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Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)1 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and (1651)1 punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty every joint and member is moved to Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) spent most of his life as perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in tutor, secretary, and financial manager in the service the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the of the earls of Devonshire and Newcastle. His particular members are the strength; salus populi (the extensive travels in Europe brought him into contact people’s safety) its business; counselors, by whom all with many of the leading thinkers of the time, things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are including Galileo, whom he visited in 1636, and the memory; equity, and laws, an artificial reason and Mersenne, to whose circle he belonged while in Paris will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil in 1635, and then again when in exile in Paris from war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which 1640 to 1651. He had met the elderly Bacon in the the parts of this body politic were at first made, set 1620s. Hobbes contributed the Third Set of Objec- together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the let us tions to Descartes’s Meditations in 1641 and began to make man, pronounced by God in the creation. publish his own philosophical system, Elements of To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will Philosophy, first issuing Section Three, Concerning consider: Government and Society (De Cive) in 1642, then The First Section Concerning Body (De Corpore) in 1655 First, the matter of this, and the artificer—both of and Section Two, Concerning Human Nature (De which is man. Homine) in 1658. The work for which he is best Secondly, how, and by what covenants it is made; known in which he defends his materialist philosophy what are the rights and just power or authority and rejects Anglicanism, is Leviathan, or the Matter, of a sovereign; and what it is that preserves and Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesias- dissolves it. ticall and Civill (1651).2 Thirdly, what is a Christian commonwealth. Introduction Lastly, what is the kingdom of darkness. Nature (the art by which God has made and Concerning the first, there is a saying much governs the world) is also so imitated in this by the usurped of late, that wisdom is acquired, not by art of man, as in many other things, that it makes an reading of books, but of men. Consequently, to which artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of end, those persons that for the most part can give no limbs, the beginning of which is in some principal other proof of being wise take great delight to show part within, why may we not say that all automata what they think they have read in men, by unchari- (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels table censures of one another behind their backs. But as does a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the there is another saying not of late understood, by heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many which they might learn truly to read one another, if strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving they would take the pains; and that is, nosce teipsum, mot10n to the whole body, such as was intended by read thyself: which was not meant, as it is now used, the artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in rational and most excellent work of nature, man. For power towards their inferiors, or to encourage men of by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a low degree to a saucy behavior towards their betters, COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin CIVITAS), which but to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions strength than the natural, for whose protection and of another, whoever looks into himself, and considers defense it was intended, and in which the sovereignty what he does, when he does think, opine, reason, is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds, he shall as a whole body; the magistrates, and other officers of result read and know what are the thoughts and 1 From The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Press, 1992); Richard Tuck, Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford Malmesbury, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1839- University Press, 1989); and Tom Sorell, ed., Cambridge 45), 11 vols., modified. Companion to Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University 2 For more on Hobbes, see A. P. Martinich, The Two Press, 1996). Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University 93 passions of all other men upon the like occasions. I The cause of sense is the external body, or object, say the similitude of passions, which are the same in which presses the organ proper to each sense, either all men, desire, fear, hope, etc., not the similitude of immediately, as in taste and touch, or mediately, as in the objects of the passions, which are the things seeing, hearing, and smelling; this pressure, by the desired, feared, hoped, etc., for these the constitution mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes individual, and particular education, do so vary, and of the body, continued inwards to the brain and heart, they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that causes there a resistance, or counterpressure, or the characters of man’s heart, blotted and confounded endeavor of the heart, to deliver itself; this endeavor, as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, because outward, seems to be some matter without. and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him who And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call searches hearts. And though by men’s actions we do sense, and consists, as to the eye, in a light, or color discover their design sometimes, yet to do it without figured; to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all odor; to the tongue and palate, in a savor; and to the circumstances by which the case may come to be rest of the body, in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and altered, is to decipher without a key, and be for the such other qualities as we discern by feeling. All these most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much qualities called sensible are in the object that causes diffidence, as he who reads is himself a good or evil them but so many several motions of the matter, by man. which it presses our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but diverse But let one man read another by his actions ever so motions (for motion produces nothing but motion). perfectly, it serves him only with his acquaintance, But their appearance to us is fancy, the same waking which are but few. He who is to govern a whole nation as dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the must read in himself, not this or that particular man, eye makes us fancy a light, and pressing the ear but mankind, which though it is hard to do, harder produces a din, so also do the bodies we see or hear than to learn any language or science, yet when I shall produce the same by their strong, though unobserved have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicu- action. For if those colors and sounds were in the ously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, bodies, or objects that cause them, they could not be if he also does not find the same in himself. For this severed from them, as by glasses, and in echoes by kind of doctrine admits no other demonstration. reflection, we see they are, where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another. And Part I. Of Man though at some certain distance, the real and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; yet Chapter 1. Of Sense. still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them another, so that sense in all cases is nothing else but first singly, and afterwards in train, or dependence original fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, upon one another. Singly, they are every one a repre- that is, by the motion of external thing upon our eyes, senttation or appearance of some quality or other ears, and other organs ordained to it. accident of a body without us, which is commonly But the philosophy schools through all the univer- called an object—which object works on the eyes, sities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of ears, and other parts of a man’s body, and by diversity Aristotle, teach another doctrine, and say, for the of working, produces diversity of appearances. cause of vision, that the thing seen sends forth on The origin of them all is that which we call SENSE. every side a visible species (in English) a visible (For there is no conception in a man’s mind, which show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen, the has not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon receiving of which into the eye is seeing.
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