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HOBBES
RICHARD PETERS
HOBBES
Richard Peters

PENGUIN BOOKS
 Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex
U.S.A. :
Penguin Books Inc,. 3300 Clipper Mill Road, Baltimore 1 1, Md
CANADA: Penguin Books (Canada) Ltd, 178 Norseman Street,
Toronto 18, Ontario
AUSTRALIA: Penguin Books Pty Ltd, 762 Whitekorse Road,
Mitcham, Victoria
SOUTH AFRICA: Penguin Books (S.A.) Pty Ltd, Gibraltar House^
Regent Road, Sea Point, Cape Town

First published 1956

Kfade and printed in Great Britain

by The Whitefriars Press Ltd
London and Tonbridge
 ToJ.P.

For when we calculate

the magnitude and motions of heaven or eatth,

we do not ascend into heaven that we may divide it into parts,

or measure the motions thereof,

but we do it sitting still in our closets t

or in the dark.

THOMAS HOBBES
 CONTENTS
Editorial Foreword 9

Preface i o

1 LIFE AND PROBLEMS 13

2 METHOD MAKETH MAN 45

3 NATURE AND MIND 80

4 SENSE AND IMAGINATION IO2

5 SPEECH I
19

6 MOTIVATION 138

7 MOTIVES AND MORALITY l6o

8 THE STATE IpO

9 SOVEREIGNTY, LAW, AND

FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 215

IO RELIGION 240

Index 267
 EDITORIAL FOREWORD
THE series to which this book belongs is devoted
both to the history and to the problems of philo-
sophy in all its various branches. It is intended for
the general reader, but not exclusively. The aim is
to write at a level which will also interest the
specialist. Beyond this there has been no attempt
at uniformity. The series is not designed to reflect
the standpoint of any one philosophical school.
In recent times the fame of Thomas Hobbes has
rested chiefly his political philosophy, which is
on
principally distinguished by his theory of sove-
reignty. But, as Mr
Peters shows, this is by no
means the only thing for which he is worth reading.
In particular his theory of language remains of the
greatest interest. Hobbes was an exceptionally
acute thinker, and even those who are unable to
accept his thorough-going materialism will find
that they have much to learn from a comprehen-
sive study of his work.
A. J. AVER
 PREFACE
THE Hobbes' works used and referred to in this book are
texts of
those edited Sir William Molesworth. 1 The English Works of
by
Thomas Hobbes (edited by Molesworth in eleven volumes and pub-
lished in 1839) will be abbreviated to E.W. and the Opera Latina

(edited by Molesworth in five volumes and published in 1845) will

be abbreviated to L.W. Thus a reference to the tenth page of e.g.
Leviathan will appear as E.W. Ill, 10. Readers who may be stimu-
lated by this book to read Leviathan, at least, for themselves, will
find Michael Oakeshott's edition in Blackwell's Political Texts
most suitable. The editor has provided an imaginative introduc-
tion.
In my attempt in this book to reconstruct Hobbes' problems and
have been most helped by G. C.
to present his solutions to them, I
Robertson's Hobbes (Blackwood, London, 1886), J. Laird's Hobbes
9

(Ernest Benn, London, 1934), and F. Brandt's Thomas Hobbes

Mechanical Conception of Nature (Engl. Trans., Hachette, London,
1928). The last mentioned book is an indispensable classic for all
serious students of Hobbes. Readers who are more anxious for a

general impression than for technicalities will find Leslie Stephen's

Hobbes (Macmillan, London, 1904) stimulating as well as scholarly.
I am indebted to Miss Helen Hervey for lending me a copy of
her Ph.D. thesis on Hobbes' Theory of Truth and Knowledge^ which
was a great help to me in gathering together the relevant material
from Hobbes for my second chapter. I am also grateful to Ruth
Saw, Maurice Cranston, and Professor H. B. Acton for reading
and commenting on parts of the book, and to Professor A. J. Ayer,
the editor of the series, for his detailed suggestions for improve-
ments especially on points of style. But my greatest debt is to John
Watkins who has helped me enormously with his painstaking com-
ments on the whole book.

I .In reproducing quotations from the text of the Molesworth edition

the have been ignored except in one or two places where they
italics
seemed necessary to the sense of the passage. In one or two other places
italics have been used by the author to siress some point he is making
about Hobbes' own words. These passages are indicated by means of a
footnote.
 KEY TO HOBBES' MAJOR WORKS IN
THE MOLESWORTH EDITION
E.W. I De Corpore (English translation)
E.W. II Philosophical Rudiments concerning Govern-
ment and Society (the English translation
of De Give)
E.W. Ill Leviathan
E.W. IV Human Nature
De Corpore Politico
Of Liberty and Necessity
E.W. V The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity,
and Chance
E.W. VI A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Stu-
dent of The Common Laws of England
Behemoth
E.W. VIII, IX Translation of Thucydides
L.W. I Vita and auctarium (supplement)
Vita carmine expressa (the verse autobio-
graphy)
L.W. II De Homine

The Little Treatise or A Short Tract on First Principles is

published as an appendix to The Elements of Law (ed.
Tonnies, G.U.P., 1928).
The dates and contexts of the above works can be found
in Gh. I.
 CHAPTER ONE

LIFE AND PROBLEMS

THOMAS HOBBES was born prematurely on 5 April, 1588,

when hismother heard of the approach of the Spanish
Armada. In spite of this somewhat unpropitious entry into
the world Hobbes had the equivalent of two lives. For he
lived cheerfully to the age of ninety-one, which was double
the normal expectation of life in those times; his health
greatly improved at about the age of forty and the melan-
choly and seedy mien, which, together with his jet black
hair, earned for him in his youth the nickname of 'The
Crow', gave way to a ruddy complexion; and although he
was a competent classical scholar and stylist at forty, his
bent for philosophy did not reveal itself till he was nearly
fifty. He was thus a schoolboy during the closing years of
Elizabeth's reign, an undergraduate, young tutor, and
classical scholar under James I, a mathematician and

aspiring philosopher under Charles I, a famous and suspect

philosopher under Cromwell, and after the Restoration a
fashionable historian, a poet, and almost an English institu-
tion.
Hobbes' father was vicar of Westport, an adjunct of
Malmesbury in Gloucestershire. Aubrey referred to him as
an ignorant man who 'could only read the prayers of the
Church and the homilies, and disesteemed Learning, ... as
not knowing the Sweetnes of it.' l However he had other
ways of enlivening his parishioners. On one occasion, after
a card party on a Saturday night, he went to sleep in the
middle of the service and announced to the congregation,
while dreaming, that clubs were trumps. He was a choleric
man and, on being provoked by another parson at the
i. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 147 (Ed. O. Dick.).

13
 HOBBES
church door, struck him and fled to London, where he died
in obscurity. Thomas, however, was fortunate in having a
rich, respectable, and childless uncle who paid for his educa-
tion. He was sent to school at four at Westport church and
was learning Latin and Greek at six. At eight he was sent
to a small private school in Malmesbury where a certain
Mr Robert Latimer, *a good Grecian and the first that
1
came into our Parts hereabout since the Reformation',
took a great interest in him and used to instruct him and
one or two other boys till nine o'clock at night.
At the age of fourteen, having already attained sufficient
competence in Latin and Greek to translate Euripides'
Medea into Latin iambics, he was sent by his uncle to
Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he remained for five years
before taking his bachelor's degree. At Oxford he was bored
by his Aristotelian teachers, though he thought himself a
good disputant had a strong Puritan
at logic. His college
tradition. This may well have perturbed him, though his
later reflections on Oxford indicate that the prevalent
drunkenness, wantonness, gaming, and other vices, which
occasioned frequent commissions and campaigns for reform,
impressed him more than the religious threats to peace.
Later in his life he was to launch furious attacks on the Uni-
versities as hotbeds of sedition planted by the Roman
Catholic Church in the Middle Ages to perpetuate the
challenge to secular power, for which purpose they were
also used later by the Puritans. But it is doubtful whether
Hobbes was politically conscious enough to see them in that
light while he was an undergraduate; rather, if we can
tru$t Aubrey, his interests lay more in trapping jackdaws
than in baiting Puritans. He also preferred going to book-
binders' shops and gaping at maps to poring over theories
of sense-perception. For at this time it was the new and
strange worlds charted by Drake and Magellan that fired
his imagination rather than the intellectual voyages of

Kepler and Galileo out of the snug, earth-centred security

of the Aristotelian cosmology.
i. J. Aubrey, op. cit., p. 148.

'4
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
On leaving Oxford in 1608 Hobbes was fortunate to be-
come tutor to the young son of William Cavendish, Earl of
Devonshire for in this way he was introduced to influential
;

people, foreign travel, and a first-class library. These were

to be the three main stimulants that turned Hobbes first of
all into an eminent classical scholar and stylist and later into

a brilliant philosopher. The young earl, who was about

Hobbes' age, already had a wife aged twelve. One of
Hobbes' duties was to keep the young man's purse. On
occasions this necessitated borrowing money, in the course
of which he often caught cold through standing about
soliciting with wet feet. In 1610, however, the two young
men were packed off to the Continent.
Hobbes' intellectual development can be conveniently
related to his three visits to the Continent before he went to
Paris as a voluntary exile. On this first occasion he dis-
covered the disrepute into which the Aristotelianism, in
which he had been nurtured, had fallen. Kepler had pub-
lished his Astronomia Nova in 1607 and Galileo had just re-
turned to Tuscany after triumphant revelation of the
his
new planet Neptune by means of his telescope. The founda-
tions of Aristotelianism were cracking. Politically, too,
France was in a turmoil after the assassination of Henry IV
by Ravaillac, a lay-Jesuit. Hobbes returned from Italy with
his Greek and Latin vastly improved and with a determina-
tion to become a classical scholar. There were plenty of
facilities for this in his master's library. He was also con-

siderably helped by the access to prominent people which

his position in the Cavendish family afforded him. Aubrey
records that 'the Lord Chancellor Bacon loved to converse
with him. He assisted his Lordship in translating severall of
'
x
his Essayes into Latin . . . Bacon seemed particularly
appreciative of Hobbes' company because he was accus-
tomed to dictate his thoughts 'in his delicious walkes at

Gorambery', and Hobbes was the only companion whose

had been
notes gave evidence that the Chancellor's musings
understood. These meetings probably took place between
I. J. Aubrey, op. cit., p. 149.
 HOBBES
1621 and 1626 when Bacon was in retirement, writing and
dabbling in scientific research. It was Hobbes who told
Aubrey that Bacon died of pneumonia after getting out of
his coach in winter in order to buy a fowl from an old
woman which would serve as a subject for experiments on
the preservative powers of snow.
Not unnaturally this association with Bacon, while he was
engaged on research and soon after the appearance of his
Novum Organum in 1620 - his famous attack on Aristotelian-
ism and outline of the new experimental method - has led
to much speculation about Bacon's influence on Hobbes. It
isusual to point out that Hobbes expressed his contempt for
the experiments of the Royal Society which were conducted
in the true Baconian spirit 1 that he hailed Copernicus,
;

Galileo, and Harvey as the founders of the new natural phi-

2
losophy and did not mention Bacon that Hobbes' inspira-
;

tion came from the deductive method of mathematics of

which Bacon knew little and which he regarded as being of
little importance compared with the method of induction.

All this important and incontrovertible. But too much

is

stress differences can lead to the neglect of more

on palpable
profound similarities. Already Hobbes had met with wide-
spread contempt for the Aristotelian tradition. Is it not pro-
bable that he would have felt the wind of this climate of
opinion more keenly when he listened to and read the Lord
Chancellor's pungent and self-confident indictments of the
wisdom of the past ? This was an age of shifting opinions and
increasing social mobility. Bacon was the mouthpiece of self-
made men who thought that knowledge as well as political
office was obtainable by those who had ability and wits.
Bacon provided a book for them which would serve as a sub-
stitute for being brought up in the right families and

colleges. With this book in his hand a judicious man could

emerge from the barren wilderness of forms and species,
tended by the relics of scholasticism, and find a new heaven
and a new earth. The book, too, would enable him to
improve this newly found paradise by using Nature's secrets
i. E.W. IV, 437. 2. E.W. I, viii.

16
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
for his own ends. For to Bacon and his followers knowledge
meant power - power to use Nature for human purposes.
This conviction, shared by so many of the new men of the
seventeenth century and evidenced by the rapid development
of experimentation and technology, is one of the keys to
understanding Hobbes' thought. Like Bacon, he was to coin
some of his most pungent epigrams for the discomfiture of
the Aristotelians; like Bacon, he replaced reverence for
tradition by belief in method, albeit a different method;
and, like Bacon, he believed that knowledge was power. His
hope was to devise a civil philosophy which would provide a
rational ground-plan for the reconstruction of civil society
by those who could penetrate the secrets of human nature.
There is, too, another significant similarity between
Hobbes and Bacon. Both men used language to say things
clearly, pungently, and in order to convert. They believed
that ambiguities in language were intolerable. Bacon refer-
red to them as idols of the market place which lie at the
source of much nonsense and misunderstanding; Hobbes
thought that society could almost be saved by definitions
and tracked down the various types of ambiguity and vacu-
ousness in scholastic terminology which he regarded as
*

potential sources of danger to the peace. Words,' he says,

'are wise men's counters; they do but reckon by them; but

they are the money of fools.' For both men the primary
1

function of language was to describe things clearly, words

being 'signs' or 'notes' or 'marks' of things or of our thoughts
about things. Nature, for these self-confident adventurers,
was no longer haunted by mysteries to be suggested and
conveyed by language; she lay before them to read, to
probe, to use. The medievals, and, to a large extent, the
Elizabethans were involved in Nature; they felt bound in a
settled order by common ties issuing from a benign protec-
tor. Their language of description did justice to this sense of

belonging and was therefore less clear because it expressed

their intimations of this secure relationship their explana- ;

tions, to our more detached way of looking at Nature,

i. E.W. Ill, 25.
 HOBBES
systematically confused their fears, hopes, and aspirations
with how Nature in fact behaved. Aristotelianism, which
Hobbes attacked so savagely, represented a sort of twilight
world between animism and a more detached mode of
explanation. Even in the thoughts of Sir Thomas Browne,
Hobbes' curious contemporary, superstitions and mysteries
jostled higgledy-piggledy with rational explanations. But to
Hobbes, Bacon, Descartes, and other representatives of the
new order, Nature was something apart from man to be
clearly and distinctly conceived, more like a machine to be
understood and used than an abiding place to be endured
and enjoyed. To Descartes animals were machines; Hobbes
even achieved the detachment necessary for regarding both
men and civil society as machines to be understood and
manipulated. This was a great advance in detachment; for
most men even to-day are as involved and non-detached in
their thinking about society as Hobbes' predecessors were
about Nature.
Surely this similarity in outlook expressed in their hos-
tility towards Aristotelianism, in their denunciations of
verbal ambiguities and their preference for plain, clear
speech, in their belief in the efficacy of method or tech-
nique, and in their conviction that knowledge was power,
owed something to these early meetings after Hobbes' re-
turn from the Continent ? Surely from this didactic master
of English prose, Hobbes caught something of his inquisitive
pragmatic attitude towards Nature ? Hobbes never acknow-
ledged any debt to Bacon. Indeed he prided himself, like
many dogmatists, on avoiding stuffing his mind with other
people's opinions. Sir William Petty reported that he never
saw more than half a dozen books in Hobbes' chamber and
Aubrey recorded 'He was wont to say that if he had read as
much as other men, he should have knowne no more than
other men.' 1 But these reports refer to a later period after
Hobbes had emerged as a philosopher. Until at least the age
of forty he read copiously in the Cavendish library and his
friend Sorbiere regarded Hobbes' style as a survival from
i. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 154.
18
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
Bacon under whom he wrote in his youth and from whom
he learnt a great deal. We know definitely from Aubrey that
Hobbes helped to translate at least three of Bacon's essays
into Latin. Hobbes' meetings with Bacon antedated his
espousal of the rival deductive method. And, in general, few
men are aware of the sources of their most deep-seated pre-
suppositions or admit them gladly if perchance they light
upon their traces. This is especially the case with those who
pride themselves on their originality.
Hobbes' study of the classics lasted about fifteen years, a
period which he refers to in his verse autobiography as the
1
happiest in his life. His purpose in turning to the classics
was not merely to improve his style. In the supplement to his
2
prose autobiography it is indicated that he also did so in
order to develop an adequate philosophy in view of the dis-
credit into which the philosophy of the schools had fallen.
Their logic and metaphysics were distasteful because of
their sophistry and contentiousness, their ethics because it

rested on popular prejudice rather than on truth, and their

Aristotelian physics because it smelt of the study, being
based on the ingenuity of pedants rather than on investiga-
tions of nature. The literature of the schools being, too, of
little civil use, Hobbes turned to Greece and Rome in

search of treasures which he could employ more profitably.

The supplement then goes on to speak of Hobbes' friend-
ship with Bacon, who thought so highly of him, and with
Edward Herbert, philosopher and historian. It does not
seem that Hobbes had no interest in philosophy during
these years; on the contrary he seems to have been actively
dissatisfied with the philosophy of the Schools and to be in
search of other inspiration. This did not come till later when
he discovered geometry. In the meantime, after reading
through many poets and historians, Hobbes decided, for
reasons both of style and of civil usefulness, to translate
Thucydides.
Hobbes' choice was a significant indication of the trend
of his thought. For, like Thucydides, Hobbes believed that
i. L.W. I, Ixxxviii. 2. L.W. I, xxiv.

'9
 HOBBES
the function of the historian was 'to instruct and enable men,
by the knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves pru-
1
dently in the present and providently towards the future'.
The historian, while remaining truthful, should select and
record events which seem most significant for instructing
mankind. Hobbes, in his introduction to his translation,
described Thucydides as 'the most politic historiographer
that ever writ' 2 who 'least of all liked democracy' and
praised the government of Athens most when Peisistratus,
the tyrant, reigned, and when at the start of the Pelopon-
nesian War 'it was democratical in name, but in effect mon-
archical under Pericles. So that it seemeth, that as he was of
3
regal descent, so he best approved of the regal government.'
In his autobiographies Hobbes stressed that he published
his translation because he wished to point out the unsuit-
ability and danger of democracy to his fellow-countrymen.
Had not Thucydides traced the downfall and degeneration
of Athens to the time when representatives of the people
like Cleon, the eloquent tanner, took the place of Pericles ?
In 1628, when Hobbes published his translation, Charles I
had been on the throne for three years and was already at
loggerheads with Parliament led by Eliot and Pym. In 1627
the king's favourite, Buckingham, had been decisively de-
feated at La Rochelle in trying to help the French Hugue-
nots. In 1628 an election had returned a Parliament most
hostile to the King Sir Edward Coke, the great defender of
;

the Common Law against James I, had introduced a Peti-

tion of Right to secure from the king a proper respect for the
rights and liberties of the subject; Buckingham was assas-
sinated. In 1629 the Commons launched an attack on the
king's religious policy. When the Speaker, on the king's
orders, tried to put an end to these attacks
by adjourning
Parliament, he was held in his chair while three further
resolutions were passed. Truly it was a time when the for-
tunes of England abroad under 'regal government' were at
a low ebb and when the democratic tide at home was rising
ominously. What more appropriate for a supporter of 'regal
i. E.W. VIII, vii. a. E.W. VIII, viii. 3. E.W. VIII, xvii.

20
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
government' like Hobbes than to publish the warnings

implicit in the fate of Athens ? Was not this wisdom from

the past of more civil use than the wranglings of the Schools ?
In 1628, at the age of forty, there occurred a radical
change in Hobbes' health, in his fortune, and in his think-
ing. To quote Aubrey: 'From forty, or better, he grew
healthier, and then he had a fresh, ruddy, complexion. He
was Sanguineo-melancholicus; which the physiologers say is the
most ingeniose complexion.' 1 His master died, and, as a tem-
porary economy, the Countess of Devonshire dispensed with
Hobbes' services. Hobbes transferred his services to Sir
Gervase Clinton and, in 1629, accompanied his son on a
journey to the Continent. It was on this second journey that
Hobbes' inspiration came. 'Being in a Gentleman's Library,
Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the 47 El. libri I. He
read the Proposition. By G sayd he (he would now and
,

then sweare an emphaticall Oath by way of emphasis), this

is impossible 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. Et sic deinceps (and so on) that at last he was demonstra-
tively convinced of that trueth. This made him in love with
Geometry.' The fascination of geometry for him lay in its
2

method, which permitted important and indubitable con-

clusions to be drawn from premisses that no one could help
accepting. For one who believed that knowledge was power
and that divergent opinions were at the root of civil discord,
it was a revelation to light upon a method for establishing

conclusions with demonstrative certainty. Could not his

convictions about the dangers of democracy be demon-
strated in a similar manner ? Could not his estimate of man's
motives and of the causes of war, which he shared with
Thucydides, be shown to follow from self-evident postulates
like Pythagoras' theorem ? Given knowledge of the axioms
of human nature could not the rationale of society be con-
structed like a geometrical figure ?
The feverish state of England provided Hobbes with his
I. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 153. 2. J. Aubrey, op. cit., p. 150.

21
 HOBBES
major problem; his translation of
Thucydides indicated his
rough and ready diagnosis the;
method of geometry sug-
gested a way of reaching an indisputable diagnosis which
would end for ever the arguments of Arminians and con-
tentious sectaries; the Baconian conviction that knowledge
meant power, with geometry as the paradigm of knowledge,
suggested as a manner of cure the reconstruction of society
on rational lines like a geometer's figure. But this rehabilita-
tion of the body politic required a vision of content as well
as of form; for a new society could not be
constructed solely
out of a knowledge of lines, planes, and solids. And it was
Hobbes third journey to the Continent which provided him
5

with the missing content for his geometrically conceived

social equilibrium.
Hobbes had returned to the service of the Devonshires in
1630 and went with the next Earl to the Continent from
1634 to 1636. During his stay in Paris he became a member
of the intellectual circle of the Abbe Mersenne, who patron-
ized Descartes, Gassendi, and other famous thinkers. He
also made a pilgrimage to Italy in 1636 to visit Galileo, the
great genius of the new natural philosophy. By the time of
his return to England in 1637 he was ready to work out his
own philosophical system and had established a reputation
as a philosopher. His great imaginative idea had been born
- the
geometrical deduction of the behaviour of men in
society from the abstract principles of the new science of
motion. 'For seeing life is but a motion of limbs. For. . .

what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves but so many
strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to
the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer?' 1
Hobbes claimed originality for two main parts of his
-
philosophy his optics and his civil philosophy. Between the
time of his discovery of geometry and his return to England
in 1637 he wrote a Little Treatise in geometrical form in
which he tried to give an explanation of the act of sense in
terms of a general theory of motion. Whatever the exact
date of the Little Treatise between 1630 and 1637 - and
i. E.W. III,ix.

22
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
scholars are not agreed about this - it obviously represents
an exercise in the newly discovered geometrical method in
an attempt to solve a particular problem. But why this
seemingly sudden interest in sensation ? At the end of his
prose autobiography he relates how after his study of
1

history and poetry, he found himself in the company of some

learned men who were discussing the cause of sensation.
One of them asked derisively what sensation might be and
Hobbes was astonished to find that no one of them could
say. From this time forward Hobbes was haunted by the
problem of the cause of sense until he lighted upon the idea
that if bodies and their parts were always at rest or always
moved by the same degree of motion, the ability to make
discriminationswould no longer exist and consequently all
sensationwould be no more. He concluded that the cause of
everything, including sensation itself, was in variations of
motion. Unfortunately no date is given to this episode. We do
2
know, however, from the same autobiography, that while
he was in Paris in 1634 he was investigating the types of
motion that brought about sense, intellect, fancy, and other
3
animal properties. In his verse autobiography, too, he
relates graphically how on his third journey he was obsessed
by the omnipresence of motion. All this is evidence for
Hobbes' great interest in sensation and motion at this
period; it also shows that he considered his originality to
consist in applying a general theory of motion to the parti-
cular problem of the cause of sense. But it does not help us
to explain the shift in interest from the political warnings of

Thucydides to problems of optics.

An 4
ingenious suggestion has been made that Hofrbes'
early interest in sensation is to be seen in the context of his
and scholastic doctrines, prominent
hostility to theological
amongst which was the scholastic doctrine of 'intelligible
species' which was part of their theory of sense perception.
Elsewhere Hobbes goes out of his way to attack this doc-
i. L.W. I, xx~xxi. 2. L.W. I, xiv. 3. L.W. I, Ixxxix.
4. H. Hcrvey in Hobbes' Theory of Truth and Knowledge, Ph.D. thesis,
University of London, 1952.

23
 HOBBES
trine as a lynch-pin of the Catholic conspiracy against the
state, and Hobbes mentions in a letter to Newcastle, when
reporting on his fruitless attempts to find a copy of Galileo's
Dialogues in London in 1633, that 'it is called, in Italy, as a
book that will do more hurt to their religion than all the
J1
books have done of Luther and Calvin. . . . In the Little

Treatise, too, Hobbes constantly considers, criticizes, and

rejects, Aristotelian solutions to various problems before
advancing his own theoiy. Whether Hobbes' own theory
was as original as he claimed it to be, or whether he drew on
Galileo's // Saggiatore, on Bacon's theories, or on the atomic
theories of the ancients, is a matter for conjecture; but there
can be no doubt that the Little Treatise represents an explicit
assault on the theory of sense that he had learnt from the
Aristotelian teachers of his university days, the outlines of
which are referred to in his verse autobiography. 2 It is
therefore tempting to suggest that both his fascination for
the method of geometry and his aroused interest in the
theory of sense are explicable in terms of his desire to elimi-
nate sources of civil unrest, and that his Little Treatise was a
preliminary exercise in geometrical demonstration to show
the folly of scholastic doctrines in contrast to the unassailable
conclusions of the new theory of motion. This suggestion
would provide an ingenious link between his translation of
Thucydides and his later civil philosophy. There is, how-
ever, no direct evidence for it, and in view of Hobbes'
3
persistent preoccupation with the wonder of sense, it is
just as plausible to suggest that Hobbes became genuinely
puzzled about the cause of sensation. It is not unusual for

people to get excited in maturity about problems which

bored them at the university; Hobbes very probably in-
cluded a careful study of the ancient atomists in his search
for new inspiration in the work of the ancients during his
classical period; and, after all, there is something puzzling
1 . Historical Manuscripts Commission, Vol. XIII. Portland Papers,
p. 124.
2. L.W. I, Ixxxvii.

3. In Leviatiian, for instance, and De Corpore.

24
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
about the relationship between our subjective experiences,
our bodies, and the world outside our bodies. No doubt
Hobbes turned to such philosophical puzzles partly because
of his fear of civil unrest and because of his anger at the
mystery-mongering of the Aristotelians which he regarded
as one of its main sources. But to suggest that this was the
main cause of his turning to philosophy is to underrate the
ferment of intellectual excitement on the Continent which
Hobbes shared with other exponents of the new natural
philosophy. It looks as if Hobbes tended to be caught up in
the excitement of theoretical problems while he was on the
Continent and to revert to predominantly political prob-
lems when in England or when his compatriots came later
to Paris laden with English sorrows.
It is difficult for us, who inherit the world-view forged by
thinkers from Copernicus to Newton, to picture the intel-
lectual ferment of the seventeenth century which followed
the gradual acceptance of the heliocentric theory of Coper-
nicus and the law of inertia which was first formulated in
rather a clumsy way by Galileo. And the intellectual excite-
ment was not just the product of replacing one or two old
conceptions by new ones; it was due also to the vast scope
fornew explanations which was opened up by these shifts in
fundamental assumptions. Hobbes' inspiration came from
the law of inertia as well as from the method of geometry
which actually made possible its formulation. 1 What ex-
cited him was the possibility of deducing consequences from
the law of inertia in spheres to which it had not yet been
- sensation, psychology, and politics. When he
applied
speaks in his verse autobiography of his obsession with the
omnipresence of motion, what he was in fact doing was
acclimatizing himself to the fundamental shift in thought
required by Galileo's law. For in the Aristotelian world-
view rest had been regarded as the natural state for bodies.
Things only moved when motion was imparted to them by
a mover. As soon as this influence ended bodies relapsed
into their normal state. But Galileo imagined motion as the
i . See infra, p. 66.

25
 HOBBES
They continued in motion to in-
'natural state' for bodies.
were impeded. In other words everything
finity unless they
was moving, including the world itself as suggested by
Copernicus; the problem was to account for why things
seemed to stop moving. Rest was a limiting case of motion.
This was the imaginative idea which so excited Hobbes and
which he applied to the problem of the cause of sense as well
as to psychology and politics.
In 1637, the year in which Descartes produced his Dis-
course on Method, Hobbes returned home stimulated by his
own venture in philosophy and by his contact with Mer-
senne's circle. Like Descartes he was fired by the thought of
a universal system of philosophy. The first part on 'Body'
would outline the general principles of magnitude and
motion and deal with the behaviour of natural bodies; the
second part on 'Man' would show how man's feelings, sen-
sations, thoughts, and desires could be explained in terms
of the peculiar internal motions in the human body in con-
tact with other bodies; the third part on 'Citizen' would
reveal the state as an artificial body to be constructed out
of the movements of men towards or away from each other.
But the course of political events necessitated postponing
this grand design in favour of issuing abbreviated state-
ments to influence the contemporary situation. He arrived
home when the ship-money dispute was raging. The at-
tempt, also, to impose a Book of Common Prayer upon the
Scots caused a riot in Edinburgh in 1637 and led to the
Covenant of 1638, the subscribers to which swore to resist
to the death such religious innovations. War broke out soon
after in Scotland and in 1640 Charles had to summon the
English Parliament in order to raise the money to fight it.
Before they would discuss the grant of subsidies by the king,
Pym listed the grievances which had first to be redressed -
attacks on parliamentary privilege, religious innovations,
ship-money. The king insisted on the prior discussion of
the grant of subsidies and, when it was clear that Parlia-
ment would not consider it, dissolved Parliament on 5
May.
26
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
Hobbes, on his return, was living with the young Earl of
Devonshire, and mixed with Lord Falkland, Hyde, and
other perplexed politicians. No wonder that he turned aside
from his wider speculations and published The Elements of
Law in 1640 during the assembly of Parliament. This book
was circulated in manuscript form and dealt only with
'Man' and 'Citizen', the more theoretical questions about
'Body' being almost omitted. Later, in 1 650, these two parts
were published separately under the titles of Human Nature
and De Corpore Politico. The work demonstrated the need for
undivided sovereignty, but the arguments were taken from
general principles of psychology and ethics rather than from
assertions about Divine Right. Hobbes characteristically
remarked later that his life would have been in danger be-
cause of this publication had not the king dissolved Parlia-
ment - an exemplification of his claim that he and fear had
been born twins at the time of the Spanish Armada. 1 But
Hobbes' fear was that of a self-made man whose feeling of
insecurity and desire for esteem expressed itself in the flat-
tering delusion that men were taking note of him and plan-
ning his decease; it was not an unreasoning panic. Similarly
Hobbes' flight to the Continent six months later, when
Parliament reassembled and impeached Strafford, was the
well-calculated move of a man who sees events in terms of
threats to himself. He was over fifty and confident of a
friendly reception by Mersenne whose circle flourished
under the approving eye of Richelieu, renowned for his
patronage of the sciences. For a man with a major work to
write and who, though favouring monarchy, must have
been aghast at the ineptitude and foolhardiness of Charles I,
Paris presented much better prospects than London. If he
stayed at home, he might well, so he thought, have lan-
guished in the Tower. And his loyalty was not such that, at
the age of fifty, he would contemplate taking up arms if
civil war broke Hobbes prided himself on being 'the
out.
of all
first that fled'. As always his fear was mingled with an
exaggerated sense of his own importance,
i. L.W. I, Ixxxvi.

27
 HOBBES
On his arrival in Paris Hobbes was welcomed by Mer-
senne and was asked by him to compose some objections to
Descartes' Meditations in advance of their publication.
Hobbes gladly obliged with sixteen objections from an
anonymous Englishman. Descartes replied, but the inter-
change became increasingly acrimonious; for Hobbes sent
with his further objections a paper on optics, later published
in 1644 in Mersenne's Optique, which was critical of Des-
cartes' Dioptric (1637). Descartes accused the Englishman
of plagiarism - an improbable charge in view of Hobbes'
early fascination with the problem of sense. Hobbes dealt
in a dignified way with these accusations, pointing out that
some of the opinions, which he was accused of having taken
from Descartes - for instance, the view that secondary
-
qualities like sound and colour were subjective phantasms
had been publicly expressed by him as early as 1630. Hobbes
and Descartes actually met in Paris in I648 and discussed
1

the cause of hardness, about which they disagreed. But the

meeting seems to have been quite amicable and in later
years Hobbes, according to Aubrey, spoke well of him.
'Descartes and he were acquainted and mutually respected
one another. He would say that had he kept himself to
Geometry he had been the best Geometer in the world but
that his head did not lye for philosophy.' 2 It was Descartes'
theological opinions that Hobbes could not stomach. He
could not pardon him for writing in defence of transub-
stantiation to please the Jesuits, a doctrine in which Hobbes
knew that Descartes did not believe. Descartes, who was a
brilliantmathematician, was rather derisive about Hobbes'
somewhat amateurish demonstrations but admitted, when
his De Give was published in 1642, that Hobbes had ability
in ethics, though he found Hobbes' account of human
nature pernicious. But, as Brandt has pointed out in his
masterly unravelling of the relationship between Hobbes
1. See H. Hcrvcy, 'Hobbes and Descartes in the Light of Some Un-

published Letters of the Correspondence between Sir Charles Cavendish

and Dr John Pell* Osiris, Vol. X, 1952.
2. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 158,

28
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
and Descartes, 1 the main cause of the enmity between
Hobbes and Descartes was that they agreed on two doc-
trines which were basic to the new mechanical picture
of Nature - maleria subtilis, an imagined medium between
non-contiguous bodies, and the subjectivity of sense-quali-
ties - and that they arrived at their conclusions on these
issues independently of each other. Both were self-made
men and very conscious of points of prestige; the question of
priority was therefore very important to them as they both
regarded themselves as founders of a new philosophy, con-
sciously discarding an old tradition and making a fresh
start.Paternal pride made them both possessive of their
ideas and blind to their indebtedness to others without
whose intellectual labours their ideas would never have
been born.
Hobbes did not settle down to
After writing his Objections
work away on his ambitious project for a complete
straight
philosophy of nature, man, and citizen, but issued another
contribution to the English controversy. This was his De
Give published in 1642 in which he tried to demonstrate
conclusively the proper purpose and extent of the civil
power. The Long Parliament, after the impeachment and
execution of Strafford, spent much time on a bill to exclude
the clergy from participation in civil affairs and on the
general reform of church organization and ceremonial.
John Milton's tract Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline
in England had appeared in 1641 and the activities of the
various sects opposed to the Church of England were greatly
on the increase. England was seething with religious in-
dividualism. The De Give was a Latin version of that part of
the earlier Elements of Law which later appeared as De Corpore
Politico] but it was expanded considerably so as to deal in
more detail with the topical issue of the relationship be-
tween the church and the civil power. These religious con-
troversies provided Hobbes with the occasion to express his

life-long fear and hatred of religions which set up authorities

above the civil power. Hobbes has the angry, aggressive
i. F. Brandt, Thomas Hobbes' Mechanical Conception ofNoture, Ch. IV.

29
 HOBBES
style of an insecureman, and when he writes about religious
organizations his furious pen seems almost to jab and lacer-
ate the paper as if it were a Puritan or a Catholic. He as-
signed great importance to the religious causes of the Civil
War. In his later work on the causes and course of the Civil
War 1 Hobbes made a list of those who corrupted and
seduced the people and so brought about the war. 2 Presby-
terians, Papists, and the various Nonconformist sects were
mentioned first on his list before the city of London and
other towns of trade, classical scholars, and spendthrifts. In
3
his verse autobiography Hobbes spoke of the interruption
to his studies occasioned by a disease which swept England
in 1640. Anyone affected by it thought that the laws of God
as well as the laws of man were revealed to him personally.
5
This remark epitomized Hobbes attitude towards the Puri-
tan conscience.
Though Hobbes considered his De Give to be a funda-
mental and original work in which the grounds of natural
justice were clearly set out, the fragment surviving of A
Minute or First Draught of the Optiques - a treatise in English
which he sent to the Marquis of Newcastle in 1 646 4 -
makes clear that he thought his optical theory equally im-
portant and original. The former he considered the most
profitable, the latter the most curious of all his work. In
1644, too, he contributed a long section to Mersenne's
Ballistica which amounted to an abbreviated statement of
his psychological theory. This period between the publica-
tion of De Give in 1642 and the completion of the optical
treatise in English in 1646 was spent in the intellectual
haven of Mersenne's circle. Hobbes, now an acknowledged
leader of the new philosophy, was working continuously on
the details of his natural philosophy, the first part of his
trilogy which was later to appear as De Corpore. In his verse
autobiography Hobbes recorded that for four years he
1. Behemoth. Published posthumously in 1682.
2. E. W. VI, 167-8.
3. L.W. I, xc.
4. E.W.VII, 47 i.
30
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
pondered on the Torm' of De Corpore and that the material
was all in order for writing 1 when the Prince of Wale-3 came
to Paris with other fugitives from Naseby. But perhaps be-
cause of his desire to establish himself as an equal of Des-
cartes in optical theory, 2 he turned aside from the De Corpore
to write his A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques and then
external events interrupted his more ambitious project. For,
at the end of 1646, when Hobbes was on the verge of

accepting an invitation to retire to the peace of a friend's

estate in Languedoc in the South of France, he was re-

quested to act as tutor in mathematics to the future Charles

II. Hobbes complied with this request. Newcastle had been
his instructor for a time and had drawn up a brief advising
that the boy should not be too devout and should be very
civil to women. Charles found little difficulty in complying
with these not very exacting instructions but what influence
;

Hobbes had on him is more difficult to discern, though many

attribute his later patronage of the sciences to his initiation
under Hobbes' guidance into the secrets of mathematics.
Hobbes' tutorship was interrupted, if not terminated, by
a severe illness in 1647. Mersenne visited him on his sick
bed at the request of a common friend who hoped that
Hobbes might be converted to Roman Catholicism. Mer-
senne began tactfully on his bizarre enterprise by discours-
ing on his church's power to remit sins. Hobbes character-
interrupted him in full flight. 'Father,' he said, 'I
istically
have long ago gone over the question in my own mind.
You have something pleasanter to say. When did you see
Gassendi?' This sick-bed scene reveals Hobbes' most en-
- his hatred of
dearing qualities humbug and his great
capacity for close friendship. Aubrey says simply of Hobbes
and Gassendi 8 that they loved each other entirely. A few

1. L.W.I,xcii.
2. Sec Brandt, op. cit., p. 190 and Gh. VI passim.
3. Gassendi was professor of mathematics in the College Royal. He
probably exerted great influence on Hobbes' thought. His materialism
stemmed from Greek atomism, his De Vita et Moribus Rpicuri being pub-
lished in 1647.

31
 HOBBES
days later, however, Hobbes consented to receive the sacra-
ment from Dr Cosin, who later became Bishop of Durham,
on condition that the English prayer-book was used. This
occasion later stood him in good stead when he was accused
of atheism and heresy; for he was able to refer his accusers
to the testimony of the Bishop of Durham.
Hobbes recovered and contact with the exiled Royalists
stimulated him to arrange for his views on church and state
to be more widely known. A second edition of the De Give

appeared in 1647; but this was in Latin and had only a

limited circulation. Hobbes therefore decided to publish his
views on 'Man' and 'Citizen' for all his contemporaries to
read. He began work on his Leviathan, his masterpiece.
Aubrey reports how he composed this work. 'He sayd that
he sometimes would sett his thoughts upon researching and
contemplating, always with this Rule that he very much
and deeply considered one thing at a time (scilicet, a weeke
or sometimes a fortnight). He walked much and contem-
plated, and he had in the head of his Staffe a pen and inke-
horne, carried always a Note-book in his pocket, and as
soon as a notion darted, he presently entreed it into his
Booke, or els he should perhaps have lost it. He had drawne
the Designe of the Booke into Chapters, etc., so he knew
whereabout it would come in. Thus that booke was made.' 1
Mersenne died in 1648 and Hobbes began to feel in-
creasingly isolated in Paris. He was suspected of atheism
and known to be a declared enemy of Catholicism. When
his friend Sorbiere proposed to describe Hobbes on the title

page of the new edition of the De Give as tutor to the Prince

of Wales, Hobbes wrote him a brusque letter saying that the
Prince might be harmed by the suggested connexion, that
Hobbes himself might be accused of vanity as he was
definitely not a memberof the royal household, and that it
would be difficult for Hobbes
to return to England if it was

suggested that he belonged to the exiled Court. This letter

is indicative of Hobbes' uneasy situation in Paris after the

death of Mersenne.
i. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 151.

32
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
Political events provided a fitting prelude to the publica-
tion of Hobbes' Leviathan. The king was executed in 1649
after the abortive attempt of the Presbyterians to establish
him in power. Up
till
1653, when Cromwell was made Pro-
tector, there was constant discussion and experimentation
to find an appropriate form of government to succeed the

monarchy. The Leviathan was published in England in 1651

after the two parts of the earlier Elements of Law had been

published separately in 1650 as Human Nature and De Cor-

pore Politico:, the De Give, too, had been translated into Eng-
lish in 1651 with the title of Philosophical Rudiments Concerning
Government and Society. The Leviathan was thus the culmina-
tion and definitive expression of Hobbes' convictions about
the conditions necessary for social order.
In view of the controversy about Hobbes' intentions in
publishing his masterpiece at this particular juncture, it is
as well to indicate the contemporary significance of its main
conclusions; for it was not really the conclusions of the
Leviathan that were of outstanding importance but the way
in which these conclusions were reached. There were at
least four issues of philosophical interest about which there
was much contemporary controversy. The first concerned
the legitimate basis of government. Parliament and the
army believed in forms of popular representation ranging
from the radical democracy of the Levellers, who believed
in full adult suffrage, to the mixed constitution of checks
and balances introduced by Cromwell and the moderates;
the Stuarts, on the other hand, believed in the Divine Right
of Kings. Hobbes conceded popular representation but, by
an ingenious twisting of the social contract theory, made it
result in an absolute sovereign whilst rejecting the Divine

Right of Kings. The doctrine of sovereignty which emerged

from his writing was one that could be used to justify any
, absolute de facto government. It was used, in fact, to justify
both the Protectorate and the Restoration governments. So
Hobbes was accused of atheism and subservience to Crom-
well by Royalists; but he was also suspected by Parliamen-
tarians for his advocacy of monarchy and for his Royalist

33
 HOBBES
connexions, in spite of his claim that his work Trained the
minds of a thousand gentlemen to a conscientious obedience
to present government' (i.e. the Protectorate). 1
On the second issue, the subject's right to resist, Hobbes,
in spite of his general condemnation of anarchy and the
exercise of the individual conscience, put forward a doc-
trine which provided a loophole for both parties when they
were not in power. The subject, he maintained, was bound
to obey the government only so long as it fulfilled its sole
function, which was to govern. At a time of civil strife, there-
fore, it became a nice question for the subject to decide
when he was justified in rebelling because of the govern-
ment's failure to preserve the peace.
The third issue was, perhaps, one of the most interesting
of the time - the status of law. The traditional view, defen-
ded so ably by Sir Edward Coke in his controversy with
James I, was that there was a fundamental law binding on
king and subjects alike, which was there to discover. Parlia-
ment had been regarded as a kind of court, and its statutes,
like the decisions of judges, were deemed to be declarations
of what the law was. With the advent of James I, Charles I,
and especially the Long Parliament, it became increasingly
evident that laws were being made which bore little relation
to the immemorial customs of the realm. Laws were being
made; the fiction could no longer be maintained that the law
was being declared. Hobbes, therefore, like many other reflec-
tive people, maintained that the laws were the commands of
the sovereign. They issued from his will; they were not, as
Coke maintained, 'the artificial perfection of reason'. But
as John Milton, the redoubtable Puritan, held also that
laws were the commands of the sovereign, there was no-
thing very partisan in Hobbes' view; he only differed from
Milton about who the sovereign should be.
On the fourth burning issue, the position of the Church,
Hobbes' views were decided but not unusual. He feared and
hated any religion which afforded the individual an author-
ity other than the sovereign. The Church should be sub-
i. E.W.VII,336.
34
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
ordinated to the state and the sovereign should be finally
responsible for ecclesiastical affairs both in relation to
organization and ritual and in relation to the proper inter-
pretation of divine law and the Scriptures. The Puritan who
appealed to the newly translated Bible or to his own leadings
from God was just much a danger to peace as the Catho-
as
lic who appealed to
papal authority.
In brief, Hobbes believed that the only hope for the per-
manent preservation of peace was an absolute sovereign,
whose commands were laws enforced by judges, bishops,
and thfe military, all of whom should be responsible to him
and appointed by him alone. Obedience to such a sovereign
was always obligatory unless he should prove an ineffective
autocrat. This was a geometer's panacea for peace, the
clear-cut, rational construction of a ruthless theoretician
who thought that definitions and demonstrations could re-
veal solutions to problems which had blunted the wits and
the swords of practical men. And because it ignored many
of the age-long traditions of Englishmen and ridiculed many
of their newly-found convictions, because it smacked of a
Continental salon rather than of an English council chamber,
there was much in it to offend as well as to fascinate any of
hiscountrymen who read it.
The French, too, because of Hobbes' withering attack on
the Papacy, were incensed that they had given asylum to
such a scorpion. One of the first tangible results, therefore,
5
of the Leviathan was Hobbes banishment from the Court
soon after Charles' return in 1651 from his humiliation at
Worcester which ended the ill-fated Scottish expedition.

Hobbes, it is true, had presented the young Prince with a

manuscript copy which is now in the British Museum.
Nevertheless he soon had to leave France as he had left
England - with fear; for he fancied that the French clergy
had designs on his life. Indeed it was Hobbes' unashamed
England that later got him into trouble.
desire to return to
For Clarendon, Charles IFs unfailing counsellor and censor,
reported that when discussing Hobbes' masterpiece with
him he asked him how he could voice such heterodox and
 HOBBES
disloyal opinions. After a 'discourse between jest and ear-
nest* Hobbes replied, 'The truth is I have a mind to go
home.' 1 And certainly he did want to go home because as
early as 1649 he had written to Gassendi, 'For my age I am
well enough, and take good care, reserving myself for my
return to England, if it may be.' 2 We
have also seen from
his letter to Sorbiere about the second edition of the De Give
that he did not want his chance of returning to England
spoilt by the suggestion that he was a member of the royal
household. But although there is abundant evidence that
Hobbes wanted to go home, it is absurd to take his reply to
Clarendon too seriously and suggest, as his opponents did
later, that Hobbes hoped to work his passage home by
writing the Leviathan. It seems probable that Hobbes wrote
the Leviathan much more in order to instruct his country-
men how best to reconstruct English civil society so that it
was a place for sensible people like himself, than to pro-
fit

vide a mere passport for himself. For ever since 1640, when
Hobbes Law to his friends, he had
issued his Elements of
believed that he had drawn up a ground-plan for peace.
The De Give was merely an expansion and the Leviathan a
fuller and popularized English edition of the views he had

always held. The execution of Charles I made his views

particularly relevant; for the ruler by Divine Right having

failed to preserve peace, the time was now ripe for an even
more autocratic leader to emerge by popular consent. The
Leviathan was published in 1651 before Cromwell became
Protector and when he was already at loggerheads with the
Rump. His doctrine, as Hobbes himself pointed out, pro-
vided advice for Royalists to stay and make their peace with
Cromwell; for was not allegiance due only so long as the
sovereign afforded protection? The implication was that
Cromwell should become king by common consent and dis-
pense with incompetent parliaments. And if Cromwell
should fail and Charles be asked to return from Paris, the
message of the Leviathan was just as cogent: no legitimacy
1. Clarendon, Survey of Leviathan, p. 7.
2. L.W. V, 307.
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
without power, and the people wanted Charles back, let
if

them give him the power necessary to keep the peace, what-
ever they thought of his claim to Divine Right. Hobbes was
a dogmatist who believed that most of his countrymen were
either stupid or riddled with various brands of anarchic
individualism or both. Surely the Leviathan is the over-con-
fident appeal of an angry, and intellectually
insecure,
arrogant theoretician; not a querulous hint to an auto-
it is

crat for his fare home. Indeed the importance of the Levia-
than did not lie at all in the conclusions reached, but in the

way in which they were reached. This is what made the

Leviathan uninfluential as a political tract but of great im-
portance as political philosophy.
Hobbes crept home at the end of 1651 after another
severe illness. He gave a vivid picture of his homecoming
in his Latin verse autobiography: 'I return to my country
unsure of my safety, but nowhere else could I count on being
any safer: it was cold, the snow was deep, I was old, and the
winter was bitter; I was cursed with a horse that threw me
and by the uneven road.' 1 He made his submission to the
Council of State and was allowed to subside into private life.
He settled down in Fetter Lane. His patron, the Earl of
Devonshire, had submitted to Parliament in order to save
his family estates which were sequestered in 1645. Hobbes,

however, preferred to remain most of his remaining years in

the intellectual atmosphere of London, where he built up a
circle of friends which included Harvey, Davenant, Cowley,
and John Selden, rather than to stay at the Earl's country
house where he feared that his wits might get mouldy for the
want of learned conversation. Very soon, however, he be-
came embroiled in learned, though acrimonious controver-
sies. In 1645 Hobbes had discussed the problem of free-will

with a certain Bishop Bramhall, who had fled with New-

castlefrom Marston Moor. At Newcastle's request they
both wrote down their views in 1646. But a young disciple
of Hobbes had managed to obtain a copy of the discussion
and published Hobbes' contribution in 1654 without
i. L.W. I, xciii.

37
 HOBBES
Hobbes' consent. Bramhall was understandably indignant
and in 1655 published the whole controversy under the title
A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent
or Extrinsic Necessity. In 1656 Hobbes replied, printing
Bramhall's book together with some new and entertaining
observations on it - his Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity,
and Chance. Bramhall replied in 1658 with Castigation of
Hobbes' Animadversions and a bulky appendix entitled The
Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale. Hobbes replied to the
latter about ten years later, Bramhall having died in 1663.
The controversy with Bramhall was important in that it
provided scope for Hobbes to make some interesting points
on a topic of perennial philosophical interest. Hobbes' views
are worth studying in some detail, along with those of
Spinoza, because they represent the climate of opinion out
of which so many of the misunderstandings about determin-
ism were born. The same, however, cannot be said for the
other major controversy in which Hobbes was embroiled for
most of the twenty years that still remained to him. Hobbes
had always been an outspoken critic of the Universities. He
thought that they were hotbeds of civil disobedience be-
cause of their Puritan and Catholic connexions. He thought,
too, that much of their old curriculum, inherited from the
scholastic tradition, should be abandoned in favour of the

study of the new sciences. But he had been out of England a

long time and had not kept abreast of developments at the
Universities. In 1619 Sir Henry Savile had founded at
Oxford professorships in geometry and astronomy and
mathematical studies had already become advanced and
respectable, although only amongst a small and brilliant
circle at Wadham and Merton. Oxford was now one of the
5
centres of the 'invisible collegewhich was to become the
Royal Society. John Wallis was professor of geometry,
famous for his development of the differential calculus. Seth
Ward, later Bishop of Salisbury, another able mathemati-
cian, was professor of astronomy. John Wilkins, who was
interested in mechanical inventions and astronomy, was
warden of Wadham College. Robert Boyle, Sir William

38
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
Petty, and Christopher Wren were also members of this
brilliant group of men. They were disciples of Bacon both
in their eagerness to explore Nature and in their desire to
use their findings for the improvement of life. United in the
Puritan religion they believed that the end of scientific
learning was the 'glory of the Creator and the relief of man's
estate John Wilkins, for instance, who later became Bishop
5
.

of Chester, believed that the study of Nature was the best

way of promoting reverence for its Author. It is
probable
that nine out of ten of the original founders of the 'invisible
college' in 1645 were Puritans, and of the original list of
members of the Royal Society in 1663, 42 out of 68, about
whom is available, were clearly Puritan.
information 1
It
v/as be expected, therefore, that Hobbes' hostility
only to
to Puritanism and the Universities, together with his ex-
alted opinion of his own contributions to knowledge, would
provoke some reaction from this formidable combination
of Puritanism and scientific illumination.
The first Hobbes had of the enmity of
intimation that
these able men was an appendix
to Seth Ward's Vindiciae
Academiarum, a book directed against an attack on the Uni-
versities by a certain John Webster. Ward claimed that
Hobbes too was out of date in his attack on the Universities
as he would find out to his cost when and if he produced his

alleged demonstrations of the squaring of the circle. Hobbes

unheedingly produced his long expected De Corporc in 1655,
the first part of his comprehensive work in which a proper
science of body was expounded to succeed the metaphysical
absurdities of the schools. In Chapter 20, however, he in-
serted his attempts at squaring the circle - the final triumph
of the deductive method. Ward and Wallis decided to teach
the old gentleman a lesson. Ward dealt with his general
philosophy in his Exercitatio epistolica and Wallis subjected
Hobbes' geometry to a most cruel exposure in his Elenchus
Geometriae Hobbianae. For not only did he treat the argu-
ment to a withering analysis; he also traced through
i .See R. Merton, 'Puritanism, Pietism, and Science', in Social Theory
and Social Structure, p. 338.

39
 HOBBES
Hobbes' original manuscript on squaring the circle the
three abortive attempts at the problem which preceded his
final and futile solution. Wallis specialized in this kind of
detective work he had deciphered the King's papers taken
;

at Naseby. Hobbes, grossly underestimating the quality of

his opponent and sublimely unaware of his own limitations
as a mathematician, replied with an emended English
edition of the De Corpore with appended for Wal-
Six Lessons
lis. He had the temerity to attack Wallis' own work on conic

sections treated algebraically, although he knew no algebra

himself. Wallis answered understandably with Due Correc-
tions for Mr Hobbes or School-discipline for not saying his lessons

right. And so the controversy went on, becoming, as the

years passed, more acrimonious, personal, and undignified.
Wallis, for instance, commented on Hobbes' West country
accent and social standing and charged him with writing
the Leviathan to please Cromwell. Hobbes raked up Wallis'
- 'There, doctor,
deciphering activities after Naseby you
ill'. But no
deciphered triumphs in personal invective could
atone for his discomfiture at the hands of a Puritan divine.
Even when allowance has been made for the fact that
squaring the circle did not then seem quite such a pre-
posterous project as it does now, it remains evident that
Hobbes' sublime confidence in his own ability led him to
make rather a pathetic exhibition of himself. Wallis had
probably forgotten more mathematics than Hobbes ever
knew. Descartes, before Wallis, had commented on Hobbes'
awkwardness with the love of his middle age. Nevertheless
Wallis was not an attractive man and his brilliant demoli-
tion of Hobbes' argument was interspersed with pontifical
and boorish invective. A
greater man could have afforded
to be kinder to the old gentleman in spite of such preten-
tious provocation.
Hobbes, however, did not spend all his remaining years
on this unfortunate controversy. In 1657 he published the
second part of his trilogy, the De Homine. This was received
without much comment, being concerned mainly with
optics and with human nature, on both of which Hobbes'
40
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
views were already well known. At the Restoration in 1660
Hobbes was rather apprehensive about how he would be
treated in view of the circumstances in which he returned
to England. But his uneasiness was soon removed; for, as

Aubrey relates: 'It happened, about two or three days after

his Majestie's happy returne, that, as He was passing in his
coach through the Strand, Mr Hobbes was standing at Little
Salisbury-house gate (where his Lord then lived) The King .

espied him, putt of his hatt very kindly to him, and asked
him how he did.' 1 The King was well disposed towards his
former tutor thenceforward to whom he granted a pension
of 100 per year and 'free accesse to his Majesty, who was
always much delighted in his witt and smart repartees. The
witts at Court were wont to bayte him. But he feared none
of them, and would make his part good. The King would
call him the Beare. . . .
' 2
Hobbes had, in fact, become an
institution.Only once again did he fancy himself in mortal
danger. And on this occasion he had good cause for his
apprehension. For, after the Plague and the Fire of London
in 1665-6, some reason was sought for God's displeasure.
What more likely than that a people should suffer who gave
shelter to a notorious atheist like Thomas Hobbes? A bill
was brought before Parliament for the suppression of athe-
ism and a committee was set up to look into the Leviathan.
The bill passed Parliament but was eventually dropped,
probably through Charles' influence. Hobbes breathed
again, but he was forbidden to publish his opinions.
Perhaps one of the greatest disappointments of Hobbes'
declining years was the attitude of the Royal Society to-
wards him. At the Restoration Robert Boyle had gone to
Gresham College and had acquired recognition for the 'in-
visible college' as the Royal Society in 1662. Hobbes
thought that, in view of his Continental reputation and the
royal favour that had been shown him, he should be made
a fellow. He submitted papers and demonstrations, but was
never elected. This hurt him. But it was hardly surprising
1. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives> p. 152.
2. J. Aubrey, op. cit. 9 pp. 152-3.

41
 HOBBES
in view of the fact that Ward, Wallis, and Wilkins from
Oxford were the leading spirits of the Society, which had a
predominantly Puritan membership. Hobbes showed his
resentment by attacking Boyle's theory of the air. His
general criticism of the Society was that they spent too much
time on new fangled devices and experiments and too little
on working out the fundamental theory of motion as
Galileo and Harvey had done. This was a shrewd criticism ;

but it would have come better from one whose mathemati-

cal ability was less suspect and who had himself done some
experiments.
Hobbes made few more, contributions to knowledge
though he never desisted from writing. He completed his
Behemoth in 1668 - a history of the period 1640-60 inter-
preted in the light of Hobbes main tenets about society. He
5

submitted it to Charles who advised against its publication.

It was published posthumously in 1682. Hobbes was never
averse to turning his hand to a new subject and was en-
couraged by Aubrey to write about law. Hobbes, who was
then seventy-six, replied that he was too old. Nevertheless,
when Aubrey sent him Bacon's Elements of Common Law he
managed to produce his unfinished Dialogue between a
Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England in 1 666.
It was published in 1681. The dialogue was an attack on the
defenders of the Common Law like Sir Edward Coke, who
had tried to limit the royal prerogative. Hobbes, even at
this age, managed to say some interesting things about law
and in many respects he anticipated the analytic positivism
of the Austinian school of jurisprudence in the nineteenth
century. At eighty-four he wrote his own autobiography in
Latin verse, after completing one in prose. At the age of
eighty-six he published a verse translation of the Iliad and
the Odyssey because, as he said, he had nothing better to
do; there was, too, a hope that he might deflect the atten-
tion of his adversaries from his religious and political
opinions to his renderings of Homer. In 1675 ^ c k^ London
for Chatsworth and Hardwick, and in 1679 he was still in
the throes of scientific composition.He learnt, however,
42
 LIFE AND PROBLEMS
that he had an incurable disease and remarked: 'I shall be
glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at.' It is said
that he amused himself by allowing his friends to prepare
epitaphs for him. He was most attracted to This is the true
4

philosopher's stone'. He died on 4 December, 1679.

So much, then, for the development of Thomas Hobbes
in the setting of the problems which he tried to solve. But
no life of Hobbes would be complete without the delightful
picture given by Aubrey of the idiosyncrasies of this remark-
able man who was as noted for his habits as he was notorious
for his opinions.

Face not very great; ample forehead; whiskers yellowish-

reddish, which naturally turned up - which isa signe of a brisque
wit. Belowe he was shaved close, except a little tip under his lip.
Not but that nature could have afforded a venerable Beard; but
being naturally of a cheerfull and pleasant humour, he affected
not at all austerity and gravity to looke severe. He desired not the
reputation of his wisdome to be taken from the cutt of his beard,
but from his reason.
He had a good eie, and that of a hazell colour, which was full of
Life and Spirit, even to the last. When he was earnest in discourse,
there shone (as it were) a bright live-coale within it. He had two
kinds of lookys: when he laugh* t, was witty, and in a merry
humour, one could scarce see his Eies; by and by, when he was
serious and positive, he open'd his eies round (i.e. his eyelids). . . .

'Tis not consistent with an harmonious soule to be a woman-

hater, neither had he an Abhorrence to good wine but he was,
even in his youth (generally) temperate, both as to wine and wo-
men. I have heard him say that he did beleeve he had been in ex-
cesse in his life, a hundred times which, considering his great age,
;

did not amount to above once a yeare. When he did drinke, he

would drinke to excesse to have the benefitt of Vomiting, which he
did easily; by which benefit neither his wit was disturbt longer
than he was spuing nor his stomach oppressed; but he never was,
nor could not endure to be, habitually a good fellow, i.e. to drink
every day wine with company, which, though not to drunkennesse,
spoiles the Braine.
For his last 30 yeares, his Dyet, etc, was very moderate and regu-
lar. He rose about seaven, had his breakfast of Bread and Butter;
and tooke his walke, meditating till ten; then he did putt downe

43
 HOBBES
the minutes of his thoughts, which he penned in the afternoon. He
thoughtmuch and with excellent method and stedinesse, which
made him seldom make a False step.
He had an inch thick board about 16 inches square, whereon
paper was pasted. On this board he drew his lines (schemes). When
a line came into head, he would, as he was walking, take a rude
his
Memorandum of it, to preserve it in his memory till he came to his
chamber. He was never idle; his thoughts were always working.
His dinner was provided for him exactly by eleaven, for he could
not now stay till his Lord's howre - sell about two that his stomach
:

could not beare.

After dinner he took a pipe of tobacco, and then threw himselfe
immediately on his bed, with his band off, and slept (tooke a nap
of about half an howre) .

Besides his dayly Walking he did twice or thrice a yeare play at

Tennis (at about 75 he did it) then went to bed there and was well
rubbed. This he did believe would make him live two or three
yeares the longer.
In the countrey, for want of a he would walke up-
tennis-court,
hill and downe-hill he was in a great sweat, and
in the parke, till

then give the servant some money to rubbe him.

He had alwayes bookes of prick-song lyeing on his table; which
at night, when he was abed, and the dores made fast, and was sure
nobody heard him, he sang aloud (not that he had a very good
voice) but for his health's Sake he did beleeve it did his Lunges
:

good, and conduced much to prolong his life.

1

was recorded on Hobbes' tombstone that he was a just

It
man well known for his learning at home and abroad. This
was true; for though his work aroused more controversy
than that of most academic figures, there was never any
suggestion that he was anything but a man of integrity,
honest and kindly in all his dealings.

I. J. Aubrey, Brief'Lives, pp. 154-5.

44
 CHAPTER TWO

METHOD MAKETH MAN

/. Hobbes' Approach to Philosophy

MOST of the important books in philosophy have been

written by men who were either worried or excited. Plato
was worried by the profound social changes of his time and
excited by mathematics; Kant was both worried and ex-
cited by Newtonian physics and the French Revolution;
Leibniz was excited by the discovery of the microscope and
worried by the mechanistic implications of Cartesian phy-
sics.These thinkers were perplexed by problems arising
from new discoveries and social change just as many modern
thinkers are perplexed by the implications of Freud, Marx,
and Einstein, or appalled by the social problems created by
rapid industrialization. Hobbes' Leviathan ranks as one of
the great books in philosophy because it attempted a sys-
tematic answer to the problems posed by the profound
social changes of the seventeenth century and by the rise of
the mathematical sciences. Hobbes was desperately worried
by the upheavals of the seventeenth century and excited by
mathematics and mechanics. The marriage of his worry
with his excitement may have produced a monster - Levia-
than - which shocked his contemporaries and successors.
But at least it had the rare philosophical distinction of being
so lucid that on many issues it was obviously wrong, and so
readable that even minor clergymen occupied themselves
with trying to refute it.
Hobbes had good reason to be worried in spite of his jest-
ing reference to the pre-natal determinants of his timorous
-
disposition. He asked little of life only the peace and
security necessary to pursue his scholarly interests. Yet he
45
 HOBBES
found himself in a country where peace and security were
constantly in jeopardy because of the demands for liberty
and for a greater share in government by the growing class
of traders, professional men, and yeomen farmers, who
rated the authority of the Bible and of their own consciences
above that of the magistrates, bishops, and counsellors of the
king. Hobbes had little sympathy for their religion and less
for their politics. Like so many others at this time, too, he
lived in daily dread of the Church of Rome which he re-
garded as an organized conspiracy against the temporal
power supported by superstition and sharp practice. The
overriding need of every sensible man, he thought, was for
peace and security. Yet few seemed to discern how best this
need could be satisfied or even to be aware of its existence.
Indeed most men seemed to be pursuing policies diametri-
cally opposed to their real interests. How could this disas-
trous drift be halted? For Hobbes, the intellectual who
trusted in rational understanding rather than in tradition
and experience, the answer was obvious. There must be a
rational reconstruction of civil society which got down to
first principles. This was the only way to avoid war - especi-
- which is the worst
ally civil war calamity that can befall a
society. From war proceed 'slaughter, solitude and the want
of all things'. 1 All men know war to be evil but they do not
know how to avert it; for few men have learnt the 'duties
which unite and keep men in peace'. 2 Hobbes' science of
natural justice would bring them down to first principles
and supply the knowledge they so sorely lacked. 'The end
of knowledge is power.' The Leviathan contained the know-
ledge; Cromwell or Charles could use it to reconstruct
society and perpetuate their power.

2. The Belief in Method

This belief in the efficacy of the book was symptomatic of

the new outlook. With the gradual breakdown of the Feudal
system there emerged not only challenges to traditional
i. E.W.I, 8. 2. Ibid.

46
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
methods of social and political organization but also chal-
lenges to traditional ways of thought. Wisdom was not now
something that lay in the past to be gained by laboriously
thumbing the pages of Aristotle or by listening to the
priests. Men were exhorted to find out things for them-
selves, to consult their own consciences, to communicate
with God directly instead of through the intermediary of
the priest. The discovery of America, the improvement of
communications through the spread of trade, the invention
of printing, the development of the new heliocentric theory
of the heavens - all these influences combined to produce
the conviction that there were new secrets to wrest from
Nature and new possibilities for human life on earth. There
were certain exceptional men who struck out on their own
and who thought that the success which they achieved was
due to the method of enquiry which they had adopted.
They therefore wrote up accounts of their techniques to
guide others on the road, and assured others that any
rational man could acquire by himself the knowledge which
had previously been passed on in a tradition. The age of the
manual, guide, and correspondence course was beginning
to dawn. There thus emerged Bacon's Novum Organum and
Descartes' Discourse on Method and Regulae, books which
assured their readers that all men were equal in the posses-
sion of reason and that if they used the proper method they
could not fail to read the secrets of Nature. Of course Bacon
and Descartes disagreed about what the proper method was,
but they agreed on the fundamental point that there was
such a method. Spinoza's Ethics was another such book ex-
plicitly written to guide any rational being along the path
of human blessedness. The parallel in politics had been
Machiavelli's Prince - a book of political maxims written
explicitly for usurpers who were to found new states or
restore existing ones to health.
Hobbes' Leviathan was therefore not an unusual book in
it exhibited the belief that knowledge meant power
so far as
and that knowledge could only be obtained by adopting a
certain kind of method. Its originality consisted in applying

47
 HOBBES
man, and nature all at once. Hobbes
this belief to society,
dreamed up a picture of man in society which was a system-
atic delusion, the creature of a rigorous method, rather than
a calm after-image of experience. Perhaps his basic delusion,
which he shared with so many others, was just this belief in
the efficacy of method. Generally speaking our under-
standing of nature and man has not been advanced by
people who have applied a method which could be mastered
or a technique which could be conned. Making discoveries
is not like making sausages. There seems to be no recipe for

making discoveries; only certain rules of procedure for com-

municating and testing them. Hobbes' method did not in
fact provide him with new truths; it only helped him to

systematize and set out in a stimulating and startling way

opinions which were, in essentials, as old as Thucydides,
Protagoras, and the Greek atomists, but which burst forth
with new vigour in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
with the rise of individualism, rationalism, and the mathe-
matical sciences.

j. Philosophy and the Method of Geometry

Philosophy, said Hobbes at the start of the De Corpore, is now

amongst men as corn and wine were in the world in ancient
times. As these were not cared for, men had to live on
acorns. So every man had natural reason, but, for want of
improving it, most men had to be content with the acorns of
daily experience. Hobbes proposed to lay open a few of the
elements of philosophy which would serve as seeds from
which pure and true philosophy would spring up. By
showing how to cultivate wine and corn he might win some
of his contemporaries away from their acorns. There was
no mystery about the method. At the age of forty Hobbes
had discovered and fallen in love with geometry; and it was
the method of geometry that had captivated him. Hobbes'
revolt against the Aristotelian tradition was in fact a return to
that of Plato and the Pythagoreans; for Plato had insisted
on knowledge of geometry as a necessary qualification for
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
discussions in his Academy. What was it about geometry
that so fascinated Plato, Copernicus, Descartes, Hobbes,
Spinoza, and other eminent thinkers? It was partly the
belief coming down from the Pythagoreans that the world
had a geometrical ground-plan, and partly its method,
which permitted certainty in its conclusions provided no
slipswere made in demonstration. The quest for certainty
has been almost the occupational neurosis of philosophers,
especially at times of rapid social change. It was the possi-
bility of attaining certainty which so attracted Hobbes
whose deep-seated feeling of insecurity was aggravated by
the objective facts of the political situation.
It requires considerable intellectual imagination for us to
realize what an exciting and remarkable activity mathe-
matical reasoning seemed to the Greeks and to the post-
Renaissance physical scientists who re-discovered its im-
portance. Plato and the Pythagoreans were so impressed by
it that they regarded reason as the divine element in man.

Plato was perhaps the first to see the great importance of

geometry, the method of which he tried to generalize for
dealing with other than mathematical problems. Instead of
grubbing about with hands and eye to find out things, or
laboriously sorting out the conflicting tales told by credu-
lous informants, the geometer could just sit down and work
rigorously on the creations of his own mind. The amazing
-
thing was that if he started from definitions e.g. of 'straight
line' or 'equal' -and combined these defined terms in axioms,
conclusions followed which were certain, far from trivial,
and of which he was not aware when he started. The ideas,
too, with which the geometer dealt, seemed to have a pecu-
liar status. The idea of 'straight line' or 'equal' seemed to be
clear and distinct in that he seemed to know intuitively what
the terms meant; yet there seemed to be no concrete imagery
of 'equality' or of lines that were perfectly straight. Indeed
the understanding of these terms was in no way affected by
the idiosyncrasies of images formed as a result of seeing
various geometrical figures. This led Plato to distinguish the
world of non-deceptive, perfect objects like the geometer's
49
 HOBBES
triangle about whose properties mathematical reasoning
could provide certain knowledge, from the ordinary world
of changing, deceptive objects about which the senses pro-
vide uncertain opinions. Mathematics thus came to be
taken as the paradigm of all knowledge because of the re-
quirement of certainty. Nature's ground-plan could only be
revealed to reason; the senses were useful for dealing with
the mundane problems of daily life but useless for the
development of scientific understanding.
Descartes, another great geometer, did for mechanics,
astronomy, and the other developing sciences what Plato
had done for earlier developments in mathematics - he
extrapolated the method by means of which he thought the
results had been obtained, and developed a very similar

theory of knowledge. He thought that knowledge could only

be obtained by isolating intuitively certain 'simple natures'
or essential properties of the physical world like 'extension*
and 'motion' a clear and distinct understanding of these
;

would provide a certain foundation from which a deductive

science of nature could be developed. The senses were bio-
logically useful but, in relation to the development of
knowledge, their function was only to provide
scientific

problems by the mathematical method

for rational solution
and to decide between mathematically equivalent postu-
had no other use for their senses.
lates. Scientists
As Hobbes' philosophical inspiration dated from his dis-

covery of geometry, it is not surprising that he adopted

fundamentally the same position as Plato and Descartes. He
distinguished between experience, on the one hand, which
gives rise to historical knowledge and prudence, and reason
which gives rise to scientific (or philosophical 1 ) knowledge
and wisdom. 'The remembrance of succession of one thing
to another, that is, of what was antecedent, and what conse-

quent, and what concomitant, is called an experiment;

whether the same be made by us voluntarily, as when a man
i. Hobbes uses the terms 'science* and 'philosophy' interchangeably,
whereas there has now been a separation between science and philosophy
leading to a more specialized meaning for both terms.

5
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
putteth any thing into the fire, to see what effect the fire will
produce upon it or not made by us, as when we remember
:

a fair morning after a red evening. To have had many ex-

is what we call
periments, experience, which is nothing
else but remembrance of what antecedents have been fol-
lowed by what consequents.' 1 We see a cloud and, because
of past associations, we conjecture that it will rain. The
prudent man is the one who has noted well these regularities
of sequence and who can therefore make reliable forecasts
about what is likely to happen in a given situation or who
can give a shrewd opinion about what has probably led up
to a given state of affairs. But this prudence, which is the

product of experience, should not be mistaken for wisdom,

'.. for though a man have always seen the day and night to
.

follow one another hitherto yet can he not thence conclude

;

they still do so, or that they have done so eternally experi- :

ence concludeth nothing universally.' 2 Wisdom is the pro-

duct of reason which alone gives us knowledge of 'general,
eternal,and immutable truths' as in geometry.
Prudence is much helped by the branch of knowledge
which is called history, about which Hobbes makes some
interesting points. History is the 'register of knowledge of
fact'. It differs from scientific knowledge firstly in that it is
categorical knowledge whereas science is hypothetical. The
historian records what actually happened at particular
times and places, whereas the scientist postulates that, e.g.
'if the figure shown be a circle, then any straight line through
3
the centre shall divide two equal parts'. Secondly,
it into
the historian gives only a register of 'effects'. Facts are
selected and ordered which provide a storehouse for pru-
dence. 'For he that hath seen by what courses and degrees a
flourishing state hath first come into civil war, and then to
ruin; upon the sight of the ruins of any other state, will
guess, the like war, and the like courses have been there
also.' 4 But this register of 'effects', which provides a store-
house for prudence, is quite different from the knowledge of
i. E.W. IV, 16. 3. E.W. Ill, 71.
a. E.W. IV, 16, 18. 4. E.W. Ill, 16.

51
 HOBBES
'causes' possible by science. Machiavelli's maxims for
made
his prince were only counsels of prudence culled from a
study of Livy. They were as different from a true science of
statecraft as Hobbes' early translation of Thucydides was
from his Leviathan. Hobbes considered that he had, in his
own thinking, progressed from shrewd, fallible, common
sense about his country's plight to the certain knowledge of
the scientist.
From a brief survey of Hobbes' account of what science
or philosophy was not - experience, prudence, history -
something has been gleaned of his conception of scientific
knowledge. It was the product of reason rather than of
sense; it yielded universal truths that were hypothetical in
character; it permitted knowledge of Causes', not simply of

'effects'. These characterizations are very suitable signposts

for a more detailed account of Hobbes' positive conception
of scientific knowledge.

4. Reason and Scientific Knowledge

'When a man reasoneth,' said Hobbes, 'he does nothing else

but conceive a sum total, from addition of parcels or con- :

ceive a remainder, from subtraction of one sum from an-

other; which, if it be done by words, is conceiving of the con-
sequence of the names of all the parts, to the name of the
whole; or from the names of the whole and one part, to the
name of the other part. For REASON, in this sense, is
. . .

nothing but reckoning, that is adding and subtracting, of

the consequences of general names agreed upon for the
1
marking and signifying of our thoughts.' Reasoning is not
born with us like sense or memory; nor, like prudence, is it
the product of experience. It is rather an art which we
acquire by industry. We must learn, first of
impose all, to
names, or to define; we must an
learn, secondly, to devise
orderly method of proceeding from the names from which
we start to statements, which are the result of connecting
names together, and to syllogisms which are ways of connect-
i. E.W. Ill, 29-30.

5*
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
ing statements logically with each other. Science is 'a know-
ledge of all the consequences of names appertaining to the
1
subject in hand.' It gives us certain knowledge not of the
nature of things but of the names of things. 'The only way to
know is by definition.' 2
This account of reasoning is manifestly a generalization of
the method of mathematics. We start with certain terms or
names about whose definition we agree. We connect these
terms together into statements like 'A man is a rational, ani-
mated body' just as we add together items in an account.
We then find that if we follow certain methods of combining
the statements so created, conclusions follow which were con-
tained in our premisses but of which we were ignorant be-
fore we started our reckoning. We might for instance start
with the definition of 'man' as 'living creature' and of 'crea-
ture' as 'animated body'. We could then argue: Every man
is a living creature; every living creature is a body; there-

fore everyman is a body. Hobbes thought that science was

mainly a matter of exploring 'the consequences of names
appertaining to the subject in hand' or, in other words, see-
ing what followed from combining the various definitions
with which we might start.
The procedure of deducing consequences from definitions
Hobbes called the synthetical method, which is
very useful
for teaching or for expounding the consequences of prin-
ciples already known. In the analytical method, which is
employed when we wish to understand some given pheno-
menon, we must work backwards from a description of it
until we come to what Hobbes called 'primary propositions'
from which our description can be logically deduced. A
primary proposition is 'that wherein the subject is explica-
ted by a predicate of many names, as man is a body, ani-
mated, rational; for that which is comprehended in the
name man, is more largely expressed in the names body,
animated, and rational, joined together; and it is called
primary, because it is first in ratiocination for nothing can
;

be proved, without understanding first the name of the thing

i. E.W.III,35. 2. E,W.II,30 5 .

53
 IIOBBES
in question. 'Now primary propositions are nothing but defini-
tions, or parts of definitions, and these only are the prin-
ciples of demonstration, being truths constituted arbitrarily
by the inventors of speech, and therefore not to be demon-
strated.' l This is Hobbes' rendering of the Aristotelian
method of explanation in which to explain a thing was to
refer to the essential properties of the natural kind or class of

things to which it belonged. Whydo men make laws? Be-

cause making laws is a way in which rationality is exer-
cised and rationality is one of the essential properties of man.
Hobbes differs from Aristotle, however, in stressing that
some of these definitions which comprise 'primary proposi-
tions' are arbitrary conventions decided upon by the inven-
tors of speech. He
also says that there are certain basic terms
like 'motion', 'straight line', and 'extension', which cannot
be defined like 'man' by breaking them down into their
component parts; they are 'well enough defined, when, by
speech as short as may be, we raise in the mind of the hearer

perfect arid clear ideas or conceptions of the things named,

as when we define motion to be the leaving of one place, and
the acquiring of another continually'. 2 Here we see nothing
move nor is any cause of motion laid clown in the definition;
but nevertheless a clear idea of motion comes into our minds
when we hear the circumlocution. The terms for which we
can only give circumlocutions rather than definitions are
those describing a genus which is not itself a species under a
higher level genus. 'Man' is a species under the genus 'ani-
mal' which is a species under the genus 'body' but there is
;

no further genus in relation to which terms like 'body',

'motion', and 'extension* can be regarded as species.
Reasoning, therefore, whether synthetically or analyti-
cally, involves definitions. Definitions remove ambiguity,
give a universal notion of the thing defined, and obviate
occasions for controversy. Hobbes saw in definitions and in
geometrical demonstrations the main hope for reasonable
men to rid their country of those controversies which he

thought to be the basis of civil disputes. 'And therefore in

i. E.W.I, 36-7. 2. E.W. I,8i.

54
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased
God hitherto to bestow on mankind, men begin at settling
the significations of their words; which settling of significa-
J1
tions they call definitions Why should not men do the
. . .

same in political disputes ? Leibniz later had the same vision.

Men might develop a universal language which would en-
able them, when confronted with a moral problem, to sit
down with paper and pencil saying to each other 'Let us
calculate'. Hobbes puts his hopes succinctly: 'To conclude,
the light of human minds 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.' 2 The point of philosophy or
science was not just to understand society but to change it.
But are we to conclude that Hobbes thought that this could
be achieved by simply starting from and sticking to defini-
tions? We are hesitant in ascribing this view to Hobbes
both on general grounds and because there are strands in
Hobbes' teaching which make such a simple interpretation
suspect.
To take the general grounds first. Since the time of Hume
and Kant it has been customary to distinguish between
analytic and synthetic truths. The distinction is not an
absolute one but can be roughly formulated as follows. The
grounds for the truth of an cinaly tic judgement lie solely in
the definitions of the terms involved. 'Centaurs are four-
legged animals' is analytic if four-leggedness is one of the
defining properties of centaurs, or if one would not call an
animal a centaur if it did not have four legs. The grounds
for the truth of a synthetic judgement, on the other hand,
are observations, memories, or testimonies which confirm
what is stated. Thus 'sons hate their fathers' is a synthetic

truth if hatred of a father is not taken as one of the defining

properties of a son (i.e. if we did not stop calling a person a
son if there was no sign of his hating his father), and if sons

actually do hate their fathers, our belief that they do being

grounded on observations, memories, and testimonies
i. E.W. Ill, 23, 4. 2. E.W. Ill, 36, 7.

55
 IIOBBES
Hobbes himself makes a when he differ-
similar distinction
entiates necessaryfrom contingent propositions. 1 In a neces-
sary proposition like 'man is a living creature' we cannot
conceive of anything which we would call by the subject
('man') without also calling it by the predicate ('living
creature'); also the predicate is either equivalent to the
subject as in 'man is a rational living creature' or part of an
equivalent name as 'man is a living creature'. A contingent

proposition, on the other hand, like 'every crow is black'

may be true now but false hereafter; and, as in 'every man
is a the predicate ('liar') is no part of a compounded
liar',
name equivalent to the name 'man' which forms the sub-
ject.Hobbes, however, does not develop this distinction and
does not think it important in his account of scientific know-
ledge; for science is concerned only with what he calls
necessary truths. This is where we encounter the crucial
difficulty; for though geometry, whose method Hobbes
generalized, is usually considered to be composed of only
what we have called analytic truths, the natural and
social sciences are not. If the natural and social sciences
were just like geometry, then what Hobbes says about
the importance of definitions in obtaining true knowledge
would be reasonable enough. But the model of analytic
truths misleading for the natural and social sciences;
is

for, as Hume
saw, geometrical propositions may be
necessarily true but need have no application in the world
in which we live. Definitions may be constructed and pro-
positions generated which are indubitable; but what is the
use of them in Hobbes' ambitious project for 'the benefit of
mankind' if they tell us nothing about the world? The
problem which haunted Kant was how it comes about that
mathematical propositions - e.g. Newton's laws - are some-
times true explanations of events in the world. Hobbes,
however, assumed like Descartes that nature had an under-
lying mathematical structure which was not apparent to
sense but which could be unfolded by the definitions and
demonstrations of the geometrical method. But how were
i. E.W. 1,38.

56
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
the appearances to be saved ? How could what was ration-
ally revealed be related to what could be seen with the eyes ?
For in the natural and social sciences it is not sufficient to
define terms precisely; we must also choose those 'primary
propositions' whose deduced consequences agree with what
can be observed. Certainly definitions are important in that
verbal misunderstandings are minimized; certainly the
deductive method is employed in exploring the conse-
quences of the postulates with which we start. But observa-
tion is decisive in deciding between such postulates. In this

respect science is quite unlike geometry.

So much, then, for the general grounds for hesitating to
ascribe to Hobbes the view that the model of geometric
truth was quite adequate for the sciences of nature, man,
and society. We must now pass to what he actually saidon
the crucial topic of scientific truth. It must be said, to start
with, that he was not at all clear about the distinction be-
tween geometry and the non-formal sciences and that his
theory of truth is unclear in consequence. But it is possible
to defend the view that when he is speaking in a predomin-

antly political context he stresses always the importance of

definitions and usually puts forward a conventionist theory
of truth; whereas when he is thinking about the natural
sciences his theory is less conventionist and more like a self-
evidence theory such as Descartes'.
in Leviathan and De Give which give
5
It is Hobbes remarks
the reader the strong impression that he held some kind of
conventionist theory of truth. He starts with the important
insight that 'true' and 'false' are attributes of speech, not of
things. They are words about words. He then goes on: 'See-
ing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names
in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had
need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and
to place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled
in words, as a bird in lime twigs, the more he struggles the
more belimed.' 1 And at the end of his English translation of
De Give he says that truth about questions of human science
i. E.W. Ill, 23.

57
 HOBBES
is'sought out by natural reason and syllogisms, drawn from
the covenants of men, and definitions, that is to say, signi-
fications received by use and common consent of words;
such as are all questions of right and philosophy . truth
. .

therefore depends upon the compacts and consents of men.

In like manner, when it is demanded in philosophy, whether
the same thing may entirely be in divers places at once the ;

determination of the question depends on the knowledge

of the common consent of men, about the signification of the
word entire. For if men, when they say a thing is entirely
somewhere, so signify by common consent that they under-
stand nothing of the same to be elsewhere; it is false that the
same thing is in divers places at once. That truth therefore
depends on the consents of men, and by the same reason, in
all other questions concerning right and philosophy.' l In
such passages one could interpret Hobbes as meaning that
agreement about definitions is a necessary condition for
arriving at true knowledge for otherwise men would be con-
;

stantly involved in verbal misunderstandings. One could

also hold that he meant that some disputes, where there is

agreement about the facts, can be settled by agreement

about how to use a word like 'entirely'. But it is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that he saw agreement about defini-
tions as more than just a necessary condition for arriving at
true knowledge. It looks as if he failed to see the importance
of the crucial difference between analytic and synthetic
truths and, through the influence of geometry, extended the
model of analytic truth to the natural and social sciences.
Hobbes saw that there is a certain arbitrariness about
definitions in science, but he did not see that this matters

very little because in science so little depends on definitions.

Terms have to be defined with sufficient precision to avoid
verbal misunderstandings and to guide the researches of
other scientists. But that is about all. 'In science, we take
care that the statements we make should never depend upon
the meaning of our terms. Even where the terms are defined,
we never try to derive any information from the definition,
i. E.W. II, 295-6.
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
or to base any argument upon it. That is
why our terms
make We do not overburden them. We try
so little trouble.
to attach to them as little weight as possible. We do not take
their 'meaning' too seriously. We are always conscious that
our terms are a little vague (since we have learned to use

them only in practical applications) and we reach precision

not by reducing their penumbra of vagueness, but rather by
keeping well within it, by carefully phrasing our sentences
in such a way that the possible shades of meaning of our
terms do not matter. This is how we avoid quarrelling about
words.' 1 'Clear speaking is speaking in such a way that
. . .

words do not matter.' 2 In the empirical sciences the main

function of clear definitions is to enable us to look through
the words at the facts described by them. But if the proce-
dure of empirical science is modelled on geometry where
there need be no facts described by the words, it is under-
standable that undue prominence should be given to the
role of definition. For geometry is simply exploring the
logical consequences of definitions.
If Hobbes' view that scientific knowledge depends on
exact definitions was over-optimistic, his belief in the effi-
cacy of definitions for eliminating civil discord was in-
credibly naive. For suppose agreement were to be reached
about how terms like 'sovereign' and 'justice' were to be
used, the decision would still remain whether such a sove-
reign should be tolerated or whether justice, however de-
fined, should be done. Hobbes' political arguments were,
as we shall see, more subtle than this ; but prima facie the
belief in the efficacy of definitions in
promoting civil con-
cord seems preposterous. For knowing precisely what a
Communist means by 'democracy' or 'class-solidarity' may
make a Liberal quite clear that he is completely opposed to
the convictions put forward by the use of such words. Only
if agreement were reached about the definitions of such
terms by getting the other person to share the convictions
for which the terms were shorthand, would Hobbes' optim-

1. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II, p. 18.
2. Op. cit., p. 282,

59
 HOBBES
ism be justified. this, again, would show the relative un-
But
importance of definitions. For agreement about definitions
would then be the symptom rather than the cause of civil
concord.
The stress on the need for definitions is often linked by
Hobbes with the contract theory of the origins of civil
society. In setting up a commonwealth men agree to use
words in a certain way as well as to accept the arbitration
of a sovereign on matters relating to the preservation of
peace. There are passages, however, where Hobbes pushes
this theory of truth by convention to its logical conclusion.
For men may disagree about definitions. 'It is needful
therefore, as oft as any controversy ariseth in these matters
contrary to public good and common peace, that there be
somebody to judge of the reasoning, that is to say, whether
that which is inferred, be rightly inferred or not; that so the
controversy may be ended. But there are no rules given by
Christ to this purpose, neither came he into the world to
teach logic. It remains therefore that the judges of such
controversies, be the same as those whom God by nature
had instituted before, namely, those who in each city are
constituted by the sovereign. Moreover, if a controversy be
raised of the accurate and proper signification, that is the
names or appellations which are com-
definition of those
monly used insomuch as it is needful for the peace of the
;

or the distribution of right, to be determined; the deter-

city,
mination will belong to the city. But the decision of the
. . .

question whether a man do reason rightly, belongs to the

51
city. Scientific disputes, which bear upon matters of pub-
lic importance, must, so it seems, be submitted to the magis-

trate. It must be said, however, that this bizarre and

authoritarian theory of truth is usually put forward when
Hobbes is concerned to delimit the respective spheres of
secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction or when he is troubled
about the kinds of disputes that provoke civil unrest. In-
deed it may be said in general that Hobbes is more enthral-
led by the prospect of modelling political reconstruction on
i. E.W. II, 268-9.
60
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
geometry than troubled by doubts about the lack of parallel
between geometry and natural science.
There are, however, certain strands in Hobbes' teaching
which indicate a self-evidence rather than a conventionist
theory of truth both in geometry and in the non-formal
sciences. We have already encountered certain terms in

primary propositions like 'motion' and 'straight line' which

cannot be further analysed but which are 'well enough
defined, when, by speech as short as may be, we raise in the
mind of the hearer perfect and clear ideas of the things
named'. These terms, which occur in the basic postulates of
geometry and of the physical sciences, are suspiciously
similar to Descartes' clear and distinct ideas of simple
natures. It seems as though we do not arbitrarily decide on
all our definitions. Rather our postulates contain terms
which symbolize clear and simple conceptions of all-per-
vading properties of the physical world like motion and
extension. It is not the decision of the magistrates which
generates the truth of these postulates but the self-evidence
of the conceptions which their terms symbolize.
This interpretation is supported by taking into account
Hobbes' odd subjective account of evidence. At the start of
his early work entitled Human Nature he says that know-
two - truth and evidence.
ledge necessarily implies things
Truth he has already exemplified by an analytic truth.
'Charity is a virtue' is true if the name of virtue includes
that of charity. Evidence he defines as 'the concomitance of
a man's with the words that signify such concep-
conception
tion in the act of ratiocination.' 1 A parrot could speak
truth but it could not know it; for it would lack the concep-
tions which accompany the speaking of truth by a man who
knows truth. 'Evidence is to truth, as the sap to the tree,
which, so far as it creepeth along with the body and bran-
ches, keepeth them alive; where it forsaketh them, they die:
for this evidence, which is meaning with our words, is the
life of truth. Knowledge thereof, which we call science, I
define to be evidence of truth, from some beginning or prin-
i. E.W. IV, 28.

61
 HOBBES
ciple of sense : for the truth of a proposition is never evi-
dent, until we conceive the meaning of the words or terms
whereof it consisteth, which are always conceptions of the
mind nor can we remember those conceptions, without the
:

1
thing that produced the same by our senses.'
Now there are several points of interest in this key pass-
age. In the first place Hobbes makes the interesting and
important distinction between speaking truth and knowing
truth. A
man with scientific understanding must know
truth and not just speak it. This involves not only speaking
in accordance with agreed definitions but also having con-
ceptions of 'evidence' or of the 'meaning' of terms. By
'meaning' he does not refer to the definition of terms by
introducing other terms but to mental conceptions which
are supposed to accompany speech. Whatever the merits of
the theory of meaning here suggested, it is surely significant
that Hobbes sees the necessity for introducing the notions of
evidence and meaning. In the second place it is important
that Hobbes links this very subjective account of meaning
with the doctrine that our conceptions originate in sense
experience. His doctrine of evidence thus preserves a con-
nexion, albeit a very tenuous one, between observation and
knowledge of truth. For we cannot have true knowledge
without 'conceptions' and these are produced in us from
without by our sense experience of things. Names are then
given to the things of which we have conceptions and are
joined together to make true propositions. These in their
turn are joined together into the syllogisms of scientific
demonstration. This working on the material provided by
sense with the help of the tools of definition and deduction
differentiates science from prudence. For the latter is merely
the experience of the effects of things working on us from
without. This may lead to error if we are mistaken in our
perceptions, memories, or expectations. But we are only
guilty of falsehood if we speak. For instance, if we see the
image of the sun in water and imagine it to be there, and
act as if it were there, we are in error. But we only commit a
i. E.W. IV, 28.

62
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
falsehood if we go on to call both the heavenly sun and the
sun in the water 'sun', and say that there are two suns.
It seems, then, as if Hobbes thought that true knowledge
or science involved correct speech in accordance with defi-
nitions but that thishad meaning because it mirrored con-
ceptions derived from sense experience. There are two pro-
cesses - and thinking - which go on concomitantly
talking
and which culminate in the enunciation of the basic postu-
which symbolize our simple and clear con-
lates of science

ceptions of motion, extension, and so on, which we have

originally seen with our eyes.The definitions of the scientist
are thus connected with his sensory experience of the world
which he tries to explain. But in thus trying to save the ap-
pearances Hobbes committed himself, surely, to a strangely
private theory of scientific meaning that both under-
estimated and misconceived the role of sensory observation
in science. For his suggestion that scientific postulates have
meaning, and therefore, in contrast to those of the theolo-
gian, have impeccable credentials, because they symbolize
conceptions which originate in sense, is surely irrelevant.
For it does not matter much how scientific postulates
originate ; what matters is that their deduced consequences
should be testable by observation. The role of sensory
observation is at the end, in deciding between postulates,
however they originate or however clear an(i distinct the
conceptions may be that they are alleged 'to symbolize.
Galileo saw this for he insisted that even the most rational
;

and mathematically satisfactory theories should be tested

by comparing their deduced consequences with observa-
tions. This, of course, raises the problem of the empirical

meaning or interpretation of scientific postulates which

Hobbes touched on in his theory of evidence but at least it
;

raises the problem in the right place. Hobbes nowhere as-

signed a decisive role to sensory observation in deciding be-

tween postulates. He was in love with geometry and, absor-
bed in the enjoyment of his own conceptions, he averted his
eyes from the face of Nature.
 HOBBES

5. Scientific Knowledge and History

We have so far attempted to disentangle what Hobbes

meant when he characterized scientific knowledge as the

product of reason rather than of sense. We

must now turn
to his second characterization of it as universal and hypo-
thetical knowledge. He has in mind that when we talk, for
instance, of a circle in geometry we are not talking of any
particular circle drawn in a particular colour on a particu-
lar piece of paper. Rather we are enunciating universal
truths about any circle, about any figure that conforms to
the initial definitions. These statements are hypothetical
because we say that if a figure is a circle, then any straight
line through its centre will divide it into two equal parts.

We do not say that there is or was or will be a circle at any

particular place at any particular time which conforms to
these specifications. We only say that if a figure has certain
properties then certain propositions will be true about it.
Science provides us with truths that are universal, hypo-
thetical, and eternal.
This analysis seems to be substantially correct both for
natural science and for geometry. The main business of
scientists is to establish laws which are universal and hypo-
thetical statements like 'Everywhere and always if iron is
5

heated, then it expands But Hobbes does not sufficiently

.

inform us of his views about the relationship between these

truths and the register of facts which he calls history. In his
Behemoth Hobbes used his science of human nature to ex-
plain the causes and course of the Civil War. But he was
only able to do so because he did not make an impassable
gulf between his rational understanding on the one hand
and the particular events which he witnessed, remembered,
or heard about on the other. Observation, memory, and
testimony provided him with categorical statements about
particular events at particular times which served as minor
premisses for the major premisses provided by his rational
science of human nature. Self-interest, taught Hobbes, is
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
the only operative motive. Men go to war only because of
their desire for power. The Presbyterians waged war on
Charles. They did so, therefore, in order to get power for
themselves. Whatever their alleged reason might be for
-
making war on a king the injustice of shipmoney, the or-
ders of God, the influence of a Catholic queen - the reality
behind the appearances was their desire for power for them-
selves. In cases like these Hobbes uses his universal truths
about human nature in order to explain particular
events. At other times he even uses such categorical state-
ments to confirm his universal statements as any scientist
would who believes in the importance of observation. For
instance Hobbes quotes as evidence for his principle 'by
experience known to all men and denied by none, to wit,
that the dispositions of men are naturally such, that except
they be restrained through fear of some coercive power,
every man will distrust and dread each other', the fact that
people shut their doors against their neighbours even in
well-governed states and lock up their trunks and coffers
for fear of domestics. 1 These statements, it is true, are lower
order universal statements; but the sole evidence for them
could only be that Hobbes had seen, remembered, or heard
about these examples of neighbourly conduct at particular
times and places. There thus seems to be an obvious con-
nexion between Hobbes' rational science of human nature
and his record of historical events, which is an interpreta-
tion guided by his assumptions about human beings. His
rational science which is quite different from experience
seems rather a fraud. When he makes use of his science,
however mistaken his postulates, what he in fact does seems
much more intelligible than what he claims to be doing.
This is often the case with philosophers of science.

& Science as Knowledge of Cause and Effect

The first two characterizations of scientific knowledge as the

product of reason and as hypothetical knowledge were
i. E.W. II, xv.

65
 HOBBES
manifestly a generalization of the method of geometry. Al-
though much has been said about Hobbes' mistake in
equating the method of geometry with that of physical
science, it was quite understandable in view of the great
contribution of the geometric method to the development
of the new science of motion from which Hobbes obtained
his third characterization of scientific - that it
knowledge
yields knowledge of causes.
There is a sense in whichit is misleading to stress too

much the role of observation in science; for most great

advances in scientific theory have come about through the
postulation of unobservables to explain the observable.
Galileo worked out his theory by imagining perfect spheres
moving on frictionless planes in perfectly straight lines. He
was able to conduct such imaginary experiments because
his mind had been set free from the earth-bound Aristote-
lian system by the method of geometry which accustoms
its students to conduct such experiments with parallel lines
that arc perfectly straight and stretch out to infinity, with
angles that are really equal, and with perfect circles. Aristo-
telianism, on the other hand, was an earth-bound system
with a premium on rapes of the senses. The sun revolved
round the earth because it was actually observed to do so.
The elements of earth, water, air, and fire had their
natural places, in that order, with the water on the earth
separated by the region of air from the fiery region occupied
by heavenly bodies. This too was based on crude observa-
tion. And so was the all-important assumption that rest is
the natural state of bodies which move only so long as a
mover imparts motion to them. It was only because Galileo
and his contemporaries at Padua were versed in geometrical
modes of thought that they were able to make the momen-
tous advance of imagining motion as the norm for it is not
;

through observation that we become convinced that bodies

continue their motion unless something impedes them. It
was through imagining the perfect case of a body moving
without impediment as the norm that Galileo was set free
to work out a new system of mechanics. These ideal experi-

66
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
merits were very important in Galilean method. We shall
find Hobbes having recourse to them. Indeed this is the
most convincing way of interpreting his account of the state
of nature and the social contract.
We tend to think of Galileo as a lone pioneer at war with
the Inquisition; but a little research reveals him as the in-
heritor of a long tradition of the Averroistic branch of
Aristotelianism that had flourished at Padua for centuries. 1
His famous resoluto-compositive method, which Hobbes
adopted, was taken over from Zarabella and fused with a
new mathematical tradition that had gathered support at
Padua after the translation of Archimedes' works into Latin
in 1543. Hobbes adopted the terms 'analysis' and 'synthe-
for his method which were the terms used by Euclid and
sis'

Archimedes rather than the 'resolution' and 'composition'

of the Paduan school. But it was more or less equivalent to
the mathematicized version of the resolution and composi-
tion of the Paduan tradition.
What, in brief, this method which worked such magic
was
in the hands of Galileo ? Suppose we want to explain some-
thing like the fall of a body towards the earth. We take a
typical phenomenon like the rolling of a ball down an in-
clined slope. We
think away characteristics like the colour
and smell of the ball, which are presumed to be irrelevant
to the problem, and resolve the situation by analysis into
components which can be quantified - the length and angle
of the slope, the weight of the ball, and the time taken to
cover the distance to the ground. We then think about the
mathematical relations disclosed until we find some
formula in which one variable is a function of another. In
this casewe find that the velocity of the body, or the units of
space travelled in a unit of time, is a function of the time it
has been falling from rest, the distance being proportional
to the square of the time taken. The 'composition' or 'syn-
5
thesis of the situation is the reconstruction of the situation

I. The details of this tradition can be found in J. H. Randall's article,

Scientific Method in the School of Padua,' in the Journal of the History of
Ideas, 1940.

67
 HOBBES
in mathematical terms by deducing consequences from the
laws discovered. The situation has been transformed into
a rational structure of mathematical relations. In view of the
great deductive power of this method, is it surprising that
Galileo and his followers thought of shape, size, quantity,
and motion as the reality behind the appearance of colours,
and other properties unamenable to mathe-
tastes, smells,
matical expression ?
When, therefore, Hobbes spoke of the search for causes
we must bear in mind that his paradigm for causal explana-
tion was the resolution and composition of the Paduan
school. One of his most famous definitions of philosophy or
scientificknowledge occurs at the beginning of De Corpore :

'PHILOSOPHY is such knowledge of effects or appearances,

as we acquire by true ratiocination from the knowledge we
have first of their causes or generation And again, of such
:

causes or generations as may be from knowing first their

effects.' 1 By 'effects or appearances' he meant properties in
virtue of which, at a common sense level, we distinguish
things from each other. The example of a circle reveals how
knowledge of effects can be obtained from knowledge of its
generation. For if we are presented with a plane figure, we
cannot possibly tell by looking at it whether or not it is a
true circle; but if we know how the figure was constructed
by the circumduction of a body, one of whose ends remained
fixed, we can reason that this must be a circle, because the
body, as it is pivoted round on one end, must provide a
succession of radii for the figure which are all equal to one
another. The motion of the body is the cause of the appear-
ance or generates it. Hobbes in fact equated 'cause' with
antecedent motion. 'I say then, that in the first place you

are to enquire diligently into the nature of motion. For the

variations of fancies, or (which is the same thing) of the
phenomena of nature, have all of them one universal effi-
cient cause,namely the variety of motion. For if all things in
the world were absolutely at rest, there could be no variety
of fancy; but living creatures would be without sense of all
i. E.W.I, 3.

68
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
objects, which is little less than to be dead/ 1 Similarly, in
the section 'Of cause and effect' in De Corpore, Hobbes
equates cause with 'the aggregate of all the accidents both
of the agents how many soever they be, and of the patient,
put together; which when they are all supposed to be pre-
sent, it cannot be understood but that the effect is produced
at the same instant; and if any one of them be wanting-, it
5
cannot be understood but that the effect is not produced 2 .

Causation and the production of effects consist in a continual

mutation in agents by the working on them of other agents.
For instance, as the heat of a fire increases, so bodies in
proximity gradually get hot as well. All such mutations con-
sist in motions and there can be no cause of motion except

in a body contiguous and moved.

For Hobbes, then, a cause of an event amounted to the
antecedent motions in contiguous bodies necessary and
sufficient to produce it. The enquiry into causes can be
conducted in two ways. Either, as in the case of deducing
that a figure must be a circle from our knowledge of the
motions by means of which it was produced, we are not sure
of an effect and deduce what it must be from our knowledge
of its causes. Or we may know an effect and may wish to
know what are its causes. This is what Hobbes calls the
analytical method. To discover, for instance, the cause of
light, we must conduct an imagined experiment to discover
those motions which invariably precede light and which are
absent when light also is absent. We discover that there must
be some principal object which is, as it were, the fountain of
light, together with a transparent medium and a body with
a fitting disposition of organs to receive impressions from
without. There must also be some kind of motion in the
objectwhich is continued through the medium to the eye
and thence to the 'last organ of sense, the heart'. Light is
'nothing but the alteration of vital motion, made by the
5
3
impression upon it of motion continued from the object .

The effect has been broken down by analysis into the vari-
ous circumstances necessary and sufficient to produce it.

i. E.W. VII, 83. 2. E.W. I, 121-2. 3. E.W. I, 79.

69
 HOBBES
Such a mental experiment can only be carried out if we
make use of names to register our conceptions and names ;

are definitions or, as in the case of 'motion', terms which

conjure before our minds 'perfect and clear ideas or con-
ceptions of the things named'. And so we are back where
we started in the account of scientific knowledge - with the
indispensability of definitions or of clear ideas symbolized
by terms which permit only circumlocutions.
There is, however, a distinction which Hobbes makes
between these two scientific enquiries of discovering effects
when we know causes and discovering causes when we know
effects, which he does not develop at length, but which is
of paramount importance in any attempt to assess his
account. 1 At the beginning of Part IV of De Corpore, when
Hobbes embarks on physics with the chapter 'Of Sense and
Animal Motion', he distinguishes his two types of scientific
'

enquiry and says one, from the generation of things to

: . . .

their possible effects; and the other, from their effects or

appearances to some possible generation of the same. In the

former of these the truth of the first principles of our ratio-
cination, namely definitions, is made and constituted by
ourselves, whilst we consent and agree about the appella-
tions of things.' 2 This method Hobbes had already used in
the preceding sections of the De Corpore on parallel lines,
refraction and reflection, circular and other forms of
motion, angles, and so on. However, 'I now enter upon
another part; which is the finding out by the appearances or
effects of nature, which we know by sense, some ways and
means by which they may be, I do not say they are, genera-
ted. The principles, therefore, upon which the following
discourse depends, are not such as we ourselves make and pro-
nounce in general terms, as 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 single and particular, not

universal propositions.' 3 He then embarks on the attempt

1 . This contrast can also be found in Zarabella. Sec Randall article

referred to on p. 67.
2. E.W. I, 388. 3. E.W. I, 388 (my italics).

70
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
to explain 'apparition itself, the fact that some 'natural
bodies have in themselves the patterns almost of all things,
3
and others of none at all which had puzzled him on his
,

third journey to the Continent when he witnessed the in-

ability of certain learned men to explain the nature of sense.
Explanations of the phenomena of the physical world,
starting with sensation itself and animal motion, and includ-
ing the world, the stars, light, heat, colours, cold, wind,
hardness, ice, lightning, thunder, the heads of rivers, sound,
odours, savour, touch, and gravity, all these depend upon
hypotheses, 'which unless we know them to be true, it is
impossible for us to demonstrate that those causes which I
have here explicated, are the true causes of the things whose
5
1
productions I have derived from them They may be the
.

true explanations but we cannot demonstrate that they

must be. Physics seems to differ from geometry in that we
do not create the phenomena in the way in which we create
triangles. Therefore there is always the chance that the
effects of nature have been generated in accordance with a
formula other than the one which we suggest in our hypo-
theses. This is a most important admission of whose far-

reaching implications Hobbes did not seem properly aware.

With the state, however, the case is different. For the
state is an artificial, not a natural, body. We can therefore
come to know with certainty the formula of its construction.
To use his own words 'Geometry, therefore is demonstrable,
:

for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn
and described by ourselves; and civil philosophy is demon-
strable because we make the commonwealth ourselves. But
because of natural bodies we know not the construction,
but seek it from effects, there lies no demonstration of
what the causes be we seek for, but only of what they may
be.' 2 This explains the link in Hobbes' thought between

geometry and social reconstruction. But it leaves the science

of animate bodies in an awkward predicament between the
5

two; for Hobbes intention was to explain the behaviour of

i. E.W. I, 531. 2. E.W. VII, 184.

71
 HOBBES
men in society as a particular case of the motion of bodies
having sense organs and animal spirits.
In general, there is little mystery about Hobbes' theory of
causation; for it was the usual theory adopted by the new
natural philosophers. In his Epistle Dedicatory to the De Cor-
pore Hobbes announced his indebtedness to Copernicus who
revived the opinion of Aristarchus, and Philolaos in his
heliocentric theory of the heavens; to Galileo, 'the first that
opened to us the gate of natural philosophy universal, which
5
*
is the knowledge of the nature of motion and to Harvey ;

for his Motion of the Blood and Generation of Living Creatures.

Before these, says Hobbes, there was nothing certain in
natural philosophy. Copernicus had regarded astronomy
as a branch of mathematics - the geometry of the heavens.
He believed, like most people before Hobbes and Leibniz,
that the space of geometry was the space of the universe ;

his heliocentric theory provided a geometrical ground-plan

of the universe that was much simpler than the Ptolemaic
one used by the Aristotelians. Kepler, whom Hobbes

praised along with Mersenne and Gassendi, for advancing

natural philosophy, thought of the 'underlying harmony
discoverable in the observed facts as the cause of the latter,
the reason, as he actually puts it, why they are as they
are'. 2 Mathematics was the key to the universe's struc-
ture since mathematical harmonies in the mind of the
Creator furnish the cause 'why the number, the size, and
the motions of the orbits are as they are and not otherwise'. 3
It was, however, in the natural philosophy of Galileo that
thisPythagorean- Platonic tradition was applied in detail to
phenomena and linked with the doctrine that all
terrestrial
causes are antecedent motions. Galileo allowed a place for
God, the great geometer, who constructed the atoms and
then set them in motion. But in mechanics we deal with
what he called 'secondary causes' which are specific

2. E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science 9

P- 53-
3. E. A. Burtt, op. cit.j p. 54.

72
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
motions. 'That and no other is in the proper sense to be
called cause, at whose presence the effect always follows,
and at whose removal the effect disappears.' 1 To all in-
tents and purposes a scientific explanation of an event
amounts to finding the antecedent motions co-present and
co-absent with the event to be explained.

7. Body, Man, and Citizen

This, then, was Hobbes' conception of philosophy or scien-

tific knowledge. It was by means of laying down definitions
in the search for causes that the universal truths of science
were to be proclaimed. Hobbes' imaginative idea was to use
thismethod in order to expound a complete philosophy of
body, man, and civil society. The method of analysis or
resolution was to be used to arrive at the most universal
notions necessary for a knowledge of the causes of all things.
We might start, for instance, with 'gold' and resolve this
into the ideas of 'solid', Visible', 'heavy', and so on. These
terms could be resolved into more universal ones like 'ex-
tended', but in our search for causes we must always arrive
in the end at 'motion', which could have no cause save
motion. There were also other terms which would permit
no further resolution like 'place' - definitions 'which are
5
2
nothing but the explication of our simple conceptions .

Geometry was the first science in which we could see how

different types of figures were generated by varieties of mo-
tion. This was the science of simple motions. Secondly came
the philosophy of motion (presumably Galileo's) in which
the effects of the manifest motions of one body on another
were to be considered. Thirdly we were to pass to physics,
the investigation of the internal and invisible motions which
explain why 'things when they are the same, yet seem not to
be the same, but changed'. 3 Sensible qualities like light, col-
our, sound, heat, odour, were to be explained together with
the nature of sensation itself, by which is meant seeing, hear-
ing, smelling, tasting, and touching, whose causes have to
i. E. A. Burtt, op. cit., p. 92. 2. E.W. I, 70. 3. E.W. I, 72.

73
 HOBBES
be determined. After physics we could proceed to moral
-
philosophy or a study of the motions of the mind appetite,
aversion, love
- whose causes should be investigated. This
science, which we would now call psychology, would follow
physics because the motions of the mind had their causes
in sense and imagination which were the subject of physical

contemplation. 'And, therefore, they that study natural

philosophy, study in vain, except they begin at geometry;
and such writers or disputers thereof, as are ignorant of
geometry, do but make their readers and hearers lose their
time.' 1

Geometry, however, was not quite so indispensable in the

whose status seems a trifle ambigu-
case of civil philosophy,
ous. As Hobbes claimed that his originality consisted in try-
ing to do for civil philosophy what Galileo had done for
natural philosophy and Harvey had done for the science of
the human body, the case of civil philosophy needs careful
consideration. In the Preface to the Reader of the English
translation of De Give, Hobbes stated explicitly the method
he had followed. The philosopher must proceed from 'the
very matter of civil government' to its generation and form.
Tor everything is best understood by its constituent causes.
For as in a watch, or some such small engine, the matter,
figure, and motion of the wheels cannot well be known, ex-
cept it be taken insunder and viewed in parts so to make a;

more curious search and duties of

into the rights of states
subjects, it is necessary, I
say not to take them insunder, but
yet that they may be so considered as if they were dis-
solved ; that is, that we rightly understand what the quality
of human nature is, in what matters it is, in what not, fit to
make up a civil government, and how men must be agreed
amongst themselves that intend to grow up into a well-
2
grounded state.' This is a project fraught from the start
with an ambiguity which is crucial to our estimate of
Hobbes' whole civil philosophy. For was he really proposing
to explain the causes of a state at all ? When he says that he
will enquire about the matters in which human nature is Jit

i. E.W.I, 73. 2. E.W. n,xiv.

74
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
to make up a civil government and 'how men must be agreed
amongst themselves that intend to grow up into a well-

grounded state', he obviously is proposing to show how a

rational state ought to be constructed; he surely is riot at-
tempting an explanation of actual states. However, he pro-
ceeds as if he were conducting a Galilean experiment
rather than enunciating a rational plan for reconstruction.
The resolution of the state into its constituents, men, is
followed by the analysis of the causes of their entry into a
commonwealth - man's dread and distrust of his fellows,
and death which, together with his self-interest,
his fear of
lead him to devise a
compact guaranteeing the conditions of
peace which is enforced by an absolute sovereign power.
How did Hobbes arrive at these axioms about human
nature to which he appealed in his analysis of a well-
grounded state ? In his chapter 'Of Method' in De Corpore,
after sketching his plan for geometry, the science of motion,

physics, and moral philosophy, as already indicated, he

says that men might attain knowledge of the passions and
perturbations of the mind by reasoning synthetically from
the first principles of philosophy and deduce from these the
causes and necessity of constituting commonwealths, the
knowledge of what is natural right and what are civil duties ;
for the principles of politics consisted in the knowledge of
the motions of the mind which comes from knowledge of
sense and imagination. But he also says that even those who
were ignorant of geometry and physics might attain the
principles of civil philosophy by the analytical method. For
they could start, for instance, with the question whether an
action be just or unjust; 'unjust' could be resolved into Tact
against law', and 'law' into 'command of him or them that
have coercive power'; 'power' could in its turn be derived
from the wills of men that constituted such power to the end
that they might live in peace. In the end the axiom would
be reached that the appetites of men and the passions of
their minds were such that, unless they were restrained by
some power, they would always be making war on each
other. Any man would admit that his experience confirmed

75
 HOBBES
this if he were to examine his own mind.
This admission
seems to indicate the possibility of an almost self-contained
civil philosophy depending only on certain axioms of moral

philosophy, vouched for by self-evident conceptions. In

Leviathan, too, Hobbes not only followed this method but
advocated it to his readers in his introduction. After speak-
ing of the danger of inferences about people's designs from
the evidence of their overt behaviour he concludes 'He that :

is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this or

that particular man; but mankind: which though it be hard

to do, harder than to learn any language or science; yet
when I shall have set down my own reading, orderly and
perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consi-
der, if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of
doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.' 1
Hobbes was not modest in the claims he advanced for his
civil philosophy. At the end of Part II of Leviathan he com-

pared his work with Plato's Republic, whose main theme was
that society could not be saved till philosophers became
kings or kings philosophers. Hobbes did not go quite so far
as this. He claimed only that a sovereign who understood
his science of natural justice, which neither Plato nor any
other philosopher hitherto had worked out, could learn to
govern. Perhaps some sovereign would gain possession of
his writing and 'convert this truth of speculation, into the

utility of practice'. The principles of his science of natural

2

justice were rules like 'Every man ought to endeavour peace,

as far as he has hope of attaining it', 'That men perform their
covenants made', and 'That every man strive to accommo-
date himself to the rest'. Hobbes regarded these rules as self-
evident axioms that any rational man could not help accept-
ing. For, he argued, man's desire to increase his own power,
his pride, is balanced by his fear of death, and because man
is afraid of death he must accept rules like these, which are
the necessary conditions of peace.
What can have led Hobbes to think that men can only be
moved either by pride or fear? For his whole civil philoso-

i. E.W. III, xii. 2. E.W. Ill, 358.

76
 METHOD MAKETH MAN
phy depends upon the acceptance of this assumption.
really
The evidence Hobbes gives is mainly introspective. He asks
us to look into ourselves and to agree with him that these
considerations alone move us to act. Hobbes, like Descartes,
seems to have thought that if postulates are self-evident,
they are true. Men cannot doubt that they are moved solely
by pride or fear; this seems to them to be self-evident when
they look into themselves ; therefore it must be true. This is
surely a mistake; for although some statements that are true
may also seem self-evident, they are not true because they are
self-evident, and many statements that are not true may
seem to be self-evident. The history of thought is littered
with self-evident assumptions that were later discarded.
Newton, for example, tried several other formulations of his
laws of motion before coming back to the one for which he
is famous because this formulation did not seem to him to

be self-evident. It soon became self-evident to scientists once

they became accustomed to it. Indeed the self-evidence of
assumptions is largely a product of habituation. Many
Freudian assumptions, which surprised and shocked our
grandfathers, seem almost self-evident to us. But what makes
assumptions true or false in science has nothing to do with
self-evidence. It depends on whether or not conclusions de-
duced from them are confirmed or falsified by observation,
not on whether they seem clear and distinct to those who
think about them. Presumably Hobbes was very conscious
of and very used to his own pride and fear. These may well
have been his dominant motives. But Hobbes' inability to
doubt this is a very poor reason for accepting them as an
interpretation of his own motives, let alone of human
motivation in general.
Many would say that Hobbes used the attractiveness and
persuasiveness of geometrical demonstration to enunciate
as self-evident the generalizations about man reached by a
timid academic who had, during his formative years, been
swept away by the rhetoric of Thucydides. They might fur-
ther maintain that he pretended that a generalization of his
own timid egoism could be deduced from the laws of motion
77
 HOBBES
in order that men would be disposed a despotism
to accept
that would permit him enough peace and security to pursue
his intellectual interests without danger and distraction.
Such an interpretation is possible, but it is irrelevant and
lacks historical perspective. It is irrelevant because, as in the
case of all theories of the psychological, economic, or social
causes of people's beliefs, the causes which prompt a man to
put them forward have no bearing on the evidence which
makes them true or false. Marx may have put forward his
theory of economic change because he had a certain kind of
upbringing in a middle-class Jewish home but such con-
;

siderations have no bearing on the question whether or not

his theory of economic change was true or false. The causes
or origins of a theory are different from the grounds or evi-
dence for it.
The suggestion lacks a sense of historical perspective be-
cause it omits to dwell on the historical importance of
Hobbes as a methodologist. He was right in making claims
for the originality of his civil philosophy; for he attempted
to establish political science and psychology as objective
studies,untrammelled by theological assumptions or moral
convictions, preserving a detached and uninvolved attitude
towards man and society as well as towards nature. He tried
to explain the behaviour of men in the same sort of way as he
explained the motion of bodies. This was a comparatively
novel undertaking at that time. Perhaps it was mistaken.
Perhaps man's ability to alter the course of events through
his knowledge of causal laws introduces a quite novel factor
in nature which makes Hobbes' dream of a complete deduc-
tive science of man unrealizable. Perhaps the long line of

psychologists and social scientists who, like Hobbes, have

been fired by the imaginative idea of an all-inclusive deduc-
tive science of body, man, and citizen, have been the victims
of a gigantic mistake. This may be so. But the objective
attitude necessary for such an undertaking was a great step
forward. Hobbes was wrong in thinking that the method of
geometry was adequate for the development of physical
theories; he was wrong in thinking that psychological ex-
 METHOD MAKETIl MAN
planations are entirely similar to physical and hence to geo-
metrical explanations; but his supreme importance was to
have been wrong about psychology and political science in
thesame sort of way as he was about physics. This was a great
achievement.

79
 CHAPTER THREE

NATURE AND MIND

/. Hobbes the Metaphysician

THE ground-plan of Hobbes' deductive system of body,

man, and citizen was set out in his De Corpore, published in
1655 after thirteen years' intermittent work. This was
Hobbes' last word on the philosophy of nature. Yet it is a
strange book. When compared with Galileo's great works
on nature it seems abstract and lacking in observational
confirmation; yet when viewed as a philosophical treatise it
is remarkable for its lack of interest in and detailed treat-

ment of problems that are now regarded as 'philosophical'.

The explanation of the peculiar scope of the book is not
simply that Hobbes was a rationalist who decried the im-
portance of observation in obtaining certain knowledge, nor
that philosophy and science were almost indistinguishable
in the seventeenth century. It is probably to be found in
the nature of the problem which fascinated Hobbes and in
his speculative solution which provided the motif of De

Corpore.
The problem which haunted Hobbes is stated in a cele-
brated and striking passage of De Corpore: 'Of all the pheno-
mena or appearances which are near us, the most admirable
is apparition itself, TO
</>alvcrOai ; namely, that some natural
bodies have in themselves the patterns almost of all things,
and others of none at all/ 1 We are familiar with Hobbes'
perplexity about the cause of sense, of which the learned
doctors were ignorant, 2 and of his imaginative idea that the
cause of everything, including sensation itself, was in varia-
tions of motion. His Little Treatise and his early optical
i. E.W. I, 389. 2. Sec supra, p. 23.

80
 NATURE AND MIND
treatises were his first attempts at working out this specula-
tive suggestion. The De Corpore was a more ambitious attempt
to solve this problem by constructing a system of principles
which would also be adequate as a foundation for a science
of man and citizen. Motion, which obsessed Hobbes on his
third journey to the Continent, permeated his treatment of
geometry, physics, and animal psychology. Sensation occu-
pied a shadowy central position between the motions of the
external world and the endeavours or minute motions of the
bodily organs.
The De Corpore, then, represented a greatly expanded
version of a picture the elements of which were sketched in
the Little Treatise. But in spite of this expansion the details of
the deductive system were not elaborated with too close a
watch on the appearances. No engineer, after reading
Hobbes, would return to his daily tasks with a clearer grasp
of heat, velocity, or the paths of projectiles. But he might
derive a certain intellectual excitement from Hobbes'
mechanical vision. For Hobbes is to be regarded as the
metaphysician of the new scientific movement rather than
as one of its Whitehead has described meta-
field-workers.
physics as 'the science which seeks to discover the general
ideas which are indispensably relevant to the analysis of
1
everything that happens'. It involves 'the utilization of
specific notions, applying to a restricted group of facts, for
the divination of the generic notions which apply to all
facts'. Hobbes used the specific notions of the new physical
2

sciences and generalized them to cover man, who was

viewed as part of the mechanical system of nature. In this

extrapolation of the concepts of body, motion, and efficient

cause to the sphere of human affairs Hobbes justly prided
himself on his originality. Bacon ridiculed the Aristotelian
notion of final causes as adequate to explain the processes
of nature but retained them for the explanation of human
affairs. For human beings, after all, do have purposes and
move towards appropriate goals. Similarly Descartes held
1. A. N. Whitehead, Religion in the Making, p. 84 (footnote).
2. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 6.
81
 HOBBES
that only involuntary actions could be mechanically explained
in terms of antecedent push. But Hobbes ruthlessly, if per-
haps inappropriately, pushed the mechanical model into
the innermost sanctuaries of human intimacy, endeavour,
and decision. Most of the details of this ambitious project
were left to the imagination of the reader; and many have
been sufficiently fascinated by its audacity to attempt to
supply them.

2. The Cause of Sense

Many philosophers have been worried about imagery, which

Hobbes called TO <aiVecr0cu, or apparition, because of the
problematic status of images. When a man sees a tiger in his
dreams, a ghost in a churchyard, or a vivid picture of his
drowning son, does it make sense to say that these appear-
ances exist? Certainly they do not exist in the same way as
do the tiger in the jungle, the tombstone in the churchyard,
or the solid son squatting on the floor playing soldiers. Have
they existence, then, only as 'mental contents' ? Yet perhaps,
it is
argued, sensation as well as imagery is a kind of mental
picturing. Our private screen of appearances intervenes
between us and the things we see. When we say we have
perceived rather than imagined a tiger, we mean that in the
one case something really exists independently of us which
is represented on our private screen, whereas in the other

case there are only the private pictures. Or the physical

thing itself may be only an organization of or a construction
And so the problem of perception
out of our private pictures.
and the mind-body problem begin to develop.
related
Now the strange and tantalizing thing about Hobbes is
that though he was troubled about sensation and imagery,
he does not seem to have been at all troubled about the sort
of philosophical problems which came to be traditionally
associated with them. He seems to have assumed in a hard-
headed way that things exist independently of our percep-
tions of them and to have been convinced that 'conceptions
and apparitions are nothing really but motions in some in-
to
 NATURE AND MIND
head 1 He distinguished the faculties
5
ternal substance of the .

of the body from those of the mind, imagery being one of

our mental powers. 2 But he never supposed that our minds
contained a sort of stuff which was different in kind from
that of our bodies. Phantasms or apparitions were simply
one class of material movements. At least that is what he
explicitly said, though it may well be that he in fact re-
garded them as concomitants of movements in the brain
rather than as the actual movements. For there is something
rather incredible about a rigid materialist who maintains
that our thoughts and feelings are simply motions of the
body; epiphenomenalism, which holds that thoughts and
feelings are appearances or products of bodily motions,
sounds prima facie less incredible. Experienced heat or pain
may well be an appearance or product of motions in our
body in contact with other bodies; but it is odd to equate the
experiences with the motions. But Hobbes does not seem to
have been sufficiently interested in this problem to define
carefully what his position was. He
was able, too, to sustain
this ambiguity in his thought because he used terms like

'agitation', 'disturbance', 'celerity', 'tranquillity', and so

on, to describe mental occurrences, terms which have both
a mentalistic and a physical interpretation. His key concept
of 'endeavour', too, has also this double interpretation. This
twilight kind of language enabled Hobbes to talk like a
physiologist and yet preserve the common touch of every-
day experience.
Why, then, was Hobbes so preoccupied with sensation
and imagery and why did he think it so wonderful ? To take
the first question Hobbes seems suddenly to have hit upon
:

the idea that a correct causal analysis of sensation was the

key both to nature and to man. His prose biography,
after recording the interview with the learned doctors who
did not know
the cause of sense, says 'From that time on-
:

wards he often pondered upon the cause of sense and by

chance and good fortune it occurred to him that if bodies
and all their parts were to be at rest, or were always to be
i. E.W. IV, 31. 2. E.W. IV, 2.
 HOBBES
moved by the same motion, our discrimination of all things
would be removed, and (consequently) all sensation with
it;and therefore the cause of all things must be sought in
the variety of motion. And this was the first principle which
he employed. Then he was led to geometry to learn the
J *
varieties and modes of motion. . . . Hobbes regarded
apparition as a kind of meeting place of motions. Our sense-
organs are agitated by external movements. Without such
movements there would be no sensation. To give the entire
cause of sensation must therefore require an analysis of
movements in bodies external to us which are passed on to
us via a medium. The problem of the learned doctors is
only soluble in terms of a general mechanical theory. And
sensation is important, too, not just as a receptor of external
motions but also as the means by which actions are initiated.
Hobbes held an ideo-motor theory of action. By this is
meant that actions are reactions to external stimuli passed
on by means of the sense-organs. In Hobbes' language
phantasms are the efficient causes of action. Hobbes there-
fore regarded a correct causal analysis of sensati9n as the
key both to physics and psychology.
Why, then, did he describe apparition as a wonderful
thing? There is a sophisticated and a simple explanation of
this. The sophisticated theory is briefly as follows Hobbes' :

conviction was that a causal analysis of sensation is the ker-

nel of any physical enquiry; for sensations are caused by
external movements transmitted to us via a medium. Yet
this means that all we can know of nature depends upon our
sense organs; for how else could we know that there were
different classes of external movements ? But according to
Hobbes, the rationalist, we could only acquire prudence by
the use of our senses, not scientific understanding. However,
the conclusion must be drawn with regard to apparition
'that if the appearances be the principles by which we know
all other things, we must needs acknowledge sense to be the

by which we know those principles, and that all the

principle
knowledge we have is derived from it. And as for the causes
i. L.W.I, XXI.

84
 NATURE AND MIND
of sense, we cannot begin our search of them from any other
phenomenon than that of sense itself. But you will say, by
what sense shall we take notice of sense ? I answer, by sense
itself, namely, by the memory which for some time remains
1
in us of things sensible, though they themselves pass away.'
Hence the great wonder of apparition for without it there ;

could be no science, yet science itself is a matter of reason,

not of sense.
The simple explanation is that he was struck by the marvel
'
of imagery the most admirable is apparition itself, TO
. . .

^atrcadat; namely that some natural bodies have in them-

selves the patterns almost of all things, and others of none at
all.' The fact that men can measure the heavens and range
2

over continents in their imagination, that they can run over

their past lives and anticipate their future death 'sitting still
in our closets or in the dark' 3 impressed Hobbes enormously
-
especially as he thought of imaginings as motions of part
of a natural body. Yet certain natural bodies 'have in them-
'
selves the patterns almost of all things. There is a strong
. . .

streak of rustic wonder in Hobbes' thought just as there is a

strong element of the vernacular in his forceful, homespun
style and in the vigour and homeliness of his metaphors and
similes. Hobbes' verse autobiography gives the impression
of a man almost bemused by the wonder of motion. The
sophistication of the court and of continental circles was
grafted on the shrewd, almost mystical wonderment of a
man who was brought up in the country and spent long
hours in adolescence pondering and poring over the seas
charted by Drake and Magellan. Hobbes was above all a
man who could become intellectually excited. Even modern
professors of psychology can be filled with wonder when
they ponder over the peculiarities of imagery. How much
more so could Hobbes, who lived at a time when thinkers
sailed on comparatively uncharted seas ?
Sensation and imagery, then, are the central problems
round which Hobbes' philosophy of nature revolves. The
first part of De Corpore deals with the method necessary for

i. E.W. I, 389. 2. E.W. I, 389. 3. E.W. 1, 92.

85
 HOBBES
the attainment of scientific understanding. The second part
analyses the main concepts necessary for a mechanical ex-
planation of nature in general and sensation in particular.
Amongst these the most important are motion, body and
accident, space and time, cause and effect. The third part
is concerned with the details of the various modes of magni-

tude and motion. The fourth part is addressed specifically to

the problem of sensation and animal motion and then pro-
ceeds to physics. This opens with a chapter on the world as a
whole - whether it is a plenum or whether it contains empty
space, which is followed by an analysis of the various parts of
the world, grouped together, significantly enough, on the basis
of their appearance to the different senses. It is interesting
to notice that Hobbes' first venture into the philosophy of
nature in his Little Treatise, concerned explicitly with the
cause of sense, had a similar structure on a greatly reduced
scale. It began with an analysis of agent and patient, sub-
stance and accident, and cause; it then proceeded to deal
with the problem whether motion is transmitted by a
medium or by species (effluxes from agents) it ended with
;

the explanation of sense and animal motion. This similarity

of structure reinforces the suggestion that Hobbes' philo-
sophy of nature was like a snowball which gathered more
and more accretions round the central core of the explana-
tion of sensation. We must now turn to his imaginative solu-
tion of the problem - that the explanation of sensation and
of everything else in nature lay in variations of motion.

3. Motion

Hobbes believed, like many of his contemporaries, that

Euclidean geometry really represented the ground-plan of
the physical world, and that it was the foundation and para-
digm of all other sciences. He also believed that he could
outline a deductive system encompassing body, man, and
citizen. But this imposed a certain logical requirement on
him. 'The end of science is the demonstration of the causes
and generations of things; which if they be not in the defini-
86
 NATURE AND MIND
tions, they cannot be found in the conclusion of the first

syllogism, that is made from those definitions and if they ;

be not in the first conclusion, they will not be found in any

l *
further conclusion deduced from that. Thus, Hobbes
. . .

saw quite correctly not only that his psychology and poUtics
must describe human action in terms of bodies in motion in
order to be deducible from his science of mechanics and
physics, but also that, if his mechanics and physics were to
be deducible from his basic science of geometry, then his
geometry too must contain statements about motion in its
initial definitions. Hobbes' speculative feat was the two-way
extension of motion into geometry on the one hand and
into psychology and politics on the other.
Little need be said about the details of Hobbes' geometry

except to indicate how he introduced motion into it, so

making geometry a particular branch of kinematics. 'Lines,
superficies, and solids, are exposed, first, by motion but . . .

so as that the marks of such motion be permanent; as

when they are designed upon some matter, as a line upon
paper; or graven in some durable matter. Secondly, by
apposition; as when one line or length is applied to another
line or length, one breadth to another breadth, and one
thickness to another thickness. Thirdly, lines and super-
. . .

ficies maybe exposed by section, namely, a line may be

made by cutting an exposed superficies; and a superficies
by the cutting of an exposed solid.' A line is made by the
2

motion of a point, superficies by the motion of a line, and

so on. Similarly, circles are generated 'by the motion of a
compass or other equivalent means.'. No one can under-
3

stand what the definitions of geometry mean unless he has

performed such actual or imaginary experiments with
motion. To imagine motions with their lines and ways is a
c

new business, and requires a steady brain, and a man that

can constantly read in his own thoughts, without being
diverted by the noise of words.' 4 Hobbes claimed that
Euclid's definitions of circle and sphere supported his con-
1. E.W. I, 82. 3. E.W. VII, 205.
2. E.W. I, 140. 4. E.W. VII, 272.

87
 HOBBES
tention, but that he himself was 'the first that hath made the
grounds of geometry firm and coherent'. The mathematical
1

merits of this introduction of motion into the definitions of a

2
formal science geometry are very questionable. Wallis,
like

amongst others, took strong exception to it. But it was

certainly an imaginative conception. His mature fascination
for motion enabled him to reconcile his abiding concern for
social security with his middle-aged passion for geometry.
It is seldom that such harmonious relations can be estab-
lished between the loves of the different stages of a man's

development.
Geometry, then, was the science which dealt with those
simple motions involved in the construction of lines, circles,
and the other geometrical properties of bodies. It paved the
way for mechanics which dealt with the effects of the
motions of one body on another, and for physics which ex-
plained the generation of sensible qualities out of the in-
sensible parts of a body in contact with other moving bodies.
8
Geometry, as has been seen, was a demonstrable science; for
we ourselvesmake the motions which generate lines and
figures just aswe ourselves construct commonwealths; but
we are not responsible in the same way for the generation of
natural bodies, so we have to proceed by analysis to dis-
cover what their causes may be rather than must be.
Causation, or the production of effects in nature, consisted,
according to Hobbes, in a continuous process. There is con-
tinuous mutation in substances which affects other sub-
stances. The fire gets hotter and the bodies close to it are
affected as the heat spreads outwards. It was a cardinal
principle of Hobbes' philosophy that all such mutations
consisted in motion and that 'There can be no cause of
motion, except in a body contiguous and moved
41
He as-
.

sumed this principle more or less as self-evident throughout

the De Corpore, though he did make some rather half-

i. E.W.VII,242.
a. Sec Laird, pp. 102-9.
3. See supra, p. 71.
4. E.W. I, 124.
88
 NATURE AND MIND
hearted attempts to prove it. Action at a distance was to
philosophers of this period an intuitively repugnant idea. If
bodies were not contiguous and yet influenced each other,
contact must be brought about either by means of emana-
tions or through a medium. In his Little Treatise Hobbes

stoutly defended a theory of species, according to which

small particles are emitted from the agent which move
across space to the patient. In his later Tractatus Opticus he
changed his mind on this point and maintained a medium-
istic theory. Contiguous movement could thus be carried

over from agent to patient as if people went about with in-

visible antennae projecting from their sense organs. Air,
water, glass, or crystal were examples of media of different
degrees of density. Hobbes continued to hold this medium-
istictheory in De Corpore. All his attempts to demonstrate
the impossibility of action at a distance presupposed that
bodies with empty space between them could not influence
each other.
Hobbes, however, assumed not only contact between
bodies but also the transmission of motion in order for causal
interaction to take place. 'Whatsoever is at rest, will always
be at rest, unless there be some other body besides it, which,

by endeavouring to get into its place by motion, suffers it

no longer to remain at rest.' 1 Hobbes sought to establish

this by assuming the very point at issue - that there can be
no reason within a body at rest for its movement. If a body
at rest in empty space initiated its own movements it 'would
be moved alike all ways at once; which is impossible'. 2
Similarly, 'whatsoever is moved, will always be moved,
except there be some other body beside it, which causeth it
to rest', 8 and 'whatsoever is moved, will always be moved
on in the same way and with the same velocity, except it be
hindered by some other contiguous and moved body'. 4
Hobbes was here merely stating part of the principle of
i. E.W.I, 115.
a. E.W.I, 115.
3. E.W.I, 115.
4. E.W. I, 125.

89
 HOBBES
inertia first formulated by Galileo with regard to horizontal

motion, that a body once in motion continues to move with

the same velocity and in the same direction unless some
force actsupon it. Galileo abandoned the traditional dicho-
tomy between motion and rest and, by distinguishing
instead between accelerated and uniform motion, he had
been able to treat rest as a limiting case of uniform motion.
This advance made by Galileo was unquestionably the
source of Hobbes' inspiration that all change was a change
in motion; but it is questiomible whether Hobbes really
understood the details of Galileo's treatment of inertia. 1 His
attempt to prove that all mutation is motion was singularly
unconvincing.
The importance of Hobbes' principle that 'there can be
no cause of motion, except in a body contiguous and moved',
in its application to man as well as to nature, cannot be

over-emphasized. The traditional Aristotelian view was

that everything moved towards its natural end or final
cause in its natural place and in accordance with its formal
cause or law of development. The earth was the centre of
rather an intimate world in which everything had its due
place in a hierarchical system existing for the glory of God
and to provide a theatre for man's endeavours. Hobbes
remarked briefly and baldly: 'A final cause has no place but
in such things as have sense and will; and this also I shall
2
prove hereafter to be an efficient cause.' This was the
death-knell of the Aristotelian world-view. As Brandt puts
curious to read these few lines about final causes;
it: 'It is

on his Aristotelian contemporaries they must have had the

effect of the blow of a bludgeon. A whole world perished
with the giving up of the final causes.' 3 In its place Hobbes
conceived a world of bodies composed of particles, moved
by other bodies and other particles. The appearances of
nature which stimulated the artist and haunted the poet
were phantasms in bodies whose peculiarity consisted in
1. Sec Brandt, op. cit., pp. 282-5.
2. E.W. I, 132.
3. Brandt, op. cit., p. 290.

90
 NATURE AND MIND
having But
in themselves the patterns of almost all things.

phantasms themselves were but motions produced by other

motions and producing the motions of animal bodies. . . .

In the transition from mechanics to what Hobbes called

physics and moral philosophy the concept of 'conatus' or
'endeavour' was most important. He defined 'endeavour' as
'motion made in less space and time than can be given; . . .

that is, motion made through the length of a point, and in

an instant or point of time'. 1 The quantity or velocity of en-
deavour Hobbes called 'impetus' - 'the swiftness or velocity
of the body moved, but considered in the several points of
that time in which it is moved'. 2 In brief, the term 'endea-
vour' was used to designate infinitely small motions. Hobbes
took over the term from the physical scientists and general-
ized its application to bridge the gaps between physics,
physiology and psychology. As Brandt has so painstakingly
3
shown, the term was used for the internal beginnings of
animal motions in Hobbes' early Elements of Law in order to
bring out the analogy between appetite and impulse to
motion. In the Tractatus Opticus he expanded the concept to
denote the beginnings of motion in the mediumistic process
from the object of sense to the brain, which transmitted
pressure. In both these cases minute motions were postu-
lated. In a later optical treatise in criticism of Descartes, the
term appeared again to denote the property of a body in
virtue of which it falls to the earth or would fall to the earth
if it ceased to be suspended. In De Corpore weight and equi-
-
ponderation were defined by coriatus weight, for instance,
being 'the aggregate of all the endeavours, by which all the
points of that body, which presses the beam, tend down-
wards in lines parallel to one another'. 4 Bodies seemingly at
rest really have motion, albeit an infinitely small or conatus
motion. Pressure and resistance were similarly defined by
conatus. 5 All distance effects like light and sound were ex-

i. E.W. I, 206. 2. E.W. I, 207.

3. Brandt, op. ctt., pp. 300-15, to which this account of 'endeavour* is

greatly indebted.
4. E.W. I, 351. 5. E.W.I,2ii.

91
 HOBBES
plained by the propagation of conatus motions in a medium.
Hobbes also used the conatus concept to give an account of
appetite and aversion. Thus, to quote Brandt: 'The conatus
concept enters freely into Hobbes' collective endeavour to
understand everything by motion. What is common to the
different uses of the conatus concept is merely this that it
refers to very small motions; it is therefore used in appar-

ently widely different domains. Endeavour attributed

. . .

to heavy bodies by the ancients, as their "appetitus", "ex-

plaining" gravitation, is by Hobbes conceived as motion it-
self. ... In the kinetic endeavour we have Hobbes' purpose

with the conatus concept. By means of this he succeeds in

understanding a multiplicity of phenomena kinetically,
phenomena which either seem quite withdrawn from
motion, such as the static phenomena, or which might per-
haps be understood as motions, but as infinitely small
motions such as the act of illuminating, perception, the
nerve processes, appetite, etc,-'. 1
*
Endeavour' was the bridging concept which enabled
Hobbes to describe human behaviour in terms of his general
theory of motion. External objects working on the organs of
sense produce not only phantasms, but also what Hobbes
called 'animal motions'. 'For seeing in all sense of external
things there is mutual action and reaction, that is, two en-
deavours opposing one another, it is manifest that the
motion of both of them together will be continued every
2
way, especially to the confines of both the bodies.' This
motion from the sense organs proceeds to the heart and
makes some alteration or diversion of vital motion, the
motion of the blood. When it helps the vital motion we
experience pleasure; when it hinders it, we experience pain.
If vital motion is helped by the motion made by sense, the
body will be guided in such a way as to preserve that
motion. 'And in animal motion this is the very first endea-
vour,and found even in the embryo ; which while it is in the
womb, moveth its limbs with voluntary motion, for the
avoiding of whatsoever troubleth it and for pursuing of what
i. Brandt, op. '/., pp. 313-14. 2. E.W. I, 405.

92
 NATURE AND MIND
pleaseth it. And endeavour, when it tends towards
this first
such things as are known by experience to be pleasant, is
called appetite, that is, an approaching; and when it shuns
what is troublesome, aversion, or flying from it.' 1 Appetite
and aversion are thus the first endeavours of animal motion.
The postulation of these minute movements in the bodies of
animals and men made the suggestion plausible that human
action as well as the movement of projectiles can be ex-
plained mechanically. After all men move towards and away
from objects and each other. And just as there are minute
incipient movements involved in resistance, weight, and

pressure even though no gross movements of the body are

visible, so also a human body, though seemingly immobile,
isthe vehicle of myriads of minute movements. 'These small
beginnings of motion, within the body of man, before they
appear in walking, speaking, striking, and other visible

actions, are commonly ENDEAVOUR.' 2 Even its

called
habits are nothing but motions made more easy and ready
by perpetual and repeated endeavours in a way that is
differentfrom the motion that was natural to it originally;
they are comparable to the bend of a cross-bow.
Hobbes left the details of human psychology to the second
work in his trilogy, the De Homine. In De Corpore he outlined
only the general principles of animal psychology, men only
differing from animals in their ability to impose names and,
in their disinterested curiosity, their desire to know the
causes of things. For animals deliberate like men and have
will or the appetite that emerges aftera process of delibera-
tion. Their motions towards or away from objects are not
started just by contact via sense organs but also by images
5
or conceptions which are 'nothing but motion in the head .

These give rise to passions which are pleasures or pains

which 'arise from the expectation, that proceeds from fore-

sight of the end or consequence of things; whether those

things in the sense please or displease'. 8 Passions are pleasure
or displeasure that men have from opinion of their power.
'So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of
i. E.W. 1, 407. 2. E.W. Ill, 39. 3. E.W. Ill, 43.

93
 HOBBES
all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after
power, that ceaseth only in death.' The prospect of the ces-
1

sation of vital motions in death arouses the most violent

aversion of all and leads men to construct the state. Motions
of the mind are thus the causes of the artificial human asso-
ciation called the state just as motions of points and lines are
the causes of geometrical figures. Motion, too, permeates
Hobbes' description of social life. Life is a race with no other
goal but being foremost. There can be 'no contentment but
c
in proceeding'. 2 Liberty is an absence of the lets and hind-
rances of motion'. 3 Individual differences in wits are due to
differences in quickness or 'swift succession of one thought to
another'. 4 Life itself is 'but a motion of limbs' 5 there can be ;

'no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we

live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be
without desire, nor without fear, no more than without
6
sense'. Hobbes has often been called a materialist; but he
is more aptly described as the great metaphysician of mo-
tion.

4. Body and Accident

7
'Every thing is eyther Substance or Accident,' said Hobbes
at the beginning of his Little Treatise. 'Substance' he defined
in the traditional manner as 'a ground, a base, anything that
hath existence or subsistence in itself'. 8 'Body ... is that
substance which hath magnitude indeterminate and is the
same with corporeal substance; but a body is that which
hath magnitude determinate, and consequently is under-
9
stood to be totum or integrum aliquid.' The definition of
'body' in De Corpore is 'that which having no dependance
upon our thought, is coincident and co-extended with some
10 Bodies need not be
part of space', visible; indeed bodies
-which were understood by reason rather than actually

1. E.W. Ill, 85-6. 4. E.W. Ill, 56. 8. E.W. IV, 308.

2. E.W. IV, 33. 5. E.W. Ill, ix. 9. E.W. IV, 309.
3. E.W. II, 120. 6. E.W. Ill, 51. 10. E.W. I, 102.
7. El. of L., p. 153.

94
 NATURE AND MIND
observed played a very important part in his explanations.
For 'endeavours' were movements of such minute un-
observable bodies. Of course the ordinary man calls some-
thing a body which he can touch or see; but he has not
achieved scientific understanding.
Hobbes maintained that there was nothing else in the
world but bodies. How, then, did he deal with the claims of
theologians that there are spirits or incorporeal substances
also? In Leviathan Hobbes boldly equated 'substance* with
c

body' and did not flinch at the logical consequence of this

- that 'substance 1
incorporeal' is a contradiction in terms.
God may be a spirit. But that does not entail that he is an
incorporeal substance. Indeed he must have a subtle, fluid,
and invisible body. For was it not recorded that the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters, which attributes
motion and place to God - characterizations intelligible

only when applied to bodies? To Bishop BramhalPs ques-

tion what he took God to be, Hobbes replied categorically :

'I answer, I leave him to be a most pure, simple, invisible,

2
spirit corporeal.'
5

By 'accident Hobbes meant a property or characteristic.

It misleading, he says, to call properties parts of things;
is

rather 'they answer best that define an accident to be the

manner by which any body is conceived'. 3 To view an acci-
dent as part of a thing would be to assimilate the relation
between redness and blood to that between blood and a
bloody cloth, which would be to make the accident another
body. Everyone, including Aristotle, has an intuitive under-
standing of how magnitude and motion can be in that which
is great or moved without being part of it. Most accidents

can be absent without the body also perishing. The excep-

tions are extension and figure. For if these were to be taken

away, the body also would perish. All other accidents are
appearances either of motions of the mind of the perceiver
or of the bodies themselves which are perceived.
This account of accident was a weak point in Hobbes'
philosophy; for his definition of accident as 'the manner by
i. E.W. III, 381. 2. E.W. IV, 313. 3. E.W. I, 103.

95
 HOBBES
which any body is conceived' overlooked the status of ex-
tension and figure which was quite different from that of all
'
other accidents. For these are defining attributes of 'body ;

whereas motion and rest seem to have the same status as

accidents like colour and hardness. Presumably Hobbes
meant that extension and figure are alone 'necessary acci-
dents' of body because a body could be conceived without
motion and colour, but not without extension and figure.
But if the criterion is one of conceivability what is the status of
colour ? For, as Berkeley remarked later, it is no more pos-
sible to conceive of something with shape and no colour
than it is possible to conceive of something with colour and
no shape. Hobbes did not even seem to be consistent in his
opinion. For he says in the same passage: 'And as for the
opinion that some may have, that all other accidents are not
in their bodies in the same manner that extension, motion,
rest, or figure, are in the same; for example, that colour,
heat, odour, virtue, vice, and the like, are otherwise in them,
and, as they say, inherent I desire they would suspend their
:

judgement for the present, and expect a little, till it be found

out by ratiocination, whether these very accidents are not
also certain motions either of the mind of the perceiver, or of
the bodies themselves which are perceived; for in search of
1
this, a great part of natural philosophy consists'. Here ex-
tension, motion, rest, and figure are classed together and
contrasted with secondary qualities like colour, heat, and
odour. This was the usual distinction made by Galileo,
Descartes, and others, between the primary qualities which
were thought to be real characterizations of objects and
secondary qualities which were thought of as being subjec-
tive appearances due to the interaction of the object with
the percipient. We have seen 2 how Hobbes and Descartes
came independently to believe in the subjectivity of second-

ary heat and odour. In Part IV of De

qualities like colour,
Corpore a whole chapter (XXVII) is devoted to light, heat,

and colour, and an attempt is made to give a mechanical

i. E.W. I, 104-5. a ' Sec supra, p. 28.

96
 NATURE AND MIND
explanation of them in terms of bodies characterized by
primary qualities.
The explanation of this lack of consistency in Hobbes'
treatment is probably that he never seriously questioned the
underlying assumptions of the new science of motion. He
accepted without question the underlying presupposition
that the real world was characterized only by those quali-
ties, called the primary ones, which were susceptible to
mathematical treatment in the sciences of geometry and
mechanics. They are also qualities which are accessible
through more than one sense modality. This methodological
convenience, which was his underlying criterion of distinc-
tion,was exalted by all members of the new movement into
a metaphysical postulate about the reality behind the
appearances. But he, like Descartes and Locke, got into
difficulties when he tried to rationalize this criterion in
terms of the conceivability of bodies with some qualities rather
than with others. For his underlying concept of 'body' was
that defined by the postulates of the mathematical sciences.
As soon as he started bringing in questions of conceiva-
bility the common-sense notion of body insinuated itself
with ensuing havoc to the unassailable status of the scien-
tist's 'body'. Berkeley was later to take his stand on common-

sense criteria and to attack the assumptions of the physical

scientists which were really definitions and methodological
conveniences masquerading as metaphysics. Modern philo-
sophy stemming from Berkeley has shown the muddles that
arise if a concept of common-sense is not distinguished from
a concept of an exact science.

5. Space and Time

Hobbes had defined body as 'that, which having no de-

pendance upon our thought, is coincident or co-extended
with some part of space'. 1 From this we would expect him
to hold that space, like body, existed independently of our

conceptions. Yet he speaks constantly of space as a 'phan-

i. E.W.I, 102.

97
 HOBBES
tasm'. He defines space phantasm of a thing existing
as 'the
without the mind simply'. 1 By this he meant that what we
call space is the appearance of externality. He maintained
that it was a phantasm because if the world of physical
things were to be destroyed and a man were to be left alone
with his imaginations and memories, some of these would
appear external to him, or located in space, which must
therefore be a subjective frame of reference. This conviction
is reinforced by the consideration that 'when we calculate

the magnitude and motions of heaven or earth, we do not

ascend into heaven that we may divide it into parts or mea-
sure the motions thereof, but we do it sitting still in our
closets or in the dark'. 2 In other words though bodies exist

independently of us and are external to us or located in

space, the system of co-ordinates we use to describe their
relative positions is a subjective framework. Tlace is no-
3
thing out of the mind nor magnitude anything within it.'
A body always keeps the same magnitude, whether moved
or at but when it is moved it does not keep the same
rest,

place. Place cannot therefore be an accident of body. Place

is feigned or imagined extension - an order of position con-

structed out of our experience of real extended things to

provide a framework of externality for them. Our concept
of space is thus an abstraction from our experience of bodies
which have real rather than feigned extension.
Time is treated in a similar manner. It is 'the phantasm of
before and after in motion'. 4 Bodies leave ideas of their
motion as well as of their extension in consciousness. Out of
our experience of succession or 'before and after in motion'
we construct time systems, in which we make use of the
movement of the sun or of hands round a clock. Hobbes'
treatment of time was even more sketchy than his treat-
ment of space, and suffered from a similar defect. For
Hobbes never made clear the relationship between the sub-
jective frames of spatio-temporal reference within which
any particular individual orders what he experiences
1. E.W. 1, 94. 3. E.W. 1, 105.
2. E.W. I, 92. 4. E.W. I, 95. ,

98
 NATURE AND MIND
(psychological space) and the co-ordinate systems construc-
ted by physical scientists. It may well be the case that what
we call space and time are abstractions from our experience
of extended bodies in motion. But what is the relationship
between such private frames of reference which are notor-
iously unreliable and the dependable inter-subjective con-
structs of the scientist? Hobbes typically failed to see the

philosophical problem suggested by his treatment. His view

of space and time was subsidiary to and a way of restating
his dominant conviction that the real world was composed

only of extended bodies in motion.

This somewhat cursory and cryptic treatment of space
and time illustrates well the problems which Hobbes' philo-
sophy of nature and mind present to a philosopher. He was
fascinated by sensation and imagery - especially because
some bodies 'have in themselves the patterns almost of all
things' yet he never bothered to make clear whether such
;

mental apparitions were themselves motions of the brain or

merely accompaniments of such motions. Still less did he
ask himself what kind of relationship held between such
appearances and the external things of which they were
appearances. He held that all thoughts were images and yet
he assumed that the images of bodies in motion really repre-
sented bodies in motion whereas images of colours, sounds,
and other secondary qualities were only subjective appear-
ances. Both types of images were causally explicable in
terms of antecedent motions transmitted from the external
world to the brain. Some of these, when names were fixed to
them, led to science as opposed to prudence. Yet scientific
truth depended upon the correct use of names almost cut
adrift from its origin in sense experience. In his science of
nature he presupposed that all mutation was motion and
that there was no action at a distance, the causal relation
holding only between bodies contiguous and moved ; yet all
his attempts to prove these assumptions presupposed them.
The transition from mechanics to physiology was accom-
-a
plished by a generalized use of the notion of 'endeavour*
good illustration of Hobbes' tendency to tear terms out of

99
 HOBBES
technical contexts and them to bridge gaps in his
to use

speculative scheme. This tendency was further exemplified

in his dubious transition from physiology to psychology by
use of a terminology of motion which, because of its twofold
interpretation, obscured the jumps which he was in fact mak-
ing. His account of accident was slipshod and suffered from a
confusion of the concepts of science with those of common
sense. His account of space and time suffered from a similar
failure to relate the subjective frameworks of private ex-

perience to the complicated constructs of physical science,

and from his more general failure to bridge the gap between
what appears to sense and what is rationally reconstructed.
These defects in his treatment justify and illustrate the
suggestion that Hobbes was the great metaphysician of the
new science of motion in that his De Corpore admirably illus-
trates 'the utilization of specific notions, applying to a re-
stricted group of facts, for the divination of the generic
notions which apply to all facts'. Fired by his imaginative
idea of extending the science of motion into geometry and
civil philosophy he could not help taking for granted the
basic assumptions of the new science of motion whose
details he probably understood but imperfectly. He thus

presupposed that the real world was a world of bodies in

motion; that the secondary qualities, because mathemati-
cally intractable, were subjective appearances of the under-
lying primary ones; that all causal relations held between
bodies contiguous and moved; that extension and figure
were the only defining properties of body. This unquestion-
ing acceptance of the presuppositions of Galilean mechanics
accounts for many of Hobbes' philosophical defects. Most of
his other defects derive from his extrapolation of the con-

cepts of the new science to spheres where their applicability

is dubious or trivial. There is of course a sense in which life

is motion of the limbs; but there is also a sense in which

work is moving bodies about and love is motion of the heart,

lips, and sexual organs. But are such descriptions particu-

larly illuminating ? They only become so if they lead to a

detailed theory which has important and novel deductive

100
 NATURE AND MIND
consequences. Hobbes never produced such a theory. In-
stead he produced a redescription of what we already know
in rather a bizarre terminology or descriptions which seem
absurd because of the inapplicability of mechanical con-
cepts. Certainly his enthusiastic diffusion of the concepts of
mechanics involved him in the dubious extension of the
3
term 'endeavour to bridge the gap between minute
motions and animal strivings; it also occasioned a cavalier
disregard for whether thoughts and feelings were motions
of the brain and corporeal organs or just accompaniments
of them, a disregard that was fostered by his terminology of
movement. In general such an extension of the concepts of
a science, without developing another science for the new
sphere covered by the extrapolation, will lead to constant
perplexities created by the clash between the technical
meaning of terms and their common-sense usage. This is
particularly in evidence in Hobbes' treatment of 'body' and
its 'accidents' and in his tantalizing treatment of space and

time which even won the admiration of Leibniz, who re-

5
marked of Hobbes, 'What a man!
AndLeibniz's reaction is perhaps the appropriate one
to Hobbes' achievement. Many are disappointed, on reading
him, that he did not develop some of his insights in more
detail and that he did not see some of the philosophical

problems they suggested. But Hobbes lived at a time when

a new world-view was dawning and when it was exciting as
well as dangerous to be abreast of novel speculations. Men
did not then know enough to be specialists and discussions
in philosophy were not cut short by the plea that a scientific
and not a philosophical problem was being raised. Hobbes
applied himself with a robust versatility to problems in
logic and epistemology, optics, mechanics, physics, physio-
logy, psychology, ethics, politics, and jurisprudence, and
speculated about the connecting links between them. This
iswhat makes his very failure to see what later generations
have called 'philosophical problems' in some ways so re-
freshing.

101
 CHAPTER FOUR

SENSE AND IMAGINATION

Introductory

HOBBES' treatment of sensation and imagery reflected his

major He never attempted an exhaustive psycho-
interests.

logical examination of the different sensory mechanisms or

types of imagery. He disregarded cheerfully the philosophi-
cal perplexities connected with sensation which were later
to fascinate Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. His disjointed and
often rather cryptic remarks on the subject were designed
mainly to show that both sensation and imagery could be
explained in terms of the theory of motion and to exhibit in
more detail the wonder of apparition - *that some natural
bodies have in themselves the patterns almost of all things'.
Having indicated the representative function of sensation
and imagery he usually passed to his theory of speech to
show that there is a form of representation peculiar to man
and to indicate how it is related to that which we share with
animals.
The search for the causes of sensation, imagery, and
speech unified his treatment. But it led him to neglect the
crucial logical problems of how 'apparition' can be said to
represent bodies and how words refer to that which is not
verbal. In other words Hobbes gave a causal theory of sensa-
tion and meaning and often spoke as if he was solving the
logical problems involved. The result is stimulating to
psychologists; indeed many of his speculations have a dis-
tinctly modern ring about them. But philosophers find his
suggestions tantalizingly undeveloped and often conclude,
to quote a modern critic, 1 that Hobbes, 'as well as a great
i. A. Flew in a broadcast talk printed in The Listener, 15 Nov. 1951.

I O2
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
political thinker, was an interesting mino- philosopher'.
This verdict on Hobbes is also a comment on the modern

philosophical attitude to politics.

/. Sense

To explain sense in terms of the new theory of motion,

Hobbes had both to describe sensory processes in mechanical
terms and to show that smells, colours, sounds, and other
secondary qualities were really appearances of the move-
ments of bodies. He therefore proclaimed boldly that 'we
have discovered the nature of sense, namely, that it is some
internal motion in the sentient 1 The external body presses
5
.

the organ proper to each sense, either immediately as in

taste or touch, or through a medium as in seeing, hearing,
'
and smelling, which pressure, by the mediation of the
. . .

nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body, con-

tinued inwards to the brain and heart, causeth there a
resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to
deliver itself, which endeavour, because outward, seemeth
to be some matter without'. 2 All sense qualities 'are in the
object, that causeth them, but so many several motions of
the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversely.
Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything else, but
divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion'. 8
These motions appear to us as fancy 'the same waking, that
dreaming'. Although they are nothing but motions in some
internal substance of the head, they have the character of
externality because of the outward endeavour of the heart.
The definition of sense is therefore 'a phantasm, made by
the reaction and endeavour outwards in the organ of sense,
caused by an endeavour inwards from the object, remaining
for some time more or less'. 4
These descriptions provided only a general framework
for a mechanical theory, but they limited the sort of ex-
planation which it was possible for Hobbes to give of some
1. E.W. 1,390. 3. E.W. Ill, a.
2. E.W. Ill, 2. 4. E.W. 1,391.

103
 HOBBES
of the more obvious characteristics of perception as we
experience it. And some of these are bound to prove
troublesome for any such mechanical theory; for when we
perceive something, it is not just an atomic event initiated
by an external stimulus. There is always an element of
recognition in perception; we select and group what is
before us in the light of our past experience and present
interests. Hobbestried to account for recognition and
mechanical terms. Perception, he said, is not
selectivity in
a simple reaction of bodies. If it were so, all bodies that
react would have sense, a theory that some philosophers
have actually suggested. But a simple reaction requires the
constant presence of the object to which the reaction is
made. The phantasm, if it could be produced by the reac-
tion of an inanimate body, would cease as soon as the object
was removed. Sense organs relieve us from the necessity of
constant contact; for they act as retainers for the move-
ments of external bodies which bump into us and pass on
their way. Without such retention of motions what we call
sense would be impossible; for 'by sense we commonly
understand the judgement we make of objects by their
phantasms namely, by comparing and distinguishing those
;

phantasms which we could never do, if that motion in the

;

organ, by which the phantasm is made, did not remain

there for some time, and make the same phantasm return'. 1
Sense has therefore always 'some memory adhering to it'
which permits comparison and discrimination.
Selectivity, too, is shown in perception; for, though sen-
sory discrimination would be impossible without a constant
variety of phantasms, the nature of sense is such that it does
not permit a man to discern many things at once. Tor see-
ing the nature of sense consists in motion ; as long as the
organs are employed about one object, they cannot be so
moved by another at the same time, as to make by both their
5
motions one sincere phantasm of each of them at once. 2
Two objects working together will produce one compoun-
ded phantasm rather than two separate ones. But why is
i. E.W. I, 393. 2. E.W. I, 394.

104
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
one object rather than another selected from amongst the
many possible objects that could be perceived on any
occasion? Hobbes said nothing of the interests and atti-
tudes which predispose us to see some things rather than
others. Indeed his idco-motor theory made it very difficult
for him to do so for according to this theory all reactions of
;

organisms are initiated by external stimuli, and the theory

had not, in the seventeenth century, developed the degree
of sophistication necessary to speak of stimuli from the in-
ternal environment' of an organism. If reactivity is made
subordinate to sensitivity, it is very difficult to do justice to
the selecting and grouping of stimuli. Sensation is made to
look like an automatic registering of stimuli on a photo-
graphic plate instead of like the active ranging of a search-
light.
Hobbes also attempted a mechanical explanation of the
phenomena of attention or concentration. Once a strong
action from an external object stirs the sense-organ, the
motion from the root of the nerves of the sense-organ to the
heart persists contumaciously, and makes the sense-organ
impervious to the registering of other motions. 'For study is
nothing but a possession of the mind, that is to say, a vehe-
ment motion made by some one object in the organs of
sense, which are stupid to all other motions as long as this
lasteth.' 1 Hobbes illustrated this speculation about the
cause of the focus of attention by the dubious example of
reading. He claimed that when we read we see the letters
successively one by one and not all together, even though
the whole page be presented to the eye. When we look at
the whole page we read nothing. 'From hence it is manifest,
that every endeavour of the organ outwards, is not to be
called sense, but that only, which at several times is by
vehemence made stronger and more predominant than the
rest; which deprives us of the sense of other phantasms, no
otherwise than the sun deprives the rest of the stars of light,
not by hindering their action, but by obscuring and hiding
them with his excess of brightness.' 2
i. E.W. 1,395- 2. E.W.I, 396.

105
 HOBBES
These rather sketchy remarks about sensation exhibit
1
Hobbes interest in it as limited to a phenomenon that can
be mechanically explained. Like the British Empiricists who
followed him, he was a martyr to the current physiological
account of sensation according to which objects imprinted
themselves on us by isolated, disconnected sorties on our
sense-organs. Hobbes ingeniously combined this sort of
account with deductions from the theory of motion. It is
true that he tried to explain phenomena like attention,
selectivity, and the ineradicable intrusion of past experience
into present perceptions. But the limitations of his mech-
anical hypothesis precluded him from giving these aspects
of perception the attention they deserve.
We must now pass to the other facet of Hobbes' limited
interest in sensation his view that secondary qualities were
subjective appearances of the movements of bodies having
only primary qualities. In his early Elements of Law Hobbes
stated succintly, using the example of colour, the main
points of his contention :

(1) That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is
not the object or thing seen.
(2) That that is nothing without us really which we call an
image or colour.
(3) That the said image or colour is but an apparition unto us

of that motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh

in the brain or spirits, or some internal substance of the head.

(4) That as in conception by vision, so also in the conceptions

that arise from other senses, the subject of their inherence is not
the object, but the sentient. 1

Hobbes produced a string of reasons in the Elements of Law

to support these contentions and briefly recapitulated them
at the start of Leviathan. They were singularly unconvincing
because Hobbes never quite made clear precisely what they
were designed to prove; the result was that they proved too
much and too little. The kernel of his claim about secondary
qualitieswas that what seemed to be qualities of objects
external to us were in fact only phantasms in our heads
i. El. of L., p. 3.

1 06
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
caused by the primary properties of external objects inter-
acting with our sense-organs but representing nothing outside
us. He adduced in support of this claim facts like double

images, reflections of the sun in water, echoes, and light

produced by a blow on the optic nerve, which brought out
that images may seem to be located where things cannot be;
for in some cases there is no thing and in other cases things
appear be in two places at once, which is impossible.
to
Therefore he argued that images and colours were 'inherent
in the sentient'. But this proved too much; for our images of
reflected suns, stars caused by stimulation of the optic
nerve, and double images, all have extension and motion.
In this respect primary qualities are on a par with secondary.
If Hobbes' arguments were valid they would support only
his thesis that all perception was by way of phantasms, that
a private picture always intervenes between us and the
qualities of the object perceived. In this sense of 'subjective'
all qualities are subjective because we are confronted not
with them but with their phantasmal representations. As
Hobbes himself put it 'And though at some certain dis-
:

tance, the real and very object seem invested with the fancy
it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or
1
fancy is another.'
Hobbes, however, wished to establish that secondary
qualities were subjective in a further sense - the sense in
which the distinction between a quality and our representa-
tion of a quality cannot be made. For he maintained that
in the case of secondary qualities what we call qualities of

objects were only phantasms in the sentient caused by exter-

nal objects reacting on our sense-organs, but representing no
qualities of external objects, whereas in the case of primary
qualities our phantasms were both caused by and represen-
ted qualities external to us. But here his argument proved
too little. Tastes, smells, and sounds, said Hobbes, appear
differently to different sentients. They cannot therefore be
properties of the object. But this argument neither proves
what it purports to prove nor does it establish any difference
i. E.W. Ill, 2, 3.

107
 HO HUES
between primary and secondary qualities. For it is absurd
to make such generalizations about the relativity of percep-
tion to the individual percipient without taking into account
the conditions of perception and the state of the percipient.
All cows look grey in the twilight and there are objective
tests for establishing that a man is colour-blind. Also, as

Berkeley later insisted, primary qualities are in precisely the

same boat. Golf-greens change their shape as we approach
them and the movements of a train appear quicker to a man
travelling in the opposite direction than to a man on the
station. Things appear to pass by more quickly in the dark
than in the light and all movement appears slower to a tired
man than to a man dosed with benzedrene. The arguments
which the relativity of secondary as opposed to pri-
stress

mary qualities also ignore the fact that standard conditions

can be established for reaching agreement about secondary
as well as about primary qualities, in spite of the fact that
the primary qualities can be perceived each through more
than one modality of sense, thus permitting correlation, for
instance between touching and seeing a moving object. How
else could there be standard methods of colour matching or
how could people make a living by tasting wine and tea or
by tuning pianos? It would indeed be very odd if both
primary and secondary qualities did not in fact appear
different to different percipients under different conditions.
Hobbes in fact gave but halting philosophical excuses for
a distinction which was embedded in the practice of the
physical scientists. He never questioned their basic assump-
tion that bodies in motion exist independently of our per-
ception of them, and that mathematical thinking about
them represented their real properties. 'The things that
really are in the world without us, are those motions by
which these seemings are caused.' 1 The real was what was
amenable to mathematical treatment; the convenience of
physical science was exalted into a metaphysical dogma.
Hobbes produced a kind of philosophical patter while the

i. El. of L., p. 6.

1 08
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
rabbits of the new
science of motion popped out of the hat.
He was the arch-metaphysician of motion.
The basic trouble with Hobbes' philosophical arguments
was that he never examined the relationship of 'represent-
ing'which he presupposed in his wonder that some natural
bodies had in themselves the patterns of all things. Presum-
ably he thought that there was nothing mysterious about a
phantasm, which is a motion in some internal substance of
the head, being a pattern of motions in external bodies. He
never asked himself, as Berkeley was later to ask Locke, how
we could ever know that such a pattern was a correct pat-
tern of an external body if we could never know anything of
an external body except by means of our private patterns of
it.Hobbes may have thought that as a motion can only
produce another motion, so a motion (in this case a phan-
tasm) could never represent anything like a colour unless it
was also a motion. But it does not seem that he was ever
much troubled by this kind of problem. He simply deve-
loped a causal theory of sensation and saw no need for a
theory of representation.
Hobbes, therefore, in his theory of phantasms, took the first
step down the path that was to be trodden later by so many
of his countrymen but he neither saw nor pursued the impli-
;

cations of his position, and he was led to it by rather differ-

ent preoccupations. For the conviction of Locke, Berkeley >
and Hume, that even in sensation we are confronted with
our own mental states, derived from epistemological worries
about the reliability of thinking, which they inherited from
Descartes. Descartes was absorbed by the quest for cer-
tainty and came to the conclusion that he could be certain
only that he was thinking; for it would be self-contradictory
to doubt that he was thinking as doubting was thinking that
he did not think. The implications and influence of his first
certainty were enormous. The British Empiricists were con-
strained by it to believe that they had some kind of cer-
tainty about their own mental states and that, provided that
they did not pass beyond isolated ideas and make inferences
about their connexions with other ideas, they had a sure
109
 HOBBES
foundation for reliable knowledge. Their interest in sensa-
tion was therefore, as Locke put it, to enquire into the
'original, extent, and certainty of human knowledge'. By
tracing ideas back to their origin in simple sensory impres-
sions they could establish their epistemological credentials.
Indeed, Locke defined an idea as 'the object of the under-
standing when a man thinks , and referred to sensations as
9

simple ideas. And, after all, the view is plausible in relation

to thinking that we are confronted with our own ideas and
not with things for when we think we do seem sometimes
;

to conjure up images or phantasms. If, therefore, the inter-

est is in explaining thinking, the next step is plausible - that

images are copies or relics of sensations which are also

shadowy entities intervening between us and objects.
In Hobbes* case, however, not clear why he passed
it is

so easily into the belief that in sensation a phantasm inter-

venes between us and objects. For he was unimpressed by
Descartes* first certainty and was as much interested in the
causes of ideas as in their epistemological credentials. In-
deed, he said that the task of physics was to investigate these
phantasms which we experience as a result of the outer
world impinging on our sense-organs. It seems probable
that his main interest in explaining sense lay in giving an
account of the conditions in the external world and in the
sentient which gave rise to secondary qualities which he be-
lieved to be subjective. But he could not avoid the conclu-
sion that in the case of primary qualities as well 'the object
is one thing, the image or fancy is another'. As is evident

from the opening of the Elements of Law, and from the pass-
ages on heat and light and so on in the fourth part of De
Corpore, Hobbes was greatly intrigued by current explana-
tions of secondary qualities; it looks as if his interest in

physics led him to hold a philosophical position whose diffi-

culties and implications he did not grasp. His was not an
unusual predicament.

1 10
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION

2. Imagination

The theory of motion was very much in evidence in Hobbes'

account of imagination. His explanations of some of its
characteristics were deductions from the Law of Inertia,
which was stated in general terms at the start of the chapter
'Of Imagination' in Leviathan. Unwillingness to accept it was
attributed to the projection into nature of man's weariness
after a lot of movement - 'little considering, whether it be
not some other motion, wherein that desire of rest they find
in themselves, consisteth.' 1 The application of the law to the

phenomenon of imagination was then made 'When a body :

is once in motion, it moveth, unless something else hinder

it, eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an in-

stant, but in time, and by degrees, quite extinguish it; and

as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves
give not over rolling for a long time after: so also it hap-
peneth in that motion, which is made in the internal parts of
a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc. For after the object
is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the
thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. ...
IMAGINATION therefore is no thing but decaying sense .' 2 . .

This decay in sense is not a decay in motion for that would

;

be contrary to the Law of Inertia. Rather it comes about

because the sense-organs are moved by other objects 'in such
manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the
stars; which stars do no less exercise their virtue, by which
3
they are visible, in the day than in the night'. Evidence
which supports this deduction is that phantasms in dreams
are no less clear than in sense itself, the passages of sense
being shut up and external actions thus being excluded.
When, however, sense impressions are constantly crowding
in upon us, the imagination of the past is obscured and
'made weak, as the voice of a man is in the noise of the day'.
Thus the longer the time that elapses after sensing an object,
the weaker our imagination of it.
i. E.W. III, 4. 2. E.W. Ill, 4. 3. E.W. Ill, 5.

in
 HOBBES
The suggestion is made, also, that a mechanical explana-
tion can be given for the more impressive feats of the

imagination. Hobbes distinguished simple imagination 'as

when one imagineth a man or horse, which he hath seen
before' from compounding imagination 'as when, from the
sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we
conceive in our mind a Centaur'. 1 This he explained as a
phenomenon similar to water moved in one motion which
is a product of compounding diverse movements. 2 When,
too, there has been long and vehement action of sense, as
when we gaze steadfastly at the sun or pore over geometrical
3
figures, a peculiarly clear and striking image is formed
which stands out clearly even when we lie awake in the
dark.
The distinction made by Hobbes between imagination
and memory is not altogether satisfactory. When sense is
fading, old, and past, he called it memory. 'So that imagina-
tion and memory are but one thing.' Memory is an image
together with an awareness that we have had the same
image before. He compared it to a sixth sense and said ex-
plicitly in De Corpore: 'But you will say, by what sense shall
we take notice of sense ? I answer, by sense itself, namely by
the memory which for some time remains in
us of things sen-
sible, though they themselves pass away. For he that per-
ceives that he hath perceived remembers.' 4 Memory differs
from imagination only in that it 'supposeth the time past'. 5
Presumably he meant that when we remember as opposed to
perceive or imagine something, we have a fading image
together with the conviction that we have had this
picture before. But how then could a case of memory be
distinguished from a case of perceiving for a second
time ? Suppose that a person walked past a pillar box for the
second or third time and had rather a weak impression of it.
Gould it not be said that he was remembering and not per-
ceiving it ? For the weak sensation would be accompanied
by the conviction that he had experienced this before. Also
1. E.W. III, 6. 3- E.W. Ill, 6. 5. E,W. I, 398.
2. El. of L., p. 8. 4. E.W. I, 389.

1 1 12
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
ifconviction of pastness distinguishes memory from imagi-
nation, would we be said to remember a street in a certain
town when we were convinced that we had seen it before
while all the evidence from our previous travels indicated
that we could never have been there ?
Many have attempted to give subjective criteria like

feelings of pastness, vividness, and order for distinguishing

memories from sensations and images. Hume notoriously
came to grief in the quicksands of these elusive subjective
criteria. All such attempts have proved inadequate to do
justice to a distinction which common-sense people handle
perfectly well. The reason is, surely, that the distinction is
not a psychological one at all. Very probably there are no
cut and dried differences in personal experience between
perceiving and rememjbering or between remembering and
- be-
imagining. The distinction is primarily a logical one
tween what is asserted when a person claims that he remem-
bers something rather than imagines it or perceives some-
thing rather than remembers it. The test of whether a
person remembers or imagines is not the subjective convic-
tion of pastness accompanying the imagery, but the evidence
which confirms or refutes what is asserted about the rela-
tionship between the situation thought about and the think-
er's participation in actual events. And to establish whether
or not such a relationship holds - i.e. whether it is a case of
-
remembering rather than of imagining a person's private
conviction is a good guide but an unreliable test.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Hobbes' treatment
of the imagination was his account of trains of thought. Why
is it that one thought is succeeded by another? Hume was

later to apply a mechanical model to this process. Ideas, he

suggested, were mental atoms bound together by the prin-

ciples of association in a similar fashion to Newtonian atoms
attracted to each other by gravitation. Hobbes, however,
for all his devotion to the new sciences, was more influenced
in his account by than by mechanics. Nevertheless
Aristotle
he introduced it in such a way that he made it sound as if it
had something to do with the theory of motion. 'In the
 HOBBES
motion of any continued body,' he said, 'one part follows
another by cohesion.' 1 Motions which appear as images
become predominant in the same order as they were for-
*

merly generated by sense ... and those motions that imme-

diately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also
together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again
to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by
coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water
upon a plane table is drawn which way any one part of it is
guided by the finger'.
2
But we so often perceive things in
different contexts that understandable that our thoughts
it is

appear to succeed each other in rather a haphazard way.

For the other thoughts that succeed them may belong to
another context. For instance, if I see a horse and then a
plough, I will tend to think of a plough when next the pic-
ture of a horse presents itself. But supposing I then see a
horse with a cart, it is difficult to predict whether I will
think of a plough or of a cart next time I have the picture
of a horse.
We should thus not make the mistake of thinking that
there is no rhyme or reason in even our most wild ranging
of the mind, to use Hobbes' expression. 'For in a discourse
of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent,
than to ask, as one did, what was the value of a Roman
penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For
the thought of the war, introduced the thought of the
delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that,
brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and
that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the
price of that treason; and thence easily followed that malici-
ous question, and all this in a moment of time; for thought
3
is quick.' This kind of sequence of thoughts Hobbes called
'unguided* because it lacked a passionate thought to govern
and direct those that followed. He did not use the phrase
'association of ideas' to describe the dependence of one
thought on another; neither did he attempt to state prin-
ciples like those of similarity, and spatio-temporal contigu-
i. E,W. I, 398. a. E.W. Ill, u, 12. 3. E.W. Ill, 12, 13.

114
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
ity which many have thought to be implicit in it. He had
the insight to see that such trains of thought are unimpor-
tant in comparison with those regulated by some desire or
design. For a seventeenth-century thinker it would have
required something akin to clairvoyance or pre-cognition to
suggest that even apparently wild rangings of the mind
were controlled by desire. For at this period it was unthink-
able that a desire could be unconscious. Too many people
criticize Aristotle and Aquinas for not having read Darwin,
and Hobbes and Hume for ignoring Freud.
Hobbes' account of regulated thinking owed a lot to and
was an improvement on Aristotle's analysis of deliberation.
Desire for an end holds the train of thought together and
determines the relevance of its content. Hobbes suggested
that the strength of the attraction of the end is so great that
it not only
prevents our thoughts from wandering but some-
times even prevents or hinders our sleep. There are two
main types of regulated thinking. One is the classic Aristo-
telian type where desire provides us with an end and we work
backwards with the planning of means until we come to an
action which it is in our power to perform here and now.
Hobbes instanced searching the mind for a place to begin
looking for something that has been lost, 'or as a spaniel
ranges the field, till he finds a scent; or as a man should run
over the alphabet, to start a rhyme. u This search for the
means of producing an end or faculty of invention is shared
by the animals. Man, however, is alone capable of the other
kind of regulated thinking which Hobbes called prudence.
For animals have no curiosity - only sensual passions like
hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In prudence we do not work
from an end but start from an action within our power and
use our store of past experience to speculate about its prob-
able effects. 'As he that foresees what will become of a
criminal, reasons what he hath seen follow on the like crime
before; having this order of thoughts, the crime, the officer,
the prison, the judge, and the gallows.' 2 Deliberation in
this case leads on to an end which is either desired or feared.
i. E.W. Ill, 14. 2. E.VV. Ill, 14, 15.

"5
 HOBBES
This a very valuable addition to Aristotle's analysis;
is

for he pictured people going about their lives with pre-

meditated ends to lure them and to guide their deliberation.
This is only half the story; for too often we cannot act like
chess-players planning means to independently premedi-
tated ends. Rather we are confronted by situations in which,
regrettably, we have to act; our deliberation consists in
gloomily working out which of the actions possible in the
circumstances is likely to have the least disastrous conse-
quences. Hobbes seemed to think that people will be more
prudent in proportion to the amount of past experience
which they are able to use. This sounds improbable; for
though few children are prudent, many old people miss the
relevance of their past experience. Perhaps this suggestion
is a recrudescence of the quantitative symptoms of his

mechanical theory; or possibly he meant that much past

experience was a necessary though not a sufficient condi-
tion of prudence - a plausible suggestion in the light of
Hobbes' statement in Tlie Elements of' Law that 'PRUDENCE
is nothing else but conjecture from experience, or taking
'
x
signs of experience warily. . . .

Dreams were the other phenomena of the imagination

which interested Hobbes. He was intrigued by the charac-
teristics which distinguished them from the thoughts of
-
waking life and stimulated to give an explanation of them
if possible a mechanical one. He thought, firstly, that dreams

lacked coherence and order, the explanation of this being

that we lack thought of an end in sleep which might hold
them together. Secondly, we dream of nothing but what is
compounded and made up of the phantasms of sense past.
The explanation of this was 'that in the silence of sense
thereis no new motion from the objects, and therefore no
new phantasm, unless we call that new, which compoun- is

ded of old ones, as a chimera, a golden mountain, and the

like'. 2 Thirdly, dreams are clearer than the imaginations of

waking men, 'except such as are made by sense itself. There

are two causes of this phenomenon the predominance of :

I. El. of L., p. 12 (my italics). j E.W. I, 400.

116
 SENSE AND IMAGINATION
the internal motion which makes the phantasm in the
absence of external stimulation, and the making up with
'other fictitious parts' of the parts of our phantasms which
are decayed and worn out by time. Fourthly, when we
dream we 'admire neither the places nor the looks of the
1
things that appear to us'. Neither is our wonder aroused at
rinding ourselves in a strange place without consciovisness of
how we came there. This is because wonder presupposes
comparison with the past whereas in sleep all things appear
as if the)* were present. Fifthly, we never remark on the

absurdity of waking life in dreams as we remark on the

absurdity of dreams in waking life. When we are awake we
seldom think that we are dreaming, but when we are dream-
ing we always think that we are awake.
Hobbes maintained that there was an intimate connexion
between dreams and bodily states. Lying cold produces
dreams of fear and raises up the image of a fearful object.
The motion from the brain to the inner parts and from the
inner parts to the brain is reciprocal. So just as anger causes
heat in some parts of the body, so when we sleep the over-
heating of the same parts causes anger, and produces the
picture of an enemy in the brain. Our dreams are thus the
reverse of our waking imaginations. Motion begins at one
end when we are awake and at the other end when we are
asleep.
This tendency to project images which are produced by
bodily states gives rise to belief in apparitions and visions.
If we always undressed and went to sleep in our beds all
would be well; for we would not be so likely under these
conditions to believe that when we had dreamed we had
been doing anything other than dream. But people tend to
drop off while sitting fully clothed in chairs and other cold
places. They then have fearsome dreams and mistake their
dream for an apparition. Marcus Brutus' vision on the night
before Philippi is a good example. Tor sitting in his tent,
pensive and troubled with the horror of his rash act, it was
not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that
i. E.W.I, 400.
"7
 HOBBES
which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it
made him wake, so also it must needs make the apparition
by degrees to vanish; and having no assurance that he slept,
he could have no cause to think it a dream, or any thing but
a vision.' 1 Other tales of ghosts are similarly explicable;
stories spread and our strong imagery in the dark is en-
hanced by fear.
Hobbes' treatment of dreams and apparitions typified his
restless curiosity and tough-mindedness. The philosophical
tradition stemming from Descartes became preoccupied
with the epistemological status of dreaming in so far as it
cast doubts on the trustworthiness of everyday experience.
Hobbes took dreams for what every man knows them to be
and concentrated on explaining their peculiarities.

i. E.W. Ill, 9.

118
 CHAPTER FIVE

SPEECH

Introductory

HOBBES' interest in and attitude to speech was epitomized

in hisfamous epigram: Tor words are wise men's counters,
they do but reckon by them but they are the money of fools,
;

that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero,

or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.' 1
This occurs in a passage whose theme is that the extremes of
wisdom and folly are only open to the literate. 'Natural
senseand imagination are not subject to absurdity.' Speech
is a dangerous gift. For if it is properly used with due regard
to definitions, it is the gateway to certain knowledge and
even to civil peace. But if it is improperly used, as by the
philosophers of the schools, it generates absurdities and a
type of danger to peace of which no unlettered man would
be capable.
We have already had occasion to explain and comment
on Hobbes' positive claim that definition is the gateway to
wisdom and civil peace. 2 In this chapter we shall be con-
cerned mainly with Hobbes' interest in speech as a source
of absurdity. For the questions he raised about speech were
limited by his interests. And these were mainly polemical.
He wished to fashion a theory of speech which was con-
sistent with the practice of the physical scientists and which
could be used as a weapon to expose the absurdities of the
Aristotelian metaphysicians of the Schools. In this he was a
precursor of the empiricist school of philosophy in this
country whose theory of meaning has tended to be modelled
on the logical behaviour of low-level scientific terms and for
i. E.W. Ill, 25. 2. Sec supra, pp. 54-61.

"9
 HOBBES
whom the theories of metaphysicians have provided genera-
tions of ghosts to be exorcized by linguistic analysis.
Most prominent amongst the cherished doctrines of the
Schools was the theory of universals which, according to
Hobbes, encouraged belief in mysterious entities and so
perpetuated the superstitious hold of the Catholic Church
on the minds of men. 'It is to this purpose, that men may no

ionger suffer themselves to be abused, by them, that by this

doctrine of separated essences, built on the vain philosophy of
Aristotle, would fright them from obeying the laws of their
country with empty names; as men fright birds from the
corn with an empty doublet, a hat, and a crooked stick. For
it is upon this ground, that when a man is dead and buried,

they say his soul, that is his life, can walk separated from
his body, and is seen by night amongst the graves. Upon the
same ground they say, that the figure, and colour, and taste
of a piece of bread, has a being, there, where they say there
is no bread. And upon the same ground they say, that faith,

and wisdom, and other virtues, are sometimes poured into a

man, sometimes blown into him from Heaven, as if the virtu-
ous and their virtues could be asunder; and a great many
other things that serve to lessen the dependance of subjects
on the sovereign power of their country.' 1

/. The Theory of Universals

Hobbes contrived to make the doctrine of essences sound so

ridiculous that it is how its numerous sup-
difficult to see

porters thought that anything was explained by means of it.

To understand why it exerted so much influence we must
see how it arose in the context of Greek thought and how
people came to think that to find the essence of something
was the only method of explaining its behaviour.
The Greeks had a passionate desire to understand the
world in which they lived and a conviction that things were
not as complicated and complex as they seemed. In their
drama they suggested that the vagaries of human destiny
i. E.W. Ill, 674, 5-
I2O
 SPEECH
were governed by rules laid down by the gods - e.g. that
men who get too prosperous tend to commit some arrogant
act which is a turning point, ushering in the doom which
inevitably overtakes them. Their speculations about the
world were also characterized by this search for the One in
the Many. Thales, for instance, suggested that everything
in the world was a manifestation of water Heracleitus put
;

the case for fire. A more fruitful suggestion was that the
differences in nature as it appeared to the senses were due
to different mathematical combinations of the underlying

homogeneous atoms or units. This speculation was later to

prove the guiding inspiration of the post-Renaissance physi-
cal scientists, including Hobbes himself.
There was, however, another manifestation of this pre-
occupation with generality, for which Socrates achieved
fame. When we describe things and situations we use terms
like 'courage', 'justice', and 'love' which seem applicable to
different situations. Often we misunderstand each other
because we use these terms in slightly different ways.
Socrates tried to discover in virtue of what we could use the
same word to describe different situations. Now Plato seems
to have combined the Socratic search for definitions with
the insight of the early Greek scientists. For he thought that
the search for definitions would reveal the 'Forms' or
and that these were also the One
'essences' to the intellect

Many. In other words, not only do we know the true

in the
meaning of a term like 'bed', 'man', 'state', or 'courage*
when we grasp intellectually certain essential character-
istics which permit the general terms to apply to all the in-
stances; but also these 'Forms' or 'essences' are the One in
the Many, the explanatory principles of particular things.
They 'participate' in the world of appearances which is also
a copy of and a degeneration from them.
Aristotle modified this model of explanation in so far as
he maintained the essences were not separable, except in
thought, from the particulars. But he developed in much
more detail what was implicit in Plato's theory, that to give
a definition in terms of the essence of a thing is to explain

121
 HOBBES
why things are as they are and behave as they do. Hence the
great importance of essences in Aristotelian thought. The
mathematical road of the atomists to the One in the Many
was rejected; instead, science must aim at a vast catalogue
- i.e. names of in-
consisting in definitions of all essences
Jimae species like 'man' or 'horse' plus their defining formulae.
Explanation of the behaviour of a thing consisted in looking
up the essential properties of the natural kind or class of

things to which belonged. Why do bodies fall or smoke

it

rise ? Because part of their essence to seek their natural

it is

places on the earth or in the heavens. To quote Hobbes on

Aristotelian physics: 'If you desire to know why some kind
of bodies sink naturally downwards towards the earth, and
others go naturally from it; the Schools will tell you out of
Aristotle, that the bodies that sink downwards are heavy;
and that this heaviness is it them to descend.
that causes
But if you ask what they mean by heaviness, they will define
it to be an endeavour to go to the centre of the earth. So
that the cause why things sink downward, is an endeavour
tobe below for which is as much as to say, that bodies des-
:

cend or ascend, because they do.' 1 Particular men like

Socrates exist,and so does the essence of man. Nouns like
'man' designate the essence which is the object of thought in
the same kind of way as 'Socrates' designates Socrates who is
an object of perception. So, to adopt Hobbes' standpoint,
the world became full of occult qualities which, being
revealed only to the intellects of the learned doctors of the
Schools, perpetuated the superstitious hold of the Catholic
Church on the minds of men.
To free men from
these dangerous absurdities it was not
enough to new science of motion as applied to
develop the
men in society. It was also necessary to expose the Aristo-
telian doctrine of the universal in re or essence, which was
an integral part of his theory of explanation. This could not
be done without a proper theory of speech, which would
exhibit how general terms could have meaning without it

i. E.W. 111,678.
122
 SPEECH
being necessary to postulate a realm of occult essences which
they were alleged to designate.

2. The Nature and Uses of Speech

Hobbes defined speech as the joining together of words

'

determined by the decision of men, to stand for the train of

conceptions of those things which are objects of our
thoughts'. Similarly he said in De Corpore that 'Names arc
1

things, but of our cogitations'. He wanted to

2
signs not of
stress both that there was a close connexion between

thought and language in that the latter in some way mir-

rored the former and that human speech differed from
animal signs because of its arbitrariness. On the one hand
he attempted a causal theory of language yet on the other ;

hand he insisted on its arbitrariness, on 'the decision of

men'. It is hard to see how these two approaches can be
made consistent with each other. But it is worth exploring
briefly what he actually said.
In Hobbes' view every man has his own private world of
phantasms and words stand for these phantasms of things,
not for the things themselves. We start with our own private
marks by means of which we take note of our conceptions -
a kind of private system of mnemonics - 'as men that have
passed by a rock at sea set up some mark, thereby to remem-
ber their former danger, and avoid it'. 8 Thus, words are
caused by external things through the intermediary motions
of the phantasms. They become connected together as a
result of experience and come to act as signs to others of
what we think and feel. Hobbes seemed to have thought
that our private system of marks or 'notes of remembrance'
antedate and are independent of a public language. This
sounds a most improbable suggestion. Perhaps it was linked
in Hobbes' mind with the anarchic state of nature when
everyman was solitary; the social contract put an end to
anarchy both of conduct and of communication.
Now a causal theory of signs is quite plausible, provided
i. L.W. II, 88. a. E.W. I, 17. 3. E.W. IV, 20.

123
 HOBBES
that they are what are often called natural signs. And
Hobbes distinguished natural signs from arbitrary ones. A
thick cloud is a natural sign of rain. Similarly animals use
natural signs when they give warnings of danger or sum-
monses to food. These noises burst forth from the animals
in certain typical predicaments. There is very little variety
in them because their predicaments and nature are similar
the world over. But human language comes about through
decision and the signs employed are arbitrary, 'namely, those
we make choice of at our own pleasure, as a bush hung up,
5
1
signifies that wine is to be sold there Animals may under-.

stand some of our words but 'they do this not in so far as

words are words, but in so far as they are signs; for they do
not understand the meanings which men have decided on
for words'. 2 Their noises come about by necessity, not by
decision as does human speech. That is
why animals,
though capable of imagery, cannot reason; for reasoning
presupposes words with meanings fixed by decision. Ani-
mals do not do geometry; therefore they do not reason.
Whether or notthis is a useful way of defining 'reasoning'
is
disputable; but Hobbes certainly hit upon one of the
crucial distinctions between men and animals. Men had
traditionally been distinguished from animals by their
possession of reason. Yet as 'reason' was often used in rather
an omnibus way so as to include the planning of means to
ends and the use of past experience to solve present prob-
lems, it was very plausible to hold that men are not really

very different from animals. For animals obviously plan

means to ends and make primitive inferences. Hume, for
instance, could even say that reasoning is nothing but a
wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls. . . .

'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has

determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel'. 3 But
we do not do geometry by instinct; and Hobbes, by con-
fining 'reason' to the construction of symbolic systems,

brought out a very important distinction between men and

i. E.W.I, 14. 2. L.W. II, 88.
3. D. Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, Bk I, Part IV, Sec. i.

124
 SPEECH
animals, even if he did violence to the ordinary use of the
term 'reason'.
The arbitrariness of speech, which distinguishes it from
animal signs, is one of Hobbes' favourite themes. Speech,
like civil society, is an not a natural
artificial construction,

growth. That why does

is not come about
it by 'natural
5

necessity like the signs of animals. Indeed, he often spoke

as if the social contract included also a linguistic contract.
*
... the order of numeral words is so appointed by the
common consent of them who are of the same language
with us, (as it were, by a certain contract necessary for hu-
man society) n This is to be taken like the social contract
. . .

itself, as an attempt at rational analysis rather than

historical speculation. So, too, are his sly accounts of the

origins of speech taken over from Genesis, which also

emphasize its arbitrariness. God, he said, instructed Adam
how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight.
'But this was sufficient to direct him to add more names, as
the experience and use of the creatures should give him
occasion; and to join them in such manner by degrees, as
2
to make himself understood. ..' Hobbes, characteristi- .

cally, went on to point out that God gave Adam no instruc-

tions for naming figures, numbers, measures, colours, and
other items of scientific curiosity; neither did he lay down
names of words and of speech like 'general', 'affirmative',
'negative', and so on; least of all did he teach Adam names
5
like 'entity', 'intentionality , 'quiddity', and 'other insigni-
ficant words of the school'. 3 However, this promising, if

limited, progress in naming was all lost at the Tower of

Babel, and those who were dispersed had to make a fresh
5
start! Hobbes stress on the artificiality of language was thus

part of his polemic against the doctrine of essences. How it

squared with his attempt to give a causal explanation of
marks and his theory that decisions were determined is diffi-
5
cult to see; for if decisions are 'determined they must at
4
least be causally explicable. Yet Hobbes was anxious to

1. E.W. 11,303. 3. E.W. Ill, 19,

2. E.W. Ill, 18. 4. See pp. 123-4 an(^ PP- 180-6.

'25
 HOBBES
contrast the arbitrariness of human speech with the
'natural necessity' of that of animals.
Hobbes saw that speech has many specific uses as well as
the general one of transferring 'the train of our thoughts
into a train of words'. Itis used to register what we find to

be the cause of any thing and its effects, to share this know-
ledge with others, to make known our wills and purposes so
as to ensure mutual help, and to please and delight our-
selves and others by playing with words. Hobbes' main in-

terest, however, was in the descriptive use of language

covered by the first two uses which he assigned to it; for this
use is best exemplified in science and mathematics. But the
imperative use of language was also important to him,
though he did not examine its peculiarities. It featured in
his doctrine that law is the command of the sovereign, and
in the light of the contemporary controversy about the
status of law, it was crucial for him to emphasize the arbi-

trary character of legal rules and definitions.

3. Hobbes' Theory of Names

Hobbes* theory of the meaning of words is co-extensive with

his theory of names. This is one of the major defects of his
treatment. For a name is typically a noun expression used
to designate things, people, places, and so on. His quarrel
with the Aristotelians was that they thought that nouns like
'man' designated abstract entities in the same sort of way as
'Socrates' designates Socrates. But both Hobbes and his
adversaries were primarily concerned with the meaning of
noun expressions. It was not therefore surprising that
Hobbes got into difficulties with his treatment of the acci-
dents of bodies. For here he was raising the problem of how
predicates have meaning.
And the model of how names have
meaning tends to creak when it is used in this context.
'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 pronounced to others, may
be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had, or had
126
 SPEECH
not before in his mind.' 1 Names may be either concrete or
abstract. Concrete names can denote bodies or their acci-
dents or names. Abstract names only come into being with
propositions and denote 'the causes of concrete names'.
There are two classes of concrete names, proper names and
*
universal names. Proper names like Peter' and 'this tree'
are singular to one thing only; a universal name like 'man',
'horse', and 'tree', denotes each member of a class of things,
though the pronunciation of it will arouse in the mind an
image of a particular member. For a universal name,
'though but one name, is nevertheless the name of diverse
particular things; in respect of all which together, it is called
a universal; there being nothing in the world universal but
names ; for the things named are every one of them indivi-
dual and singular. One name is imposed on many
universal
some quality, or other accident;
things, for their similitude in
and whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing
8
only, universals recall any one of those many.' The crucial
sentence in his attack on the doctrine of essence was 'there
being nothing in the world universal but names'. The world
contains no essences for universal names to designate. 'Uni-
versal' is the name of certain names, not of a type of entity

by a name.
designated
Hobbes' position with regard to universal names of bodies
was radically nominaiistic. Indeed, he should have said
that names stood for pictures of 'one thing only' or of
'divers particular things'. For according to his definition of
names they were signs of our conceptions of things, not of
things themselves. It is obvious that words are not signs of
things themselves, for 'that the sign of this word stone should
be the sign of a stone cannot be understood in any sense but
this, that he that hears it collects that he that pronounces it

thinks of a stone'. 3 Yet even though he believed that our

conceptions intervene between things and names, he did not
adopt either of the positions later adopted by Locke and
Berkeley with regard to universal names. Locke held that
our conceptions could be general and that general names
i. E.W. 1, 16. 2. E.W. Ill, ai. 3. E.W. I, 17.

127
 HOBBES
were those which stood for images having this indeterminate
character. But Hobbes, like Berkeley, maintained that all
'

imagery is determinate : as if there could be in the

. . .

image of a man, which were not the image of some one

man, but a man simply, which is impossible.' 1 But he did
not develop the theory for which Berkeley became famous
- that ideas, though
psychologically determinate, become
general because their function is to represent others of the
same sort. Berkeley thought that a particular determinate
image of a particular man stood for all other images of men
and was thus general because of its use rather than because
of its psychological nature. Hobbes, on the contrary, held
that universal names are so purely because of their use, not
because they refer to any general image, whether the Locke-
ian or Berkeleyan analysis of the general image is proffered.
It is the name whose use is general, not the idea.

Thus, 'universal' is a name of a name which ascribes a

certain use to it. The error of the Aristotelians derived from
treating a universal name as if it were a peculiar kind of
proper name. Proper names like 'Churchill' denote a singular
body with a unique combination of properties. The name
is, as it were,
a cap which fits over the individual named, or
a ticket attached to him. The Aristotelians used the same
model for universal names and thought that they could be
fitted over or attached to an object of thought, the essence
of man. Confronted with the term 'man* the philosopher
had to look for the essence designated by it in the same kind
of way as a policeman might look for Mr Brown with a pic-
ture in his hand to identify him. Hobbes, a hard-headed
mechanist, held that the world is composed only of moving
bodies; there are no essences behind the appearances for
our universal names to fit. Names are called 'universal'
purely because they are used to refer to different men rather
than just one particular individual.
So much for Hobbes' analysis of names of bodies. His
treatment of names of accidents was not nearly so clear. He
said that 'One universal name is imposed on many things,
i. E.W.I, 60.

128
 SPEECH
for their similitude insome quality, or other accident'. 1 So
obviously his account of names of properties like 'extended'
is very important. Many have held that it was inconsistent

with his nominalism ;

for it is often said that his account of
names of accidents was simply a way of smuggling in the
Aristotelian account of the universal in re. As this suggestion
is obviously quite contrary to what Hobbes intended to do,

it is essential to try to get clear as to what his view was. And

this is no mean undertaking.

The first move is to examine what Hobbes said about the
joining together of names into propositions, a process which
gives rise to what Hobbes called 'abstract names'. A proposi-
tion is 'a speech consisting of two names copulated, by
which he that speaketh signifieth he conceives the latter
name to be the name of the same thing whereof the former
2
is the name'. For instance, in 'man is a living creature'
the speaker conceives 'living creature' and 'man' to be
names of the same thing, the name 'man' being compre-
hended by the name 'living creature' - rather in the way in
which a surname is more extensive in its application than a
Christian name. Some languages bring out this relation of
'comprehension' by the order of words without recourse to
the verb 'to be'. The copulation of the two names 'makes us

think of the cause for which these names were imposed on

that thing', and this search for the causes of names gives rise
to abstract names like 'corporeity', 'motion', 'figure', 'quan-
tity', 'likeness',
and so on. But these denote only the causes of
concrete names and not the things themselves, which are
designated by concrete names. For instance, we see some-
thing which is extended and fills space and we call it by the
concrete name 'body'. The cause of the name is that the
thing is extended, 'or the extension or corporeity of it'.
These causes of names are the same as the causes of our con-
ceptions, 'namely, some power of action, or affection of the
thing conceived, which some call the manner by which any
thing works upon our senses, but by most men they are
called accidents'. 3 Accidents are neither the things them-
i. E.W. Ill, 21. 2. E.W. I, 30. 3. E.W. I, 32-3.
H. B 129
 HOBBES
selves, nor parts of them, but 'do nevertheless accompany
the things in such manner, that (saving extension) they may
1
all perish, and be destroyed, but can never be abstracted'.
The great advantage of abstract names is that they permit
us to reason and calculate without moving about and
manipulating the bodies themselves. Their abuse consists
in the manipulation of names, as is done by metaphysical
writers, without constant regard for the anchorage of acci-
dents to bodies. For instance, it is possible to think of
thought without also thinking of body, and this leads such
writers to think that thinking can go on without a body that
thinks. This sort of absurdity is generated by failure to
understand the function of the copula. Indeed, terms like
'essence', 'reality', 'quiddity', and so on, 'could never have
been heard of among such nations as do not copulate their
names by the verb is, but by adjective verbs as runneth,
2 '

readeth, . Such terms are not the names of things but

. .

signs 'by which we make known, that we conceive the con-

sequence of one name or attribute to another: as when we
say, a man is a living body, we mean not that the man is one
thing, the living body another, and the is or being a third but ;

that the man, and the living body is the same thing; because
the consequence, if he be a man, he is a living body, is a true
consequence, signified by that word is. Therefore, to be a
body, walk, to be speaking, to live, to see, and the like infini-
to

tives; also corporeity, walking, speaking, life, sight, and the like,
that signify just the same, are the names of nothing.' 3
Hobbes' treatment of the copula is interesting; for he
seems to have adumbrated later attempts to remove the
ambiguities of the word 'is'. There is a sense of 'is' or 'ex-
ists* which assigns a date and a place to something. If we say

'Here is a man' or 'Churchill exists' we are not assigning a

property but are literally or figuratively pointing to an
object with a date and a place. There is another sense of 'is',
however, when we say 'man is a living body', where 'is' has
the function of what Hobbes called 'comprehension* or
class-inclusion. We are stating something like 'Everywhere
i. E.W. I, 33. a. E.W. I, 34. 3. E.W. Ill, 674.

130
 SPEECH
and always if X is man then X is a living body*. We arc not
a
committing ourselves to the existence of men in the first
sense of'is' or 'exists'. We
could equally well say 'centaurs
are four-legged animals'. Hobbes suggested that terms like
'moved' and 'extended' refer to accidents of bodies as they
are caused by them through the intermediary of concep-
tions, just as do terms like 'stone' and 'tree' which are names
of bodies. When propositions are invented the copula of
class-inclusion enables us to calculate and reason about the
accidents of bodies without having to move them about or
have them actually in front of us. But people are misled by
the copula into thinking that 'is' refers to an entity or
essence. Thus, when they use abstract terms like 'motion' or

'corporeity' to reason about the class-inclusion relation-

ships between properties, they, as it were, inject this essence
into the accidents referred to by the property words and
think that such abstract terms refer to essences of motion
and corporeity. But in order to use the copula meaningfully
we have not to intuit some essence but to think clearly and
distinctly about the causes of concrete names, i.e. accidents,
as was made clear in Hobbes' account of evidence. 1 Meta-
physicians talk nonsense by omitting to do this as well as by
mistaking the function of the copula.
This account of abstract names gives an ingenious ex-
planation of how people come to believe in essences ; it also
brings out in rather a tortuous way that Hobbes thought
that all statements in which abstract names occur could be
translated without loss of meaning, though with consider-
able loss of time, into statements in which only concrete
names occurred. But suppose we use terms like 'extended'
and 'moved' instead of 'extension' and 'motion', is there not
still a puzzle about the status of these terms ? Hobbes cer-

tainly said some rather puzzling things about them. In De

Corpore he made a distinction between things like men which
are known to us via our senses, of which it is true that the
whole is better known than any part of it, and things 'known
to nature' of which we know better the parts like figure,
I. See supra, pp. 61-3.
 HOBBES
motion, and rest, than the whole which we reconstruct by
means of such scientific concepts. Such accidents he some-
times called 'universal things' 1 and remarked that the en-
deavour of the scientist was to understand their universal
cause - motion - without knowledge of which he could not
achieve this reconstruction. But these comments are surely
not inconsistent with his rather peculiar brand of nominal-
ism if they are not torn from their context and if his remarks
about abstract names are borne in mind. By 'known to
nature' Hobbes explained that he meant not something
which is known to no man, but our rational reconstruction
of things, in which, of course, abstractions like figure, quan-
tity, and motion would be used for without abstraction we
;

could have only categorical knowledge, not the hypothetical

knowledge of the scientist. He had in mind here, as the pre-
ceding section made clear, the resoluto-compositive method
of Galilean mechanics. The phrase 'universal things' which
isoften quoted against Hobbes' nominalism, 2 is followed by
the phrase 'or of such accidents as are common to all
3
bodies,' and on the preceding page he said explicitly,
'those things that have universal names (which for brevity's
sake, I call universal)'. In
view of this it is difficult to accuse
Hobbes of inconsistency. For he repeatedly stressed that
'universal' was not a characteristic of things but a name of
names.
It well be, however, that his analysis of how predi-
may
cates have meaning is very faulty, partly because he tried
to give an account of them as if they were names or noun-

expressions. Certainly the difficulties that he both encoun-

tered and slurred over in his treatment suggest that the
model of nouns like 'Socrates' and 'man* breaks down when
it is extended to
adjectives like 'extended' and 'moving'.
But a discussion of this problem would take us too far afield.
So too would the discussion of the adequacy of nominalism
in general. Hobbes' particular brand of nominalism, how-

ever, had one great strength and two great weaknesses. Its
i. See E.W. I, 66-9. 3. E.W. I, 68.
a. See J. Laird, Hobbest p. 148.

X32
 SPEECH
strength consisted in its exposure of the redundancy of
abstract entities, which, in his view, rested on the fallacy of
treating universal names as if they were a species of proper
names, distinguished by the status of the entities which they
were alleged to designate. No one disputes that there are
bodies, that they are extended, and move about. Sometimes
we use a name like 'Churchill' to designate one of them; at
other times we use a name like 'man' to designate any body
conforming to the expectations we have which can be
verbalized in the definition or connotation of 'man'. Dogs
can be taught the difference between these two classes of
names; and they have no inward eye, as far as we know, to
intuit essences. For on hearing a certain kind of whistle a

dog can be trained to expect his master and no one but his
master, Mr Brown. Yet, on hearing a different kind of
whistle, he can be trained to expect any object which he will
be able to eat - i.e. conforming to certain criteria which
could be verbalized in a connotation. Without such univer-
sal names language would be of very limited value; for it
would merely be a mass of proper names reduplicating all
the bodies we happened to encounter. But the fact that we
can use such universal names does not necessitate the
- that there
explanation which is often given of this fact
must be essences designated by the names in the same way
as individuals are designated by proper names. Hobbes

hung grimly on to this cardinal point in his distinction be-

tween proper names and universal names, and in his insis-
tence that abstract names refer to nothing, but are only
shorthand devices for enabling us to think about what is
designated by concrete names. This, of course, raises the
problem of how terms for properties like 'extended' have
meaning and how their meaning is related to those for bodies.
Obviously they are connected; for, as Hobbes remarked,
we impose a universal name on many things because of
their 'similitude in some quality, or other accident'. Certainly
the analytic tool, which Hobbes fashioned to deal prim-
arily with names of bodies, was too clumsy to deal with the
intricacies of this problem. But it was sharp enough to

133
 HOBBES
do its main job - to show that, on the assumption about
names shared both by himself and his opponents, the postu-
lation of abstract entities to account for the differences be-
tween singular and universal names was superfluous.
The major weakness of his account sprang from his fas-
cination with phantasms and with mechanical explanations.
Words were for him marks which could be manipulated like
a mathematician's counters. They are caused by external
things through the intermediary of phantasms, the word
standing for the private phantasm and yet somehow caused
by it. He spoke of accidents as the causes of concrete names
just as they are the causes of our conceptions. But he also
spoke of names as denoting bodies and accidents. But he
never examined the logical relations expressed by terms like
'denote', 'refer to', and 'designate', any more than he ex-
amined the relation of representation in his account of
phantasms. It may well be that there is little that can be
said about a relation like that expressed by the term 'refer-
ring', it being a primitive relation which cannot be ex-
plained in terms of anything simpler and for which most
analogies are unilluminating. But it certainly does not help
to muddle it with a causal relation. For though perhaps a
causal explanation can be given for words which, like the
signs of animals and birds, have only an expressive or an
evocative function, it seems fantastic to suggest that a
descriptive language, with all its artificiality and arbitrari-
ness, can be causally explained simply by the movements of
bodies impinging on the sense-organs. Hobbes set his face
against this suggestion when he contrasted the arbitrariness
of human language with the 'natural necessity' of animal
signs. But at times his obsession with mechanical explana-
tions led him to ignore the implications of his own insight.
For the possession of reason, which enables men to construct
descriptive languages, makes men different from moving
bodies as well as from brutes.
The second weakness in his account was the presumed
intermediary of phantasms between things and names which
was part and parcel of his peculiarly private theory of
134
 SPEECH
meaning. derived from his general view that we are con-
It
fronted with our own phantasms of things, not with things
themselves, and from his mechanical theory. He thought
that our conceptions are marked by names which are like
signposts rearing themselves out of an unfamiliar country;
these marks, when uttered as words, bring to the minds of
those whohear them similar conceptions as they, too, go on
their journeys. But this presupposes not only that the speaker
and the hearer always have a similar conception when they
hear a word, but also that they always have some conception.
And by 'conception' Hobbes meant a concrete determinate
image. Both these assumptions seem plainly false. For words
evoke all sorts of different imagery in different people and,
as was demonstrated with great labour by the Wiirzburg
school of introspective psychologists, 1 talking and problem-
solving can be carried on perfectly well without any deter-
minate imagery at all. In his account of evidence 2 Hobbes
suggested that meaningful talk was different from parrot-
talk in that our words mirrored our conceptions. Is this

always the case? Perhaps this double process of thinking

and talking occurs when we are wrestling with an unfamiliar
problem. We may then need the help of imagery which is
probably a more primitive method of problem-solving.
When, however, our talk is proceeding smoothly it can be
perfectly meaningful without any accompanying shadow
process in our heads. Hobbes modelled his account too much
on the mental contortions of a scientist like Descartes strug-
gling for clear and distinct ideas.

4. The Exposure of Absurdities

Whatever the defects of Hobbcs* theory of names he used

it in a most interesting and aggressive manner to expose and

explain the absurdities of metaphysicians. We

have already
met with his suggestion that abstract entities are generated

i. For an account of their work see G. Humphreys, Thinking, London,

1951, Chs. II-IV.
a. Sec supra, p. 61.

135
 HOBBES
not by God but by our failure to understand the function of
the copula. We have also seen that he thought that a great
deal of mental confusion was the product of failure to start
fiom agreed definitions. But more interesting than either of
these suggestions was his view that metaphysicians are led
into absurdities by being insensitive to the logical behaviour
of different classes of words.
Hobbes believed, roughly speaking, that names could
name bodies, accidents, or names. Now if one of these classes
of names were used as if it belonged to another class, all
sorts of confusions were likely to be propagated. For in-

stance, those who say that faith is 'infused' or 'inspired' are

treating 'faith' name of a body. For only

as if it were a
bodies can be poured or breathed into anything. Similarly,
those who believe 'that there be things universal' confuse
the names of bodies with the names of names, or misunder-
stand the different senses of 'in'. For an accident is not in a
body in the same kind of way as a body is in a body - 'as if,
for example, redness were in blood, in the same manner, as
blood is in a bloody cloth'. 1 He also attacked the use of meta-
phors like 'the proverb says this or that', which cloud the
search for truth, and fulminated against 'names that signify
nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the
schools, as hypostatical, transubstantiate,consubstantiate,
2
eternal-now, and the like canting of schoolmen'.
This demand for plain speech and the anchoring of
terms to palpable things like bodies has been one of the
main characteristics of British philosophy since Bacon and
Hobbes initiated it; but Hobbes anticipated modern tech-
niques of logical analysis by supplementing the demand for
clarity and concreteness of speech by a theory of absurdity.
He tried to show how absurdities are generated by mistakes
about the logical behaviour of different classes of terms. The
instrument he forged was too crude to do the job very ele-
gantly. But in using this kind of weapon he was a pioneer,
and in this respect, as in many others, he failed to develop
in detail the implication of his insight. What emerged from
i. E.VV. I, 104. 2. E.W. Ill, 34-5.

136
 SPEECH
histheory of names was a bludgeon for pulverizing some of
the more extravagant verbal structures of the schoolmen
and a crude theory of meaning modelled on what he thought
to be the practice of those whose thoughts were limited to
the contemplation of bodies in motion. And this was more
or less all that he set out to do in constructing a theory of
names.

'37
 CHAPTER SIX

MOTIVATION

Introductory

HOBBES' theory of motivation linked his general theory of

motion with his moral and political theory. His exposition
of it therefore tended to conform to a certain pattern. He first
of all introduced it by means of the bridging term 'endea-
vour' and tried to show how the gross motions of the body
towards or away from objects in desire or aversion could be
explained in terms of its endeavours or minute movements
of muscles, animal spirits, and so on. This was to show how
all life was but motion of the limbs and of the minute parts
of the body. He then introduced his theory of the passions
in which movements towards objects were classified as forms
of pride and movements away from objects as forms of fear,
in order to explain the acceptance of moral rules and the
necessity for civil society. Indeed, the use to which he put
his theory of motivation very much dictated its form and
content. For though it was ostensibly a deduction from the
theory of motion, it was in fact constructed with an eye much
more on its political relevance than on its theoretical ade-
quacy.

/. Pleasure and Pain

There are two of motion in the body. The first is vital

sorts
motion which begun in generation and continued with-
is

out interruption through life. It is manifest in the circula-

tion of the blood, in breathing, nutrition, excretion, and
other such processes, and proceeds without the help of the
imagination. Animal motion, which is the same as voluntary
138
 MOTIVATION
motion, manifests itself in
walking, speaking, moving the
limbs, and so on;
5
1
always 'first fancied in our minds ,
it is

the imagination being always the first beginning of volun-

tary motion. Motions from the external world not only move
to the brain and produce phantasms; they also affect the
vital motions of the heart. This gives rise to another kind of
sensation - pleasure if the motion of the blood is helped and
pain if it is impeded.
Hobbes distinguished between sensual and mental plea-
sures. The former have the main functions of helping the

preservation of the individual and the continuation of the

have no obvious connection with any part
species ; the latter
of the body. The basic difference between the two is that
sensual pleasures require the presence of the object associa-
ted with pleasure whereas mental pleasures do not. Amongst
sensual pleasures are 'all onerations and exonerations of the
body; as also all that is pleasant, in the sight, hearing, smell,

taste, or touch. Others arise from expectation, that proceeds

from foresight of the end, or consequence of things; whether
those things in the sense please or displease. And these are
pleasures of the mind of him that draweth those conse-
2
quences, and are generally called JOY.' Hobbes paid little
attention to sensual pleasures except to suggest quantitative
explanations of harmony and of the difference between light
'the most glorious of all colours' and colour 'that is to say
8
unequal light'.

2. Appetites and Aversions

Pleasure and pain are thus our introspective awareness of

vital motions. Pleasure is 'nothing really but motion about

the heart, as conception is nothing but motion in the head'. 4

When the action of sensible objects hinders this motion, it
may be resolved again 'by bending or setting strait the parts
of the body; which is done when the spirits are carried now
into these, now into other nerves, till the pain, as far as is

i. E.W. Ill, 38. 3. E.W. IV, 36, 7.

a. E.W. Ill, 42-3. 4. E.W. IV, 31.

139
 HOBBES
1
possible, be quite taken away'. Similarly, in the case of
2
pleasure the spirits are guided by the help of the nerves to
preserve and augment the motion. When this endeavour
tends towards things known by experience to be pleasant, it is
called an appetite; when it shuns what is painful, it is called
aversion. Appetiteand aversion are thejirst endeavouis of ani-
mal motion. They are succeeded by the flow of animal spirits
into some receptacle near the 'original' of the nerves which
brings about a swelling and relaxation of the muscles
causing contraction and extension of the limbs, which is
animal motion.
There are some appetites and aversions which are born
with men 'as appetite of food, appetite of excretion and
exoneration, which may also and more properly be called
aversions, from somewhat they feel in their bodies and some ;

other appetites, not many'. 3 These sound very much like the
'drives' about which so much has been heard in recent
4
psychological theorizing. But even in these cases Hobbes
thought that the initiation of movement was from without.
Food seen causes the organism to move towards it. This
sounds an insufficient account of the matter. For there is
good evidence to suppose that organisms are born with in-
nate needs which predispose them to seek out and pay atten-
tion to some features of their environment rather than

1. E.W.I, 407.
2. The notion of 'spirits' is whose work the
to be found in Galen, in
tradition of the Pneumatists reached culmination. Life is due to
its

'spirit' which charges the blood at the key centres of the body
- the liver,
the heart, and the brain. Blood, which was produced by the liver and
charged with natural spirits, met air from the lung at the heart and be-
came Vital spirits' to be distributed by the arteries. Some of these went
to the brain where they became transformed into a third type of spirits,
'animal spirits'. These were distributed by the nerves which were pic-
tured as hollow tubes. Hobbes, like Descartes, abandoned this picture on
account of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. But he still
retained the notion of animal spirits coursing through the nerves as the
means by which animal motion was propagated.
3. E.W. Ill, 40.
4. See G. Hull, Principles of Behaviour ; E. Tolman, Purposive Behaviour
in Animah and Men ; and P. T. Young, Emotion in Man and Animal.
140
 MOTIVATION
1
others, and to move towards
or away from them in ways
which need not be learnt. And, as we said in commenting on
Hobbes' account of sensation, only those external stimuli
register which relate to the needs of the organism.
Hobbes' account of the increase and decrease in vital
motions was also vague. Yet this was a crucial point in his
transition from physiology to psychology. His suggestion was
that increase in vital motions round the heart, occasioned
by contact with an external object, is felt as pleasure or pain.
He was referring to movements of Vital spirits' in what we
would now call the autonomic nervous system. But surely
there is not a simple correlation between increase in such
internal motions and pleasure; some pains are accompanied
by a great increase in vital motion. Hobbes must have meant
more than the simpleincreasing or impeding of motion, but
doubtful whether his account, as it stands, amounts to
it is

more than an attempt to describe in the language of motion

the felt difference between pleasure and pain.
Appetite and aversion referred to the beginning or first

endeavour of motion. And Hobbes was most anxious to

point out that he meant actual movement, not simply a
state of readiness to move. 2 He called the end of movement
its 'fruition', but did not indicate whether this referred to

obtaining the object towards which movement was directed

(e.g. drinking a tankard of ale) or the end-state of increase
in vitality which supervenes. 3 He did, however, observe that
the supreme end of felicity, about which the ancients had
spoken so much, was a mirage Tor while we live, we have
:

desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. Seeing . . .

all delight is appetite, and presupposeth a further end, there

can be no contentment but in proceeding. Felicity, . . .

therefore, by which we mean continual delight, consisteth

not in having prospered but in prospering.' 4 Implicit in

1. See, for instance, K. Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring.

2. E.W. Ill, 39.
3. See Freud's distinction between the object and aim of an instinct.
S. Freud, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, Collected Papers, Vol. IV, p. 65.
4. E.W. IV, 33-

141
 HOBBES
this observation not merely Hobbes' devotion to motion;
is

there is also the insight that the 'utmost end' of happiness

cannot be an end in the sense in which having a meal or
*

going to bed are ends. Continual delight' is a fitting descrip-

tion not for an additional end but for the way we go about
and succeed in attaining whatever ends we may have. To be
happy is not to arrive at an additional destination; it is to
be in process of calling according to some schedule at those
places which we really want to visit.
The point of Hobbes' remark that all final causes are
efficient causes can now be seen. The end or final cause only
functions as a cause in so far as it features in the conscious-
ness which initiates the movements. This, however, was a
very intellectualistic account of goal-directed behaviour;
for it assumed that all behaviour towards an end is initiated

by foresight of the end. This is not the case. There is, first of
all, the ambiguity already noted in the concept of 'end'
which can mean the object of pursuit or the state of satisfac-
tion which follows the capture of the quarry. Behaviour is
seldom initiated by foresight of an end of the second sort.
Huntsmen are lured by thoughts of killing foxes, not by
thoughts of the satisfaction of having killed them. But more
important are the cases where we move towards ends in the
first sense which we do not consciously envisage as objec-

tives. Many men are consistently rude to their employees

although they consciously try to be nice to them; husbands

protest love for their wives, yet constantly act as if they
hated them. Often we are never conscious of these goals
towards which our behaviour veers like a moth towards a
light. It was not until Freud that their theoretical import-
ance was seen. They render unplausible Hobbes' account of
the initiation of behaviour, though, perhaps, they can be
fitted in to a more subtle account of efficient causes.
The will is often referred to in accounts of the initiation
of behaviour. Hobbes believed that there was a sense in
which we can talk of willed actions without postulating a
special faculty of will. It often happens that we deliberate
before we act. Indeed, Hobbes thought that all human
142
 MOTIVATION
action was voluntary. 1 In this 'alternate succession of appe-
2
tite and fear' the last one that emerges triumphant is called
will. 'Will therefore is the last appetite in deliberating.' 3
This is an inadequate analysis, but an analysis which is

along the right lines. What we call 'will' is certainly to be

linked with deliberation successfully terminated there is no ;

need to postulate specific mental acts of something called

'the will'. But is not a special kind of deliberation involved ?
Are not the alternatives examined in relation to what is
either in the long-term as distinct from the short-term
interest of the agent or in accordance with some ideal pic-
ture of himself that he has built up, his 'ego-ideal', to use
Freudian terminology? Suppose I am lying in bed in the
early morning deliberating about whether to get up. My
fear of the cold alternates with my desire to get the morning
post. If I get up because my desire wins it would be odd to
call this a willed action. But suppose I think about getting

up from the point of view of the necessity of earning a living.

Or suppose I compare myself hogging it in bed with a pic-
ture I have of myself as a brisk man like Sir Stafford Cripps,
who was always at his desk by 9 a.m. And suppose, as a result
of either of these reflections, I grit my teeth and leap out of
bed. Surely we would be more inclined to call this a willed
action? Will is not simply the last appetite in deliberating;
for often we would be inclined to say of a man who eventu-

ally decided to stay in bed that he did not exert his will.
Rather it is deliberation carried on under the aegis of self-
regard, in which self-regard reinforces what Hobbes called
an appetite and enables it to be the last one in the field.

3. The Passions

For Hobbes love and hate were more or less the same as

appetite and aversion, the only difference being that love

and hate require the actual presence of the object, whereas
appetite and aversion presuppose its absence. These, to-
1. See infra, p. 155 (footnote). 3. E.W. Ill, 49.
2. E,W. IV, 68.
 HOBBES
gether with joy and grief which both involve foresight of an
end rather than just an immediately perceived object, are
the simple passions out of which all others are compounded.
Hope, for instance, is appetite with an opinion of attaining,
despair is the same without such opinion. Fear is aversion
with opinion of hurt from the object, courage the same with
hope of avoiding that hurt by resistance. Passions are dis-
tinguished by the objects of appetites and aversions as well
as by our opinion of attaining these objects. Ambition is
desire for office and covetousness Love of
desire for riches.

persons for society is kindliness and love of persons for

pleasing the sense only is natural lust. Hobbes' detailed
classification of the passions scarcely repays detailed study.
It looks very much like the account of the passions in Aris-
totle's Rhetoric served up in rather a piecemeal manner to

provide a transition from physiology to politics.

Nevertheless it does indicate the lines along which Hobbes
thought that all human actions could be explained. It is
therefore worth while pausing for a moment to summarize
his assumptions and to comment on them. Hobbes postu-
lated :

(a) The initiation of action by an external stimulus producing a

phantasm in the brain or by a phantasm of some absent object.
(We shall call this an efficient cause of an action.)
(b) The augmenting or impeding of vital motions as a collateral
effect of the actual or imagined object. (These tensions in the body
are felt as pleasure and pain.)
Movements towards or away from an objective, of which we
(c)
are conscious, which preserve or augment the vital motions. (We
shall refer to the objective of an action and to its function in augment-

ing or impeding vital motion.)

Hobbes seems to have thought that all elements of this

model of explanation had to be postulated when we assign
a desire or a passion to a person in order to explain his
behaviour. This does seem to display a certain inelasticity
in approach to the problem of psychological explanation.
For, in the first place, many of the explanations which we
in fact give of human behaviour do not in fact commit us to

144
 MOTIVATION
such a complicated set of assumptions. Hobbes' model of
explanation is plausible, perhaps, for what we call 'motives'
like fear, hunger, sex, and thirst where there are obvious
external stimuli and internal organic conditions which
initiate action and which are felt as pleasant or unpleasant,
where there are palpable goals towards which actions are
consciously directed, and where there are recognizable end-
states of quiescence which enable us to assign a function to
the action. But is it plausible to suggest that covetousness,
ambition, liberality, impudence, and countless other of
Hobbes' 'passions' conform to this model ? Some of these
terms certainly imply that actions have typical objectives.
Ambition, says Hobbes, is a desire for office and precedence,
and covetousness is desire for riches. But can it be said that
the actions of an ambitious or covetous man are initiated by
antecedent tensions in the same sort of way as the actions of
a hungry man ? To explain an action in terms of ambition
is surely only to suggest a typical objective or reason for it; it
is not to ascribe an efficient cause to it, or even to imply one.
Of course, there may be occasions on which actions per-
formed out of covetousness or ambition are initiated by the
impeding of vital motions occasioned by the absence of
certain objects which could be felt as gnawings, hankerings,
cravings, and so on. But we would not have to assure our-
selves of the occurrence of these antecedent motions before

venturing the suggestion that a politician acted out of ambi-

tion or a business man out of covetousness. We would, how-
ever, have to assure ourselves that they consciously aimed
at certain objectives.
There are, in the second place, certain other examples
which Hobbes gives of passions which conform even less to
his desire-aversion model. Courage, says Hobbes, is aver-
sion with hope of avoiding hurt by resistance; confidence is
constant hope and diffidence constant despair. But of actions
done out of courage, confidence, or diffidence is it even
appropriate to ask 'What was the point of the action?' let
alone to believe that something has been implied about
their efficient causes? Surely when we use such terms as

145
 IIOBBES
these we are ascribing traits of character to a person. are We
classifying his action as being in accordance with a certain

type of rule or socially accepted norm. We do not neces-

sarily ascribe a typical objective to it; still less do we

suggest an efficient cause. But Hobbes had to try to fit

such terms into his desire-aversion model because of an

assumption about explanatory terms that permeated
his physical theory as well as his psychology. He assumed
that all explanatory terms referred to actual occurrences.
He set his face resolutely against the Aristotelian concep-
tion of potentiality, or what we would now call the ascrip-
tion of dispositional properties to bodies. In his chapter on
'Power and Act' in De Corpore he said 'Wherefore the power
:

of the agent and the efficient cause are the same thing. But
they are considered with this difference, that cause is so
called in respect of the effect already produced, and power
in respect of the same effect to be produced hereafter; so
that cause respects the past, power the future time.' 1 But
surely Hobbes missed the point in his reference to future
time in the analysis of 'power'. To ascribe a power to some-
thing is not to refer to anything actually occurring in the
is to say that if certain conditions
past, present, or future. It
are fulfilled, then certain other things happen. Solubility is
a 'power' of sugar; for if it is put into water (at any time,
past, present, or future) then it dissolves. To ascribe a
cause to something, on the other hand, is to indicate an
event actually occurring at a particular time which is a neces-
sary condition for another event to occur. But Hobbes
refused to give any terms which describe bodies a disposi-
tional interpretation; all terms refer to actual occurrences.
We have seen the importance of this in his account of 'en-
deavour'. 2 It also had a considerable influence on his
account of the passions. For Hobbes even interpreted habits
as actual motions made more easy and more ready by per-
petual endeavours.
Now of all terms that are used to explain human behavi-
our 'habit' is the most obviously dispositional. To say that
i. E.W. I, 127-8. 2. See.rw/>ra, pp. 91-2.
146
 MOTIVATION
a person has a habit of punctuality is not to say that he is
doing anything at a particular moment. It is to say that if
he goes to the office, he is always there at the stipulated
time, that if he goes to catch a train, he never misses
it, and so on. A great number of terms for giving an

account of human actions are of this sort. But for Hobbes

a 'passion' cannot be a term for making this sort of disposi-
tional statement about a person; it must refer to actual
occurrences. Thus the term 'desire', which has both a dis-
1
positional and an occurrent interpretation, must refer in
Hobbes' account to actual movements towards an object
accompanied by actual prospective picturings of it. And
this underlying assumption about the analysis of disposi-
tional terms imposed a severe limit on his treatment of
terms like 'ambition', 'courage', 'confidence', 'benevolence',
'covetousness', and so on, which he classed as 'passions'.
Indeed, Hobbes' analysis of 'powers' reinforced the necessity
of using only one model of explanation in which continuous
motions from stimuli to response were postulated as in-
variably occurring.
The truth of the matter is that common-sense explana-
tions of actions usually take the form of assigning an objec-
tive or classifying them as instances of traits and habits.

They also postulate efficient causes where these are external

stimuli which set off a train of behaviour. But seldom do
ordinary people have recourse to functional explanation or
to the more recondite types of intra-organic efficient causes
suggested by Hobbes. And if they do it is because they have
picked up a smattering of physiology or read a bit about
Freud. Hobbes tried to underwrite common-sense explana-
tions in terms of objectives and traits with a scientific theory

postulating invariable causes and function. The result was

rather bizarre and led to a lot of subsequent trouble, as we
shall see when we discuss his alleged psychological hedon-

i. Talking about e.g. the desire for power can suggest an actual pic-

turing of ourselves as Prime minister and actually taking steps to attain

such a goal, or it can imply only that in certain situations we will tend to
aim at dominating others.

147
 HOBBES
ism. And he certainly gave only a very broad outline of a
theory of the passions because of his predominantly political
bias. Indeed, it is only when we pass on to the passions which
seemed to him politically important that Hobbes' account
comes to life again. One of the striking features which
rejuvenates his treatment is his fascination for motion which
bursts forth again when we pass from arid classification to
social implications.
Social life, for Hobbes, was a race for precedence which
had no termination except death. To last in the race
final
needed foresight and scheming. There are therefore specific
pleasures and pains which encourage or deflect men on
their journey. These are the mental pleasures and pains
which 'arise from the expectation that proceeds from fore-
sight of the end or consequence of things for whether those
;

things in the sense please or displease'. Their generic name

1

is joy and grief. These presuppose not simply anticipation of

the future based on past experience but a peculiar kind of

anticipation in which the individual is conscious of his
power to produce something. For we cannot conceive of what
is in the future without also knowing of something at the

present that has power to produce it. 'Wherefore all con-

ception of future, is conception of power able to produce
something. Whosoever therefore expecteth pleasure to
come, must conceive withal some power in himself by which
the same may be attained.' 2 This is an odd doctrine. But it
was made startling by the shift which Hobbes contrived in
the meaning of the word 'power'. He sometimes used it in
its very general sense and spoke, like Aristotle, of nutritive,

generative, motive, and mental powers. He added power

- riches,
acquired by the exercise of these faculties place of
authority, friendship or favour, and good fortune, and re-
marked that as 'the power of one man restricteth and hin-
dereth the effects of the power of 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 their opposition is called contention'. 8 But this is
i. E.W. Ill, 43. 2. E.W. IV, 37. 3. E.W. IV, 38.

148
 MOTIVATION
surely a more restricted sense of 'power' than the first sense
which refers generally to bodily or mental faculties. Indeed,
the term 'power' is another bridging term like 'endeavour'.
Hobbes used it most ingeniously to fashion a psychological
theory suitable for his political theory. For instance, his
celebrated announcement: 'So that in the first place, I put
for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and
restless striving of power after power, that ceaseth only in
5 x
death would be comparatively innocuous, though quaint,
if itreferred just to his general theory that all striving for
future ends involves a conception of our power to produce
them. For Hobbes often did use his general theory to say
rather bizarre things - for instance, that the fear of death
involves the fear of our inability to produce effects. But
'power' in most of the key passages where he speaks of the
desire forpower means our ability to dominate or win pre-
cedence over others. He passes smoothly from the more
general to the more limited sense. To fail to compete was to
die.
It follows that in their dealings with others men are very
sensitive tohonour or the acknowledgement of power. They
cherish their power generative which shows itself in beauty
'consisting in a lively aspect of the countenance and other
2
signs of natural heat'. They are honoured, too, for their
power motive whose signs appear in bodily strength, and
for their faculty of knowledge which appears in their ability
to teach or persuade. Riches, nobility, authority, and good
fortune are also honourable adjuncts since they are acquired
by various powers. A
man who is convinced that his own
power overshadows that of his rivals is subject to what
Hobbes called 'glory' or 'internal gloriation or triumph of
the mind', which may be just, false, or vain, depending on
whether it is based on his own experience, other people's

opinions, or his own imaginings unrelated to concrete

action. The opposite of glory is called humility or dejection,
depending on the observer's attitude to it. Pity is grief for
the calamity of another arising from the imagination that
i. E.W. Ill, 8;,-6. 2. E.W. IV, 38.

H9
 HOBBES
a like calamity may befall ourselves. This was the sort of
deduction from his theory that rankled with Hobbes'
critics. For pity was transformed by it into a sophisticated
sort of self-interest.
Hobbes prided himself on being the to give a con-
first

vincing explanation of laughter. It is the expression of

sudden glory caused by something new and unexpected in
which we discover some superiority in ourselves to others.
Laughter is most common amongst those who are conscious
of few abilities in themselves and are therefore forced to keep
themselves in their own favour by glorying in the imperfec-
tions of others. Hobbes was also very interested in curiosity
to which in the sphere of the passions he assigned a place
similar to that occupied by giving names in the cognitive
sphere. For in both man is quite unlike animals. 'For when
a beast seeth anything new and strange to him, he consider-
eth it so far only as to discern whether it be likely to serve
his turn, or hurt him, and accordingly approacheth nearer
to it, or fleeth from it: whereas man, who in most events

remembereth what manner they were caused and begun,

in
looketh for the cause and beginning of everything that
ariseth new unto him. And fromthis passion of admiration
and curiosity, have arisen not only the invention of names,
but also supposition of such causes of all things as they
thought might produce them. And from this beginning is
'
l
derived all
philosophy. . . .

But all men are not equally skilled in science; nor are
they equally equipped in wits on which worldly success
mainly depends. Hobbes put down these differences in
attainment to differences in passion. He ruled out differ-
ences in the natural temper of the brain for if that were the ;

cause, men would differ as much in their perceptual abili-

ties as they do in wisdom. And this is not so. Differences in

wits, therefore, originate in the different passions and the

ends to which appetites lead. Some men are addicted to
- and exonera-
predominantly sensual delights ease, food,
tions of the body they are
;
little moved by the attractions of
i. E.W. IV, 50-1.

150
 MOTIVATION
honour and glory which presuppose imagination of the
future. Such dullness probably derives from 'a grossness and
1
difficulty of the motion of the spirits about the heart'.
Quick ranging of the mind, which, joined with curiosity,
leads to grasping the similarities and differences between
2
things, spring from 'a tenuity and agility of spirits'. Levity
is a sign of excessive mobility in the spirits, which prevents

people from sticking to the point. A man of judgement must

have strong passions to control the relevance of his thoughts.
'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, GIDDINESS, and dis-
traction; and to have stronger and more vehement passions
for anything, than is ordinarily seen in others, is that which
men call MADNESS. 3 Indeed, in madness we are consumed
'

by a passionate conviction of our own superiority or in-

- an excess of vain -
feriority glory or vain dejection like the
man who preached in a cart in Cheapside that he himself
was Christ, or those who prophesy the world's end or emu-
late Don Quixote, or fancy themselves as brittle as glass. To
be successful a man must have not only steadiness and
strength of passion, but also a clear grasp of his own abili-
ties. The madman is one whose conception of his own power

is out of touch with the realities of his nature and situation.

There are many shrewd insights in this rather rambling

account of the passions and individual differences. It is
interesting to speculate on the extent to which the striving
for power and precedence in fact was rampant in the society
in which Hobbes wrote; for, as has been noted before, he
lived at a time when the new men of the commercial classes
were wresting power from the landed aristocracy. His was
an age of individualism, competition, and social mobility.
His preoccupation with honour is most significant. It is
difficult for his readers, who have often lived in more set-
i. E.W. IV, 55. 2. E.W. IV, 56. 3. E.W. Ill, 6 1-2.
 HOBBES
tied times, to realize that psychological traits like aggressive-
ness, acquisitiveness, and the striving for power are enor-
mously dependent on social conditions which vary. Yet we
are familiar with a similar theory put forward in a less in-
tellectualistic manner, by Alfred Adler in Vienna between
the two World Wars. His doctrine of 'organ inferiority'
5
reminds us of Hobbes general theory of the conception of
our own power; his famous 'will to power' recalls Hobbes'
'perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that
ceaseth only in death'. But whereas Adler cited case his-
tories to support his thesis, Hobbes presented a vivid picture
of life as a race in which 'we must suppose to have no other
goal, nor other garland, but being foremost'.
1
He gave not
a new theory of motivation with concrete evidence to sup-
port it but a re-description of the familiar processes of living,
in which the theory of motion linked social life with his

physics and the striving for power prepared his readers for
his political theory.

To endeavour, is appetite.
To be remiss, is sensuality.
To consider them behind, is glory.
To consider them before, is humility.
To lose ground with looking hack, vain glory.
To be holden, hatred.
To turn back, repentance.
To he in breath, hope.
To be weary, despair.
To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation.
To supplant or overthrow, envy.
To resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage.
To break through a sudden stop, anger.
To break through with ease, magnanimity.
To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity.
To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep.
To see another fall, is disposition to laugh.
To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity.
To see one out-go whom we would not, is indignation.
To hold fast by another, is to love.
i. E.W.IV,53-
152
 MOTIVATION
To carry him on that so holdcth, is charity.
To hurt one's self 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.

1

4. Psychological Hedonism

Hobbes summed up his theory of human nature in two prin-

ciples from which he thought he could demonstrate the
absolute necessity of leagues and contracts and the rudi-
ments of moral and civil prudence - 'the one arising from
the concupiscible part, which desires to appropriate to it-
self the case of those things in which all others have a joint

interest; the other proceeding from the rational which

teaches every man to fly a contra-natural dissolution, as the
greatest mischief that can arrive to nature'. Everything we
2

do springs from either pride or fear. Pride is the desire for

power and even greater power 'spontaneously and continu-
ously in one jet of appetite'.
*
... Men from their very birth,
and naturally, scramble for everything they covet, and would
have all the world, if they could, to fear and obey them.' 3
The fear of death, especially violent death, V/hich encom-
passes all the aversions, alone can damp down the jet of
appetite. The appearances, our pretensions to generosity or
to disinterestedness, are but cloaks to hide the struggle be-
tween pride and fear; the reality beneath is the thrust and
recoil of a pleasure-pain calculating machine.
This is the stark picture which Hobbes presented. Before
passing to the consequences that follow from this descrip-
tion of human nature, let us pause to remind ourselves how
Hobbes came to suggest it. To understand what Hobbes was
about we must disabuse our minds of the hope that Hobbes
would have been much worried by the citation of cases
which do not appear to conform to his account. Mothers are
moved by love of their children, we might say. Surely this
is not fear for themselves or the desire for power. Hobbes

i. E.W. IV, 53. 2. E.W. II, vii. 3- E-W. VII, 73.

 HOBBES
would reply a Freudian analyst when a patient denies
like
that he wants to kill his father. That is a superficial, un-
scientific account of the matter, he would say. The real
motives must be discovered and the clothes discarded in
which we dress them up. Of course the scientific account is
not altogether beyond the experience of the ordinary man.
For do we not prefer to travel in company ? Do we not lock
our doors when we are asleep and lock up our chests in our
houses ? * This shows, surely, that the ordinary man's atti-
tude to his fellows is consistent with the scientist's account.
Man to man is wolf to wolf.
But Hobbes did not attach much weight to such observa-
tions on the actual behaviour of men. His postulates of
motivation were not empirical assumptions which could be
refuted or confirmed by observation. Rather they were self-
evident truths which any man could discern if he looked
into himself. 2 Many men took his advice and, needless to
say, there weremany who vociferously protested that Hobbes
had misrepresented human nature. His ablest and most
coherent critic was Bishop Butler who explicitly attacked
Hobbes' theories in his first and eleventh Sermons on Human
Nature. These sermons, delivered in the Rolls Chapel in
the more peaceful period at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, raised points which are shrewd comments on
Hobbes and of lasting philosophical importance. Butler's
purpose was to persuade his sophisticated listeners that
living virtuously was their Christian duty as well as in their
interest. The love of God was quite consistent with self-love.
His objection to Hobbes was that in his system everything
was a manifestation of self-love. This was a shocking doc-
trine in which good-will and benevolence were misrepre-
sented in order to fit into a theory that may have seemed
clear to Hobbes when he retired into himself but which
went against acknowledged facts and actions. And after all
'whether man
be thus or otherwise constituted, what is the
inward frame in this particular, is a mere question of fact or

i. See E.W. Ill, 1 14. 2. See E.W. Ill, xi, xii.

154
 MOTIVATION
natural history, not provable immediately by reason'. 1 So
much for Hobbes' method.
Hobbes' theory, according to Butler, rested on the failure
to make two cardinal distinctions. Firstly, Hobbes treated
all action as if it were calculating action in which the agent
aimed at an increase of his own power. But many actions
proceed without foresight of an end to be achieved. 'Though
a man hated himself, he would as much feel the pain of
hunger as he would that of gout. One man rushes upon
. . .

certain ruin for the gratification of a present desire nobody :

will call the principle of this action self-love.' 2 The trouble

with men, argued Butler, is not just that they have too little
benevolence; it is also that they act too little from self-love,
being at the mercy of fleeting impulses. This may well be so.
But it was not really an informed objection to Hobbes. For
he did distinguish between sensual and mental pleasures,
the former being occasioned by the presence of an object
and requiring no foresight of an end. He did also single out
appetites and aversions like hunger, thirst, excretion, and
exoneration which are born with men, and which, unlike
appetites for particular things, need no previous experience
and trial of their effects which Butler laid down as a neces-

sary condition for the operation of self-love. Finally, Hobbes

was careful to distinguish real from apparent objects of
desire and his whole account of prudence and natural law
presupposed the distinction between short-term and long-
term goods. Hobbes dealt cursorily, it is true, with impulsive
3
action, probably because of his political approach to
motivation. In ethics and politics actions are only interest-
ing in so far as they are consciously directed towards goals.
And this brings us to Butler's second cardinal distinction.
1. J. Butler, Sermons on Human Nature, I, footnote to section 6 (ed.
Matthews, 1914).
2. J. Butler, op. cit., I, footnote to section 7.

3.Hobbes thought that human

action was voluntary. In cases
all
where there was no time to deliberate action followed 'the present
thought he hath of the good or evil consequence thereof to himself. As
for example, in sudden anger, the action shall follow the thought of
1

revenge . E.W. IV, 272.

'55
 IIOBBES
Hobbes, argued Butler, was able to treat benevolence as
a special case of self-love because he failed to distinguish the
object towards which an action is directed from the satisfac-
tion which may attend its attainment. The cruel man aims
at hurt to his neighbour. He may get satisfaction from hurt-

ing him but he does not aim at such satisfaction. It is the

same with benevolent actions. The fact that both selfish and
benevolent actions satisfy us does not mean either that we
must equate them or that we must make the mistake of
thinking that both are performed in order to obtain our own
satisfaction. '. This is not the language of mankind: or if
. .

it were, we should want words to express the difference be-

tween the principle of an action, proceeding from cool

calculation that it will be to my advantage; and an action,
suppose of revenge, or of friendship, by which a man runs
upon certain ruin to do evil or good to another. It is manifest
that the principles of these actions are totally different, and
sowant different words to be distinguished by: all that they
agree in is, that they both proceed from and are done to

gratify, an inclination in a man's self.' 1 Butler is certainly

right here at the common-sense level. We distinguish selfish
from unselfish actions by trying to discover what the agent
was aiming at. It is extremely difficult to defend the view
that all actions are consciously aimed at the satisfaction of
the agent. For, at the common-sense level, impulsive and
benevolent actions are obvious counter-examples. Our
ordinary language, our judgements of conduct and legal
judgements of intention all reflect this obvious distinction.
Without them practical men would be at a loss to assess
conduct. And, as Butler pointed out, even if Hobbes'
manner of describing the matter were adopted, new words
for bringing out this crucial distinction would have to be
introduced into his new language. Things are what they are
arid not some other thing; there are some distinctions of fact
which must be reflected in any language that is to be of
practical use.
Hobbes' suggestions derived, in part, from his attempt to
I. J. Butler, Sermons on Human Nature, XI, section 7.

156
 MOTIVATION
marry common-sense with science, and rather unconvincing
science at that. His scientific theory was an attempt to re-
construct rationally the causes of action; men were pic-
tured as natural machines pushed towards or away from
objects. Every such movement increased or impeded the
vital motions, and this was felt as pleasure or pain. The
pleasure and pain resulting from action was therefore an
integral part of his scientific account. This is not absurd.
Most modern theories of behaviour employ some such
homeostatic principle of explanation. The function of goal-
directed behaviour, it is maintained, is to preserve the
equilibrium of the organism. But this does not imply that
organisms consciously aim at attaining an equilibrium state.
Hobbes also held an ideo-motor theory of actions which
assigns the cause of actions to external stimuli which produce
phantasms transmitting push. But Hobbes never suggested
that as actions bring about an increase or decrease in vital
motion they must always be initiated by an image of this
result. Actions which bring mental pleasures or pains (joy
or grief for Hobbes)" are initiated by foresight of pleasure to
come together with consciousness of our power to produce
something. But this is not the case with sensual pleasures.
It is true that his account of sensual pleasures is sketchy;
but it would be very difficult to conclude that he thought
5
that 'all onerations and exonerations of the body together
with actions directed towards preserving what is 'pleasant,
in the sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch' were initiated by

anything other than a phantasm of the object to be kept near

or pushed away from the body. We have previously re-
marked on Hobbes' vagueness about the concept of 'end'
which he calls the 'fruition' of an action. 1 His lack of clarity
about this concept makes it very difficult to decide precisely
what his theory was, but it is tempting to suggest that
Butler's strictures on Hobbes' theory were not altogether
fair. Hobbes was attempting to give a scientific theory
about the of action. It was not a particularly con-
causes

vincing theory in itself because of its ideo-motor bias. But

I. See supra, pp. 14-12.

157
 HOBBES
its intrusion into common-sense questions about actions
proved disastrous. And one of the disasters occasioned by it
was the theory popularly known as psychological hedonism.
This point is of such general philosophical importance that
it must be briefly explained.

Psychological hedonism is the view, often ascribed too

readily to Hobbes, that men can only seek their own plea-
sure. It need never have troubled moral philosophers very
much if questions about actions which are psychologically
interesting had been clearly distinguished from those which
are ethically relevant. In making moral judgements we are
only interested in limited questions about actions we want ;

to the point of or reason for them - the objective con-

know
sciously intended by the agent. We
are not interested in
their psychological function, whether this is put in the old

language of increasing or impeding vital motion or in the

new language of preserving the equilibrium of the organ-
ism, reducing need, or producing satisfaction. Nor are we
interested in the causes of actions unless these causes are of
such a kind as to make them unavoidable, i.e. to render an
agent's intentions ineffective or superfluous. We do not give
a man moral marks for his social conditioning or endocrine
balance. And when, as moralists, we fasten upon a person's
intentions,it is obvious that there are many actions which

are not aimed solely at the agent's own pleasure. Butler was
obviously right about this ; he was the champion of morals
and common-sense. But the psychologist wants to know
more about actions. He is not content to find out a man's
intentions he is intrigued by the causes of actions or what
;

initiates them and often relates their function to some prin-

ciple similar to Hobbes' pleasure-pain principle. A

man may
jump into a river in order to save a drowning boy. give We
him moral marks for his intention. But the action may have
been caused) in part, by his need for social approval which
could be traced back to the nursery years. This is psycho-
logically interesting but morally irrelevant unless he con-
sciously intended to obtain social approval or unless the need
was irresistible. The same kind of point can be made about
158
 MOTIVATION
the satisfaction derived from the action or its psychological
function. No doubt the action increased or decreased the
motions; but this is not ethically relevant unless
hero's vital
he saved the boy in order to obtain this satisfaction. Unless
the psychologist's questions are distinguished from the
moralist's we get the typical situation of a seeming clash
between a developing science and common-sense. We have
seen how this collision occurred in Hobbes' account of body. 1
It then requires a Butler or a Berkeley to come to the rescue
of common-sense. In Hobbes' case the shock to common-
sense was accentuated because his scientific theory was such
a bad one. Nowadays, when theories are much better and
much more difficult to relate to common-sense because of
the discovery of unconscious motives, the need to distin-
guish scientific questions about causes arid function from
practical questions about intention is even greater. Butler
revived common-sense after the shock of Hobbes; but no
comparable philosopher has yet emerged to do a similar job
after the shock of Freud.

i. See supra, pp. 96-7.

159
 CHAPTER SLVEN

MOTIVES AND MORALITY

Introductory

HOBBES explicitly stated in his Preface to the English

translation of De Give that his original plan of a trilogy -
- was
Body, Man, and Citizen interrupted because his
country was 'boiling hot with questions concerning the
rights of dominion and the obedience due from subjects',
and that therefore his De Give, which was last in order, 'is yet
come forth first in time'. 1 Yet he had gathered together its
first elements and had 'digested them into three sections by
2
degrees'. Nevertheless the principles on which his political
philosophy was based were 'sufficiently known by experi-
ence'. We can thus infer that he thought his principles con-
sistent with the sections that had not yet been written, and
also that they were self-evident in themselves. He believed
that the rules of justice rested on consent and that he could
demonstrate how men must come to agree upon them by
making explicit the springs of human action and decision.
Thus, Hobbes' theory of motivation was a kind of water-
shed between his physics and politics. Foj* it was to show
what sort of rules and conventions for civil society man as a
natural machine must necessarily assent to and need to have
supported by the sword of the sovereign. As Bentham was
later to put it: 'Nature has placed mankind under the

governance of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain. It

is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well

as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the

standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of

i. E.W. II, xx. 2. E.W. II,xix

160
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
causes and
effects, are fastened to their throne.' But to give
l

the standard of right and wrong or to give moral reasons for

actions, like giving the meaning of words or images, is to
answer one kind of question; whereas to give the causes of an
action, like giving the causes of imagery or speech, is to
answer another kind of question. Hobbes' treatment of
motivation, like his treatment of imagery and speech,
ignored this distinction and suggested that an adequate
answer to both types of question could be provided by
answering the second type of question.
It is extremely dubious whether any attempt to substitute

psychology for ethics could be made at all plausible for, as ;

was indicated in our discussion of Hobbes' method, this

would involve the fallacy of trying to settle questions about
what ought to be by settling questions about what is the
case. This logical blemish, however, was not clearly grasped
till Hume made
it explicit when commenting on the subtle

transition from what is to what ought to be, 2 and does not

seriously detract from the interest of Hobbes* account.

/. The Transition to Morality

The first step in Hobbes' attempt to bridge the gap between

psychology and ethics was his analysis of goodness. 'What-

soever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it
which he for his part calleth good and the object of his hate
:

3
These words do not name some
}
and aversion, evil. . . .

metaphysical essence; they are 'ever used with relation to

the person that useth them there being nothing simply and :

absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be

taken from the nature of the objects themselves'. 4 'Good,' in
other words, is a term like 'nice' or 'amusing* which implies
a relation to the emotions, desires, or interests of the person
1 .
J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

(ed. Harrison), Oxford, 1948, p. 125.

2. D. Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Bk III, Part I, section i ad
fin.

3. E.W.III,4i.
4. E.W. Ill, 41.

161
 HOBBES
who uses it. It differs in this respect from a term like
for when we call a box square it needs consider-
5

'square ;

able ingenuity to suggest that we are implying anything

about ourselves.
It should, however, be noticed that Hobbes did not sub-
scribe to one version of the subjectivist view, which is that
statements about good are psychological statements about
ourselves - a species of introspective note. According to
Hobbes we always assume certain qualities in the object in
*
virtue of which it pleases us. ... nothing is good or evil but
in regard of the actions that proceedeth from it, and also of
the person to whom it doth good or hurt some herbs are. . .

good because they nourish, others evil because they poison

us; and one horse is good because he is gentle, strong, and
carrieth a man easily.' 1 Hobbes here lighted upon an in-
triguing feature of the term 'good* which many modern
writers on ethics have brought out in different ways. In
describing something as good we do not refer to any
definite properties of the object in the way in which we do
when we call something square. But although we do not
directly indicate properties we always imply that the object
has some in virtue of which the term 'good' is appropriate.
Criteria are assumed. Hobbes' horse is good because he is
'gentle, strong, and carrieth a man easily'. The qualities
which are implied vary from context to context, there being,
as Hobbes put it, 'no common rule of good and evil, to be
taken from the nature of the objects themselves'. The 'com-
mon rule' is understood by the speaker and his audience.
This explains how an object's goodness is relative to the
person who describes it as good without its being intro-
spectively revealed.
There are, however, two major troubles with Hobbes'
analysis. The first is that it is difficult to see why we need the
word 'good' in our vocabulary in addition to words like
'attractive', 'pleasant', and 'satisfying'. Surely Hobbes'
analysis omits the normative force of the term. To say that
peace is good implies not just that it has qualities in virtue
i. E.W.V, 192.
162
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
of which it is desired; it is to insist that it has qualities in
virtue of which it ought to be desired and promoted. 'Good'
has an impersonal commendatory force about it which is
lacking in words like 'nice' and 'attractive', that are used
for purely private preferences. There would be nothing
surprising about saying 'Peace is good; but unfortunately
neither I nor anyone else desires it'. But it would verge on
the self-contradictory to say 'Peace is good; but neither I nor
anyone else ought to desire it.' Hobbes' analysis presupposed
that 'good' was a word which we use simply to describe the
relation of the properties of an object to our desires. But this
is not the case. For not only are certain impersonal stan-

dards or 'common rules' implied; but also the primary

function of the word is to advise, commend, prescribe, and
indulge in other such practical activities. Plato once
described the philosopher as the spectator of all time and
all existence. But when he went on to describe the theoreti-
cal life as good, he gave up theorizing and commended it to
his readers.
This leads on to the second defect in Hobbes' analysis,
which was his handling of the relational aspect of 'good'.
He thought that part of the meaning of 'good' is the relation
of certain characteristics of the object to the actual desires of
the speaker. These desires vary from speaker to speaker, and
it is only when talking of peace which, in his view, every

man could not help but desire, that he v/as prepared to

speak of something that is absolutely good. But, as we have
seen, it would be quite in order to speak of peace as good
even though no one in fact desired it. The relational aspect
is connected with the commendatory use of the term rather
5
than with its descriptive content. 'Peace is good is roughly
equivalent to saying that peace is something which, because
of qualities #, j>, , ought to be chosen, promoted, or pur-
sued, by both the speaker and his audience. The com-
mendatory attitude of the speaker is part of the analysis of

'good', not his actual desires towards the object. Of course

one of the most obvious grounds for commending something
is that it has qualities which we and our audience desire or

163
 HOBBES
find satisfying. This surely the point of Mill's often criti-
is

cized remark that the sole reason that can. be given for calling
something desirable is that people actually desire it. But
this is not, surely, the sole reason for commending some-
thing; still less is it part of what 'good' means. Hobbes was
misled by the contingent fact that people often desire what
they call good and often call things good because they have
qualities which they in fact desire, into thinking that there
is a necessary connexion between being good and being

by the speaker.
actually desired
There is another aspect of Hobbes' theory of goodness
which is more interesting than the rather crude analysis
which we have outlined to date. He often spoke of 'good' in
the context of rationality. 'Reason declaring peace to be
good, it follows by the same reason, that all the necessary
means to peace be good also.' 1 This he contrasted with men
swayed by 'irrational appetite, whereby they greedily prefer
the present good'. A man may not in fact desirepeace at a
particular moment; but he would desire it if he reflected
calmly on what would give him pleasure on the whole and
in the long run. Sobered by the fear of death he would see
the desirability of peace and of the means necessary to
attain it. It is as if a guardian were giving advice to his ward
and said, 'I know you want to go on the stage, but under-
standing you as I do, I feel confident that the best thing for
5

you to do would be to go to the University. Hobbes thought

that he understood human nature. He therefore thought
that peace was what all men would desire in so far as they
were rational and understood their permanent, long-term
interests. And all men were in part rational because of their
fear of death. Peace must therefore be good, what any
rational man would desire.
This analysis preserves the reference to desire as part of
the meaning of 'good', but 'object of desire' is expanded to
include what a man would desire if he were rational. The
question that arises, however, is whether the addition of 'if
he were rational* is a way of covertly smuggling in the im-
i. E.W. 11,48.

164
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
personal and normative force of the term. To say that some-
thing is good implies that it should be chosen or pursued
and that there are good reasons which any man would
accept for this advice. In Hobbes' case the good reasons
derived from an assumed identity of interests on the part of
all men. Certainly it would sound odd to say 'The rational

thing for you to do would be to seek peace, but you ought

not to do so.' Is not 'rational' itself a normative term? Be-
fore we deal with this question we must examine the use
which Hobbes makes of the concept of rationality in his
attempt to provide a psychological foundation for natural
law. For his analysis of 'good' is but the gateway to what for
him was a far more important task - the use of psychologi-
cal postulates to demonstrate 'the absolute necessity of

leagues and contracts, and thence the rudiments both of

moral and of civil prudence'. 1

2. The Justification of Natural Law

Morality is not concerned simply with the pursuit of good,

but with the limitation of its pursuit when it affects that of
others. These limitations are imposed by custom arid law as
well as by moral rules. In primitive communities social
controls tend to be undifFerentiated. It would be absurd to
ask whether a rule was a matter of morality or whether it
was merely a custom. These distinctions, like the distinction
between mythology and science, took a long time to emerge
and presuppose the use of criteria by reference to which
rules could be classed as customary, legal, and moral.

Historically speaking what we now call morality emerged

from custom and law under the name of the law of nature
or natural law. It was regarded as a set of rules universally
binding on all men and contrasted with the conventions of
particular states. The Stoics, who were the first to formulate
this conception with explicitness, spoke of man as a citizen
of the world as well as of a particular state. He was entitled
to this status on account of his reason which he shared with
i. li.W. II, vii.

165
 HOBBES
all men. As rational beings all men were equal, whatever
their civic status and as rational beings men could not doubt
;

that contracts ought to be kept, life and property ought to

be respected, and justice ought to be practised in the various
transactions of life. These were the sorts of rules for which
good reasons could be given in any society of men. Socrates
long ago had insisted on accepting only those rules which
the individual himself could justify. It was not enough to
adopt traditional standards because they were traditional
or authoritatively ordained. The individual must question
them and apply to himself only those rules for which a
justification could be found. But the Stoics made more ex-
plicit the conception of a rationally defensible system of
rules which applied universally. They flourished after the
conquests of Alexander and the cosmopolitan tendencies
which he fostered. It was therefore possible for them to

develop the cosmopolitan implications of the rational in-

dividualism of the Socratic tradition.
Stoicism came to Rome, but the Romans were far too
practically minded to attempt to implement a set of ideal
principles. It so happened, however, that as a concession to
those foreign cities with whom their military and commer-
cial expansion was increasingly bringing them into contact,
they had developed a simplified system of law called the jus
gentium, or law of nations. This was a sort of L.G.M. of the
legal rules in force in the different cities; it permitted dis-

putes between people of an expanding empire to be settled

fairly and efficiently. Although the Roman lawyers kept the
ideal law of nature distinct from the law of nations, it is easy
to see how the former exerted a simplifying and humanizing
influence on the latter. With the coming of Christianity cos-
mopolitanism and equalitarianism found a more emotional
and dynamic form of expression. The system of natural law
came gradually to be regarded as a selection from God's
rules for man which could be rationally discerned as distinct
from being supernaturally revealed. It was appealed to by
the more philosophically minded of the clergy to humanize
and often to condemn current laws and customs.
166
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
Thenotion of the law of nature, then, was not at all a
novel one at the time when Hobbes was writing. But it is
very interesting to conjecture why it had assumed such
great importance at this period. This was not because of its
content - for this changed very little - but because of its
status and of the use to which it could be put. The Renais-
sance, as has often been remarked, focused interest on man
as an individual. The law of nature was thought to be rooted
in man as an individual, who was in certain respects like all
other individuals, rather than derivative from his civic or
ecclesiastical status. At a time of acute religious controversy
it appeared to those who wanted peace and toleration as a

set of ruleswhich were rationally acceptable and unaffected

by the revelations of rival religious sects. Also, with the rise
of nation states in England, France, and Spain, kings were
beginning to make laws instead of declaring the fundamental
law of the realm enshrined in its customs. The law of nature
therefore was a godsend to those who feared absolutism, as
a set of principles binding on kings as well as on their sub-
jects. Finally, at a time of great commercial expansion, the
law of nature appealed to the rising class of traders and
business men as a set of rules that could form a basis for
international law. The Dutchman, Grotius, coming from a
nation as famous for its trade as for its toleration, attempted
to use natural law as a scientifically established set of prin-

ciples on which a system of international law could be

erected. He tried to do for law what Galileo had done for

physics, to demonstrate that it had an axiomatic foundation

in self-evident principles which were clear and distinct to
any rational being.
Hobbes, therefore, was not at all original in trying to
demonstrate that moral principles could be derived from
postulates describing man as an individual. But he differed
from Grotius in his account of human nature and in his
conviction of the conventionality of civil law. Grotius
grounded natural law on man's nature as a rational and
social being. The maintenance of society was a major need
for man irrespective of private benefits. The source of law

167
 IIUBBES
was to be found in this tendency to maintain some kind of
social order. Keeping non-injury to life
faith, fair dealing,
and property were ways of behaving as natural to man as
pursuing his own interests. They gave rise to the civil laws
of different states which, though conventional and based on
utility, depended on the 'natural obligation' to keep con-
tracts. Natural law, therefore, which comprised all the

simple rules for living together which any rational and social
being could not help accepting, was the foundation of all
systems of civil and international law.
Hobbes, with his eye on Grotius' account, maintained
that more or less the same set of principles could be deduced
from man's nature as a being who becomes rational through
his fear of death. The state of nature was a state of war, not
of social co-operation as Grotius taught. 'All society, there-
fore, is either for gain or for
glory; that is, not so much for
love of our fellows as for the love of ourselves.' 1 Men are
equal enough in body and mind to render negligible any
palpable claims to superior benefits, and even the weakest
is able to kill the strongest. So all men have more or less

equal hope of attaining their ends. As their basic striving is

for power and precedence they live in a constant state of

competition, enmity, and mutual suspicion. 'In such condi-

tion, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof
is uncertain and consequently no culture of the earth no
:
;

navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be impor-

ted by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of
moving, and removing, such things as require much force;
no knowledge of the face of the earth no account of time
; ;

no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,

continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' 2
Hobbes did not take such a state of nature seriously as a
historical hypothesis, though he did mention in passing the
3
plight of 'savage people in many places of America', who
in fact had no central government. He was conducting a
Galilean experiment of the imaginary sort - a resolution of
i. E.W. II, 5. 2. E.W. Ill, 113. 3. E.W. Ill, 114.

1 68
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
society into its clear and distinct parts so as to reconstruct
the whole in order of logical dependence rather than of his-
torical genesis. He could thus treat men 'as if but now sprung
out of the earth and suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full
maturity'. Having isolated the underlying movements of
1

men towards each other - their pride - he deduced the con-

sequences that followed from this postulate alone. This was
the state of war. This analytic exercise was also a way of
teaching a lesson; for it showed how men would behave if
they had no civil power to restrain them. In such a
there would be no right or wrong, justice or
*
Where there is no common power, there is no lawi ydfcre no
law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two csfiffc
nal virtues.' 2
Having shown the logical consequences of man's pride,
Hobbes passed to the other clear and distinct component,
the fear of death. Man shuns death 'by a certain impulsion
of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves down-
ward'. 3 For Hobbes this aversion was the basis of all virtue
and morality. It brings man up short in his pursuit of power
and leads him to reflect about his predicament. In the calm-
ness occasioned by this overwhelming fear man's reason in-
forms him that peace is a necessity for survival and it also
'suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men
may be drawn to agreement. These articles are they, which
otherwise are called the Laws of Nature'. 4 The first of these
is 'that every man,
ought to endeavour peace, as far as he
has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that
he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of war'. 5
From this can be derived the second law 'that a man be will-
ing, when others are so too, as far-forth, as for peace, and
defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down
this right to all things; and be contented with so much

liberty against other men, as he would allow other men

8
against himself'. This is equivalent to the law of the Gospel,
Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that
1. E.W.II, 109. 3. EW. 11,8. 5. E.W. Ill, 117.
2. E.W. Ill, 115. 4. E.W. Ill, 116. 6. E.W. Ill, 118.

169
 HOBBES
do ye to them.' The third law follows 'that men perform
their covenants made'. 1 And so Hobbes
proceeded with the
deduction of the various rules and virtues which seemed to
him essential to peace.
But in what sense can Hobbes be said to have demon-
strated from the maxims of human nature arising from its

concupiscible and rational components 'the absolute neces-

sity of leagues and covenants, and thence the rudiments
t^oth of moral and of civil prudence' ? How can the rule that
5

ght to endeavour peace be a deduction from postulates

that men can only seek power and avoid death ?
is a crucial transition here of which Hobbes

curtously unaware. The science of natural justice, in

Wnich the laws of nature were to serve as basic axioms, pre-
scribed both that men ought to endeavour peace and ought
to follow certain rules in order to obtain it. But this science
was to be quite unlike mechanics, physics, and psychology,
which contain only descriptions stating what happens uni-
versally under certain conditions. Neither Galileo nor
Harvey prescribed rules for the behaviour of bodies. Scien-
tists do not advise their subject-matter in the way in which

kings advise their subjects.

There would be no logical objection to Hobbes formulat-
ing an axiomatic system of rules and appealing to people to
adopt them as a prescriptive basis for living together. Once
accepted, the logical consequences of these rules could be
explored and applied to personal life and social organiza-
tion. This is the parallel between geometry and Hobbes'
civil philosophy. The fundamental rules of natural justice
would function rather like the aims of an instituted club or
association; the details of the ground-plan could be worked
out by seeing what followed from the definitive aims. But
Hobbes was not trying to institute a new society. He thought
that he was making explicit by Galilean resolution the
rationale of any existing civil society - deducing the real
objectives of its members from their underlying motives.

i. E.W.III, 130.

170
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
But this more ambitious and more interesting undertaking
has, surely, grave logical objections to it. For it presupposes
that statements prescribing how men ought to behave can be
deduced from statements describing how they in fact behave.
And this breaks one of the first rules of deductive logic,
which is that no statement can feature in the conclusions of
a valid deduction which is not contained explicitly or
implicitly in the premisses. If physics and psychology pro-
vide the premisses, then they contain only descriptions, It
follows, therefore, that no statement other than a descrip-
tion can feature in the conclusion. It is only if a rule like
5
'men ought to endeavour peace one of the premisses that
is

the principles of natural justice can be deduced from pre-

misses containing also physical or psychological postulates.
Rules of physical health can be deduced from the science of
the human body provided that the prescription 'health
ought tobe promoted' is included in the premisses. But the
science of psychology and physics alone, without a basic pre-
scription, will no more yield rules of natural justice than will
the science of body alone yield rules of health. Hobbes
seems to have thought that the basic prescription 'men
ought to endeavour peace' can be deduced from psychology
and physics. This seems to be a logical mistake.
There is, too, an absurdity involved in treating these
rules as deductions from psychology. For supposing we
treat 'men ought to endeavour peace' as a counsel of pru-
dence equivalent to 'it is in the long term interest of men to
pursue peace'. This can only be deduced from psychology if
our psychological premiss maintains that everywhere and
always men can only pursue their own interest. If the pre-
miss were true it would then become superfluous to remind
people so forcefully of what they could not help doing any-
way. And, of course, Hobbes did not think that this premiss
was true. For he laboured the point that men were too often
driven by their pride to prefer their short-term triumphs to
their long-term interest. This gives point to reminding men
of their long-term interests but it makes nonsense of the de-
duction from psychology. For all that could be deduced

171
 I10BBES
would be the vacillation of men between the pursuit of their
long-term and short-term interest. Hobbes' rules of natural
justice, then, if we treat them as deductions from psychology,
would either be invalid deductions or they would be logi-
cally valid but otiose counsels of prudence for men whose
nature was to be prudent anyway.
Suppose, then, that we admit the necessity for a prescrip-
tive premiss. Hobbes argument is now very interesting and
5

convincing, granted his psychological assumptions. Adopt-

ing the Galilean method of resolution he isolated the simple
component of man's pride and deduced the consequences
that followed from this alone - the state of nature. He then
isolated man's fear of death and showed that this would lead
a rational man
(and man, for Hobbes, is rational by defini-
without the observance of which
tion) to accept certain rules
death could not be avoided. These were the laws of nature.
If these two components were now put together in the com-
positive step of themethod, men would be demonstrated as
poised precariously between civil society, which was the
ultimate consequence of accepting the laws of nature and
enforcing them by the sword of the sovereign, and the state
of nature. At the time when Hobbes wrote Leviathan this was
a fair enough picture of the conditions which in fact pre-
vailed. The Leviathan was tossed into the fray as a grim warn-
ing of what would necessarily happen if men allowed their
pride to get the better of their fear of death. He seems to
have thought that only under certain conditions was man's
fear of death strong enough to master his pride - when a
violent death or a death whose exact nature could not be
foreseen was imminent. The Leviathan would not only help
to bring this kind of situation vividly before his readers who
were too often lulled into insensitivity to their stark predica-
ment, but it would also provide the science of natural jus-
tice in which the rules necessary for making peace a reality
instead of a pious hope were demonstrated.
This interpretation of the Leviathan only works if Hobbes
had laid down as a prescriptive premiss the axiom that men
ought to endeavour peace. This he did not do. Neverthe-
172
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
less, as we have 1
previously noted, he did seem to think that
the Galilean method, when applied to society, had a norma-
tive rather than a purely descriptive function. For the
declared intention of his civil philosophy was 'to under-
stand what the quality of human nature is, in what matters
it is, in what not Jit to make up a civil government, and how

men must agree amongst themselves that intend to grow up

into a well-grounded state'. 2 If his civil philosophy had been

purely descriptive he could only have deduced the pre-

cariousness of man's predicament, poised between civil
government and the state of nature. But surely the Leviathan

rings with prescription. It covertly advises men to damp

down their jet of appetite by brooding on the possibility of
violent death. It shows men that their nature is 'fit to make
up a civil government' and throws in the demonstrable
axioms necessary to make their fear of death effective.

3. Rationality and the Law of Nature

There remains for comment the connexion which Hobbes

assumed between man's rationality and the acceptance of
the axioms of the law of nature. Traditionally these were
regarded as the precepts that a rational and social being
would accept as minimum rules for living peaceably with
others. In the thought of the Stoics rationality was linked
with respect for others in whom also the divine spark of
reason shone. Hobbes assumed that rationality was com-
patible with egoism and that the law of nature could be
defended equally well on a basis of rational self-interest. We
ought not to keep faith on account of our respect for others
but on account of our fear for ourselves.
Now there is no doubt that a defence of these rules can be
given in terms of self-interest. Yet Hobbes was at pains to
equate the law of nature with morality. 'The true doctrine of
the laws of nature, is the true moral philosophy.' 3 This,
prima facie, does seem a bit startling; for, as Hume pointed
I. See supra, pp. 74-5. 2. E.W. II. xiv (my italics). 3. E.W. Ill, 146.

173
 HOBBES
out, the question 'What this to me?', when asked about a
is

rule, seems clearly distinct and different from the question

'Is this right?' Why do we have different forms of words if
the two questions mean the same? The moral criterion does
not require the disregarding of our own interests but con-
sidering them impartially with the interests of others who
may also be affected by the rule. To ignore the interests of
others, or to consider them only as a means to our own is,
surely, to refuse to adopt a moral standpoint to a rule. Cer-
tainly part of the 'true moral philosophy' lies in the import-
ance of reason, or giving reasons for rules. But moral rules
are those for which reasons of a certain sort are given. In-
deed, rules become moral when looked at from the point of
view of the interests affected by them, and with impartiality
in regard to these interests. This is not to deny that they can
also be rules of prudence when looked at simply from the

point of view of self-interest. Indeed, it is a happy event

when a proposal is both moral and in our best interests. It is
only to deny the equation of the moral defence with that of
self-interest.
This criticism of Hobbes' account of course presupposes
the validity of the criticisms levelled against his psycho-
logical hedonism. But the case for Hobbes' neglect of the
principle of impartiality can be strengthened by raising an
even more fundamental query about the consistency of
rationality itself with thorough-going egoism. To use our
reason implies, surely, not just the ability to solve intellec-
tual conundrums in our heads; it implies also the willing-
ness to decide questions on the basis of the reasons advanced
rather than by reliance on authority or revelation. The
rationalist movement was an attempt to break away from
authority and to accept only those assumptions or rules the
reasons for which were clear to any thinking man. This pre-
supposes discussion, the raising of objections to suggestions,
and all the intellectual climate of criticism which Hobbes
revelled in while a member of Mersenne's circle. If a man
was refuted by his peers he had to go away and remodel his
theory to meet objections. Descartes published a celebrated
*74
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
volume of answers to objections raised against his theories.
In other words being prepared to abide by reason implies a
certainminimum of impartiality towards our own theories ;

we must be prepared to admit that we may be wrong and

we must respect other people at least in so far as they too
have theories and may make telling objections to ours. We
must bother about arguments and disregard the personal
and social idiosyncrasies of the men who propound them.
Wallis' reference to Hobbes' West-country accent was quite
irrelevant to the truth of his contentions. This rule of
impartiality must be applied also to ourselves. Now it is

notorious that we become very much attached to our own

theories, and often it is very much in our interest that we
should not be refuted. But if we are to abide by the canons
implied by being reasonable or using our reason we must
be prepared to disregard our own interests and bow before the
force of argument. Respect for truth must come before regard
for our own interests. To use our reason, therefore, is incon-
sistent with being completely self-interested. Hobbes, there-

fore, cannot consistently hold that men are both rational

1
and complete egoists.
Hobbes, of course, held no such explicit view of rational-
ity. Being rational, for him, amounted to following out the

implications of definitions and being able to frame clear and

distinct ideas. It may, too, be objected that in his practice
Hobbes treated argument rather like a wrestling bout in
which the point was to throw the other fellow and glory in
his discomfiture. But even wrestling is conducted according
to certain rules, and whether or not the norm of impartiality
was implied in Hobbes' rather didactic method of argument
depends on the extent to which he regarded argument as a
method of arriving at truth or as a process of imposing his
will (or definitions) arbitrarily on another man. This brings
us back to his vacillation between a self-evidence and con-
ventionist theory of truth and the part played by what he
called 'evidence'. 2
1 . The substance of this argument I owe to Professor Popper.
2. See supra, Ch. II,Section 4.

175
 HOBBRS

4. Causes and Reasons

Hobbes' attempt to found the law of nature on psychology

looks like a further example of the tendency already noted
in his theory of imagery and speech to answer causal ques-
tions and to think that he was thereby answering other
sorts of questions. The issue he was grappling with was that
of the of or giving reasons for the precepts en-
justification
joined by the law of nature. Hobbes exhibited pride and
fear as the causes of everything we do and presumed that he
was thereby making clear the reasons for accepting the law
of nature. But if we are trying to justify a rule like 'men per-
form their covenants made' does it matter what causes us to
accept it? A man may believe firmly in the sanctity of
covenants because of his childhood upbringing, his uncon-
scious need of security, or because of the discomfort generated

by an uncompleted task but all such speculations seem irrele-

;

vant to the reasons that can be given for keeping covenants.

It only when beliefs are held in the faces of reasons or
is

when they are the sorts of belief for which no reasons can be
given, that we seem justified in passing from the question of
validity to the question of causes. If, for instance, a man is
convinced that his hands are covered in blood or that a
room is occupied by an invisible friend, and if, as in the first
case, all the evidence seems to point against it, or, as in the
second case, there seems to be no evidence which could count
against it, then it seems legitimate to ask 'What causes him
to believe this ?' But it is only the absence of reasons that
makes the causal question seem relevant.
The
ingenuity of Hobbes' theory was that his account of
the causes of action ruled out the possibility of any reason
other than that of self-interest being effective. To use a
modern term, all other reasons were rationalizations, a
facade to render pride and fear socially respectable. It is as
if the human machine had
only two gears. Unless the
reasoning engaged one of them it would move neither for-
wards nor backwards. But this presupposed the tenability
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
of his analysis of our basic motives, of psychological hedon-
ism, and of the ideo-motor theory of action. And, as has
been indicated, there seem to be good reasons for rejecting
allthese presuppositions. Indeed, there is a sense in which
the tables can be turned on Hobbes. For much of what pur-
ports to be causal analysis in Hobbes' attempt to fit all the
1
passions into the desire-aversion model was in fact merely
indicating the typical objectives of (reasons for) a man's
action. There is therefore a strong case for saying that in a
great number of cases he was really giving the reasons for
actions when he thought that he was giving their causes.
Nevertheless, in spite of its psychological and logical
defects, there is much to be said in favour of Hobbes' ambi-
tious attempt to deduce the necessity of covenants and rules
from principles of human nature. His theory provides a
refreshing contrast to those which postulate mysterious un-
observable qualities described by ethical terms or which
suggest transcendental sources of obligation. Hobbes be-
lieved both that it is idle to ask what is good for man without
a thorough understanding of human nature and that there is
a close connexion between man's needs and purposes and
what he ought to do. By making the connexion one of logical
deducibility he made it too close. He was mistaken in think-
ing that psychology or any other science can of itself tell us
what is good for we have to decide. Similarly he was mis-
;

taken in thinking that what we ought to do can be deduced

from a theory of human nature for there is a gap between
;

discoveries of fact and what ought to be done about them.

But facts about human nature are indispensably relevant to
our decisions. One of the main problems of moral philosophy
is to get clearer about the ways in which
they are relevant.
Hobbes may have been over-optimistic and dogmatic in
his claims for his science of human nature. Philosophers, in
fact, have ever since been fastening on the logical flaws in
naturalistic ethics. But Hobbes never made the opposite
mistake, encouraged by so many critics of naturalism, of
thinking that the good for man and his palpable duties can
i. Sec supra, pp. 144-7.

H. G 177
 HOBBES
be intuited with a cavalier disregard for psychological

findings.

5. Free-will

Hobbes' transition from psychology to ethics was made easy

by his belief in determinism or 'necessitation' as he usually
called it; indeed, on his assumptions the transition was a
way of expressing this belief. For the causes of a man's
thoughts or actions determined the reasons which he found
acceptable. Hobbes' views on free-will emerged, in the main,
as defined against Bishop Bramhall's in his brief Of Liberty
and Necessity, drawn up in 1646 at Newcastle's request, and
in his lengthier The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and
Chance, which gave Bramhall's version of their discussion
together with his own animadversions. We shall, however,
1

only mention Bramhall's views in so far as he exposed

possible weaknesses in Hobbes' position.
Hobbes' first important contribution to the controversy
was on the subject of the will. The Bishop's talk of reason
2
representing things to the will was unintelligible for there ;

is no special entity or faculty in a man's mind called 'will'

*
... as absurdly said, that to dance is an act allured or
it is

drawn by means out of the ability to dance; so is it also

fair
to say, that to will is an act allured or drawn out of the
8
power to will, which power is commonly called the will'.
To speak of 'will* was a shorthand way of referring to the
4
last desire in a process of deliberation.

Secondly, Hobbes claimed that it is not, according to this

'proper and generally received' meaning of the word,
the desire or will of a man that can be said to be free, but
the man. For Tree' is a word that is applied properly only
to bodies. Thus Trom the use of the word free-will, no

liberty can be inferred of the will, desire, or inclination, but

the liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds
no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination
5
to do'. The definition of liberty is 'the absence of all the

i. See supra, pp. 37-8. 2. E.VV. V, 48. 3.E.W. IV, 266.

4. For discussion, see supra, pp. 142-3. 5. E.W. Ill, 197.

178
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
impediments to action that are not contained in the nature
and intrinsical quality of the agent'. 1 A person is thus Tree
to do a thing, that may do it if he have the will to do it, and
2
may forbear if he have the will to forbear'. 'Proper and
generally received meaning' presumably refers to the ordin-
ary language of educated people. Hobbes was pointing out
that, if this criterion of usage is adopted, to speak of liberty is
not to make any suggestions about whether or not a person's
will or desire is caused; it is rather to suggest that a man is

not constrained in the pursuit of certain interests that he may

have. Theologians, with their mystifying talk of free-will,
had obscured this important point which was implicit in the
language of common-sense people. Certainly this was an
important point that Hobbes made and it is not surprising
that both Locke and Hume followed Hobbes in maintaining
that Tree' is a term which is appropriately used of men or
bodies that lack some kind of constraint on their actions.
The consequence that Hobbes drew from this definition
of 'liberty' is also acceptable. For he claimed that if, by
calling a man free, we are referring to the absence of ex-
ternal constraint on his action, there is nothing inconsistent
in saying that actions that are free are also determined or
necessitated. The opposite of 'necessitated' is 'contingent',
not People, of course, do distinguish Tree from com-
'free'.

pulsion' from Tree from necessitation'. But a man who is not

compelled to do something is one who does not do it out of
terror. For 'a man is only said to be compelled when fear
makes him willing to it as when a man willingly throws his
:

goods into the sea to save himself, or submits to his enemy

for fear of being killed'. 3 But people who do actions out of
love or revenge and are thus free from compulsion (in
Hobbes' peculiar sense) do actions which are as necessary
as those done out of fear. For all actions have causes and
are thus necessitated. It is therefore pointless to use Tree' in
the sense of Tree from necessitation' ; for there are no such
actions. 'That which, I say, necessitate th every action is the
sum of all things which being now existent, conduce and con-
i. E.W. IV, 273. 2. E.W. V, 38. 3. E.W. IV, 261.

179
 HOBBES
cur to the production of that action hereafter, whereof if
any one thing now were wanting, the effect could not be
produced'. And all human actions are caused by motions
1

external to them. We only think that contingency exists be-

cause we are ignorant of the causes of actions and mistake
our ignorance of them for their absence. A wooden top that
*

is lashed by the boys, and runs about sometimes to one wall,

sometimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes hit-

ting men on the shins, if it were sensible of its own motion,
would think it proceeded from its own will, unless it felt
2
what lashed it,'

The question remains, however, whether Hobbes'

recommended use of 'liberty' as 'an absence of the lets and
hindrances of motion' 3 disposes of the objections which
Bramhall and many others have raised against determin-
ism. For the issue still remains whether all actions are
'necessitated' however we decide to use the word Tree'.
Bramhall did not object to this doctrine in so far as
Hobbes spoke only of the actions of animals or of the spon-
taneous actions of human beings. What he could not sto-
mach was that voluntary actions, which follow on election
and deliberation, should also be necessitated. 'The will is
moved by the understanding, not as by an efficient having
a causal influence into the effect, but only by proposing and
representing the object. And therefore, as it were ridiculous
to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing, so it is
to say that the proposing of the object by the understanding
to the will is the cause of willing: and therefore the under-
4
standing hath no place in the concourse of causes
Election is a rational act proper only to man. This objection,
in a certain way, goes to the heart of the matter, though
Hobbes was very quick to deride the unfortunate language
of faculties in which Bramhall couched it. However, before
we discuss the issues raised, it will be as well to set out

shortly Hobbes' reply, which was really nothing more than

a reiteration of his theory of motivation.
1. E.W. IV, 246. 3. E.W. II, 120.
2. E.W. V, 55. 4. E.W. V, 73-4.
1 80
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
Hobbes replied that children and animals deliberate as
they are moved by the hope of good and fear of evil ; that
bees and spiders exhibit election, art, prudence, and
policy; andthat, in fact, all human actions proceed from
election. For habitual actions like setting the foot in the
correct posture for walking were once deliberate. When a
man has not time to deliberate, the doing of the action
necessarily follows the thought he has of the good or evil
consequence thereof to himself, as the thought of revenge in
sudden anger or of escape in sudden fear. The imagining of
good or evil consequences in deliberation is the same thing
as being moved alternately by hope and fear. The last in
this succession of contrary appetites is the will. Actions done

upon choice and election are therefore as easily explicable

in terms of antecedent causes as the motions of anything else
in the world. 'The last dictate of the judgment, concerning
the good or bad, that may follow on any action, is not pro-
perly the whole cause, but the last part of it, and yet may be
said to produce the effect necessarily, in such manner as the
last feather may be said to break a horse's back, when there
were so many laid on before as there wanted but that one
to do it ... the will itself, and each propension of a man dur-

ing his deliberation, is as much necessitated and depends

on a sufficient cause, as
anything whatsoever. As for
else
it is no more that fire should burn, than
example, necessary
that a man or other creature, whose limbs be moved by
fancy, should have election, that is liberty, to do what he
hath a fancy to do.' 1
There are two major issues raised by Hobbes' claim which
are derivative from two possible meanings of 'necessitated' 2

1. E.W. IV, 247.

2. Hobbes spoke of events being 'necessitated' when a causal explana-
tion could be given of them because he thought that the causal relation
was like that of ground and consequent in logic or geometry. He held
that all scientific knowledge was demonstrative and that therefore it re-
sulted in necessary truths. In order to avoid referring again to the diffi-
culties raised by this view, which were discussed in Chapter II, the
term
'determined' is used in this discussion which Hobbes sometimes used as a
synonym for his more usual term 'necessitated*
181
 HOBBES
or 'determined' which are not always clearly distinguished.
'Determined* may mean simply 'causally explicable*. For
an event to be causally explicable we must have established
causal laws together with statements describing initial con-
ditions from which two together the event can be predicted.
For instance, given that under conditions x, y, z, if heat is
applied to iron then it expands, and given, secondly, that
here is a case of heat being applied to iron, then it can be
predicted that the iron will expand. We have, therefore, to
ask about actions proceeding from choice whether Hobbes
was right in saying that they are always causally explicable.
Of course, there were not the causal laws in psychology in
Hobbes' time which would permit this; there still are not
such laws. But it is often said that this is a matter of time
only and that eventually psychology will have its laws just
likephysiology and physics. This is the attitude of the scien-
tificoptimist. There are, however, doubts which insinuate
themselves when w e consider the problems raised by Bram-
r

hall's elective actions.

Deliberation which precedes human choice may often be
of the animal sort - a rehearsal of the alternatives before us.
But there may enter in to it something which is unparalleled
in the animal world, our consciousness of what we are likely
to do. This is a development of self-consciousness made

possible by the advance of the sciences of man. A scientist

may discover a causal law connecting the properties of

clover with certain effects on the digestive organs of sheep.
But if he publishes his findings the sheep cannot take cog-

nizance of it and modify their behaviour accordingly. But

with men it is different. For many causal connexions dis-
covered by psychologists may only hold good provided that
the people whose actions are predicted in accordance with
the law remain ignorant of what it asserts. And it is practi-
cally impossible to ensure that this is the case. Thus in the
case of actions preceded by deliberation, in so far as the
causes are known which will enable our actions to be pre-
dicted, it is always possible that our knowledge of the
causes may intervene and prevent us from doing what we
182
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
would have done had we not known what we were going to
do. Dr Gallup would probably have been correct in his pre-
diction that the majority of voters in the U.S.A. would vote
against President Truman had not the voters known that
they were going to vote against him. There is thus a case for
unpredictability in human affairs in those spheres where
action is preceded by informed deliberation.
There
is also the problem of giving a causal explanation

of actions done after deliberation of a mathematical or

logical sort, which proceeds in accordance with certain

logical criteria. The kind of thinking, which involves the use

of symbolic systems, was admitted by Hobbes to be peculiar
to man. Was his thinking determined when he deduced the
laws of nature as theorems necessary for peace ? Hobbes said
that it is the consultation that causeth a man and necessi-
c

tated! him to choose to do one thing rather than another'. 1

But the man who manipulates mathematical symbols and
eventually makes an atomic explosion, which he could not
have made unless he had done the preliminary mathematics,
is 'determined' by the rules of logic and mathematics; such

'consultation' is an odd kind of efficient cause. In cases like

this the gulf between the causes of an action such as writing

something on a piece of paper and the reasons for it seem to

be enormous. Similarly, a chess-player may deliberate for
hours on how to checkmate his opponent in three moves.
There may be antecedent causes for his move appetites
and aversions of one sort and another - but most of us would
think it much more important to know the rules of chess
without which his action would have no point or reason.
Deliberation involving rules, criteria, standards, and so on,
is insufficiently explained by reference to antecedent causes.

This was the sort of difficulty about Hobbes' view which

Bramhall was raising in his talk about the understanding.
So much, then, for the first meaning of 'determined' -
that an action is causally explicable. But Hobbes also im-
plied that if a causal explanation can be given of an action,
then it could not have happened otherwise than it did.
i. E.W. IV, 254.

183
 HOBBES
'Determined', in other words, has often meant, for those who
have shared his scientific optimism, inevitable as well as
causally explicable. 'This concourse of causes, whereof
everyone is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse
of former causes, may well be called (in respect they were
all set and ordered by the eternal cause of all things, God
1
Almighty) the decree of God.' Many chains of causes
stretch from God Almighty, some of them being motions
impinging on the sense organs and moving us to and fro in
We only think that things could be other-
deliberation.
wise than they are because of our limited knowledge of
causes.
Now this assumed coincidence of inevitability with
causal explicability is surely simply a mistake occasioned by
the peculiar circumstances of the rise of science. It so hap-
pened that the scientific advance, which consisted in the

discovery of far-reaching causal laws, coincided with the

widespread theological doctrine of predestination and with
the metaphysical picture of the universe as a vast piece of
clockwork in which human beings were like cog-wheels,
pushed onwards in a set pattern of movement. Gocl, as it

were, constructed the clock arid set it going. If we could see

the clock as a whole we would be able to see what our fate
would be for yearsahead arid see also what movements
determined that it would be this and no other. There was
also the fact that astronomy was taken for centuries as the

paradigm of all sciences and in astronomy, because of the

;

peculiarity of the solar system as a relatively closed system,

events like lunar eclipses are both predictable for a long
time ahead and unavoidable. For what can we do to pre-
vent them? The tacit assumption therefore developed that
wherever a causal explanation could be given of an event,
then that event was also inevitable. Thus, with the advance
of psychology and the social sciences, which so fired the
imagination of Hobbes and Spinoza, shades of the prison
house have come increasingly to descend upon the growing
boy as more and more details have been filled in by those
i. E.W. IV, 246.

184
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
like Pavlov and Freud who shared the scientific optimism of
the seventeenth century.
In humanaffairs this alleged coincidence of inevitability
and causal explicability is so manifestly lacking that almost
the reverse is the case. For knowing the causes of what
we tend do is often a necessary condition of preventing
to
ourselves from doing it. If we know that irritability at
breakfast is caused by late nights, we know how to prevent
irritability at breakfast. Of course, what we say about its
inevitability depends very much on our temporal position
as an observer. If we look back on our choice of a wife and
see the causes that led up to the scene in the registry office,
we may often reflect that the course of events was inevitable.
But if we approach a courting couple with a battery of
psychological laws at our disposal (if such laws existed) and
ask ourselves whether, knowing the couple as we do, there
are grounds for saying that their marriage is unavoidable,
the position is very different.
There are, however, some cases where actions can be
shown to have causes of such a kind that they are rendered
inevitable, within a certain range of circumstances. For
instance, it is claimed that the 'lack of opportunity for
forming an attachment to a mother-figure during the first
three years', or 'deprivation for a limited period - at least
three months and probably more than six - during the first
three or four years' (of maternal care) not only causes traits
like 'unfriendliness', 'distractability', 'lack of self-inhibi-
1
tion', but also that the cause is of such a kind as to render
that sort of behaviour unavoidable. Deliberation by the
- all
delinquent, good resolutions, change of foster-home
these remedial devices are no good. Knowledge, too, of
what he is do makes no difference to what he in
likely to
fact does in the given circumstances. But causal discoveries
of this kind in psychology are extremely rare. Unfortu-
nately it has often been assumed by those who have inheri-
ted the outlook of the seventeenth century that there is a
similar inevitability about conduct wherever the ingenuity
i. J. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health, Geneva, 1951, p. 47.
 HOBBES
of the psychologist has unearthed a cause. But it has yet to
be shown that the man whose pipe-smoking is a continua-
tion of biting his mother's nipples cannot give up his expen-
sive habit or that a man can do nothing about his parsi-

mony, pedantry, and petulance which were all caused by

the way he reacted to the frustration of being potted in his
early years. Indeed, the whole practice of psycho-analysts
belies this assumed coincidence of causal explicability and

inevitability. For a necessary condition of curing patients or

changing their behaviour is
bringing them to understand
and relive the early experiences which caused their later
behaviour.
So appears that in the case of what Bramhall called
it

elective actions a case can be made against determinism in

both senses of the word. Whether this means that a case can
be made for freedom depends entirely on whether it is
thought advisable to restrict the use of 'freedom' to absence
of external constraint as Hobbcs recommended.
Hobbes, however, spoke much sense on the subject of the
ethical consequences of his doctrine which Bramhall so much
feared. Bramhall argued that if human actions are deter-
mined, then praise and blame, reward and punishment, are
both unjust and vain. To the charge of their being vain
Hobbes replied that praise and blame, reward and punish-
ment introduce additional cause factors which direct
c
choices. be necessity that an action should be done,
lf there
or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not there-
fore follow, that there is nothing necessarily requisite as a
means to bring it to pass.' 1 Praise and blame, reward and
punishment 'do by example make and conform the will to
2
good and evil'.

To
the charge of injustice Hobbes replied that 'the law
3
regardeth the will and no other precedent causes of action'.
This is quite correct. For the law is only interested in a

person's intentions ; it is not interested in the causes of his

actions unless they are of such a kind to make his action un-
avoidable - e.g. the much debated irresistible impulse.
i. E.W. IV, 255. 2. E.W. IV, 256. 3. E.W. IV, 252.
1 86
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
Also, said Hobbes, the punishments annexed to breaches of
the law function as deterrents and thus necessitate justice;
and consequently injustice to make such a law. 'The
it is no
intention of the law not to grieve the delinquent, for that
is

which is past, and not to be undone; but to make him and

others just, that else would not be so, and respccteth not the
evil act past, but the good to come.' 1
This is a more questionable position for punishment means
;

pain inflicted on a person by an authorized agency as a con-

sequence of his past acts. Perhaps legislators, in attaching a
range of punishments to breaches of the law, can look at
punishment mainly from the point of view of prevention and
deterrence. And, of course, the justification of law should not
be confused with the justification of punishment for breaches
of the law. But a judge, when it has been established that a
person is guilty of a breach of the law, cannot help but be in-
fluenced by the degree of responsibility of the law-breaker.
He will surely be influenced by the deliberateness and cold-
bloodedness of the crime in deciding upon the severity of the
sentence and will not think of punishment purely from the
point of view of its effects on the criminal and on society.
Hobbes, it seems, saw that punishment was by its nature
retributive as it is
pain inflicted on account of a past
offence, but that its justification is to be sought along-
Utilitarian lines. In Leviathan he defined it as 'an evil in-
flictedby public authority, on him that hath done, or
omitted that which is judged by the same authority to be a
transgression of the law; to the end that the will of men may
thereby the better be disposed to obedience
2
He went out 5
.

of his way to distinguish punishment from acts of hostility

3
and to stress the Utilitarian purposes of punishment. But
the punishment of the innocent was not to be deplored
solely on Utilitarian grounds; it was against the law of
nature. 4 If the retributive element is lacking, punishment
is not punishment but an act of hostility.
This is sound enough. But surely the underlying assump-
1. E.W. IV, 253. 3. E.W. Ill, 297-301.
2. E.W. Ill, 297. 4. E.W. Ill, 304.

187
 HOBBES
tion of punishment is that people could have avoided doing
what they did. This is more or less what we mean when we
say that a person is responsible for his actions. When a judge
imposes a light sentence for a crime committed under great
provocation or in the heat of the moment, it is surely because
he thinks that a man's responsibility for his action is thereby
diminished. Hobbes was right only in maintaining that the
'necessity' of actions makes no difference to the operation of
law, if he meant only by 'necessity' causal explicability.
For we may be able to give a perfectly adequate and com-
plete causal explanation of a person's intentional behaviour
in stealing from his employer. But this is irrelevant. For

showing that the behaviour was caused does not also show
that his behaviour was unavoidable or that his intentions
were redundant. But if the type of cause revealed was also
of the sort to render his behaviour unavoidable, if it could be
established that reflection on the consequences of his action,
his resolutions and his attempts to escape his overmastering
impulse, could make no difference to what he in fact did;
then the 'necessity' would suiely affect the operation of law
and moral judgement. Whether this was the case about the
operation of the legal system in the seventeenth century is
dubious. But it certainly is the case about the operation of
our present legal system.
We have here the same kind of clash between the com-
mon-sense practical judgement of judges and the theoretical
speculations of a developing science which we noted in our
discussion of Hobbes' psychological hedonism. 1 Moralists
and judges are concerned primarily with the reasons for
actions or people's intentions; psychologists, on the other
2
hand, are interested in their causes and function. Hobbes
assumed that reasons can be explained in terms of causes.
We have repeatedly questioned this assumption. But the
practical consequences of psychological discoveries for our
judgements of praise and blame have yet to be adequately
assessed. Certainly the Erewhonian period, when crime was
likened to disease, and when all reasons were regarded as
I. Sec supra, pp. 153-8. 2. See supra,, pp. 144-5.
1 88
 MOTIVES AND MORALITY
rationalizations,is
passing, together with the fatalism which
was the heritage of the seventeenth century. There is a
cautious return to the pre-evolutionary view that the pos-
session of reason distinguishes men from brutes, and en-
ables us to counteract the influences of early childhood and
economic conditions which were once thought to provide
rails along which we ran towards the buffers of our destiny.
There is, perhaps, increasing acceptance of Kant's view
that man is distinct from the rest of nature in being able to
regulate his conduct because of his understanding of scien-
tific laws, and, in the normative sphere, in being able to live

in accordance with rules that he himself creates. But the

consequences of this insight in terms of the detailed empirical

discoveries of psychology and the social sciences have yet to
be exhibited. This is one of the main tasks of social philo-
sophy in our generation.

180
 CHAPTER EIGHT

THE STATE

Introductory

PHILOSOPHERS have tended to ask themselves the ques-

tion, 'What the
is nature of the state ?' Some of them, like
Plato, have assumed that because we have a word like 'state*
there must be some entity which is properly designated by
the word. Hobbes, however, was a radical nominalist and
he cannot be accused of this approach. But he was like

many other philosophers in not being concerned purely

with a sociological enquiry, the point of which would be to
distinguish an association of men called 'state' or 'common-
5
wealth from other associations like clubs, families, and
villages. Nearly all philosophers who have argued about the
nature of the state have never questioned the minimum
criteria assumed by most sociologists - that it is a non-

voluntary institution extending to people in a given geo-

graphical aiea for maintaining internal order and external
defence against aggressors. They have usually assumed
such minimum criteria and have gone on to liken the state
to an organism or to a machine; or they have said that it
exists to make the best life possible or to facilitate class-
coercion. What kind of question have they been trying to
answer by putting forward these rather puzzling pictures ?
It is significant that the question about the nature of the
state or the proper foundations of commonwealth has only
tended to emerge as an important one at certain periods of
history. Edmund Burke once remarked that one sure symp-
tom of an ill-conducted state was the propensity of its people
to resort to theories and that it was always to be lamented
when men were driven to search into the foundations of

190
 THE STATE
common-wealth. We may discount Burke's bias against
change; but it remains true that people tend to ask them-
selves about 'the foundations of common-wealth' at a time
of insecurity and social change. The philosopher's question,
when asked seriously rather than just as an academic exer-
cise, is indicative of stresses and strains in the social fabric.
For philosophy is intellectual unrest made explicit.
What then has been the worry made explicit in the ques-
tion about the nature of the state ? Surely it has been a worry
about what attitude to adopt and what policies to pursue
masquerading as a worry about the reality behind the
appearances. When Plato suggested that the state was really
an organism in which there was specialization of function
for the common good, he was constructing a model for re-
jecting and counteracting the growing tendencies towards
individualism and equalitarianism in fourth-century
Athens. Philosophers have tended to wave words instead of
flags. Their abstract accounts of the nature of the state have
had very obvious valuative implications. Now Hobbes com-
pared his Leviathan to Plato's Republic in so far as he thought
that a knowledge of his theory would help a ruler to grapple
with contemporary unrest and bewilderment. What were
the problems to which he could have been providing
answers in picturing the state as an artificial machine based
on a contract between individuals? Quite briefly, they were
problems thrown up by the development of two comple-
-
mentary, but opposed tendencies individualism and abso-
lutism. In order to explain this we must say something of
the great social changes which had led to these problems.
Societies cannot continue without some form of social
control; but they can change gradually as one form of social
control takes the place of another. Under the Feudal system
the predominant social control had been that of tradition.
This prescribed a man's status and the roles he had to play
in the various departments of life. Economic life was static
and secure, regulated by the Guild system which blocked
undue competition and self-assertion. There was little social

mobility. And the world-view propagated by the Church

 HOBBES
assigned a proper place to everything in the divine order of
things. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with
the rapid growth of international commerce, a new econo-
mic order began to emerge. Large commercial companies
were formed. Work was decreasingly regulated by Guilds,
and men who had previously worked for themselves had to
hire out their labour to the growing class of ambitious
employers. Time became valuable and clock-faces began
to show the quarter hours thrift, efficiency, and hard work
;

became virtues; social life became more and more charac-

terized by acquisitiveness, the desire for power, and desire
for honour. Life indeed became rather like a race as Hobbes

pictured it. And just as motion came to be regarded as

normal in Galileo's universe, so too was social mobility in-
creasingly taken for granted. Individual effort as well as
traditional status were coming to determine a man's place.
In the religion of Protestantism all believers were priests ;
the individual was alone before God; and he had to make
his lonely way in the quest for salvation by his own in-
dividual effort. The great gains of this movement were in
the field of individual liberty, self-discipline, and personal
responsibility. But they were won at a cost, and the cost was
the loss of security.
The economic, social, and religious ties of a traditional
society cannot be shaken off without a threat to security.
Indeed, this was a time of great individual and social in-

security; this need for a new kind of security to replace the

tiesof a traditional society was almost universally met by
the development of another form of social control - the
strengthening and extension of the powers of the king. The
nation state was emerging. Machiavelli lamented at the
start of the sixteenth century that Italy, divided into five
warring city states, was not abreast of the movement to-
wards strong central government in France, Spain, and
England. Although these two tendencies, the one towards
individualism and the other towards the centralization of
executive power, were in a sense complementary to each
other, they were also obviously opposed. Direct conflict was

192
 THE STATE
partly averted by the king winning the support of the more
wealthy of the new middle class. Trade and strong govern-
ment go well together. Henry VII and Elizabeth, for in-
stance, made great use of this class of new men who made
money by ability and achieved social status by buying land
with Hence the great disposal of Crown lands during the
it.

sixteenth century, which admirably met the monarch's need

for money and the new men's need for social status. In

England, however, the tendency towards absolutism did not

swamp the tendency towards individual liberty as it did in
France and Spain. This may well have been because in
England, which is an island, the king could not justify the
need for a standing army to defend the country against ex-
ternal aggressors; he had a standing navy. Now a navy
cannot be used for internal suppression in the same way as
an army can. Thus the king suffered under the perpetual
handicap of not having a standing army to stem the rising
tide of liberty. The tradition of civil liberty in this country
may well owe much to geography.
Thus England there was a long period in the seven-
in
teenth century when no equilibrium resulted from the
mutual impact of the forces of absolutism and individual
liberty. This state of continued social tension occasioned
great intellectual unrest, as is manifest in the volume of
political tracts and treatises which were the intellectual

threshings accompanying struggles of the

the physical
antagonists in the Civil War. But theorists were not simply
trying to reconcile the competing claims of liberty and
security. They were also trying to make explicit how they,
as individuals, stood in relation to this new system of cen-
tralized social control that had gradually emerged from the
more secure and understandable social structure of the
Middle Ages. It is significant that Hobbes called the state
Leviathan. The problem was to catch the monster with an
adequate description which would stress how the individual
stood in relation to it. Why should he obey the commands
of its magistrates ? On what conditions was he justified in
resisting its claims ? What spheres of private interest could

193
 HOBBES
the magistrate legitimately invade ? These were the burning
questions which theories of the state had to face. These so-
called theories incorporated decisions and valuations as well
as factual assumptions. Hobbes, as is well known, pictured
the state as an artificial machine based on a social contract
and controlled by an absolute monarch with unlimited,
perpetual, and indivisible sovereignty. How was this
macabre model of the state arrived at and what sort of an
answer did it give to the questions which gave rise to it? We
are now in a position to look at the main details of Hobbes'
theory.
/. The Social Contract Theory

The view to which Hobbes subscribed, that civil society was

based upon some kind of a contract or covenant, was a
commonplace at this period. Two sorts of contracts were
suggested. There was the pactum unionis which was thought
to account for the institution of civil society. Men as in-
dividuals made a contract with each other which turned
them into citizens. They agreed to accept majority decision
in the regulation of their affairs or some other such condi-
tion of combination. A
model for this was the Pilgrim
Fathers who made a declaration in 1620 solemnly covenant-
ing and combining themselves together into a civil society.
This kind of contract is to be distinguished from the pactum
subjectionis which was an agreement on the part of a civil
body to submit to a particular form of government. Magna
Carta was the stock example of such a conditional accept-
ance of government. Some thinkers treated^this account of
the institution of commonwealth as a quasi-historical
hypothesis, For others it was purely a vehicle for the ex-
pression of certain basic demands. Hobbes' account was
unusual in that he fitted the contract into his 'resolution' of
civil society and deduced a most ingenious form of pactum
unionis which made the acceptance of a sovereign the condi-
tion of membership.
It is usual for philosophers nowadays to deride the social
contract theory and to dismiss it as a strange aberration
194
 THE STATE
perpetrated by our forebears who were rather careless about
verbal usage. But this rather cavalier attitude is only pos-
sible if the historical context ofways of speaking is dis-
regarded. Before examining the ingenious use to which
Hobbes put the theory, it will therefore be as well to con-
sider why it seemed such a natural and appropriate vehicle
for making the points that required to be made.
In the main those who resorted to a contract theory of
society were voicing the demands of individualism in its
conflict with absolutism. Kings tended to argue in defence
of their increasing arbitrariness that their authority was
divinely sanctioned and that patriarchalism was the natural
order of society deriving from the Old Testament. The
theory of contract was a device for denying these claims.
Individuals were presumed to be born free and equal in the
sight of God or under natural law, with an identity of in-
terests. Civil society itself, as well as the appointment of an

executive, was merely a device for furthering and protecting

these interests. The king's authority stemmed purely from
popular consent. Civil society itself had been instituted', it
was not a natural growth like a family or a tree or a bee-
hive. Kings, like other men, were limited by natural law or
God's commands and by the terms of a contract presup-
posed by their instituted authority. This was a pictorial way
of saying that their authority was conditional, not absolute.
Protestants, with their eye on the Bible, even pointed out
that the origin of the Jewish state could be traced to a
covenant between God and his chosen people.
But why was the model of a contract used for making
these points? For there are such obvious objections to its
appropriateness. The supposed pactum unionis was obviously
absurd as an attempt to account for the origin of civil
society with its legal system and constitutional framework.
For 'contract' was primarily a legal term imported from
Roman law into philosophical theorizing. In legal history
law antedates and is presupposed by contract. For a con-
tract was a pact plus a legally created obligation. A vendor
signified his intention, for instance, of conveying a piece of
195
 HOBBES
land to a purchaser who signified his intention of paying
for it. This pact became a contract when an obligation to

complete the conveyance was annexed by law. It was only

later thata special form of consensual contract (as distinct
from earlier forms of verbal, written, and real contracts)
grew up in which consent alone was regarded as sufficient
to create an obligation without additional legal formalities.
This type of contract was associated with the ius gentium,
and, because of its simplicity and universality, was often
thought to be the original and archetypal form of contract.
In it intention was regarded as paramount and external acts
merely symbolical. This sort of contract, which was in fact
a late and streamlined version of older and more complica-
ted ritual procedures, was taken as the paradigm and origi-
nal form of contract and used to explain not simply the
relationship between king and people but also the origin of
civil society itself, including its legal system. This was

absurd; for historically speaking, contracts presupposed a

legal system. As a matter of history, too, the pactum subjec-
tionis was just as fictitious. For, as Hume argued, it ascribed a

degree of calculation and sophistication to earlier people that

was unwarranted by the evidence; it overlooked the enor-
mous importance of habit, tradition, and prejudice in the
growth of institutions; and it was not supported by historical
evidence which suggested that existing forms of government
originated in usurpation and that the device ofcentral govern-
ment itself was a war-time habit carried over into peace.
As an analytic device, too, both types of contract were
inappropriate. For a promise is a form of words and a neces-
sary condition of making a promise is to utter the words.
How could members of a civil society be regarded as having
made a contract with each other, or with a king, if they had
never used a form of words to signify an intention which it-
self was hypothetical ? Also, as Hume pointed out, the con-
tract theory assumed the logical priority of the obligation
to keep a promise. By why should this obligation be prior
There are no better reasons for keeping
to civil obligation ?
a promise than there are for the more general duty of up-

196
 THE STATE
holding the social order. Finally, membership of a civil
society and submission to government are not voluntary
undertakings like those of a promisor entering into a con-
veyance and submitting to fines if he fails to honour his
obligation. How could we bind our descendants to accept a
legal system and obey a government even if we were the
Pilgrim Fathers? Yet they are bound without having to
make any explicit promise when they come of age.
What, then, made the model of the contract seem so
appropriate in spite of these obvious objections ? For it is not
enough to say that the social contract theory was embedded
in Greek thought and that, after the Renaissance, it was
popularized together with many other muddles initiated by
Greek thinkers. For why was this particular theory seized
on and used so universally rather than others ? The general
point must first be made that just because these objections
seem obvious to us, it does not follow that they were obvious
then. Thinkers of this period did not conceive either of man
or society in evolutionary terms. They supposed that men
and social institutions had always been much the same. After
all, did the kings in the Old Testament behave very differ-
ently from their kings ? Were money-lenders at the time of
Christ much different from their own ? Were governmental
forms described by Aristotle so different from those with
which they were familiar ? Machiavelli perused the pages of
Livy to find maxims which could be used by a ruler to set
sixteenth-century Italy once more on the road to greatness.
It did not occur to him that the social and economic order in

which his prince would have to manoeuvre was vastly differ-

ent from that of ancient Rome. Men, it was true, were
beginning to realize that society was not a natural growth,
that institutions were to a certain extent arbitrary and alter-
able by human decision. The role of arbitrariness in Hobbes'
writings is most significant. And Machiavelli himself was one
of the first to see clearly the role of human intervention in the

shaping of history and institutions. But this insight was

crudely expressed without adequate grasp of the development
of social and economic forces. Indeed, the social contract

197
 IIOBBES
theory was one way in which this insight into the arbitrari-
ness and artificiality of human institutions found expression.
The model of the contract, however, was much more than
a way of exhibiting the artificiality of human institutions.
It was a device which gave expression to a shift in attitude
towards authority whose significance was not then properly
appreciated. The momentous social changes which were
then in full swing could be graphically desciibed as the rise
of the fatherless society. Patriarchalism, as a system of
authority spreading beyond the family to all institutions,
was on the wane. And even with regard to the family itself
there are most interesting discussions in the works of writers
at this period, including Hobbes, about the proper extent of
parental authority. But in the wider context of civil author-
ity men were coming slowly to realize that patriarchalism
was a system incompatible with human dignity and re-
sponsibility, that men are responsible themselves for the
institutions which shape and stunt their lives. After all, the
Colonists were founding new states and moulding constitu-
tionsby common consent. Why should the mother countries
submit to the patriarchal pretensions of monarchs ?
To the medieval mind a king or a baron was not an in-
dividual with various interests arid functions; he was a total
person whose status and roles were prescribed by traditions
stretching back into time immemorial. Obedience was a
matter of personal loyalty within an area of accustomed
obligations. But with the rise of self-made men whose wealth
bought status and equipped the king's navy, the old pattern
of authority made decreasing sense. Men like the Cecils, who
wielded such enormous power under the Tudors, could claim
no authority stretching back into the distant past. Neither
could Samuel Pepys who did so much to re-organize the
navy. They owed their authority to their brains and to the
wealth which royal patronage enabled them to acquire. A
pattern of authority was emerging with which we are much
more familiar. Max Weber called it legal-rational authority. 1

I. M. Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization (cd. T.

Parsons), W. Hodges Co., 1947, Gh. III.

198
 THE STATE
When we want to insult it we call it bureaucracy. But Weber
himself regarded bureaucracy as the most crucial social
phenomenon in the development of the Western world, as
it is the most efficient way of exercising power over human

beings that has yet been developed. Under this pattern of

authority men exercise authority because of their recognized
ability rather than because of their traditional ties. They are
accountable to their fellows for the proper exercise of their
authority, and they are not able to rely on patronage to
escape the consequences of their incompetence or disregard
for their proper sphere of competence. Under this type of
authority obedience is not to a person so much as to a legally
established order. Authority is only wielded by individuals
in so far as they occupy an 'office' with powers limited to a
'sphere of competence'. Officers are elected or appointed in
some agreed mariner; they do not emerge like status holders
trailing clouds of the immemorial past. The basis of their
claim to legitimacy lies in common consent.
The emergence of this pattern of authority was sympto-
matic of an age when wealth, power, and the chance of
salvation depended increasingly on individual effort and
competence. W T
hat was more natural than that the king
himself should come to be regarded as an officer, as the chief
executive of the government rather than as a divinely in-
stituted status-holder?The talk of the covenant between
king and people in the social contract theory was a pic-
torial way of stating the agreed conditions on which he held
his office and his proper sphere of competence. Of course the
old conception of kingship had its own ways of looking after
similar points. The king was regarded as being limited by
the 'fundamental law' embodied in the customs of the realm
which guaranteed common-law rights to his subjects; simi-
5

larly the sphere of his 'prerogative was limited by tradition.

But these were ill-defined as under all forms of traditional
authority; there were endless controversies about cases like
ship-money and monopolies which were on the border-line
between the rights of the subject and the sphere of the king's
prerogative. The Declaration of Rights of 1689 was an
199
 IIOBBES
attempt to tidy up these flexible traditions on a solid legal-
rational basis. The social
contract theory was the theoretical
justification of such concrete endeavours to end the spell of
tradition; it was symptomatic of a new conception of
authority which was compatible with the growing demands
for liberty and equality.
And what was more natural than for those whose power
derived mainly from the proceeds of commercial trans-
actions to use the model of a contract to intellectualize their
relationship to each other as members of a civil society, and
of civil society, as a legally constituted person, to its chief
executive? In their daily lives they were at this period
bound' or 'obliged much more by contractual agreements
' 5

with each other than by governmental enactments. Con-

tractual obligations honeycombed their lives. The great
problem with which thoughtful men were grappling was
that of the compatibility of individual liberty with the social
control necessary for public security. To what extent could
an individual admit himself to be bound or obliged if he
was, at the same time, to remain free to pursue his para-
mount interests as an individual and to preserve his dignity
as a child of God ? Now a contract provides a model for

dealing with just this sort of problem. For in a contract free

and equal individuals voluntarily enter into a relationship
which imposes obligations on them. And the conditions on
which they are obliged can be written into the contract. So
the contract provides a model for justifying the acceptance of
social control in a way which is compatible with human

dignity and individual liberty. Of course, the model is in-

appropriate in many respects as has already been indicated.
But is not the social contract theory a good example of the
typically philosophical device of taking a concept from a
limited context and generalizing it to do much more work
than it can adequately manage ? It was a logical device for
stating certain typical demands for liberty, limited govern-
ment by consent, and the end of traditional forms of author-
ity. It was a way of stressing that the state, like other human
institutions, is alterable and to a certain extent arbitrary;

aoo
 THE STATE
that human beings arc responsible for its structure which,
unlike nature's regularities, can be moulded according to
human demands and aspirations; that human beings may
have have fathers by nature but that there is no need to
to
institutionalize their infantile dependency in their attitude
to a monarch. The device was widespread and popular be-
cause of its usefulness to the rising forces of individualism,
commercialism, and Protestantism. Hobbes' great ingenu-
ity consisted in taking over this logical weapon and slewing
it round so that its broadsides were directed against those
who had fashioned it.He used it to show that absolutism
was the logical outcome of consistent individualism. To this
masterstroke we must now turn.

2. Hobbes' Version of the Social Contract Theory

Hobbes' account of the social contract, as has already been

suggested, was an attempt to apply the resoluto-compositive
method of Galileo to civil society, to reveal the basic prin-
ciples presupposed by its which a
existence in terms of
rational reconstruction of apparent features could be
its

made. In this imaginary experiment its characteristics like

law and justice were first of all thought away and later re-
introduced as deductions from psychological postulates. The
crucial transition was from psychological descriptions of
human nature to the normative rules commonly known as
the law of nature. The legitimacy of this transition has al-
ready been discussed. We have now to explain and discuss
the further deduction of the institution of government. For
Hobbes prided himself on grounding the authority of
sovereigns as well as the liberty and duty of subjects upon
axioms of human nature rather than on tradition or super-
natural authority. In his attitude to tradition and author-
ity he was at one with the advocates of a new basis for
legitimacy. He differed from the Parliament men only in
putting the claims of security higher than those of liberty and
in trying to show in a way that was compatible with their
premisses that there can be no legitimacy without power.
201
 IJOBBES
When the institutions of civil society are thought away in
an imaginary experiment we have a state of nature. Hobbes
maintained that in such a state man has an unlimited right
to 'protect his life and members' and 'to use all the means,

and do all the actions, without which he cannot preserve

himself'. 1 But he also has a right to all things 'to do what he
would, and against whom he thought fit, and to possess, use,
and enjoy all that he would, or could get'. 2 Hobbes was
3
anxious to distinguish 'right from 'law', 'because RIGHT,
consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbear; whereas LAW, de-
terrnineth and bindeth to one of them'. 8 'Right,' he said in
De Give, means 'that liberty which every man hath to make
use of his natural faculties according to right reason'. 4 This is
surely a strange use of the term 'right'. Hobbes believed that
men avoid death by a natural necessity, like a stone rolling
down a hill. 'It is therefore neither absurd nor icprehensible
neither against the dictates of true reason, for a man to use
all his endeavours to preserve and defend his body and the
members thereof from death and sorrows.' 5 This is an under-
standable point of view, though rather a long-winded way
of labouring the obvious. For if men can't help avoiding
death there is obviously nothing unreasonable in their
taking steps to do what they can't help doing anyhow. But
to say that men have a right to preserve themselves and
furthermore a right to do what they think fit to others in the
process, is to make
quite a different sort of observation. For
it is to say either that, given the need to preserve themselves,
there is a rule prohibiting others from interfering, or that,
assuming such a need, there ought to be such a rule. The
analysis of the term 'right' implies the existence of or
demand for a rule enjoining non-interference. Yet Hobbes
was most anxious to separate right from law, right being
what was not legally prohibited. Right is equated with
liberty. But, as we shall see later, one of the defects of his
account of liberty was his equation of it with a sphere of

1. E.W. 11,9. 3. E.W. Ill, 117. 5. E.W. II, 8.

2. E.W. II, 10. 4. E.W. II, 9. See also E.W. Ill, 117.

202
 THE STATtt

activity which not legally prohibited. What he did not

is

see was that to talk either of rights or ofliberty was to imply

the existence of or demand for some kind of rule enjoining
non-interference, though not necessarily a legal rule. He
could have said that natural rights were spheres of activity of
the individual which were proclaimed as inviolable by
natural law. But it is clear that he did not take this view. For
though he spoke little of natural right in his later work,
Leviathan^ in what he did say he contrasted the state of
affairs when men had a natural right to all things with the
state of affairs which ensued when men accepted the law of
nature. 1 So there seems to have been an explicit contrast in
his thought rather than a connexion between natural right
and natural law.
Whatever Hobbes meant by rights of nature, they play
a crucial part as the deduction proceeds. For the second law
of nature prescribed that every man should lay down his
right to all things 'and be contented with so much liberty
against other men, as he would allow other men against
himself'. 2 Laying down a right meant standing out of the

way of another man enjoying his right - i.e. non-interfer-

ence. This could be done either by simply renouncing the
right in question without worrying about who benefited or
by transferring it to another. In the case of a transfer a
specific person or persons benefited and the transfcrrer of
the right was said to be bound or obliged not to hinder the
recipient of the right. Injustice consisted in hindering a per-
son whom it was a duty not to hinder; it was to perpetrate a
kind of logical inconsistency as it consisted in voluntarily
undoing what in the beginning had been voluntarily done.
Thus, when the state was created by handing over natural
rights to the sovereign, interference with his actions con-
stituted injustice. For justice was what the sovereign com-
manded on the individual's behalf; to disregard his com-
mands was logically inconsistent. There were, however,
some rights which could not be transferred - that of resisting
those that make attacks by force, or of resisting imprison-
i. SeeE.W. Ill, 117. 2. E. W.III, 118.

203
 HOBBES
ment. For in such cases the individual could not be said to
be aiming at any good to himself. The mutual transferring
of rights is called contract. When one of the contractors
delivers the thing contracted for on his part and leaves the
other person to perform his part at some determinate time,
or when both postpone completion, it is called a covenant, or
pact. The third law of nature, as we have seen, is 'that men
perform their covenants made'.
Hobbes deduced this transfer of rights from his postulate
that men are led by the fear of death to act reasonably and
to accept the law of nature which prescribed such a transfer
of rights. But men are not really safe yet. For in a state of
nature there may be danger in keeping covenants. Men,
too, may decide not to keep their contracts because of their
belief that some greater advantage may accrue to them by
breaking them. If men arc to be really consistent in their
determination to avoid death, they must make some
arrangement whereby it would never be in anyone's interest
to break a covenant or transgress any of the other laws of
nature. For the laws of nature were only theorems that any
rational man would accept. They needed the backing of the
sword to ensure peace. 'And covenants, without the sword,
are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.' 1
Men are not like ants or bees which live sociably together
and work for the common good. They agree by contract
only, and to make their agreement constant and lasting they
need a 'common power to keep them in awe, and to direct
their actions to the common benefit'. 2 This is the only hope
for strong and undivided action against external aggressors
and disturbers of the peace at home.
The social contract therefore follows as the only logically
consistent step to take to ensure lasting peace. The contract
is a
pacturn unionis 'that may reduce all their wills, by plural-
3
ity of voices, unto one will'. They constitute themselves a
civil society by appointing a sovereign to act for them in their

corporate capacity. It is as if every man should say to every

man 'I authorize and give up my right of governing myself,
i. E.W. Ill, 154. 2. E.W. Ill, 157. 3. E.W. Ill, 157.

204
 THE STATE
to man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition,
tliis

that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his
actions in like manner'. 1 This contract unites the multitude
into one people and marks the generation of a common-
wealth, of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak more
reverently, of that mortal God, to which we owe under the
immortal God, our peace and defence'. 2 Thus the under-
lying basis or essence of the state consists in the alienation of
rights to a person or assembly who acts on behalf of all. The
definition of commonwealth is therefore 'one person, of
whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with
another, have made themselves every one the author, to the
end he may use the strength and means of them all, as- he
shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence'. 3
The person that results is called sovereign and everyone else
his subjects. He is created by the contract but is not a party
in the contract being a pactum unionis betv/een individuals.
it,

Thus the people rule in all governments. For the people, as

distinct from the multitude with their individual wills, rule
even in monarchies. For to refer to the people rather than
to the multitude is to indicate an entity which can be said
to be one, to have one will, and to perform one action.
Commonwealths are treated as distinct entities; for they
can be said each other. This must pre-
to take action against

suppose some device by which a multitude becomes a

people. Some such covenant is surely implicit in what we
call a commonwealth or people. For it is nonsense to speak
of something as one without concrete ways of ascertaining
what its decisions and actions are. If the multitude severally
can be regarded as setting up a sovereign to be their repre-
sentative, all his actions and decisions, because taken on
behalf of all, can be regarded as being theirs in their
capacity as a people.
Whatever the merits of Hobbes' analysis of the logical
presuppositions of civil society, he certainly can be credited
with considerable insight into the important problem of
what it means to refer to a collection of individuals by a term
i. E.W. III, 158. 2. E.W. Ill, 158. 3. E.W. Ill, 158.

205
 HOBBES
like 'commonwealth'. For commonwealths are not natural
wholes like potatoes or penguins in which the relations
making the skin or the wings 'parts' are not difficult to
discern. Social wholes are to a large extent constructions
out of individuals according to a variety of different
criteria. An individual may be a member of a group like a

family and of an institution like an army. But being a member

of such social wholes is quite a different kind of relation from
that of being a part of a body. Hobbes saw this clearly when
he insisted that commonwealths are artificial wholes. He

saw, too, that the historical question of how commonwealths

are in fact formed - e.g. by acquisition - is different from
the logical question of the criteria implicit in calling a collec-
tion of individuals one people instead of a multitude. For in
a commonwealth, he said, it is as if every man who desired
security said 'I authorize and give up my right ...' By
commonwealth we mean individuals who accept an autho-
rity with a view to securing peace. A commonwealth is an
institution and by 'institution' we mean something like
'individuals with a common aim and standardized methods
of attaining it.'But all institutions are not consciously insti-
tuted like clubs, and the problem is to explain what an insti-
tution is if, like a commonwealth, it has obviously not been
consciously instituted. The trouble about the language of
covenant and contract is that it implies conscious institu-
5
tion. Hobbes 'as if qualification recognizes the problem
but leans over towards the misleading model of conscious
institutionby covenant.
For Hobbes, then, the social contract served a double
function. It was a device which, so he thought, permitted
the deduction of the institution of civil society from postu-
lates of human nature. It was also a logical presupposition
of the existence of any commonwealth as one common-
wealth, whatever its governmental forms. We must examine
the cogency of his argument before passing to his views on
sovereignty and forms of government.

206
 THE STATE

jj.
The Reasons for and Causes of Political Obligation

Hobbes said explicitly in his introduction to De Give that he

was searching for the 'constitutive causes' of the rights and
duties of subjects in the quality of human nature. 1 The basic
principle which he discovered by this resolution was 'that
the dispositions of men are naturally such, that except they
be restrained through fear of some coercive power, every
man will distrust and dread each other'. 2
Fear of punish-
ment the cause of political obedience; were it not for the
is

fact that the sword dangles over the head of every member
of a state, no motive would be strong enough to counteract
the disruptive passions of men. And because Hobbes
assumed that men were driven irresistibly by fear like a
stone rolling downhill, he was able to deduce that men must
establish the rule of the sword. For, like men under the in-
fluence of an irresistible impulse, the only reasons that they
would accept would be those indicating means to objectives
dictated by their fear. 8 Thus, given the de facto existence of
civil society, Hobbes' analysis revealed fear as its only pos-
sible constitutive cause and self-preservation as the only
possible reason for its institution. He was also able to deduce
that since this is the underlying rationale of civil society,
men, in so far as they pursue the logical consequences of the
reasons for its institution, must institute a perpetual, un-

divided, and absolute sovereign. For to divide or limit

sovereignty would be illogical. There would be a constant
danger of the sovereign speaking with a divided voice and
being unable to enforce his commands; and since safety is
the sole reason for the institution of a sovereign, and since
these limitations on sovereignty would endanger the safety
of the subject, individuals could not logically institute a
sovereign who would perhaps be unable to perform effec-
tively the functions for which he had been instituted. Salus
populi suprema lex. And complete safety entails complete sub-
mission to a sovereign. Absolutism is the logical consequence
i. E.W. II, xiv. 2. E.W. II, xiv, xv. 3. See supra, pp. 176-7.

207
 IIOBBES
of government by popular consent once the real interests of
any man in consenting to government are properly realized.
The claims of Royalists and Parliament men could be re-
conciled if it were realized that either Charles or Cromwell
could be an absolute ruler by consent. The Royalists would
have to give up their patriarchal pretensions and the theory
of divine right; the Parliament men would have to waive
their objections to absolutism. Then peace would reign and
allcould pursue such private interests as did not endanger
the peace - trade, for instance, or mathematical study.
The force of Hobbes' argument depends largely on the
truth of his premisses. Reasons have been given for doubting
his account both of the causes of actions and of the acceptable
reasons for them. 1 But even if we were to accept his starting-
5

point, Locke's objection is surely a good one. 'Are men, he

said, 'so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs
may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay
think it safety, to be devoured by lions ?' 2 After all, absolute
rulers are only men and 'He that thinks absolute power

purifies men's blood and corrects the baseness of human

natiire need but read the history of this or any other age to be
convinced to the contrary'. 3 Even supposing that security
were the sole reason for the institution of civil society -
which it is not - it is not an obvious deduction that absolute
sovereignty is the only method of achieving it. Indeed, it
might turn out to be a matter of substituting one form of in-
security for another. For the sovereign is not party to the
contract. He is
appointed simply to keep the peace, and how
he does own business. Hobbes did suggest that he was
it is his

subject to the law of nature, but himself laboured the point

that this was a poor deterrent to self-assertion. He could well
keep the peace by establishing a reign of terror which would
make the state of nature seem like paradise. It is, surely, as
Locke saw, the arbitrariness of another man's authority

1. See supra, Gh. VI and VII.

2. J. Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government (ed. Gough), Blackwell,
1948, p. 46.
3. J. Locke, op. nt., p. 45.

208
 THE STATE
which both terrifying and an insult to human dignity. A
is

legal system, as a form of constraint, is introduced in order

to get rid of the arbitrary constraints which would charac-
terize a state of nature. If these are to be ended by setting

up an authority that is both arbitrary and backed by over-

whelming force, it is questionable whether even the most
timid man would choose to venture forth from the state of
nature, He being in a much worse condition that is exposed
to the arbitrary power of one man who has command of
100,000, than he that is opposed to the arbitrary
power of
S1
100,000 single men. . . ,

Once the inadequacies in Hobbes' psychology are admit-

ted and some allowance has been made for his logical mis-
take in trying to deduce the justification of obedience to
government from a theory about its causes, his contribu-
tion to political theory can be seen in a wider perspective.
If the issue is one of justifying or giving reasons for the in-
stitution of civil society surely one of the best reasons is
Hobbes' reason - civil society exists in order to protect us.
Salus populi suprema lex. This is not to say that it was in fact
instituted with that aim; it is only to say that this is one of
the best reasons that can be given for legal machinery and
all the paraphernalia of government. The objection to
Hobbes' theory is that he thought it was the only reason and
that he had a very stringent and short-sighted view of what
salus populi entailed in the way of sovereign power. Similarly,
Why should we obey government ?'
*
if the question is asked
Hobbes' answer is very good. Either we should obey govern-
ment because it would be do so,
logically inconsistent not to
the term 'government' implying that men have been
appointed to give commands as our representatives. Or, if
we are unmoved by the logic of the matter, it is in our mani-
fest interest to do so as the alternative is prison and it is also
in our long-term interest to have such a device to guard
against anarchy. Of course objections can be made to such
unconditional obedience; it can also be pointed out that this
is not the only reason for obeying government; it may not
i .
J. Locke, op. cil.f p. 69.

H. H
209
 HOBBES
even be a conclusive reason; but it certainly is a very good
reason that carries much weight with most of us if we have
ever thought seriously about breaking the law.
If we turn to Hobbes' theory about the causes of political

allegiance, his account was obviously hamstrung by his

psychology. Men obviously do not accept a legal system and
a government simply because they are afraid of death. They
c

accept it largely out of habit, what Burke called a sort of

heavy, lumpish acquiescence in government'. It also satis-
fies their need for order and security which was first genera-

ted and satisfied by parental care and control. Hume was

extremely puzzled by the adoption of the device of central
government. For though the instinct of sex might drive men
to band together in patriarchal groups, he could suggest no
similar psychological explanation for such an unobvious
expedient as the appointment of magistrates with authority
delegated from a central government. He suggested that
patriarchal groups banded together out of necessity to meet
external aggressors and men gradually came to apply to
*

peace the lessons learnt in war. Gamps are the true mothers
of cities.' Central government is to be explained more in

terms of the logic of the situation than in terms of psycho-

logical causes, which only become operative once central
government is set up. Hume's puzzlement illustrates the
lack of cogency in Hobbes' causal explanation.

4. Acquisition and Institution

Hobbes himself was prepared to admit that, historically

speaking,commonwealth by acquisition and hereditary
right preceded or made unnecessary instituted government.
But even in the case of such natural forms of dominion he
could not rid himself of the notion that even these presup-
posed some form of covenant. In the case of acquisition the
vanquished promised his service and obedience in return
for his life and liberty. Only in the case of slaves could there
be said to be no contract. In such cases men subject them-
selves to a sovereign out of fear of the person instituted
rather than out of fear of each other.
210
 THE STATE
Hereditary governments, too, where the right of dominion
seems to issue from generation, presuppose a covenant. For
even a parent's right of dominion over his children derives
from their consent rather than from the mere fact of genera-
tion. Dominion is indivisible as no man can serve two
masters but two persons, male and female, must concur in
;

the act of generation. How then does being a father entail

being a lord ? Socrates is a man and therefore a living crea-
ture because 'a living creature' is part of the definition of
'man'. But 'Sophronicus is Socrates' father, and therefore
his lord'is not a valid deduction; for the word 'lord' is not

in the definition of *a father', 1 Some kind of contract is

necessary for making being a father the ground for being a
lord. Anyway, in a state of nature dominion was maternal,
as mothers alone could declare who
the father of the child
was, if there was no marriage system! The mother, too, had
the child in her power first to nourish and educate it. No
case could be made for paternal right even in the family,
save by contract. How much weaker was the case for pater-
nal right in hereditary governments?
The significant aspect of Hobbes' treatment of natural
forms of government - apart from his lack of interest in
them - was his determination to rid all forms of authority of
the appeal to tradition or generation as the justification of
legitimacy. His rejection of the divine right of kings was but
one facet of a thorough-going rejection of patriarchalism
and the modes of thought of a traditional society. Hobbes,
like most of the self-made men of this period, regarded

hereditary right as a feeble justification for natural forms of

dominion. They were founded on inequalities due to irra-
tional accidents of birth or conquest and presupposed a
superstitious and mystifying appeal to tradition. It was in-
stitution that appealed to his way of thinking. This was
rationally understandable like laying down definitions in
geometry or working out a profit and loss account on a
balance sheet. It was something that could be done by clear-
headed individuals on an equal footing. In his treatment
i. SeeE.W. II, 115.

211
 HOBBES
of natural dominion he tried to extend the new rational way
of conceiving legitimacy into the strongholds of traditional
authority. He was indeed one of the mouthpieces of
the gradual transition from traditional to legal-rational
1
authority.
Was Hobbes' view at all plausible that some kind of con-
tract or consent is
implicit in the existence of any civil
society whatever? Obviously not in the sense that civil
society could not exist if individualshad not actually come
together and made promises. But Hobbes' analysis did not
require this; for he often spoke of 'tacit covenants'. But if
the consensual basis of society is watered down sufficiently
to cover even this, then any government must rule by con-
sent when there is not either open rebellion or mass emigra-
tion. And the distinctive feature of contract would be lost;
for a society arranged according to status and tradition
could equally well be said to be based on 'tacit covenant'.
Perhaps this is part of what Hobbes wanted to show. But it
is rather trivial in that all it achieves is to make
acquiescence
in government part of the definition of government. Yet, on
the other hand, it may be one of those analytic propositions
whose enunciation has considerable recommendatory force.
People often say, in a certain tone of voice, that the func-
tion of government is to govern. This is trivial in descriptive
content; but it is a way of demanding that the government
should get on with its main job rather than range round too
much new-fangled legislation and plans for social
for

improvement. Similarly, Hobbes wanted to bring out that

it was both illogical and unwise not to obey a de facto

government. For a government is a body appointed to be

obeyed.
Another way of looking at Hobbes' ubiquitous covenant
is to suggest that he was attempting an analysis of repre-
sentation. A multitude can only become one person or
commonwealth if there is a device which gives them a voice
and a will and which enables them to deal collectively with
breaches of the peace and external aggression. This device
i. Secj/>ra, p, 198.
212
 THE STATE
presupposes not that, historically speaking, individuals had
alienated their rights and appointed a sovereign, but that
they must at least see the point of a sovereign authority. They
behave as if a contract had been made in which they said
'
each one individually, 'I authorize and give up my right . . .

To think of government is to think of magistrates and others

representing the individual wills of all. For how else could a
people be one or magistrates have legitimate authority?
The model of institution is introduced and extended, with
the 'as if qualification, to lay bare the rationale of the magis-
trate's authority. For consent or contract implies granting

permission to someone to do something which he would

have no right to do without such permission. Now if this is
interpreted as implying something concrete about the minds
of actual subjects, unpalatable consequences follow. For it
could only be decided whether a magistrate had legitimate
authority by conducting a Gallup Poll. But Hobbes, we
must remember, was conducting an imaginary experiment.
This was his resolution of society into its logically prior
principles. His individuals were therefore ideal construc-
tions like the straight lines of the geometer or Galileo's
frictionless surface. Gallup Polls would have appalled him
even more than the Common Law.
But the danger of the geometrical method is precisely that
it need not
apply to anything that exists. Surely the cardinal
question to ask about representation is not what is pre-
supposed about the minds of imaginary individuals, but
what is entailed about the ways in which actual minds must
exhibit themselves on earth. This means actual procedures
for appointing representatives; it means also actual pro-
cedures for ascertaining whether acts done in a representa-
tive capacity meet with approval; and so on. The mistake
is to treat terms like 'government by consent' and 'repre-
5
sentation as only implying certain things about the minds
of individuals, whether real or imaginary. It is only when
their institutional implications are also brought out that they
have any cash value as about government.
distinctive terms
It is interesting that Hobbes' declared intention was 'to
213
 HOBBES
understand what the quality of human nature is, in what
matters it is, in what not^Jil to make up a civil government,
and how men must be agreed amongst themselves that in-
tend to grow up into a well-grounded state'. 'Well-grounded'
is surely a normative term; it meant, for Hobbes, the sort of
state he believed in - absolute monarchy. Human nature
was 'fit' to make up such a
government because he laid
civil
down definitions of human naturewhich enabled him to get
to the desired conclusion. The social contract theory became
in his hands an ingenious method for presenting his political
demands which were cunningly concealed by the deceptive
lucidity of the resoluto-compositive method. The geometri-
cal method is a godsend to dogmatists and the insecure; for
itdresses up dubious opinions as necessary truths. By fitting
the social contract theory into this analytic framework
Hobbes was able to present his uncompromising demand for
security as the sole reason for the species of promise that was
alleged to underlie the 'well-grounded' state; but the
method, when applied to society, is as specious as the pro-
mise which the existence of the state is alleged to pre-

suppose.

214
 CHAPTER NINE

SOVEREIGNTY, LAW, AND FORMS

OF GOVERNMENT

Introductory

THE notion of sovereignty within a nation state, first

popularized by Bodin and developed by Hobbes to its
logical conclusion, was foreign to the political thought of the
Middle Ages. Yet it was assumed by Hobbes that there
must be in every state a supreme authority issuing and en-
forcing commands to all subjects and receiving none;
creating law but not itself subject to it. The existence of a
commonwealth presupposed such an authority. The
sovereign might be a king, a parliament, or the people; but
sovereignty must be located somewhere. This is a strange
assumption. In Hobbes' case it can perhaps be most easily
understood in the context of the traditional assumptions of
the English about constitutional authority. For it was an
ingenious attempt to rationalize an ambiguous tradition by
the application of the geometric method.
Many have described the Civil War in England as a con-
test between the Common Law and the King's prerogative.
In the disputed cases of ship-money and monopolies, both
sides quoted long-standing precedents for the legality of
their claims. They were able to do so because there had
always been a fundamental ambiguity in the tradition about
the ultimate source of authority. This can be traced right
back to Bracton, the fountainhead of English constitutional-
ism, who maintained that the king had no peer on earth and
that no subject, not even a judge, could question the legality
of any of his acts; nevertheless the king's will was not law

215
 HOBBES
except in the form of a definition to which the assent of the
magistrates was essential. Had the king, then, a master who
could 'put a bridle on him' ?
The answer to this crucial conundrum was both negative
and affirmative. For there were two distinct but overlapping
spheres of authority which have been called those of guber-
naculum and jurisdictio. 1 The sphere of gubernaculum was
that of the king's prerogative. It concerned rights touching
the crown like the king's marriage, the keeping of the peace,
and external defence. In such matters the king was the sole
authority. But in the sphere of jurisdictio, which concerned
the traditional of the - to - the
rights subject e.g. property
king's discretion was limited by precedents of the Common
Law. He was bound by oath to proceed by law and not
otherwise, and the judges, though appointed by theking,
were bound by their oaths to determine the rights of the

subject not according to the king's will but according to law.

The case against a subject must be made out by due process
of law before the king could proceed against him by
force.
In the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century
the Royalists were trying to extend the precedents for the
king's prerogative into the sphere of jurisdictio. The Parlia-
mentarians, on the other hand, sought to apply the limita-
tions imposed on jurisdictio to acts of gubernaculum as well.
So it is easy to understand how both were convinced of the
legality of their claims; for the disputes were about cases
where the spheres of gubernaculum and jurisdictio over-
lapped. The Royalists could argue that ship-money, for in-
stance, was necessary for external defence which was in the
sphere of gubernaculum where the king's authority was un-
conditional. As Hobbes put it: 'Mark the oppression; A
Parliament-man of 5OO/. a year, land-taxed at 20^!' 2 Hamp-
den was simply refusing to contribute to his own defence.
The Parliament men, on the other hand, could argue that
1 . For these terms and for the details of this explanatory exposition I
am indebted to G. H. Mcllwain, Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern.
2. E.W. VI, 209.

2l6
 SOVEREIGNTY
property was a matter of their Common Law rights which
could not be touched without their consent.
It is true that the king could always ignore the dividing
line between jurisdictio and gubernaculum by claiming a
national emergency or the pretext of 'reasons of state'. But
a wise monarch used this pretext very warily. Elizabeth, for
instance, was very sensitive to the feelings of Parliament on
such matters and, as in the case of monopolies, gave way on
occasion to their demands. But James I, who came from
Scotland where the dual tradition was not firmly established,
was not so sensitive. He maintained that the 'fundamental
law' guaranteeing authority applied only to himself. Not
only had Parliament no business to meddle with affairs of
state; but also the liberties of the subject were purely the
gift of the king, deriving from his supreme authority. The
king's silence on matters of custom simply denoted his
assent. The duality of the tradition was a fundamental
illusion. No wonder Coke replied that 'When the king says
he can not allow our liberties of right, this strikes at the root.
We serve here for thousands and for ten thousands.' This
explicit rejection of the dual tradition helped to precipitate
the struggle. For Parliament in its turn insisted on its right
to discuss matters of the king's prerogative. The intellectual
outcome was a spate of theories claiming the supreme
authority either of Parliament or of the King. Milton, for
instance, voiced demands for the absolute and undivided
sovereignty of Parliament. Hobbes inclined towards abso-
lute monarchy. The significant feature of such theories was
the determination to break away from authority guaranteed
by tradition and precedents and to institute a clear, ration-
ally understandable, and unambiguous chain of command.

/. Hobbes' Theory of Sovereignty

Little theoretical mischief would have been done if Hobbes

had argued in a straightforward way that the time had come
to tidy up an ambiguous tradition and to institute a more
rational and effective form of authority. But he did not put

217
 HOBBES
forward demands in such an explicit manner. For he
his
held that in every commonwealth there must be a sovereign
authority. And the 'must' was meant to be a logical 'must',
though there are grounds for interpreting it as a normative
'must' dressed up as a logical one. There could, on his view,
be reasonable dispute about the advisability of the sovereign
authority being wielded by an individual or by a body of
men. But there could be no dispute about the logical neces-
sity for the existence of such a sovereign authority if a
multitude was to become a people.
This conclusion is acceptable enough if it meant simply
that the existence of a commonwealth entails the existence
of authority as distinct from the exercise of naked power. For
'authority' as distinct from 'power' presupposes that power
is exercised legitimately or in accordance with certain rules

of authorization accepted by those affected by it. The claim to

legitimacy is substantiated in different ways in different
-
societies may be by appeal to supernatural signs, to
it

traditionally transmitted rules, or to definite procedures of

institution - but a man cannot exercise authority unless

approval is extended to his actions, whatever the accepted

criteria of authorization may be. Now according to Hobbes
a commonwealth or people differed from a mere multitude
in that in the former wills were represented. Approval was
extended in advance to the actions of the people's represen-
tative in that they authorized his actions on their behalf; he
was given authority. The mere exercise of power by one
individual over others characterized the state of nature but
did not constitute a commonwealth. In this sense there can-
not be a commonwealth without someone having authority.
But authority is one thing, sovereign authority quite an-
other. For Hobbes held that the type of authority to keep
the peace and defend subjects against external aggressors
must be perpetual, unlimited, and indivisible. By 'sover-
eignty' he meant not simply authority in certain spheres but
authority in all spheres of state activity. And in every com-
monwealth there must exist such an authority. For authority
presupposes individual approval and these features of
218
 SOVEREIGNTY
sovereignty were alone compatible with the 'known inclina-
tions' of men which led them to institute such an authority,
and with the logical needs of being one people.
Hobbes, therefore, like a geometer, deduced what he
thought to be the logical consequences of the type of
authority that had been instituted. It was created to pro-
vide for the safety of the people. This meant, primarily, the
making and interpreting of law and the punishment of in-
justice which was simply breaches of the law. It followed
that the sovereign could not be impeached in his own courts
or put to death for actions in his capacity as sovereign; for
how could injury to a subject come about if he did what
every subject had authorized him to do? Iniquity he might
commit, 'but not injustice, or injury in the proper significa-
tion'. 1 This was logically impossible. Similarly he had been
authorized to do anything necessary Tor the preserving of
peace and security by prevention of discord at home, and
hostility from abroad'. 2 And this meant anything-, for 'al-

though of so unlimited a power, men may

fancy many evil
consequences, yet the consequences of the want of it, which
is
perpetual war of every man against his neighbour, are
much worse'. 3 There was no place for jurisdictio in Hobbes'
scheme. All was gubernaculum. Civil liberty lay 'only in
those things, which in regulating their actions, the sovereign
hath praetermitted'. 4 Subjects might buy and sell, choose
their abode, diet, and wives, ply whatever trade they liked,
and educate their children as they saw fit. It is unlikely that
laws would be necessary to regulate these aspects of life.
But that was entirely up to the sovereign. Anything might
turn out to be prejudicial to security. Anylimitation on

sovereignty
- Common Law
rights, for instance - would be
logically inconsistent with the type of authority set up.
There were, however, certain rights, whose peculiarity
5
we have already noted, which it was psychologically im-
possible for any individual to surrender - e.g. th$ right to

1. E.W. Ill, 163. 3. E.W. Ill, 195. 5. See supra, pp. 202-3.
2. E.W. Ill, 164. 4. E.W. Ill, 199.

219
 HOBBES
preserve himself or to resist imprisonment. The liberty of
the subject, therefore, consisted in those acts which it would
be vain for the sovereign to forbid as well as in those which
he had not in fact forbidden. But this, surely, is a very thin
analysis of the relationship between law and liberty. For the
question of the liberty of the subject only arises when at-
tempts are made to prevent people doing what they want to
do. It is odd to talk about our liberty to choose our own diet
because it has rarely occurred to anyone in this country,
except during a food-shortage, to prevent us eating what we
want. And it may be true that we are free to dream what we
like, because no one has yet found a way of stopping us; but
it is only in sentimental lyrics that questions of our liberty

to dream arise. Talk of our liberties seems out of place in

cases where interference is either a matter of indifference or
of impossibility.
There is a very good reason for this triviality in Hobbes'
talk about liberties of the subject, which can be brought out

by a more thorough analysis. When we speak of liberties we

presuppose (a) that people have certain interests or things
that they want to do; (b) that other people have made or
are likely to make attempts to interfere with them in the
pursuit of these interests (c) that there is a law (or perhaps
;

a custom) that prescribes non-interference with these inter-

ests. Now Hobbes spoke of liberties in the sense of absence

of legal constraints on interests like the choice of wife and

diet. But he failed to deal with the more important function
of law in relation to liberty in providing a levelling con-
on all to get rid of the arbitrary constraint of the weak
straint

by the strong. Under our present system, for instance,

political liberty consists largely in being able to vote with-
out arbitrary constraint for the candidate of our choice. But
in order to rid ourselves of the constraints of employers,
land-owners, and political agents, a mass of electoral laws
are necessary. It is true that there is no law forbidding us
from voting for the candidate of our choice; but it is also
true and far less trivial that there is a network of law pre-
venting other people from imposing constraints of an arbi-
220
 SOVEREIGNTY
trary kind on our choice. Liberty may well mean the ab-
sence of constraint; but it is essential to emphasize the role
of law as one form of constraint which saves us from others
of a more arbitrary sort. Locke, as often, put the matter in
proper perspective when he said: 'So that, however it may
be mistaken, the end of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but
to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of
created beings capable of laws, where there is no law there

isno freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and vio-

lence from others; which cannot be where there is no law:
and is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what
he lists.' 1
There was a third sense in which Hobbes spoke of the
liberty of the subject which connected it in another way
with law. He held that 'in the act of our submission, con-
5
sisteth both our obligation, and our liberty 2 For both the .

obligation and the liberty of the subject were to be derived

from the words 'I authorize all his actions' which he was
imagined to have expressed in instituting a commonwealth.
Thereby men made for themselves 'artificial chains, called
civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants,
have fastened at one end, to the lips of that man, or assem-
bly, to whom they have given the sovereign power; and at
the other end to their own ears'. 3 These laws are made to
promote internal peace and security from external aggres-
sors. Therefore, in obeying them the subject was submitting
to laws that he had taken part in instituting. He therefore
was exercising his liberty in obeying laws that were condu-
cive to these ends; but he had liberty to refuse to do what
went against the intentions implicit in the institution of
commonwealth. Thus his obligation to obey the sovereign
lasted 'as long as, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by
which he is able to protect them'. 4
This is surely a redundant and specious sense of 'liberty'.

1. J. Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government (cd. Gough), p. 29.

2. E.W. Ill, 203.
3. E.W. Ill, 198.
4. E.W. Ill, 208.
221
 HOBBES
For merely brought out that Hobbes' ideal construct of a
it

subject became such by choosing to authorize a representa-

tive. What is added by saying that such a choice was an
exercise of liberty ? Not that there was no law constraining

his choice; for law itself came about by his choice. Who,
then, or what was not constraining his choice in deciding to
accept the constraint of law? For talk of liberty in general is
vacuous talk. It means too little because it means too much.
It is like the terms 'same* or 'equal', which convey little in-
formation until the respects are specified in which people
are being compared. Until we know what constraint is
pre-
sumed be lacking in preventing a person from doing what
to
he wants, little is conveyed by speaking of his liberty. Cer-
tainly this general type of liberty was not that to which
Hobbes referred when he said, 'As for other liberties, they
depend on the silence of the law.' This was an informative
1

remark in spite of the inadequacy of his analysis of civil

liberties. For he spoke of liberties rather than of liberty, and
he specified the type of constraint whose absence gave point
to their being described as such. To speak, on the other

hand, of the liberty of an individual in authorizing a repre-

sentative, through whose agency ti legal system is instituted,
is vacuous. But it is the sort of vacuous talk which has

enabled theorists to conclude that our liberty consists in be-

ing locked up in gaol. In Hobbes' case it enabled him to say
that a person was exercising his liberty in a proper manner
when he joined in a rebellion against a sovereign who was

losing a war. This general and vacuous sense of liberty

civil
is useful only in that it enables us to
put a halo round actions
that lack the more obvious forms of respectability.
For Hobbes, then, the only limitations on sovereignty
were those set by the unalterable tendencies of human
nature over which it had to be exercised. Sovereignty, too,
was necessarily indivisible as well as unlimited. For if a limit
was put on sovereignty that must mean that there was a
sphere where there was some other authority. This was pre-
cisely the claim of those like Coke who claimed that
i. E.VV. Ill, 206.

222
 SOVEREIGNTY
Common Law rights were outside the sphere of prerogative.
'Prerogative/ he said, 'is
part of the law, but "sovereign
power" no parliamentary word.
is Magna Charta is
. . .

5
such a fellow that he will have no "sovereign". Hobbes'
reply was again an appeal to a necessary truth. For if the
term 'people' or 'commonwealth* meant a multitude who
had set up an authority to protect them, how could there be
one people if there were more than one authority? Their

unity consisted in having one instituted person to represent their

collective wills. The sovereign was the soul of an artificial
monster with a will issuing in laws executed by its limbs -
the magistrates. The Civil War showed the danger of
dividing the rights of the sovereign. Politics was not tennis;
practice and precedent should be surrendered in favour of
the safer skill of the geometer.
There is indeed a certain sort of safety in geometry which
Hobbes exploited in his geometrization of politics. For little
isrisked, the conclusions arrived at being merely conse-
quences of the definitions from which a start is made. And
it was the artificiality of commonwealths that made Hobbes'

use of the geometric method seem so appropriate and

plausible. For as a commonwealth is not a natural whole
like a man or a rabbit, if we wish to speak of a collection of
individuals as one, we must institute or lay down criteria.
And these are more or less arbitrary. club, for instance,A
could be defined as a collection of individuals who accept a
constitution and rules and pay a subscription in order to
further some interest which they all have. They are separate
individuals but can be regarded as 'one' in so far as they
combine for certain purposes and accept some authority
structure in the process. They can be said to have a 'voice'
and to perform 'acts' in so far as they define what constitutes
their voice and acts. They act as one in so far as they define
what constitutes collective action. This, perhaps, is a neces-
sary fiction in order to get things done effectively and in
order to save breath. For it is quicker to say 'The club has
'
decided . . . than a long rigmarole about individuals acting
in accordance with agreed procedures. But it remains
223
 HOBBES
figurative talk. Hobbes pictured individuals agreeing to
accept an unlimited sovereign as a necessary device for pro-
tection. They become one because they institute him as
their collective will, voice, and limbs. But, of course, they
have not really got any of these properties collectively at
all; for these are the sorts of things that only individuals
have. But if they decide that their one-ness consists in his
coercive efforts on their behalf, they become one - in a
-
figurative sense by definition. Once, however, the fallacies
have been uncovered in Hobbes' attempted deduction of
this sort of totalitarian monster from psychological postu-
1
lates, other criteria for 'one-ness' could be laid down. For
the cogency of Hobbes' argument depends on his deduction
from psychology that the business of commonwealth was
2
purely 'salus populi, the people's safety'. This, on his view,
entailed that there must be in every state an ultimate and
recognized wielder of coercive power to keep the peace.
This could not be done effectively unless the same authority
made laws. For anything can come in the sphere of guber-
naculum; jurisdictio is but one branch of gubernaculum.
But this is surely an empirical requirement rather than a
logical necessity unless is interpreted as being com-
law
mands concerned only with the provision of safety.
Locke, who did not subscribe to Hobbes' deduction of the
reasons for commonwealth from psychological postulates,
was very cautious in acceptance of the maxim Salus
his

populi suprema lex. And understandably so; for he held that

the main business of government was to safeguard the in-
violable rights of the subject. In his account the Common
Law rights of Englishmen appeared in the guise of natural
rights to life, liberty, and estate. Gubernaculum must never
violate jurisdictio. The institution of government made no
difference to the subject's indefeasible rights; it only helped
to protect them. This implied the existence of an authority
other than the will of the sovereign, even if the sovereign
were Parliament. Indeed, if we are talking of instituted
states, it is possible for a constitution to be framed, as in the
i. See supra. Ch. VIII, sect. 3. 2. E.W. Ill, x.

224
 SOVEREIGNTY
U.S.A., with the express intention of there being no overall
sovereign in Hobbes' sense. If we say that no common-
wealth exists where there is an explicit division of authority,
then we are ruling out a great number of forms of com-
monwealth by definition. For there is no reason why in-
dividuals should not decide that a necessary condition of
being one people is that no one person or body should
exercise supreme authority over them. Their unity could be
defined as consisting in decisions and actions issuing from
compromises between their representatives in different
departments of state.
Of course, very few commonwealths have in fact been
instituted in such a clear-headed way. This is the illusion
about states popularized by the model of the social contract.
Authorities develop in different spheres; often they clash
and intellectual confusion as well as more overt forms of
conflict develop. Then a geometer like Hobbes comes along
and tries to work out a logically consistent structure of com-
mand. But there is little reason why his proposals for calling
a collection of individuals 'one people' should be accepted
rather than anyone else's. For they were deductions from
his convictions about the proper business of government.
But government has no business except that which those who
practise it and suffer from it assign to it. And this is a matter
of political preference rather than of dispassionate analysis.
5
Is there, then, almost nothing to be said for Hobbes con-
viction that the existence of a commonwealth entails the
existence of a sovereign ? This, as has been stressed, depends
on what criteria we are going to use for calling a collection
of individuals a commonwealth. Most people would main-
tain that a necessary condition would be the existence of a
common legal system, and there is a sense in which sover-
eignty indispensable for the working of a legal system. For
is

legal authority necessitates a hierarchical structure of rules.

We can only make use of rules or legal principles if we have
higher order principles for interpreting and deciding be-
tween rules of a lower order. An umpire, for instance, inter-

prets a number of rules at cricket. But part of what is meant

225
 HOBBES
is final on the inter-
by an umpire is the rule that his decision
pretation of rules of a lower order. Similarly a legal system
cannot work unless there is a source of final reference.
Hobbes wanted to substitute for the Common Law prin-
ciple, that custom, as interpreted by the judges, is the arbiter
of law, the principle that the commands of a determinate
body are the final source of legal authority. He was writing
at a time when statute law was increasing in importance;
and it is intolerable for lawyers to work with two incon-
sistent higher order principles for ascertaining what the law
is. In this
respect any workable system of law requires the
sovereignty of a supreme legal principle like the principle,
in this country, that the principles of constitutional law
shall determine what is or is not an act of Parliament which
in its turn provides lower order principles which the courts
will recognize. But the supremacy of a legal principle does
not entail the supreme authority of any determinate body ;

still less does it entail that the supreme law-making body

shall also be responsible for wielding coercive power. In-

deed, the empirical necessity and advisability of this is hotly
denied by those who advocate the separation of the legisla-
ture from the executive as in the U.S.A.
It may well be the case, again, that most people would

say that a necessary condition of a collection of individuals

being a commonwealth is the existence of a central and
supreme authority for coercion. This is another sense in
which people speak of sovereignty. But it surely is not a
necessary condition that the same body should be the
supreme authority both for law and for coercion as Hobbes
insisted. An army is the sort of organization that can only
work if there is a final authority in the chain of command.
But the commander-in-chief need not be concerned at all
with making the law of the land.
When we consider soberly Hobbes* demands for per-
petual, unlimited, and indivisible sovereignty, 'there is/ as
Aristotle said of Plato's proposals, 'another matter which
must not be ignored - the teaching of actual experience.' 1
i .
Aristotle, Politics, II, 5.

226
 SOVEREIGNTY
It is surely inadvisable to propose a form of authority that
no one can ever have the actual power to exercise. In theory
a monarch can be given unlimited authority; but in prac-
tice he is limited in what he can command by the major
interests of his subjects and their deep-rooted traditions, and

by those without whose religious or economic power his

political power is precarious. A ruler cannot exercise
authority indefinitely by sole reliance on the sword; he
must cajole and bargain with those who wield other sorts of
power; he must provide incentives for his subjects and bend
them to his will by propaganda. Hobbes saw the great
importance of religion as an instrument of state propaganda
and insisted on the sovereign having supreme authority in
this sphere. 1 He also saw the importance of economic
matters. For all the land and its resources were to belong to
the sovereign. Private property was simply that which the
sovereign had declared to belong to an individual. The in-
dividual was given a right to exclude other individuals from
his property, but not the sovereign who had distributed land
peace and security'. A sovereign
common 2
'in order to the

might act inequitably in regard to property; but he could

never act unjustly, and his actions in this respect could never
be a legitimate occasion for rebellion. So much for ship-
money. The sovereign, too, was to have authority over
matters of trade and of exchange of property. And therefore
it belongeth to the commonweal th, that is to say, to the
sovereign, to appoint in what manner all kinds of contract
between subjects, as buying, selling, exchanging, borrowing,
lending, letting, and taking to hire, are to be made; and by
53
what words and signs they shall be understood for valid.
The concoction of commodities in the body of common-
wealth was done by means of money which was 'as it were
the sanguification of the commonwealth: for natural blood
is manner made of the fruits of the earth and circu-
in like ;

lating, nourisheth by the way every member of the body of

man'. 4 Collectors and receivers were the veins gathering the
1. See infra, Ch. X. 3. E.W. Ill, 237.
2. E.W. Ill, 235. 4. E.W. Ill, 238.

227
 HOBBES
money into the public coffers; treasurers appointed for

public disbursements were the arteries.

But such a vast structure of authority could not be wielded
competently by one man; it must be delegated; there must
be experts in the different spheres of authority. Hobbes en-
visaged the appointment by the sovereign of viceroys,
- the nerves and tendons which move
governors, prefects
the limbs of the monster; then there were to be military
commanders, public ministers for education and instruc-
tion in civil duty. Religious instructors, too, were to receive
their power del gratia et regis; the sovereign alone taught
religion del gratia. and all public ministers for
Judges, too,
execution who supported them, were to be ministers of the
sovereign. The sovereign, however, would do well to rely on
advice from counsellors in the various spheres of state. 1 This
reliance on 'many and prudent counsellors, with every one
2
counselling apart, in his proper element' was better than
not having any counsellors at all. For to try to rule alone
would be like trying to play tennis without seconds. But a
ruler foolish enough to rely on the counsel of a demo-
cratic assembly would be like a man carried to hit the ball
in a wheelbarrow But, surely, as soon as such a vast struc-
!

ture of delegated authority became well established and as

soon as the sovereign began to rely increasingly on expert
advice in different spheres, the indivisibility of his authority
would become somewhat of a fiction in practice for others ;

would come to share his actual power. Henry VIII found

this out to his cost with his succession of Chancellors. But
for Hobbes, political science was concerned with an ideal
- the construction of a
experiment logically consistent
pyramid of authority; it was not concerned with the actual
determinants and distribution of power.

2. Law as Command

That Hobbes' doctrine of sovereignty was primarily in-

- the
tended to clarify confusion in the field of law strong-
i. E.W. Ill, 246. 2. E.W. Ill, 249.

228
 SOVEREIGNTY
hold of the opposition to the Stuarts - can be seen from his
writings on legal theory. In Leviathan he declared his interest
in law to be that of an analytic philosopher enquiring into
the nature of law rather than that of a legalist looking into
the details of particular legal systems. 1 Nevertheless, in
spite of his considerable contribution to legal theory, his
treatment of law at a theoretical level had very obvious
practical consequences for the English legal system. These
were most explicit in his Dialogue between a Philosopher and a
Common Laws of England - a sustained attack on
Student of the
the theory of law held by Sir Edward Coke and other
champions of the Common Law against the Stuarts.
Law in Feudal times had been regarded as a declaration of
existing custom. The law was there to discover - a sort of
property belonging to the people - as it applied to particu-
lar circumstances. With the development of Common Law
or the King's Law this view still persisted. The King and his
Courts never made laws he declared what the law was.
1
.,

Some maintain that this legal fiction still holds good of

Common Law in so far as it has not been changed by stat-
ute. 2 Up to the time of the Long Parliament of the seven-
teenth century legislation was a very minor function of
3
Parliament, which was regarded as a kind of court. Specific
provisions of law might be altered from time to time; but
the law itself unfolded as generation replaced generation.
It assigned to every man his rights and duties, his liberties
and obligations; it imposed limitations on King and sub-
jects alike. It included not simply principles for deciding
private disputes, but conventions of the constitution and
rights of both King and subjects. It was this fundamental
law which was thought to bestow authority in the spheres
of gubernaculum and jurisdictio to which we have already
referred.
The law, which was made explicit by the decisions of
judges which constituted precedents for future cases falling

1. E.W. 111,251.
2. See, e.g. H. Maine, Ancient Law (Everyman Ed.), pp. 18, 19.
3. See G. H. Mcllwain, The High Court of Parliament, New Haven, 1910.

229
 HOBBES
in similar categories, was presumed to be in accordance with
reason, though the lawyers like Sir Edward Coke held that
itrequired the special sort of 'artificial reason' which only a
lawyer with a long training could acquire, to interpret it.
And if the system of precedents, on which the Common Law
proceeded, resulted in a gross wrong being done for which
there was no redress in law, then the subject could appeal
to the Court of Chancery where the Chancellor had author-

ity to settle the claim according to general considerations of

equity. The Chancellor was traditionally an ecclesiastic and
1

therefore deemed to be an authority on matters of con-

science. The Court of Equity became increasingly important

during the sixteenth century and there was constant friction

between the Chancellor and the Common Law Courts.
Matters came to a head with the accession of James I. For
he, believing in the Divine Right of Kings, held that his un-
trained reason was a better judge of the law than Coke's
'artificial reason' and that, anyway, as God's vicar on

earth, he was above the law. Law was his command;

customary law was only valid because he condoned it. He
also supported his Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, against Sir
Edward Coke, the Chief Justice, in a great quarrel about
the respective spheres of Equity and Common Law.
With the coming of the Long Parliament, also, which in-
dulged in an unprecedented amount of legislative activity,
it became more and more obvious that laws were being
made; the law was not being declared. For where was the
precedent for a Parliament prolonging its own life by statute ?
Legislation came gradually to take precedence over all
other Parliamentary business and Common Law came
more and more to be superseded by Statute Law. Precedent
and immemorial custom were no longer completely binding
on legal decisions large parts of Common Law in fact came
;

to be abolished by Acts of Parliament. We are so used, in

this country, to the legislative sovereignty of Parliament
that we find it difficult to realize that there is no logical or
I. In actual fact it developed an elaborate system of precedents as

time went on, just like the Common Law Courts.

230
 SOVEREIGNTY
practical necessity for the supremacy of the statute-making
authority and that in the seventeenth century it was still

thought that there were principles of Common Law that

could control Acts of Parliament. This transitional state of
confusion with regard to legislative authority was the con-
text of Hobbes view that law is the command of the
5

- 'the word of him that hath command

sovereign by right
He was an uncompromising advocate of the
over others'. 1
supremacy of Statute Law over the Common Law.
Hobbes' political objections to the Common Law were
obvious enough; for it imposed a limit on sovereignty and
hence endangered the peace. But more interesting was his
theoretical attack on its presuppositions. Common Law was
an attempt to make explicit the customs of the realm; this,
thought Hobbes, was tantamount to perpetuating the stu-
pidity of ignorant men ill-versed in the science of natural

justice. 'The making and maintaining common-

skill of
wealths, consisteth in certain rules, as doth arithmetic and
geometry; not, as tennis play, on practice only.' 2 The
philosopher remarked acidly to the defender of the Common
Law 'Now as to the authority you ascribe to custom, I deny
:

that any custom of its own nature can amount to the author-
ity of a law. For if the custom be unreasonable, you must,
with all other lawyers, confess that it is no law, but ought to
be abolished; and if the custom be reasonable, it is not the
3
custom, but the equity that makes the law.' The alterna-
tive would be a regress of judgements depending upon pre-
cedents terminating in some ignorant man's decision.
Although Hobbes stressed the character of civil law as
command - for it was authority, not wisdom, that made a
law - he nevertheless contrived to hang on to the accepted
presumption that law could not be unreasonable. In effect
he wished to do away with the Common Law and the 'arti-
reason' necessary to interpret its precedents and in its
ficial

place to put Statute Law which could be interpreted and

amended by the judges in accordance with equity. 4 Pre-
1. E.W. Ill, 147. 3. E.W. VI, 62-3.
2. E.W. Ill, 195-6. 4. See E.W. VI, 68.

231
 HOBBES
sumably Hobbes had eye on the Court of Chancery; but
his
his case for Equity, especially in Leviathan,was formulated
in terms of the relationship between the civil law and the
laws of nature. 'The law of nature, and the civil law, con-
tain each other, and are of equal extent.' 1 Nevertheless he
remained clear about the distinction. The laws of nature
were 'but conclusions, or theorems concerning what con-
duce th to the conservation and defence of themselves'. 2
Civil law, on the other hand, 'is to every subject, those rules,
which the commonwealth hath commanded him, by word,
writing, or other sufficient signs of the will, to make use of,
for the distinction of right, and wrong; that is to say, of what
is contrary, and what is not contrary to the rule'. 3 Laws
properly so called were rules issuing in writing from a deter-
minate source which were enforced by the sword; we are
obliged by them. Justice in a commonwealth was simply
what was commanded by law. The only sense in which a
law could be unjust was if it were abrogated by another law.
Of course, a law could be unequitable; but this must be dis-
tinguished from being unjust in a strict sense of 'unjust*.
This should rarely happen; for the sovereign and his
appointed judges were guided by the laws of nature or con-
siderations of equity in making and interpreting laws. In-
deed, in Hobbes' ideal experiment a commonwealth was
created when the theorems of natural law were converted
into the commands of the civil law by being officially issued
in statutesand supported by the sword of the sovereign. Yet
there was a reciprocal connexion. For men were imagined
as having covenanted to obey the civil law and the third law
of nature was that men should keep their covenants made.
Thus, 'Civil, and natural law are not different kinds, but
different parts of law; whereof one part being written, is

called civil, the other unwritten, natural.' 4

So Hobbes gleefully shook hands with the lawyers in
agreeing with the presumption 'that law can never be
6
against reason'. But, he remarked savagely, 'the doubt is of
1. E.W. Ill, 253. 3. E.W. Ill, 251. 5. E.W. Ill, 256.
2. E.W. Ill, 147. 4. E.W. Ill, 254.

232
 SOVEREIGNTY
whose reason it is, that shall be received for law', 1 It could
not be any private reason; for that would make as many
contradictions in the law as there were in the Schools.
Neither could it be 'as Sir Edward Coke makes it, an artifi-
cial perfection of reason, gotten by long study, observation,
and experience, as his was'. 2 For long study might only
c
serve to increase and confirm erroneous sentences. So it is
not that juris pmdentia, or wisdom of subordinate judges; but
the reason of this our artificial man the commonwealth, and
his command, that maketh law'. 3
The subordinate judges
should have regard to the reason which moved the sovereign
in making the laws; for though they were written, they had
to be interpreted not by the letter but by their 'intendment
or meaning'. 4 Equity was to enter in at all stages of the
making and interpreting of law. And the sovereign was
ultimately the sole judge of equity. In fact, of course, his
Chancellor was, and Hobbes staunchly resisted Coke's
claim that the Chancellor should be a lawyer and supported
the traditional view that he should be an ecclesiastic well-
versed in the law of nature. 5
It not clear what Hobbes' proposals amounted to in in-
is

stitutional terms.Presumably he meant the King's courts to

remain but to cease working according to the traditions of
Case Law. Instead their function would be simply to inter-
-
pret Statutes according to general principles of equity
'from it I conclude, that justice fulfils the law, and equity
interprets the law, and amends the judgments given upon
the same law'. 6 Presumably, also, the Court of Chancery
would remain and assume great importance as an institu-
tional device for dealing with consequences of the law
which seemed unequitable, though there was no legal
redress. 7 But whatever institutional provision Hobbes had in

1. E.W. Ill, 256. 3. E.W. Ill, 256. 5. E.W. VI, 64-8.

2. E.W. Ill, 256. 4. E.W. Ill, 262. 6. E.W. VI, 68.
7. Whether Hobbes definitely linked in his own mind general prin-
ciples of equity with the Chancellor's Court is not clear. Neither is it

clear whether Hobbes realized that court also had developed its
this own
system of precedents. See E.W. VI, 63-8.

233
 HOBBES
mind, quite clear that his main proposal was to do away
it is

with the appeal to custom as interpreted by the 'artificial

reason* of the Common Law judges and to substitute the

authority of actual Statutes which would be made and

interpreted according to general principles of equity. And
the sovereign would be the final authority on the interpreta-
tion of equity or laws of nature. He would be the geometer
presiding over the science of natural justice. Plato claimed
that God everywhere did geometry; Hobbes assigned a
God.
similar role to the sovereign of his mortal
It would be out of place here to enter into the long-
standing debate on the advantages and disadvantages of
Common Law; and it would be superfluous to comment
further on Hobbes' pious hope that an absolute monarch
and his appointed judges would make and interpret laws
strictly in accordance with principles of equity. But it is
worth while to pick out one or two points which he made as
an avowed analytic philosopher of law which justify his
claim to be the precursor of the analytic school of juris-
prudence which came to the fore in the nineteenth century.
Firstly, Hobbes made a very good beginning in clarifying
the question of what we mean when we talk about law. It is
difficult for us to realize that in the seventeenth century
thinkers were only beginning to get clear about the criteria
by means of which the different social codes and rules could
be distinguished from each other. Common Law was an
interesting blend of what we now call custom and law in
which the supreme legal principle was that custom should
be the determinant of law. Hobbes attempted to distinguish
law both from custom and from the laws of nature, or what
we now call morality. The law is simply those rules which
have been promulgated explicitly in writing by an authority
having power to enforce them. It is not the content of rules
that makes them laws; it is their authoritative source, their
determinate character, and their predictable coercive sanc-
tion. General considerations of custom and equity may influ-
ence those who make and interpret laws. But the question
'What is the law?' should be clearly distinguished from the
234
 SOVEREIGNTY
5

question the law right or reasonable? Similarly, justice

'Is

in the strict sense is what the law commands; this precise

sense of 'justice' should be clearly distinguished from general
notions of equity stemming from the application of ideal
principles or 'theorems'. Laws, too, oblige us because of
their external sanctions ; this sense of 'oblige' must be clearly

distinguished from the natural obligation felt in for o interno.

Words like 'duty', 'conscience', and 'obligation' are used in

at least two senses. One
refers to the demand of an external

authority on us; the other to our own reasoned conviction,

often after we have weighed the claims on us of our duties
and obligations in the first sense. Hobbes held that the law-
maker should be guided by ideal principles (laws of nature) ;

but he did well to point out that there is no necessary con-

nexion between law and ideal principles. Those who think
that law is an expression of the moral consciousness of a
people can be at best stating a contingent truth about laws
in some countries. To regard it as a necessary truth is to
betray a certain insularity of thought; for it is the sort of
assumption that could only be made by one who has lived
in England or some other country where most laws are not
obviously immoral.
Secondly, Hobbes saw that a system of law cannot work
efficiently without some kind of legal sovereignty. He inter-
preted this as implying the sovereignty of a determinate
person or body who must also be the supreme authority for
coercion. It has been maintained that all that in fact is
required is the sovereignty of a legal principle. The neces-
1

sity of such a principle is

implicit in Hobbes' attempt to
dispense with the authority claimed for custom in Common
Law and to substitute that of statutes issuing from a deter-
minate sovereign. His doctrine of the necessity of legal
sovereignty in this sense is but one example of many possible
supreme legal principles.
Thirdly, Hobbes is famous for his contention that law is
command. The historical context of this view has already been
explained. But it is also interesting from a logical point of
I. See supra, pp. 225-6, and H. Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State.

235
 HOBBES
view. It is attractive because
it points to the
prescriptive
character of legal language which distinguishes it from
statements of fact. The trouble, however, about the view is
that 'command' is too strong a word, which suggests the
picture of a sergeant-major rather than of a judge or legis-
lator. So many laws obviously do not command - e.g. en-

abling statutes and laws conferring franchises. The law does

not command a man to sell a house; rather it lays down
rules or directions for selling a house if he wants to do so.
Law, logically speaking, is much more adequately classed
as a system of rules or as a record of decisions taken by judges,

legislative bodies, and so on, rather than as a collection of

commands. Some, indeed, would go so far as to regard the
law as a kind of costing system in which the function of
statements mainly predictive. The law, it is claimed,
is

states what probably happen if the subject decides to

will
act in a certain manner. But this, surely, is to run too far
away from the view that law is command; for it omits the
normative force of legal language in laying down standards
to guide people's choices.
So much, then, for Hobbes' doctrine of sovereignty and
for his analysis of the chains stretching from the lips of the

sovereign to the ears of the subject. There remains only to

consider his views on the most suitable occupant for the
office of sovereign.

5. Forms of Government

Hobbes claimed no demonstrability for his conclusion that

monarchy was the best form of government. He admitted in
his Preface to De Give that it was the one thing 'in this whole
book not to be demonstrated, but only probably stated'. 1
However, his first contention that there can only be three
types of commonwealth was incontrovertible as it followed
from the definition of commonwealth. For differences could
be due only to the differences in the person or persons repre-
senting all and every one of the multitude. This could be
i. E.W. II,xxii.

236
 SOVEREIGNTY
one man, some men, or all men. There were no further
possibilities. Thus the classification of commonwealths into
monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies was exhaustive
as sovereign power was indivisible. Words like 'tyranny',
5
and 'anarchy were only emotive descriptions
'oligarchy',
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy by people who did
not like them; they did not refer to logically distinct types of
commonwealth .

It followed, also,from his definition of commonwealth

that was ridiculous to talk of the people's representatives
it

under a monarchy unless reference was being made to the

monarch. For it was as absurd to think of a body of men
representing the opinions of all to the monarch as it would
be to think of a sovereign assembly inviting the people of
their dominion to send up deputies, with power to make
known their advice or desires, and then regarding these

deputies rather than themselves as the absolute representa-

tives of the people. This necessary truth had lately been

blatantly neglected by those who never considered their

king as their representative in spite of an unquestioned
claim to his title stretching back for six hundred years. Yet
they bestowed the title of 'representatives' on those men
'which at his command were sent up by the people to carry
their petitions, and give him, if he permitted it, their
advice'. 1 Pym and Hampden were not geometers.
The differences between these forms of government were
not, therefore, due to differences in power 'but in the differ-
ence of convenience, or aptitude to produce the peace, and
2
security of the people; for which end they were instituted.'
Democracy might well be the rationally prior form of
government; for the coming together of men to institute a
commonwealth is a kind of democratic act, which requires

only fixed prescription as to time and place of assembly for

democracy in its full sense to emerge. Aristocracy and mon-
archy arise from such a democratic act when the people
give up their habit of assembly and hand over to a limited
section or to one man the uncontrolled exercise of sovereign
r. E.W. Ill, 173. 2, E.W. Ill, 173.

237
 HOBBES
rights on
their behalf. But, in spite of the logical priority of
democracy, its inconveniences for promoting the peace and
security of the people are so manifest that monarchy is in-

finitely to be preferred.
In the first place, members of a sovereign assembly have

always the conflict between public and private interest,

whereas in a monarchy the private interest is the same as the
public interest, the riches, power, and honour of a monarch
arising only from the riches, strength, and reputation of his
subjects. Secondly, a monarch has constant access to secret
and expert counsel; whereas matters have to be debated
openly in a sovereign assembly by those versed more in the
acquisition of wealth than of knowledge. Thirdly, the reso-
monarch are subject only to the inconstancies of
lutions of a
human nature, whereas in an assembly there is inconstancy
due to number as well as to nature. Fourthly, a monarch
cannot disagree with himself out of envy or interest; but the
disagreements of an assembly may produce a civil war.
Fifthly, though it is an undoubted inconvenience that under
monarchy a subject may be deprived of his possessions for
the enriching of a favourite (e.g. Buckingham), the same
may well happen under a sovereign assembly with addi-
tional inconvenience proportionate to the numerical differ-
ence. Democracies, too, cannot attend continuously to
public business and have to appoint executive committees;
this tends to make them aristocracies in practice. Mon-
archies may be notorious for their problem of succession ;

but democracies are as contentious as children and always

resort to a protector in time of trouble.
5
If Hobbes case for monarchy seems rather shaky, so was
the England in which he had lived and from which he fled.
But he did at least, in the indemonstrable part of his political
writings, ask the right sort of questions about forms of
government. Some Utopians like Plato have fixed their gaze
on the ideal state and the ideal ruler, and have dismissed
democracy because of its failure to conform to such an ideal.
Hobbes never did this. He shared with Plato a general dis-
trust of his fellow men; but he thought that institutional

238
 SOVEREIGNTY
control rather than the breeding and training of a ruling
class of philosophical shamans was the only effective safe-

guard against the depravity of man. He assumed quite

sensibly that the first thing to get clear about in politics is
not what is the ideal state but what is the worst thing that
can befall a man. His unhesitating answer was civil war.
His case against democracy was that it was less likely than
monarchy to avert this ultimate disaster. He was very con-
scious of the inconveniences of monarchy and paid scant
attention to the character and training of the monarch.
Sovereignty was for Hobbes an office. He assumed that any-
one who occupied it would be no better and no worse than
anyone else. The office was the thing; he bothered little about
the conscience of the King.
If we believe that the threat of civil war is more of an evil
than the threat of arbitrary and overwhelming interference
with the liberties of the subject, then Hobbes' preference for
monarchy is not unreasonable. The case for democracy in
no way rests on its being an ideal form of government. It
rests solely on its being less likely to be intolerable to the in-
dividual than other forms of government. For it provides
institutional methods for getting rid of rulers without a
revolution if they turn out to be even worse than was ex-
pected. All that the convinced democrat can say in answer
to Hobbes is that the worst evil of all is, as Locke put it, 'to
be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of
another man'. 1 The possible risk of civil war under a sove-
reign assembly is preferable to the probable risk to individual
liberty under an absolute monarch.

i. J. Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government (ed. Gough), p. 13.

239
 CHAPTER TEN

RELIGION

Introductory

FOR those unfamiliar with the atmosphere of the seven-

teenth century one of the most surprising features of its
literature is the ubiquity of religious controversy and
quotations from the Scriptures. For the politician nowadays
religion is something which he perhaps introduces at the

end of a speech to add a touch of inspiration to a drab

economic analysis. In the seventeenth century such detach-
ment from or indifference to religion was almost impossible.
Political passions were fanned by religious arguments;
democratic movements expressed themselves in religious
forms. Even the Royal Society was founded by men who
believed that science would reveal more and more of God's
creation and thus enhance our worship. Religion was so
connected with the customs and practices of ordinary life
that to be called an atheist was tantamount to being called
a rogue or a brigand. Every man practised some form of
religion and the impact of Luther's doctrine of the priest-
hood of all believers reverberated round the land with the
recent translation of the Bible into English. Reasons from
the Scriptures for most diverse forms of conduct were thus
the property of all who could read or listen to the multitude
of preachers who were only too willing to expound the word
of God. The seventeenth century in England was the great
period of individualism in England; it was from the various
sects and splinter groups which broke away from the Estab-
lished Church that the Nonconformist movement in this
country developed. But these movements were not simply
religious movements in the limited sense of the word; they
240
 RELIGION
were manifestations of the wider revolt against patriarchal-
ism and of the striving for individual liberty to which we
have already referred 1 If we were to consider the beliefs and
.

conduct of men like Cromwell, Rainborough, John Wild-

man, and George Fox, it would be impossible to separate
their opinions on politics and morals from their religious
convictions or to give a clear-cut religious, moral, or politi-
cal reason forany of their major decisions.
Indeed, as we have already explained, these distinctions
were only in process of being made explicit by those who
reflected in a more abstract way on the assumptions of their
fellows. 2 And Hobbes was one of the few with the detach-
ment necessary to attempt this. He rigorously excluded
theology from philosophy and tried to map the proper
domains of knowledge and faith. He outlined a theory of the
causes of religion and superstition and discussed the grounds
of religious belief. He also conducted an elaborate enquiry
into the use of various crucial terms in the Scriptures in
order to decide on their proper use - 'proper' implying not
at variance with the new science of motion! But all his
theorizing about religion was subordinate to his main inter-
est in it as a possible source of civil discord. It is seldom
realized that 371 out of 714 pages in Leviathan deal with
religious matters. They are packed with detailed arguments
and quotations drawn from the Scriptures in which he
defended what he called 'true religion' against the twin
threats of Catholicism and the priesthood of all believers.
His attitude was not quite like that of Machiavelli, who
was quite unmoved by religious problems and regarded
religion simply as a useful form of social cement to restrain
the multitude and to enhance their patriotism. Hobbes felt
- other
passionately about religion people's religion. His
astonishing knowledge of the details of the Scriptures and his
insight into the follies and superstitions which accumulate
around the nucleus of faith were like the mental card-index
and merciless penetration of a malevolent village gossip.
His was the attitude of the insecure intellectual who sees the
See supra, pp. 191-4. See w/?ra, p. 165,

H i
241
 HOBBES
social fabric threatened by the absurd vapourings of ignor-
ant, credulous, and passionate men. And he had good cause
to be afraid. For the main enemies of the sort of absolutism
which he envisaged were indeed those whose belief in in-
dividual liberty assumed predominantly religious forms or
those who, because of their Catholic convictions, could
never give the kind of undivided allegiance to a sovereign
which he demanded of them.
We have no intention of following Hobbes into the
minutiae of Scriptural exegesis, but will be content to deal
with his general views on the subject of religious belief and
his use of the Scriptures to justify his demand for absolute

sovereignty. Weshall also raise the problem of Hobbes' own

5

religious convictions. For 'religion , he said in an Epistle

Dedicatory to Charles II, not philosophy, but law.' 1
'is

man laying out the foundations

From the point of view of a
of commonwealth, the important thing was to look into the
authority by which religious doctrines became law, and
were publicly taught, rather than to indulge in abortive
speculations about the supernatural credentials of the doc-
trines. But that did not prevent Hobbes from writing with
scorn and irony about the source and content of most
people's religious convictions. In view of this obvious lack of
sympathy with religious men it will not be amiss to conjec-
ture where he himself stood on these matters.

/. The Causes of Religion

Religion being peculiar to man, there must be some pecu-

liar quality in human nature, which the beasts lack, from
which it springs. This is man's curiosity, his desire to know
the causes of things, especially of good and evil fortune.
Often this desire cannot be completely satisfied. But in such
cases man is not content to confess his ignorance. Instead he
tends to invent causes as his fancy suggests, since experience
has convinced him that things do not happen without
causes. Man, too, is haunted by fear of 'death, poverty, or
i
E.W.VII,5.
242
 RELIGION
other calamity' which his capacity for prudence aggravates.
'This perpetual fear, always accompanying mankind in the
ignorance of causes, as it were in the dark, must needs have
for object something.' 1 Recourse is therefore had to powers
or invisible agents to explain good or evil fortune. In this
sense the old poets were right when they said that the gods
were first created by human fear. At least this was true of
the gods of the Gentiles; belief in the one God, eternal, in-
visible, and omnipotent, on the other hand, was more likely
to have arisen from 'the desire men have to know the causes
3
2
of natural bodies .

Gods cannot remain metaphysical blank cheques. They

have to be filled in with some kind of substance, and man
has usually thought of this as like his own soul. The concep-
tion of the soul's substance is derived from appearances in
dreams, reflections in a looking-glass, and other such crea-
tures of the fancy. These are taken for 'real and external'
substances or ghosts. The gods, therefore, are favoured with
thin aerial bodies, differing from apparitions only in their
ability to appear and vanish when they please. These in-
visible agents are thought to operate by means of signs,

omens, and other phenomena which often precede happen-

ings, though they have no obvious connexion with them.
They are approached and honoured by man in ways which
are appropriate to dealings between man and man. 'And in
these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second
causes, devotion to what men fear, and taking of things
casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of reli-
3
gion.'
Hobbes, however, did not make the mistake of thinking
that, because we can assign a psychological cause to reli-
gion, religious belief is necessarily undermined. He went to
considerable lengths to explain the different ways in which
this seed of could be cultivated - either according to
religion
natural invention which led to the superstitions and nature
4
worship of the Gentiles or according to God's command-
1. E.W. 111,95. 3. E.W. 111,98.
2. E.W. Ill, 95. 4, E.W. Ill, 98-105.

243
 HOBBES
ments and direction. In his account of the passions he put his
view succinctly: Tear of power invisible, feigned by the
mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, RELIGION;
not allowed, SUPERSTITION. And when the power ima-
gined is truly such as we imagine, TRUE RELIGION.' This
1

remark was really rather startling in its candour if we consi-

der coldly its implication when taken in conjunction with
Hobbes' other contentions. For he held that we can have no
idea of God though we might give names to 'things super-
natural'. How then can we ever imagine the required power?
Truth, also as we have seen, can only be affirmed of proposi-
2
tions, not of our imagining and Hobbes elsewhere laboured
;

the point that nothing could be rationally asserted of God's

attributes ; religious beliefs were not true or false like the pro-
positions of geometry but were expressions of devotion rest-
ing on our trust in the person propounding them. In view
of these implications it is difficult to judge whether Hobbes
was here indulging in irony or expressing himself somewhat
carelessly.
What, then, constituted 'true religion' for Hobbes ? For if
there are grounds or reasons for religious beliefs, then specu-
lations about their causes, however interesting in themselves,
do nothing to undermine the beliefs themselves. It is only if
there are no good reasons for what is asserted in religious
beliefs that those who suggest causes for them are justified in

regarding them only as projections of our fears and infantile

wishes. It is interesting to note that Freud himself in his The
Future of an Illusion defined illusions as beliefs which we very
much wish to be true like Columbus' belief that he had dis-
covered a new sea-route to India. But they may be true like
the alchemist's belief that all metals can be turned into gold.
When beliefs are held in flat contradiction to what is known
they are to be called delusions. Therefore, maintained
Freud, though the grounds for religious belief are very
flimsy, they are not to be dismissed solely because, psycho-
logically speaking, they spring from some of the oldest,

i. E.W. Ill, 45. 2 See supra, pp. 62-3.

244
 RELIGION
strongest, and most man. 1 Hobbes seems
insistent wishes of

implicitly to have held some such view; for he used his

theory of causes mainly to expose superstitions. But it is
difficult to disentangle what he thought the grounds of reli-

gious belief to be and more difficult still to gauge how con-

vincing he thought them.

2. The Grounds of Religious Belief

In Hobbes' system God played a role rather

like a supreme
civil which the privileged could
servant; he issued orders
decipher, but he obscured his person in an enigmatic anony-
mity. He declared himself to man by laws in three ways 'by
the dictates of natural reason, by revelation, and the voice
of some man, to whom by the operation of miracles, he pro-
cureth credit with the rest. From hence there ariseth a triple
word of God, rational, sensible, and prophetic: to which
correspondeth a triple hearing: right reason, sense super-
natural, and faith.' 2
To reasonable men capable of understanding Hobbes'
principles of natural justice, God's commands amounted to
the laws of nature. God's function here was mainly to en-
able Hobbes to say that theorems conducive to peace could
be regarded as laws properly so called in so far as they were
the commands of God. There were also rules with a divine
source enjoining worship and honour of God which a
rational man could understand. God's nature, however, was
a much more baffling matter for a rational man. There was
first of all existence which, in this context, Hobbes seems to

have taken as an attribute of God in spite of his interesting

remarks elsewhere about the ambiguities of the verb 'to be*.
Tor no man can have the will to honour that, which he
thinks not to have any being.' 3 Secondly, Hobbes held, at
least in his Leviathan, that God was the cause of the world.
Tor he that from any effect he seeth come to pass, should
reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from
1 . See S.Freud, The Future of an Illusion, Ch. VI (Hogarth Press, 1928) .

2. E.W. 111,345. 3- E.W.III,35i.

245
 HOBBES
thence to the cause of that cause, and plunge himself pro-
foundly in the pursuit of causes shall at last come to this,
:

that there must be, as even the heathen philosophers con-

fessed, one first mover; that is, a first, and an eternal cause
of all things which is that which men mean by the name of
;

God.' 1 In his later De Corpore, however, he indicated the

difficulties in the notion of an unmoved mover. For though
it could be affirmed that nothing is moved by itself, it fol-

lowed also that nothing could move something else which

was not itself moved. Philosophers therefore could not deter-
mine questions about the creation of the world which were
to be handed over for decision to the lawful authorities. 2

Thirdly, Hobbes was convinced of God's irresistible power

which gave him sovereignty over all men and the right of
afflicting men at his pleasure. The problem of why evil men
often prosper and good men suffer adversity could be
decided only from arguments drawn from God's power. Did
not God reply to Job, 'Where wast thou, when I laid the
foundations of the earth ?' Job had not sinned his suffering ;

was an unfortunate consequence of God's manifestation of

power.
The main function of reason, however, in the realms of
religion was to suggest what God cannot be - at ease, finite,

figured, having parts, occupying a place, moved or at rest,

plural, having passions, rational appetite, sight, knowledge,
and understanding. If we rely on natural reason we must
either qualify God in a negative manner by adjectives like
5
'infinite 'eternal', 'incomprehensible'; or superlatives, as
,

'most high', 'most great', and the like, or indefinites like

'good' and 'holy' which are not really descriptions of his
nature but expressions of our admiration. Thus rational dis-
putation about the nature of God is pointless and is a dis-
honour to him; 'for in the attributes which we give to God,
we are not to consider the signification of philosophical
truth; but the signification of pious intention, to do him the
3
greatest honour we are able.' Worship, however, in a com-
monwealth must be public and uniform as a commonwealth
i. E.W. Ill, 95-6. 2. E.W. I, 412. 3. E.W. Ill, 354.

246
 RELIGION
isbut one person. The attributes of God, therefore, which are
words by means of which we worship him, must be settled
by agreement. For 'whatsoever may be done by the wills of
particular men, where there is no law but reason, may be
done by the will of the commonwealth, by laws civil.' 1 It
follows therefore that the sovereign must decide on God's
attributes.
The comparative helplessness of reason in deciding on
God's attributes must not, however, lead us to abandon it.
For it is a gift of God for our use till the Second Coming of
Jesus. It is therefore not 'to be folded up in the napkin of an
implicit faith, but employed in the purchase ofjustice, peace,
and true religion.' 2 For though many matters connected
with God cannot be rationally demonstrated, yet there is
nothing in God's word contrary to reason. If we think that
there is, then usually we are at fault in our reasoning. We
must therefore be prepared, to a certain extent, to 'captivate
our understanding to the words; and not to labour in sifting
out a philosophical truth by logic, of such mysteries as are
not comprehensible, nor fall under any rule of natural
science. 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 up, are for the most part cast
3
up again without effect.'
Hobbes did not play down the use of reason in religious
matters in order to exalt the inner light of the individual.
Indeed, some of his most scathing comments were reserved
for those who claimed individual intimacy with the will of

God, or what he called immediate revelation by sense

supernatural. The favoured individual, he pointed out, may
understand well enough how God spoke to him; but how
are others to understand this? Tor if a man pretend to me,
that God hath spoken to him supernaturally and immedi-
ately, and I make doubt of it, I can not easily perceive what
argument he can produce, to oblige me to believe it.'
4
And
a private individual has not the argument of the sword by
i. E.W. Ill, 355. 3. E.W. Ill, 360.
a. E.W. Ill, 360. 4. E.W. Ill, 361.

247
 HOBBES
which a sovereign can compel at least outward conformity to
the authorized religion. And how seriously are we to take
this talk of supernatural sense ? For if a man says that God

spoke to him in a dream, this 'is no more than to say he

dreamed that God spoke to him/ 1 Anyone who under-
stands the causation of dreams and who has marked men's
conceit of their own godliness, cannot help but be sceptical
of such claims; for visions and voices are explicable as
dreams that occur in the intermediate state between sleep-
ing and waking. Inspiration, too, is psychologically suspect ;
for 'to say he speaks by supernatural inspiration, is to say he
finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong opinion of
himself, for which he can allege no natural and sufficient
reason.' 2
Nevertheless dreams, visions, voices, and inspiration are
not to be dismissed for this is the means by which the pro-
;

phets have been informed of the will of God which has been
recorded in the Scriptures. These mediate revelations to
prophets being the foundation on which Hobbes thought
religious belief was built, the crucial question was how true
prophets could be distinguished from false ones. Hobbes
suggested two criteria: the working of miracles and not
teaching religious doctrines at variance with those already
established. Both criteria must be satisfied, neither being in
itself sufficient. But as miracles had now ceased there was
no sign left whereby acknowledge the pretended revela-
to
tions or inspirations of any private men. Since the time of
Jesus the Holy Scriptures had supplied the place of and
sufficiently recompensed the want of all other prophecy.
From these 'by wise and learned interpretation, and care-
ful ratiocination, all rules and precepts necessary to the

knowledge of our duty both to God and man, without

enthusiasm or supernatural inspiration, may easily be
deduced.' 3
Reliance on the authority of Scripture is, as Hobbes saw,
rather hazardous. For which books of the Bible are to be
taken as authoritative and what does the doctrine therein
i. E.W. Ill, 361. 2. E.W. Ill, 362. 3. E.W. Ill, 365.

248
 RELIGION
enunciated mean ? Hobbes subjected the books of the Bible
to scrutiny and suggested, amongst other things, that the
books ascribed to Moses must have been written after his
death. The authority of the Old Testament could be traced
back only to the time of Esdras. However, most of the Old
Testament could be accepted as genuine; so also could the
New Testament, though the authority for it could not be
traced back before the Council of Laodicea. With regard to
the authentic texts there could be no dispute about the
genuineness of the revelation therein incorporated. For who
could know that they were God's word save the prophets
themselves? The question of authority was not suitably
raised in connexion with the authenticity of their divine
source, but in connexion with the authority by which they
were made law. And to this there could only be one answer
for those who themselves were not favoured with super-
natural intimations - the authority of the commonwealth
whose commands had already the force of laws. For how
else could agreement be established about the implementa-
tion of God's commands ?

3. The Concepts of Scripture

There was, however, the further problem of agreement

about the meaning of what was asserted in the recognized
books of the Scripture. This depended on the constant
signification of words 'not as in natural science, on the will
of the writer, nor, as in common conversation, on vulgar use,
but on the sense they carry in Scripture.' 1 In fact, this 'sense*
was very much refined by Hobbes' mechanical theory of
nature; the writers of the Scriptures would have been some-
what surprised to learn what their terms meant.
Hobbes started with the terms 'body' and 'spirit*. A body
is that which
occupies 'some certain room' and as it is sub-
ject to change it is also called 'substance' which means 'sub-
ject to various accidents'. As 'body' and 'substance' signify
the same thing, 'substance incorporeal' is a contradiction in
i. E.W. Ill, 380.

249
 HOBBES
terms. This usage of 'body', however, is more general than
that of common people who call only those parts of the uni-
verse 'body' as 'they can discern by the sense of feeling, to
or by the sense of their eyes to hinder them
resist their force,
from a farther prospect.' 1 Therefore, in the common lan-
guage of men, air and aerial substances are not taken for
bodies but are called wind, breath, or spirits - the Latin
word spiritus signifying all these. For instance, the aerial
substance, which gives life and motion to the bodies of
living creatures, is called vital and animal spirits. Ignorant
men, however, often use the term 'bodies' or 'spirits' to refer
to 'those idols of the brain, which represent bodies to us,
where they are not, as in a looking-glass, in a dream, or to a
distempered brain waking.' The term 'spirits' is favoured
2

by such credulous folk because these apparitions have no

resistance to touch. So 'the proper signification of spirit in
common speech, is either a subtle, fluid, and invisible body,
or a ghost, or other idol or phantasm of the imagination.' 3
There are, of course, metaphorical significations like 'spirit
of contradiction' where 'spirit' is taken for a disposition or
inclination of mind, or for an eminent ability, extraordinary
-
passion, or disease of the mind e.g. 'the spirit of wisdom',
'possessed with a spirit'. Hobbes has been hailed by some
modern philosophers as one of the founders of the method of
solving philosophical problems by paying attention to the
ordinary use of words ; he can certainly be credited, too,
with another modern habit - that of giving meaning to the
words of others by reading his own theories into them, in-
stead of attempting to reconstruct the theoretical framework
of beliefs in which the words occur.
Where these senses of 'spirit' fail us in Scriptural inter-
pretation we must human understand-
realize the limits of

ing and rely on faith. For instance, when God is said to be a

spirit or where by the spirit of God is meant God himself,
'our faith consisteth not in our opinion, but in our submis-
sion. . For the nature of God is incomprehensible; that is
. .

to say, we understand nothing of what he is, but only that

i. E.W. Ill, 381. 2. E.W. Ill, 382. 3. E.W. Ill, 382.

250
 RELIGION
he is.' 1 Hobbes then proceeded to cite strings of passages
from the Scriptures in which reference was made to the
spirit of God and tried to show how his various senses of
'spirit' could take care of them. 'Holy Ghost' and 'Holy
Spirit' were rather a trouble to him. For 'Jesus was full of
the Holy Ghost.' 2 Hobbes took this as meaning zeal to do
the work for which he was sent by God the Father! For
to interpret it of a ghost, is to say, that God himself, for
'
. . .

so our Saviour was, was rilled with God; which is very im-

proper and insignificant.' The translation of 'spirits' by the

3

term 'ghosts' was a bad lapse. For 'ghosts' is a word that

signifies 'nothing, neither in heaven, nor earth, but the
imaginary inhabitants of man's brain.' 'Spirit' is a respect-
able rendering; for this means either a real, if aerial, sub-
stance, or some extraordinary affection or ability of mind
or body. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water,
they took him to be a spirit or aerial body, and not a phan-
tasm; 'for it is said, they all saw him which cannot be under-
;

stood of the delusions of the brain (which are not common

to many at once, as visible bodies are but singular, because ;

of the differences of fancies) but of bodies only.' 4

It is possible that God created angels to act as his messen-
gers and to execute his will in extraordinary and super-
natural ways. But if he did, they must have been substances
endued with dimensions, taking up room, and moving from
place to place. Very often, however, where angels crop up
in the Scriptures 'there can be nothing else understood by
the word angel, but some image raised, supernaturally,
in the fancy, to signify the presence of God in the execution
of some supernatural work.' 5 Indeed, if we are to take
account only of the Old Testament and of dreams and vis-
ions that happen in the ordinary course of events, it could
be held that angels are nothing but 'supernatural appari-
tions of the fancy, raised by the special and extraordinary

operation of God.' But many passages in the New Testa-

6

ment and Jesus' own words 'have extorted from my feeble

i. E.W. Ill, 383. 3- E.W. Ill, 386-7. 5. E.W. Ill, 389.
a. St Luke, iv, i. 4. E.W. Ill, 387. 6. E.W. Ill, 393-4.

251
 HOBBES
reason, an acknowledgement and belief that there be also
1
angels substantial and permanent.'
The term 'inspiration' can only be used metaphorically
in the Scriptures. For literally it means 'blowing into a man
some thin and subtle air or wind, in such manner as a man
2
filleth a bladder with his breath.' If it says in the Scriptures,

therefore, that God inspired into man the breath of life, it

can only mean that God gave him vital motion. Similarly
the word 'infused' can only be employed metaphorically to
describe the way God's graces are imparted to man: 'for
those graces are virtues, not bodies to be carried hither and
thither,and to be poured into men as into barrels.' 3 The
term 'word of God* used properly to refer to the words
is

spoken but
to prophets; it is also used metaphorically to

designate God's wisdom, power, and eternal decree in

making the world. It can be used as well for the effect of his
word, that which by his word is affirmed, commanded,
-
threatened, or promised e.g. the word was made flesh,
where Jesus was what was promised. Finally, 'the word of
God' can mean such words as are consonant with reason
and equity.
Miracles interested Hobbes. They are works that cause
wonder in virtue either of their strangeness or of their pro-
duction by other than natural means. 'Therefore, if a horse
or cow should speak, it were a miracle; because both the
4
thing is strange, and the natural cause difficult to imagine.'
But we do not call reproduction a miracle; for though we
don't know by what means men and animals manage it,
there is nothing unusual about it. The first rainbow was a
miracle, and served its purpose as a sign from God. But
nowadays, whether or not we know their causes, rainbows
have ceased to be miracles because of their frequency. Con-
versely rare works produced by human industry are not
miraculous. Furthermore, as men differ in their capacity
for admiration and wonder, so what is a miracle to some

may not be so to others. That is why events like eclipses of

1. E.W. 111,394. 3. E.W. Ill, 395.
2. E.W. Ill, 394. 4. E.W. Ill, 428.
 RELIGION
the sun and moon have been taken as miracles by the
common people. But these two criteria, though necessary,
are not sufficient; for a miracle is always wrought for the
procuring of credit to God's messengers, ministers, and pro-
phets. Strictly speaking, therefore, the creation of the world
and the destruction of all living creatures in the deluge were
not miracles; for no prophet was thereby provided with
impeccable credentials. But the works of God done by
Moses in Egypt were miracles because they established
Moses' divine mission. This method of providing divine
testimonials was only employed for the benefit of the elect;
the lesser breeds were passed over by what was essentially a
device for increasing and consolidating church member-
ship.Nowadays, however, under Christian sovereigns, there
isnothing that a man 'endowed but with a mediocrity of
reason would think supernatural.' 1 The question, therefore,
to ask is not whether a reported action is a miracle, but
whether the report is true or false. This cannot be settled
simply by the private conscience, but rather by the public
one residing in the sovereign. Of course, thought being free,
a private man has always the liberty 'to believe or not be-
lieve in his heart those acts that have been given out for
miracles. But when it comes to confession of that faith,
. . .

the private reason must submit to the public that is to say, ;

to God's lieutenant.' 2 This treatment of miracles was

typical of Hobbes' technique with religious questions. It

resembled Euripides' treatment of his religious heritage. 3
Radical probing was mingled with subtle irony and when
the lid seemed about to blow off the traditional teaching,
the sovereign appeared as a kind of deus ex machina to dish
up the mixture as before.
The notions of eternal life and eternal torment deserved
attention ; for they might provide incentives more potent than
those which Hobbes thought would keep men from civil war.

1. E.W. 111,436.
2. E.W. Ill, 437.
3. See A. W. Yen-all's classic exposition of this technique for saying
what it is dangerous to say in his Euripides the Rationalist.

253
 IIOBBES
Adam had lost the gift of eternal life by his sin, but Jesus had
- to
recovered it for believers enjoy, however, at the resur-
rection of the dead. There was no scriptural evidence for
saying that this boon would be experienced 'in another
Jerusalem and Mt
9
l
higher heaven, called caelum empyreum.
Zion were singled out by Isaiah as the dwelling place for the
people of God. Christians must keep their feet on the
ground. For those not fortunate enough to rise again, no
situation was promised in the Scriptures - only rather de-
pressing company, e.g. deceased giants. Predictions of hell
fire were to be taken metaphorically, and terms like 'Satan'
and 'Devil' were appellations of an office rather than proper
names of persons; they were variables whose values were the
earthly enemies of the Church. To be saved was the same
as to enjoy eternal life 'when God shall reign at the coming
again of Christ in Jerusalem.'
Hobbes in fact interpreted the Scriptures in such a way
that there was danger of his readers thinking with his
little

Jewish contemporary, Spinoza, that 'blessedness is not the

reward of right living; it is the right living itself.' By making
terms like 'eternal life', 'heaven', and 'hell' concrete, and

by postponing their relevance till the Second Coming, he

effectively removed one of the most potent grounds for sedi-
tion and saintliness - the belief that eternal life is something
to be enjoyed here and now
an anticipation of a future
as
state, and that the kingdom of heaven is a state of mind
which can be achieved in this life when two or three are
gathered together in the name of Jesus. Maybe the notions
are rather mystical - especially when judged by the yard-
stick of Hobbes' mechanical theory - but there arc such

good scriptural grounds for withholding a completely escha-

tological interpretation from much of Jesus' teaching on the
2
subject of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, that
Hobbes' interpretation was either a superb piece of irony or
a case of very special pleading. As the issue at stake was the

1. E.W. III, 441.

2. H. Dodd's case against a thorough-going
See, for instance, C.
eschatological interpretation in his The Parables of the Kingdom.

254
 RELIGION
relationship between church and state it is not surprising
that Hobbes glossed over in the Scriptures passages which
sectaries and Catholics brought so prominently to his notice
when he left his study.

4. Church and State

Hobbes defined a church as 'a company of men professing

Christian religion, united in the person of one sovereign, at
whose command they ought to assemble, and without whose
1
authority they ought not to assemble.' There is therefore
no universal church which all Christians are bound to obey ;

for there is no power on earth to which all other common-

wealths are subject. A church is the same thing as a Chris-

tian commonwealth consisting of Christian men. It is called
a civil state in so far as its members are men and a church
in so far as they are Christians. 'Temporal and spiritual
government, are but two words brought into the world, to
make men see double, and mistake their lawful sovereign.' a
Hobbes had already demonstrated from the law of nature
that the chief pastor of the church must be the civil sove-
reign; he now had to show that this rational conclusion was
in accordance with the will of God as revealed in the Scrip-
tures. And the ingenuity with which he manipulated the
Scriptures, in order to provide a divine sanction for his
Leviathan^ was astonishing.
Most divines, he admitted, took the phrase 'kingdom of
God' to refer to eternal felicity or for the earnest of it which
they termed 'kingdom of grace'. But a study of the Scrip-
tures would reveal that in most places 'kingdom of God*
signified 'a kingdom properly so named, constituted by the
votes of the people of Israel in peculiar manner.' 3 God was
thus their chosen king by covenant as well as ruling over
them naturally, as over all men, by his might. This covenant
was first made by Abraham and renewed by Moses on
Mount Sinai, making the Jews into a peculiar people. There-
fore, Hobbes concluded, 'by the kingdom of God, is pro-
K E.W. Ill, 459. 2. E.W. Ill, 460. 3. E.W. Ill, 397.

255
 HOBBES
perly meant a commonwealth, instituted, by the consent of
those which were to be subject thereto, for their civil
government, and the regulating of their behaviour, not only
towards God their king, but also towards one another in
point of justice, and towards other nations both in peace
and war; which properly was a kingdom wherein God was
king, and the high-priest was to be, after the death of Moses,
his sole viceroy or lieutenant.' 1
The civil and ecclesiastical

powers, in other words,were united in Abraham, Moses,

c
and subsequent high-priests. Whosoever had the sove-
reignty of the commonwealth among the Jews, the same had
also the supreme authority in the matter of God's external
2
worship, and represented God's person.'
Whatever the correct interpretation of the relationship
between the spiritual and temporal powers amongst the
Jews, most people would say that the situation was rather
transformed by the coming of Jesus and the spread of
Christianity to the Gentile world. But Hobbes had his story
pat to deal with this obvious rejoinder. Jesus was certainly
called King of the Jews, but as he himself said, his kingdom
was not of this world. By the pact of baptism his followers
undertook to accept him as king at the appointed hour of
the Second Coming. His mission on earth was 'to restore
unto God by a new covenant, the kingdom, which being his
by the old covenant, had been cut off' by the rebellion of the
3
Israelites in the election of Saul.' It was also to proclaim
himself the Messiah, the king promised by the prophets,
when he should come again to take possession of his father's
kingdom. His preaching on earth was not contrary to the
law of the Jews or of Caesar; for he preached only of his
kingdom to be and advocated the payment of tribute to
Caesar. Christians should therefore submit unquestioningly
to the civil sovereign until the Second Coming when in-
stitutional arrangements would be somewhat different.
Jesus and his Messianic mission having been accommo-
dated comfortably and innocuously in the entrails of Levia-
than, Hobbes turned his attention to the church which he
i. E.W. Ill, 400. 2. E.W. Ill, 475. 3. E.W. Ill, 479.

256
 RELIGION
founded - probably somewhat inadvertently. Hobbes divi-
ded the time between the Ascension and the Second Com-
-
ing into two main periods before and after civil sovereigns
embraced the Christian religion. During the former period
'power ecclesiastical' was with the aspotles and those to
whom the Holy Spirit was transmitted by the laying on of
hands. They were left no coercive power by Jesus; only
authority to proclaim the kingdom of God to be and to per-
suade men to prepare themselves for it. They were thus
schoolmasters rather than commanders, and their precepts
were not laws but wholesome counsels. The time between
the Ascension and the Second Coming was a regeneration,
not a reigning. The non-coercive character of ecclesiastical
authority was evidenced also by Jesus' comparison of
apostles to fishers of men, by the nature of faith which is not
to be coerced, and the instructions of Jesus and St Paul

advocating submission to princes, who enforce outward

conformity but not inner faith.
The sole content of the message of the early church was
*
that Jesus was the Christ, that is to say the king that was to
save them, and reign over them eternally in the world to
come.' * None of the early ministers regarded himself or any-
one else as an authority on the Scriptures of such a sort that
all should take his interpretation for law. Indeed, difficulties
about interpretation were dealt with in church assemblies.
The Old Testament had not been made law for the Jews
until the renovation of the covenant with God at the return
from captivity and the restoration of their commonwealth
under Esdras; and that was done by the sovereign civil
power. Every convert might have made the New Testa-
ment canonical for himself until the coming of Christian
sovereigns; but for others such individual interpretations
were counsels, not laws. Jesus did not in fact leave new laws
to oblige us in this world but new doctrines to prepare us
for the next. They only became obligatory canons when
'obedience to them was commanded by them that God had
2
given power to on earth to be legislators.' Consequently
i. E.W. 111,511. 2. E.W. 111,519.

257
 HOBBES
the Scripture was only law where the lawful civil power had
made it so. Councils like that of Laodicea, which first settled
the canonical Scriptures, were purely meetings for agreeing
about what was to be taught; they did not establish canons
or laws in the strict sense. There was no Scriptural authority
for setting up 'canons against laws, and a ghostly authority

against the civil.'

Hobbes went on to show how pastors and ministers of the
early church were elected by the congregation, how econo-
mic provision was made, and how this voluntary body for
regeneration was organized under an infidel prince. When,
however, the prince became a Christian, all was trans-
formed. For conversion to Christianity could not take away
from him his right to take the steps necessary to conserving
peace. Before conversion he had been pastor of his people in
that no subject could lawfully teach the people save by his
authority and permission; so too, after conversion, he still
retained the right to ordain what pastor he chose and 'to
teach the Church, that is, to teach the people committed to
their charge. 51 If, therefore, a congregation elected a pastor
in a Christian commonwealth, it was ultimately the sove-
reign who did so; for this election would have been invalid
without his consent. And as teachers taught only on his
authority, so pastors were really his ministers like judges in
courts ofjustice or army commanders. 'And the reason here-
of, isnot because they that teach, but because they that are
to learn, are his subjects.' 2 The sovereign, indeed, had the

right to perform all pastoral functions like baptism and the

laying on of hands; but he was likely to be a very busy man,
and, like the Pope, usually would leave such mundane tasks
to his ministers. So Christian sovereigns 'have all manner of

power over their subjects, that can be given to man, for the
government of men's external actions, both in policy and
religion and may make such laws as themselves shall judge
;

fittest, government of their own subjects, both as they

for the
are the commonwealth, and as they are the Church; for
both Church and State are the same men.' 8 If a sovereign,
i. E.W. Ill, 538. 2. E.W. Ill, 539. 3. E.W. Ill, 546.

258
 RELIGION
therefore, committed government in matters of religion to
the Pope, the latter only exercised that charge in another's
dominion in the right of the civil sovereign. He was on a par
with supreme pastors, assemblies of pastors, or any other
persons charged with the supervision of religion. But *his
was purely a matter of convenience. The civil sovereign had
merely delegated his authority to interpret and teach the
Scriptures. No division of sovereignty was thereby implied.
After a lengthy and learned demolition of Cardinal
Bellarmine's 'defence of Rome's challenge to the temporal
power in his De Summo Pontifice, Hobbes reiterated his recipe
for protection against false prophets, whose individualistic
and anarchic outpourings were just as much a danger to the
state religion as the 'ghostly authority' of Rome. 'All that is
NECESSARY to salvation,' he maintained, was 'faith in
Christ and obedience to laws.' 1 Under obedience came cha-
rity and love because they both imply a will to obey righte-
:

ousness because the will to give every one his own, that
it is

is to obey the laws; and repentance which is the same thing

as the return of the will to obedience. Faith, of course, was a

giftof God. But for those not blessed with private revelation
it came by way of teachers appointed by the sovereign. The
only article of faith necessary to salvation was that Jesus is
the Christ.
Under a Christian sovereign there could thus be no diffi-
culty about reconciling the sword of justice with the shield
of faith. The sovereign required obedience to the civil law
which contained all the laws of nature or of God, and he
allowed belief in the article of faith that Jesus is the Christ
and which he deduced from it. If a
in those conclusions
sovereign drew from this article, and com-
false conclusions
manded 'some superstructions of hay or stubble' 2 to be
taught, how could the subject's salvation be imperilled by
believing his lawful teacher? Anyway who was to judge
whether a deduced consequence was erroneous? 'Shall a
private man judge, when the question is of his own obedi-
ence?' 3 Under an infidel sovereign resistance was against
i. E.W. Ill, 585. 2. E.W. Ill, 601. 3. E.W. Ill, 601.

259
 HOBBES
the laws of nature and in defiance of the counsels of the
apostles. Faith, too, was internal and invisible and could not
be damaged by such compliance. A man who risked his life
for his faith might expect his reward in heaven, but should
not complain of his lawful sovereign. Martyrs there could
be the first degree of martyrdom however was reserved for
;

those who were called to preach that Jesus Christ was risen
from the dead on first-hand evidence of his resurrection.
Martyrs of the second degree were those who were called to
preach that Jesus the Christ. This was the sole message
is

which - and the sufferer had to be

justified martyrdom
called. 'To die for every tenet that serveth the ambition or

profit of the clergy, not required.' 1 But only a very un-

is

reasonable prince would put to death or persecute a subject

who was waiting for the Second Coming before he transfer-
red his allegiance, and who, in the meantime, was obliged
by his conscience to obey the civil law. For in the sphere of
overt action, at any rate, the claims of the immortal God
were indistinguishable from those of the mortal God, Levia-
than.

5. Knowledge and Faith

Hobbes concluded Leviathan with his famous section on the

kingdom of darkness in which he launched a savage attack
on superstition and Catholicism as enemies of the true reli-
gion. Spiritual darkness descended through misinterpreta-
tions of the Scriptures, belief in demons and other relics of
the Gentile religion, acceptance of absurdities from ancient
-
philosophers especially Aristotle, and the promulgation of
the doctrines of the Catholic church which were 'contrary
5
to the peaceable societies of mankindThe Papacy, Hobbes .

very shrewdly remarked, 'is no other than the ghost of the

deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave
thereof.' The Pontifex Maximus became the Pope. Aqua
2

turned into holy water, saturnalia into carnivals,

lustralis

bacchanalia into wakes, and the Venus-Cupid ensemble

i. E.W. Ill, 496. 2. E.W. Ill, 698.

260
 RELIGION
into the Madonna The Latin language em-
with Child.
ployed by the Church was the ghost of the old Roman lan-
guage. The whole set-up resembled fairy tales told by old
wives. The Pope was the counterpart of the king of the
fairies. 'The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly
fathers. The fairies are spirits and ghosts. Fairies and ghosts
inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics
walk in obscurity of doctrine, in monasteries, churches and
1
churchyards.' Both fairies and ecclesiastics snatch away
the reason of the young, marry not, and dwell in enchanted
castles. Superstition was inevitable; as most men were ignor-
ant and all were fearful. But the papacy ruthlessly ex-
ploited the fear of ignorant men to perpetuate the power of
unscrupulous priests as a rival to the secular power.
Hobbes left his readers in little doubt about the types of
religious belief which he considered pernicious! He also
made it reasonably clear what beliefs he thought it desirable
for a subject to confess publicly. But his own private beliefs
on these matters were not so readily apparent. Certainly he
held that faith was radically different from knowledge. The
object of both faith and knowledge were propositions. But
the reasons for accepting them were different. In the case of
knowledge we consider the proposition itself and call to
mind what its terms signify. For instance we know that two
plus two make four because we have agreed about how
these symbols are to be used. Truth is a matter of following
out the consequences of our definitions. We are thus enabled
to settle such problems as whether theft is injury or not; for it

depends purely on remembering what we have called 'theft'

and what 'injury'. 2 When, however, our reasons for assent
derive 'not from the proposition itself but from the person
propounding, whom we esteem so learned that he is not de-
ceived, and we see no reason why he should deceive us our ;

assent, because it grows not from any confidence of our own,

but from another man's knowledge, is called faith.' 3 In
matters of faith the method of definition is inappropriate;
1. E.W. Ill, 698. 3- E.W. II, 304-5-
2. E.W. II, 303. See also supra, Ch. II, sect. 4.

261
 HOBBES
only makes those things which exceed human
for explication

capacity more obscure and harder to be credited.

Hobbes held, as we have seen, that the one article of faith
necessary for salvation was that Jesus is the Christ. On
what authority did this belief rest? In De Give he said it was
tantamount to belief in Christ. 'To believe in Christ, there-
fore, nothing else but to believe Jesus himself, saying that
is

he the Christ.' 1 But the Scriptures are our authority for

is

this revelation by Jesus of his Messianic secret. Who, then,

is to be the authority in interpreting the Scriptures? In

Leviathan Hobbes raised this problem and attacked the

claims of the papacy and the testimony of the private spirit
to infallibility in interpreting the word of God. Talk of in-

fallibility is quite out of place in this sphere. For it is obvious

'that Christian men do not know, but only believe the

Scripture to be the word of God.' 2 St Paul said that Taith

cometh by hearing'. 3 And that means hearing our lawful
pastors. It seems therefore that Hobbes thought that ulti-
mately faith that Jesus is the Christ, which was necessary to
salvation, depended on our trust in teachers appointed by
the sovereign who would interpret the Scripture for us.
Charles II or Cromwell must have been flattered by the
- the creation of the
problems referred to them by Hobbes
world, God's attributes, and the proper interpretation of the
Scriptures !

What, then, did Hobbes himself believe ? He went out of

his way to attack atheism and quoted divine authority for

classing atheists as fools in a footnote on the subject of athe-

ism in De Give.* They were to be punished by God and kings
as enemies in a state of nature; for they accepted no laws,
either human or divine. In Leviathan^ too, he gave a rather
Platonic description of atheists who believe that God takes
no interest in the affairs of men. 6 Such men who took from
God the government of the world and man had 'a wretched
6
apprehension of God'. But to be suspected of atheism was

i. E.W. II, 306. 3. Romans, x, 17. 5. E.W. Ill, 344.

a. E.W. Ill, 589. 4. E.W. II, 199. 6. E.W. II, 214.

262
 RELIGION
very dangerous in those days, as Hobbes discovered when he
was sought as a scapegoat for the Great Fire. 1 Nothing much
can be assumed about Hobbes' convictions from the evi-
dence of these explicit attacks. Some might say, in fact, that
he protested too much. Anyway, he obviously thought, like
Spinoza, that atheism was dangerous for those who had not
acquired scientific understanding. The Church helped to
render peaceable those who had not a clear understanding
of the principles of natural justice.
But it was obvious that the existence of God even as
rather a remote and incomprehensible first cause did not
seem as clear and distinct to Hobbes as some of his postu-
lates of natural and civil philosophy. Indeed, he remarked
in the same De Give footnote than the proposition that there
is a God was no more likely to be clear to the understanding

of the vulgar, who were engaged in worldly pursuits, than

was the proportion which the circle had to the square. And
we have already noted the doubts he had about the argu-
ments for a first cause in his De Corpore.
Did Hobbes, then, like Kant, 'abolish knowledge to make
room for belief in the sphere of religion ? But had he him-
selfvery strong beliefs that stood in need of this suspense of
rational criteria ? People who make this move usually have
passionate religious beliefs for which they can find no
rational justification. But could Hobbes have felt very
strongly as a private person about religious issues if he could
cheerfully hand over the attributes of God and the inter-
pretation of the Scriptures to a sovereign? Hobbes might
say at Court or on his way to church that a man must be-
lieve that Jesus was the Christ and that the interpretation of
this must be left to the pastors appointed by the sovereign.
But what did he think in the privacy of his study ? weWhen
read Hobbes' outrageous and impish excursions into Scrip-
tural exegesis we cannot help but feel that his reverence for
theword of God was limited - especially if we consider what
he had to say about divine inspiration and the causes of
superstition.
i. See supra, p. 41.

263
 HOBBES
Probably Hobbes was very confident of his own interpre-
tation of the Scriptures on certain key points - that Jesus'
kingdom did not begin till the Second Corning, that in the
meantime civil obedience was prescribed both by Jesus and
St Paul, that the cardinal article of faith was that Jesus was
the Christ, that Jesus only gave authority to his followers to
teach and preach, and that there never was a divinely in-
stituted spiritual authority independent of or a rival to the
state* Most
of his Scriptural exegesis were directed towards
establishing these points. He probably thought, however,
that a great many beliefs, which were not so politically im-
portant, could be substantiated or refuted by appeal to the
Scriptures. But these could be merely a matter of inner con-
viction; Hobbes probably only had convictions on Scrip-
tural matters that were politically important. He was
patently not a religious man, and though he stated that be-
lief was necessary for salvation, he probably never
in Jesus
felt very deeply about the state of his own soul or anyone
else's. That was a matter of private conviction when shorn

of expressions which might endanger the peace. Certainly

no attempt should be made to enforce details of dogma by
the Inquisition or any other fanatical device for the danger
;

to the peace therein contained was a far more potent con-

sideration than the hypothetical benefit which might accrue
to the soul of the man who knew all the right answers.
Whether Hobbes himself believed in salvation through
Jesus, in the divinity ofJesus, or even in the existence of God
cannot definitely be settled. And, after all, it would be
very difficult to say what believing in such propositions im-
plies.
There were, too, the laws of nature which were God's
commands enjoining the rules necessary to peace. They
were in remarkable conformity with faith in Christ and
obedience to the laws which were all that was necessary to
salvation. Within this universally agreed and socially bene-
ficial framework of conformity private men might indulge
in private speculation and spin out their own idiosyncratic

interpretation of further minutiae of the word of God. What

264.
 RELIGION
Hobbes thought about these matters as he prepared him-
self for sleep after singing from his books of prick-song, only
God and Hobbes knew. But we can safely infer that there
was little consultation on these matters between them.
 INDEX
ABRAHAM, 255, 256 BFI I.ARMINF, Cardinal, 259
Absolutism, 192-4, 195, 201, 207-10, 214, BENTHAM, J., iGo, i6rn.
217, 242 BFRKEIEY, Bishop, 96, 97, 102, 109, 127,

Absurdity, theory of, 119-20, 135-7 128, 159

Accident, 947, 100, 101 RODIN, J 215 ,

names of, 128-35, 136 Body, concept of, 81, 94- 7i 249-50
Acquisition (see Commonwealth) as conti gurus, 889
Action, at a distance, 89, 99 and mind, 83, 101, 117
causes of (see Motivation) and place, 98
function of (see Function) names of, 126-8, 129, 136
reasons for (see Reason) or objectives of Bovi E, R., 38, 41, 42
(set Objectives) BOWLBY, J , 18511.
ADLER, A., 152 BR ACTON, II , 215
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 166 BRAMHALI, Bishop, 37-8, 95, 178, 180,
A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques, 30, 183, 186
31,33 BRANDT, F , 28, agn , sin., gon., 91, 92
Analytic, method, 53-4, 69-71, 73, 75 (see BROWNE, Sir T., 18
also Resolute-compositive method) BUCKINGHAM, Duke of, 20, 238
truths, 55-7, 58, 212 (see also Truth) BURKE, E., 190-1, 210
Angels, 251-2 BURTT, E. A., 72n.
Apparition, the wonderof, 80, 83-5, 102 BUTLER, Bishop, 154-8, 159
Appetite and aversion, 92, 93, 139-43,
146, 155
AQUINAS, T, 115, 119 CALVIN, J., 24
Arbitrariness, of authority, 208-9, 239 Causation, as motion, 73, 88-91
of institutions, 197-8,200 Causes, efficient, 73, 81, 90, 142, 144,
of speech, 123, 124 US, 147, 157-9, 183

ARCHIMEDES, 67 final, 90, 142 (see also End)

ARISTARCHUS, 72 first, 246, 263

Aristocracy, 237
and reason*?, 161, 176-8, 183

Aristotelianism, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,

and scientific knowledge, 65-73, 182
of political obligation, 207-10
25-6, 48, 54, 66, 81, 90, 115, 119, 122,
of religion, 242-5
126, 128, 129, 146
ARISTOTLE, 47, 95, 113, 115, 116, 119, 120, CAVENDISH, Sir W., Earl of Devonshire,
121, 144, 148, 197, 226, 260 5
Attention, explanation of, 105 Certainty, quest for, 49, 109
CHARLES I, 20, 26, 27, 34, 36, 65
AUBREY, J., 13, 14, 15, iG, 18, 19, 21, 28,
CHARLES II, 11,31, 35, 37,41,42, 46, 208,
31,41,42,43
Authority, basis of, 201, 211-12, 213, 242, 262

215-17, 225
Church, definition of, 255
and state, 34-5, 255-60
208-9
arbitrariness of,
and power, 218-19, 226-7 CICERO, 119
and sovereignty, 218-19, 223 Circle, definition of, 51, 64, 87

types of, 198-200 squaring of, 39-40, 263

Civil philosophy (set Philosophy)

BACON, Sir F., 15-19, 24, 39, 42, 47, 81, CLARENDON, Earl of (see HYDE), 35, 36
136 ^Class-inclusion (see Comprehension)
Behemoth, 30, 42, 64 CLEON, so

267
 INDEX
CLINTON, Sir G., 21 Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student
COKE, Sir E., 20, 34, 42, 217, 222, 229, of the Common Laws of England, 42, 229
233 Dispositions, 146-7
Common Law (see Law) Divine Right of Kings, 33, 36, 37, 211,
Common-sense, 97, 147, 156-7, 158-9, 230
179, 188 DODD, C. H 254n. ,

Commonwealth, by acquisition, 210 DRAKE, Sir F. 14, 85 t

analysis of, 205-6, 212-14, 215, 218, Dreams, theoiy of, 116-18
223-4, 22 s
) Drives, 140
types 236-9 (see also State)
of,

Comprehension, relation of, 129-32

Conatus (see Endeavour) EINSTEIN, A., 45
Elements of Law, 27, 29, 33, 36, 91, 106,
Conceptions, 62, 93, 127, 134-3
Consent, government by, 199, 200, 208, no, 116
212, 213 ELIOT, Sir J., 20
Contract, theory of speech, Go, 123, 125 ELIZABETH I, 193, 217
Ei LESMERE, Lord, 230
theory of society, 194-210, 211, 212-13,
225 Endeavour (or Conatus), 83, 91-3, 95, 99,
COPERNICUS, 25, 26, 49, 72 101, 138, 141, 146, 149

Copula, function of, 130-1, 136 (see also End, of action, 141-2, 156, 157
Existence) Equity, Court of, 230, 233
COSIN, Dr, 32 as law of nature, 231-2, 233, 234

COWLEY, A., 37 Error, 62

CROMWELL, O., 33, 36, 40, 46, 208, 241, ESDRAS, 249, 267
262 Essences, 120, 121, 127, 130-1 (set also

Curiosity, 93, 242-3 Umversals)

Custom, 165, 231, 233, 234 Eternal life, 253-5
EUCLID, 20, 87
EURIPIDES, 14, 253
DAVENANT, Sir W., 37 Evidence, theory of, 61-3, 175
DARWIN, C., 115 Existence, and function of copula, 12931,
DeCive, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 57, 74, 160, 202, 245
236, 261, 263 Experience, and knowledge, 50-1
De Corpore, 30, 31, 39, 48, 68, 70, 72, 75, Experiment, and knowledge, 50-1
80, 81, 86, 91, 93, 94, 96, 100, no, tia, imaginary or ideal, 667, 69, 75, 9 I,

123, 131, 146, 246, 263 202, 213, 228, 232

De Corpore Politico, 27, 29, 33 Extension, 54, 61, 95, 0^, 8, loo, 107,
Definitions, 17, 53-61, 121, 175, 223-4, 129, 130, 131, 132
225, 261
De Homine, 40, 93
Deliberation, 93, 115-16, 142-3, 178, 180, Faith, 259, 260
181, 182-3 and knowledge, 260- 5
Democracy, 20, 21, 228, 237-9 FALKLAND, Lord, 27
DESCARTES, R., 18, 22, 25, 28-9, 40, 47, Falsehood, 62-3
49, 50, 56, 57, 61, 77, 81,91, 96, 9V, 109, Fear of death, 75, 76, 149, 153, 164, 168,
118, 135, i4on., 174 169, 172, 173, 176, 179. 204, 207, 243
Desire, 115, 138,146, 147 (see also Appetite Figure, 95, 96
and Passions) Fox, G., 241
for power (see POWER) FLEW, A., I02n.
Determinism, 178-89 Free-will, 178-89
DEVONSHIRE, Earls of, 15, 22, 27, 37 FREUD, S., 45, 115, 142, 147, 159, 185,244
Countess of, 2 1 Function, of action, 144, 145, 147, 57~9

268
 INDEX
GALEN, i4on. Inertia, law of, 25, 90, 1 1 1

GALILEO, G., 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, 42, 63, 66, Inevitability (see Unavoidabihty)
68, 72, 73, 74, 80, go, 96, 167, 170, 192, Infallibility, 262
201, 213 Injustice, 75, 219
GASSENDI, P., 22, 31, 36, 72 Inspiration, 2^2
Geometry, Ilobbrs' discovery of, 21 Institution, I9<>, 206, 211, 212-13
method of, 21, 25, 48-63, 213, 215, 223
and civil philosophy, 74, 213, 215, 223,
JAMES I, 20, 34, 217, 230
225 JFSUS CHRIST, 60, 247, 248, 251, 252, 254,
and motion, 87-8, 100
256, 257, 259, 261, 263, 264
and space, 72
JOB, 246
Ghosts, concept of, 251 Justice, 203, 232
explanation of, 117-18 natural, 76, 160, 172, 234
God, definition of, 95
existence of, 245-6, 264
KANT, I., 45, 55, 56, 189, 263
kingdom of, 255-60
nature KEPLER, J., 14, 15, 16, 72
of, 245-7
Gods, nature
Kingdom of God, (see God)
of, 243
Knowledge, historical, 6^-5
Goodness, analysis of, 161-5.
scientific or philosophical, 52-72
GROTIUS, H., 167-8
and faith, 260-5
as power, 16-17, 22, 46

Habit, 93, 146-7

HAMPDKN, J., 216, 237
Language, Bacon and Hobbes on, 17
Happiness, 141-2
(see Speech)
HARVEY, Sir W., 16, 37, 42, 72, 74, Hon., LA TIMER, R., 14
170 150
Laughter, explanation of,
HENRY VII, 193
Law, analysis of, 202, 229, 234-5
HENRY VIII, 228
canon, 257-8
HERACLEITUS, 121 Common, 213, 216-17, 223, 225, 229-34,
HERBERT, E., 19 235
HERVEY, H., 23n., 2811.
fundamental, 199, 217
History, 50-51, 64-5 as command, 22836
34, 126,
Honour, 149, 151 and liberty, 220-2
HULL, G., I4on and obedience, 209-10
Human Nature, 27, 33, 61 and punishment, 187-8
HUME, D., 55, 56, 102, 109, 1 13, 1 15, 124, and reason, 230, 231-3
161, 173, 179, 196, 210 and sovereignty, 225-6, 235
HUMPHREYS, G., i35n. Laws of Nature, 169-70, 172, 173-6, 183,
HYDE, E., Earl of Clarendon, 27, 35 204-5, 232, 235, 245, 264
Hypothetical truths, 64 LEIBNIZ, G., 45, 55, 72, 101
Levellers, 33
Leviathan, 32, 33-7, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 52,
Ideas, abstract, 127-8 57, 76, 106, in, 172, 187, 191,203,229,
association of, 114-15 231, 241, 245, 255, 260, 261
Ideo-motor theory, 84, 105, 157, 158, 177 Liberty, 94, 178-9, 180, 193, 200, 201,
Imagination, theory of, 1 1 1-18 202-3, 219-22, 239, 242, 253
Impartiality, 174-5 Little Treatise, 22-3, 80, 86, 89, 97
Impetus, 91 LIVY, 52, 197
Individual differences, theory of, 150-1 LOCKE, J., 97, 102, 109, no, 127, 179,
Individualism, rise of, 191-4, 195, 201, 208-9, 221, 224, 239
240 LUTHFR, M., 24, 240

26Q
 INDEX
MACHIAVELLI, N., 47, 52, 192, 197, 241 Natural law, 165-73 ( see Laws of
MAGELLAN, F., 14, 85 Nature)
MAINE, Sir II., 22gn. \iNature, laws of (see Laws of Nature)
Martyrs, 260 state of, 1 68, 202
MARX, K., 45, 78 Necessitation (see Determinism)
MclLWAiN, G. H., 21611., 22gn. NEWCASTLE, Marquis of, 30, 31, 37, 178
Meaning, theory of, 62-3, 134-5, 137 NEWTON, Sir I., 25, 56, 77
Mechanical explanation, 82, 83, 86, 88, Nominalism, 126-37 ( see k Names)
93, 134 (see also Motion)
Medium, theory of, 29, 89, 91 Objectives, of action, 142, 144, 145, 146,
149, 157-9 ( set a ?so Reasons for Action)
Memory, 112-13
MERSENNE, Abbe M , 22, 27, 28, 30, 31, Obligation, contractual, 196, 200

32, 72, 174 natural, 169, 171, 235 (ste also Laws of

MERTON, R. K., 3gn. Nature)

Metaphysics, 80-2, 94, 97, too, 108, political, 204, 207-10, 221, 235
130-1, 135-6, 184 Of Liberty and Necessity, 178
Method, scientific or philosophical, 45-79 One in the many, 121, 122
belief in, 46-8 (see also Analytic, Syn-
Pastors, 258-9
thetic, and Resoluto-compositive)
Passions, definition of, 93
MILTON, J., 29, 34, 217
theory 143-53
of,
Miracles, 248, 252-3
Patnarchahsm, 198, 21 1
Monarchy, 205, 214, 237-9
PAVLOV, I, 185
Morality, 165-78, 234
PEISISTRATUS, 20
Moral philosophy Philosophy)
(see
PEPYS, S., 198
judgements, 158-9, 188
Perception, problem of, 82-3
MOSES, 249, 253, 256
representative theory of, 99, 102, 107-9,
Motion, definition of, 54, 61
metaphysics of, 81, 86-94, IO i
I 4^,
PERICLES, 20

science of, 22-3, 72, 97 249

PETTY, Sir W., 18,39
Phantasms, status of, 83, 91, 96, 99, 1 10
as abstract name, 129, 131, 132
as primary quality, 96, 107
PHILOLAOS, 72
Philosophy, method of, 45-79
and causation, 689
problems of, 80, 82, 101, 102
and law of inertia, 25-6, 192
and the mind, 83, 85, 99, 114, 139 civil, 71, 74-6, 78, 100
moral, 74, 173. 74. 77
Motions, animal, 92-3, 138-9
natural (see Knowledge, scientific or
minute, 91-2, 93, 101 (see also Endea-
philosophical)
vour)
Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Govern-
vital, 92, 94, 138-9, 141
ment and Society, 33 (see De Cwe)
Motivation, theory of, 138-59, 160, 177
Motives, 145, 154
Physics, 73, 88, no, 160
and morality, 160-189 PLATO, 45, 48, 49, 50, 76, 121, 163, 191.
226, 234, 238
Pleasure, and pain, 92, 93. 138-9, 148
Names, theory of, 126-37 153. '57, 160
reference of, 102, 134 Pleasures, sensual and mental, 139, 148,
abstract, 127, 129-32 155. 157
concrete, 127, 129, 131 POPPER, K. R., sgn., i75n.
proper, 127, 128, 133 Power, analysis of, 146, 149, ai8, 226, 237
of names, 127, 132, 133 (see also Uni- (see also Dispositions)
versals) desire for, 65, 76, 93-4, 148-9. i5*-a

Naturalism, 177 (see also Prescriptions) 153, 168, 171, 172, 176

27O
 INDEX
Predestination, 184 RICHELIEU, Cardinal, 27
Prerogative, 199, 215 Rights, analysis of, 202-3
Presbyterians, 30 Common Law, 216, 219, 223, 224

Prescriptions, relation to descriptions, hereditary, 211

162-4, 170-3, 235-6 of Nature, 202-4, 219-20
Pride (see Desire for Power) to resist, 34, 203-4, 220
Prophets, 259 Roman Catholics, 14, 30, 31, 32, 3% 38,

Propositions, definition of, 129 45, 120, 122, 241, 242, 258-9, 260-1

necessary and contingent, 56 Royal Society, 16, 38, 39, 41-2, 240
primary, 53-4, 61
and religious beliefs, 261, 264
Safety (set Security)
PROTAGORAS, 48
St Paul, 257, 261,264
Prudence, 51, 62, 84, 99, 1 15
Salvation, 259-60, 261, 264
Psycho-analysis, 186
SAVILE, Sir H., 38
Psychological hedonism, I53~9> *74> "77.
1 88 Scriptures, authority of, 248-9, 261
concepts of, 249-55
Punishment, 186-8
interpretation of, 254, 255, 257-8, 263,
Puritans, 14, 30, 35, 38, 39
264
PYM, J., 20, 26, 237
Security, 192-3, 201, 208, 210, 214, 22 i,
Pythagoreans, 48, 49
224
SELDEN, J., 37
Qualities, primary and secondary, 96^ Selectivity, explanation of, 104-5
97, 100, 103, 106-10 Self-interest, 64-5, 150, 154-8, 171,

Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and 173-6, 209

Chance ,37, 178 Sensation, Hobbes' interest in, 23-5, 8o~a,
102-3
cause of, 80, 82-6, 102, 107
RAINBOROUOH, T., 241 mechanical theory of, 103 10
RANDALL, J. H., 670 Sense, and meaning of terms, 62-3
Rationality, 164-5, 166, 173-6 and reason, 50
Reason, definition of, 52 and science, 57, 63, 66, 84-5, 99
and law, 230, 231-3 Sensible qualities, and physics, 73-4 (stt
and religion, 244, 245-7 also Qualities)
and sense, 50 Second Coming, 256-7, 260, 264
and scientific knowledge, 52-63 Signs, natural, 124
and speech, 124-5 arbitrary, 124
Reasons, for action, 161, 176-8, 183 (set SOCRATES, 121, 166
*
also Objectives)
SORBI&RE, S., 18, 32, 36
for political obligation, 207-10 Sovereignty, 33, 204, 207, 217-28, 230
and rationalizations, 176, 189 23*239
Recognition, explanation of, 104 Space, 97-100, 101
Religion, Hobbes' attitude to, 29-30, Speech, arbitrariness of, 123, 134
240-2,262-5 causal theory of, 123-5, *34 *6i
causes of, 242-5 nature and uses of, 123-6
grounds of religious beliefs, 244-9 SPINOZA, B., 38, 47, 49, 184, 254, 263
'true religion/ 244
Spirit, concept of, 250-1
Representation, 212-3 Spirits, animal, 139-40
Resolute-compositive method, 67-9, 72, State, construction of, 71, 94
132, 168-9, 170, 194. 201, 207, 813-4 nature of, 190-4, 205-6, 212-13 (see als+
(set also Analytic method) Commonwealth)
Revelation, 247-8 Stoics, 165-6, 173

271
 INDEX
STRAFFORD, Larl of, 27, 29 Universities, 1 4., 38, 39
Substance, 94 Unpredictability, 182-3
incorporeal, 95 Utilitarianism, 187
Superstition, 244, 245
Synthetic method, 53, 69, 70
truths, 55-7, 58 VERRALL, A. W., 253n

XHALES, 121 \\r . nn

WA,, B J s. W.4o...88, ,73
Theology, ,79
m WARD, S., 38, 'uj, 42
TH ES ,-.,. , . .3. 4. A
n
3., 77
w M ^
Tune, 98-9, 100, 101 ... _
-, T- WEBSTFR, J., 39
IOLMAN, E i40n. _
_ '

o
, lf
WmrFHEAD,
* T
A. N.,8i
Tractatus Otticus, 89, 91
_. ,
_ , _ WlIDMAN,
_..
J 241 ,

Tradition, 47, ^, 196,

-*/, 165, ^ 198 9,
^ 201, sir, T

212
rf/'-i
WILKINS, J 38, 42 ,

^
Trams,

r
, rue
r i
of thought,
Traits, of character, 146, 147
,
Truth, theory
,
55-63
r
of,
i
u 3- 1
^
6
Will, 93,

...
'

^'
Deliberation,
mmism)
.
.
*
142-3, 178, '
1

Free-will,
80,
...
181
and
,
(ste also
_,
Dcter-

Wisdom, 51
by convention, 5 > -6 1, 175
"' '
'
elf-cvidence theory of, 61-3, 76, 77, 154,
V\ui7burg School, of psychologists, 135

in religion, 244, 261-2

YOUNG, P. T., i4on

Unavoidabihty, 156, 184-6
Universals, theory of, 120-3, 127-34 (st
also Names) ZARABFLLA, G., 67, 7on.