Hobbes stands in sharp contrast to Bacon both in disposition
and in doctrine. Bacon was a man of a wide outlook, a rich, stimulating,
impulsive nature, filled with great plans, but too mobile and desultory to
allow them to ripen to perfection; Hobbes is slow, tenacious, persistent,
unyielding, his thought strenuous and narrow. To this corresponds a
profound difference in their systems, which is by no means adequately
characterized by saying that Hobbes brings into the foreground the
mathematical element neglected by his predecessor, and turns his attention
chiefly to politics. The dependence of Hobbes on Bacon is, in spite of
their personal acquaintance, not so great as formerly was universally
assumed. His guiding stars are rather the great mathematicians of the
Continent, Kepler and Galileo, while Cartesian influences also are not
to be denied. He finds his mission in the construction of a strictly
mechanical view of the world. Mechanism applied to the world gives
materialism; applied to knowledge, sensationalism of a mathematical type;
applied to the will, determinism; to morality and the state, ethical and
political naturalism. Nevertheless, the empirical tendency of his nation
has a certain power over him; he holds fast to the position that all ideas
ultimately spring from experience. With his energetic but short-breathed
thinking, he did not succeed in fusing the rationalistic elements received
from foreign sources with these native tendencies, so as to produce
a unified system. As Grimm has correctly shown (Zur Geschichte des
Erkenntnissproblems, there is an unreconciled contradiction between the
dependence of thought on experience, which he does not give up, and the
universal validity of the truths derived from pure reason, which he asserts
on the basis of the mathematico-philosophical doctrines of the Continent. A
similar unmediated dualism will meet us in Locke also.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was repelled while a student at Oxford by
Scholastic methods in thought, with which he agreed only in their
nominalistic results (there are no universals except names). During
repeated sojourns in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Gassendi,
Mersenne, and Descartes, he devoted himself to the study of mathematics,
and was greatly influenced by the doctrines of Galileo; while the disorders
of the English revolution led him to embrace an absolutist theory of the
state. His chief works were his politics, under the title Leviathan
1651, and his Elementa Philosophiae in three parts (De Corpore, De
Homine, De Cive, of which the third, De Cive appeared first (in Latin;
in briefer form and anonymously, 1642, enlarged 1647), the first, De
Corpore in 1655, and the second, De Homine in 1658. These had
been preceded by two books [1] written, like the two last parts of the
Elements in English: On Human Nature And De Corpore Politico
composed 1640, printed without the author's consent in 1650. Besides these
he wrote two treatises Of Liberty and Necessity 1646 and 1654,
and prepared, 1668, a collected edition of his works (in Latin). In
Molesworth's edition, 1839-45, the Latin works occupy five volumes and the
English eleven.[2]
[Footnote 1: Or rather one; the treatise On Human Nature Consists of
the first thirteen chapters of the work, Elements of Law, Natural and
Politic and the De Corpore Politico of the remainder.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. on Hobbes, G.C. Robertson (Blackwood's Philosophical
Classics, vol. x.), 1886; Tönnies in the Vierteljahrsschrift für
wissenschaftliche Philosophie Jahrg. 3-5, 1879-81.]
Philosophy is formally defined by Hobbes as knowledge of effects from
causes and causes from effects by means of legitimate rational inference.
This implies the equal validity of the deductive and inductive
methods,--while Bacon had proclaimed the latter the most important
instrument of knowledge,--as well as the exclusion of theology based on
revelation from the domain of science. Philosophy is objectively defined as
the theory of body and motion: all that exists is body; all that occurs,
motion Everything real is corporeal; this holds of points, lines, and
surfaces, which as the limits of body cannot be incorporeal, as well as
of the mind and of God. The mind is merely a (for the senses too) refined
body, or, as it is stated in another place, a movement in certain parts
of the organic body. All events, even internal events, the feelings and
passions, are movements of material parts. "Endeavor" is a diminutive
motion, as the atom is the smallest of bodies; sensation and representation
are changes in the perceiving body. Space is the idea of an existing thing
as such, i. e, merely as existing outside the perceiving subject; time,
the idea of motion. All phenomena are corporeal motions, which take place
with mechanical necessity. Neither formal nor final causes exist, but only
efficient causes. All that happens takes its origin in the activity of an
external cause, and not in itself; a body at rest (or in motion) remains
at rest (or in motion) forever, unless affected by another in a contrary
sense. And as bodies and their changes constitute the only objects of
philosophy, so the mathematical method is the only correct method.
There are two kinds of bodies: natural bodies, which man finds in nature,
and artificial bodies, which he himself produces. By the latter Hobbes
refers especially to the state as a human artefact. Man stands between the
two as the most perfect natural body and an element in the political body.
Philosophy, therefore, besides the introductory philosophia prima which
discusses the underlying concepts, consists of three parts: physics,
anthropology, and politics. Even the theory of the state is capable of
demonstrative treatment; moral phenomena are as subject to the law of
mechanical causation as physical phenomena.
The first factor in the cognitive process is an impression on a
sense-organ, which, occasioned by external motion, continues onward to the
heart and from this center gives rise to a reaction. The perception or
sensation which thus arises is entirely subjective, a function of the
knower merely, and in no way a copy of the external movement. The
properties light, color, and sound, which we believe to be without us, are
merely internal phenomena dependent on outer and inner motions, but with no
resemblance to them. Memory consists in the lingering effects or residuary
traces of perception; it is a sense or consciousness of having felt before
(sentire se sensisse meminisse est, and ideas are distinguished from
sensations as the perfect from the present tense. Experience is the
totality of perceptions retained in memory, together with a certain
foresight of the future after the analogy of the past. These stages of
cognition, which can yield prudence but not necessary and universal
knowledge, are present in animals as well as men. The human capacity for
science is dependent on the faculty of speech; words are conventional
signs to facilitate the retention and communication of ideas. As the
memory-images denoted by words are weaker, fainter, and less clearly
discriminated than the original sensations, it comes to pass that a number
of similar ideas of memory receive a common name. Thus abstract general
ideas and generic concepts arise, to which nothing real corresponds, for
in reality particulars alone exist. The universal is a human artefact. The
combination of words into propositions, being an addition or subtraction
of arbitrary symbols or marks, is called judgment; the combination of
propositions into syllogisms, inference; the united body of true or
demonstrated principles, science--hence mathematics is the type of all
knowledge. In short, thought is nothing but calculation and the words with
which we operate are mere counters; he who takes counters for coin is a
fool. Animals lack reason, i.e. this power of combining artificial
symbols.
Hobbes's theory of the will is characterized by the same! sensationalism
and mechanism as his theory of knowledge. All spiritual events originate
in impressions of sense. Man responds to the action of objects by a double
reaction, adding to the theoretical reaction of sensation a practical one
in the feeling of pleasure or pain (according as the impression furthers or
hinders the vital function), whence desire and aversion follow in respect
to future experience. Further developments from the feelings experienced at
the signs of honor (the acknowledgment of superior power) and the contrary,
are the affections of pride, courage, anger, of shame and repentance, of
hope and love, of pity, etc. Deliberation is the alternation of different
appetites; the final, victorious one which immediately precedes action is
called will. Freedom cannot be predicated of the will, but only of the
action, and even in this case it means simply the absence of external
restraints, the procedure of the action from the will of the agent; while
the action is necessary nevertheless. Every motion is the inevitable result
of the sum of the preceding (including cerebral) motions.
Things which we desire are termed good, and those which we shun, evil.
Nothing is good per se or absolutely, but only relatively, for a given
person, place, time, or set of circumstances. Different things are good to
different men, and there is no objective, universal rule of good and
evil, so long as men are considered as individuals, apart from society. A
definite criterion of the good is first reached in the state: that is right
which the law permits, that wrong which it forbids; good means that which
is conducive to the general welfare. In the state of nature nothing is
forbidden; nature gives every man a right to everything, and right is
coextensive with might. What, then, induces man to abandon the state of
nature and enter the state of citizenship? The opinion of Aristotle and
Grotius that the state originates in the social impulse is false; for man
is essentially not social, but selfish, and nothing but regard for his own
interests bids him seek the protection of the state; the civil commonwealth
is an artificial product of fear and prudence. The highest good is
self-preservation; all other goods, as friendship, riches, wisdom,
knowledge, and, above all, power, are valuable only as instruments of the
former. The precondition of well-being, for which each man strives by
nature, is security for life and health. This is wanting in the state of
nature, in which the passions govern; for the state of nature is a state
of war of everyone against everyone (bellum omnium contra omnes. Each
man strives for success and power, and, since he cannot trust his fellow,
seeks to subdue, nay, to kill him; each looks upon his fellow as a wolf
which he prefers to devour rather than submit himself to the like
operation. Now, as no one is so weak as to be incapable of inflicting on
his fellows that worst of evils, death, and thus the strongest is unsafe,
reason, in the interest of everyone, enjoins a search after peace and the
establishment of an ordered community. The conditions of peace are the
"laws of nature," which relate both to politics and to morals but which do
not attain their full binding authority until they become positive laws,
injunctions of the sovereign power. Peace is attainable only when each man,
in return for the protection vouchsafed to him, gives up his natural right
to all. The compact by which each renounces his natural liberty to do what
he pleases, provided all others are ready for the same renunciation,--to
which are added, further, the laws of justice (sanctity of covenants),
equity, gratitude, modesty, sociability, mercifulness, etc., whose
opposites would bring back the state of nature,--this compact is secured
against violation by the transfer of the general power and freedom to a
single will (the will of an assembly or of an individual person), which
then represents the general will. The civil contract includes, then, two
moments: first, renunciation; second, irrevocable transference and
(absolute) submission. The second unites the multitude into a civil
personality, the most perfect unity being vouchsafed by absolute monarchy.
The sovereign is the soul of the political body; the officials, its limbs;
reward and punishment, its nerves; law and equity, its reason.
The social contract theory has often experienced democratic interpretation
and application, both before and since Hobbes's time; and, in fact, it does
not include per sethe irrevocability of the transfer, the absoluteness
of the sovereign power, and the monarchical head, which Hobbes considered
indispensable in order to guard against the danger of anarchy. In every
abridgment of the supreme power, whether by division or limitation, he sees
a step toward the renewal of the state of nature; and he defends with iron
rigor the omnipotence of the state and the complete lack of legal status on
the part of all individuals in contrast with it. The citizen is not to obey
his own conscience, which has simply the value of a private opinion,
but the laws, as the public conscience; while the supreme ruler, on the
contrary, is superior to the civil laws, for it is he that decrees,
interprets, alters, and abrogates them. He is lord over the property, the
life, and the death of the citizens, and can do no one wrong. For he
alone has retained his original natural right to all, which the rest have
entirely and forever renounced. He must have regard, indeed, to the welfare
of the people, but he is accountable to God alone. The obligation of the
subject to obey is extinguished in one case only,--when the civil power is
incapable of providing him further with external and internal protection.
For the rest, Hobbes declares the existing public order the lawful one, the
evils of arbitrary rule much more tolerable than the universal hostility of
the state of nature, and aversion to tyrants a disease inherited from the
republicans of antiquity.
The sovereign, by the laws and by instruction, determines what is good and
evil; he determines also what is to be believed. Religion unsanctioned by
the state is superstition. The temporal ruler is also the spiritual ruler,
the king, the chief pastor, and the clergy his servants. One and the same
community is termed state in so far as it consists of men, and church in so
far as it consists of Christian men (the ecclesiastical commonwealth). The
dogmas which the law prescribes are to be received without investigation,
to be swallowed like pills, without mastication.
The principle that every passion and every action is in its nature
indifferent, that right and wrong exist only in the state, that the will
of a despot is to determine what is moral and what immoral, has given just
offense. Moreover, this was not, in fact, Hobbes's deepest conviction. Even
without ascribing great importance to isolated statements,[1] it must
be admitted that his doctrine was interpreted more narrowly than it was
intended. He does not say that no moral distinctions whatever exist before
the foundation of the state, but only that the state first supplies a fixed
criterion of the good. Moral ideas have a certain currency before this, but
they lack power to enforce themselves. Further, when he ascribes the origin
of the state to self-interest, this does not mean that reason, conscience,
generosity, and love for our fellows are entirely wanting in the state of
nature, but only that they are not general enough, and, as against the
passions, not strong enough to furnish a foundation for the edifice of the
state. Not only exaggeration in statement but also uncouthness of thought
may be forgiven the representative of a movement which is at once new and
strengthened by the consciousness of agreement with a naturalistic theory
of knowledge and physics; and the vigor of execution compels admiration,
even though many obscurities remain to be deplored (e. g, the relation
of the two moral standards, the standard of the reason or natural law and
the standard of positive law). And recognition must be accorded to the
significant kernel of doctrine formed, on the one hand, by the endeavor to
separate ethics from theology, and on the other, by the thoughts--which, it
is true, were not perfectly brought out--that the moral is not founded on
a natural social impulse, but on a law of the reason, and first gains a
definite criterion in society, and that the interests of the individual are
inseparably connected with those of the community. In any case, the
attempt to form a naturalistic theory of the state would be an undertaking
deserving of thanks, even if the promulgation of this theory had done no
further service than to challenge refutation.
[Footnote 1: God inscribed the divine or natural law (Do not that to
another, etc.) on the heart of man, when he gave him the reason to rule his
actions. The laws of nature are, it is true, not always legally binding
(in foro externo, but always and everywhere binding on the conscience
(in foro interno. Justice is the virtue which we can measure by civil
laws; love, that which we measure by the law of nature merely. The ruler
oughtto govern in accordance with the law of nature.]
