Thomas Hobbes (born April 5, 1588, Westport, Wiltshire, England—
died December 4, 1679, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire), English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for his political philosophy,
especially as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651). Hobbes
viewed government primarily as a device for ensuring collective security. Political authority is justified by a hypothetical social contract
among the many that vests in a sovereign person or entity the responsibility for the safety and well-being of all. In metaphysics, Hobbes
defended materialism, the view that only material things are real. His
scientific writings present all observed phenomena as the effects of
matter in motion. Hobbes was not only a scientist in his own right but
a great systematizer of the scientific findings of his contemporaries,
including Galileo and Johannes Kepler. His enduring contribution is
as a political philosopher who justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis of the self-interested consent of citizens.
Early life
Hobbes’s father was a quick-tempered vicar of a small Wiltshire parish
church. Disgraced after engaging in a brawl at his own church door,
he disappeared and abandoned his three children to the care of his
brother, a well-to-do glover in Malmesbury. When he was four years
old, Hobbes was sent to school at Westport, then to a private school,
and finally, at 15, to Magdalen Hall in the University of Oxford, where
he took a traditional arts degree and in his spare time developed an
interest in maps.
For nearly the whole of his adult life, Hobbes worked for different branches of the wealthy and aristocratic Cavendish family. Upon
taking his degree at Oxford in 1608, he was employed as page and tutor
to the young William Cavendish, afterward the second earl of Devonshire. Over the course of many decades Hobbes served the family and
their associates as translator, traveling companion, keeper of accounts,
business representative, political adviser, and scientific collaborator.
Through his employment by William Cavendish, the first earl of Devonshire, and his heirs, Hobbes became connected with the royalist side
in disputes between the king and Parliament that continued until the
1640s and that culminated in the English Civil Wars (1642-51).
Hobbes also worked for the marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a
cousin of William Cavendish, and Newcastle’s brother, Sir Charles
Cavendish. The latter was the centre of the “Wellbeck Academy,” an
informal network of scientists named for one of the family houses at
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Wellbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire.
Intellectual development
The two branches of the Cavendish family nourished Hobbes’s enduring intellectual interests in politics and natural science, respectively.
Hobbes served the earls of Devonshire intermittently until 1628; Newcastle and his brother employed him in the following decade. He returned to the Devonshires after the 1640s. Through both branches of
the Cavendish family, and through contacts he made in his own right
on the Continent as traveling companion to various successors to the
Devonshire title, Hobbes became a member of several networks of intellectuals in England. Farther afield, in Paris, he became acquainted
with the circle of scientists, theologians, and philosophers presided
over by the theologian Marin Mersenne. This circle included René Descartes.
Hobbes was exposed to practical politics before he became a
student of political philosophy. The young William Cavendish was a
member of the 1614 and 1621 Parliaments, and Hobbes would have
followed his contributions to parliamentary debates. Further exposure
to politics came through the commercial interests of the earls of Devonshire. Hobbes attended many meetings of the governing body of the
Virginia Company, a trading company established by James I to colonize parts of the eastern coast of North America, and came into contact
with powerful men there. (Hobbes himself was given a small share in
the company by his employer.) He also confronted political issues
through his connection with figures who met at Great Tew; with them
he debated not only theological questions but also the issues of how the
Anglican church should be led and organized and how its authority
should be related to that of any English civil government.
In the late 1630s Parliament and the king were in conflict over
how far normal kingly powers could be exceeded in exceptional circumstances, especially in regard to raising money for armies. In 1640
Hobbes wrote a treatise defending King Charles I’s own wide interpretation of his prerogatives. Royalist members of Parliament used arguments from Hobbes’s treatise in debates, and the treatise itself circulated in manuscript form. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic
(written in 1640, published in a misedited unauthorized version in
1650) was Hobbes’s first work of political philosophy, though he did not
intend it for publication as a book.
The development of Hobbes the scientist began in his middle
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age. He was not trained in mathematics or the sciences at Oxford, and
his Wiltshire schooling was strongest in classical languages. His interest in motion and its effects was stimulated mainly through his conversation and reading on the Continent, as well as through his association with the scientifically and mathematically minded Wellbeck Cavendishes. In 1629 or 1630 Hobbes was supposedly charmed by Euclid’s
method of demonstrating theorems in the Elements. According to a
contemporary biographer, he came upon a volume of Euclid in a gentleman’s study and fell in love with geometry. Later, perhaps in the
mid-1630s, he had gained enough sophistication to pursue independent
research in optics, a subject he later claimed to have pioneered. Within
the Wellbeck Academy, he exchanged views with other people interested in the subject. And as a member of Mersenne’s circle in Paris
after 1640, he was taken seriously as a theorist not only of ethics and
politics but of optics and ballistics. Indeed, he was even credited with
competence in mathematics by some very able French mathematicians,
including Gilles Personne de Roberval.
Self-taught in the sciences and an innovator at least in optics,
Hobbes also regarded himself as a teacher or transmitter of sciences
developed by others. In this connection he had in mind sciences that,
like his own optics, traced observed phenomena to principles about the
sizes, shapes, positions, speeds, and paths of parts of matter. His great
trilogy—De Corpore (1655; “Concerning Body”), De Homine (1658;
“Concerning Man”), and De Cive (1642; “Concerning the Citizen”)—was
his attempt to arrange the various pieces of natural science, as well as
psychology and politics, into a hierarchy, ranging from the most general and fundamental to the most specific. Although logically constituting the last part of his system, De Cive was published first, because
political turmoil in England made its message particularly timely and
because its doctrine was intelligible both with and without natural-scientific preliminaries. De Corpore and De Homine incorporated the
findings of, among others, Galileo on the motions of terrestrial bodies,
Kepler on astronomy, William Harvey on the circulation of the blood,
and Hobbes himself on optics. The science of politics contained in De
Cive was substantially anticipated in Part II of The Elements of Law
and further developed in Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power
of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), the last—and in
the English-speaking world the most famous—formulation of Hobbes’s
political philosophy (see below Hobbes’s system).
Exile in Paris
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When strife became acute in 1640, Hobbes feared for his safety.
Shortly after completing The Elements of Law, he fled to Paris, where
he rejoined Mersenne’s circle and made contact with other exiles from
England. He would remain in Paris for more than a decade, working
on optics and on De Cive, De Corpore, and Leviathan. In 1646 the
young prince of Wales, later to become Charles II, sought refuge in
Paris, and Hobbes accepted an invitation to instruct him in mathematics.
Political philosophy
Hobbes presented his political philosophy in different forms for different audiences. De Cive states his theory in what he regarded as its
most scientific form. Unlike The Elements of Law, which was composed
in English for English parliamentarians—and which was written with
local political challenges to Charles I in mind—De Cive was a Latin
work for an audience of Continental savants who were interested in
the “new” science—that is, the sort of science that did not appeal to the
authority of the ancients but approached various problems with fresh
principles of explanation.
De Cive’s break from the ancient authority par excellence—Aristotle—could not have been more loudly advertised. After only a few
paragraphs, Hobbes rejects one of the most famous theses of Aristotle’s
politics, namely that human beings are naturally suited to life in a polis and do not fully realize their natures until they exercise the role of
citizen. Hobbes turns Aristotle’s claim on its head: human beings, he
insists, are by nature unsuited to political life. They naturally denigrate and compete with each other, are very easily swayed by the rhetoric of ambitious men, and think much more highly of themselves than
of other people. In short, their passions magnify the value they place
on their own interests, especially their near-term interests. At the
same time, most people, in pursuing their own interests, do not have
the ability to prevail over competitors. Nor can they appeal to some
natural common standard of behaviour that everyone will feel obliged
to abide by. There is no natural self-restraint, even when human beings are moderate in their appetites, for a ruthless and bloodthirsty
few can make even the moderate feel forced to take violent preemptive
action in order to avoid losing everything. The self-restraint even of
the moderate, then, easily turns into aggression. In other words, no
human being is above aggression and the anarchy that goes with it.
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War comes more naturally to human beings than political order. Indeed, political order is possible only when human beings abandon their natural condition of judging and pursuing what seems best
to each and delegate this judgment to someone else. This delegation is
effected when the many contract together to submit to a sovereign in
return for physical safety and a modicum of well-being. Each of the
many in effect says to the other: “I transfer my right of governing myself to X (the sovereign) if you do too.” And the transfer is collectively
entered into only on the understanding that it makes one less of a target of attack or dispossession than one would be in one’s natural state.
Although Hobbes did not assume that there was ever a real historical
event in which a mutual promise was made to delegate self-government to a sovereign, he claimed that the best way to understand the
state was to conceive of it as having resulted from such an agreement.
In Hobbes’s social contract, the many trade liberty for safety.
Liberty, with its standing invitation to local conflict and finally all-out
war—a “war of every man against every man”—is overvalued in traditional political philosophy and popular opinion, according to Hobbes; it
is better for people to transfer the right of governing themselves to the
sovereign. Once transferred, however, this right of government is absolute, unless the many feel that their lives are threatened by submission. The sovereign determines who owns what, who will hold which
public offices, how the economy will be regulated, what acts will be
crimes, and what punishments criminals should receive. The sovereign is the supreme commander of the army, supreme interpreter of
law, and supreme interpreter of scripture, with authority over any national church. It is unjust—a case of reneging on what one has
agreed—for any subject to take issue with these arrangements, for, in
the act of creating the state or by receiving its protection, one agrees to
leave judgments about the means of collective well-being and security
to the sovereign. The sovereign’s laws and decrees and appointments
to public office may be unpopular; they may even be wrong. But unless
the sovereign fails so utterly that subjects feel that their condition
would be no worse in the free-for-all outside the state, it is better for
the subjects to endure the sovereign’s rule.
It is better both prudentially and morally. Because no one can
prudently welcome a greater risk of death, no one can prudently prefer
total liberty to submission. Total liberty invites war, and submission
is the best insurance against war. Morality too supports this conclusion, for, according to Hobbes, all the moral precepts enjoining virtuous
behaviour can be understood as derivable from the fundamental moral
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precept that one should seek peace—that is to say, freedom from war—
if it is safe to do so. Without peace, he observed, man lives in “continual
fear, and danger of violent death,” and what life he has is “solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” What Hobbes calls the “laws of nature,” the system of moral rules by which everyone is bound, cannot be
safely complied with outside the state, for the total liberty that people
have outside the state includes the liberty to flout the moral requirements if one’s survival seems to depend on it.
The sovereign is not a party to the social contract; he receives
the obedience of the many as a free gift in their hope that he will see to
their safety. The sovereign makes no promises to the many in order to
win their submission. Indeed, because he does not transfer his right of
self-government to anyone, he retains the total liberty that his subjects
trade for safety. He is not bound by law, including his own laws. Nor
does he do anything unjustly if he makes decisions about his subjects’s
[sic] safety and well-being that they do not like.
Although the sovereign is in a position to judge the means of
survival and well-being for the many more dispassionately than they
are able to do themselves, he is not immune to self-interested passions.
Hobbes realizes that the sovereign may behave iniquitously. He insists
that it is very imprudent for a sovereign to act so iniquitously that he
disappoints his subjects’s [sic] expectation of safety and makes them
feel insecure. Subjects who are in fear of their lives lose their obligations to obey and, with that, deprive the sovereign of his power. Reduced to the status of one among many by the defection of his subjects,
the unseated sovereign is likely to feel the wrath of those who submitted to him in vain.
Hobbes’s masterpiece, Leviathan (1651), does not significantly
depart from the view of De Cive concerning the relation between protection and obedience, but it devotes much more attention to the civil
obligations of Christian believers and the proper and improper roles of
a church within a state. Hobbes argues that believers do not endanger
their prospects of salvation by obeying a sovereign’s decrees to the letter, and he maintains that churches do not have any authority that is
not granted by the civil sovereign.
Hobbes’s political views exerted a discernible influence on his
work in other fields, including historiography and legal theory. His
political philosophy is chiefly concerned with the way in which government must be organized in order to avoid civil war. It therefore encompasses a view of the typical causes of civil war, all of which are represented in Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament (1679), his history of the
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English Civil Wars. Hobbes produced the first English translation of
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which he thought contained important lessons for his contemporaries regarding the excesses
of democracy, the worst kind of dilution of sovereign authority, in his
view.
Hobbes’s works on church history and the history of philosophy
also strongly reflect his politics. He was firmly against the separation
of government powers, either between branches of government or between church and state. His ecclesiastical history emphasizes the way
in which power-hungry priests and popes threatened legitimate civil
authority. His history of philosophy is mostly concerned with how metaphysics was used as a means of keeping people under the sway of Roman Catholicism at the expense of obedience to a civil authority. His
theory of law develops a similar theme regarding the threats to a supreme civil power posed by common law and the multiplication of authoritative legal interpreters.
Return to England
There are signs that Hobbes intended Leviathan to be read by a monarch, who would be able to take the rules of statecraft from it. A specially bound copy was given to Prince Charles while he was in exile in
Paris. Unfortunately, Hobbes’s suggestion in Leviathan that a subject
had the right to abandon a ruler who could no longer protect him gave
serious offense to the prince’s advisers. Barred from the exiled court
and under suspicion by the French authorities for his attack on the
papacy (see below), Hobbes found his position in Paris becoming daily
more intolerable. At the end of 1651, at about the time that Leviathan
was published, he returned to England and made his peace with the
new regime of Oliver Cromwell. Hobbes submitted to that authority
for a long time before the monarchy was restored in 1660.
From the time of the Restoration in 1660, Hobbes enjoyed a
new prominence. Charles II received Hobbes again into favour.
Although Hobbes’s presence at court scandalized the bishops and the
chancellor, the king relished his wit. He even granted Hobbes a
pension of £100 a year and had his portrait hung in the royal closet. It
was not until 1666, when the House of Commons prepared a bill
against atheism and profaneness, that Hobbes felt seriously
endangered, for the committee to which the bill was referred was
instructed to investigate Leviathan. Hobbes, then verging upon 80,
burned such of his papers as he thought might compromise him.
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Optics
Hobbes’s most significant contributions to natural science were in the
field of optics. An optical theory in his day was expected to pronounce
on the nature of light, on the transmission of light from the Sun to the
Earth, on reflection and refraction, and on the workings of optical instruments such as mirrors and lenses. Hobbes took up these topics in
several relatively short treatises and in correspondence, including with
Descartes on the latter’s Dioptrics (1637). The most polished of
Hobbes’s optical works was A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques
(1646).
In its mature form, Hobbes’s optical theory held that the dilations and contractions of an original light source, such as the Sun, are
transmitted by contact with a uniform, pervading ethereal medium,
which in turn stimulates the eye and the nerves connected to it, eventually resulting in a “phantasm,” or sense-image, in the brain. In
Hobbes’s theory, the qualities of a sense-image do not need to be explained in terms of the qualities of a perceived object. Instead, motion
and matter—the motion of a light source, the disturbance of a physical
nervous system, and sensory membranes—are all that have to be invoked. In contrast, traditional optics—optics as developed within Aristotle’s framework—had held that seeing the colour of something—the
redness of a strawberry, for example—was a matter of reproducing the
“form” of the colour in the sense organs; the form is then abstracted
from the sense organs by the mind. “Sensible forms,” the characteristic
properties transmitted by objects to the senses in the act of perception,
were entirely dispensed with in Hobbes’s optics.
Hobbes’s system
Theories that trace all observed effects to matter and motion are called
mechanical. Hobbes was thus a mechanical materialist: He held that
nothing but material things are real, and he thought that the subject
matter of all the natural sciences consists of the motions of material
things at different levels of generality. Geometry considers the effects
of the motions of points, lines, and solids; pure mechanics deals with
the motions of three-dimensional bodies in a full space, or plenum;
physics deals with the motions of the parts of inanimate bodies insofar
as they contribute to observed phenomena; and psychology deals with
the effects of the internal motions of animate bodies on behaviour. The
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system of the natural sciences described in Hobbes’s trilogy represents
his understanding of the materialist principles on which all science is
based.
The fact that Hobbes included politics as well as psychology
within his system, however, has tended to overshadow his insistence
on the autonomy of political understanding from natural-scientific understanding. According to Hobbes, politics does not need to be understood in terms of the motions of material things (although, ultimately,
it can be); a certain kind of widely available self-knowledge is evidence
enough of the human propensity to war. Although Hobbes is routinely
read as having discerned the “laws of motion” for both human beings
and human societies, the most that can plausibly be claimed is that he
based his political philosophy on psychological principles that he
thought could be illuminated by general laws of motion.
Last years and influence
Although he was impugned by enemies at home, no Englishman of the
day stood in such high repute abroad as Hobbes, and distinguished foreigners who visited England were always eager to pay their respects to
the old man, whose vigour and freshness of intellect remained unquenched. In his last years Hobbes amused himself by returning to the
classical studies of his youth. The autobiography in Latin verse with
its playful humour, occasional pathos, and sublime self-complacency
was brought forth at the age of 84. In 1675 he produced a translation
of the Odyssey in rugged English rhymes, with a lively preface, “Concerning the Virtues of an Heroic Poem.” A translation of the Iliad appeared in the following year. As late as four months before his death,
he was promising his publisher “somewhat to print in English.”
Hobbes’s importance lies not only in his political philosophy
but also in his contribution to the development of an anti-Aristotelian
and thoroughly materialist conception of natural science. His political
philosophy influenced not only successors who adopted the social-contract framework—John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel
Kant, for example—but also less directly those theorists who connected
moral and political decision making in rational human beings to considerations of self-interest broadly understood. The materialist bent of
Hobbes’s metaphysics is also much in keeping with contemporary Anglo-American, or analytic, metaphysics, which tends to recognize as
real only those entities that physics in particular or natural science in
general presupposes.
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Tom Sorell
The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic (composed c. 1640, published
in two parts as Humane Nature; or, The Fundamental Elements of Policie and De Corpore Politico; or, The Elements of Law, Moral & Politick,
1650); Elementorum Philosophiae: Sectio Tertia de Cive (1642; Eng.
trans., Philosophicall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society,
1651); Leviathan; or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill (1651); Elementorum Philosophiae:
Sectio Prima de Corpore (1655; Eng. trans., Elements of Philosophy,
1656); Elementorum Philosophia: Sectio Secunda de Homine (1658;
Eng. trans. appears in Man and Citizen, ed. by Bernard Gert, 1972).
Source: Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 27 April 2016.
10
THOMAS HOBBES
LEVIATHAN, or The Matter, Forme, & Power
of a COMMON-WEALTH ECCLESIASTICALL and
CIVILL*
Introduction to Hobbes’ Leviathan
Hobbes has suffered a fate shared by many classic authors. His greatest work is more often quoted than carefully and thoroughly read.
There are reasons for this. Hobbes took pains to be quotable, sometimes at the cost of obscuring his message. And Leviathan is a very
long book, not all of whose parts are obviously relevant to its central
purpose. My aim here is to give you some sense of how the parts fit
together and to ward off misunderstandings, which make criticism and
rejection seem easy.
A brief summary of Hobbes’ argument will suggest both why
we still read him, and why few accept what they read. Hobbes contends
that by nature people are sufficiently unsocial that if they had to live
without an effective government to check them, they would find themselves in a “war of all against all.” But people are also sufficiently dependent on one another that in such a war everyone’s life would be, in
the book’s most famous phrase, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short.” This alternative is so horrible that life under any effective government would be preferable to it, no matter what the form of that
government. The same features of human nature which would make
life in the state of nature so miserable also make it impossible for any
government to be effective if it does not possess absolute power. To try
to limit the powers of government by a constitution or by dividing authority among different branches of government is to invite the anarchy and misery of the state of nature. So the subject of an absolute
government should prefer that form of government to any other and
* The text herein is taken from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, with Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1994). Leviathan was published in English in 1651 (when Hobbes was 63
years old) and in Latin in 1668 (when Hobbes was 80). Hobbes produced both versions.
As of April 2016, Edwin M. Curley (born 1937), was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at
the University of Michigan. All bracketed numerals were inserted by Curley (to facilitate
reference).
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give it “simple obedience.” If you are a citizen in an effective dictatorship, which makes your life secure from both internal and external
threats, without allowing you any say in how you are governed, presumably you are morally required to obey that government and give it
your support. If this is Hobbes’ conclusion, most of us, I suppose, would
find it unacceptable. But Hobbes’ argument can feel very forceful.
CHAPTER XIII
Of the NATURAL CONDITION of MANKIND, As Concerning Their
Felicity, and Misery
[1] Men by nature Equal. Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet
when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is
not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any
benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. For as to the
strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest,
either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others that are in
the same danger with himself.
[2] And as to the faculties of the mind—setting aside the arts
grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon general and infallible rules called science (which very few have, and but in
few things), as being not a native faculty (born with us), nor attained
(as prudence) while we look after somewhat else—I find yet a greater
equality amongst men than that of strength. For prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things
they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make
such equality incredible is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom,
which almost all men think they have in a greater degree than the vulgar, that is, than all men but themselves and a few others whom, by
fame or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the
nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to
be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned, yet they will hardly
believe there be many so wise as themselves. For they see their own
wit at hand, and other men’s at a distance. But this proveth rather
that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that
every man is contented with his share.
[3] From Equality proceeds Diffidence. From this equality of
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ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore, if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they
cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end,
which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only, endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. And from
hence it comes to pass that, where an invader hath no more to fear
than another man’s single power, if one plant, sow, build, or possess a
convenient seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared
with forces united, to dispossess and deprive him, not only of the fruit
of his labour, but also of his life or liberty. And the invader again is in
the like danger of another.
[4] From Diffidence War. And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself so reasonable as
anticipation, that is, by force or wiles to master the persons of all men
he can, so long till he see no other power great enough to endanger him.
And this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. Also, because there be some that taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue
farther than their security requires, if others (that otherwise would be
glad to be at ease within modest bounds) should not by invasion increase their power, they would not be able, long time, by standing only
on their defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation
of dominion over men being necessary to a man’s conservation, it ought
to be allowed him.
[5] Again, men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great
deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value
him at the same rate he sets upon himself, and upon all signs of contempt, or undervaluing, naturally endeavours, as far as he dares
(which amongst them that have no common power to keep them in
quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other), to extort a
greater value from his contemners, by damage, and from others, by the
example.
[6] So that in the nature of man we find three principal causes
of quarrel: first, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.
[7] The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety;
and the third, for reputation. The first use violence to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the
second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their
persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation,
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their profession, or their name.
[8] Out of Civil States, there is always war of every one against
everyone. Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without
a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition
which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every
man. For WAR consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but
in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently
known. And therefore, the notion of time is to be considered in the
nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of
foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination
thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in
actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time
there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.
[9] The Incommodities of such a War. Whatsoever therefore is
consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man,
the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the
earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported
by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the
earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is
worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
[10] It may seem strange, to some man that has not well
weighed these things, that nature should thus dissociate, and render
men apt to invade and destroy one another. And he may, therefore,
not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire perhaps
to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider
with himself—when taking a journey, he arms himself, and seeks to go
well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even
in his house, he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws,
and public officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done him—
what opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his
fellow citizens, when he locks his doors; and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse
man’s nature in it. The desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them—which till laws be made
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they cannot know. Nor can any law be made, till they have agreed
upon the person that shall make it.
[11] It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a
time nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally
so, over all the world. But there are many places where they live so
now. For the savage people in many places of America (except the government of small families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural
lust) have no government at all, and live at this day in that brutish
manner as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner
of life there would be where there were no common power to fear, by
the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful
government use to degenerate into, in a civil war.
[12] But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all
times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies and in the state and posture of
gladiators, having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one
another, that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of
their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours, which is a
posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of their
subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies
the liberty of particular men.
[13] In such a War, nothing is Unjust. To this war of every man
against every man, this also is consequent: that nothing can be unjust.
The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no
place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law,
no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind.
If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as
well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men
in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition
that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct, but
only that to be every man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can
keep it. And thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature
is actually placed in, though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason.
[14] The Passions that incline men to Peace. The passions that
incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain
them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which
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men may be drawn to agreement. These articles are they which otherwise are called the Laws of Nature, whereof I shall speak more particularly in the two following chapters.
CHAPTER XVII
Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a COMMONWEALTH
[1] The End of Commonwealth, particular Security. The final cause,
end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty and dominion over
others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves in which
we see them live in commonwealths is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting
themselves out from that miserable condition of war, which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shown [Chapter XIII]) to the natural
passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep them in awe,
and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants and observation of those laws of nature set down in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters.
[2] Which is not to be had from the Law of Nature. For the laws
of nature (as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and (in sum) doing to others as we would be done to) of themselves, without the terror of some
power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. And covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure
a man at all. Therefore notwithstanding the laws of nature (which
every one hath then kept, when he has the will to keep them, when he
can do it safely), if there be no power erected, or not great enough for
our security, every man will, and may lawfully rely on his own strength
and art, for caution against all other men. And in all places where men
have lived by small families, to rob and spoil one another has been a
trade, and so far from being reputed against the law of nature that the
greater spoils they gained, the greater was their honour; and men observed no other laws therein but the laws of honour, that is, to abstain
from cruelty, leaving to men their lives and instruments of husbandry.
And as small families did then, so now do cities and kingdoms (which
are but greater families) for their own security enlarge their dominions
upon all pretences of danger and fear of invasion or assistance that
may be given to invaders, [and] endeavour as much as they can to subdue or weaken their neighbours, by open force and secret arts for want
of other caution, justly (and are remembered for it in after ages with
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honour).
[3] Nor from the conjunction of a few men or families. Nor is it
the joining together of a small number of men that gives them this security; because in small numbers, small additions on the one side or
the other make the advantage of strength so great as is sufficient to
carry the victory; and therefore gives encouragement to an invasion.
The multitude sufficient to confide in for our security is not determined
by any certain number, but by comparison with the enemy we fear, and
is then sufficient, when the odds of the enemy is not of so visible and
conspicuous moment, to determine the event of war, as to move him to
attempt.
[4] Nor from a great Multitude, unless directed by one judgment. And be there never so great a multitude, yet if their actions be
directed according to their particular judgments, and particular appetites, they can expect thereby no defence, nor protection, neither
against a common enemy, nor against the injuries of one another. For
being distracted in opinions concerning the best use and application of
their strength, they do not help, but hinder one another, and reduce
their strength by mutual opposition to nothing; whereby they are easily, not only subdued by a very few that agree together, but also when
there is no common enemy, they make war upon each other, for their
particular interests. For if we could suppose a great multitude of men
to consent in the observation of justice and other laws of nature without a common power to keep them all in awe, we might as well suppose
all mankind to do the same; and then there neither would be, nor need
to be, any civil government or commonwealth at all, because there
would be peace without subjection.
[5] And that continually. Nor is it enough for the security,
which men desire should last all the time of their life, that they be governed and directed by one judgment for a limited time, as in one battle
or one war. For though they obtain a victory by their unanimous endeavour against a foreign enemy, yet afterwards, when either they
have no common enemy, or he that by one part is held for an enemy is
by another part held for a friend, they must needs by the difference of
their interests dissolve, and fall again into a war amongst themselves.
[6] Why certain creatures without reason, or speech, do nevertheless live in Society, without any coercive Power. It is true that certain living creatures (as bees and ants) live sociably one with another
(which are therefore by Aristotle numbered amongst political creatures), and yet have no other direction than their particular judgments
and appetites, nor speech whereby one of them can signify to another
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what he thinks expedient for the common benefit; and therefore some
man may perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do the same.
To which I answer,
[7] First, that men are continually in competition for honour
and dignity, which these creatures are not; and consequently, amongst
men there ariseth, on that ground, envy and hatred, and finally war;
but amongst these not so.
[8] Secondly, that amongst these creatures the common good
differeth not from the private; and being by nature inclined to their
private, they procure thereby the common benefit. But man, whose joy
consisteth in comparing himself with other men, can relish nothing but
what is eminent.
[9] Thirdly, that these creatures (having not, as man, the use
of reason) do not see, nor think they see, any fault in the administration
of their common business; whereas amongst men there are very many
that think themselves wiser, and abler to govern the public, better than
the rest; and these strive to reform and innovate, one this way, another
that way; and thereby bring it into distraction and civil war.
[10] Fourthly, that these creatures, though they have some use
of voice (in making known to one another their desires and other affections), yet they want that art of words by which some men can represent to others that which is good in the likeness of evil, and evil in the
likeness of good, and augment or diminish the apparent greatness of
good and evil, discontenting men, and troubling their peace at their
pleasure.
[11] Fifthly, irrational creatures cannot distinguish between
injury and damage; and therefore, as long as they be at ease, they are
not offended with their fellows, whereas man is then most troublesome,
when he is most at ease; for then it is that he loves to shew his wisdom,
and control the actions of them that govern the commonwealth.
[12] Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is natural; that of
men is by covenant only, which is artificial; and therefore, it is no wonder if there be somewhat else required (besides covenant) to make their
agreement constant and lasting, which is a common power to keep
them in awe, and to direct their actions to the common benefit.
[13] The Generation of a Commonwealth; the Definition of a
Commonwealth. The only way to erect such a common power as may
be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners and the injuries
of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort as that by their
own industry, and by the fruits of the earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is to confer all their power and strength
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upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their
wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will, which is as much as to say,
to appoint one man or assembly of men to bear their person, and every
one to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever he that
so beareth their person shall act, or cause to be acted, in those things
which concern the common peace and safety, and therein to submit
their wills, every one to his will, and their judgments, to his judgment.
This is more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them all, in
one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every
man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this
assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him,
and authorize [sic] all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a COMMONWEALTH, in Latin
CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to
speak more reverently) of that Mortal God to which we owe, under the
Immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority, given him
by every particular man in the commonwealth, he hath the use of so
much power and strength conferred on him that by terror thereof he is
enabled to form the wills of them all to peace at home, and mutual aid
against their enemies abroad. And in him consisteth the essence of the
commonwealth, which (to define it) is one person, of whose acts a great
multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and
means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence.
[14] Sovereign, and Subject, what. And he that carrieth this
person is called SOVEREIGN, and said to have Sovereign Power; and
every one besides, his SUBJECT.
[15] The attaining to this sovereign power is by two ways. One,
by natural force, as when a man maketh his children to submit themselves and their children to his government, as being able to destroy
them if they refuse, or by war subdueth his enemies to his will, giving
them their lives on that condition. The other is when men agree
amongst themselves to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others. This
latter may be called a political commonwealth, or commonwealth by
institution, and the former, a commonwealth by acquisition. And first,
I shall speak of a commonwealth by institution.
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