Hobbes - Leviathan (Ebook - ...

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LEVIATHAN
1
LEVIATHAN (1651)
By Thomas Hobbes
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LEVIATHAN
2
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by
the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated,
that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion
of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within,
why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves
by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For
what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many
strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the
whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet
further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature,
man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH,
or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though
of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection
and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an
artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the
magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial
joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the
sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty)
are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and
riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi
(the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things
needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity
and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition,
sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by
which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together,
and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced
by God in the Creation.
To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will consider
First, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both which is man.
Secondly, how, and by what covenants it is made; what are the rights
and just power or authority of a sovereign; and what it is that
preserveth and dissolveth it.
Thirdly, what is a Christian Commonwealth.
Lastly, what is the Kingdom of Darkness.
Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, that
wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men.
Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give
no other proof of being wise, take great delight to show what they
think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another
behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late
understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if
they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce teipsum, Read thyself:
which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance either the
barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors, or to
encourage men of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their
betters; but to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and
passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another,
whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he
does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he
shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of
all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of
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LEVIATHAN
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passions, which are the same in all men,- desire, fear, hope, etc.;
not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the
things desired, feared, hoped, etc.: for these the constitution
individual, and particular education, do so vary, and they are so easy
to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart,
blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying,
counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him
that searcheth hearts. And though by men's actions we do discover
their design sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our
own, and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come
to be altered, is to decipher without a key, and be for the most
part deceived, by too much trust or by too much diffidence, as he that
reads is himself a good or evil man.
But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it
serves him only with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is
to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this, or that
particular man; but mankind: which though it be hard to do, harder
than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall have set down
my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another
will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself.
For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.
THE FIRST PART
OF MAN
CHAPTER I
OF SENSE
CONCERNING the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly,
and afterwards in train or dependence upon one another. Singly, they
are every one a representation or appearance of some quality, or other
accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object.
Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of man's body,
and by diversity of working produceth diversity of appearances.
The original of them all is that which we call sense, (for there
is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally or
by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense). The rest are
derived from that original.
To know the natural cause of sense is not very necessary to the
business now in hand; and I have elsewhere written of the same at
large. Nevertheless, to fill each part of my present method, I will
briefly deliver the same in this place.
The cause of sense is the external body, or object, which presseth
the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in the taste
and touch; or mediately, as in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which
pressure, by the mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes
of the body, continued inwards to the brain and heart, causeth there a
resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to
deliver itself: which endeavour, because outward, seemeth to be some
matter without. And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call
sense; and consisteth, as to the eye, in a light, or colour figured;
to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an odour; to the tongue and
palate, in a savour; and to the rest of the body, in heat, cold,
hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we discern by feeling.
All which qualities called sensible are in the object that causeth
them but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth
our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything
else but diverse motions (for motion produceth nothing but motion).
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LEVIATHAN
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But their appearance to us is fancy, the same waking that dreaming.
And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye makes us fancy a
light, and pressing the ear produceth a din; so do the bodies also
we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved
action. For if those colours and sounds were in the bodies or
objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by
glasses and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where we know the
thing we see is in one place; the appearance, in another. And though
at some certain distance the real and very object seem invested with
the fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the
image or fancy is another. So that sense in all cases is nothing
else but original fancy caused (as I have said) by the pressure that
is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other
organs, thereunto ordained.
But the philosophy schools, through all the universities of
Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another
doctrine; and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen
sendeth forth on every side a visible species, (in English) a
visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen; the receiving
whereof into the eye is seeing. And for the cause of hearing, that the
thing heard sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible
aspect, or audible being seen; which, entering at the ear, maketh
hearing. Nay, for the cause of understanding also, they say the
thing understood sendeth forth an intelligible species, that is, an
intelligible being seen; which, coming into the understanding, makes
us understand. I say not this, as disapproving the use of
universities: but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a
Commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way what
things would be amended in them; amongst which the frequency of
insignificant speech is one.
CHAPTER II
OF IMAGINATION
THAT when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it
will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that
when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless
somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same (namely, that
nothing can change itself), is not so easily assented to. For men
measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves:
and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and
lassitude, think everything else grows weary of motion, and seeks
repose of its own accord; little considering whether it be not some
other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves
consisteth. From hence it is that the schools say, heavy bodies fall
downwards out of an appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature
in that place which is most proper for them; ascribing appetite, and
knowledge of what is good for their conservation (which is more than
man has), to things inanimate, absurdly.
When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else
hinder it) eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an
instant, but in time, and by degrees, quite extinguish it: and as we
see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over
rolling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion
which is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he sees,
dreams, etc. For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we
still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when
we see it. And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the
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LEVIATHAN
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image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all
the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy, which signifies
appearance, and is as proper to one sense as to another.
Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in
men and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking.
The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay of the motion made
in sense, but an obscuring of it, in such manner as the light of the
sun obscureth the light of the stars; which stars do no less
exercise their virtue by which they are visible in the day than in the
night. But because amongst many strokes which our eyes, ears, and
other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant only is
sensible; therefore the light of the sun being predominant, we are not
affected with the action of the stars. And any object being removed
from our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain, yet other
objects more present succeeding, and working on us, the imagination of
the past is obscured and made weak, as the voice of a man is in the
noise of the day. From whence it followeth that the longer the time
is, after the sight or sense of any object, the weaker is the
imagination. For the continual change of man's body destroys in time
the parts which in sense were moved: so that distance of time, and
of place, hath one and the same effect in us. For as at a great
distance of place that which we look at appears dim, and without
distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices grow weak and
inarticulate: so also after great distance of time our imagination
of the past is weak; and we lose, for example, of cities we have seen,
many particular streets; and of actions, many particular
circumstances. This decaying sense, when we would express the thing
itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination, as I said before.
But when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is
fading, old, and past, it is called memory. So that imagination and
memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations hath
diverse names.
Much memory, or memory of many things, is called experience.
Again, imagination being only of those things which have been formerly
perceived by sense, either all at once, or by parts at several
times; the former (which is the imagining the whole object, as it
was presented to the sense) is simple imagination, as when one
imagineth a man, or horse, which he hath seen before. The other is
compounded, when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse
at another, we conceive in our mind a centaur. So when a man
compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the
actions of another man, as when a man imagines himself a Hercules or
an Alexander (which happeneth often to them that are much taken with
reading of romances), it is a compound imagination, and properly but a
fiction of the mind. There be also other imaginations that rise in
men, though waking, from the great impression made in sense: as from
gazing upon the sun, the impression leaves an image of the sun
before our eyes a long time after; and from being long and
vehemently attent upon geometrical figures, a man shall in the dark,
though awake, have the images of lines and angles before his eyes;
which kind of fancy hath no particular name, as being a thing that
doth not commonly fall into men's discourse.
The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call dreams. And
these also (as all other imaginations) have been before, either
totally or by parcels, in the sense. And because in sense, the brain
and nerves, which are the necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed
in sleep as not easily to be moved by the action of external
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