big enough
to hold the resulting population. There will be no
death vacancies. The wicked will also come to life
in order to receive condign punishment. They will
suffer " the second death," which cannot, as he thinks,
mean eternal life in torture, but simple extinction.
As they will die, they may propagate ; and therefore
hell may be eternal in the sense that there will always
be a supply of the wicked to be punished, though
every individual will come to an end. This amazing
theory is meant to show that since Christ's kingdom
is not to become a reality until the resurrection, the
Church is, for the time being, not a kingdom at all
but a mere voluntary association. The apostles and
their successors could only persuade, not command,
and had no coercive powers. Excommunication
could only mean amicable separation, not the in-
fliction of a penalty. The Church did not acquire
legal authority until it was invested with power by
the emperor.

These queer speculations are connected with a more
Q

226 HOBBES [CHAP.

interesting set of arguments. Hobbes wishes to meet
the claims of the Church to supernatural authority.
He cannot deny — explicitly at any rate — that Moses
and the prophets were divinely inspired. What he can
do is to argue that their inspiration does not transmit
supernatural authority to their descendants. Moses
himself knew that he was speaking to Jehovah. But
in what way Jehovah spoke to him is " not intelligible."
The Jews could only know that Moses told them that
he was so speaking, and that makes a vital difference.
When a prophet says that God has spoken to him in
a dream, that is only to say he " dreamed that God
spoke to him, which is not of force to win belief from
any man that knows that dreams are for the most
part natural." To say that a man speaks by " super-
natural inspiration is to say he finds an ardent desire
to speak in some strong opinion of himself, for which
he can allege no natural and sufficient reason. So that,
though God Almighty can speak to a man by dreams,
visions, voice, and inspiration, yet he obliges no man
to believe he hath so done to him that pretends it,
who, being a man, may err, and which is more, may
lie." As miracles have ceased, we can now only appeal
to the Holy Scriptures. What, then, is the authority
of the Scriptures ? Hobbes goes through many of the
passages, which have been mentioned by later critics,
to show that the books ascribed to Moses and others
were written after the time of the supposed authors.
The Psalter must have been put into its present form
after the captivity as some of the psalms refer to it.
The authority, of the Old Testament in general can
only be traced to the time of Esdras, who discovered
the books when they were lost; and the canon of

iv.] THE STATE 227

the New Testament cannot be proved to have been
authoritative before the Council of Laodicea in the
year 364 A.D. Hobbes, indeed, believes that the New
Testament books are genuine, for a characteristic
reason : The doctors of the Church had claimed
supreme power by the time of the Council and
thought pious frauds commendable. If they had
altered the books " they would surely have made
them more favourable to their power over Christian
princes . . . than they are." Why, then, do we believe
the Scriptures to be the Word of God ? Everybody,
he says, admits the fact of inspiration, but no one
can know it except " those to whom God him-
self hath revealed it superuaturally." Men believe,
though they do not know, for reasons so various
that no general account of them can be given. But
" the question truly stated is, by what authority they
(the Scriptures) are made law." The answer is
obvious. They must be imposed by a sovereign
authority ; and, if so, either by sovereigns each
absolute in his own territory, or by the " Vicar of
Christ r as sovereign of the universal Church, who
must then have the power of judging, deposing, or
putting to death the subordinate sovereigns. Mean-
while, every man is " bound to make use of his
natural reason " to test the claims of a prophet. It
is clear that a great many prophets are not to
be trusted. When Ahab consulted four hundred
prophets, all but one were impostors, " and a little
before the time of the captivity the prophets were
generally liars (see Jeremiah xiv. 14)." We must
judge them then by their conformity to the estab-
lished authority. When Christians do not take their

228 HOBBES [CHAP.

own sovereign for God's prophet, they must take
their own dreams or obey " some strange prince," or
be bewitched into rebellion and the " chaos of violence
and civil war" by some fellow-subject.

Hobbes proceeds to treat of miracles. We take
an event to be miraculous when we do not perceive
its cause. The first rainbow " was a miracle because
the first," and consequently strange. A rainbow is
not a miracle now, because it is no longer strange,
even to those who do not know the cause. That
may be a miracle to one man which is not so to
another. Before astronomy became a science, a man
who predicted an eclipse would pass for a prophet.
Juggling, ventriloquism, and thaumaturgy are com-
mon, and " there is nothing how impossible soever to
be done that is impossible to be believed." When we
hear of a miracle, we must therefore consult the
lawful head of the Church how far we are to give
credit to the story. "A private man has always
the liberty, because thought is free, to believe or
not believe in his heart those acts that have been
given out for miracles," and he should consider who
is likely to profit by them. " But when it comes
to the confession of that faith, the private reason
must submit to the public, that is to say, to God's
lieutenant."

Hobbes was thus suggesting doubts as to the
evidences of the established creeds, doubts which
were to bear fruit in a later generation. Spinoza,
in the Tractatus Theologico-Foliticus, treated the ques-
tions on wider grounds and "went a bar'; beyond
what Hobbes has dared to say. No active con-
troversy, however, arose till a later period. Hobbes's

iv.] THE STATE 229

argument, we may notice, has a resemblance to
that which Hume made famous. Both of them
argue, not that miracles are impossible, but that the
proof of a miracle is always insufficient. Hobbes
has to assert that the events recorded in the Scrip-
tures really happened, but endeavours to show that
there is no proof that they happened. We must
believe on authority, and, moreover, on the authority
of the Church. Only by authority we do not mean
the intellectual authority of competent inquirers, but
the legal authority of the sovereign. Rather, we may
believe what we like, but we may only profess the
belief which the law allows us to profess.

We have still to see why he rejects the alternative
of the supremacy of the Church. The existing com-
monwealths are independent of each other, and there-
fore not subject in fact to any central authority ; but
it may still be urged that they ought to be subject to
this. To this he replies partly by the familiar Pro-
testant arguments from texts, and maintains that
Bellarmine's interpretations of "feed my sheep," and
so forth, are erroneous. But the main answer is given
in the last book upon " The Kingdom of Darkness."
There he takes up the position which was already
assumed in his account of the natural history of re-
ligion. The gods of the heathen are, as we have
seen, mere " phantasms " — dreams mistaken for reality
and so forth. The Church of Rome adopted the same
methods. By misinterpreting Scripture the priests
made people believe in devils and exorcism, in
purgatory and the efficiency of sacraments, and other
doctrines calculated to increase their power and give
them authority over the secular rulers. They adopted

230 HOBBES [CHAP.

many ceremonies and superstitions from the Gentiles,
and they introduced the vain and erroneous philosophy
of Aristotle to perplex men's minds. The argument
ends by a quaint comparison between the papacy and
the " kingdom of fairies." The whole " hierarchy " has
been built up like the " old wives' fables in England
concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play
in the night." It is needless to go into the details ;
but I may quote the striking phrase which sums up his
theory. " If a man consider the original of this great
ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that
the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased
Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave
thereof." " The Eoman Church," says a great living
authority, " in this way privily pushed itself into the
place of the Roman world-empire of which it is the
historical continuation." 1 A comparison of the phrases
may illustrate Hobbes's vigorous grasp of thought as
well as command of words.

His ascription of sovereignty in religious matters to
the civil authority was startling enough and led him.
into some difficulties. What, for example, are we to
say of the Christian martyrs ? They were clearly
rebels and yet have been generally praised for their
conduct. Hobbes has to " distinguish." To be a true
martyr, a man must have " received a calling to
preach." He must, moreover, have seen the facts to
which he testifies. " If he testifies to the resurrection,
he must have conversed with Christ before his death
and seen him after he was risen. Otherwise he can
only be a " martyr " (that is, a witness) to other men's

1 Harnack's What is Christianity? p. 252.

iv.] THE STATE 231

testimony. Moreover, there is only one article for
which a man ought to die, namely, that " Jesus is the
Christ." We are not to die for every private tenet of
our own or for tenets which suit the clergy. Naainan
set a very convenient precedent, and if, like him, we
obey our sovereign in using words which do not express
our thoughts, the action is not ours but our sovereign's.
To resist an infidel sovereign is to " sin against the
laws of God (for such are the laws of nature) and the
counsel of the apostles " (i.e. to obey princes). If we
do not take Naamaii's view, we must expect our
reward in heaven. " But," he asks, " what infidel
king is so unreasonable as, knowing he has a subject
that waiteth for the second coming of Christ after the
present world shall be burnt, and intendeth then to
obey him (which is the intent of believing that Jesus is
the Christ), and in the meantime thinketh himself
bound to obey the laws of that infidel king (which all
Christians are obliged in conscience to do), to put to
death or persecute such a subject?' Certainly if all
that is meant by belief in Christ is an intention of
obeying him as a king after the general resurrection,
the infidel king would be very unreasonable. They
sometimes are.

Hobbes sums up his belief in one phrase. " Re-
ligion," he says in dedicating his Seven Problems to
Charles II., " is not philosophy but law." We have
already seen what is the view which he takes in his
natural history of religion. Religion is the " fear of
power invisible." That is the essential meaning of the
instinct, and legislators have taken advantage of it to
strengthen their own authority and to keep the peace.
Whether the objects of worship be real or " phantasms,"

232 HOBBES [CHAP.

religion is useful just so far as it promotes that end.
We know nothing of God except His power ; and it is
upon His power that His authority is founded. All
the other attributes ascribed to him " are not to declare
what He is/' but how much we honour Him. " The end
of worship among men is power." The worship of
God is directed by " those rules of honour that reason
dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent
men in hope of benefit," or for fear of damage, or
thankfulness for good received. Prayer and thanks
are simply an acknowledgment of God's power.
Rational worship "argues a fear of Him, and fear
is a confession of His power." I will not ask
whether Hobbes's theological conceptions would
really justify even this account of religion. It
comes apparently to this, that religion is a system of
beliefs and observances imposed by the sovereign in
order to give force to the " Law of Nature," that is, the
law of self-preservation and the obligation of the social
contract. Modern thinkers have given a good many
definitions of religion ; but this I fancy is not among
them.

Hobbes's purpose is clear enough. The Church, as he
holds, is an organised body which has taken advantage
of phantasms and dreams to claim supernatural powers
and to forge a system of spiritual weapons capable of
encountering the secular weapons of the sovereign.
Then it has elaborated the sham philosophy of the
schoolmen, the empusa which strangles thought by
words and enables it to bewilder men by mysterious
dogmas which are really nonsense. In attacking the
/ Church, therefore, he is defending the cause of enlight-
enment against a systematic obscurantism. He traces

w.] THE STATE 233

the growth of the spiritual power through three stages :
first the claim of priests to make belief obligatory
instead of free ; secondly, the concentration of this
power in the hands of bishops ; and thirdly, absorption
of the episcopal in the papal power. Queen Elizabeth
got rid of the pope ; the Presbyterians of the bishops ;
and the Presbyterians have now lost their power, so
that "we are reduced to the independency of the
primitive Christians," every man believing what he
pleases. This, he says, "is perhaps the best," first,
because there ought to be no power "over the con-
sciences of men, but of the Word itself, working faith
in every man ; " and secondly, because it is unreasonable
to ask a man to accept the reasons of others, " which
is little better than to venture his salvation at cross
and pile." Priests ought to know that power is pre-
served by the same virtues by which it is acquired —
"that is to say, by wisdom, humility, clearness of
doctrine, and sincerity of conversation; and not by
suppression of the natural sciences and of the morality
of natural reason ; nor by obscure language ; nor by
arrogating to themselves more knowledge than they
make appear ; nor by pious frauds ; " nor by other faults
which tend to scandal. Hobbes would thus seem to be
in favour of complete religious toleration and absolute
indifference of the State in religious matters. How is
this reconcilable with the theory that "religion is
law ? "

The explanation is not far to seek. The endless
religious controversies had been made an argument
on one side for the necessity of a central spiritual
authority, and on the other for a limitation of the
essentials of religious belief to the points upon which

234 HOBBES [CHAP.

all men were agreed. Hobbes having, in words at
least, to accept the Christian doctrines, declares that
the only article of faith " which the Scripture maketh
simply necessary to salvation is this, that Jesus is the
Christ " : an article which, as we have seen, he manipu-
lates strangely enough. Other dogmas need not
trouble us. "For it is with the mysteries of our
religion as with wholesome pills for the sick ; which
swallowed whole have the virtue to cure ; but chewed
are for the most part cast up again without effect."
Now when the State orders us to swallow, it will
allow us to take our pills whole. The State, as he
says, can only take notice of our words. It is one of
the vital errors of the false teachers to " extend the
power of the law to the very thoughts and consciences
of men." That, he intimates, means the Inquisition,
which he detests as heartily as any man. The only
interest of the State is in peace. The secular
sovereign will not want to rouse theological quarrels
or to burn his subjects to enforce dogmas. Persecution
is the natural consequence when a great corporation
has been built up upon the ground of a dogmatic
system, and when all its interests depend upon en-
forcing orthodoxy. The destruction of such a power
is Hobbes's real aim. If we subordinate the Church to
the State, the secular sovereign will be no longer the
tool of the priest, and, even if he prescribes the verbal
acceptance of certain dogmas, he will take care that
they do no harm. His aim will be to suppress contro- >
versy, not to hinder speculation.

The doctrine of toleration was developing, though
slowly enough, and Hobbes saw one difficulty clearly.
If by " religion '; we mean simply the creed of the

iv.] THE STATE 235

individual, the case for toleration is obvious and over-
powering. It must be wrong, that is, to punish a man
for accepting what he believes to be true. But a
practical difficulty remains when "religion " is regarded
as the creed of an organised body, which has therefore
a system of laws. What is to be done when such laws
come into conflict with the laws of the State ? The
difficulty need not occur if as a matter of fact the
Church and State do not represent conflicting theories,
or if there be an agreement as to a demarcation of their
spheres of action. But as religious motives affect
men's conduct as a whole, the Church can hardly be
indifferent to every part of the action of the State.
When differences occur, as for example when the State
undertakes the charge of education, there is even in our
own day a great difficulty in applying the principle of
toleration, however much it may be accepted in general
terms. In Hobbes's time, such difficulties were of
course much greater. The Puritan proposed to alter
the constitution of the Church, but not to diminish its
authority or to divorce it from the State. As sects
multiplied, the principle of toleration became more
widely accepted ; for it is plain that when you are in a
minority of one your only logical plea for liberty must
imply universal toleration. Meanwhile Hobbes, dis-
gusted by the struggles of rival sects and the claims of
the Catholic church to interfere with political matters
in the interest of the hated dogmatic system, took a
short cut to a solution. Instead of trying to effect a
reconciliation, he would simply put one power under
the feet of the other, and the dominant power should
be that which is least given to bigotry.

In some respects Hobbes's solution was that which

236 HOBBES [CHAP. IT.

actually succeeded. The claim of the pope to depose
kings was of little practical importance ; and Hobbes,
like his countrymen, seems to have been unduly
nervous. Giant Pope, though far from being so de-
crepit as Bunyan thought, was ceasing to have much
authority over the political world. The Church of
England was following the course which Hobbes
desired. He complains that the bishops made certain
claims to independent authority, but remarks that at
any rate they had practically submitted to the king.
That tendency developed, and Hobbes would have
been thoroughly content with the eighteenth century,
when the Church ceased to make any claim to corporate
power, and the clergy became useful dependants on the
possessors of patronage.

NOTE

DURING the last months of his life Sir Leslie Stephen
was writing this book. When he could no longer work
he asked me to see it through the press. Its readers
should, I think, be told that he had some thoughts of
adding to it a few sentences about the influence exer-
cised by Hobbes on later philosophers, the French
Encyclopaedists and the English Utilitarians, and
that he gave me some notes, by the aid of which this
addition might have been made. However, before his
death I had sent him word that the book was so com-
plete that no second hand ought to touch it. I have
only made those small changes that must always be
made whenever a book is printed. He expressly
charged me to acknowledge his debt of gratitude to
three of his precursors : his friend Groom Eobertson,
Dr. F. Tonnies, and M. Georges Lyon.

F. W. MAITLAND.

237

INDEX

Advancement of Learning (Ba-
con), 85.

Althusius, Johannes, Politics of,
177.

Andrewes, Bishop, 179.

Areopagitica (Milton), 69.

Aristotle, 118, 191.

Arlington, Lord, 60.

Armada, The Spanish, 178.

Athense Oxonienses (Anthony
Wood), 2.

Aubrey, John, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11,
12, 17, 25, 34, 37, 46, 48, 49, 57,
60, 61, 65, 66.

Augustine, St., 160.

Austin, John, 207, 208.

Autobiography, Hobbes's, 2.

Ayton, Sir Robert, 11, 12.

B

Bacon, 1, 12, 13, 58, 61, 67, 76, 85.
Behemoth, 4, 26, 29, 30, 60.
Bellarmine, Cardinal, 179, 229.
Bentham, Jeremy, 124, 207.
Berkeley, Bishop, 79, 99.
Blount, Charles, 68-9.
Bodies, Properties of, 99.
Boyle, Robert, 51, 54, 76.
Bramhall, Bishop, 36, 50, 150, 151,
154, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165,

Buchanan, George, 58.
Buckle, Henry T., 86.
Budget of Paradoxes (de Mor-
gan), 55.

Bunyan, John, 236.
Burnet, Bishop, 60.

Calvin, 160.

Calvinism, 160.

Cambridge, University of, 51, 60.

Catholicism, Roman, 30, 178, 179.

Cause and Effect, 101 seq.

Cavendish, William, 1st Earl of

Devonshire, 6, 7.
Cavendish Family, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13,

15, 16, 19, 20, 36, 37, 38, 43, 46.
Charles I., 27, 28, 186,197.
II., 39, 41, 45, 57, 58, 59, 60,

67, 231.

Chatsworth, 7, 14.
Chillingworth, William, 25.
Christianity, 78.

Church and State, 176setf.,222seg.
Circle, Squaring the, 52-6.
Clarendon, Lord, 24-5, 26, 37, 41,

42, 56, 60.

Clinton, Sir George, 16.
Cluverius's Historia Universalis,

61.

Coke, Sir Edward, 61, 206.
Collins, Anthony, 69.

166, 167, 168, 169, 170.
Brief Lives (Aubrey), 2.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 72.

Cominges, Comte de, 58.
Comte, 155.
Condillac, 94.
239

240

HOBBES

Constitution, The British, 193.
Cooper, Samuel (miniature

painter), 58.
Copernicus, 77, 79.
Cosin, Bishop, 40, 45.
Cowley, 46, 47, 48.
Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 41, 42, 198.

D

Davenant, Sir William, 46, 47.
Decameron Physiologicum, 55.
De Give, 34, 35, 37, 39, 42, 78, 150,

173, 182, 190, 194, 201, 207, 220,

222.

De Corpore, 50, 52, 66, 70, 77, 79,
87, 88, 95, 98, 105, 114, 149, 150.

De Corpore Politico, 114, 173, 182.

Definitions, 92 seq.

De Homine, 114.

De Quincey, 15.

Descartes, 20, 21, 32, 33, 37, 38, 65,
78, 81, 82, 91, 98, 107, 111, 146.

Determinism, 157 seq.

Devonshire, Earls of, see Caven-
dish.

Dialogue upon the Common Law

61, 193, 206.

Dioptrique (Descartes), 33.
Divinity, The Schoolmen's, 78.
Donne, John, 179.
Dort, Synod of, 158, 159, 160.
Dreams, 115 seq.
Dryden, 67.
Du Verdus, 36.

Fell, Dr., 2.
Filmer, Sir Robert, 49.
Final causes, 102 seq.
Freewill, 157-72.

G

Galileo, 20, 21, 22,77, 79, 111, 125.

Gassendi, 20, 24, 35, 37, 40, 45, 78.

Geometry, 79-81.

Gierke, Professor, 177.

Gladstone, 203.

God, Existence of, 146 ; attributes

of, 147 seq.

Godolphin, Sidney, 25, 37, 38.
Gondibert (Davenant), 46, 48.
Grotius, 49, 177.

H

E

Eachard, 68.
Edwards, Jonathan, 159.
Effect, Cause and, 101 seq.
Elizabeth, Queen, 233.
Ethics (Spinoza), 122.

F

Falkland, Lord, 25, 26.

Furquhar's Constant Couple, 68.

Hales, John, 25.
Hamilton, Sir William, 85, 148.
Hammond, Henry, 25.
Hampden, John, 199.

Harnack's Tf7ia« is Christianity?

230.

Hartley, David, 118.
Harvey, William, 48, 78, 79, 81,

111.

Henry VIII., 6, 178.
Heylin, Peter, 20.
History of the Sabbath (Heylin),

20.

Hobbes, Thomas, his autobiog-
raphy, 2; family history and
birth, 3; school, 4; goes to
Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 4;
youthful pursuits, 6; tutor to
the Cavendish family, 6-8 ; long
connection with the family, 8;
makes the grand tour, 8; trans-
lates Thucydides, 9, 12; friend-
ship with eminent men, 11, 12,
13; death of his patron, 15;
travels with another pupil, 16 ;
first acquaintance with Euclid,
17, 70, 71, 77, 80; inquiries into'

INDEX

241

the nature of motion, 18, 21, 77,
78, 80; devotes himself seri-
ously to philosophy, 19 ; renews
his connection with the Caven-
dish family, 19, 20; further
travels, 20; recognised by con-
temporary philosophers, 20 ;
new acquaintances at home
and abroad, 20, 21, 25; circu-
lates summary of his philo-
sophical ideas, 27; goes to
France for greater safety, 27 ;
controversy with Descartes,
33 ; publishes De Give, 34 ; be-
gins to write The Leviathan,
34 ; tutor to the exiled Prince
of Wales, 38 ; severe illness,
40; publication of The Levia-
than, 40; returns to England,
41, 45; accused of inconsis-
tency and disloyalty, 41, 42,
43, 54; suspected of atheism,
44, 45, 59, 60, 67-9, 144, 150, 154 ;
makes acquaintance of various
distinguished men, 46-49; con-
troversy with Bishop Bram-
hall, 50 ; publishes De Corpore,
50 ; attempts to square the cir-
cle, 52, 53, 55 ; attacks the uni-
versities, 51-7 ; controversy
with John Wallis, 52-5; be-
comes a favourite at Court,
58 ; receives a pension of £100
a year from Charles II., 59; ex-
amination and suppression of
his writings ordered, 59, 60;
his fame abroad, 61 ; writes a
long Latin poem in his eightieth
year, 61 ; publishes Decameron
Physiolocjicum in his ninetieth
year, 55 ; produces a work on
Common Law, 61 ; translates
the Iliad and Odyssey, 62;
death, 63; starting-point of his
philosophical speculations, 73,
74, 84; aim of his philosophy,
R

84; subject of philosophy, 84;
theory of the universe, 72 seq.,
80 seq. ; divergence from Des-
cartes's views, 81-2 ; theory of
logic, 87 seq.; physical science,
98 seq.; psychology, 109 seq. ;
theology, 144 seq.; freewill,
157 seq.; political system, 173
seq. ; his doctrine of motion,
18, 21, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84 passim ;
materialism of his philosophy,
82, 98 ; philosophical methods,
12, 13 ; ethical theories, 21 ;
hostility to established beliefs,
75 ; attitude towards the spirit-
ual authorities, 29-32, 34, 45,
57, 75; heterodox views, 76;
comparison of Hobbes with
Bacon, 12, 13; resemblance
between Hobbes and Herbert
Spencer, 73 ; a great thinker, 1 ;
a born logician, 70; Euclid his
type of reasoning, 88 ; failure as
a mathematician, 53; intellec-
tual energy and boldness, 55,
56, 61, 62; personal timidity,
56, 156; shortcomings, 65; con-
temporary estimate of him, 67 ;
general opposition aroused by
his views, 67 ; his one-sidedness,
71 ; idiosyncrasies, intellectual
and moral, 70 ; his unemotional
nature, 72; dogmatic and ag-
gressive methods, 77 ; views
of love, 132; cynical views of
human nature, 139; style, 9,
10, 117 ; favourite authors, 65 ;
personal attractiveness, 23-4;
sincerity of his friendship, 23,
24; personal appearance and
habits, 63-4; devotion to music
and tennis, 64.

Hobbes, Thomas (father), 3, 4.

Mrs. (mother), 3, 4.

John (brother), 4.

Francis (uncle), 4.

242

HOBBES

"Hobbism,"74, 146.
Hoeffdiug, Professor, 84.
Human Nature, 108, 114, 120,

123, 127, 132, 139.
Hume, 99, 118, 229.
Huxley, 81.
Huygens, 58, 59.

Ideas, Association of, 118-19.
Imagination, 107, 115.
Infinite, The, 109, 149.

James I., 7, 8, 179.
Johnson, Samuel, 201.
Joiison, Ben, 11, 12.
Jowett, Benjamin, 10.

K

Kenneth, 61.

Kepler, 78.

Kings, Divine right of, 179 seq.

Language, 92.
Laud, Archbishop, 31.
Laughter, 130, 131.
Law, Moral, 214 seq.
Leibnitz, 52.

Leighton, Archbishop, 24.
Leviathan, The, 1, 2, 32, 34, 36,
38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 59, 60, 61, 65,
68, 69, 73, 82, 114, 120, 127, 132,
136, 150, 154, 173, 182, 193, 195,
199, 206, 207, 211, 212, 220, 223.

the Great, 182, 183, 192, 194,

195, 196, 197, 200, 204, 212.
Lewes, G. H., 117.
Lilburne, John, 206.
Locke, John, 1, 67.
Logic, 87-97.
Longornontanus, 38.
Louis XIV., 59, 198.

M

Machiavelli, 185.
Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 4, 5.
Maine, Sir Henry, 61, 207.
Malmesbury, 3.
Mansel, Henry, 148.
Manwaring, Bishop, 28.
Mare Clausum (Selden), 20.
Mary, Queen of Scots, 178.
Meditations (Descartes), 32, 81,

82.

Meditationes Sacrae (Bacon), 85.
Memory, 107.
Mersenne, Marin, 21, 22, 23, 24, 32,

33, 35, 38, 40, 45, 56, 67, 78.
Method (Descartes), 32.
Mill, John, 94.
Milton, 21, 24, 49, 58, 157, 158,

205.

Miracles, 228.
Molesworth's edition of Hobbes's

Works, 70.

" Monarchomachist ' contro-
versy, 178.
Montaigne, 67.
Montesquieu, 193.
More, Sir Thomas, 58.
Morley, Bishop, 25.
Motion, Nature of, 18, 21, 77, 78,
80-1, 84.

N

Names, 89-90.

Natural History of Religion

(Hume), 155.
Nature, Law of, 173 seq., 186, 187,

188, 189, 191, 208, 215.
State of, 185 seq.

Newton, Sir Isaac, 52, 111.
Nicholas, Sir Edward, 43, 44.

O

One-sidedness, 71.
Oxford, 4, 5, 51, 52.

INDEX

243

Paine, Thomas, 206.

Papacy, The, 30, 178, 179, 221 seq.,

229, 230, 235, 236.
Pascal, 67.
Passions, 125 seq.
Pepys, Samuel, 60.
Petty, Sir William, 37, 51.
Phenomena, Natural, 109 seq.
Place, 100.
Politics, Hobhes's System of, 173

seq.

Pollock, Sir Frederic, 122.
Presbyterianism, 31.
Psychology, 114 seq.
Punishment, Eternal, 170-1.
Puritans, The, 5, 30.
Pym, John, 203.

R

Ravaillac, 178.

Richelieu, 17.

Rights of Man (Paine), 206.

Robertson, Groom, 12, 55.

Rochefoucauld, 139.

Rousseau, 13.

Royal Society, The, 51, 52, 54, 76.

S

Savile, Sir Henry, 51.

Scargill, 60.

Science, Physical, 73, 75, 76, 82,

98, 113.

Selden, John, 20, 48, 49.
Self-preservation, 189 seq.
Sensation, 18.
Sense, 106-7.
Seven Problems, 231.
Sheldon, Bishop, 25.
Sorbiere, 13, 35, 58, 59.
Sordello (Browning), 136.
Sovereignty, 181, 186, 192 seq.
Space, 98-9.
Spencer, Herbert, 73, 122, 148.

Spinoza, 100, 101, 122, 156, 228.

Spirits, 83.

Spiritual Power, 220 seq.

Sprat, 13.

Stewart, Dugald, 85, 94.

Suarez, 179.

Sully, Professor, 131.

Swift, 5.

T

Table Talk (Selden), 49.

Tenison, Archbishop, 15.

Testament, The Old, 226.
— The New, 227.

Thought, 84, 87-8.

Thucydides, Hobbes's Transla-
tion of, 9, 10, 12.

Time, 98-9.

Toland, John, 69.

Toleration, Religious, 233 seq.

Tolstoi, 202.

Tonnies, Dr., 18, 55.

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
(Spinoza), 156, 228.

Truth, 87.

Tyrannicide, 178.

U

Universities, The, 19, 50, 51, 52.

Venice, Constitution of, 17.
Voltaire, 66.

W

Waller, Edmund, 16, 37, 40,46, 48.
Wallis, John, 41, 42, 52, 53, 54, 88.
Warburtou, William, 69.
Ward, Bishop, 51, 53.
Wentworth, Sir Thomas, 16.
White, Thomas, 59, 60.
Wood, Anthony, 2.
Words, 89-90.
Wren, Sir Christopher, 51.

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