with hope of avoiding hurt by resistance, is Courage." "Sudden courage, Anger." "Contempt of little helps and hindrances, Magnanimity." Aversion, with opinion of hurt from the object, Feare." "Feare of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publiquely allowed, Religion; not allowed, Superstition. And when the power imagined is truly such as we imagine, True Religion." We may admire this ingenious reduction of Maguanimity to Contempt, and Religion to Aversion, which if it be "truly such" is "true," and compare what follows with his preceding definitions of "glory" and "laughter." "Grief from opinion of want of power is called Dejection;"" sudden dejection is the passion that causeth weeping, and is caused by such accidents. as suddenly take away some vehement hope." "Therefore some weep for the sudden stop made to their thoughts of revenge by reconciliation ;"* "Grief for the discovery of some defect of ability is Shame;" the "contempt of good reputation is called Impudence;" "grief for the calamity of another is called Pity, and ariseth from the imagination that the like calamity may befall himself; and therefore is also called Compassion, and, in the phrase of this present time, a Fellow-feeling." "Grief for the success of a competitor is Emulation." Having thus reduced religion, courage, emulation, sorrow, shame, and compassion, to Aversion, i.e. also to motion, Hobbes goes on in the next chapter to lower Conscience and Faith. "When two or more know of one and the same fact, they are said to be conscious of it, which is as much as to know it

on

* The definitions given here are deliberately revised and repeated from his work on "Human Nature." There he says of Reconciliation, "Men are apt to weep that prosecute revenge, when the revenge is suddenly stopped or frustrated by the repentance of their adversary; and such are the tears of reconciliation."

In his "Human Nature," he says, that in bebolding the danger of a ship in a tempest, though there is pity which is grief, yet "the delight in our own security is so far predominaut, that men are usually content in such a case to be spectators of the misery of their friends;" and again, speaking of" a passion, sometimes called lave, but more properly good. will, or charity," he says, "The affection wherewith men many times bestow their benefits on strangers is not to be called charity, but either contract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship, or fear, which makes them to purchase peace." Perhaps the best refutation of this preposterous attempt to reduce all our feelings and actions to the desire of power is to be found in Bishop Butler's First Sermon on Human Nature, where he remarks," Is there not often the appearance of a man's wishing that good to another which he knows himself uuable to procure him; and rejoicing in it when bestowed by a third person? And can love of power any-way possibly come into account for this desire or delight? Is there not often the appearance of men's distinguishing between two or more persons, preferring one before the other to do good to, where love of power cannot in the least account for the distinction and preference." All three sermons, as well as the very able preface to them, are directed against Hobbes.

against his conscience." Proceeding onwards, after a short but interesting dissertation, in which he advances a most ingenious and original theory of poetry, namely, that "it pleases for its extravagancy," he asserts the natural equality of all men, maintaining that they are only made different by their passions, all of which passions he reduces to "the more or less desire of power." In this part of his work, Hobbes again anticipates a celebrated modern, Sir Robert Walpole, in his wellknown theory, that every man has his price," The value or worth of man is, as of all other things, his price, that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power," and "to value a man at a high rate is to honour him." "Civil obedience proceeds from love of ease, or from fear of death;" "love of virtue from love of praise ;" "hate from difficulty of requiting benefits, and from conscience of deserving to be hated;" "confidence and friendship from ignorance."

In this manner, by means of his grand assumption, Hobbes has succeeded in reducing all our moral feelings, passions, and appetites together. And because such are fittest witnesses of the facts of one another, it was and ever will be a very evil act for a man to speak to Motion; making reverence, love, benevolence, admiration, and hope, to proceed from Appetite, or motion towards an object; sorrow, shame, pity, and anger from Aversion, or motion from an object. All notion of any absolute Good or Evil, Truth or Falsehood, Right or Wrong, he utterly repudiates. At this point we see him gradually ceasing to enlarge on his Moral Theory, and proceeding to raise upon it the superstructure of his Political System. Hobbes's Political Theory may be briefly stated as follows. All men are by nature equal, and all are alike actuated by one restless ruling passion, the love of power; and thus it comes to pass that man's natural equality produces an universal competition and an universal diffidence. The consequence of this diffidence (as he calls it) is war; and thus he supposes that in the earliest stages of society all men would be in a perpetual state of warfare," and such a warre as is of every man against every man." It is of course evident that such a state of things could not last long; still, as Hobbes remarks, “The nature of warre consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto;" and from this known warlike disposition arises a state of univeral mistrust and suspicion, which lasts as long as anarchy remains. But, as Hobbes says, "Feare and desire incline men to peace; and reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace upon which men may be brought to agreement. These articles are those which are otherwise called the lawes of nature." He thus affirms a sense of right to spring from laws, instead of laws from a sense of

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right, making the effect prior to the cause. He next proceeds to state what these laws of nature are, deriving them all from his two principlesthat naturally every man has a right to every thing, and that all good proceeds from fear, glory, or pride. It is curious to observe how the extravagant nominalism which he had adopted from Ockham leads him to confuse between men and things, positive and moral law; and how in almost every sentence he is obliged to use words such as ought," "should," right," "wrong," and others which imply that innate moral obligation which he is so eager to disprove. "The science of these laws of nature" Hobbes concludes to be "the true and only moral philosophy." But to put these laws into execution there must be some personal authority. The plurality of wills must become a unity of will by the multitude resolving their several wills into the absolute will of one individual person, or a collective assembly of persons considered as one body; and as the more perfect this unity is the better, Hobbes becomes an advocate for unlimited monarchy, as being the most natural form of government, " as if every man should say to every man I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him and authorise all his actious in like manner. This done the multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth, in Latin civitas. * This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently!) of that mortal God to whom we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence." This last sentence is curious, as explanatory of the frontispiece of the book, which represents the great "Leviathan," in the shape of a giant despot, rising with his sword and sceptre in all the perfection of beauty and power from amidst a sea of men and towns, like a second Venus from the ocean.

Hobbes next goes on to state that the person in power has an absolute right to that power. Since, according to him, the monarch de facto is the monarch de jure, and having unlimited power over his subjects, it

* Hobbes's account of the origin of a state is this:-Man and woman meeting together for purposes of natural lust form an oxía or family. A congregation of such families form 2 κώμη or town. Laws are drawn up for mutual advantage, and thus arises the woλes or state; and from these laws come the feelings of right and property, duty, loyalty, and filial obedience. Very different is the reasoning of Aristotle. He (Polit. Lib. 1,) shows that the δικία met together χρήσεως ἕνεκεν μὴ ἐφημέρου, and beasts only χρήσεως ἕνεκεν ἐφημέρου, and that the πολιs was a congregation of these οικίαι in the improved form of KÉμαι àνтaρKÉιas évekeV. Cf. also Coleridge (" Church and State," chap. 1,) who maintains that as the idea of the perfect is always prior to the idea of the imperfect, and the idea of the end precedes the conception of the means, the idea of unity that of duality, and the idea of genus that of species, so the idea of the state is prior to the idea of man, as it is the TEλos or perfection of his humanity, the full developement of his manhood.

follows that for him there is neither right nor wrong, for the idea of right he has already assumed to proceed from the idea of law, and for the absolute despot there can be no law,-"the king can do no wrong."

Such is Hobbes's political theory. Actuated as man is by that desire of power (which he affirms to be the ruling principle of humanity), his first most natural state is a state of constant warfare, or if not of war, of mutual mistrust and suspicion. Fear and desire, however, inclining men to peace, laws spring up; and as for the execution of these laws some personal authority is necessary, the multitude agree to resolve their wills into the absolute will of one individual person, or a collective assembly of persons. Hence (thus do extremes meet) absolute Despotism is the best and most natural mode of government, and next to that, Republicanism. The feelings of right and wrong* spring up afterwards from the constitution of laws, and are nothing more than a sense of conformity to, or transgression from, the will of the majority. The result he comes to is, that the subject owes allegiance to the monarch only so long as the latter is able to protect him. This result he expresses in the following language:-"To resist the sword of the Commonwealth, in defence of another guilty or innocent man, no man hath liberty, because such liberty takes away from the commonwealth the means of protecting us; and is, therefore, destructive of the very essence of government. But in case a great many men have already resisted the sovereign power unjustly, or committed some capital crime for which every one of them expecteth death, whether they have not the liberty then to join together, and assist to defend one another? Certainly they have; for they but defend their lives, which the guilty man may do as well as the innocent. There was, indeed, injustice in the first breach of their duty. Their bearing of arms subsequent to it, though it be to maintain what they have done, is no new unjust act.” And having educed so much from his principle of force and fear, being the basis of all institutions, he proceeds, "Since the . . . . . end or design of men. . . . . in the introduction of restraint upon themselves . . . . . is the foresight of their own preservation,

the obligation of the sovereign is understood to last so long, and no longer than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them." From these passages alone we might have inferred what Hobbes himself told Clarendon, that he had a mind to go home and transfer his allegiance to Cromwell.

It is by no means to the credit of literature that a scholar-a man

He makes the idea of wrong to precede that of right.

of learning and ability-the friend of Selden, Harvey, and Cowley*— could maintain, and not only maintain, but with an Englishman's earnestness and sincerity, require others to believe this view of humanity to be the true one,-could advocate a doctrine which reduces everything to locomotion; which makes Appetite the great "primum mobile," and supposes men to be a set of steam-engines, running against each other with a mutual implacable hatred, and only restrained by the intervention of a set of provisional tram-roads, formed so as to allow to each the greatest possible latitude, and the creation of a despotic Leviathan, or engineer, with an unlimited irresponsible power over all, to see that each keeps to his own line.

And now that we have briefly analysed the moral and political philosophy of Hobbes, and shown but little charity to his principles, let us manifest some for the man. There is, as I have shown, much to admire in his character; and there is also much to account for his adoption of those pernicious principles which he so ably promulgated, and was the first to bring into fashion. It has been said, with a certain degree of truth, that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists, Nominalists or Realists; and Hobbes was by nature a Nominalist.f Thus the very constitution of his mind, and his natural tone of thought, would of themselves incline to the sensualistic school of philosophers. Moreover, Hobbes lived and wrote in times of civil war, when the bad passions, to which he attributes so much, are most prominently and distinctly brought forward. That Hobbes had meditated much and deeply upon the nature and consequences of these passions, is likely enough from his constant study of Thucydides, (one of his few favourite authors)—a study which enabled him to perceive that the working of the same passions and feelings in his own times, were silently paving the way for troubles similar to those of which the Athenian historian wrote. Moreover, Hobbes was a late learner and self-taught, both of which, in some measure, account for the dogmatical character of his writings. Indeed, the sincerity and downright heartiness with which he brings forward and urges his one idea, bending all else to it, and the thorough contempt which he entertains for all other

Hobbes was also intimate with Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes, and others.

+ Hobbes studied the logic of the Nominalists, when at Oxford. See Ritter's " Geschichte der Neuern Philosophie," vol. ii. p. 453. Hobbes may also have been partially influenced by one side of Bacon's writings; for the most dangerous errors are those which are the shadows "and ghosts of truth," caricatures of some great truth, partial truth, lying at the bottom of every widely-spread error, otherwise it could never become widely spread; and Hobbes had none of that true science, which Novalis beautifully defines to be "a voiceless knowledge of what is knowledge," to guide him.