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Thomas Hobbes - Alfred Edward Taylor · Philosophy Library

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Speaker 1: Prefaratory note of Thomas Hobbes. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Thomas
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Speaker 1: Hobbes by Alfred Edward Taylor. Prefatory note. This brief sketch
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Speaker 1: has throughout been written directly from the original text of
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Speaker 1: Hobbes himself and his contemporary biographers, though use has of
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Speaker 1: course been made, especially in the first chapter of the
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Speaker 1: Labors of such modern students as Professor Groom Robertson, Professor F. Tony's,
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Speaker 1: and Sir Leslie Stephen. The verbal quotations from Hobbes's works
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Speaker 1: are given from the following editions. One Elements of Philosophy
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Speaker 1: concerning Body London, sixteen fifty six, two Human Nature and
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Speaker 1: a Corporate A Politico from the third edition of Hobbs's
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Speaker 1: Tripose London, eighteen sixty four. Three Leviathan from the reprint
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Speaker 1: of the first edition in the series of Cambridge English
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Speaker 1: Class six nineteen o four, which has been carefully compared
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Speaker 1: with my own copy of the edition of sixteen fifty one,
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Speaker 1: apparently one of the inferior issue. The spelling of these
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Speaker 1: editions has been preserved, but the punctuation modified in accord
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Speaker 1: with present day usage. Allusions to the Latin text of
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Speaker 1: one and three are based on the edition of Hobbs's
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Speaker 1: Opera Philasophica, published by blay Oh of Amsterdam in sixteen
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Speaker 1: sixty eight. A. E. Taylor end of preparatory Note, Chapter
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Speaker 1: One of Thomas Hobbes by Alfred at Taylor. This LibriVox
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Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Life The Long Life
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Speaker 1: of Thomas Hobbes covers almost the whole of the most
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Speaker 1: critical period alike in the growth of modern science and
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Speaker 1: in the development of the British Constitution, born in the
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Speaker 1: year of the Armada. Hobbes did not die until nine
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Speaker 1: years before the Great Revolution, which finally determined the question
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Speaker 1: whether the British Island should be ruled constitutionally or absolutely.
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Speaker 1: He lived through the Stewart attempt to convert England into
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Speaker 1: an absolute monarchy, the Puritan Revolution and Great Civil War,
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Speaker 1: the political and ecclesiastical experiments of the Long Parliament and
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Speaker 1: of Cromwell, the restoration of the exiled line, and the
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Speaker 1: beginnings of modern phigism and nonconformity. Still more remarkable were
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Speaker 1: the changes which came over the face of science during
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Speaker 1: the same period. When Hobbs entered the university as a
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Speaker 1: lad the sham Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages was still
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Speaker 1: officially taught in its lecture rooms. Before he died, mechanical
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Speaker 1: science had been placed on a secure footing by Kepto,
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Speaker 1: Galileo and Descartes. The foundations of the scientific study of
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Speaker 1: physiology and magnetism had been laid by Harvey and Gilbert.
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Speaker 1: The Royal Society for Experimental Research into Nature had been
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Speaker 1: incorporated for more than a generation. Analytical geometry had been
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Speaker 1: created by Descartes and the calculus Leibniz in Newton, while
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Speaker 1: it was only eight years after his death that the
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Speaker 1: final exposition of the new mechanical conception of the universe
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Speaker 1: was given by Newton's Principia. It is only natural that
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Speaker 1: a philosopher who was also a keen observer of men
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Speaker 1: and affairs, living through such a period of crisis, should
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Speaker 1: have made the most daring of all attempts to base
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Speaker 1: the whole of knowledge on the principles of mechanical materialism,
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Speaker 1: and should also have become the creator of a purely
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Speaker 1: naturalistic theory of ethics and sociology. Thomas Hobbes, the second
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Speaker 1: son of the Vicar of Westport, now included in the
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Speaker 1: town of Malmsbury in Wiltshire, was prematurely born on Good Friday,
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Speaker 1: April five, fifteen eighty eight. His own theory was that
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Speaker 1: both his premature birth and his constitutional timidity were consequences
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Speaker 1: of his mother's alarm at the impending approach of the
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Speaker 1: Great Armada. The father, one of the ignorant Sir Johns
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Speaker 1: of Elizabeth's time, fell into trouble by assaulting a rival
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Speaker 1: cleric at the church door, and was obliged to go
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Speaker 1: into hiding, but the boy's education was cared for by
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Speaker 1: a maternal uncle, who was a flourishing glover and alderman
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Speaker 1: of Malmsbury. After a period of preliminary schooling at Malmsbury
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Speaker 1: in Westport, where he learned enough of the classical languages
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Speaker 1: to translate Euripides Medea into Latin Verse, at the age
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Speaker 1: of fourteen, the lad was sent to Oxford, where he
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Speaker 1: was entered at Maudlin Hall, then an important center of Puritanism.
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Speaker 1: It was a time of general relaxation of university discipline,
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Speaker 1: and the acrimonious attacks made by Hobbes in later life
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Speaker 1: on the English universities as haunts of debauchers, hot beds
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Speaker 1: of disloyalty in places where the elements of mathematics and
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Speaker 1: physics were unknown, must have been chiefly based on his
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Speaker 1: undergraduate experiences. He tells us himself of the contempt he
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Speaker 1: conceived for the traditional scholastic logic and physics expounded by
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Speaker 1: his tutors, and of the joy he felt in escaping
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Speaker 1: from their lectures to the bookshops, where he could pour
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Speaker 1: over books of travel and maps, and follow in imagination
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Speaker 1: the voyages of the great Elizabethan buccaneers. This rather unprofitable
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Speaker 1: period of university life ended after five years, when Hobbs
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Speaker 1: graduated Bachelor of Arts on February five, sixteen o seven
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Speaker 1: or eight. Immediately afterwards he formed what was to prove
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Speaker 1: a lifelong and honorable connection with the rising family of Cavendish.
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Speaker 1: William Cavendish baron Hardwick afterwards Earl of Devonshire, second son
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Speaker 1: by her second marriage of the famous Bess of Hardwick,
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Speaker 1: being anxious to find a suitable companion and tutor for
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Speaker 1: his eldest son, offered the post to Hobbes on the
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Speaker 1: recommendation of the then President of Martlin Hall. By all accounts,
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Speaker 1: Hobbes's actual services seemed to have been those of companion
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Speaker 1: rather than tutor. Young mister Cavendish was a decided spendthrift,
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Speaker 1: and it became Hobbes's function to assist him in raising
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Speaker 1: frequent loans. Studies were freely neglected, and Hobbes himself almost
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Speaker 1: forgot as Latin. Fortunately, in sixteen ten, the two young
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Speaker 1: men were sent to make the Grand Tour of the continent,
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Speaker 1: and traveled together over a great part of France, Germany
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Speaker 1: and Italy. As yet, Hobbes appears to have been untouched
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Speaker 1: by the new scientific movement, though it was only in
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Speaker 1: the preceding year that Kepler had published the first two
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Speaker 1: of his famous laws, and Galileo was at the very
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Speaker 1: height of his glory owing to his recent discovery of
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Speaker 1: the satellites of Jupiter. The main effect of the journey
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Speaker 1: was to revive Hobbs's interest in his neglected literary studies,
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Speaker 1: and to send him home with a fixed determination to
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Speaker 1: make himself a thorough scholar. The resolve was executed so
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Speaker 1: successfully that Hobbes not merely became one of the most
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Speaker 1: vigorous and luminous of English writers, but learned to handle Latin,
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Speaker 1: still the general language of the learned world, with rare
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Speaker 1: force and fluency. The first fruits of this renewed interest
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Speaker 1: in learning was an English translation of Thucydides, published in
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Speaker 1: sixteen twenty eight nine, for the purpose, as Hobbes said
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Speaker 1: at the time, of educating his readers in the true
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Speaker 1: principles of statesmanship. Afterwards, when his absolutist political theories have
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Speaker 1: been fully developed, he wished it to be believed that
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Speaker 1: his real object had been to warn Englishmen against the
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Speaker 1: dangers of democracy by showing them how much wiser a
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Speaker 1: single great statesman is than a multitude. From Hobbes's Admira
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Speaker 1: John Aubrey, we learned something about the circles in which
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Speaker 1: he was moving at this time of his life. Foremost
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Speaker 1: among his friends Dans Francis Bacon, who loved to converse
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Speaker 1: with him and employed him on the translation of some
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Speaker 1: of the famous essays, notably that on the True Greatness
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Speaker 1: of Kingdoms and Estates into Latin. This connection can be
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Speaker 1: shown to belong to the year sixteen twenty one through six,
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Speaker 1: when Bacon, after his political disgrace was devoting himself entirely
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Speaker 1: to scientific work in his retreat at gorham Berry. The
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Speaker 1: influence of Bacon, however, has left no trace on Hobbes's
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Speaker 1: own matured thought. He barely mentions the Chancellor in his writings,
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Speaker 1: and has no place for Baconian induction in his own
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Speaker 1: conception of scientific method. Bacon's zeal for experiment, the redeeming
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Speaker 1: feature in an otherwise chaotic scheme of thought, is entirely
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Speaker 1: alien to the essentially deductive and systematic spirit of the
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Speaker 1: hobby and philosophy. Other friends of this spirit were Ben Johnson,
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Speaker 1: the reigning literary dictator of London, Edward Herbert Baron Chairberry,
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Speaker 1: the first of the English Deists, the antagonist against whom
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Speaker 1: Locke's attack on innate ideas was afterwards to be directed,
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Speaker 1: and the now forgotten Scottish poet Sir Robert Ayden. In
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Speaker 1: sixteen twenty eight, Hobbes's ex pupil died after a two
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Speaker 1: years tenure of the Earldom of Devonshire, leaving the family
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Speaker 1: estates heavily encumbered. The necessary retrenchments involved a temporary severance
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Speaker 1: of Hobbes's connection with the cabin Dishes, and from sixteen
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Speaker 1: twenty nine to sixteen thirty one he acted as tutor
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Speaker 1: to the son of Sir Gervais Clifton, a gentleman of Nottinghamshire.
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Speaker 1: He accompanied this new pupil on a foreign tour which
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Speaker 1: apparently extended through France in as far as Venice. He
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Speaker 1: was probably during this period that an incident occurred which
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Speaker 1: was to exercise elasting and not entirely happy, influence on
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Speaker 1: the whole of Hobbes's subsequent thought. At the age of forty,
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Speaker 1: he was for the first time introduced to the works
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Speaker 1: of Euclid, and at once fell in love with geometry,
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Speaker 1: being attracted, he says, more by the rigorous manner of
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Speaker 1: proof employed than by the matter of the science. Mathematics,
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Speaker 1: we must remember, were then only beginning to be seriously
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Speaker 1: studied in England. Hobbs tells us that in his undergraduate
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Speaker 1: days geometry was still looked upon generally as a form
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Speaker 1: of the Black art, and it was not until sixteen
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Speaker 1: nineteen that the will of Sir Henry Saville Warden of
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Speaker 1: Merton College established the first professorships of geometry in astronomy
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Speaker 1: at Oxford. In sixteen thirty one, Hobbs was recalled from
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Speaker 1: Paris by the widow of his late pupil to take
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Speaker 1: charge of the education of her eldest son, the third
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Speaker 1: Earl of Devonshire, then a boy of twelve. By sixteen
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Speaker 1: thirty four, the lad was thought old enough to make
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Speaker 1: the continental tour, and Hobbes accompanied him on a journey
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Speaker 1: through France and Italy, from which the pair did not
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Speaker 1: return until sixteen thirty seven. This third foreign journey was
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Speaker 1: destined to be the turning point of Hobbes's intellectual life.
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Speaker 1: All through the journey he was haunted by a single idea,
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Speaker 1: the thought of the omnipresence of motion in nature, and
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Speaker 1: of the apparent variety of natural objects as a mere
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Speaker 1: effective diversity of motion in the different parts of body.
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Speaker 1: The origin of this absorption in the notion of motion
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Speaker 1: he derives from the following undated incident. In a company
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Speaker 1: of learned men among whom he was present, a chance
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Speaker 1: reference to sensation provoked the contemptuous question and pray what
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Speaker 1: his sense? Reflecting long on this chance question, Hobbes came
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Speaker 1: to the conclusion that if all bodies were at rest,
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Speaker 1: or all moved exactly in the same way, there would
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Speaker 1: be no means of distinguishing any one thing from any other,
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Speaker 1: and therefore no sensation. Hence, not only must the whole
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Speaker 1: of physical nature consist, as Galileo was already declaring, of
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Speaker 1: diversity of motions of homogeneous particles, but the same must
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Speaker 1: be true of the inner world of our so called
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Speaker 1: mental processes. They must all be but so many diverse
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Speaker 1: motions in what we now call our nervous system. With
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Speaker 1: this conclusion, Hobbes's path as a philosopher was marked out.
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Speaker 1: His task was to be the exhibition of all the
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Speaker 1: facts of the universe, and more particularly those of the
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Speaker 1: inner life of motion and will, as consequences of the
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Speaker 1: primary laws of motion. Hence, in the preface to the
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Speaker 1: De Capoure, after mentioning as the founders of true physical
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Speaker 1: science Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Harvey, he adds that the
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Speaker 1: true doctrine of civil society is no older than his
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Speaker 1: own book De Sivue. Evidence discovered by doctor Ferdinand Urnees
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Speaker 1: has now made it probable that the facts just described
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Speaker 1: belonged to a date some years anterior to the Journey
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Speaker 1: of sixteen thirty seven. But in any case, Hobbes's third
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Speaker 1: residence abroad marks a definite epoch in his life. It
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Speaker 1: is the date at which he first takes his place
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Speaker 1: as a recognized member of the band of European thinkers
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Speaker 1: who were aiming at the systematic reconstruction of science. In Italy,
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Speaker 1: he met the great Galileo, not yet indeed blind, but
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Speaker 1: confined by the inquisition to his villa, and a little
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Speaker 1: tarnished in his renown by his insincere recantation. Almost more
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Speaker 1: important were the connections formed on the return to Paris
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Speaker 1: in sixteen thirty seven. Here Hobbs became one of the
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Speaker 1: circle which centered around the famous Franciscan Friar Marin Meyer Senn,
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Speaker 1: who performed what, in the absence of scientific journals, was
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Speaker 1: the indispensable service of furthering the communication of knowledge by
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Speaker 1: bringing learned men together in person or by correspondents. Mayor
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Speaker 1: senns Cell says Hobbes was more to him than all
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Speaker 1: the universities. We may note that this same year saw
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Speaker 1: the publication of the first work of another of Mayor
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Speaker 1: Senn's constant correspondents, his old schoolfellow, Renee Descartes, now for
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Speaker 1: years settled in his self chosen Dutch seclusion. Before the
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Speaker 1: end of sixteen thirty seven, Hobbs and his pupil were
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Speaker 1: once more in England, with the times as we know
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Speaker 1: now began to be singularly troublous. The next two years
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Speaker 1: saw the trial of Hampden for his refusal to pay
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Speaker 1: ship money, the Edinburgh revolved against the ill judged attempt
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Speaker 1: to force episcopacy on Scotland, the signing of the Solemn
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Speaker 1: League and Covenant, and the Scottish invasion of England. In
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Speaker 1: virtue of his connection with the Devonshire family, Hobbes was
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Speaker 1: just now much in the society of the more moderate
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Speaker 1: Royalist leaders such as Falkland and Hyde, and the result
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Speaker 1: was that early in sixteen forty, about the time of
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Speaker 1: meeting of the Short Parliament, he put aside his wider
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Speaker 1: philosophical schemes for the composition of a little work in
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Speaker 1: support of his fundamental political conviction that the anti social
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Speaker 1: tendencies of human nature are too strong and deep rooted
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Speaker 1: to be held in check by anything short of an
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Speaker 1: absolute authority free from all controls, such as the English
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Speaker 1: ground might be made if released from all dependents on Parliament.
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Speaker 1: The work which bore the title The Elements of Law,
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Speaker 1: and contains one of the clearest and fullest of Hobbes's
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Speaker 1: expositions of his psychology. Was not printed, but circulated in manuscript.
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Speaker 1: Ten years later it was published in an imperfect form
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Speaker 1: as two Distinct Essays of Human Nature and date Corpore Politico.
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Speaker 1: He was not until eighteen eighty nine that the work
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Speaker 1: was printed in its original shape and with its original
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Speaker 1: title Doctor Tourneys. When the Long Parliament met towards the
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Speaker 1: end of the year and showed its temper by at
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Speaker 1: once proceeding to impeach Strafford, Hobbs's native timorousness got the
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Speaker 1: better of him. Fancying that the author of the Elements
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Speaker 1: of Law might be the next victim, he promptly escaped
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Speaker 1: to Paris, not to return for eleven years. In after Days,
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Speaker 1: he oddly represented this success of alarm as giving him
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Speaker 1: an exceptional claim on royal gratitude. His flight brought him
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Speaker 1: back to Paris in the very nick of time. Marsen
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Speaker 1: was busy, at Descartes's request in procuring criticisms from learning
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Speaker 1: men on the famous meditations then just about to be publish.
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Speaker 1: One such set of criticisms he obtained from Hobbes, those
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Speaker 1: which now figure as the third objections, that they failed
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Speaker 1: to achieve their purpose. Descartes was seeking help from the
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Speaker 1: criticisms of persons in sympathy with his general line of thought.
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Speaker 1: What he got from Hobbes was an attack on his
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Speaker 1: fundamental positions by a thinker of radically different convictions. Hence,
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Speaker 1: he treated the objections very curtly, even refusing to admit
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Speaker 1: that they contained a single valid inference. Nor was he
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Speaker 1: more favorably impressed by Hobbes's remarks on the Uptreak, published
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Speaker 1: along with the Discourse on Method sixteen thirty seven, which
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Speaker 1: were also communicated to him by Mayr Senn. On the
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Speaker 1: other hand, Hobbs contracted an enduring friendship with another of
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Speaker 1: the lights of Meyer Senn's circle, Pierre Gaisson, the reviver
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Speaker 1: of Epicureanism. During sixteen forty one, Hobbs recast in Latin
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Speaker 1: his exposition of his psychological and political doctrines. The work
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Speaker 1: was printed in a very limited edition in sixteen forty
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Speaker 1: two under the title De Sievwey, and was highly appreciated
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Speaker 1: even by day. It was reissued five years later from
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Speaker 1: the press of the Elzevirs at Amsterdam as Elamenta Philsophica
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Speaker 1: day Subway. Hobbes had meanwhile been sixteen forty six appointed
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Speaker 1: mathematical tutor two Prince of Wales, afterwards, Charles the second
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Speaker 1: had just come over from Jersey. The engagement cannot have
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Speaker 1: lasted beyond sixteen forty eight, when the Prince withdrew to Holland,
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Speaker 1: and was possibly ended earlier by a dangerous illness which
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Speaker 1: overtook Hobbs in sixteen forty seven. In after years he
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Speaker 1: was accustomed to meet doubts as to his religious orthodoxy
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Speaker 1: by an appeal to his acquiescence during this illness in
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Speaker 1: the administrations of doctor Cousins afterwards, Bishop of Durham. In
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Speaker 1: sixteen fifty one came out an English version of the
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Speaker 1: deceis Way Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society. During the
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Speaker 1: same year Hobbes was busy with the composition of the
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Speaker 1: work by which he is now best known to the
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Speaker 1: general student, Leviathan or The Matter of Form and Power
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Speaker 1: of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, which appeared in London
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Speaker 1: at the end of the year. The book consists of
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Speaker 1: a restatement of the general philosophical argument for absolutism, with
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Speaker 1: the addition of a long and bitter polemic against admitting
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Speaker 1: any independent ecclesiastical authority other than the civil sovereign. A
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Speaker 1: specially handsome copy of that manuscrip was presented to Charles
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Speaker 1: the Second, now King of Scots, own his return to
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Speaker 1: Paris after the adventurous escape from Worcester. But the Anglican Royalists,
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Speaker 1: who identified the cause of monarchy with the cause of
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Speaker 1: the English Church, where it naturally incensed that the author's
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Speaker 1: consistent erastianism and anti clericalism, and for a time contrived
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Speaker 1: to keep Hobbs from access to the King. Between this
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Speaker 1: and his concern is to the way in which the
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Speaker 1: anti papal doctrines of Leviathan might be received by the
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Speaker 1: French clergy, Hobbs once more took alarm and made his
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Speaker 1: way back to London at the end of sixteen fifty one,
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Speaker 1: sending in his formal submission to the Council of State.
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Speaker 1: Shortly after, there was just now amid the general confusion
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Speaker 1: following on the abolition of the old Constitution, no sense
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Speaker 1: of ship of the press in England to interfere with
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Speaker 1: his publications Thus it came about that I think could
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Speaker 1: be published in London, and that so much of the
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Speaker 1: great systematic work on philosophy as was ever completed, appeared
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Speaker 1: after all on English soil. Among Hobbes's personal friends of
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Speaker 1: this period we have to note the famous Selden and
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Speaker 1: that still more famous Harvey. With Milton, the chief man
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Speaker 1: of letters among the anti royalists, he had no relations,
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Speaker 1: though it is recorded that Milton did not like him,
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Speaker 1: but would acknowledge him to be a man of great parts. Hobbes,
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Speaker 1: for his part, declared, comparing Milton's famous defense of the
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Speaker 1: people of England with Salamasius's defense of the king, they
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Speaker 1: are very good Latin both and hardly to be judged,
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Speaker 1: which is better, And both very ill reasoning, hardly to
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Speaker 1: be judged, which is worse. Hobbs was now, at last,
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Speaker 1: at the age of sixty four, working on the reas
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Speaker 1: and exposition of his system. When completed, the scheme was
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Speaker 1: to contain three divisions, one of body, the presentation of
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Speaker 1: the fundamental principles of the new science of motion, and
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Speaker 1: the deduction from them of a doctrine of physics. Two
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Speaker 1: of man of further deduction from the same principles of
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Speaker 1: human physiology and psychology three of the body politic, a
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Speaker 1: deduction of ethics, politics, and sociology from the results reached
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Speaker 1: in the previous sections. Thus, the final achievement would have
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Speaker 1: been the deduction of social science as a body of
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Speaker 1: corollaries from the principles of mechanics from the first. The
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Speaker 1: execution of this plan was delayed by controversies, largely provoked
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Speaker 1: by Hobbes's own mistakes, and the great scheme never reached fulfillment.
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Speaker 1: The first section was indeed completed, but the second remained
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Speaker 1: a mere fragment, and the third is represented only by
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Speaker 1: works like The Day, Subway and Levithan. Originally composed as
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Speaker 1: independent treatises, The de Capore, though in the press in
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Speaker 1: sixteen fifty four, did not appear until sixteen fifty five,
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Speaker 1: the reason of the delay being that during the interval
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Speaker 1: Hobbes had discovered flaws in the quadrature of the circle,
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Speaker 1: which he fancied himself to have found, and of which
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Speaker 1: he had been rather rashly boasting in advance. By the
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Speaker 1: time of publication, he had further become implicated in the
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Speaker 1: eternal dispute about the freedom of the will and the
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Speaker 1: consequence of his double country with the mathematicians and the
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Speaker 1: theologians was that when the des Homine at last appeared
20:05
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty eight, it turned out to contain nothing
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Speaker 1: but a few chapters on optics, along with a brief
20:11
Speaker 1: sketch of elementary psychology. For many years after a sixteen
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Speaker 1: fifty five, Hobbes' career as an author's mainly the history
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Speaker 1: of a series of acrimonious disputes with mathematical and theological opponents.
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Speaker 1: The theological disputes go back ultimately to the year sixteen
20:26
Speaker 1: forty six, when Hobbs had held a verbal discussion with
20:29
Speaker 1: Brahm Hall, Bishop of Londonderry and afterwards Archbishop of Armagh,
20:33
Speaker 1: in which he maintained the determinist view of human action
20:36
Speaker 1: against the Armenian and High Anglican doctrine of free will.
20:39
Speaker 1: Both parties had afterwards reduced the substance of their contentions
20:43
Speaker 1: to writing, though with an understanding that nothing should be
20:45
Speaker 1: published on either side. In sixteen fifty four, however, an
20:48
Speaker 1: unknown person who had procured a copy of Hobbes's manuscript,
20:51
Speaker 1: which contains one of the clear statements ever made of
20:54
Speaker 1: the argument for determinism, published under the title of a
20:56
Speaker 1: Discourse concerning Liberty and Necessity. Bram Hall, angered at what
21:00
Speaker 1: he supposed to be the bad faith of Hobbs, replied
21:03
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty five by publishing his own original contribution
21:06
Speaker 1: to the controversy. Hobbes rejoining in the next year with
21:09
Speaker 1: a fresh set of questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance.
21:14
Speaker 1: The questions were in turn attacked by Bramhall in sixteen
21:17
Speaker 1: fifty eight in a work to which was appended a
21:19
Speaker 1: violent attack on Leviathan, facetiously styled the Catching of Leviathan
21:23
Speaker 1: the Great Whale. Hobbs took no notice of this onslaught,
21:27
Speaker 1: beyond drawing up ten years later sixteen sixty eight, a
21:30
Speaker 1: refutation of bram Hall's imputations of Impiety, which, like most
21:34
Speaker 1: of his writings of that time, was not published until
21:36
Speaker 1: after his death. More damaging for Hobbs was his violent
21:40
Speaker 1: quarrel with the Oxford mathematicians itself and outgrowth of his
21:43
Speaker 1: attacks on the universities. Like many other persons who have
21:46
Speaker 1: never quite made themselves at home in geometry, Hobbs unluckily
21:50
Speaker 1: conceived the notion that he had solved the famous and
21:52
Speaker 1: insoluble problems of the quadrature of the circle in the
21:55
Speaker 1: subdivision of the angle into any given number of equal parts.
21:59
Speaker 1: In palliation of his delusion, it may be pleaded that
22:02
Speaker 1: neither problem was definitely known in his day to be
22:05
Speaker 1: insoluble by the methods of elementary geometry. In fact, the
22:08
Speaker 1: insolubility of the more famous of the two, that of
22:11
Speaker 1: the quadrature, has only been finally demonstrated in our own
22:14
Speaker 1: time by Lindemann, though a sound of mathematical instinct would
22:17
Speaker 1: no doubt have suggested to Hobbes, that it probably was
22:20
Speaker 1: not to be solved. His fault lay not so much
22:22
Speaker 1: in attempting to grapple with the problem as in the
22:24
Speaker 1: obstinacy with which he refused to recognize the futility of
22:28
Speaker 1: his results, even when they had been repeatedly exposed by
22:31
Speaker 1: the first mathematicians of the day. A few words must
22:34
Speaker 1: be said as to the history of the quarrel. Hobbes had,
22:36
Speaker 1: in Levithan made a bitter attack on the universities, which
22:39
Speaker 1: he regarded as the chief supporters of clerical pretensions, and
22:43
Speaker 1: had particularly enlarged from their ignorance of mathematics and natural science.
22:48
Speaker 1: He did not know or forgot that the Oxford of
22:51
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty one was a very different place from the
22:53
Speaker 1: Oxford of halfa center earlier. The civilian professor Ships had
22:57
Speaker 1: done much to raise the standard of mathematical and physical
22:59
Speaker 1: noses in Oxford was already the home of an eager
23:02
Speaker 1: band of scientific workers, who were subsequently to form the
23:05
Speaker 1: nucleus of the Royal Society. The resentment of the Oxford
23:09
Speaker 1: men of science against Hobbes's undeserved strictures had already found
23:12
Speaker 1: expression in the then dicky i Eca demi Um sixteen
23:18
Speaker 1: fifty four of Seth Ward, Civilian Professor of Astronomy, are
23:21
Speaker 1: rejoined it to an attack on the universities by the
23:23
Speaker 1: Reverend John Webster, also honorably known as one of the
23:26
Speaker 1: first writers against the belief in witchcraft. Ward, however, took
23:30
Speaker 1: only a minor part in the long and angry controversy
23:32
Speaker 1: which followed on the publication of the day corp Poret,
23:36
Speaker 1: Hobbes's principal assailant being Ward's associate John Wallace, civilian professor
23:41
Speaker 1: of geometry, the most eminent English mathematician of the generation
23:44
Speaker 1: before Newton. Three months after the issue of the day
23:48
Speaker 1: corp poret In sixteen fifty five followed Wallace's Ellentius Geometry I, HA,
23:55
Speaker 1: B and I, exposing the fallacies of Hobbes's squadrature, improving
23:59
Speaker 1: with the aid of an unbound copy of the work
24:00
Speaker 1: that his solutions, such as they were, had been repeatedly modified,
24:04
Speaker 1: owing to their author's discoverer of airs in them. After
24:07
Speaker 1: they had been sent to the press. In sixteen fifty six,
24:10
Speaker 1: there came out an English version of the de corps Core,
24:13
Speaker 1: made by Hobbes's instruction, but not from his own hand,
24:15
Speaker 1: concerning Body sixteen fifty six. Here the solutions were given
24:19
Speaker 1: as mere aggressions or approximations, but as set off, the
24:22
Speaker 1: book contained an appending six lessons to the Oxford professors
24:26
Speaker 1: decrying the whole of Wallace's mathematical work. Wallace rejoined in
24:30
Speaker 1: three months with a due correction for mister Hobbs, which
24:33
Speaker 1: in its turn provoked in sixteen fifty seven an abuse
24:36
Speaker 1: of reply from Hobbes and the inevitable counter reply from Wallace.
24:40
Speaker 1: In sixteen sixty Hobbs returned to the Fray with five
24:42
Speaker 1: Latin dialogues exam not to you yet a ment Matha
24:47
Speaker 1: mazcai Ho de Ierne. Next year he proceeded to bring
24:52
Speaker 1: out a professed solution of the third of the famous
24:54
Speaker 1: ancient problems, the duplication of the cube, which was, as usual,
24:57
Speaker 1: duly refuted by Wallace Exteen sixty two. Hobbs went on
25:01
Speaker 1: to aim a blow at the recently incorporated Royal Society,
25:04
Speaker 1: in which Wallace was a prominent figure, by attacking Boyle's
25:07
Speaker 1: experiments with the air pump and endeavoring to show that
25:10
Speaker 1: mere experimentation has nothing to our insight into nature. Boyle
25:15
Speaker 1: replied with an examine of mister Hobbes his dialogus, and
25:20
Speaker 1: Wallace with the scathing satire Hobbes's mathematics hobbyists hot on
25:25
Speaker 1: Timo Room Menace. Hobbs wisey left this exposure unanswered, but
25:29
Speaker 1: avenged himself signaling upon Wallace's incidental political insinuation against him
25:34
Speaker 1: of having favored Cromwell's usurpation by a letter on the Reputation, Loyalty,
25:38
Speaker 1: Manners and Religion of thh in which Wallace was reminded
25:41
Speaker 1: of the service he had done to the parliamentarians by
25:44
Speaker 1: deciphering the papers of Charles the first captured at Nasby.
25:48
Speaker 1: For some years. After this, the controversy slumbered, but was
25:50
Speaker 1: revived again by Hobbes in sixteen sixty six. Wallace continued
25:55
Speaker 1: to refute Hobbes's various mathematical papers as they came out
25:58
Speaker 1: until sixteen seventy two, and then allowed the dispute to drop. Hobbs,
26:02
Speaker 1: for his part, still kept up the game, and even
26:04
Speaker 1: in his latest work Date Cameron see Low Jigum, produced
26:09
Speaker 1: when he was over at ninety, contrived to insert a
26:11
Speaker 1: new demonstration of the equality of a straight line to
26:13
Speaker 1: an arkava circle. Meanwhile, the restoration had made some change
26:16
Speaker 1: in the philosopher's position. He was met and warmly welcomed
26:20
Speaker 1: by Charles the Second a few days after his return
26:22
Speaker 1: to England, encouraged to present himself at court, had his
26:25
Speaker 1: portrait painted at the King's expense, and received a pension
26:28
Speaker 1: of one hundred pounds, which unfortunately was not always regularly paid.
26:32
Speaker 1: Court favor, however, could only partly protect the author of
26:35
Speaker 1: Leviathan from the animosity of the clergy, whom he had
26:38
Speaker 1: handled so roughly in connection with the bill brought into
26:40
Speaker 1: the Commons in sixteen sixty six under the influence of
26:43
Speaker 1: the emotions aroused by the plague in the Great Fire
26:46
Speaker 1: for the Suppression of Atheism and Profanity of Committee was
26:49
Speaker 1: appointed to receive informations against atheistical, blasphemous and profane books,
26:53
Speaker 1: among which Leviathan was specified by name. The bill felt
26:56
Speaker 1: through in the lords, but Hobbs, who began to fear
26:59
Speaker 1: that he was in personal danger, made it his set
27:01
Speaker 1: a show of conformity, and took care in reprinting Leviathan
27:04
Speaker 1: in Latin to add an appendix intended to show that
27:07
Speaker 1: his doctrines did not formally contradict a Nicene Creed even
27:10
Speaker 1: took the trouble to draw up a dissertation on the
27:12
Speaker 1: state of the English Law of Heresy to prove that
27:15
Speaker 1: he could not legally be burned. From this time on,
27:17
Speaker 1: Hobbes only retained court protection on condition of abstention from
27:21
Speaker 1: all publications on political and religious topics. For the Latin
27:25
Speaker 1: edition of his opera Omnia, which appeared in sixteen sixty eight,
27:29
Speaker 1: he had to find a publisher in Holland, and Peepe's
27:32
Speaker 1: records in his direct for September third of the same
27:34
Speaker 1: year that a second hand copy of Leviathan, which had
27:37
Speaker 1: originally come out at eight shillings, costing twenty four shillings
27:40
Speaker 1: in that the price was still rising as the book
27:42
Speaker 1: could not be reprinted. Similarly, a new treatise of the
27:45
Speaker 1: same date, Bohemoth The History of the Civil Wars, was
27:48
Speaker 1: prescribed by the censor. In spite of age and Rebuff's
27:51
Speaker 1: Hubbs still continued to write on a variety of topics,
27:54
Speaker 1: ranging from mathematics to English law and church history. Was
27:57
Speaker 1: frequently visited on account of his famous asas scholar and philosopher,
28:01
Speaker 1: by foreign admirers of learning who found themselves in England.
28:05
Speaker 1: In sixteen sixty nine, his clerical enemies found a characteristic
28:09
Speaker 1: method of annoying him. Daniel Scargill, a disreputable fellow of
28:13
Speaker 1: Corpus Christi College Gambris, was deprived of his degree and
28:16
Speaker 1: expelled from the university for having publicly maintained theses taken
28:19
Speaker 1: from Leviathan. Scargill was persuaded to make an edifying recantation
28:24
Speaker 1: in which the blame for his loose life was laid
28:26
Speaker 1: on the supposed immoral principles he had imbibed from the
28:29
Speaker 1: books of Hobbes, who, thanks to the censorship, was unable
28:32
Speaker 1: to possest against the imputations. Five years later Oxford followed suit.
28:36
Speaker 1: Doctor Feldean of christ Church, the hero of a well
28:38
Speaker 1: known uncomplimentary epigram, took advantage of his connection with the
28:42
Speaker 1: University press to strike out of the Latin version of
28:45
Speaker 1: Anthony Wood's History and Antiquities of Oxford all the appreciative
28:49
Speaker 1: epithets which the English original habistowte on Hobbs, and to
28:52
Speaker 1: replace them by terms of abuse. Hobbes was this time
28:55
Speaker 1: permitted by the King to publish a letter of remonstrance,
28:58
Speaker 1: but the only effect was to draw from Doctor Fell
29:01
Speaker 1: an outrageous additional note to the book, in which Hobbes
29:03
Speaker 1: was reviled more coarsely than before. Meanwhile, the old man
29:07
Speaker 1: had for a while amused himself by a return to
29:09
Speaker 1: the literary pursuits of his earlier days. In sixteen seventy
29:13
Speaker 1: two he composed a succinct account of his life works
29:16
Speaker 1: in Various Controversies in Latin elegiics, and in sixteen seventy
29:19
Speaker 1: three and the year or two following a complete version
29:22
Speaker 1: of the Elite in Odyssey in English rhyme. A sufficiently
29:25
Speaker 1: arduous task for an old man well on towards his
29:28
Speaker 1: nineteenth year. In sixteen seventy five, he finally left London,
29:32
Speaker 1: residing for a few years of life still left to
29:35
Speaker 1: him ultimately of the two Derbyshire seats of the Devonshire family,
29:39
Speaker 1: Chadsworth and Hardwick. His last work day Cameron Physiologicum, was
29:44
Speaker 1: as we have already seen, produced in sixteen seventy at
29:47
Speaker 1: the age of ninety. At the end of the following year,
29:49
Speaker 1: when the family moved as usual from Chad's Work to
29:51
Speaker 1: Hardwick for the winter, Hobbes refused to be left behind,
29:54
Speaker 1: but the journey proved too much for his strength. In
29:56
Speaker 1: a few days after reaching Hardwick, the old philosopher was
29:59
Speaker 1: struck by paralys of which he died on December fourth,
30:02
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy nine, at the age of ninety twenty years
30:04
Speaker 1: and eight months. The body was laid to rest in
30:08
Speaker 1: a modest grave in the parish church of halt Hucknall,
30:11
Speaker 1: just outside the Park gates. Hobbes's personal appearance as well
30:14
Speaker 1: known to us from various portraits and from the description
30:17
Speaker 1: of his friend Aubrey. He was tall, erect, and strikingly
30:20
Speaker 1: handsome a face, though sickly in youth, In manhood and
30:23
Speaker 1: later age, he was exceptionally healthy and vigorous, being able
30:26
Speaker 1: even at seventy five to enjoy an occasional game of tennis.
30:29
Speaker 1: His personal habits were regular, and in later age of Stemius,
30:32
Speaker 1: though according to Abery, he owned to having been drunk
30:35
Speaker 1: about one hundred times in his life, a moderate allowance
30:38
Speaker 1: in those days, especially as the good gentleman seems to
30:40
Speaker 1: have regarded occasional drunkenness as medicinal. There is a report
30:44
Speaker 1: of the existence of a natural daughter, for whom he
30:46
Speaker 1: is said to have provided. With respect to his character,
30:49
Speaker 1: there's little to be objected against except his natural timidity
30:52
Speaker 1: and a certain lack of emotional warmth, which did not, however,
30:55
Speaker 1: prevent him from proving a benefactor to his relatives and
30:58
Speaker 1: a steady and constant friend. In spite of his rather
31:00
Speaker 1: cynical theories of human nature, appears to have been reasonably
31:03
Speaker 1: charitable to real distress, and it is highly creditable to
31:06
Speaker 1: him as well as to his protectors, the family of Cavendish,
31:09
Speaker 1: that having once resolved in the life of a scholar
31:12
Speaker 1: and thinker, he avoided all temptations to desert his modest
31:15
Speaker 1: position for the sake of worldly advantage, and that so
31:18
Speaker 1: much care was taken to make that position compatible with
31:21
Speaker 1: his unchecked pursuit of his chosen studies. If we looked
31:24
Speaker 1: in vain in his life and writings for any traces
31:26
Speaker 1: of deep spirituality and ethical inwardness. The same thing may
31:30
Speaker 1: be said of Descartes, and in fact of most of
31:32
Speaker 1: the eminent thinkers of an exceedingly worldly and unspiritual age.
31:37
Speaker 1: It is not often that we find, as we do
31:39
Speaker 1: in Plato, of the combination in one person of intense
31:41
Speaker 1: spiritual earnestness with the faculty of cool and keen rationalistic analysis.
31:46
Speaker 1: Apart from its splendid trust in the competence of the
31:49
Speaker 1: human intellect to discover the truth of things, there is
31:51
Speaker 1: not much in Hobbes's philosophical scheme to arouse the enthusiasm
31:56
Speaker 1: of the young and ardent, and more than a little
31:58
Speaker 1: which is positively repellent. But there are a few writers
32:01
Speaker 1: whose work is more fruitful of suggestions for the matured
32:04
Speaker 1: and reflective intellect, which has grown suspicious of all enthusiasm,
32:08
Speaker 1: even of its own, and demands before all things calm
32:11
Speaker 1: and impartial reason analysis. Perhaps the best proof of Hobbes's
32:15
Speaker 1: real genius is that even his worst errors are so
32:17
Speaker 1: much more instructive than the truths of lesser men. End
32:23
Speaker 1: of Chapter one, Chapter two, Part one of Thomas Hobbes
32:34
Speaker 1: by Alfred Edward Taylor. This LibriVox recording is in the
32:39
Speaker 1: public domain. Chapter two, Part one Philosophy, its scope and methods.
32:46
Speaker 1: Hobbes's main influence on the thought, both of his own
32:49
Speaker 1: and of subsequent times, has been felt almost exclusively in
32:53
Speaker 1: the domain of ethics and politics. He is primarily important
32:58
Speaker 1: to us as the herald of a new epoch in
33:01
Speaker 1: English thinking, an epic which we might fairly say was
33:05
Speaker 1: closed only the other day by the death of Herbert Spencer.
33:09
Speaker 1: When we think of him, it is usually as the
33:11
Speaker 1: first in the long succession of English empirical psychologists, the
33:16
Speaker 1: earliest English writer of many who have sought to found
33:19
Speaker 1: a purely naturalistic system of moral and political science on
33:24
Speaker 1: the basis of biological and psychological fact. But it is
33:28
Speaker 1: equally true that Hobbes ends an epic. He is the
33:32
Speaker 1: last English philosophical writer, with the single exception of Spencer,
33:36
Speaker 1: to understand the word philosophy in the wide sense put
33:40
Speaker 1: upon it in the Middle Ages, as the systematized and
33:43
Speaker 1: codified body of all rational human knowledge. With his immediate successor,
33:49
Speaker 1: Locke begins that distinction between science and philosophy, by which
33:54
Speaker 1: the scope of the latter is closely restricted to epistemological
33:59
Speaker 1: inquiries into the conditions and nature of knowledge in general,
34:03
Speaker 1: and psychological investigations into its growth, while the task of
34:07
Speaker 1: extending the contents of our knowledge of the extra subjective
34:11
Speaker 1: world is made over exclusively to the sciences, a distinction
34:15
Speaker 1: which has ever since, for good and bad, dominated English philosophy.
34:21
Speaker 1: From Hobbes's own point of view, then, his doctrine of
34:24
Speaker 1: man in society cannot be fully appreciated unless we consider
34:28
Speaker 1: it in connection with the rest of his system as
34:31
Speaker 1: an integral part of that body of deductions from the
34:35
Speaker 1: general laws of motion which constitutes science. For this reason,
34:41
Speaker 1: as well as for the intrinsic value of many of
34:43
Speaker 1: his thoughts on the nature and methods of science, it
34:46
Speaker 1: is essential to examine Hobbes's general theory of the range
34:50
Speaker 1: and the procedure of science before considering his achievements as
34:54
Speaker 1: a theorist in the fields of morals and sociology. The
34:58
Speaker 1: definition of philosoph these given at the beginning of the
35:01
Speaker 1: day Corporeal our citations are from the English version of
35:06
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty six runs. Thus, philosophy is such knowledge of
35:11
Speaker 1: effects or appearances as we acquire by true raciation from
35:17
Speaker 1: the knowledge we have first of their causes or generations,
35:22
Speaker 1: and again of such causes or generations as may be
35:25
Speaker 1: from knowing first their effects. Here the words by true
35:30
Speaker 1: rascucination are intended to exclude from philosophy knowledge directly given
35:36
Speaker 1: in sense, perception, or resting merely upon unsystematized experience, while
35:42
Speaker 1: the expression such causes as may be in the second
35:47
Speaker 1: clause of the sentence alludes to Hobbes's view that by
35:50
Speaker 1: reasoning backward from effects to their causes, we can never
35:54
Speaker 1: discover the cause of a given effect, but only one
35:58
Speaker 1: or more alternative of causes by any one of which
36:02
Speaker 1: the result might have been produced. Philosophy, then, is, in short,
36:08
Speaker 1: reason knowledge, And if we ask why we ought to
36:10
Speaker 1: set a value on such knowledge, Hobbes replies, even more
36:14
Speaker 1: emphatically than Bacon, for the sake of its practical consequences.
36:20
Speaker 1: The end of knowledge is power, and the use of
36:22
Speaker 1: theorems is for the construction of problems. And last, the
36:26
Speaker 1: scope of all speculation is the performing of some action
36:31
Speaker 1: or thing to be done concerning body one six. In particular,
36:38
Speaker 1: the utility of moral and civil philosophy is to be
36:42
Speaker 1: measured by the calamities which arise from ignorance of it.
36:47
Speaker 1: All the avoidable calamities of human life, says Hobbes with
36:51
Speaker 1: characteristic exaggeration, are due to war. And men go to
36:56
Speaker 1: war not because they wish to do so, or because
36:59
Speaker 1: they do not know that war is productive of evil effects,
37:03
Speaker 1: but because they do not know the true causes of
37:06
Speaker 1: war and peace. That is, they are uninstructed in the
37:11
Speaker 1: true principles of civil and political obedience, which had, in fact,
37:15
Speaker 1: according to Hobbes, been formulated for the first time in
37:19
Speaker 1: sixteen forty two in his own day sea Way, a
37:24
Speaker 1: true system of philosophy in which the principles of morals
37:28
Speaker 1: and politics should be rigorously deduced from the fundamental axioms
37:33
Speaker 1: of science. We therefore act as a universal peace maker. Philosophy, then,
37:39
Speaker 1: is sharply distinguished, by its reasoned form, from history, the
37:45
Speaker 1: mere record of past experience, whereas since and memory are
37:49
Speaker 1: but knowledge of fact, which is a thing passed and irrecoverable.
37:53
Speaker 1: Science is the knowledge of consequences and dependence of one
37:57
Speaker 1: fact upon another Leviathan one hundred and five. The peculiarity
38:03
Speaker 1: of philosophy or of science is that its results are
38:07
Speaker 1: at once universal and exact experience concluded. Nothing universally, but
38:14
Speaker 1: nothing is produced by reason outright but general, eternal and
38:19
Speaker 1: immutable truths. It is a notable peculiarity of Hobbes's doctrine that,
38:25
Speaker 1: while he agrees with the ordinary empiricist that the first
38:29
Speaker 1: beginnings of knowledge are the phantasms of sense and imagination,
38:33
Speaker 1: he almost entirely neglects the problem of inductive logic. How
38:38
Speaker 1: general eternal and immutable truths can be educed from these
38:42
Speaker 1: particular isolated phantasms. From the definition above given it, it follows
38:49
Speaker 1: at once that since philosophy treats only of generations or
38:54
Speaker 1: causal processes, there can be no philosophical knowledge of any
38:59
Speaker 1: being which has no cause, and consequently no philosophy of
39:03
Speaker 1: anything eternal. Hence, there is no science of God, since
39:08
Speaker 1: God is by definition an uncaused and eternal being. Theology
39:15
Speaker 1: is thus at a stroke excluded from the range of
39:18
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge. Similarly, since all causation is production of one
39:24
Speaker 1: motion by another, there is no science of anything except bodies.
39:30
Speaker 1: The profession of philosophy is to search out the properties
39:34
Speaker 1: of bodies from their generation, or their generation from their properties.
39:39
Speaker 1: Hobbs will not even allow that we can form any
39:42
Speaker 1: intelligible concept of anything incorporeal, and contends that when God
39:47
Speaker 1: is said by the official Anglican theology to be without body,
39:52
Speaker 1: this is a mere vague expression of reverence and strictness.
39:56
Speaker 1: According to him, there is no definite concept attached to
40:00
Speaker 1: the name God, and it is on this ground that
40:03
Speaker 1: he criticizes Descartes's argument from my possession of an idea
40:09
Speaker 1: of God to the actual existence of God. Hobbs replies
40:14
Speaker 1: third objections to the meditations that the inference is worthless
40:20
Speaker 1: since I have no idea of God at all. All
40:24
Speaker 1: knowledge of God requires revelation, and revelation needs to be
40:29
Speaker 1: accredited by miracles. Since miracles have ceased, a point on
40:34
Speaker 1: which Hobbes agrees with Orthodox Protestants, no one can now
40:38
Speaker 1: claim to be heard when he alleges a divine revelation
40:42
Speaker 1: as a reason for disobedience to his civil sovereign. It
40:47
Speaker 1: is our duty to accept the theology promulgated by the state,
40:52
Speaker 1: not because it is true, but because it is official
40:55
Speaker 1: religion is not philosophy but law. Hobbes's general position as
41:01
Speaker 1: to the limits of science is thus closely akin to
41:05
Speaker 1: that which we should nowadays called positivistic science extends only
41:10
Speaker 1: so far as the world of bodies moving in accord
41:14
Speaker 1: with fixed mechanical law, and no further. What distinguishes Hobbes
41:20
Speaker 1: from most modern representatives of this view is that he
41:24
Speaker 1: does not combine it, as they do, with the further
41:27
Speaker 1: assertion that the whole of the knowledge of us acquired
41:31
Speaker 1: is merely relative or concerned solely with phenomena, which are
41:36
Speaker 1: manifestations of an underlying, unknown and perhaps unknowable reality. That
41:44
Speaker 1: bodies really and objectively exist, and that the laws of
41:48
Speaker 1: their emotion can be discovered, he simply assumes as an
41:52
Speaker 1: unquestionable fact. He has no inkling of the deeper problem
41:56
Speaker 1: of Descartes's meditations, how it is possible for the individual
42:01
Speaker 1: mind to be assured of anything outside the circle of
42:04
Speaker 1: its own states. From the definition of philosophy as the
42:09
Speaker 1: knowledge of bodies, the threefold division of the subject at
42:13
Speaker 1: once follows. For bodies are either natural or artificial. Natural
42:20
Speaker 1: bodies again include, among others, one class which is of
42:24
Speaker 1: supreme importance inasmuch as it is the object of all
42:28
Speaker 1: our psychological study of sensation, thought, and emotion. The bodies
42:33
Speaker 1: of human beings. An artificial body is what we commonly
42:38
Speaker 1: call a society or commonwealth. The society or commonwealth is
42:43
Speaker 1: just as much a single body, and governed just as
42:47
Speaker 1: completely by the general laws of the motion of bodies
42:51
Speaker 1: as the individual organism. Its only distinctive characteristic is that
42:57
Speaker 1: it is artificial, that it owes its wors origin to
43:00
Speaker 1: the voluntary agreement of the persons who form its constituent members. Hence,
43:07
Speaker 1: philosophy as a whole falls into three parts. The doctrine
43:11
Speaker 1: of body in general, the doctrine of the human body
43:15
Speaker 1: in particular, the doctrine of the artificial body, or commonwealth.
43:20
Speaker 1: To chief kinds of bodies, and very different from one another,
43:24
Speaker 1: offer themselves to such as search after their generation and properties.
43:30
Speaker 1: One whereof being the work of nature, is called a
43:34
Speaker 1: natural body. The other is called the commonwealth, and is
43:37
Speaker 1: made by the wills and agreement of men, And from
43:42
Speaker 1: the spring the two parts of philosophy called natural and
43:47
Speaker 1: civil in the first place. Therefore, after I have set
43:51
Speaker 1: down such premises as appertained to the nature of philosophy
43:55
Speaker 1: in general. I will discourse of bodies natural in the
43:59
Speaker 1: second of the dis Positions and Manners of Men, and
44:02
Speaker 1: in the third of the civil Duties of subjects concerning
44:06
Speaker 1: body one nine by The premises which appertain to the
44:12
Speaker 1: nature of philosophy in general are meant, of course, the
44:15
Speaker 1: general principles of logic and method, and it is from
44:18
Speaker 1: the account of them that we have to collect Hobbes's
44:21
Speaker 1: views on the theory of knowledge. Scientific method then has
44:26
Speaker 1: two branches, reasoning from general principles, definitions and axioms to
44:31
Speaker 1: their consequences, or, as Hobbes phrases it, from causes to
44:35
Speaker 1: their effects, and this is synthesis, reasoning from the facts
44:38
Speaker 1: to the principles involved, from effects to causes, and this
44:42
Speaker 1: is analysis. Synthesis and analysis thus correspond to our popular
44:48
Speaker 1: distinction between the deductive and inductive uses of logic. Only
44:54
Speaker 1: the former, the purely deductive type of reasoning, is rigidly
44:59
Speaker 1: certain and yields perfectly determinate conclusions. The latter is essentially
45:04
Speaker 1: hypothetical and consists merely in pointing out such principles as
45:09
Speaker 1: would lead deductively to the observed results. Hence, Hobbes, like Epicurus,
45:15
Speaker 1: explicitly maintains that different theories as to the cause of
45:18
Speaker 1: an observed fact may be equally true if each would
45:21
Speaker 1: equally lead to consequences which agree with observed facts. In
45:26
Speaker 1: modern language. His theory of method makes induction to consist
45:30
Speaker 1: simply in the formation of explanatory hypotheses, apart from the
45:35
Speaker 1: further task of complete verification, by showing that any explanation
45:39
Speaker 1: other than that adopted would lead to results which conflict
45:42
Speaker 1: with fact. Like Jevins, he regards induction as being merely
45:46
Speaker 1: the inverse operation corresponding to the direct operation of deduction,
45:51
Speaker 1: as division or integration corresponds to multiplication or differentiation. Hans
45:59
Speaker 1: He held that the Royal society was proceeding on altogether
46:03
Speaker 1: false lines in attempting to advance physical science by direct experiment,
46:08
Speaker 1: rather than by reasoning deductively from pre assumed general theories.
46:13
Speaker 1: Hence to his uniform silence as to the inductive method
46:17
Speaker 1: of Bacon, the avowed object of which was to eliminate
46:21
Speaker 1: the anticipation of nature by the framing of initial hypotheses
46:26
Speaker 1: altogether from the work of science. Now the ultimate first
46:30
Speaker 1: principles of deductive science are all according to Hobbes definitions,
46:35
Speaker 1: that is, statements of the meaning of names. Everything in
46:39
Speaker 1: science therefore turns upon the original definitions. Science is merely
46:43
Speaker 1: the correct deduction of the consequences implied in the giving
46:47
Speaker 1: of names, and names Hobbes holds were originally given arbitrarily.
46:52
Speaker 1: For it is true that, for example, man is a
46:55
Speaker 1: living creature. But it is for this reason that it
46:57
Speaker 1: pleased meant to impose both these names on the same thing.
47:01
Speaker 1: Concerning body three eight. This point comes out clearly in
47:06
Speaker 1: the famous definition of a name IB two four. A
47:11
Speaker 1: name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for
47:14
Speaker 1: a mark which may raise in our minds a thought
47:16
Speaker 1: like to some thought we had before, and which, being
47:19
Speaker 1: pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of
47:21
Speaker 1: what thought the speaker had or had not before in
47:24
Speaker 1: his mind. Consistently with this view, Hobbes adopts an ultranominalist
47:29
Speaker 1: position in logic. The only names which directly denote realities
47:34
Speaker 1: are singular names of individual bodies. General terms or common
47:38
Speaker 1: names do not directly denote an object at all. There is,
47:42
Speaker 1: for example, no such object as man. In general, this
47:47
Speaker 1: word universal is never the name of anything existent in nature,
47:52
Speaker 1: nor of any idea or phantasm formed in the mind,
47:55
Speaker 1: but always the name of some word or name. So
47:58
Speaker 1: that when not living creature, own, a spirit, or any
48:01
Speaker 1: other thing is said to be universal, it is not
48:04
Speaker 1: to be understood that any man, stone, etc. Ever warzer,
48:08
Speaker 1: can be a universal, but only that these words are
48:11
Speaker 1: universal names, that is, names common to many things ib
48:15
Speaker 1: to nine. A proposition is a speech consisting of two
48:21
Speaker 1: names copulated by which he that speaketh signifies he conceives
48:25
Speaker 1: the later name to be the name of the same thing,
48:28
Speaker 1: whereof the former is the name ib three two. Thus
48:32
Speaker 1: Hobbes's doctrine as to the import of propositions as that
48:36
Speaker 1: their whole meaning is that the predicate is the name
48:38
Speaker 1: of the same thing as the subject, or the case
48:41
Speaker 1: of negative propositions, that the subject in predicate are not
48:44
Speaker 1: names for the same thing. He is careful, however, to
48:48
Speaker 1: mitigate the extreme nominalism of this account, by adding that
48:53
Speaker 1: the use of the coppola in English is to make
48:56
Speaker 1: us think of a reason why the two names are
48:58
Speaker 1: both given to the same thing. Searching criticism might here
49:02
Speaker 1: find an occasion for attacking Hobbs out of his own mouth.
49:06
Speaker 1: Since this last remark as to the function of the
49:09
Speaker 1: coppola clearly sets limits to the alleged arbitrariness of the employment,
49:14
Speaker 1: if not to the arbitrariness of the invention of names,
49:20
Speaker 1: reasoning now receives an equally nominalist definition. It is, and
49:25
Speaker 1: the phrase sounds curiously prophetic of the modern discovery that
49:28
Speaker 1: logic is really a mathematical calculus the computation of the
49:33
Speaker 1: consequences of names, and may be regarded as consisting entirely
49:38
Speaker 1: of addition, the formation of complex concepts by putting words together,
49:43
Speaker 1: and subtraction, that is, abstraction, the formation of more general
49:48
Speaker 1: concepts by analysis of a complex name into its simpler components.
49:53
Speaker 1: Concerning Body one, two, three, four six, Leviathan one hundred four. Now,
50:01
Speaker 1: apart from many minor objections which might be raised as
50:05
Speaker 1: to Hobbes's tacitly implied theory of the way in which
50:08
Speaker 1: language has historically developed, this whole account of the nature
50:12
Speaker 1: of reasoning involves an obvious and tremendous difficulty of principle,
50:17
Speaker 1: a difficulty which meets us again in the doctrine of
50:20
Speaker 1: those modern mathematicians and logicians who regard the written or
50:25
Speaker 1: printed symbols of arithmetic and algebra as the actual objects
50:29
Speaker 1: with which mathematical thought is concerned. As we have seen,
50:33
Speaker 1: Hobbs holds that the whole body of the conclusions of
50:37
Speaker 1: deductive science is a mere consequence of the initial definitions,
50:41
Speaker 1: a point on which he was afterwards followed by Locke,
50:45
Speaker 1: And as he is careful to point out, the sense
50:48
Speaker 1: which the introducer of a new word or other symbol
50:51
Speaker 1: is to put upon his invention is a matter of
50:54
Speaker 1: his own choice. The definition, then, being merely a declaration
51:00
Speaker 1: of the sense in which I intend to employ a
51:03
Speaker 1: hitherto unused word or other sign, is properly speaking, neither
51:07
Speaker 1: true nor false. As Hobbes himself puts it concerning Body
51:12
Speaker 1: six fifteen, it is not necessary to dispute whether definitions
51:17
Speaker 1: are to be admitted or no. For when a master
51:20
Speaker 1: is instructing his scholar, if the scholar understand all the
51:23
Speaker 1: parts of the thing defined which are resolved in the definition,
51:28
Speaker 1: and yet will not admit of the definition, there needs
51:31
Speaker 1: no further controversy betwixt them, at being all one, as
51:36
Speaker 1: if he refused to be taught. Since all our conclusions
51:40
Speaker 1: then are simply logical consequences of arbitrarily constructed definitions, which
51:46
Speaker 1: are themselves neither true nor false. It would seem to
51:50
Speaker 1: follow that the whole of knowledge is a mere ingenious
51:53
Speaker 1: sporting with puzzles like the solving of chess problems, the
51:58
Speaker 1: ultimate rules of the game being like the rules of chess,
52:01
Speaker 1: neither true nor false, but purely arbitrary. In what intelligible sense,
52:07
Speaker 1: then can our conclusions be said to be themselves true.
52:13
Speaker 1: It is this difficulty which Leibniz has in his mind
52:17
Speaker 1: when he urges against the extreme nominalists that though names
52:22
Speaker 1: are artificial, they are not arbitrary. For instance, quite different
52:27
Speaker 1: symbols might be chosen to represent the concepts we commonly
52:32
Speaker 1: symbolize by the signs two, three, five plus equals, and
52:36
Speaker 1: in that case, the truth we now write in the
52:39
Speaker 1: form two plus three equals five would be expressed by
52:42
Speaker 1: a very different set of symbols. But the numerical truth
52:47
Speaker 1: meant or symbolized by both groups of signs would be
52:51
Speaker 1: one and the same. For every true proposition expressed in
52:55
Speaker 1: our familiar notation about relations between numbers, there would be
53:00
Speaker 1: one and only one corresponding proposition in the other set
53:04
Speaker 1: of symbols. The particular signs selected to denote the different numbers,
53:10
Speaker 1: and the different operations which can be performed upon them,
53:14
Speaker 1: may be largely arbitrary, but there is nothing arbitrary about
53:18
Speaker 1: the laws of their combination. And Chapter two, Part one,
53:30
Speaker 1: Chapter two, Part two of Thomas Hobbes by Alfred Edward Taylor.
53:37
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter two,
53:42
Speaker 1: Part two. The secret of Hobbes's mistake, in fact lies
53:46
Speaker 1: in the insidious error into which he falls about the
53:50
Speaker 1: logical character and function of definitions. It is not true
53:56
Speaker 1: as he supposes that, for example, in geometry, the definitions
54:01
Speaker 1: are the real premises from which the theorems are inferred. Technically,
54:07
Speaker 1: as Hobbes himself is seen, a definition is a mere
54:11
Speaker 1: verbal abbreviation, a mere substitution of a single hitherto unemployed
54:18
Speaker 1: word or other symbol for a more complicated set of
54:22
Speaker 1: words or signs of already known import. Hence, you could
54:28
Speaker 1: eliminate the definitions from the science altogether by merely replacing
54:34
Speaker 1: every defined symbol in a demonstration by the group of
54:37
Speaker 1: symbols for which, as its definition declares, it is an abbreviation.
54:44
Speaker 1: The only difference such a proceeding would make would be
54:48
Speaker 1: that our demonstrations would be thus rendered painfully long encumbrous.
54:53
Speaker 1: This is why Hobbes is perfectly correct in holding that
54:56
Speaker 1: a scientific definition is really neither true nor false, since
55:00
Speaker 1: it is in fact not a proposition at all, but
55:03
Speaker 1: a mere convention between different thinkers as to the sense
55:06
Speaker 1: to be put on a particular abbreviation. But what Hobbes
55:10
Speaker 1: does not see is that it follows at once from
55:14
Speaker 1: this correct view of the function of definitions that the
55:17
Speaker 1: definitions are never the premises from which our scientific demonstrations
55:21
Speaker 1: are inferred. The real premises of all demonstrations are partly
55:27
Speaker 1: logical axioms, that is, assertions which declare that certain propositions
55:32
Speaker 1: imply formerly the truth of certain others, partly postulates or
55:38
Speaker 1: unprovable existence theorems, that is, assertions that certain objects exist
55:44
Speaker 1: or have a certain relation to one another. An instance
55:47
Speaker 1: of the former kind of premise in euclid is the
55:50
Speaker 1: first axiom, which states that if the magnitude of A
55:55
Speaker 1: is the same as that of B, and the magnitude
55:58
Speaker 1: of B is the same as that of C, then
56:00
Speaker 1: it follows that the magnitude of A is the same
56:03
Speaker 1: as that of c. Examples of the second kind are
56:08
Speaker 1: the unexpressed postulate that there exists the class of entities
56:13
Speaker 1: called points, or the explicitly enunciated postulate of the existence
56:17
Speaker 1: of the straight line, that is, of an entity which
56:20
Speaker 1: is completely determined when two of its points are given.
56:25
Speaker 1: And when we carry our analysis of the presuppositions of
56:29
Speaker 1: demonstrative science far enough, we shall always find that, just
56:33
Speaker 1: as the ultimate logical axioms are, for the simple reason
56:37
Speaker 1: that they are preconditions of all proof themselves unprovable, so
56:41
Speaker 1: the ultimate existential postulates, because they are preconditions of all definition,
56:47
Speaker 1: are all assertions of the existence of kinds of entities
56:50
Speaker 1: which are indefinable. Now, these ultimate axioms and postulates being
56:55
Speaker 1: thus neither arbitrary nor mere declarations of the significantation of names,
57:01
Speaker 1: we escape the conclusion to which Hobbes's view would lead
57:05
Speaker 1: that there is in the end no sense in asking
57:08
Speaker 1: whether the propositions of science are true or not, and
57:11
Speaker 1: science comes, after all to be something very different in
57:14
Speaker 1: kind from a curiously complicated chess problem. To return, however,
57:21
Speaker 1: to the exposition of Hobbes's thought, as we have already seen,
57:25
Speaker 1: Hobbes starts with the assumption as ultimate scientific postulates of
57:30
Speaker 1: the fundamental propositions of a rigid mechanical materialism. The only
57:35
Speaker 1: things which we really know to exist our bodies, and
57:39
Speaker 1: bodies are only known to us as vehicles of motion.
57:43
Speaker 1: All the facts of external nature and of mental life must, therefore,
57:48
Speaker 1: for science be varieties of motion in the parts of body,
57:52
Speaker 1: and nothing more. Hence, our completed philosophy would amount to
57:57
Speaker 1: a vast system of deductions, by which all the truths
58:01
Speaker 1: of physical mental science would be shown to be logical
58:05
Speaker 1: consequences of the ultimate simple laws of motion laid down
58:10
Speaker 1: by mechanics. From the purely philosophical point of view, it
58:14
Speaker 1: is Hobbes's chief merit that he has undertaken the task
58:18
Speaker 1: of performing such a deduction with greater consistency and with
58:23
Speaker 1: a fuller consciousness of what it implies than any writer
58:27
Speaker 1: before or after him. He is the one consistent philosophical
58:32
Speaker 1: materialist in the history of thought, as far as that
58:36
Speaker 1: history is known to us, whose intelligence rises above mediocrity,
58:41
Speaker 1: and whose candor, at the same time leaves no doubt
58:44
Speaker 1: as to his exact meaning. Hence it is most instructive
58:49
Speaker 1: as throwing light upon the inherent defects of materialism as
58:53
Speaker 1: an ultimate philosophical standpoint to observe at what points his
58:57
Speaker 1: initial postulates fail him. Such a failure occurs with the
59:03
Speaker 1: consequence that Hobbes is forced to abandon his strictly deductive
59:07
Speaker 1: method at two critical points in his exposition. When he
59:11
Speaker 1: enters upon the realm of our inner mental life in
59:15
Speaker 1: his account of sensation, he has to abandon the attempt
59:18
Speaker 1: to deduce our perception of the various qualities of bodies,
59:22
Speaker 1: their colours, savors, odors, and the like from a mathematical
59:26
Speaker 1: theory of the external motions, which are commonly called their
59:30
Speaker 1: causes or stimuli, and to accept the correlation of the
59:33
Speaker 1: various sense qualities with certain external stimuli simply as given
59:39
Speaker 1: and unexplained facts of experience. And in the same way,
59:43
Speaker 1: when he advances to the theory of human conduct, he
59:46
Speaker 1: finds it quite out of the question to exhibit the
59:49
Speaker 1: fundamental passions of human nature as movements of particles within
59:53
Speaker 1: the organism mechanically determined by similar movements on the part
59:57
Speaker 1: of external bodies. Passions like the simple sensible qualities of things,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: have to be treated as unexplained given facts, and the
1:00:07
Speaker 1: assertion that they are really motions of particles of the
1:00:10
Speaker 1: body and nothing more remains a mere unproved assertion which
1:00:15
Speaker 1: is of no significance for the further development of Hobbes's
1:00:20
Speaker 1: ethical scheme. There is thus no real logical connection between
1:00:26
Speaker 1: Hobbes's metaphysical materialism and his ethical and political doctrine of
1:00:31
Speaker 1: human conduct. The whole of the latter might in fact
1:00:35
Speaker 1: be equally well grafted upon a pronounced spiritualistic metaphysics, such
1:00:39
Speaker 1: as that of Descartes. Even the rejection of the doctrine
1:00:43
Speaker 1: of free will is, in point of fact, based upon
1:00:46
Speaker 1: assumed psychological grounds which in no way involve the metaphysical
1:00:51
Speaker 1: postulate that all existence is bodily. In short, the only
1:00:56
Speaker 1: advantage which Hobbes really derives from his materialism is that
1:01:00
Speaker 1: it furnishes him with a plausible excuse for his refusal
1:01:04
Speaker 1: to take theology seriously. Of Hobbes's theory of the passions,
1:01:09
Speaker 1: it will be time enough to speak in the next chapter,
1:01:12
Speaker 1: but something must be set here of the effect of
1:01:14
Speaker 1: his materialistic assumptions upon his doctrine of perception. It is
1:01:20
Speaker 1: an immediate consequence of the postulate that all physical change
1:01:25
Speaker 1: is motion that the various apparent sensible qualities of external
1:01:29
Speaker 1: bodies cannot be objectively real colors, smells, and the rest
1:01:34
Speaker 1: must be mere appearances within the percipient of realities, which
1:01:40
Speaker 1: are in truth mere motions of material particles. All which
1:01:44
Speaker 1: qualities call sensible are in the object that causeth them,
1:01:49
Speaker 1: but so many several motions of the matter by which
1:01:52
Speaker 1: it presseth our organs diversely. The vioth in one hundred
1:01:57
Speaker 1: one is thus at one with Galileo and Descartes and
1:02:03
Speaker 1: the rest of the founders of modern mechanical science in
1:02:07
Speaker 1: proclaiming the doctrine of the subjectivity of sensible or, as
1:02:11
Speaker 1: Locke name them, secondary qualities. They are not real aftributes
1:02:17
Speaker 1: of external things, but simply effects produced by the action
1:02:22
Speaker 1: of external things upon the mind or the nervous system
1:02:26
Speaker 1: of the precipient. But Hobbs does not stop at this point.
1:02:30
Speaker 1: As a consistent materialist, he is bound to hold that
1:02:34
Speaker 1: the mind or nervous system is, like everything else, a body,
1:02:38
Speaker 1: and consequently that the only effect that can be produced
1:02:41
Speaker 1: upon it by any external agent is the same kind
1:02:45
Speaker 1: of effect which one external agent can produce on another,
1:02:48
Speaker 1: a modification of its previous motions the sensible quality. For example,
1:02:54
Speaker 1: a color must not merely be a mere subjective effect
1:02:59
Speaker 1: of external miss It must itself, as a subjective effect,
1:03:02
Speaker 1: be emotion, and nothing more. So, he adds immediately after
1:03:07
Speaker 1: the words just quoted, Neither in us that are pressed
1:03:12
Speaker 1: are they anything else but divers motions for motion produce
1:03:17
Speaker 1: of nothing but motion. Thus we are left to face
1:03:20
Speaker 1: the paradox that the whole world of perceived sensible qualities
1:03:26
Speaker 1: is an illusion, while there is not, and on the
1:03:29
Speaker 1: principles of strict materialism, cannot possibly be anyone to be eluded. Colors, tones, smells,
1:03:38
Speaker 1: tastes have first been declared to be subjective effects produced
1:03:42
Speaker 1: upon the individual percipient by the impact of particles themselves
1:03:47
Speaker 1: devoid of all quality. Then, since it has to be
1:03:51
Speaker 1: recognized that, according to materialism, the subject in which these
1:03:55
Speaker 1: effects are produced must be itself just one collection of
1:03:59
Speaker 1: such parts among others, it is announced that the effects
1:04:03
Speaker 1: themselves cannot really be there. If the average materialist stop
1:04:09
Speaker 1: short of enunciating this intolerable paradox, it is only because
1:04:14
Speaker 1: he is so far Hobbes's inferior in logical power, or
1:04:19
Speaker 1: in candor or in both. The conception of the subjectivity
1:04:24
Speaker 1: of sensible qualities is still so commonly regarded as an
1:04:29
Speaker 1: established result of modern science that it is worth our
1:04:32
Speaker 1: while to pause over it for a few moments, and
1:04:35
Speaker 1: to ask whether it can be maintained in a form
1:04:38
Speaker 1: which does not lead to the hobbyan paradox. Suppose that
1:04:42
Speaker 1: Hobbes had so far relaxed as materialism as to recognize
1:04:46
Speaker 1: the real existence of immaterial states of consciousness. Might he
1:04:50
Speaker 1: not have held, without any paradoxical consequences that what we
1:04:55
Speaker 1: commonly call the secondary or sensible qualities of external things
1:05:00
Speaker 1: in truth states of our own consciousness, which are caused
1:05:04
Speaker 1: by the action of an external world of bodies totally
1:05:07
Speaker 1: devoid of quality. Such a view was widely current in
1:05:11
Speaker 1: the ancient philosophical schools, and was revived in Hobbes's own
1:05:15
Speaker 1: day by Galileo and Descartes, from the latter of whom
1:05:19
Speaker 1: it passed as an almost unquestioned axiom into modern science.
1:05:25
Speaker 1: Yet it is clear, I think that the doctrine will
1:05:28
Speaker 1: not bear serious examination. The very ground upon which the
1:05:32
Speaker 1: sensible qualities are declared to be subjective, to be in
1:05:37
Speaker 1: us and not in the things outside us, is the
1:05:40
Speaker 1: assumption that all the processes of the physical world, however
1:05:45
Speaker 1: various they may seem to be, are in actual fact
1:05:48
Speaker 1: purely mechanical. If this principle is true, it must hold
1:05:54
Speaker 1: just as much for the living organism, which after all,
1:05:57
Speaker 1: is just one body among others, as for everything else.
1:06:01
Speaker 1: The effects of a stimulus upon the organism, whatever they
1:06:04
Speaker 1: may seem to be, must in reality be as entirely
1:06:08
Speaker 1: mechanical as the stimulus itself. As Hobbes very properly said,
1:06:14
Speaker 1: even if a color or a sound could be set
1:06:16
Speaker 1: without absurdity to be a state of consciousness, the principles
1:06:20
Speaker 1: of a mechanical philosophy would absolutely forbid our calling that
1:06:25
Speaker 1: state and effect of an external stimulus. The effect of
1:06:29
Speaker 1: the stimulus would have to be simply the X hypothesis pi,
1:06:33
Speaker 1: purely mechanical changes induced by it in the nervous system.
1:06:38
Speaker 1: And with these changes the state of consciousness would have
1:06:41
Speaker 1: really no discoverable relation, but the temporal relation of simultaneity.
1:06:47
Speaker 1: The whole of our intellectual life would become, as it
1:06:51
Speaker 1: has sometimes been called an epi phenomenon, a series of
1:06:55
Speaker 1: events occurring simultaneously with certain mechanical changes in the world.
1:06:59
Speaker 1: A body, but standing absolutely outside the series of causes
1:07:03
Speaker 1: and effects. And if we carried analysis a step further,
1:07:07
Speaker 1: we should at once be confronted by a still more
1:07:10
Speaker 1: formidable difficulty, for it would readily become apparent that whatever
1:07:14
Speaker 1: sensible qualities may be, they are certainly not states of
1:07:18
Speaker 1: a mind. When in common parlance, I am said to
1:07:21
Speaker 1: see a blue flower, it is really ridiculous to say that,
1:07:24
Speaker 1: in truth it is my mind which is blue. My
1:07:28
Speaker 1: judgment that flower is blue may be true or it
1:07:31
Speaker 1: may be false, But in either case one thing is
1:07:34
Speaker 1: quite clear. It is not being blue, but believing that
1:07:38
Speaker 1: the flower is blue, which is, in that moment a
1:07:42
Speaker 1: state of my perceiving mind. And this simple reflection is
1:07:46
Speaker 1: in itself enough to dispose of the whole doctrine of
1:07:50
Speaker 1: the subjectivity of sensible qualities. There are really only two
1:07:55
Speaker 1: alternative possibilities in the case. Either all the propositions in
1:07:59
Speaker 1: which equality is ascribed to a thing are merely false,
1:08:03
Speaker 1: as Hobbes's account logically implies, or else there are at
1:08:07
Speaker 1: least some bodies which really have the sensible qualities of color, savor,
1:08:12
Speaker 1: and so forth. It would be no way of escape
1:08:15
Speaker 1: to suggest that perhaps what is really blue is neither
1:08:18
Speaker 1: the flower nor my mind, but some part of my
1:08:22
Speaker 1: optical apparatus, for example, the stimulated region of my retina.
1:08:28
Speaker 1: For on such a theory, there is at least one
1:08:31
Speaker 1: body which really has the sensible quality viz. My retina.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: But if so, why not other bodies as well? And
1:08:40
Speaker 1: what becomes of the postulate that the only objectively real
1:08:45
Speaker 1: properties of body are mechanical. The fact is that Hobbes,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: like all the philosophers who have taught the subjectivity of
1:08:53
Speaker 1: sensible qualities, commits the grave error of trying to combine
1:08:57
Speaker 1: two really inconsistent conceptions of the relation between the external
1:09:02
Speaker 1: world and our perception. He tries to think of the
1:09:05
Speaker 1: world of bodies as being at once the cause of
1:09:08
Speaker 1: perception and also the object which perception apprehends. What our
1:09:14
Speaker 1: last two paragraphs have gone to show is that both
1:09:17
Speaker 1: these conceptions cannot be true at once. If the external
1:09:21
Speaker 1: world is the cause of perception, it cannot be the
1:09:24
Speaker 1: object apprehended in perception. In fact, perception in that case
1:09:29
Speaker 1: can have no object at all and all. Suppose knowledge
1:09:32
Speaker 1: about anything must be a mere illusion, as was pretty
1:09:36
Speaker 1: clearly seen by Hume. On the other hand, since the
1:09:40
Speaker 1: external world is certainly the object of our perception. How
1:09:43
Speaker 1: far that perception is correct or erroneous, makes no difference
1:09:47
Speaker 1: to the argument the relation of the world to the
1:09:50
Speaker 1: perceiving subject cannot possibly be a cause of one. When
1:09:55
Speaker 1: we have once grasped this truth, we shall see that
1:09:59
Speaker 1: the accuracy of our perception of sensible qualities of body
1:10:03
Speaker 1: is a question to be argued in every special case
1:10:06
Speaker 1: on its own merits, and cannot be impugned by any
1:10:10
Speaker 1: general a priori arguments drawn from the principle of causality.
1:10:15
Speaker 1: Nor does this conclusion in any way conflict with the
1:10:18
Speaker 1: fullest recognition of the right of physical science to treat
1:10:21
Speaker 1: the external world for its own purposes as if it
1:10:25
Speaker 1: were devoid of sensible qualities and consistent merely, let us say,
1:10:29
Speaker 1: of vibratory motions of different rates of frequency. All that
1:10:35
Speaker 1: is required to justify such a proceeding is that there
1:10:38
Speaker 1: should be a uniform one to one correlation between each
1:10:43
Speaker 1: sensible quality, for example, each shade of color and a
1:10:47
Speaker 1: particular kind of vibration. We may then treat the color
1:10:51
Speaker 1: for all purposes of mathematical physics as if it actually
1:10:55
Speaker 1: were the vibration, just as in ordinary analytical geometry, we
1:10:59
Speaker 1: can treat a point in a plane as if it
1:11:01
Speaker 1: were actually a couple of numbers. Where the physicists so
1:11:05
Speaker 1: often goes wrong when he strays into the domain of
1:11:09
Speaker 1: philosophy is in hastily assuming that two things which have
1:11:13
Speaker 1: one correspondence to each other are really the same thing.
1:11:17
Speaker 1: As for the further a post or ory arguments by
1:11:22
Speaker 1: which Hobbes tries to establish the subjectivity of sense qualities,
1:11:26
Speaker 1: for example, in the first chapter of Leviathan, they are
1:11:30
Speaker 1: all of the type sense made familiar by Barkley and
1:11:34
Speaker 1: his followers, appeals to dreams, two hallucinations, et cetera. Their
1:11:40
Speaker 1: conclusive force, whatever it may be, would be equally great
1:11:43
Speaker 1: if we applied them to the primary mechanical properties of body,
1:11:47
Speaker 1: or even to Hobbes's supreme reality, motion itself, since all
1:11:51
Speaker 1: these may be the subject of dreams and hallucinations, just
1:11:54
Speaker 1: as colors or smells might be. In truth, all that
1:11:58
Speaker 1: is proved by arguments of this type would seem to
1:12:01
Speaker 1: be that it is possible to make erroneous judgments about
1:12:05
Speaker 1: external things, a proposition which no sober philosophy is called
1:12:10
Speaker 1: on to deny. In one respect, Hobbes goes beyond most
1:12:15
Speaker 1: of the English writers who have since espoused the doctrine
1:12:18
Speaker 1: that sensible qualities are subjected. He maintains the same thing
1:12:22
Speaker 1: about space and time themselves. They also are merely phantasms.
1:12:28
Speaker 1: That is, they are not the accident or affection of anybody.
1:12:32
Speaker 1: They are not in the things without us, but only
1:12:36
Speaker 1: in the thought of the mind concerning body seven to three.
1:12:40
Speaker 1: More precisely, space is the phantasm of a thing existing
1:12:44
Speaker 1: without the mind, simply, that is to say, that phantasm
1:12:48
Speaker 1: in which we consider no other accident, but only that
1:12:51
Speaker 1: it appears without us. Time is the phantasma before and
1:12:55
Speaker 1: after emotion hibbid. Seven to two. Three. The ground given
1:13:00
Speaker 1: by Hobbes for this assertion is that if the whole
1:13:03
Speaker 1: world could be suddenly annihilated except one man, that man
1:13:07
Speaker 1: would still retain his consciousness of space and time. I
1:13:10
Speaker 1: confess I do not see that this consideration proves anything,
1:13:14
Speaker 1: except perhaps that space and time are not bodies. Nor
1:13:17
Speaker 1: do I see how Hobbs could think that motion, the
1:13:21
Speaker 1: successive occupation of different positions by the same thing, is
1:13:24
Speaker 1: objectively real, and yet hold that space and time are
1:13:28
Speaker 1: mere subjective ideas of our own. His statement it should
1:13:32
Speaker 1: be noted, bears no real resemblance to Kant's famous doctrine
1:13:37
Speaker 1: of the ideality of the forms of perception. Space and
1:13:42
Speaker 1: time are regarded by him, not as universal forms of
1:13:46
Speaker 1: perception impressed by the mind upon a manifold of sensations
1:13:50
Speaker 1: received from without, and merely as constituent elements of the
1:13:54
Speaker 1: manifold itself. The whole distinction between a formal element in
1:13:58
Speaker 1: perception which comes from the perceiving subject, and the material
1:14:02
Speaker 1: element contributed by the external world belongs to a later
1:14:06
Speaker 1: and more developed stage of the theory of knowledge. It is, indeed,
1:14:09
Speaker 1: a signal advance upon the quantient position to recognize clearly
1:14:13
Speaker 1: that the formal element in perception is no less objective
1:14:17
Speaker 1: than the material, but the recognition seems inconsistent with sensationalism
1:14:23
Speaker 1: as a theory of knowledge. Hobbes is able to be
1:14:26
Speaker 1: consistently sensationalist precisely because it does not occur to him
1:14:30
Speaker 1: to draw any distinction between the formal and the material
1:14:35
Speaker 1: in our knowledge. End of Chapter two, Part two, Chapter
1:14:47
Speaker 1: three of Thomas Hobbes by Alfred Edward Taylor. This LibriVox
1:14:54
Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Chapter three Imperial Psychology
1:15:01
Speaker 1: the Nature of Man. We may now proceed to consider
1:15:06
Speaker 1: main outlines of the analysis of cognition and volition, which
1:15:10
Speaker 1: has earned for Hobbes the well merited title a founder
1:15:14
Speaker 1: of empirical psychology, that chief contribution of the English speaking
1:15:19
Speaker 1: peoples to mental science. This analysis will be found by
1:15:23
Speaker 1: the English reader most fully set forth in two works,
1:15:27
Speaker 1: The Human Nature, the first part of the Treatise on
1:15:30
Speaker 1: the Elements of Law, originally composed in sixteen forty, and
1:15:34
Speaker 1: the opening chapters of Leviathan, published in sixteen fifty one.
1:15:39
Speaker 1: We must bear in mind, however, that Hobbes is chiefly
1:15:42
Speaker 1: interested in the psychology of the individual mind less for
1:15:46
Speaker 1: its own sake, than because it furnishes him with a
1:15:49
Speaker 1: logical foundation for his naturalistic doctrine of ethics and politics.
1:15:55
Speaker 1: His psychology is consequently only worked out so far as
1:15:59
Speaker 1: is necessary for the achievement of this ulterior and Obbs,
1:16:03
Speaker 1: as we have seen, does not attempt to deduce the
1:16:06
Speaker 1: principles of psychology, let alone these of ethics and politics,
1:16:10
Speaker 1: from the general doctrine of motion, but falls back upon
1:16:14
Speaker 1: our immediate experience of the main facts of human nature
1:16:17
Speaker 1: as we find them in ourselves. He is so to
1:16:21
Speaker 1: speak in empiricist Malgray Luis. And it is one of
1:16:25
Speaker 1: the entertaining ironies of history that the English philosopher, who,
1:16:29
Speaker 1: of all others is most strongly insistent upon the deductive
1:16:32
Speaker 1: character of genuine science, should be chiefly remembered by that
1:16:36
Speaker 1: part of his work which is most flagrantly inconsistent with
1:16:40
Speaker 1: his own conception of strictly scientific method. From the axiom
1:16:45
Speaker 1: that neither within nor without is there any reality but motion,
1:16:50
Speaker 1: there is, in truth no road to moral and political science,
1:16:54
Speaker 1: Hobbs starts in his Doctrine of Men from the usual
1:16:57
Speaker 1: empiricist assumption that all mental life is a development from
1:17:01
Speaker 1: beginnings in sensation. For there is no conception in a
1:17:06
Speaker 1: man's mind which hath not, at first totally or by parts,
1:17:09
Speaker 1: been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are
1:17:12
Speaker 1: derived from that original Leviathan one hundred one. Sensation, as
1:17:19
Speaker 1: we have seen, is, according to him, a motion caused
1:17:21
Speaker 1: in these organs by previous motion in some external body.
1:17:25
Speaker 1: Why the sensible qualities thus forgotten are supposed to belong
1:17:29
Speaker 1: to external bodies? He explains by the theory that all
1:17:32
Speaker 1: sensation gives rise to motor reaction from the heart, which he,
1:17:37
Speaker 1: like the Aristotelians, regards as the center of the nervous
1:17:40
Speaker 1: system towards the periphery of the body. It is the
1:17:44
Speaker 1: outward flowing direction of these reactions which causes sensible objects
1:17:48
Speaker 1: to appear without us a crude version of the now
1:17:52
Speaker 1: seriously discredited doctrine of feelings of innervation, he immediately adds
1:17:57
Speaker 1: a doctrine of that relativity of sensation. Sensation requires a
1:18:02
Speaker 1: constant variety of stimuli. Persistent exposure to an unvarying stimulus
1:18:08
Speaker 1: would readily give rise to total unconsciousness, it being almost
1:18:12
Speaker 1: one for a man to be always sensible of one
1:18:14
Speaker 1: and the same thing, and not to be sensible at
1:18:16
Speaker 1: all of anything concerning body twenty five five. That is,
1:18:23
Speaker 1: consciousness depends upon contrast from sensation. Hobbes goes on next
1:18:28
Speaker 1: to derived imagination and memory. Imagination is simply decaying sense,
1:18:33
Speaker 1: that is, the persistence in a less intense form of
1:18:37
Speaker 1: the organic process excited by a stimulus after the stimulus
1:18:41
Speaker 1: itself has been withdrawn. This persistence itself again is a
1:18:45
Speaker 1: consequence of what Newton was afterwards to call the first
1:18:48
Speaker 1: law of motion. When a body is once in motion,
1:18:51
Speaker 1: it moveth unless something else hindered eternally, and whatsoever hindereth
1:18:56
Speaker 1: it cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees,
1:18:59
Speaker 1: quite extinguish it. And as we see in the water,
1:19:03
Speaker 1: though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling
1:19:06
Speaker 1: for a long time after. So also it happeneth in
1:19:08
Speaker 1: that motion which is made in the internal parts of
1:19:11
Speaker 1: a man, then when he sees dreams, et cetera. For
1:19:14
Speaker 1: after the object is removed or the eyes shut, we
1:19:17
Speaker 1: still retain an image of the thing seen, though more
1:19:20
Speaker 1: obscure than when we see it. Imagination, therefore, is nothing
1:19:24
Speaker 1: but decaying sense Leviathan one hundred two. How in the
1:19:29
Speaker 1: general subjectivity of all sensation we are to know whether
1:19:33
Speaker 1: the object has really been withdrawn or not is a
1:19:36
Speaker 1: problem which Hobbes would scarcely have found it easy to solve.
1:19:40
Speaker 1: Memory is now explained to be simply imagination of what
1:19:43
Speaker 1: has passed. When we would express the decay and signify
1:19:47
Speaker 1: that the sense is fading old and past, it is
1:19:50
Speaker 1: called memory. So that imagination and memory are but one
1:19:55
Speaker 1: thing which for divers considerations hath divers names. It is
1:20:02
Speaker 1: clear that we are here again confronted by a difficulty
1:20:05
Speaker 1: which Hobbes's superficial appeals to physical analogies cannot conceal. For
1:20:10
Speaker 1: imagination is by no means exclusively of things past. We
1:20:13
Speaker 1: can imagine our future as readily as we can remember
1:20:16
Speaker 1: our past, and we often divert ourselves by imagining a
1:20:19
Speaker 1: state of things which neither has existed nor will ever exist. Now,
1:20:24
Speaker 1: how do we come to make these distinctions between different imaginations?
1:20:29
Speaker 1: If imagination and memory are merely two names for the
1:20:32
Speaker 1: same thing looked at from two different points of view,
1:20:35
Speaker 1: why is not all imagination indistinguishable from reminiscence? In other words,
1:20:40
Speaker 1: what a psychological analysis of memory ought to account for
1:20:44
Speaker 1: is not the mere fact that we can imagine what
1:20:47
Speaker 1: is actually passed, but the fact that in doing so,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: we recognize the events imagined as belonging to the past
1:20:53
Speaker 1: and not to the future, or to no time at all.
1:20:57
Speaker 1: The secret of Hobbes's failure to give any satisfactory account
1:21:00
Speaker 1: of memory is not hard to find, and it is
1:21:03
Speaker 1: also the secret of much more that is defective in
1:21:06
Speaker 1: his psychological analysis. What must happen to any really consistent
1:21:11
Speaker 1: sensationalist in psychology has happened to him. In his derivation
1:21:17
Speaker 1: of mental life from passively received sensations, he has forgotten
1:21:20
Speaker 1: the presence of selective attention as an ever present factor
1:21:24
Speaker 1: which actively determines the course of all mental processes. It
1:21:28
Speaker 1: is only when we have learned to distinguish that from
1:21:31
Speaker 1: which attention is turning away from that towards which it
1:21:34
Speaker 1: is moving, that we acquire basis for the distinction between
1:21:38
Speaker 1: imagination of what is no longer and imagination of what
1:21:41
Speaker 1: is not yet. Abbs' next advances to the analysis of
1:21:46
Speaker 1: complex strains of thought Leviathan one hundred three. He begins
1:21:51
Speaker 1: by laying down the general doctrine of association of ideas,
1:21:55
Speaker 1: giving a crude account of the psychophysical dependence of the
1:21:59
Speaker 1: process us upon the formation of paths of conduction in
1:22:03
Speaker 1: the nervous system, and recognizing association by contiguity more explicitly
1:22:10
Speaker 1: than association by resemblance, though the latter is not entirely overlooked.
1:22:15
Speaker 1: When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought
1:22:18
Speaker 1: after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be.
1:22:22
Speaker 1: Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But we
1:22:25
Speaker 1: have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we
1:22:29
Speaker 1: never had the like before in our senses. The reason
1:22:33
Speaker 1: whereof is this, All fancies are motions within us, relics
1:22:38
Speaker 1: of those made in the sense, and those motions that
1:22:41
Speaker 1: immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together
1:22:45
Speaker 1: after sense, insomuch as the former coming again to take
1:22:49
Speaker 1: place and to be predominant that later followeth by coherence
1:22:54
Speaker 1: of the matter moved. He distinguishes, however, between mere random
1:22:59
Speaker 1: association and thought guided or regulated by the presence of
1:23:03
Speaker 1: a definite end or purpose, which controls the formation of associations,
1:23:08
Speaker 1: for example, the orderly thinking out of a series of
1:23:12
Speaker 1: steps towards the gratification of a given desire. This letter
1:23:17
Speaker 1: ought really to present a difficulty to him, since it
1:23:20
Speaker 1: most obviously involves the presence of purposive attention, as actively
1:23:25
Speaker 1: determining the current of thought and leading to sequences and imagination,
1:23:29
Speaker 1: quite independent of previous sequences in our senses. And it
1:23:33
Speaker 1: seems manifest that such attention cannot be analyzed into a
1:23:38
Speaker 1: mere succession of subjective effects of physical stimuli. On Obs's theory,
1:23:44
Speaker 1: as on any theory which treats association, is more than
1:23:48
Speaker 1: a subordinate factor in determining the course of thought. Whenever
1:23:51
Speaker 1: we think of a given thing A, our next thought
1:23:54
Speaker 1: should be of a thing B, which is either very
1:23:57
Speaker 1: like A, or has been most commonly perceived or thought
1:24:00
Speaker 1: in close connection with A. In actual fact, in proportion
1:24:04
Speaker 1: as our thinking is truly irrational, or as Hobbs would say, regulated,
1:24:08
Speaker 1: The bee which the thought of A calls up is
1:24:10
Speaker 1: that which it is most relevant to our present object
1:24:13
Speaker 1: to think of next. And this bee may be something
1:24:17
Speaker 1: quite unlike A, and something which has never been thought
1:24:20
Speaker 1: of in this particular connection with A before. It is
1:24:24
Speaker 1: really only unregulated random thinking, which is dominated by association.
1:24:29
Speaker 1: In an orderly train of purposive thinking, association appears as
1:24:33
Speaker 1: often as not as a disturbing factor and source of
1:24:37
Speaker 1: pure irrelevance. Obbs now proceeds the viathin one hundred and
1:24:42
Speaker 1: six to a similar analysis of voluntary motions, that is,
1:24:47
Speaker 1: the whole cognitive side of mental life. Like most precantient psychologists,
1:24:54
Speaker 1: he reckons feeling and emotion among the forms of carnation.
1:24:58
Speaker 1: Carnation is in every case nothing but incipient motion within
1:25:03
Speaker 1: the nervous system, and such incipient outward directed reaction. Hobbes
1:25:08
Speaker 1: calls by the general name endeavor. Endeavor again has to
1:25:13
Speaker 1: contrasted directions. It is either endeavor to or from a
1:25:18
Speaker 1: perceived object, the words to and from being understood quite
1:25:21
Speaker 1: literally of direction in space. Endeavor towards an object is
1:25:26
Speaker 1: what we call appetite or desire. Endeavor from an object
1:25:30
Speaker 1: is called aversion. Other names for the two directions of
1:25:34
Speaker 1: endeavor are love and hate. Because going, speaking, and the like,
1:25:39
Speaker 1: voluntary motions depend always upon a precedent thought of whether,
1:25:44
Speaker 1: which way and what, it is evident that the imagination
1:25:48
Speaker 1: is the first internal beginning of all voluntary motions. And
1:25:53
Speaker 1: although unstudied men do not conceive any motion at all
1:25:57
Speaker 1: to be there where the thing moved is invisible, or
1:26:00
Speaker 1: the space it is moved in is for the shortness
1:26:03
Speaker 1: of it insensible, Yet that doth not hinder, but that
1:26:07
Speaker 1: such motions are, these small beginnings of motion within the
1:26:12
Speaker 1: body of men before they appear in walking, speaking, striking,
1:26:15
Speaker 1: and other visible actions are commonly called endeavor. This endeavor,
1:26:20
Speaker 1: when it is towards something which causes it, is called
1:26:23
Speaker 1: appetite or desire, and when endeavor is from word something,
1:26:29
Speaker 1: it is generally called aversion. That which men they are
1:26:32
Speaker 1: also said to love and to hate those things from
1:26:35
Speaker 1: which they have a version, so that desire and love
1:26:37
Speaker 1: are the same thing, save that by desire we always
1:26:40
Speaker 1: signify the absence of the object, by love, most commonly
1:26:43
Speaker 1: the presence of the same. So also by aversion we
1:26:47
Speaker 1: signify the absence, and by hate the presence of the object.
1:26:50
Speaker 1: If it six, whatever is the object of appetite or
1:26:56
Speaker 1: desire to a man, he calls good, Whatever is the
1:26:59
Speaker 1: object of averse, he calls evil. Hence, since the desires
1:27:03
Speaker 1: of different men, and even of the same men at
1:27:05
Speaker 1: different times, are very various, good and evil are purely
1:27:08
Speaker 1: relative terms, and there can be no common measure of them,
1:27:12
Speaker 1: except in civil society, where they are determined by the
1:27:15
Speaker 1: command of the ruler. Hence again the absolute necessity for
1:27:19
Speaker 1: the civil sovereign and his laws, if moral anarchy is
1:27:23
Speaker 1: to be avoided. These words are ever used with relation
1:27:27
Speaker 1: to the person that useth them, there being nothing simply
1:27:31
Speaker 1: and absolutely so, nor any common rule of good and
1:27:35
Speaker 1: evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves,
1:27:38
Speaker 1: but from the person of the man. When there is
1:27:40
Speaker 1: no commonwealth, or in a commonwealth, from the person that
1:27:43
Speaker 1: representeth it, or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing,
1:27:48
Speaker 1: shall by consent set up and make his sentence the
1:27:52
Speaker 1: rule thereof Leviathan one hundred six. In other words, there
1:27:57
Speaker 1: is no such thing as a moral law equally binding
1:28:00
Speaker 1: upon all persons, except in an organized political community, and
1:28:05
Speaker 1: in such a community itself, what we call the moral
1:28:08
Speaker 1: law is a consequence, a reflex in the consciousness of
1:28:12
Speaker 1: the individual man, of the habit of obedience to the
1:28:14
Speaker 1: commands of a political ruler. It follows from this purely
1:28:19
Speaker 1: naturalistic conception of the meaning of the words good and evil,
1:28:23
Speaker 1: that of the voluntary acts of every man the object
1:28:26
Speaker 1: is some good to himself at one hundred fourteen. The
1:28:32
Speaker 1: proposition is in fact tautologous, since, according to Hobbs's definition
1:28:37
Speaker 1: of good, good means what a man desires, and, as
1:28:40
Speaker 1: we are to see immediately, his psychology is unable to
1:28:43
Speaker 1: draw any real distinction between desire or appetite and volition. Thus,
1:28:49
Speaker 1: on the ground that the object of a man's desire
1:28:51
Speaker 1: is the object of his desire, Hobbs bases the conclusion
1:28:55
Speaker 1: that all voluntary action is, in the last resort, purely egoistic.
1:29:00
Speaker 1: Though it appears that the good at which an action
1:29:03
Speaker 1: aims may, in some cases be the suppression of the
1:29:06
Speaker 1: pain we feel that the side of another person's suffering
1:29:10
Speaker 1: and room is thus made for a limited and rather
1:29:12
Speaker 1: inferior kind of benevolence. It should further be noted that
1:29:17
Speaker 1: Hobbes oddly confounds pleasure and pain with the consciousness of
1:29:21
Speaker 1: appetite and of aversion, respectively, a gross blunder in analysis
1:29:27
Speaker 1: which is forced on him by the necessity of bringing
1:29:30
Speaker 1: all features of our mental life under one of the
1:29:33
Speaker 1: two heads cognition and motor impulse. Similarly, he is obliged
1:29:38
Speaker 1: to falsify his analysis of deliberation and volition. Deliberation is
1:29:44
Speaker 1: nothing more than a succession of alternating impulses or appetites
1:29:48
Speaker 1: towards and from the same object, when in the mind
1:29:52
Speaker 1: of man, appetites and aversions, hopes, and fears concerning one
1:29:56
Speaker 1: and the same thing arise alternately, and divers goods and
1:30:00
Speaker 1: evil consequences of the doing or omitting the thing propounded
1:30:04
Speaker 1: come successively into our thoughts, so that sometimes we have
1:30:08
Speaker 1: an appetite towards it, sometimes in aversion from it. The
1:30:11
Speaker 1: whole sum of desires, a versions, hopes, and fears continued
1:30:15
Speaker 1: till the thing be either done or thought impossible. Is
1:30:18
Speaker 1: that we call deliberation leviatin one hundred and six. It follows,
1:30:24
Speaker 1: of course, that deliberation is no prerogative of men, but
1:30:28
Speaker 1: common to him with the brutes. Will is simply the
1:30:32
Speaker 1: last member of this series. The appetite or aversion which
1:30:36
Speaker 1: immediately precedes the visible bodily reaction. The last appetite or
1:30:40
Speaker 1: aversion immediately adhering to the action or to the omission thereof,
1:30:45
Speaker 1: is that we call the will. And beasts that have
1:30:47
Speaker 1: deliberation must necessarily also have will. From the definition of
1:30:53
Speaker 1: good and evil, it follows that Hobbes adopts a purely
1:30:56
Speaker 1: and crudely determinist view on the question of free will
1:31:00
Speaker 1: inevitably aims at that which, at the moment appears good
1:31:03
Speaker 1: to himself. In fact, all that we mean by saying
1:31:06
Speaker 1: that it appears good to him is that he does
1:31:08
Speaker 1: so aim at it. Hobbes's essay on Liberty and Necessity
1:31:13
Speaker 1: still remains one of the clearest and most forcible statements
1:31:17
Speaker 1: of the case for this kind of rigid determinism against
1:31:21
Speaker 1: any admission of contingency or genuine freedom. In human action.
1:31:28
Speaker 1: This whole theory of volition obviously suffers from grave psychological defects,
1:31:33
Speaker 1: which in their turn lead to equally grave ethical and
1:31:37
Speaker 1: sociological errors. The secret source of Hobbes's worst mistakes in
1:31:42
Speaker 1: ethical theory must be sought in the absurd inadequacy of
1:31:46
Speaker 1: his analysis of deliberation. From the standpoint of really thorough psychology,
1:31:52
Speaker 1: nothing can be more ludicrous than his confusion of rational
1:31:56
Speaker 1: deliberation without mere sea saw of conflicting animal impulses. Rational deliberation,
1:32:04
Speaker 1: as distinguished from mere hesitation, implies the successive examination of
1:32:09
Speaker 1: alternative possibilities of action with a preconceived plan or purpose,
1:32:13
Speaker 1: which is already fixed in its main outlines, but receives
1:32:17
Speaker 1: further special determination as to its details by each of
1:32:21
Speaker 1: these successive comparisons. The final selection of one of the
1:32:26
Speaker 1: alternatives as the line to be followed is an act
1:32:29
Speaker 1: totally different in its psychical character from the blind translation
1:32:34
Speaker 1: into overt movement of an irrational impulse. Hence, it is
1:32:39
Speaker 1: that we can actually desire what we do not will,
1:32:42
Speaker 1: and will much that we do not desire. Thus we
1:32:46
Speaker 1: find in Hobbes's account of volition precisely the same blindness
1:32:50
Speaker 1: to the importance of selective attention, which we had found
1:32:54
Speaker 1: in his analysis of cognition. This has a further, most
1:32:58
Speaker 1: momentous consequence for his ethical and social doctrine. From the
1:33:03
Speaker 1: identification of volition with mere animal appetite, it follows that
1:33:08
Speaker 1: civilization can provide us with no new objects of volition.
1:33:12
Speaker 1: It can merely increase our command over the means of
1:33:16
Speaker 1: gratifying desires which remain identical with those of the savage,
1:33:20
Speaker 1: or supply additional motives, such as, for example, fear of
1:33:25
Speaker 1: the police or the gallows, strong enough to check the
1:33:28
Speaker 1: gratification of such desires. We are all still savages at heart,
1:33:34
Speaker 1: though we are better informed than the savage as to
1:33:37
Speaker 1: the probable consequences of gratifying our appetites, and have also
1:33:42
Speaker 1: contrived to attach artificially various new unpleasant consequences to the
1:33:47
Speaker 1: gratification of some of them. Not, of course, that Hobbes
1:33:52
Speaker 1: was himself ethically on the level of a savage. The
1:33:55
Speaker 1: acquisition of a rational comprehension of life to which Hobbes's
1:33:59
Speaker 1: labor were so unremittingly devoted, is itself an object of desire.
1:34:04
Speaker 1: Impossible to amir savage but for such objects his crude
1:34:09
Speaker 1: psychological analysis has provided no place. It is a direct
1:34:14
Speaker 1: consequence of this analysis, and at the same time the
1:34:17
Speaker 1: real foundation of his whole moral and social theory. That
1:34:21
Speaker 1: competition for objects of desire which can only be enjoyed
1:34:24
Speaker 1: by one man on the condition that all others are
1:34:27
Speaker 1: prevented from enjoying them, is still, as it always has been,
1:34:31
Speaker 1: the law of human life, and that this competition will
1:34:34
Speaker 1: always make ordered society impossible unless there is a ruler
1:34:37
Speaker 1: with the admitted right to set limits to it, and
1:34:40
Speaker 1: the power to enforce his regulations by penalties. However strongly,
1:34:46
Speaker 1: some of the facts of the period of revolution through
1:34:48
Speaker 1: which England was passing during Hobbs's manhood might suggest such
1:34:52
Speaker 1: a conception. It should be manifest to a dispassionate student
1:34:55
Speaker 1: of human history that it does infinitely less than justice,
1:35:00
Speaker 1: to the extent to which, as civilization advances, the objects
1:35:03
Speaker 1: of human desire become more and more of a non
1:35:06
Speaker 1: competitive kind, or of a kind which are positively unattainable
1:35:11
Speaker 1: by one man, except on the condition of their equal
1:35:14
Speaker 1: attainment by his fellows. Hobbs develops these portentous ethical consequences
1:35:20
Speaker 1: of his psychology in much detail in the eleventh and
1:35:23
Speaker 1: thirteenth chapters of Leviathan. The supreme aim of every man
1:35:28
Speaker 1: is to obtain power, that is, an assured command over
1:35:32
Speaker 1: the means of future gratification of desire. The reason why
1:35:36
Speaker 1: this passion persists so obstinately throughout life being not so
1:35:40
Speaker 1: much that man is never content with the degree of
1:35:43
Speaker 1: satisfaction he has already attained, as the uncertainty whether he
1:35:46
Speaker 1: will continue to retain it undiminished. In the first place,
1:35:51
Speaker 1: I put for a general inclination of all mankind a
1:35:54
Speaker 1: perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth
1:35:59
Speaker 1: only in death. And the cause of this is not
1:36:02
Speaker 1: always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight,
1:36:06
Speaker 1: or that he cannot be content with a moderate power,
1:36:09
Speaker 1: but because he cannot assure the power and means to
1:36:11
Speaker 1: live well which he hath present without the acquisition of
1:36:15
Speaker 1: more Leviathan one hundred eleven. Now, Hobbs also holds that
1:36:21
Speaker 1: there is no great natural difference between one man and another,
1:36:25
Speaker 1: either in physical or mental capacity. As to the strength
1:36:29
Speaker 1: of body. The weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest,
1:36:32
Speaker 1: either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that
1:36:36
Speaker 1: are in the same danger with himself. And as to
1:36:39
Speaker 1: the faculties of the mind, I find yet a greater
1:36:42
Speaker 1: equality amongst men than that of strength hbbid. One hundred thirteen. Consequently,
1:36:48
Speaker 1: the natural state of man, that is, the condition into
1:36:51
Speaker 1: which he is born and in which he remains, so
1:36:54
Speaker 1: far as he does not artificially put an end to
1:36:56
Speaker 1: it by the creation of a political system, is one
1:36:59
Speaker 1: of the universal competition, or, as Hobs, who likes to
1:37:02
Speaker 1: give his ideas the most startling and provocative wording, phrases,
1:37:06
Speaker 1: it one of war of every man against every man,
1:37:10
Speaker 1: in which there is no moral law. Since the recognition
1:37:13
Speaker 1: of moral law is only possible among men living in
1:37:16
Speaker 1: civil society and respecting their mutual rights and duties, do
1:37:21
Speaker 1: this war of every man against every man. This also
1:37:24
Speaker 1: is consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of
1:37:28
Speaker 1: right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place
1:37:33
Speaker 1: where there is no common power. There is no law
1:37:36
Speaker 1: where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in
1:37:41
Speaker 1: war the two cardinal virtues. It is consequent also to
1:37:45
Speaker 1: the same condition that there be no propriety, that is, property,
1:37:50
Speaker 1: no dominion, no mine, and thine distinct, but only that
1:37:54
Speaker 1: to be every man's, that he can get and for
1:37:56
Speaker 1: so long as he can hibbit. This state of universal anarchy,
1:38:04
Speaker 1: we must remember, is not in the least Hobbes's ideal,
1:38:07
Speaker 1: as it has sometimes been falsely represented to be bi
1:38:11
Speaker 1: unscrupulous controversialis on the contrary, he abhors it, and is
1:38:16
Speaker 1: at great pains to point out its horrors. So long
1:38:19
Speaker 1: as it lasts, there can be no settled industry or commerce,
1:38:23
Speaker 1: no science, no arts or letters. And which is worst
1:38:26
Speaker 1: of all, continuous fear and danger of violent death in
1:38:29
Speaker 1: the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short ibbit.
1:38:36
Speaker 1: The salvation of man, in fact, is, we shall see,
1:38:39
Speaker 1: depends on the fact that though nature has placed him
1:38:42
Speaker 1: in so evil a condition, she has also endowed him
1:38:45
Speaker 1: with a possibility to come out of it. Whatever we
1:38:49
Speaker 1: may think of Hobbes's analysis of human nature, it must
1:38:52
Speaker 1: not be forgotten for a moment that its object is
1:38:55
Speaker 1: not the repudiation of law and morality, but the vindication
1:38:59
Speaker 1: of them as the ownly safeguards against general anarchy and misery.
1:39:04
Speaker 1: In proof of the correctness of the dark picture thus
1:39:07
Speaker 1: drawn of what human life would be without a firmly
1:39:10
Speaker 1: established political authority to protect men against one another and
1:39:13
Speaker 1: against their own antisocial appetites. Hobbes appeals one to the
1:39:18
Speaker 1: actual condition of savages, two to the absence of all
1:39:22
Speaker 1: moral restraint shown in the mutual relations of independent states
1:39:27
Speaker 1: who have no common superior towards each other, and three,
1:39:31
Speaker 1: with special reference to the calumniators who charged him with
1:39:35
Speaker 1: a desire to undermine the authority of the existing moral law,
1:39:39
Speaker 1: to the precautions which men take against one another even
1:39:42
Speaker 1: in settled and civilized states. He thus fairly retorts that
1:39:46
Speaker 1: he only puts into words what is implied in the
1:39:49
Speaker 1: conduct of his critics themselves, when they barb their jests,
1:39:54
Speaker 1: lock their doors, or carry arms when on a journey.
1:39:57
Speaker 1: Hobbes's account of the state of nature is, of course,
1:40:01
Speaker 1: as is shown in particular by the seventeenth chapter of Levivan,
1:40:05
Speaker 1: expressly intended to contradict the doctrine of Aristotle, revived and
1:40:10
Speaker 1: made popular in his own time by the famous work
1:40:12
Speaker 1: of Grotius de jure Belli et pacus, that man is
1:40:18
Speaker 1: naturally a political animal, that is, that the rudiments of
1:40:22
Speaker 1: sociability and social organization are never absent from any group
1:40:25
Speaker 1: of human beings living together. This implies, contrary to Hobbes's
1:40:30
Speaker 1: psychological analysis, that human impulses are not exclusively egoistic. So
1:40:37
Speaker 1: Hobbes reverts to a notion ultimately derived from the old
1:40:41
Speaker 1: Greek sophists, who taught that morality is the result of convention,
1:40:46
Speaker 1: the notion that mankind originally existed in a state of
1:40:49
Speaker 1: nature which was one of sheer lawlessness, and that all
1:40:53
Speaker 1: subtle morality is the result of habituation to obedience to
1:40:56
Speaker 1: political rules, which must have been originally set up by
1:41:00
Speaker 1: voluntary agreement or contract. It is easy to point out
1:41:05
Speaker 1: that Hobbes exaggerates the extent to which morality is a
1:41:09
Speaker 1: mere effect of civil obedience, and to show, in the
1:41:12
Speaker 1: light of later research that even savages who have no
1:41:15
Speaker 1: settled political organization really possess a rudimentary morality based on
1:41:21
Speaker 1: traditional tribal custom. It is equally true that he exaggerates
1:41:26
Speaker 1: the defects even of the seventeenth century when he maintains
1:41:30
Speaker 1: that independent nations recognize no moral restrictions whatever in their
1:41:35
Speaker 1: dealings with their neighbours. Yet is reflections on the character
1:41:39
Speaker 1: of international morality as well as on the precautions taken
1:41:43
Speaker 1: even by the citizen of outlaw abiding community against his fellows,
1:41:47
Speaker 1: retain even today a great deal of unpleasant significance. We are,
1:41:51
Speaker 1: after all, in many things nearer the savage than we
1:41:55
Speaker 1: like to think. And it is well that we should
1:41:57
Speaker 1: not be allowed to forget the fact. And it is
1:42:01
Speaker 1: at least an important part of the truth that our
1:42:03
Speaker 1: moral codes are too largely merely the effect of unreasoned
1:42:08
Speaker 1: acquiescence in long established custom. While there can be no
1:42:12
Speaker 1: doubt that Hobbes is much nearer the truth than the
1:42:15
Speaker 1: sentimental writers before and after him, who have glorified the
1:42:19
Speaker 1: relatively lawless condition of the pre civilized man as a
1:42:23
Speaker 1: golden age of superior in a sense or virtue. And
1:42:27
Speaker 1: there is an element of truth in Hobbes's polemic against
1:42:30
Speaker 1: Aristotle's conception of the way in which the family has
1:42:33
Speaker 1: widened into the village community, and the village community into
1:42:37
Speaker 1: the city or nation, by a process of peaceful expansion.
1:42:42
Speaker 1: We know enough now of the steps by which historical
1:42:45
Speaker 1: Greece came into existence to be sure that what lay
1:42:48
Speaker 1: behind the formation of the Greek polus was more often
1:42:51
Speaker 1: than not invasion, conquest, massacre and the anarchy produced by
1:42:56
Speaker 1: the violent subversion of older settled morality. Let's see if
1:43:01
Speaker 1: we abandon the empty dream of ever discovering historical information
1:43:04
Speaker 1: as to the primitive condition of mankind, and content ourselves
1:43:08
Speaker 1: with the more modest question what state of things preceded
1:43:12
Speaker 1: the growth of that which we call Western civilization, whether
1:43:15
Speaker 1: Hellenic or Germanic, we shall find that Hobbes has after
1:43:19
Speaker 1: all given us a large part, though not the whole,
1:43:22
Speaker 1: of the truth, especially if we take his picture with
1:43:25
Speaker 1: his own qualifying remark that it was never generally so
1:43:29
Speaker 1: all over the world, and that his prime purpose is
1:43:31
Speaker 1: not to write ancient history, but to show by philosophical
1:43:35
Speaker 1: analysis what manner of life there would be where there
1:43:38
Speaker 1: were no common power, to fear by the manner of
1:43:41
Speaker 1: life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful
1:43:44
Speaker 1: government use to degenerate into a civil war. Leviathan one
1:43:50
Speaker 1: hundred and thirteen, end of chapter three, Chapter four of
1:44:04
Speaker 1: Thomas Hobbes by Alfred Edward Taylor. This LibriVox recording is
1:44:12
Speaker 1: in the public domain. The making of the Leviathan. We
1:44:17
Speaker 1: have seen in the last chapter. What is Hobbes's conception
1:44:23
Speaker 1: of the state of nature, the condition of which man
1:44:27
Speaker 1: found himself at the dawn of civilization, and into which
1:44:31
Speaker 1: he tends to degenerate when the bonds of political allegiance
1:44:35
Speaker 1: are gravely relaxed. It is a condition in which the
1:44:39
Speaker 1: machinery provided by government for the restraint of men's fundamentally
1:44:45
Speaker 1: anti social impulses is entirely absent, and in which there
1:44:50
Speaker 1: is nothing to take its place. How then, could any
1:44:55
Speaker 1: number of men ever pass out of this state of
1:44:57
Speaker 1: anarchy into a state of thing settled order. Hobbs replies
1:45:02
Speaker 1: that there is a possibility to escape from the state
1:45:05
Speaker 1: of nature into one of civil society, which is founded
1:45:10
Speaker 1: partly on men's passions, partly on men's reason, partly on
1:45:15
Speaker 1: their passion, since among these there are several which make
1:45:19
Speaker 1: for peace and orderly existence, such as fear of death,
1:45:23
Speaker 1: desire such things as are necessary to commodious living, and
1:45:27
Speaker 1: a hope by their industry to obtain them Leviathan one
1:45:32
Speaker 1: hundred thirteen. Partly on reason, since it is reason which
1:45:37
Speaker 1: suggests to mankind the proper means of securing gratification for
1:45:42
Speaker 1: these un bellicose passions. Whereas Hobbes puts it, suggestive convenient
1:45:49
Speaker 1: articles of peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement.
1:45:55
Speaker 1: If we might perhaps ask how men, living by the
1:46:00
Speaker 1: unregulated promptings of egoistic appetite, ever come to listen to
1:46:05
Speaker 1: these suggestions of reason. But here too Hobbes is ready
1:46:10
Speaker 1: with an answer. We all of us, he says, of
1:46:15
Speaker 1: our calmer moments, when rational reflection is undisturbed by passion.
1:46:21
Speaker 1: And it is then that the voice which suggests articles
1:46:25
Speaker 1: of peace makes itself heard. Like the great majority of
1:46:30
Speaker 1: the political theorists, from Hooker in the sixteenth century to
1:46:34
Speaker 1: rus So in the eighteenth, Hobbes thus assumes that the
1:46:39
Speaker 1: transition from savagery to civil society must have begun with
1:46:45
Speaker 1: an express agreement or a contract the soul called social compact. Hence,
1:46:52
Speaker 1: with him, as with the others, it becomes the first
1:46:55
Speaker 1: object of political theory to discover the terms of this
1:46:59
Speaker 1: original contract, the articles of peace already mentioned, since it
1:47:04
Speaker 1: is by these terms that we have to ascertain the
1:47:09
Speaker 1: limits of the rightful authority of political rulers. The ruler
1:47:14
Speaker 1: is legitimately entitled to just so much authority over his subjects,
1:47:20
Speaker 1: and no more, as can be logically deduced from the
1:47:24
Speaker 1: examination of the terms of the contract by which civil
1:47:28
Speaker 1: subjection was first instituted. Whatever in the practice of actual
1:47:35
Speaker 1: rulers is not covered by these terms is usurpation. This
1:47:40
Speaker 1: method of deducing the rights of a government over its
1:47:43
Speaker 1: subjects from a supposed original contract, which had, in point
1:47:47
Speaker 1: of fact, come down to the thinkers of the sixteenth century,
1:47:51
Speaker 1: from the medieval ledgists and schoolmen, who were seeking a
1:47:56
Speaker 1: rational basis for their various theories of the division power
1:48:00
Speaker 1: between the pope and the secular authorities or between the
1:48:04
Speaker 1: Pope and the general councils, received its death blow towards
1:48:08
Speaker 1: the end of the eighteenth century from Bentham and Burke,
1:48:12
Speaker 1: both of whom insist in different ways that the rights
1:48:15
Speaker 1: of governments must be based on the actual needs of
1:48:18
Speaker 1: society and not on any theory of the primitive rights
1:48:22
Speaker 1: of man. Bentham's arguments, which will be found in his
1:48:26
Speaker 1: Fragment on Government, are mainly directed against Blackstone's attempt to
1:48:30
Speaker 1: determine the rights of the British crown by deductions from
1:48:34
Speaker 1: the compact between King and people supposed to be made
1:48:38
Speaker 1: in the Coronation oath Berks against the onslaught of the
1:48:41
Speaker 1: French Revolution, acting in the name of the rights of
1:48:45
Speaker 1: man upon the vested interests which he chooses to regard
1:48:48
Speaker 1: as established rights of the nobility and clergy. In the
1:48:52
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, the growth of historical research into social origins
1:48:57
Speaker 1: made the conception of government as having a at a
1:49:00
Speaker 1: definite time by means of a definite voluntary compact even
1:49:04
Speaker 1: more unreal, by revealing the enormous extent to which definite
1:49:08
Speaker 1: political institutions have arisen out of an earlier stage of
1:49:12
Speaker 1: customary law. Indeed, when we look the matter squarely in
1:49:16
Speaker 1: the face, it becomes evident that free association by voluntary
1:49:20
Speaker 1: agreement belongs to the culmination rather than to the beginnings
1:49:25
Speaker 1: of civilization, and that the recognition of the binding force
1:49:29
Speaker 1: of such agreements presupposes the existence of a highly organized
1:49:33
Speaker 1: public opinion against their violation, so that contract depends upon
1:49:38
Speaker 1: society more than society upon contract. It is therefore quite
1:49:42
Speaker 1: impossible for us to take Hobbs's account of the compact
1:49:45
Speaker 1: by which savagery is ended and civilized life begun as
1:49:49
Speaker 1: serious historical fact. Yet it is possible to suspect that
1:49:53
Speaker 1: the reaction against theories of the origin of government and
1:49:57
Speaker 1: contract may perhaps have been carried to far eas even
1:50:00
Speaker 1: on the historical side. History itself at least gives us
1:50:04
Speaker 1: reason to believe that many a famous community has sprung
1:50:08
Speaker 1: from combinations of broken men relics in a period of
1:50:12
Speaker 1: general disintegration, from many distinct, ruined tribes or cities, who
1:50:16
Speaker 1: have somehow been thrown together and entered into a new
1:50:20
Speaker 1: alliance among themselves. And in such cases the new community
1:50:23
Speaker 1: must clearly have rested upon the voluntary agreement to unite
1:50:27
Speaker 1: in mutual support. But in any case, the substance of
1:50:31
Speaker 1: Hobbs's reason plea for absolutism is quite independent of the
1:50:36
Speaker 1: largely mythical form in which it is clothed by the author.
1:50:40
Speaker 1: However governments originate, it is at least true that their
1:50:44
Speaker 1: permanency depends upon the recognition by governors and governed alike
1:50:49
Speaker 1: of certain general principles defining the functions of the governor
1:50:53
Speaker 1: and the obligations of the government. And such recognition may
1:50:57
Speaker 1: not unsuitably be represented to the imagine nation has an
1:51:01
Speaker 1: implicit bargain these principles. Hobbes and the seventeenth century publicists
1:51:07
Speaker 1: in general call by a name borrowed from the Roman lawyers, who,
1:51:11
Speaker 1: in their turn have borrowed it from the Stoic philosophers
1:51:14
Speaker 1: the laws of nature. The curious result of this appeal
1:51:18
Speaker 1: to the terminology of the Roman jurists being that, in effect,
1:51:22
Speaker 1: the theorists of the social contract contrived to apply to
1:51:25
Speaker 1: political institutions of a very UnRoman character the doctrines of
1:51:29
Speaker 1: the Roman law of corporations. There is, of course no
1:51:33
Speaker 1: inconsistency between the phrase laws of nature and Hobbes's doctrine
1:51:38
Speaker 1: that a law in the sense of a command bio
1:51:41
Speaker 1: superior is impossible until the creation of a public authority
1:51:45
Speaker 1: to give the command. Since Hobbes is careful to explain,
1:51:48
Speaker 1: the laws of nature are not commands but rules of reason,
1:51:52
Speaker 1: true universal propositions as to the conditions upon which settled
1:51:56
Speaker 1: well being is obtainable. They are laws in the sense
1:52:01
Speaker 1: in which we apply the name to the principle of
1:52:04
Speaker 1: excluded middle or to that of the syllogism, not in
1:52:07
Speaker 1: the sense in which it is given to the Statute
1:52:09
Speaker 1: of mort Maine or the British North American Act. A
1:52:13
Speaker 1: law of nature lacks naturalis is a precept or general
1:52:17
Speaker 1: rule found out by reason by which a man is
1:52:19
Speaker 1: forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life,
1:52:22
Speaker 1: or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and
1:52:25
Speaker 1: to omit that by which he thinketh it may best
1:52:28
Speaker 1: be preserved Cleviathan, one hundred fourteen. Hobbs's employment of the
1:52:33
Speaker 1: word forbidden in this sentence is, of course metaphorical. His
1:52:37
Speaker 1: meaning is simply that, since every man desires to live,
1:52:40
Speaker 1: reflection shows us that it would be irrational to endanger
1:52:43
Speaker 1: our lives or to fail to protect them. It is
1:52:46
Speaker 1: in this, and not in any mere idealistic sense, that
1:52:49
Speaker 1: we have to understand the declaration in the first chapter
1:52:52
Speaker 1: of the De Corpore Politico that the law of nature
1:52:56
Speaker 1: is identical with reason. It is not that reason is
1:52:59
Speaker 1: thought as supplying us with ends of action. The ends
1:53:03
Speaker 1: of action are already given by the fundamental brute passions
1:53:06
Speaker 1: and appetites. What reason does is to indicate general rules
1:53:10
Speaker 1: as to the means by which such foregone ends may
1:53:13
Speaker 1: be most certainly obtained. Of such general rules found out
1:53:18
Speaker 1: by reason, there are, according to Hobbes, a considerable number,
1:53:22
Speaker 1: but all are deducible from a single supreme rule. That
1:53:25
Speaker 1: every man ought to endeavor peace as far as he
1:53:28
Speaker 1: has hope of obtaining it, and where he cannot obtain it,
1:53:31
Speaker 1: that he may seek and use all helps and advantages
1:53:34
Speaker 1: of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the
1:53:38
Speaker 1: first and fundamental law of nature, which is to seek
1:53:41
Speaker 1: peace and follow it. The second the sum of the
1:53:44
Speaker 1: right of nature, which is by all means we can
1:53:47
Speaker 1: to defend ourselves lev In one hundred and fourteen. Of course,
1:53:52
Speaker 1: by saying that we ought to seek peace, Hobbes means
1:53:55
Speaker 1: no more than that, in virtue of the hazards and
1:53:57
Speaker 1: dangers of the war of all against all, it is
1:54:00
Speaker 1: manifestly to our advantage to do so where we can.
1:54:04
Speaker 1: An immediate corollary, which figures as the second law of nature,
1:54:08
Speaker 1: is that each of us should be willing when the
1:54:10
Speaker 1: rest are equally willing to abandon the general claim, to
1:54:13
Speaker 1: act exactly as he thinks fit, so far as their
1:54:16
Speaker 1: renunciation is necessary for peace. That a man be willing
1:54:20
Speaker 1: when others are so too, As far forth as for
1:54:23
Speaker 1: peace and defense of himself, he shall think it necessary
1:54:26
Speaker 1: to lay down this right to all things, and be
1:54:29
Speaker 1: contented with so much liberty against other men as he
1:54:32
Speaker 1: would allow other men against himself ibid. Briefly, then the
1:54:35
Speaker 1: second law is due not to others what you are
1:54:38
Speaker 1: not prepared to allow them to do to you, a
1:54:40
Speaker 1: precept which Hobbes characteristically enough confuses with the golden rule
1:54:44
Speaker 1: of the Gospel. It is upon this rule that the
1:54:47
Speaker 1: whole possibility of contract, and consequently, according to Hobbes, of
1:54:51
Speaker 1: political society depends. For what the rule provides for is
1:54:55
Speaker 1: the laying aside by each member of a body of
1:54:57
Speaker 1: men of some part of his original right, as we
1:54:59
Speaker 1: con described in the first of Hobbs's Rules of Reason,
1:55:03
Speaker 1: to act exactly as he thinks fit. Now, rights laid
1:55:06
Speaker 1: aside are either merely renounced, or, when they are resigned
1:55:09
Speaker 1: for the benefit of an expressly designated person or persons,
1:55:14
Speaker 1: transferred to that person or persons. Such transference, being a
1:55:18
Speaker 1: voluntary act, is necessarily interested. Since the object of every
1:55:22
Speaker 1: voluntary act is some good to myself. The contracting parties, then,
1:55:26
Speaker 1: in every case act each with a view to his
1:55:28
Speaker 1: own ultimate advantage. Also, since there are certain things for
1:55:33
Speaker 1: the surrenders which no man can receive an equivalent, there
1:55:37
Speaker 1: are things which cannot be made the subjects of contract,
1:55:41
Speaker 1: rights which cannot be transferred. A man cannot, for example,
1:55:45
Speaker 1: divest himself of the right to resist an assault upon
1:55:47
Speaker 1: his life or an attempt to wound or imprison him.
1:55:51
Speaker 1: More generally, since the whole object of our transference of
1:55:54
Speaker 1: rights is to obtain an increased security of life and
1:55:57
Speaker 1: the means of enjoying life, no act or word of
1:55:59
Speaker 1: mind can reasonably be interpreted as showing an intention of
1:56:03
Speaker 1: divesting myself of the means of self preservation. These considerations
1:56:08
Speaker 1: will meet us again as furnishing some limits even to
1:56:11
Speaker 1: the power of the sovereign. Hobbs now proceeds to deduce
1:56:15
Speaker 1: from this second law a third, which is the immediate
1:56:18
Speaker 1: foundation of the rest of his social theory. When two
1:56:21
Speaker 1: parties make a bargain for their mutual advantage, it frequently
1:56:24
Speaker 1: happens that one of them is called upon to perform
1:56:27
Speaker 1: his part of the contract first, and to trust the
1:56:29
Speaker 1: other to discharge his part at some future time. In
1:56:32
Speaker 1: this case, the contract is called, from the point of
1:56:35
Speaker 1: view of the second party, a covenant. From the second
1:56:38
Speaker 1: law of nature, we can then deduce a third, which
1:56:41
Speaker 1: Hobbes treats as the foundation of all moral obligation, that
1:56:44
Speaker 1: men perform their covenants made Leviathan one hundred and fifteen.
1:56:49
Speaker 1: This follows because if I break my agreement with you, then,
1:56:52
Speaker 1: since your object in the original agreement was to secure
1:56:55
Speaker 1: some good to yourself, and my failure to perform what
1:56:58
Speaker 1: I undertook has frustrated that obs, you have no longer
1:57:01
Speaker 1: any inducement to fulfill your part of the bargain. Thus
1:57:04
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of making covenants has been defeated. Covenants
1:57:08
Speaker 1: are in vain and but empty words, and the right
1:57:10
Speaker 1: of all men to all things remaining, we are still
1:57:12
Speaker 1: in the condition of war ibid. On this law of
1:57:15
Speaker 1: the sacredness of a covenant depends the distinction of justice
1:57:19
Speaker 1: from injustice, and indirectly the whole of social morality, since
1:57:23
Speaker 1: the definition of injustice is no other than the not
1:57:26
Speaker 1: performance of covenant, and whatsoever is not unjust is just ibid.
1:57:31
Speaker 1: Note incidentally, that Hobbes, thus, like Schopenhauer, treats wrongdoing as
1:57:35
Speaker 1: a concept logically prior to right doing. This definition explains
1:57:40
Speaker 1: what Hobbs had meant by saying that in a state
1:57:42
Speaker 1: of nature there can be no injustice. Injustice is breach
1:57:46
Speaker 1: of covenant. But the mutual trust upon which the making
1:57:49
Speaker 1: of covenants depends is only possible when there is a
1:57:51
Speaker 1: coercive power which can affect breaches of covenant with penalty
1:57:55
Speaker 1: severe enough to make it to my interest to abstain
1:57:58
Speaker 1: from them. That is under a civil government. For the
1:58:02
Speaker 1: same reason, it is only under a civil government that
1:58:05
Speaker 1: there can be property. It is a natural question why,
1:58:08
Speaker 1: if the motive for loyalty to my agreements is always
1:58:11
Speaker 1: some prospect of advantage to myself, I should be morally
1:58:14
Speaker 1: bound to keep them in cases where treachery promises to
1:58:17
Speaker 1: be still more advantageous the fact of the obligation. Hobbs
1:58:22
Speaker 1: does not dispute, even maintains expressly that a promise to
1:58:25
Speaker 1: began to pay a certain sum on condition of being
1:58:28
Speaker 1: released as binding unless declared invalid by a properly constituted
1:58:33
Speaker 1: court of law. But he is not altogether successful in
1:58:35
Speaker 1: the reasoning by which he supports his view. Partly, he
1:58:38
Speaker 1: replies that a promised breaker is not likely to gain
1:58:41
Speaker 1: in the long run, since no one will trust him
1:58:43
Speaker 1: after his detection. Partly, he obscurely hints that there may
1:58:47
Speaker 1: be a final judgment of God to be reckoned with. Apparently,
1:58:51
Speaker 1: this suggestion is not merely made for the benefit of
1:58:54
Speaker 1: the orthodox reader, but represents a lot of inconsistency in
1:58:58
Speaker 1: the author's own views, a belief that honesty is not
1:59:00
Speaker 1: merely the best policy, but has a higher sanctity of
1:59:04
Speaker 1: his own, which Hobbes's analysis of morality fails to account for.
1:59:09
Speaker 1: Perhaps he was more deeply influenced than he knew by
1:59:12
Speaker 1: the traditional English hatred of a lie as something inherently base.
1:59:16
Speaker 1: Hobbs now enumerates no less than sixteen subsidiary laws of
1:59:21
Speaker 1: nature that his conditions without which peaceable common existence would
1:59:25
Speaker 1: be impossible. The general character of these laws is negative.
1:59:29
Speaker 1: They are prohibitions of various forms of behavior which may
1:59:33
Speaker 1: be expected to lead to a breach of the peace,
1:59:35
Speaker 1: and the deduction in each case takes the form of
1:59:38
Speaker 1: an appeal to self interest. For example, if I show
1:59:42
Speaker 1: myself revengeful or arrogant, or unwilling to refer a dispute
1:59:46
Speaker 1: between myself and my neighbor to a disinterested and impartial arbitrator,
1:59:50
Speaker 1: I am doing what lies in me to prolong the
1:59:52
Speaker 1: state of war, and am thus losing the increased security
1:59:55
Speaker 1: of life and enjoyment of its good things, which peace
1:59:58
Speaker 1: would have given me. The whole body of the nineteen laws,
2:00:02
Speaker 1: Hobbs says, may be summed up in the simple formula
2:00:05
Speaker 1: which had already been given as an equivalent for the
2:00:07
Speaker 1: second law, to leave all men unexcusable. They have been
2:00:11
Speaker 1: contracted into one easy sum, intelligible even to the meanest capacity.
2:00:16
Speaker 1: And that is due not that to another, which thou
2:00:19
Speaker 1: wouldst not have done to thyself, which showeth him that
2:00:23
Speaker 1: he has no more to do in learning the laws
2:00:26
Speaker 1: in nature. But when weighing the actions of other men
2:00:28
Speaker 1: with his own, they seem too heavy to put them
2:00:31
Speaker 1: into the other part of the balance, and his own
2:00:34
Speaker 1: into their place. That his own passions and self love
2:00:37
Speaker 1: may add nothing to the weight. And then there is
2:00:39
Speaker 1: none of these laws of nature that will not appear,
2:00:42
Speaker 1: unto him very reasonable Leviathan one hundred fifteen. We see
2:00:48
Speaker 1: then that Hobbes's laws of nature, looked at as a whole,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: afford a fair formulation of the fundamental negative condition upon
2:00:55
Speaker 1: which the maintenance of social order depends. No man is
2:00:59
Speaker 1: to expect more from his neighbors than he is willing
2:01:02
Speaker 1: that they should expect from him, and no man is
2:01:04
Speaker 1: to interfere with the doings of his neighbors in any
2:01:07
Speaker 1: way in which they may not equally interfere with his
2:01:10
Speaker 1: The competitors in the great struggle of life are to
2:01:13
Speaker 1: start fair and to play the game. What we should
2:01:17
Speaker 1: seek in vain in any of Hobbes's expositions of his
2:01:20
Speaker 1: social doctrine is the great Hellenic conception of the state
2:01:23
Speaker 1: or community as having a further positive function, a duty
2:01:27
Speaker 1: to ennoble the lives of its members, so that each
2:01:29
Speaker 1: of them may, if he will, climb to spiritual heights
2:01:32
Speaker 1: which he could not have scaled alone. Hobbs can hardly
2:01:35
Speaker 1: be said to have any real belief in social institutions
2:01:39
Speaker 1: as the instruments and bears a progressive civilization. He treats
2:01:43
Speaker 1: them as merely so much machinery for the preservation of
2:01:46
Speaker 1: a status quo. He is mastered only the first half
2:01:49
Speaker 1: of Aristotle's famous dictum that the city comes into being
2:01:53
Speaker 1: that men may live, but continues to be that they
2:01:56
Speaker 1: may live well. We may now pass at once to
2:01:59
Speaker 1: a demonstration of the necessity of the organized state and
2:02:03
Speaker 1: his machinery. The laws of nature are indeed in themselves
2:02:07
Speaker 1: a sufficient code of conduct, and if they were always observed,
2:02:10
Speaker 1: peaceful social existence would be guaranteed, with all its accompanying benefits.
2:02:15
Speaker 1: But in the state of nature we can have no
2:02:17
Speaker 1: security that they will be obeyed. They oblige inro interna,
2:02:22
Speaker 1: that is to say, they bind to a desire they
2:02:25
Speaker 1: should take place, but in foro externa, that is to
2:02:28
Speaker 1: the putting them in the act not always, since a
2:02:31
Speaker 1: man who persisted in keeping them while all his neighbors
2:02:34
Speaker 1: broke them would infallibly lose by his conduct. And it
2:02:37
Speaker 1: is impossible, in Hobbes's theory of human nature that a
2:02:40
Speaker 1: man should persist in doing what he knows to be
2:02:42
Speaker 1: contrary to his private interest. Thus they are rightly speaking,
2:02:46
Speaker 1: not as yet laws, so long as men remain in
2:02:49
Speaker 1: a state of nature, For a law means a command
2:02:51
Speaker 1: given and enforceable by a definite person. These dictates of
2:02:56
Speaker 1: reason men used to go about the name of laws,
2:02:59
Speaker 1: but improperly, for they are but conclusions or theorems concerning
2:03:03
Speaker 1: what conduceth to the conservation and defense of themselves. Whereas
2:03:07
Speaker 1: law properly is the word of him that by right
2:03:09
Speaker 1: hath command over others, levive in one hundred fifteen. What
2:03:14
Speaker 1: is needed, then, to secure actual obedience to them, is
2:03:17
Speaker 1: that they should be converted into commands issued by an
2:03:20
Speaker 1: authority which has rightful claims to obedience, and has also
2:03:23
Speaker 1: sufficient force at its disposal to secure obedience by the
2:03:27
Speaker 1: infliction of such penalties for disobedience as may make it
2:03:30
Speaker 1: always to a man's own advantage to obey. What is
2:03:34
Speaker 1: needed is, in fact the institution of a ruler or sovereign,
2:03:37
Speaker 1: And with the creation of the ruler we have passed
2:03:39
Speaker 1: at once into a state of civil society or political subjection.
2:03:44
Speaker 1: This is ry with Hobbes. The creation of a ruler
2:03:46
Speaker 1: or chief magistrate is identical with the creation of society itself,
2:03:51
Speaker 1: and rebellion against the ruler equivalent to the dissolution of
2:03:54
Speaker 1: the social bond itself. Before we go on to examine
2:03:57
Speaker 1: the way in which the rulers created, there are too
2:03:59
Speaker 1: points to which it is essential to call attention. If
2:04:03
Speaker 1: Hobbes is not to be greatly misjudged. In spite of
2:04:06
Speaker 1: his insistence upon the view that the dictates of reason
2:04:08
Speaker 1: do not become actual commands until there is someone to
2:04:11
Speaker 1: enforce them, Hobbes is not justly chargeable with the identification
2:04:15
Speaker 1: of the moral law with the caprices of an autocrat.
2:04:19
Speaker 1: The validity of the moral law, though not its character
2:04:22
Speaker 1: as law is with him anterior to the establishment of
2:04:26
Speaker 1: the ruler, and depends upon what he takes to be
2:04:28
Speaker 1: the demonstrable coincidence a morality with the general interest. What
2:04:33
Speaker 1: the ruler is needed for is to provide the individual
2:04:36
Speaker 1: with a standing adequate incentive to behave morally, and Hobbs
2:04:40
Speaker 1: is at great pains to urge that his favorite constitution,
2:04:43
Speaker 1: an absolute monarchy, is precisely the form of society in
2:04:46
Speaker 1: which the ruler is least likely to have any personal
2:04:49
Speaker 1: interest independent of the well being of the community, and
2:04:52
Speaker 1: may therefore be most safely trusted to see that his
2:04:55
Speaker 1: laws embody nothing but the conditions necessary for peace and security.
2:05:00
Speaker 1: And again, the Hobbes' arguments amounts to a defense of absolutism.
2:05:05
Speaker 1: The defense is throughout based on rationalistic and consequently democratic grounds.
2:05:11
Speaker 1: He is entirely free both from the superstition of a divine,
2:05:15
Speaker 1: hereditary right inherent and monarchs such as the Stewarts laid
2:05:19
Speaker 1: claim to, and from the doctrine that mere force itself
2:05:22
Speaker 1: constitutes right. His object is to show that the absolute
2:05:25
Speaker 1: authority of the sovereign has a foundation in right by
2:05:28
Speaker 1: tracing it back to its supposed origin in a voluntary
2:05:31
Speaker 1: transference of right on the part of the subject, a
2:05:34
Speaker 1: transference made in the interests of the subject himself, and
2:05:38
Speaker 1: so to legitimate absolutism by giving it a utilitarian basis.
2:05:43
Speaker 1: The jury Duena royalists were thus completely justified in their
2:05:47
Speaker 1: instinctive distrust of Hobbes. When once it is granted that
2:05:51
Speaker 1: absolute sovereignty is only defensible if it can be shown
2:05:55
Speaker 1: to be for the general interest, the doors open for
2:05:57
Speaker 1: further inquiry whether absoluteism really is for the general interest
2:06:01
Speaker 1: or not, and if it cannot be shown that it
2:06:04
Speaker 1: is not, for the rejection of absolutism itself. Thus, Hobbes's
2:06:08
Speaker 1: theories really contained the germs of the constitutionalism which he combated.
2:06:14
Speaker 1: To declare that absolutism requires an utilitary justification is to
2:06:18
Speaker 1: be already halfway on the road to revolution. There is
2:06:21
Speaker 1: much more community of spirit between Hobbes and Lack or Sydney,
2:06:25
Speaker 1: or even russo than between Hobbes and Filmer. The immediate
2:06:29
Speaker 1: object of Hobbes's deduction of the rights of the sovereign
2:06:32
Speaker 1: is closely connected with the political controversies of his own time.
2:06:36
Speaker 1: He is anxious to disprove the claims made by Parliament
2:06:39
Speaker 1: against the British Crown to be in a special sense
2:06:42
Speaker 1: the representative of the people and of popular rights. He
2:06:46
Speaker 1: therefore sets himself to argue that in every society the
2:06:49
Speaker 1: supreme executive authority is already itself the true representative of
2:06:54
Speaker 1: the whole community. The community consequently cannot be again represented
2:06:58
Speaker 1: by any other institute, and all claims made by such
2:07:02
Speaker 1: institutions to authority co ordinate with or superior to that
2:07:06
Speaker 1: of the executive on the plea of their representative character
2:07:09
Speaker 1: must be nugatory. To affect this proof, he has recourse
2:07:12
Speaker 1: to the technical terms of the Roman law of corporations
2:07:16
Speaker 1: and their legal representation. He starts with the legal definition
2:07:20
Speaker 1: of a person. A person means any being whose words
2:07:23
Speaker 1: and acts are considered in law as issuing either from
2:07:26
Speaker 1: himself or from any other man or thing to whom
2:07:29
Speaker 1: they are attributed. In the latter case, where the words
2:07:32
Speaker 1: and acts of such a person are legally regarded as
2:07:35
Speaker 1: belonging to some other being or beings whom he represents,
2:07:39
Speaker 1: the representer is an artificial person. For example, an advocate
2:07:43
Speaker 1: speaking from his brief is an artificial person who represents
2:07:47
Speaker 1: his client. What he says is taken in law as
2:07:50
Speaker 1: if it were uttered by and committed not the advocate himself,
2:07:54
Speaker 1: but his client. When the being thus represented by another
2:07:57
Speaker 1: owns the words and acts of his representatives, he is
2:08:00
Speaker 1: said to authorize them, and the representative speaks and acts
2:08:04
Speaker 1: with authority, so that an act done by authority always
2:08:07
Speaker 1: means an act done by commission or license from him
2:08:11
Speaker 1: whose right it is. This at once leads to the
2:08:14
Speaker 1: conclusion that, by the law of nature, any being who
2:08:17
Speaker 1: has authorized another to represent him is bound by all
2:08:20
Speaker 1: engagements entered into by his representative on his behalf, so
2:08:24
Speaker 1: far as they come within the scope of the authorization,
2:08:28
Speaker 1: exactly as if they were his own words or acts.
2:08:31
Speaker 1: To repudiate them is to be guilty of a breach
2:08:33
Speaker 1: of the law that governance, when made, are to be kept.
2:08:37
Speaker 1: This point being granted, it only remains to establish the
2:08:40
Speaker 1: proposition that all governments must be regarded as originating in
2:08:44
Speaker 1: a commission bestowed by a whole community upon the government
2:08:47
Speaker 1: to represent it, and the logical defense of absolutism is complete. Accordingly,
2:08:52
Speaker 1: Hobbs now proceeds to reason as follows, an aggregate of
2:08:56
Speaker 1: individual men can only become a true society in so
2:09:00
Speaker 1: far as it exhibits a unity of will and purpose.
2:09:03
Speaker 1: It is this unity of will which constitutes the multitude
2:09:06
Speaker 1: into a community. But there is properly speaking, no such
2:09:10
Speaker 1: thing as a general will or will of society at large,
2:09:13
Speaker 1: which is not that of individuals. Only by legal fiction
2:09:17
Speaker 1: can we speak of anything but individual beings, as in
2:09:21
Speaker 1: doubt with will. Consequently, the unity of society is only
2:09:25
Speaker 1: possible by means of representation. The will of the society
2:09:29
Speaker 1: becomes a real thing when the original aggregate agree to
2:09:32
Speaker 1: appoint a determinate man or body of men their representative,
2:09:37
Speaker 1: that is, to take the volitions of that man or
2:09:39
Speaker 1: that body of men, as authorized by every individual composing
2:09:43
Speaker 1: the aggregate. In this way, and only in this way,
2:09:46
Speaker 1: an aggregate may, by legal fiction, become one person, that is,
2:09:50
Speaker 1: a collective subject of legal rights and duties. A multitude
2:09:53
Speaker 1: of men are made one person when they are by
2:09:56
Speaker 1: one man, or by one person, represented, so that it
2:09:59
Speaker 1: be done the consent of every one of that multitude.
2:10:02
Speaker 1: In particular, for it is the unity of the representer,
2:10:04
Speaker 1: not the unity of the represented, that maketh the person one.
2:10:09
Speaker 1: And it is the representer that beareth the person. And
2:10:13
Speaker 1: but one person, and unity cannot otherwise be understood in multitude.
2:10:17
Speaker 1: And because the multitude naturally is not one but many,
2:10:20
Speaker 1: they cannot be understood for one but many authors of
2:10:23
Speaker 1: everything their representative saith or death in their name, every
2:10:28
Speaker 1: man giving their common representer authority from himself in particular,
2:10:32
Speaker 1: and owning all the actions the representer death Levath in
2:10:36
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixteen. The only way, then, in which
2:10:39
Speaker 1: an aggregate of men can form themselves into a society
2:10:42
Speaker 1: for mutual defense against outsiders and against one another's anti
2:10:46
Speaker 1: social tendencies, is by unanimous agreement to appoint some definite
2:10:50
Speaker 1: man or number of men to act as their representative,
2:10:53
Speaker 1: whose commands each of the aggregate is henceforth to regard
2:10:56
Speaker 1: as issuing from himself, and by whose actions each nusforth
2:11:00
Speaker 1: is to regard himself as bound exactly as though they
2:11:03
Speaker 1: had been performed by himself. In this way, the laws
2:11:06
Speaker 1: of nature, the conditions of peace and security become actually operative,
2:11:11
Speaker 1: since by making such an agreement, the represented implicitly authorize
2:11:15
Speaker 1: their representer to employ their united physical force as though
2:11:19
Speaker 1: it were his own, in restraint of all disobedience to
2:11:22
Speaker 1: his commands, and thus create a coercive power adequate enough
2:11:25
Speaker 1: to give every individual personal motives to obey. The only
2:11:31
Speaker 1: way to erect such or common power is to confer
2:11:33
Speaker 1: all their power and strength upon one man, or upon
2:11:36
Speaker 1: one assemblyment, that may reduce all their wills by plurality
2:11:40
Speaker 1: of voices unto one will. Which is as much as
2:11:43
Speaker 1: to say, to appoint one man or assemblyman to bear
2:11:45
Speaker 1: their person, and everyone to own and acknowledge himself to
2:11:49
Speaker 1: be the author of whatsoever. He that so beareth their
2:11:52
Speaker 1: person shall act or cause to be acted in those
2:11:54
Speaker 1: things which concern the common peace and safety, and therein
2:11:57
Speaker 1: to submit their wills to his will, and then judgment
2:12:00
Speaker 1: to his judgment. This is more than consent or concord.
2:12:04
Speaker 1: It is a real unity of them all in one
2:12:06
Speaker 1: and the same person, made by covenant of every man
2:12:09
Speaker 1: with every man. This done, the multitude so united in
2:12:12
Speaker 1: one person is called a commonwealth. This is the generation
2:12:15
Speaker 1: of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently,
2:12:19
Speaker 1: of that mortal God to which we owe under the
2:12:21
Speaker 1: Immortal God our peace and defense. For by this authority
2:12:25
Speaker 1: given him by every particular man in the commonwealth, he
2:12:29
Speaker 1: hath the use of so much power and strength conferred
2:12:31
Speaker 1: on him, that by terror thereof he is enabled to
2:12:34
Speaker 1: form the wills of them all to peace at home
2:12:37
Speaker 1: and mutual aid against their enemies abroad. And in him
2:12:40
Speaker 1: consisteth the essence of the commonwealth, which to define it
2:12:43
Speaker 1: is one person of whose acts a great multitude, by
2:12:47
Speaker 1: mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one
2:12:50
Speaker 1: the author, to the end that he may use the
2:12:52
Speaker 1: strength and means of them at all as he shall
2:12:55
Speaker 1: think expedient for their peace and common defense. Indeed that
2:12:59
Speaker 1: carrieth this person is called sovereign, and said to have
2:13:02
Speaker 1: sovereign power, and everyone besides his subject levive in one
2:13:06
Speaker 1: hundred seventeen one or two points in this deduction call
2:13:10
Speaker 1: perhaps for a special remark, when it should be clear that,
2:13:13
Speaker 1: in spite of his absolutest leanings, what helps is trying
2:13:16
Speaker 1: to express by the aid of his legal fictions is
2:13:19
Speaker 1: the great democratic idea of self government. The coercive powers
2:13:23
Speaker 1: of the ruler are only legitimated in his eyes by
2:13:27
Speaker 1: the thought that they give effect to what is at
2:13:29
Speaker 1: heart the will of the whole people over whom he rules.
2:13:32
Speaker 1: The sovereign is, in effect the incarnation of the national
2:13:35
Speaker 1: will but as his philosophy will not allow him to
2:13:38
Speaker 1: admit the reality of any purpose which is not that
2:13:41
Speaker 1: of a definite man, he has to conceive of this
2:13:44
Speaker 1: national spirit and purpose as having no actual existence until
2:13:48
Speaker 1: it is embodied in a representative of flesh and blood.
2:13:52
Speaker 1: The nation is one man with a will and purpose
2:13:54
Speaker 1: of its own, but it is one only by the
2:13:56
Speaker 1: legal fiction, which treats the acts of an agent or
2:13:59
Speaker 1: represent as if they were those of that which he represents.
2:14:03
Speaker 1: To borrow an analogy from the case of the individual,
2:14:06
Speaker 1: the soul of the great artificial body politic is not
2:14:10
Speaker 1: diffused over the whole organism, all in every part, but
2:14:14
Speaker 1: definitely located in a central organ or brain. This is
2:14:17
Speaker 1: why Hobbes is so careful to insist the legitimate sovereignty
2:14:21
Speaker 1: must be based on an express or tacit consent of
2:14:24
Speaker 1: every member of the subject body, and also why he
2:14:27
Speaker 1: is afterwards great pains to argue that his favorite form
2:14:30
Speaker 1: of government, the absolute sovereignty of a single man, is
2:14:33
Speaker 1: just the one in which, from the nature of the case,
2:14:35
Speaker 1: the ruler is least likely to have any private interests
2:14:38
Speaker 1: of his own distinct from those of the community, and
2:14:41
Speaker 1: in fact is most nearly a mere mouthpiece of the
2:14:44
Speaker 1: national will. Two with Hobbes, as we see the creation
2:14:48
Speaker 1: of a commonwealth and the creation of a central coercive
2:14:51
Speaker 1: or executive power form one and the same act. It
2:14:55
Speaker 1: is by the constitution of an executive that the laws
2:14:58
Speaker 1: of nature which bid meant to seek peace and ensue it,
2:15:01
Speaker 1: cease to be amiable but impracticable ideals, and become operative realities.
2:15:06
Speaker 1: He is thus the author of the doctrine revived in
2:15:09
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century by Austin and his disciples, as sovereign
2:15:12
Speaker 1: power is in its nature one and indivisible, and that
2:15:16
Speaker 1: there can be no real distinction between the different functions
2:15:19
Speaker 1: of government, so that the making of laws may belong
2:15:22
Speaker 1: to one set of persons, the enforcing them by penalties
2:15:25
Speaker 1: to a second, and the interpretation of them, in particular cases,
2:15:29
Speaker 1: to a third. It is on this point that Hobbes's
2:15:31
Speaker 1: political theory is most strikingly at variance with those of
2:15:35
Speaker 1: his best known successors. When Locke formulated the philosophy of
2:15:39
Speaker 1: the revolution Whigs in his Treatises on Civil Government, he
2:15:43
Speaker 1: was inevitably led in the attempt to justify resistance to
2:15:47
Speaker 1: a chief magistrate who violates his trust to make a
2:15:50
Speaker 1: distinction which is opposed to the central thought of Hobbes.
2:15:54
Speaker 1: With Locke, the fundamental and original social compact consists simply
2:15:59
Speaker 1: in the determination a number of men to live in
2:16:01
Speaker 1: future under a known and common law of action, instead
2:16:04
Speaker 1: of being guided by the uncertain and fluctuating dictates of
2:16:07
Speaker 1: individual judgment. That is, in the will to establish a
2:16:10
Speaker 1: common legislature, the appointment of a definite set of persons
2:16:14
Speaker 1: armed with power to put the decisions of this legislature
2:16:17
Speaker 1: into act. The creation of executive officials is a later proceeding,
2:16:22
Speaker 1: and the chief Magistrate thus becomes a mere delegate of
2:16:25
Speaker 1: the legislature, a trustee who may lawfully be removed whenever
2:16:29
Speaker 1: he transgresses the limits of the powers delegated to him.
2:16:33
Speaker 1: Locke is thus the author of the famous doctrine of
2:16:35
Speaker 1: the division of powers between distinct branches of government, and
2:16:39
Speaker 1: of the theory of the importance of constitutional checks by
2:16:43
Speaker 1: which one branch may be hindered from usurping the functions
2:16:46
Speaker 1: of the others. Three. We might perhaps add that, in
2:16:49
Speaker 1: virtue of his definition of the ends of government as
2:16:52
Speaker 1: exhausted by the preservation of peace and common defense, Hobbes
2:16:56
Speaker 1: may be regarded as a formerunner of the negative leisz
2:16:59
Speaker 1: a LAist or of the functions of the state. The
2:17:02
Speaker 1: sovereign is there, in fact, to remove certain standing obstacles
2:17:06
Speaker 1: to the secure prosecution by his subjects of their individual aims,
2:17:10
Speaker 1: to keep society from relapsing into primitive anarchy. With his
2:17:14
Speaker 1: defective theory of volition, Hobbs can naturally find no place
2:17:18
Speaker 1: for any conception of the state as an organization for
2:17:21
Speaker 1: the positive promotion among its members of the good life,
2:17:24
Speaker 1: or civilization, or progress, or whatever else we may please
2:17:28
Speaker 1: to call that ideal of life by which the rationally
2:17:31
Speaker 1: free man is distinguished from the barbarian. The very existence
2:17:35
Speaker 1: of moral and social progress is in fact just the
2:17:38
Speaker 1: one striking feature of historical civilization, which is account of
2:17:42
Speaker 1: human nature to be consistent with itself is bound to ignore.
2:17:47
Speaker 1: End of Chapter four, Chapter five of Thomas hobbesha Edward Taylor,
2:18:02
Speaker 1: this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the powers
2:18:08
Speaker 1: of the sovereign. That the legitimate powers of a sovereign
2:18:13
Speaker 1: are absolute, and that all resistance to his authority must
2:18:17
Speaker 1: be a breach of covenant, and therefore unjust are consequences,
2:18:23
Speaker 1: which follow directly from Hobbes's conception of the fundamental conditions
2:18:28
Speaker 1: of social existence. The sovereign has in fact been authorized
2:18:34
Speaker 1: by me, if I am a member of the commonwealth,
2:18:37
Speaker 1: to make what regulations he thinks fit for the preservation
2:18:41
Speaker 1: of order and peace, and to use the whole physical
2:18:45
Speaker 1: force of the community to punish or prevent violations of
2:18:49
Speaker 1: those regulations. Refusal to obey or resistance to the execution
2:18:57
Speaker 1: of the sovereign's command is thus a distinct breach of
2:19:01
Speaker 1: my given promise and against the law of nature. That is,
2:19:06
Speaker 1: the rational consideration that covenants ought to be kept, that
2:19:11
Speaker 1: is that the making of them. He is useless unless
2:19:14
Speaker 1: they are kept. Hence the duty of unconditional obedience on
2:19:19
Speaker 1: the part of the subject. But there is no corresponding
2:19:23
Speaker 1: duty on the part of the sovereign. He has been
2:19:26
Speaker 1: expressly authorized to make such regulations as he thinks fit,
2:19:32
Speaker 1: and consequently no violation of compact can be pleaded against him,
2:19:37
Speaker 1: no matter what commands he may think good to issue.
2:19:42
Speaker 1: Hobbs throws this latter part of his argument, which aims
2:19:45
Speaker 1: at justifying the Stuart claim of irresponsibility of the Kings
2:19:50
Speaker 1: of England to their subjects into a curiously artificial form.
2:19:56
Speaker 1: The argument by which the sovereign is set up is
2:20:00
Speaker 1: he says, one between each individual member of a crowd
2:20:05
Speaker 1: and every other, there has been no agreement between the
2:20:09
Speaker 1: whole community as such on the one part, and the
2:20:13
Speaker 1: sovereign on the other before the creation of the leviathan.
2:20:17
Speaker 1: In fact, the community has no corporate existence as such,
2:20:22
Speaker 1: and the sovereign is as yet no sovereign, but only
2:20:26
Speaker 1: one man or a number of men among others. And
2:20:30
Speaker 1: therefore there are no such parties as sovereign and public
2:20:34
Speaker 1: to bargain with one another. Or even if we suppose
2:20:39
Speaker 1: that the person finally created sovereign had procured his nomination
2:20:45
Speaker 1: by private bargaining with individual members of the crowd, yet
2:20:49
Speaker 1: when once he has been declared sovereign, all these bargains
2:20:53
Speaker 1: become invalid, since he now, as sovereign, has the right
2:20:57
Speaker 1: to say what agreements shall or shall not be considered binding. Hence,
2:21:04
Speaker 1: no act of sovereign towards any of his subjects can
2:21:08
Speaker 1: be unjust. In a commonwealth, justice in fact simply means
2:21:14
Speaker 1: observing the rules of conduct which the sovereign has laid
2:21:18
Speaker 1: down Leviathan one hundred eighteen. But if I plead that
2:21:25
Speaker 1: I was not a party to the original agreement of
2:21:28
Speaker 1: every man with every man to accept this particular sovereign
2:21:33
Speaker 1: and to acknowledge his acts as if they were my own,
2:21:38
Speaker 1: then he is not my sovereign at all, and I
2:21:42
Speaker 1: am no member of the society, which, as such is
2:21:46
Speaker 1: created by his elevation towards him. And then I'm still
2:21:52
Speaker 1: in the state of nature, and may without in justice,
2:21:56
Speaker 1: be treated as an enemy, and to all that is
2:22:02
Speaker 1: incidental to the war of all against all. It follows
2:22:08
Speaker 1: that a sovereign, once instituted, can in no case be
2:22:12
Speaker 1: guilty of an injustice towards any of his subjects. And
2:22:17
Speaker 1: Hobbes bids us take note that in the Psalm, which,
2:22:21
Speaker 1: according to the notions of the seventeenth century, expresses David's
2:22:26
Speaker 1: penitence for adultery and murder, no acknowledgment is made that
2:22:32
Speaker 1: the author had done a wrong to Uriah in first
2:22:36
Speaker 1: corrupting his wife and then compassing his death. It is
2:22:42
Speaker 1: for sin against God that the Psalmist entreats forgiveness, not
2:22:48
Speaker 1: for wrong done to man, So Hobbes concludes, it is
2:22:53
Speaker 1: the teaching of scripture as well as of reason, that
2:22:57
Speaker 1: the ruler can never be unjust to his subject, and
2:23:01
Speaker 1: therefore never lawfully accused, judged, or condemned by those who
2:23:07
Speaker 1: have themselves agreed to take his orders as the measure
2:23:11
Speaker 1: of just and unjust. Still, it is admitted a ruler
2:23:18
Speaker 1: may abuse his power, as David did, and if this
2:23:21
Speaker 1: is not in justice to the subject, it is at
2:23:25
Speaker 1: least iniquity for which the ruler is amenable to the
2:23:30
Speaker 1: judgment of God. Though the action be against the law
2:23:34
Speaker 1: of nature, as being contrary to equity, as was the
2:23:38
Speaker 1: killing of Uriah by David, yet it was not an
2:23:42
Speaker 1: injury to Uriah but to God. Not to Uriah, because
2:23:47
Speaker 1: the right to do what he pleased was given him
2:23:51
Speaker 1: by Euriah himself, and yet to God, because David was
2:23:56
Speaker 1: God's subject and prohibited all iniquity by the law of nature,
2:24:03
Speaker 1: which distinction David himself when he repented, the fact evidently confirmed,
2:24:09
Speaker 1: saying to THEE only have I sinned? Leviathan one hundred
2:24:15
Speaker 1: twenty one. As in a former case, this suggestion of
2:24:20
Speaker 1: a divine judgment to which even the irresponsible sovereign is
2:24:24
Speaker 1: amenable leaves us in a perplexing uncertainty how far it
2:24:30
Speaker 1: is a concession to the weaknesses of Orthodox readers, or
2:24:35
Speaker 1: how far it may represent a genuine feeling on the
2:24:38
Speaker 1: writer's part that there is, after all, a moral authority
2:24:42
Speaker 1: more ancient and august than the various leviathans men have
2:24:47
Speaker 1: made for themselves. It must, not, of course, be supposed
2:24:52
Speaker 1: that it is only a monarch who can be absolute.
2:24:56
Speaker 1: Hobbs is careful to point out that it follows from
2:24:59
Speaker 1: his theory of the social compact, that every government, when
2:25:03
Speaker 1: once duly established, whatever its form may be, is clothed
2:25:08
Speaker 1: with the same absolute authority over its subjects. Indeed, it
2:25:13
Speaker 1: is in the case of a democracy, that is, a
2:25:16
Speaker 1: state in which the whole assembly of citizens is itself
2:25:20
Speaker 1: the sovereign body, that he thinks the fact of absolute
2:25:24
Speaker 1: authority most patent. When an assembly men is made sovereign,
2:25:31
Speaker 1: then no man imagineth any such covenant to have passed
2:25:36
Speaker 1: in the institution. For no man is so dull as
2:25:39
Speaker 1: to say, for example, the people of Rome made a
2:25:43
Speaker 1: covenant with the Romans to hold the sovereignty on such
2:25:47
Speaker 1: and such conditions, which not performed, the Romans might lawfully
2:25:52
Speaker 1: depose the Roman people that men see not the reason
2:25:58
Speaker 1: to be alike in a monarch and in a popular
2:26:01
Speaker 1: government proceedeth from the ambition of some that are kinder
2:26:06
Speaker 1: to the government of an assembly, where they may hope
2:26:10
Speaker 1: to participate, than of monarchy, which they despair to enjoy.
2:26:16
Speaker 1: Levie in one hundred eighteen. Hobbs is, however, of opinion,
2:26:22
Speaker 1: that of all forms of government, monarchy best answers the
2:26:26
Speaker 1: purpose for which sovereignty is instituted, and that, for several
2:26:31
Speaker 1: reasons one a monarch's private interest is more intimately bound
2:26:37
Speaker 1: up with the interests of his subjects than can be
2:26:40
Speaker 1: the case with the private interests of the members of
2:26:44
Speaker 1: a sovereign assembly. The riches, power, and honor of a
2:26:49
Speaker 1: monarch arise only from the riches, strength, and reputation of
2:26:53
Speaker 1: his subjects, whereas in a democracy or aristocracy, the public
2:26:59
Speaker 1: prosperity confers not so much to the private fortune of
2:27:04
Speaker 1: one that is corrupt, as doth many times a perfidious
2:27:08
Speaker 1: advice a treacherous action Civil war ibid. One hundred nineteen,
2:27:16
Speaker 1: a sentence upon which the history of the relations of
2:27:20
Speaker 1: the Restored Stuarts with the Court of France surely affords
2:27:25
Speaker 1: and entertaining commentary. Two, A monarch is freer to receive
2:27:31
Speaker 1: advice from all quarters and to keep that advice secret
2:27:36
Speaker 1: than an assembly. Three. Whereas the resolutions of a monarch
2:27:42
Speaker 1: are a subject only to the inconstancy of human nature,
2:27:46
Speaker 1: those of an assembly are exposed to a further inconstancy
2:27:51
Speaker 1: arising from disagreement between its members. Monarchy thus offers the
2:27:57
Speaker 1: maximum of security for continuity of policy, For a monarch
2:28:05
Speaker 1: cannot disagree with himself out of envy or interest, but
2:28:10
Speaker 1: an assembly may, and that to such a height as
2:28:13
Speaker 1: may produce a civil war ibid. One hundred nineteen. Against
2:28:20
Speaker 1: these advantages of monarchy may be pleaded to disadvantages. One
2:28:27
Speaker 1: the ill effects produced by the influence of flatterers and
2:28:31
Speaker 1: favorites with the monarch, and to the disorders which arise
2:28:35
Speaker 1: when the monarchy descends to an infant or an imbecile. These, however,
2:28:42
Speaker 1: are discounted by considering one that flatterers and favorites in
2:28:48
Speaker 1: the form of interested demagogues, are as common impopular as
2:28:54
Speaker 1: in monarchical government, and under the former have more power
2:28:59
Speaker 1: to do harm and less to do good than under
2:29:02
Speaker 1: the latter, for to accuse requires less eloquence such as
2:29:08
Speaker 1: man's nature, than to excuse and condemnation than absolution, more
2:29:15
Speaker 1: resembles justice Leviathan one hundred nineteen, And that the powers
2:29:22
Speaker 1: of an infant or imbecile monarch can always be placed
2:29:26
Speaker 1: in the hands of a qualified body of regents, and
2:29:29
Speaker 1: therefore any disturbances that arise must be attributed not to
2:29:34
Speaker 1: the inherent defects of monarchical government, but to the ambition
2:29:39
Speaker 1: of subjects and ignorance of their duty hibbit, as we
2:29:44
Speaker 1: have already seen, Hobbes's conception of human nature and the
2:29:48
Speaker 1: ends of action precludes his reckoning with what a more
2:29:52
Speaker 1: idealistic philosophy would probably regard as the chief objection to despotism,
2:29:58
Speaker 1: even when it is both benevo and capable, viz. The
2:30:02
Speaker 1: conviction that freedom and self government are in themselves goods
2:30:07
Speaker 1: of the highest order, and that a slight increase in
2:30:11
Speaker 1: efficiency is dearly bought by their sacrifice. From the principle
2:30:17
Speaker 1: that all authority is in its nature absolute, Hobbs has
2:30:22
Speaker 1: no difficulty in vindicating for the English crown the leading
2:30:26
Speaker 1: powers which have been challenged by the Puritan Revolution. In particular,
2:30:32
Speaker 1: we may note one that the monarch is in no
2:30:36
Speaker 1: wise bound to govern. In modern phrase, in accord with
2:30:40
Speaker 1: the acts of Parliament, Parliament is merely a body called
2:30:44
Speaker 1: together by the Monarch to advise him as to the
2:30:48
Speaker 1: state of the kingdom and the measures to be taken
2:30:51
Speaker 1: for the common peace. The claim of an elected parliament
2:30:55
Speaker 1: to be in a special sense the representative of the
2:30:59
Speaker 1: people is entirely unfounded. The people are already completely represented
2:31:06
Speaker 1: by their sovereign, the Monarch, and consequently cannot be represented
2:31:11
Speaker 1: over again. What powers parliament has it enjoys simply as
2:31:16
Speaker 1: a voluntary gift on the part of the real representative
2:31:19
Speaker 1: of the people, who is therefore free to follow its advice,
2:31:23
Speaker 1: to reject it, or to promulgate laws of his own,
2:31:27
Speaker 1: without consulting it as he thinks best ibid. One hundred
2:31:32
Speaker 1: twenty two two. The monarch has likewise the right to
2:31:36
Speaker 1: supreme command of all the forces of the community by
2:31:40
Speaker 1: land and sea. He has been instituted to take charge
2:31:44
Speaker 1: of the common peace, and therefore must be understood to
2:31:47
Speaker 1: be entrusted with the means necessary to the execution of
2:31:51
Speaker 1: the task. Thus, the demand of the Long Parliament for
2:31:54
Speaker 1: control of the militia was an act of usurpation. Three,
2:32:00
Speaker 1: again has the sole right to levy taxes at his
2:32:03
Speaker 1: own discretion, a right specially insisted upon by Hobbs Smith's
2:32:07
Speaker 1: reference to the controversy about ship money. Four. He has
2:32:13
Speaker 1: also the right, arising from his position as the authority
2:32:16
Speaker 1: from whom all the rules of justice emanate, of hearing
2:32:20
Speaker 1: and deciding all controversies which may arise concerning law, either
2:32:25
Speaker 1: civil or natural, or concerning fact Leviathan one hundred eighteen.
2:32:32
Speaker 1: Since apart from this right there is no protection of
2:32:36
Speaker 1: one subject against another, it would follow then that the
2:32:40
Speaker 1: opposition to the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, the
2:32:45
Speaker 1: Ecclesiastical Commission, and the Council of the North was entirely illegitimate. Five.
2:32:52
Speaker 1: The monarch also has, and this is the most important
2:32:55
Speaker 1: point of all, the sole right to judge what opinions
2:33:00
Speaker 1: in church and state may safely be tolerated. For it
2:33:05
Speaker 1: is his function, as keeper of the general peace, to
2:33:08
Speaker 1: be judge of what opinions and doctrines are averse and
2:33:11
Speaker 1: what conducing to peace. It follows therefore, that it is
2:33:15
Speaker 1: for him, and for him alone, to decide on what occasions,
2:33:19
Speaker 1: how far, and what men are to be trusted withal
2:33:23
Speaker 1: in speaking to multitudes of people, and who shall examine
2:33:26
Speaker 1: the doctrines of all books before they be published. For
2:33:30
Speaker 1: the actions of men proceed from their opinions, and in
2:33:33
Speaker 1: the well governing of men's opinions consisteth the well governing
2:33:38
Speaker 1: of men's actions in order to their peace and concord.
2:33:42
Speaker 1: Of five in one hundred eighteen. Of the bearing of
2:33:46
Speaker 1: this conclusion upon Hobbes's views of the ecclesiastical supremacy of
2:33:51
Speaker 1: the sovereign, I shall have something to say in the
2:33:54
Speaker 1: next chapter. It must be observed that the highly doctrinaire
2:33:59
Speaker 1: character of this defense of the royalists position at once
2:34:03
Speaker 1: lays it open to a damaging attack which Hobbes does
2:34:07
Speaker 1: nothing to meet. He has proved conclusively, if you grant
2:34:12
Speaker 1: the truth of his peculiar view of human nature, that
2:34:15
Speaker 1: peace and concord are only attainable in political society. He
2:34:21
Speaker 1: is also shown that in every political society there must
2:34:25
Speaker 1: be somewhere a center of authority endowed with plenary powers,
2:34:30
Speaker 1: and only restrained in the exercise of them by the
2:34:33
Speaker 1: consideration that governmental authority pushed beyond a certain point will
2:34:37
Speaker 1: provoke rebellion, and so defeat its own ends. What he
2:34:42
Speaker 1: has not proved, but his content simply to assume, is
2:34:46
Speaker 1: that as a matter of historical fact, this plenitude of
2:34:49
Speaker 1: power is under the Constitution of England reposed in the
2:34:54
Speaker 1: person of the King, or in other words, that the
2:34:56
Speaker 1: government of England is really a monarchy in his wa
2:35:00
Speaker 1: sense of the term. Now, this was precisely what the
2:35:03
Speaker 1: parliamentarian statesmen denied. According to them, the powers of the
2:35:08
Speaker 1: English crown were, in point of fact and had always
2:35:11
Speaker 1: been circumscribed by a superior authority, which is described, for
2:35:17
Speaker 1: example in the Petition of Right as the laws and
2:35:21
Speaker 1: statutes of the realm, the laws and customs of this realm.
2:35:26
Speaker 1: And they had, as we know, sound historical reasons to
2:35:30
Speaker 1: urge in support of this view of the case. As
2:35:34
Speaker 1: Hobbes never takes issue on the historical question, his leading
2:35:38
Speaker 1: opponents would have been perfectly justified in calling his argument
2:35:43
Speaker 1: as applied to the proceedings of the parliamentarians and elaborate
2:35:47
Speaker 1: ignored Ratio Elenchi. The question at issue between Charles the
2:35:54
Speaker 1: First and Hampden or Penn was not whether the ultimate
2:35:58
Speaker 1: seat of authority in England is absolute or not, but
2:36:02
Speaker 1: where that seat of authority lies. Hobbes's evasion of the
2:36:07
Speaker 1: real question throws a flood of light upon the fundamental
2:36:11
Speaker 1: weakness of the theory which treats government as legitimated by contract.
2:36:17
Speaker 1: Such a hard and fast theory is bound to be,
2:36:20
Speaker 1: at some point or other discrepant with the actual facts
2:36:24
Speaker 1: of the historical situation. A constitution is not a thing
2:36:30
Speaker 1: which is made once for all by the wisdom of
2:36:33
Speaker 1: a particular set of persons. It is something which grows
2:36:36
Speaker 1: up gradually under all sorts of perceptible and imperceptible influences.
2:36:42
Speaker 1: At any given time, the various formulae by which it
2:36:46
Speaker 1: is described by those who live under it are sure
2:36:49
Speaker 1: to be only imperfectly consistent with one another. Nay, further,
2:36:54
Speaker 1: since the formulae, for the most part, are things devised
2:36:57
Speaker 1: to fit a past state of affairs, which continue to
2:37:00
Speaker 1: be repeated long after the situation they describe has been
2:37:04
Speaker 1: profoundly modified. In fact, they are almost certain to be
2:37:08
Speaker 1: largely false when accepted as an account of the stage
2:37:12
Speaker 1: of development actually reached, long before they lose their inherited prestige,
2:37:18
Speaker 1: and of development and progress as great social facts. Hobbes,
2:37:23
Speaker 1: as we saw, has as good as no conception. From
2:37:28
Speaker 1: his examination of the powers of the sovereign, Hobbs advances
2:37:32
Speaker 1: to a consideration of the liberties of the subject. One
2:37:36
Speaker 1: might be tempted to think that the letter must be
2:37:38
Speaker 1: nonexistent in such a scheme as his. But there are
2:37:42
Speaker 1: certain inevitable limits even to the most unrestricted absolutism, and
2:37:48
Speaker 1: there are others which suggest themselves, as soon as absolutism
2:37:53
Speaker 1: itself is treated as only defensible on a utilitarian basis.
2:37:59
Speaker 1: What these limits are, according to Hobbs, is explained in
2:38:02
Speaker 1: Chapter twenty one of the Leviathan. The liberty of the
2:38:06
Speaker 1: subject is simply that part of the supposed original right
2:38:09
Speaker 1: of every man to everything of which he cannot possibly
2:38:13
Speaker 1: have divested himself, or of which he cannot be supposed
2:38:16
Speaker 1: to have divested himself without defeating his purpose in entering
2:38:20
Speaker 1: into the social compact viz. The preservation of himself. He
2:38:28
Speaker 1: is free, then, one to refuse, even when commanded by
2:38:32
Speaker 1: the sovereign, to kill or maim himself, or to submit
2:38:37
Speaker 1: without resistance to those who are charged to kill or
2:38:41
Speaker 1: maim him. Two to refuse to confess a crime, except
2:38:47
Speaker 1: upon previous promise of pardon, three, to refuse to execute
2:38:52
Speaker 1: in order to kill another man, and more generally, to
2:38:55
Speaker 1: decline any dangerous or dishonorable office by executing which he
2:39:00
Speaker 1: imperils that very self preservation for the sake of which
2:39:04
Speaker 1: he has entered into social life. On this ground, Hobbs
2:39:08
Speaker 1: justifies the refusal of men of feminine courage like himself
2:39:12
Speaker 1: to do personal service as soldiers, provided they are ready
2:39:16
Speaker 1: to furnish a sufficient substitute. Even a band of rebels
2:39:20
Speaker 1: he holds, may, without injustice, refuse to capitulate, except on
2:39:25
Speaker 1: a promise of pardon. To these elementary liberties, we subsequently
2:39:31
Speaker 1: find added complete liberty of conscience. So far as private
2:39:35
Speaker 1: thoughts are concerned. Thought is absolutely free, simply because it
2:39:39
Speaker 1: is impossible to subject it. The expression of thought in words,
2:39:44
Speaker 1: as we have seen, is not free at all, it
2:39:46
Speaker 1: being for the sovereign to decide what thoughts may be
2:39:49
Speaker 1: made public without danger to the peace. It is only
2:39:53
Speaker 1: to be added that the authority of a sovereign, of course,
2:39:57
Speaker 1: only lasts so long as he is able to ensure
2:40:00
Speaker 1: the general safety. For no covenant can deprive the man
2:40:04
Speaker 1: of his right to protect himself when he has no
2:40:06
Speaker 1: other protector. Political allegiance is therefore terminated. The life of
2:40:11
Speaker 1: the levizan extinguished when a monarch is captured in war
2:40:15
Speaker 1: and purchases his personal liberty by submission to the conqueror,
2:40:20
Speaker 1: or when he voluntarily releases his subjects from their obedience
2:40:24
Speaker 1: and so declares that he no longer embodies the public
2:40:27
Speaker 1: will for self protection. End of Chapter five, Chapter six
2:40:41
Speaker 1: of Thomas Hobbs by Alfred Edward Taylor. This LibriVox recording
2:40:46
Speaker 1: is in the public domain church and state, since it
2:40:49
Speaker 1: has been already declared that the Sovereign, in the interests
2:40:52
Speaker 1: of the general peace, has the sole right to determine
2:40:56
Speaker 1: what opinions may be safely taught in the commonwealth. It
2:40:59
Speaker 1: follows once that Hobbes can allow of no division between
2:41:03
Speaker 1: a civil and a spiritual power. In fact, he holds,
2:41:07
Speaker 1: as a man of the seventeenth century, not unreasonably might
2:41:10
Speaker 1: that the most potent of all sources of anarchy and
2:41:13
Speaker 1: civil disorder is precisely the claim of the clergy of
2:41:17
Speaker 1: various churches to possess an inherent right, not depending on
2:41:21
Speaker 1: any grant from the political authority, to declare what religious
2:41:25
Speaker 1: doctrines shall be taught in what form of church discipline permitted,
2:41:29
Speaker 1: and to depose or rebel against civil rulers who refuse
2:41:32
Speaker 1: to submit to their dictation on these points. Writing as
2:41:36
Speaker 1: he did in the seventeenth century, Hobbes found it necessary
2:41:40
Speaker 1: to plead the cause of Erastianism, not only on grounds
2:41:43
Speaker 1: of reason, but by the aid of an appeal to
2:41:46
Speaker 1: scripture and the consequences. That nearly a half of Leviathan
2:41:50
Speaker 1: is taken up by the ecclesiastical controversy, in which he
2:41:54
Speaker 1: has to oppose at once the Romanist, the Scotch Covenanter,
2:41:57
Speaker 1: and the ordinary Anglican high churchmen. It is impossible, in
2:42:01
Speaker 1: a short sketch like the present, to do more than
2:42:04
Speaker 1: indicate the general character of the singular result at which
2:42:07
Speaker 1: he arrives. The key to his whole position must be
2:42:10
Speaker 1: sought in his pithy aphorism that religion is not philosophy
2:42:14
Speaker 1: but law. That is, the sovereign authorizes the preaching of
2:42:18
Speaker 1: certain doctrines and prohibits others, not because the former are
2:42:22
Speaker 1: scientifically true and the latter false. In fact, we so
2:42:26
Speaker 1: long ago that all doctrines about God lie outside the
2:42:30
Speaker 1: limits of human knowledge, but because the former are conducive
2:42:34
Speaker 1: to peace, and the latter to discord. And our profession
2:42:38
Speaker 1: of faith in the authorized religion is to be understood
2:42:41
Speaker 1: not as a declaration of our philosophical belief, but as
2:42:45
Speaker 1: a declaration of our submission to the rightful political authority
2:42:49
Speaker 1: of the sovereign. Abbs says, then, to meet the objection that,
2:42:53
Speaker 1: on his view, our duty to the sovereign must, whenever
2:42:55
Speaker 1: the sovereign is an infidel lead us into disobedience to God. God,
2:43:00
Speaker 1: the infidel sovereign commands us to practice a false religion.
2:43:04
Speaker 1: God commands us, in his word, to embrace the truth.
2:43:08
Speaker 1: Are we then to obey man rather than God? And
2:43:11
Speaker 1: must the martyrs who died for the faith be accounted criminals?
2:43:15
Speaker 1: Hobbes's reply is in principle that we have to learn
2:43:19
Speaker 1: what is the true religion from the canonical scriptures, and
2:43:23
Speaker 1: that our writing depends for its canonical character upon its
2:43:27
Speaker 1: authorization as such by the sovereign, who, also, in virture
2:43:31
Speaker 1: of his general right to prohibit dangerous teaching, is the
2:43:34
Speaker 1: final court of appeal as to the interpretation of scripture.
2:43:38
Speaker 1: It must therefore be vain to plead our interpretations of
2:43:42
Speaker 1: some work which we regard as inspired in justification of
2:43:46
Speaker 1: our refusal to submit to the sovereign. As for the
2:43:49
Speaker 1: martyrs of history, no man can be a martyr or
2:43:52
Speaker 1: witness for the truth of revelation from God except its
2:43:55
Speaker 1: immediate recipient, or that any other martyr can testify to
2:43:59
Speaker 1: is his belief in the veracity of the person who
2:44:02
Speaker 1: claims to have received the revelation. To reject his witness
2:44:06
Speaker 1: is thus not to reject his commands of God, but
2:44:09
Speaker 1: merely to reject the claims of a certain person to
2:44:11
Speaker 1: have had communications with God. Not the only way in
2:44:14
Speaker 1: which a man can prove his divine commission is by
2:44:17
Speaker 1: the performance of miracles, And since miracles have ceased, no
2:44:21
Speaker 1: one can now establish his claims to be believed as
2:44:24
Speaker 1: a messenger of God, except indirectly by the agreement of
2:44:27
Speaker 1: his teaching with that of Christ and the Apostles. But
2:44:31
Speaker 1: Christ and the Apostles taught both by precept and by
2:44:34
Speaker 1: example the duty of submission to civil authorities. Hence no
2:44:38
Speaker 1: man can claim their authority in favor of disobedience to
2:44:41
Speaker 1: the sovereign. In the purely hypothetical case of a man
2:44:45
Speaker 1: receiving today a direct command from God to disobey his sovereign.
2:44:49
Speaker 1: He must, no doubt be prepared to obey God, who
2:44:52
Speaker 1: can make it his highest interest to do so, rather
2:44:55
Speaker 1: than the sovereign. But since he is unable to prove
2:45:00
Speaker 1: commissioned by miracles, he has no ground for complaint if
2:45:03
Speaker 1: the sovereign refuses to believe in it and punishes him
2:45:06
Speaker 1: as an offender. To make this doctrine more palatable to
2:45:10
Speaker 1: his readers, Hobbs combines it with an elaborate scriptural exegesis
2:45:14
Speaker 1: of his own in the development of which he rivals
2:45:17
Speaker 1: or outdoes his Orthodox antagonists in profusion of biblical quotations
2:45:23
Speaker 1: and ingenuity of interpretation, not infrequently throwing out remarkable anticipations
2:45:30
Speaker 1: of more modern criticism. The fundamental proposition of the whole
2:45:34
Speaker 1: scheme is that the Kingdom of God spoken of in scripture,
2:45:38
Speaker 1: is not an ecclesiastical system, but a civil government in
2:45:42
Speaker 1: which God, as represented by a visible human lieutenant, reigns
2:45:46
Speaker 1: as civil sovereign. This kingdom was first instituted, and Moses
2:45:50
Speaker 1: was directly installed by God as his representative in the
2:45:54
Speaker 1: government of the Jews, but suspended when that people revolted
2:45:57
Speaker 1: from their lawful rulers. Successes of Moses and set up
2:46:02
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Saul. The mission of Jesus was to
2:46:05
Speaker 1: announce his restoration, not in his lifetime, but in an
2:46:08
Speaker 1: age yet to come, when the righteous art to rise
2:46:11
Speaker 1: from the dead and be reigned over personally by Jesus
2:46:14
Speaker 1: as God's representative in Palestine. Hence, the only condition imposed
2:46:19
Speaker 1: from the first as necessary for entrance into the Church
2:46:23
Speaker 1: was the acknowledgment of the belief that Jesus is the Messiah,
2:46:27
Speaker 1: that is, the destined monarch of the coming Kingdom of God.
2:46:31
Speaker 1: All that a Christian is obliged to therefore, as a
2:46:34
Speaker 1: condition of salvation is the belief that at some future
2:46:37
Speaker 1: time Jesus will reappear on earth as a civil sovereign,
2:46:41
Speaker 1: and the intention of then obeying his authority. In the meanwhile,
2:46:45
Speaker 1: the Christian is bound, by the express language of Scripture itself,
2:46:49
Speaker 1: to complete submission to the existing civil power. As for
2:46:53
Speaker 1: the Church, which sometimes claims to be the Kingdom of
2:46:56
Speaker 1: God announced by Jesus, and consequently to have a first
2:47:00
Speaker 1: lean so to say, on the obedience of Christians, Hobbes
2:47:04
Speaker 1: gives us a choice of alternatives. If it be one person,
2:47:08
Speaker 1: it is the same thing with the commonwealth of Christians
2:47:11
Speaker 1: called a commonwealth because it consisteth of men united in
2:47:14
Speaker 1: one person, their sovereign, and a church because it consisteth
2:47:17
Speaker 1: in Christian men united in one Christian sovereign. But if
2:47:21
Speaker 1: the Church be not one person, then it hath no
2:47:24
Speaker 1: authority at all. It can neither command nor do any
2:47:27
Speaker 1: action at all, nor has any will, reason, nor voice.
2:47:31
Speaker 1: For all these qualities are personal Leviathan one hundred thirty three.
2:47:36
Speaker 1: It is then argued at length that the only commission
2:47:38
Speaker 1: given by Christ to his apostles and by them to
2:47:41
Speaker 1: their successors, was to teach and persuade, and the only
2:47:44
Speaker 1: weapon with which they were armed against the recalcitrant power
2:47:48
Speaker 1: of excommunication, that is, the threat of exclusion from the
2:47:51
Speaker 1: future Kingdom of God. Such power as the clergy now
2:47:55
Speaker 1: exercise in Christian countries, then is derived from and dependent
2:47:59
Speaker 1: on the political sovereign, who is the single fountain at
2:48:02
Speaker 1: once of temporal and spiritual authority. They are, in fact,
2:48:06
Speaker 1: so far as concerns their social status, a body of
2:48:10
Speaker 1: civil servants and nothing more. And Habes declares that whereas
2:48:14
Speaker 1: the King of England, as responsible to no tribunal on earth,
2:48:18
Speaker 1: may rightly claim to rule, dei gratia. A bishop holds
2:48:22
Speaker 1: his see by the grace of God and the king's permission.
2:48:25
Speaker 1: The fourth and last division of Leviathan is devoted to
2:48:29
Speaker 1: an unsparing attack, conducted chiefly with an eye to balar
2:48:34
Speaker 1: means arguments for papal supremacy upon the kingdom of darkness,
2:48:38
Speaker 1: that is, the Church organized as a society independent of
2:48:43
Speaker 1: the authorization of the civil power, and claiming an independent
2:48:47
Speaker 1: spiritual jurisdiction, to be enforced at its peril by their
2:48:51
Speaker 1: secular arm through the medium of temporal disabilities and penalties.
2:48:55
Speaker 1: The origin of this kingdom of darkness is sought in
2:48:58
Speaker 1: the ambition of the rune Roman clergy, which led them
2:49:01
Speaker 1: first to accept support and grants the power from the
2:49:04
Speaker 1: Christian Roman emperors, and finally in the general decay of
2:49:09
Speaker 1: the imperial system to usurp the place of their original protectors.
2:49:14
Speaker 1: If a man, says Hobbes in one of his most
2:49:17
Speaker 1: famous epigrams, considers the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion,
2:49:23
Speaker 1: he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other
2:49:26
Speaker 1: than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned
2:49:30
Speaker 1: upon the grave thereof. For so did the papacy start
2:49:34
Speaker 1: up on a sudden out of the ruins of that
2:49:37
Speaker 1: heathen power Leviathan one hundred forty seven. The ghost hobbes
2:49:43
Speaker 1: ads has partly been exercised in England, first by the
2:49:47
Speaker 1: Tudor sovereigns, who overthrew the power of the Pope, than
2:49:50
Speaker 1: by the Presbyterians of the Long Parliament, who put down
2:49:53
Speaker 1: the bishops. And finally, we must remember that this sentence,
2:49:56
Speaker 1: which does not appear in the modified Latin text of
2:49:59
Speaker 1: Sas sixteen sixty nine, was written in sixteen fifty one
2:50:04
Speaker 1: by the independents who destroyed the domination of Presbyterianism. And
2:50:08
Speaker 1: so we are reduced to the independency of the primitive
2:50:12
Speaker 1: Christians to follow Paul or Cephis or Apollos every man
2:50:16
Speaker 1: as he liketh best, which, if it be without contention,
2:50:20
Speaker 1: is perhaps the best hib But he adds, the exorcism
2:50:24
Speaker 1: will never be complete until a bold ruler takes in
2:50:27
Speaker 1: hand the universities the chief sources of theto of high
2:50:31
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical pretensions, and compels them to instruct their students in
2:50:35
Speaker 1: the true rudiments of political science and the true grounds
2:50:38
Speaker 1: of political submission. That is, set his critics until The
2:50:42
Speaker 1: Leviathan is officially made the sole textbook of political science
2:50:48
Speaker 1: in of chapter six Conclusion of Hobbes by Alfred Edward Taylor.
2:51:03
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Conclusion. The
2:51:10
Speaker 1: true measure of Hobbes's greatness as a philosopher was hardly recognized,
2:51:16
Speaker 1: either by his own contemporaries in England or by their
2:51:21
Speaker 1: successors of the eighteenth century. The innumerable attacks of the
2:51:26
Speaker 1: Orthodox upon his theories on the ground of their alleged
2:51:31
Speaker 1: irreligious and immoral tendency are mostly of an ephemeral kind.
2:51:37
Speaker 1: But the attitude of Locke and Berkeley, who had capacity
2:51:41
Speaker 1: enough to understand him if they had cared to do so,
2:51:45
Speaker 1: and who would have found his nominalism at least entirely
2:51:49
Speaker 1: to their taste, is more significant. Locke never mentions his
2:51:55
Speaker 1: name at all throughout the essay, and when accused by
2:51:59
Speaker 1: stealing fleet of arriving at results similar to those of Hobbes,
2:52:04
Speaker 1: retorts with a sarcasm upon the good bishop's familiarity with
2:52:10
Speaker 1: a suspected author. Berkley mentions him once in his Alciphron,
2:52:16
Speaker 1: along with Spinoza and Venini, as a typical atheist. The Warburton,
2:52:23
Speaker 1: with his usual love for a paradox, prided himself on
2:52:26
Speaker 1: having been the first person to discover the real strength
2:52:30
Speaker 1: of Hobbes's position. Real appreciation of his merits in England
2:52:35
Speaker 1: begins with the utilitarians of the early nineteenth century, Austin
2:52:41
Speaker 1: Groat and Molesworth, to the last of whom we owe
2:52:46
Speaker 1: the only approach as yet made to a complete edition
2:52:50
Speaker 1: of Hobbes's works down to their time. Hobbes's chief influence
2:52:55
Speaker 1: on English thought lay in the stimulus his ethical theories
2:53:00
Speaker 1: afforded to a profounder moral analysis and a deeper study
2:53:04
Speaker 1: of human nature on the part of antagonists, who sought
2:53:09
Speaker 1: to vindicate the originality of disinterested action and to base
2:53:14
Speaker 1: morality upon grounds independent of positive law. The ethical work
2:53:20
Speaker 1: of Cudworth, of Shaftesbury, of Cumberland, of Butler is throughout
2:53:25
Speaker 1: inspired by the felt need to meet and overcome a
2:53:30
Speaker 1: conception of human nature which goes back in the end
2:53:33
Speaker 1: to the philosopher of Malmsberry. On the continent, the direct
2:53:38
Speaker 1: influence of Hobbs made itself more immediately and more permanently
2:53:43
Speaker 1: felt within the philosopher's own lifetime. Spinoza had adopted as
2:53:48
Speaker 1: the basis of the theory of government given in his
2:53:51
Speaker 1: unfinished Tractatus Politicus, a view of natural right and the
2:53:57
Speaker 1: social compact, which is in all fundamentals identical with that
2:54:02
Speaker 1: of Hobbes, whose influence is also visibly traceable in the
2:54:06
Speaker 1: argument for the freedom of philosophy from theological restraints set
2:54:11
Speaker 1: forth in the famous Tractatus Theologico Politicus. Leibniz, too, in
2:54:17
Speaker 1: his youthful recoil from Scholasticism, was powerfully attracted by Hobbes's
2:54:23
Speaker 1: clear cut logical nominalism and outspoken materialism. Nor did he
2:54:29
Speaker 1: cease to express his admiration for the Englishman's genius after
2:54:34
Speaker 1: he had finally arrived at his own mature doctrine of
2:54:37
Speaker 1: spiritual realism. It has been shown that throughout the eighteenth
2:54:42
Speaker 1: century down to the time of Kant, Hobbes continued to
2:54:46
Speaker 1: be an object of philosophic interest in Germany, but the
2:54:50
Speaker 1: detailed facts as to his influence at home and abroad
2:54:54
Speaker 1: belonged to the general history of modern thought and necessarily
2:54:58
Speaker 1: fall outside the limits of a brief sketch like the
2:55:02
Speaker 1: present end of conclusion End of Thomas Hobbes by Alfred
2:55:14
Speaker 1: Edward Taylor,