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INTRODUCTION.

THOMAS HOBBES, who lived into his ninety-second year, was born in April, 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, and died on the 4th of December, 1679, within ten years of the English Revolution. The whole series of events that raised the question of the limit of authority within a State, and made it the foremost question of his day in England, lay within the limits of his actual life, after he had passed the age of seventeen. He studied philosophically the Civil Wars of the reign of Charles I., and expressed calmly in his books what seemed to him to be the argument for a royal authority entirely free from popular control, He summed up his argument in the "Leviathan," which was first published in 1651, when the experiment of a Commonwealth was being tried; and he returned to the battle with his "Behemoth" after failure of the Commonwealth and Restoration of the Stuarts. If he could have maintained his vigorous life but for another nine years, and become a centenarian, he would have seen the problem practically solved in a way not dreamt of in his philosophy.

Hobbes published his "Leviathan" at that age of sixty-three, mystically composed of seven times nine, which was said to form in a man's life the grand climacteric. He published it for instruction of the people at large in the philosophic rudiments of government, which, as he reasoned them, established as the best safeguard of national prosperity the absolute rule of a King. The political philosopher who followed him, and laid down principles of government that served as interpretation of the spirit of the English Revolution, was John Locke, whose "Two Treatises on Civil Government," are in another volume of this Library.

Thomas Hobbes, son of a clergyman at Malmesbury, was from his earliest years an energetic student. He fastened so vigorously upon Greek and Latin, that as a school-boy he translated the whole" Medea" of Euripides into Latin verse.

In the year of the death of Queen Elizabeth, Hobbes, aged fifteen, went to Oxford and entered to Magdalene Hall. After five years of study there, he became, at the age of twenty, tutor to William Lord Cavendish, whose father, Lord Hardwicke was

created Earl of Devonshire. This appointment may be said to have fixed his worldly fortunes. His association with the family remained unbroken; he was tutor and household friend to three generations of the Earls of Devonshire, and many memorials of him are still to be found at Chatsworth.

With the young Lord Cavendish, Hobbes travelled to France and Italy in 1610. At home, Bacon and Ben Jonson were among his friends. In the first year of the reign of Charles I. Hobbes's first patron died, and the son, whom he had trained, died two years afterwards, in 1628. It was in 1628, before his pupil's death, that Hobbes, at the age of forty, published his first book, a Translation of Thucydides; in the revision of which he had help from Ben Jonson. It was dedicated to Sir William Cavendish as Baron of Hardwicke and Earl of Devonshire. Hobbes's bias towards an absolute monarchy suggested to him this translation, because he thought that inasmuch as it is the principal and proper work of History to instruct and enable men, by the knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves prudently in the present and providently towards the future, this particular History of Thucydides was useful, because the Historian showed the evils of democracy, and indicated preference of the Government of Athens, "both when Peisistratus reigned (saving that it was an usurped power), and when in the beginning of the war it was democratical in name, but in effect monarchical under Pericles. So that it seemeth, that as he was of regal descent, so he best approved of the regal government." We note habitually in true literature the harmonious relation of all parts of a man's work to what may be called the motive of his public life, and the fit relation of that also to some chief feature in the life of his own time.

The death of William Cavendish, not long after his attainment of the Earldom, left Hobbes free for a short time, and he went to France as tutor to the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, but he was recalled to Chatsworth by the Dowager Countess to take charge of the son who was now Earl of Devonshire, and he was but a boy of thirteen. With him Hobbes went again to Italy and France, made the acquaintance of Gassendi and Descartes, and fastened with fresh ardour on philosophy and mathematics.

Hobbes endeavoured to base all that he could, and more than he could, upon mathematical principles. Philosophy is concerned, he said, with the perfect knowledge of truth in all matters whatsoever. "Now, look how many sorts of things there are which properly fall within the cognizance of human reason, into so many branches does the tree of philosophy divide itself. . . . . For treating of figures, it is called geometry; of motion, physic; of

natural right, morals; put all together, and they make up philosophy. . . . . And truly the geometricians have very admirably performed their part. For whatsoever assistance doth accrue to the life of man, whether from the observation of the heavens or from the description of the earth; from the notation of times, or from the remotest experiments of navigation; finally, whatsoever things they are in which this present age doth differ from the rude simpleness of antiquity, we must acknowledge to be a debt, which we owe merely to geometry. If the moral philosophers had as happily discharged their duty, I know not what could have been added by human industry to the completion of that happiness which is consistent with human life. For were the nature of human actions as distinctly known as the nature of quantity in geometrical figures, the strength of avarice and ambition, which is sustained by the erroneous opinions of the vulgar as touching the nature of right and wrong, would presently faint and languish; and mankind should enjoy such an immortal peace, that unless it were for habitation, on supposition that the earth should grow too narrow for her inhabitants, there would hardly be left any pretence for war." But sword and pen were still restlessly busy; and Hobbes, speculating on the controversies of his time, sought to bring within the bounds of exact science the problem of man in society.

In 1642 Hobbes began the publication of his Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society, with a Latin Treatise on the Citizen, of which only a few copies were then printed for friends. There was no full publication of it until the second edition appeared in 1647. In 1647 Hobbes was appointed mathematical tutor to the Prince, afterwards Charles II. In 1650 he published treatises on Human Nature and on the Body Politic. In 1651 he summed up his teaching in the "Leviathan,” which he caused to be written on vellum for presentation to Prince Charles.

Those parts of "Leviathan" that touched religion provoked the bitterest controversy; and to one opponent, Dr. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, Hobbes wrote an answer, in 1652, which he published in 1654, "Of Liberty and Necessity, wherein all Controversy concerning Predestination, Election, Free Will, Grace, Merits, Reprobation, &c., is fully decided and cleared." It would have been a fortunate book if it had fulfilled the promise of its title. Prince Charles himself was turned against Hobbes by the objection that his argument excluded divine right in kings.

In 1653 Hobbes left France, returned to England, and lived in peace under Cromwell. At the Restoration he received a pension from Charles II. He still lived happily at Chatsworth, remaining unmarried. In the morning he would visit his patrons and their

guests, then retire to his own room; at one o'clock dine alone, and after dinner blow clouds of tobacco over his papers as he worked out his philosophy. He made more use of his brains than of his bookshelves, thought for himself, and said that if he read as much as other men he should have been as ignorant as they. He was at his best when working with his pipe for sole companion. He did not bear contradiction very patiently; and in 1655, when he entered into a mathematical controversy with John Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, and the precursor of Newton, he found more than his match, not only in geometry, but also in controversial skill. In 1668 Hobbes published his collected works at Amsterdam. In 1675 he published a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. His "Behemoth: The History of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Councils and Artifices by which they were carried on, from the year 1540 to the year 1660," was published in 1679, the year of his death.

Of his writing upon what constitutes a State, Hobbes said: "I was studying Philosophy for my mind sake, and I had gathered together its first elements in all kinds; and having digested them into three sections by degrees, I thought to have written them, so as in the first I would have treated of Body and its general properties; in the second, of Man and his special faculties and affections; in the third, of Civil Government and the duties of subjects. Wherefore the first section would have contained the First Philosophy, and certain elements of Physic; in it we would have considered the reasons of Time, Place, Cause, Power, Relation, Proportion, Quantity, Figure and Motion. In the second we would have been conversant about Imagination, Memory, Intellect, Ratiocination, Appetite, Will, Good and Evil, Honest and Dishonest. . . . . Whilst I contrive, order, pensively and slowly compose these matters (for I do only reason, I dispute not); it so happens in the interim, that my country, some few years before the Civil Wars did rage, was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion, and the obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an approaching war; and was the cause which, all those other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this third part. Therefore it happens that what was last in order, is yet come forth first in time. And the rather because I saw that, grounded on its own principles sufficiently known by experience, it would not stand in need of the former sections. Yet I have not made it out of a desire of praise: although if I had, I might have defended myself with this fair excuse, that very few do things laudably, who are not affected with commendation.”

January, 1885.

H. M.