HOBBESISM, or Philosophy of Hobbes. We will divide this article into two parts: in the first we will give a summary of Hobbes’s life; in the second we will set forth the basic principles of his philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury in England on 5 April 1588. His father was an obscure clergyman of the town. The Armada which Philip II king of Spain had sent against the English, and which was destroyed by winds, was then keeping the nation in a state of general consternation. It hastened his mother’s labour, and she gave birth to the child prematurely.

He was made to study early on. In spite of poor health, he mastered the classical languages with surprising ease, and had translated Euripides’ Medea into Latin verse at an age when other children hardly know the author’s name.

At the age of fourteen he was sent to the university of Oxford, where he studied what we call philosophy; from there he went to the home of William Cavendish, Baron of Hardwick and soon afterwards Earl of Devonshire, who entrusted to him the education of his eldest son.

Hobbes’s mild character and his pupil’s progress won him the esteem of the whole family, who chose him to accompany the young earl on his travels. He journeyed through France and Italy, seeking out the company of famous men and studying the laws, habits, customs, behavior, genius, constitution, interests and tastes of those two nations.

On his return to England, he devoted himself entirely to cultivating letters and to philosophical reflections. He had developed a dislike of both the things taught in the schools and the manner of teaching them. He saw in them no application to the general and particular conduct of men. The logic and metaphysics of the Peripatetics seemed to him just a tissue of difficult nonsense, their ethics nothing but the subject of meaningless arguments, and their physics mere fantasies about nature and its phenomena.

Eager for more solid nourishment, he returned to reading the Ancients; he devoured their philosophers, their poets, their orators, and their historians. It was then that he was introduced to Chancellor Bacon, who admitted him into the society of the great men in his circle. The government was beginning to lean towards democracy, and our philosopher, fearing the evils that always accompany great revolutions, laid the foundations of his political system: he sincerely believed that the voice of a philosopher can be heard amidst the clamours of a rebellious people.

Hobbes revelled in this thought, as seductive as it is vain, and he was writing when he lost, in the person of his pupil, his protector and friend. He was then forty, an age when a man thinks about the future. He was without fortune, and all his expectations had been overturned in an instant. Gervaise Clifton invited him to follow his son on his travels, and he agreed; subsequently he took on the education of a son of the Countess of Devonshire, with whom he again visited France and Italy.

It was amid these distractions that he taught himself mathematics, which he saw as the only science that could fortify judgement. He had already arrived at the idea that everything takes place through mechanical laws, and it was only in the properties of matter and motion that one should look for the explanation of phenomena of material objects and organised beings.

After mathematics, he studied natural history and experimental physics; he was then in Paris, where he became friends with Gassendi, who was working to rescue the philosophy of Epicurus from oblivion. A system in which everything is explained by motion and atoms could not fail to please Hobbes; he adopted it and extended its application from the phenomena of nature to sensations and ideas. Gassendi said of Hobbes that he hardly knew a more intrepid spirit, a mind freer of prejudice, a man who more deeply understood things. And Hobbes’s historian [1] has said of Father Mersenne that his profession as priest had by no means prevented him from cherishing the philosopher from Malmesbury, nor from doing justice to this man’s conduct and talents, whatever differences there may have been between their religions and principles.

It was now that Hobbes published his book on the Citizen . [2] The welcome which this work received from the public, and the advice of his friends, attached him to the study of man and human behavior.

It was this engaging subject that was absorbing him when he left for Italy. In Pisa he made the acquaintance of the famous Galileo. The friendship was close and spontaneous between the two men. Later persecution further strengthened the ties that bound them.

The troubles that were soon to bathe England in blood were about to break out. It was in these circumstances that he published his Leviathan. This work caused a great stir; which is to say that it had few readers, a handful of defenders, and many enemies. In it Hobbes said: “No security without peace; no peace without an absolute power; no absolute power without arms; no arms without taxes; and the fear of arms will not establish peace if a greater fear than death does not exercise minds. Now, such is the fear of eternal damnation. A wise people will thus first agree on what is required for salvation.” Sine pace impossibilem esse incolumitatem; sine imperio pacem; sine armis imperium; sine opibus in unam manum collatis, nihil valent arma; neque metu armorum quicquam ad pacem proficere illos, quos ad pugnandum concitat malum morte magis formidandum. Nempe dum consensum non sit de iis rebus quæ ad felicitatem æternam necessariæ credantur, pacem inter cives esse non posse . [3]

While bloody men caused the churches to resonate with the doctrine that brought death to kings, handed out daggers to citizens so that they could slit each other’s throats, and preached rebellion and the rupture of the civil pact, a philosopher was saying to them: “My friends, my fellow citizens, listen to me: it is not your admiration nor your praise that I seek; I am concerned for your property and for yourselves. I would like to explain to you truths that will save you from crime; I would like you to understand that everything has its disadvantages and that your government’s are far less great than the evils you are setting yourselves in store for. It makes me impatient to see ambitious men misleading you and seeking to cement their rise with your blood. You have a city and laws; is it on the suggestions of a few individuals or by your own common happiness you should measure the justice of your actions? My friends, my fellow citizens, halt, think on these things, and you will see that those who intend to exempt themselves from civil authority, to relieve themselves from their share in the public burden, and yet enjoy the city, to be defended and protected by it, and to live tranquilly in the shadow of its ramparts, are not your fellow citizens at all but your enemies. And you will not believe stupidly what they have the impudence and the temerity to announce to you publicly or secretly as the will of heaven and the word of God.” Feci non eo consilio ut laudarer, sed vestri causa, qui cum doctrinam quam affero, cognitam and perspectam haberetis, sperabam fore ut aliqua incommoda in re familiari, quoniam res humanæ sine incommodo esse non possunt, æquo animo ferre, quam reipublicæ statum conturbare malletis. Ut justitiam earum rerum, quas facere cogitatis, non sermone vel concilio privatorum, sed legibus civitatis metientes, non amplius sanguine vestro ad suam potentiam ambitiosos homines abuti pateremini. Ut statu præsenti, licet non optimo, vos ipsos frui, quam bello excitato, vobis interfectis, vel ætate consumptis, alios homines alio sæculo statum habere reformatiorem satius duceretis. Præterea qui magistratui civili subditos sese esse nolunt, onerumque publicorum immunes esse volunt, in civitate tamen esse, atque ab ea protegi et vi et injuriis postulant, ne illos cives, sed hostes exploratoresque putaretis; neque omnia quæ illi pro verbo Dei vobis vel palam, vel secreto proponunt, temere reciperetis . [4]

He adds the strongest words against parricides, who break the tie that attaches the people to its king, and the king to his people, and who dare to propose that a sovereign subjected to the laws like an ordinary subject, guiltier still by their infraction, can be judged and found guilty.

De Cive and Leviathan came into the hands of Descartes, who recognised at first glance the zeal of a citizen strongly attached to his king and country, and the abhorrence of sedition and seditious men.

What is more natural for the man of letters and to the philosopher, than an inclination toward peace? Who among us does not know the maxim: no philosophy without rest, no rest without peace, no peace without submission within and credibility without?

Meanwhile Parliament was separated from the court, and the flames of civil war were breaking out everywhere. Hobbes, the defender of sovereign majesty, incurred the hatred of democrats. So, seeing the laws being trampled underfoot, the throne tottering, men swept up as if by a general madness into the most atrocious actions, he concluded that human nature is bad, and hence his whole fable or story about the state of nature. Circumstances made his philosophy: he mistook some passing accidents for the invariable rules of nature, and became the aggressor of humanity and the apologist of tyranny.

Meanwhile, in November 1611, there was a general assembly of the nation. They had every hope for the king: they were wrong; minds became ever more embittered and Hobbes no longer felt safe.

He withdrew to France, where he found his friends; they welcomed him; he studied physics, mathematics, philosophy, literature and politics. Cardinal de Richelieu was at the head of the government and his great vision kindled all the others.

Mersenne, who was like a common centre where all the threads linking the philosophers converged, put the English philosopher in touch with Descartes. Two such imperious minds were not likely to be long in agreement. Descartes had just proposed his laws of motion; Hobbes attacked them. Descartes had sent to Mersenne his meditations on mind, matter, God, the human soul, and others of the most important points in Metaphysics. They were communicated to Hobbes, who was far from conceding that matter was incapable of thought. Descartes had said: “I think, therefore I am”; Hobbes said: “I think, therefore matter can think.” Ex hoc primo axiomate quod Cartesius statuminaverat, ego cogito, ergo sum, concludebat rem cogitantem esse corporeum quid . [5] He also objected to his adversary that whatever is the subject of thought is only ever present to the understanding in a corporal form.

Despite the boldness of his philosophy, he lived peacefully in Paris, and when a mathematics master was needed for the Prince of Wales, [6] he was chosen from among a large number of others vying for the same position.

He had another philosophical quarrel with Bramhall, Bishop of Derry. They had spoken together at the home of the Bishop of Newcastle about freedom, necessity, and destiny and its effect on human actions. Bramhall sent Hobbes a dissertation on this matter in manuscript; Hobbes answered it. He had insisted that his reply not be published, for fear lest minds be shocked which were unfamiliar with his principles. Bramhall countered, and Hobbes did not leave it at that. Meanwhile the elements of this dispute were published, producing the effect Hobbes feared. There one read that it was the sovereign’s prerogative to prescribe to the peoples what they must believe with respect to God and divine matters; that God should be called just only insofar as there was no other more powerful being that could command him, constrain him, and punish him for his disobedience; that his right to reign and punish was founded only on the irresistibility of his authority; that without this condition, so that a single person or everyone together could constrain him, this right came down to nothing; that he was no more the cause of good deeds than of bad, but that it was by his will alone that they are bad or good, and that he could cause someone who is not to be guilty, and without injustice punish and damn even someone who has not sinned.

All these ideas about the sovereignty and justice of God are the same ones he established on the sovereignty and justice of kings. He had transferred them from the temporal to the spiritual, and the theologians concluded therefrom that according to him there was no absolute justice or injustice; that actions do not please God because they are good, but they are good because he so chooses; and that virtue, both in this world and in the next, consists in doing the will of the strongest who commands, and whom one cannot successfully oppose.

In 1649, he had a dangerous attack of fever. Father Mersenne, whom friendship had kept at his bedside, thought it his duty to talk to him then about the Catholic Church and its authority. “Father,” replied Hobbes, “I have not waited for this moment to think about that, and I am hardly in a condition to debate it; you have more pleasant things to say to me. Have you seen Gassendi at all of late?” Mi pater, hæc omnia jamdudum mecum disputavi, eadem disputare nunc molestum erit; habes quæ dicas ameniora. Quando vidisti Gassendum? The good priest concluded that the philosopher was determined to die in his country’s religion, and did not press him further, and Hobbes was administered according to the rite of the Anglican church.

He recovered from this illness, and the following year he published his treatises on human nature and the body politic. [7] Sethus Wardus, the well-known professor of astronomy in Seville and later bishop of Salisbury, published a sort of satire of him, in which one thing alone is clear: that the author, however skilful he might otherwise be, was refuting a philosophy he did not understand, and thought he could replace good reasons with bad witticisms. Richard Steele, who knew a work of literature and philosophy when he saw one, regarded these last two as the most perfect our philosopher had written. [8]

Meanwhile, as his reputation was growing, he was losing his tranquillity; imputations were multiplying on all sides; he was accused of going from the king’s party to the usurper’s. [9] This calumny gained ground; he no longer felt safe in Paris, where his enemies could do anything, and returned to England, where he formed friendships with two famous men, Harvey and Selden. The Devonshire family gave him an asylum, and far from tumult and factions he composed his logic, his physics, his book of principles or elements of bodies, his geometry, and his treatise on man, on his faculties, their objects, his passions, his appetites, imagination, memory, reason, the just and the unjust, the honest and the dishonest, etc.

In 1660, the tyranny was crushed, England’s peace was restored, and Charles recalled to the throne; the face of things changed, and Hobbes relinquished his country retreat and reappeared.

The monarch to whom he had formerly taught mathematics recognised and welcomed him; and, passing one day near the house where he lived, he had him sent for, greeted him, and presented his hand to be kissed.

He paused in his philosophical studies to learn his country’s laws, and he has left us a commentary in manuscript that is highly regarded.

He believed that geometry was deformed by paralogisms; most of the problems, such as the squaring of the circle, the trisection of the angle, or the duplication of the cube, were, according to him, insoluble only because the notions we have of relations, quantity, number, point, line, surface, and solid, were not true ones; and he worked to perfect mathematics, which he had begun to study too late, and which he did not know well enough to reform.

He had the honour of a visit from Cosimo de’ Medici, who gathered his works and had them taken along with his bust to the famous library in his house.

Hobbes had then reached a venerable age, and everything seemed to promise him some tranquillity in his last moments; yet that was not to be. Young people hungry for his doctrine feasted on it; it had become the conversation of high society and the dispute of the schools. A young graduate at Cambridge University named Scargil had the imprudence to insert some of its propositions into a thesis, and to maintain that the right of the sovereign was founded only on force; that the sanction of civil laws constitutes all the morality of acts; that holy writings have force of law in the state only by the will of the magistrate, and that this will must be obeyed, whether or not his decisions are in keeping with what is held to be divine law.

The scandal provoked by this thesis was widespread; ecclesiastic power called secular authority to its rescue; the young graduate was charged, and Hobbes was implicated in the affair. In vain did the philosopher object, claiming and demonstrating that Scargil had misunderstood him. He was not heard; the thesis was torn up, Scargil lost his degree, and Hobbes was left stained by all the odium of an affair that one will better judge after seeing his principles set forth.

Weary of human intercourse, he returned to the countryside which he should never have left, and entertained himself with mathematics, poetry, and physics. At the age of ninety he made a verse translation of the works of Homer; he wrote against Bishop Laney on the freedom or necessity of human acts; he published his Decameron physiologicum , [10] and finished his history of the civil war.

The king, to whom this work was presented in manuscript, disapproved of it; yet it was published, and Hobbes feared some new persecutions from this indiscretion that he would no doubt have undergone if his death had not come first. He had an attack of urinary retention in October 1679, followed by a paralysis of his right side which deprived him of speech and ended his life a few days later. He died at the age of 91; he had been born with a weak constitution which he had fortified by exercise and sobriety; he lived a celibate, yet was no adversary of women’s company.

In the course of their studies, men of genius commonly have a particular path that characterises them. Hobbes first published his work on the citizen. Instead of answering its critics, he wrote his treaty on man; from the treaty on man he rose to the examination of animal nature; from there he went on to the study of physics or the phenomena of nature, which led him to research into the general properties of matter and the universal chain of causes and effects. He rounded off these different treatises with his logic and books on mathematics; these different works have been arranged in reverse order. We shall now set forth their principles, with the precaution of citing the text everywhere that superstition, ignorance, and calumny, which seem to have joined forces to attack this work, would be tempted to attribute to us opinions of which we are only the historians.

Elementary and general principles . Things which do not exist outside ourselves become the object of our reason, or to speak the language of our philosopher, are intelligible and comparable by the names which we have imposed on them. So it is that we discourse on phantoms of our imagination, even in the absence of the real things on which we have based our imaginations.

Space is a phantom of an existing thing, phantasma rei existentis , without all the properties of that thing, with exception of appearing outside of him who imagines.

Time is a phantom of motion considered from the point of view that causes us to discern priority and posteriority, or succession.

One space is part of another space, one time is part of another time, when the first is contained in the second, and there is more of the latter.

To divide a space or a time is to discern a part, then another, then a third, and so forth.

A space and a time are one when they are separated out from other times and other spaces.

Number is the addition of one unit to another unit, to a third, and so forth.

To compose a space or a time is, after one space or time, to consider a second, a third, and a fourth, and to consider all these times or spaces as a single one.

The whole is what has been engendered by composition; the parts, what is rediscovered by division.

There is no whole which cannot be imagined as being composed of parts into which it can be resolved.

Two spaces are contiguous if there is no space between them.

In a whole composed of three parts, the middle part is the one which has two contiguous parts, and the two extremes are contiguous to the middle.

A time or a space is potentially finite when one can assign a finite number of times or spaces that measure it exactly or with a remainder.

A space or a time is potentially infinite when one cannot assign a finite number of spaces or times which measure it and which it does not exceed.

Everything that can be divided is divided into divisible parts, and these parts into other divisible parts; therefore, there is nothing divisible which is the smallest thing divisible.

I call body that which exists independently of my thought, coextensive or coincident with some part of space.

Accident is a property of the body with which one imagines, or which enters necessarily into the concept it impresses on us.

The extension of a body, or its size independent of our thought, is the same thing.

The space coincident with the size of a body is the place of the body; the place always forms a solid; its extension differs from the extension of the body; it is terminated by a surface coincident with the surface of the body.

The space occupied by a body is a full space; that which a body does not occupy is an empty space.

Bodies between which there is no space are contiguous; contiguous bodies that have a part in common are continuous; and there is plurality if there is continuity between contiguous anythings.

Motion is the continuous passage from one place to another.

To be at rest is to remain for any time at all in a single place; to be in motion is to have been in a different place than the place one occupies.

Two bodies are equal if they can fill one and the same place.

The extension of one and the same body is one and the same.

The motion of two equal bodies is equal when the velocity considered in all the extension of one is equal to the velocity considered in all the extension of the other.

The quantity of motion considered from this perspective is also called force .

What is at rest is understood as having to remain forever at rest without the supposition of a body that disturbs its rest.

A body cannot create itself nor perish; it passes through various successive states to which we give different names: these are the accidents of the body beginning and ending; it is improperly that we say they move themselves.

The accident that gives a name to its subject is what we call its essence .

Primary matter, or the body considered in general, is only a word.

One body acts on another when it produces or destroys an accident in it.

The accident either in the agent or in the object, without which the effect cannot be produced causa sine qua non , is necessary by hypothesis.

From the aggregate of all accidents, both in the agent and in the object, we conclude the necessity of an effect; and reciprocally, one concludes from the lack of a single accident, either in the agent or in the object, the impossibility of the effect.

The aggregate of all the accidents necessary to the production of the effect is called in the agent complete cause, causa simpliciter .

The simple or complete cause is called, after the production of the effect, efficient cause in the agent, material cause in the object; where the effect is nil, the cause is nil.

The complete cause always has its effect; at the moment when it is entire, the effect is produced and is necessary.

The generation of effects is continual.

If the agents and the objects are the same, and disposed in the same way, the effects will be the same in different times.

Motion has no other cause than in the motion of a contiguous body.

Every change is motion.

Accidents considered relative to others that have preceded them, and without any dependency of effect and cause, are called contingent .

The cause is to the effect as the potential is to the act: or rather it is the same thing.

At the moment when the potential is complete and full, the act is produced.

The active potential and the passive potential are only parts of the complete and full potential.

The act for the production of which there will never be full and complete potential is impossible.

The act which is not impossible is necessary; if it is possible for it to be produced, it will be; otherwise it would be impossible.

Thus any future act is necessarily possible.

Whatever happens, happens by necessary causes; and there are no contingent effects except relatively to other effects with which the former have neither connection nor dependency.

Active potential consists of motion.

The formal cause or the essence, and the final cause or the end, depend on the efficient causes.

To know the essence is to know the thing; the one follows from the other.

Two bodies differ if we may say about one something we cannot say about the other at the moment when we compare them.

All bodies differ numerically.

The relationship of one body to another consists in their equality or inequality, likeness or difference.

Relationship is not a new accident, but a quality of both bodies before the comparison of them is made.

The causes of the accidents of two correlatives are the causes of the correlation.

The notion of quantity arises from the notion of limits.

Large and small exist only by comparison.

Relationship is an evaluation of quantity by comparison, and comparison is arithmetical or geometrical.

Effort or nisus is a motion through a space and through a time less than any givens.

Impetus , or the quantity of effort, is the velocity itself considered at the moment of transport.

Resistance is the opposition of two efforts or nisus at the moment of contact.

Force is impetus multiplied either by itself or by the size of the moving body.

The size and duration of everything are forever concealed from us.

There is no absolute void in the universe.

The fall of heavy objects is not in them the consequence of a craving but the effect of an action of the earth on them.

The difference of gravitation arises from the difference of the actions or efforts provoked on the elementary parts of heavy objects.

There are two manners of proceeding in philosophy: whether one descends from initiation to the possible effects, or one goes back up from the effects to the possible initiations.

After establishing these principles common to all parts of the universe, Hobbes goes on to consider that portion that senses, or the animal portion, and from it to that portion that reflects and thinks, or man.

On the animal . The sensation in that which senses is the movement of some of its parts.

The immediate cause of sensation is the object that affects the organ.

The general definition of sensation is therefore the application of the organ to the exterior object; between the one and the other there is reaction, whence the imprint or phantom.

The subject of the sensation is the being that senses; its object, the being that causes him to sense; the phantom is the effect.

Two sensations cannot be experienced at the same time.

The imagination is a languishing sensation that fades with distance from the object.

The awakening of phantoms in the sentient being attests to the activity of his consciousness; it is common to man and beast.

A dream is a phantom of the person sleeping.

Fear, the conscience of a crime, night time, holy places, and tales we have heard awaken in us phantoms which we have called spectres; it is by actuating our spectres outside ourselves by names devoid of meaning that we got the idea of incorporeity. Et metus et scelus et conscientia et nox et loca consecrata, adjuta apparitionum historiis phantasmata horribilia etiam vigilantibus excitant, quæ spectrorum et substantiarum incorporearum nomina pro veris rebus imponunt . [11]

There are sensations of another kind: pleasure and pain; they consist in the continual movement that is communicated from the extremity of an organ toward the heart.

Desire and aversion are the causes of the original animal effort: spirits enter the nerves or withdraw from them; the muscles flex or distend; the limbs extend or fold, and the animal moves or stops.

If desire is followed by a parade of phantoms, the animal thinks, cogitates, and wills.

If the cause of desire is full and complete, the animal necessarily wills. To will is not to be free; it is at most being free to do what one wants, but not to will. Causa appetitus existente integra, necessariò sequitur voluntas; adeoque voluntati libertas à necessitate non convenit; concedi tamen potest libertas faciendi ea quæ volumus .

On man . Discourse is an artificial fabric of voices instituted by men to communicate the continuity of their concepts.

The signs which the necessity of nature suggests to us or provokes in us do not form a language.

Science and demonstration arise from the understanding of causes.

Demonstration occurs only on occasions where the causes are in our power. In the rest, all we demonstrate is that the thing is possible.

The causes of desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, are the very objects of the senses. Therefore, if one is free to act, he is not free to hate or desire.

We have given the name good to things when we desire them, bad when we fear them.

The good is apparent or real. The preservation of a being is for it a real good, the first of goods. Its destruction is a real evil, the first of evils.

The affections or troubles of consciousness are alternative movements of desire and aversion that arise from circumstances and shake our uncertain consciousness.

Blood flows rapidly to the organs of action, and returns swiftly; the animal is ready to move; the instant following, it is restrained; and meanwhile there awakens in it a series of alternately frightening and awesome phantoms.

The origin of the passions is not to be sought elsewhere than in the organization, the blood, the fibres, the spirits, the humours, etc.

Character arises from temperament, experience, habit, prosperity, adversity, reflections, discourses, example, and circumstances. Change these things, and the character will change.

Behavior is formed when habit has passed into character, and we submit without difficulty or effort to the acts that are being required of us. If the behaviour is good, it is called virtue , vice if it is bad.

But everything is not equally good or bad for everyone. Behaviour that is virtuous in the judgement of some is wicked in the judgement of others.

The laws of society are therefore the sole common measure of good and evil, of vices and virtues. One is truly good or truly bad only in one’s own city. Nisi in vita civili virtutum et vitiorum communis mensura non invenitur. Quæ mensura ob eam causam alia esse non potest præter unius cujusque civitatis leges . [12]

The outward veneration which we render sincerely to God is what men have called religion .

The faith that has as its object things that are beyond our reason is, in the absence of a miracle, just an opinion based on the authority of those who speak to us. In religious matters, a man can insist on the belief of another only based on a miracle. Homini privato sine miraculo fides haberi in religionis actu non potest .​​

In the absence of miracles, religion must be left to the judgement of individuals or it must be supported by the civil laws.

Thus, religion is a matter of legislation and not philosophy. It is a public convention that must be fulfilled and not disputed. Quod si religio ab hominibus privatis non dependet, tunc oportet, cessantibus miraculis, ut dependeat à legibus. Philosophia non est, sed in omni civitate lex non disputanda sed implenda. [13]

There is no public veneration without ceremonies; for what is public veneration if not an exterior sign of the reverence which all citizens bear to the God of the country, a sign prescribed according to times and places by him who governs. Cultus publicus signum honoris Deo exhibiti, idque locis et temporibus constitutis à civitate. Non a natura operis tantum, sed ab arbitrio civitatis pendet .

It is for him who governs to decide what is appropriate or not in this branch of administration just as in any other. The signs of veneration of peoples towards their God are no less subordinated to the will of the master who commands than to the nature of the thing.

These are the propositions on which the philosopher of Malmesbury proposed to construct the system he presents to us in the work he entitled Leviathan , and which we now propose to examine.

On Hobbes’s Leviathan . [14] No notions in consciousness except as have pre-existed in sensation.

Sense is the origin of everything. The object which acts on the sense, affects and presses it, is the cause of sensation.

The reaction of the object on the sense and of the sense on the object is the cause of phantoms.

Far from us, those imaginary simulacra that emanate from objects, pass into us and fix themselves there.

If a body moves, it will continue to move forever, unless a different or opposite motion impedes it. This law can be observed in brute matter and in man.

The imagination is a sensation that calms down and vanishes with the absence of its object and the presence of another.

Imagination, memory: the same quality under two different names. Imagination if an image or phantom remains in the sensorial being. Memory if, the phantom vanishing, there remains only a word.

Experience is the memory of many things.

There is simple imagination and composite imagination, which differ like a word and a discourse, a figure and a painting.

The strangest phantoms which the imagination composes in sleep have pre-existed in sensation. They are vague and tumultuous movements of the inner parts of the body which, in succession and by combining in infinite and various manners, give rise to the variety of dreams.

It is difficult to distinguish phantoms of dream from phantoms of sleep, and both from the presence of the object, when one goes from sleep to a waking state without being aware of it, or when, awake, the agitation of the parts of the body is very violent. Then Marcus Brutus will believe he has seen the terrible spectre he has dreamed. [15]

Take away fear from spectres and you will banish superstition and fraud from society, and most of those deceitful means that are used to lure men’s minds in ill-governed states.

What is understanding? The sort of factitious imagination that arises from the institution of signs. It is common to man and beast.

Mental discourse, or the activity of consciousness, or its conversation with itself, is but an involuntary chain of concepts or phantoms following one upon the other.

The mind does not go from one concept to the next, from one phantom to the next, unless the same succession has pre-existed in nature or in sensation.

There are two sorts of mental discourse, the one irregular, vague, and incoherent, and the other regular, continuous, and tending to an end.

This last is called seeking, investigation . It is a sort of quest where the mind follows as a trail the traces of a cause or a present or past effect. I call this reminiscence .

Discourse or reasoning on a future event forms foresight.

An event which has followed indicates another that has preceded, of which it is the sign.

There is nothing in man that is innate, and which he can make use of without habit. Man is born; he has senses. He acquires the rest.

Everything we conceive is finite. The word infinite is thus devoid of any idea. If we pronounce the name of God, we do not understand it better. But that is not necessary: it is enough for us to recognize and worship him.

One can conceive only of what is in place, divisible and limited. One cannot conceive that a thing can be all in one place and all in another at the same moment, and that two or more things can be at the same time in the same place.

Oratory discourse is the translation of thought. It is composed of words. Words are proper or common.

Truth or falsity is not of things but of discourse. Where there is no discourse there is neither true nor false, although there may be error.

Truth consists in a correct application of words. Hence the necessity of definition.

If a thing is designated by a name, it is among those that can enter into thought or into reasoning, or form a quantity or be subtracted from it.

The act of reasoning is called syllogism , and it is the expression of the linkage between one word and another.

There are words devoid of meaning which are not defined, which cannot be, and of which the idea will always remain vague, insubstantial, and dubious: for example, incorporeal substance. Dantur nomina insignificantia, hujus generis est substantia incorporea .

The intelligence proper to man is an effect of discourse. The beast does not possess it.

It is not conceivable for an affirmation to be universal and false.

He who reasons seeks either a whole by the addition of the parts, or a remainder by subtraction. If he uses words, his reasoning is but the expression of the linkage between the word whole and the word part , or of the words whole and part with the word remainder . What the geometer executes on numbers and lines, the logician performs on words.

We reason as correctly as is possible if we begin with general words or ones accepted as such by usage.

The usage of reason consists of the investigation of the distant linkages of words amongst themselves.

If one reasons without using words, it is by imagining some phenomenon that likely preceded, or ought likely to follow. If the supposition is false, some error has occurred.

If one uses universal terms, and arrives at a universal and false conclusion, there was some absurdity in the terms. They were devoid of meaning.

What is true of sense and memory is not true of reason: it is not born with us. It is acquired by hard work and formed by exercise and experience. It requires an ability to impose words on things, going from words imposed to the proposition, from the proposition to the syllogism, and attaining knowledge of the relationship of words amongst themselves.

Much experience is prudence; much science, wisdom.

He who knows is in a position to teach and to persuade.

In the animal there are two sorts of movement that are proper to it, one vital, the other animal; one involuntary, the other voluntary.

The penchant of consciousness towards the cause of its impetus is called desire . The opposite movement, aversion . There is real movement in both cases.

We love what we desire; we hate what we flee. We scorn what we neither desire nor flee.

Whatever the desire or its object, it is good; whatever the aversion or its object, we call it bad .

The good that is announced to us by apparent signs is called beautiful . The evil that threatens us by apparent signs is called ugly . The kinds of goodness vary. Goodness considered in the signs that promise it is beauty ; in the thing, it keeps the name of goodness ; in the end, we call it pleasure , and utility in the means.

Every object produces in consciousness a movement that urges the animal either to go away or to approach.

The birth of this movement is that of pleasure or pain. They begin at the same moment. All desire is accompanied by some pleasure; all aversion entails some pain.

All sensual pleasure arises either from the sensation of a present object, and it is of the flesh; or from the expectation of something, the foreseeing of ends, the importance of consequences, and it is intellectual, anguish or joy.

Appetite, desire, love, aversion, hatred, joy, and pain assume different names according to the degree, the order, the object, and other circumstances.

It is these circumstances that have infinitely multiplied words. Religion is fear of invisible powers. If these powers are recognized by civil law, the fear we have of them retains the name religion . If they are not recognized by civil law, the fear we have of them assumes the name superstition . If the powers are real, the religion is true. If they are illusory, the religion is false. Hinc oriuntur passionum nomina. Verbi gratia, religio, metus potentiarum invisibilium, quæ si publice acceptæ, religio; secus, superstitio , etc.

It is from the aggregate of various passions raised in consciousness, and continuing until the effect is produced, that deliberation arises.

The last desire that urges us, or the last aversion that repels us, is called will. The beast deliberates, therefore it wills.

What is felicity? A constant success in the things one desires.

The thought that a thing is or is not, will or will not happen, and which leaves after it only the presumption, is called opinion .

As with deliberation, the last desire is will; in questions of the past and future, the final judgement is [public] opinion.

The complete succession of alternative, diverse, or opposite opinions is what creates doubt.

Conscience is the inner and secret awareness of a thought or an act.

If reasoning is founded on the testimony of a man whose insight and veracity we do not suspect, we have faith, we believe. Faith is relative to the person; belief to the fact.

Quality in everything is something that strikes by its degree or its size; but all size is relative. Virtue itself is only by comparison. Intellectual virtues or qualities are faculties of the soul which we praise in others and desire in ourselves. Some are natural, others acquired.

The ability to observe resemblances and differences in things that others do not see is called a good mind ; in thoughts, good judgement .

What one acquires by study and method without the art of speaking comes down to little.

The diversity of minds arises from the diversity of passions, and the diversity of passions arises from the diversity of temperaments, humours, habits, circumstances, and educations.

Madness is the extreme degree of passion. Such were the demon-possessed in the gospel. Tales fuerunt quos historia sacra vocavit judaico stylo dæmoniacos .

The power of a man is the aggregate of all the means of arriving at an end. It is either natural or instrumental.

Of all human potentials, the greatest is that which combines in a single person, by consent, the divided potential of a larger number of others, whether this person is natural as man, or artificial as citizen.

The dignity or the value of a man is the same thing. A man is worth as much as another would wish to buy him for, according to the need he has of him.

To show esteem or need is to honour. One honours by praise, by signs, by friendship, faith, confidence, the help we implore, the advice we seek, the priority we yield, the respect we grant, the imitation we intend, the devotion we pay, the worship we render.

The relative behaviours of humankind consist in qualities that tend to establish peace and to assure the duration of the civil state.

The happiness of life is not to be sought in the tranquillity or rest of the soul, which is impossible.

Happiness is the perpetual succession of one satisfied desire by another satisfied desire. Acts do not all lead there in the same way. Some require power, honours, wealth; others leisure, knowledge and praise, even after death. Hence the diversity of behaviours.

The desire to know causes attaches man to the study of effects. He works backwards from an effect to a cause, from that cause to another cause, and so forth, until he reaches the idea of an eternal cause which no other one has preceded.

Therefore, he who has been contemplating natural things will necessarily have gained thereby a tendency to recognize a God, although the divine nature remains obscure and unknown to him.

Anxiety arises from the ignorance of causes; from anxiety, the fear of invisible powers; and from fear of those powers, religion.

The seeds of religions: fear of invisible powers, ignorance of secondary causes, a penchant to honour what one dreads, fortuitous events seen as omens.

Two sorts of men have benefitted from this penchant and cultivated these seeds: men of ardent imagination who have become heads of parties; men with revelations to whom the invisible powers have manifested themselves. Religion a part of politics of some. Politics a part of the religion of others.

Nature has given to everyone the same faculties of mind and body.

Nature has given to everyone the right to everything, even with the offense of another, for one owes to no one as much as to oneself.

In the midst of so many diverse interests, anticipating one’s rival is the best means of preserving oneself.

Hence the right to command acquired by each person through the necessity of self-preservation.

Hence the war of each against each, for as long as there is no coercive power. Hence innumerable misfortunes in the midst of which there is no security except by a pre-eminence of mind and body: no place for ingenuity, no recompense attached to work, no agriculture, no arts, no society, but perpetual fear of violent death.

From the war of each against each it further follows that everything is abandoned to fraud and force, that nothing belongs to anyone; no real possession, no injustice.

The passions which incline man to peace are fear, above all that of a violent death, the desire for things necessary for a tranquil and easy life, and the hope to obtain them by some effort.

Natural right is nothing other than everyone’s freedom to use his power in the manner that seems to him most apposite to his own preservation.

Freedom is the absence of exterior obstacles.

Natural law is a general rule dictated by reason in consequence of which one has the freedom to do what one recognizes as contrary to one’s own interest.

In the state of nature, everyone having a right to everything, not excepting the life of one’s fellow-man; so long as men preserve this right, no security even for the strongest.

Hence a first general law, dictated by reason, to seek peace if there is some hope of obtaining it; or in the impossibility of having peace, to borrow help from all sides.

A second law of reason is, after providing for our defence and preservation, to abandon our right to everything, and to keep of our freedom only the portion we can leave to others without disadvantage to ourselves.

To abandon our right to something is to renounce the freedom of preventing others from making use of their right to that thing.

We renounce a right either by a simple renunciation that casts that right, so to speak, into the midst of everyone without attributing it to anyone, or by a transfer, and for this effect there need to be agreed-upon signs.

It is not conceivable for a man to confer his right upon another without receiving in exchange some other good or right.

Reciprocal concession of rights is what we call a contract .

He who yields the right to something also abandons the use of that thing, insofar as he can abandon it.

In the state of nature, the pact forced by fear is valid.

An original pact makes a subsequent one invalid. Two motives combine to oblige to the swearing of the pact: the baseness involved in deceiving, and fear of disagreeable consequences of infraction. Now this fear is religious or civil, of invisible powers or human powers. If the civil fear is nil, the religious one is the only one that gives force to the pact, hence the vow.

Commutative justice is that of the contractors; distributive justice it that of the arbiter between contractors.

A third law of reason is to keep the pact. This is the foundation of justice. Justice and the sanctity of the pact begin when there is society and constraining force.

A fourth rule of reason is that he who receives a free gift should never give the benefactor reason to regret the gift he has made.

A fifth, to get along with others, who have their character as we have ours.

A sixth, after security measures are taken for the future, to grant a pardon for past offenses to those who repent.

A seventh, not to consider, in vengeance, how great the harm committed, but how great the good that must result from the punishment.

An eighth, to manifest to another neither hate, nor scorn, either by act or by discourse, by eye or by gesture.

A ninth, that men all be treated as equal by nature.

A tenth, that in the general treaty of peace, no one will retain the right that he is unwilling to leave to the others.

An eleventh, to abandon to common use whatever cannot admit of sharing.

A twelfth, that the arbiter chosen by both sides will be just.

A thirteenth, that in the case where the thing cannot be shared, the full right or the first possession shall be decided by drawing lots.

A fourteenth, that there are two sorts of lots: that of the first occupant or the firstborn, whose right should be allowed only to things that by their nature are not divisible.

A fifteenth, that mediators of the general peace must enjoy the security to come and go.

A sixteenth, to acquiesce in the arbiter’s decision.

A seventeenth, that no one shall be arbiter in his own cause.

An eighteenth, to judge according to witnesses in questions of fact.

A nineteenth, that a cause shall be appropriate for an arbiter each time there is some interest to pronounce for one of the parties in preference to the other.

A twentieth, that the laws of nature that oblige always to inner judgement do not always oblige to outer judgement. That is the difference between vice and crime.

Morality is the science of natural laws, or of things that are good or bad in the society of men.

One who acts in his own name or in the name of another, we call a person , and the person is proper if acting in his own name, representative if in the name of another.

After what we have just said about Hobbes’s philosophy, it remains only for us to deduce its consequences, and we will have an outline of his politics.

It is the interest in their preservation and the advantages of an easier life that has brought men from the state of war of all against all to gather themselves into society.

Laws and pacts do not suffice to put an end to the natural state of war; it takes a more coercive power to subjugate them.

The association of the small group cannot procure security; it takes that of the multitude.

The diversity of judgements and wills leaves neither peace nor security to be expected in a society where the multitude governs.

There is no point to govern and be governed for a time; it is necessary as long as the danger and the presence of the enemy continue.

There is only one means of forming a common potential that will bring security: it is to resign one’s will to one person or to a certain number.

After this resignation, the multitude is no longer anything more than a person who is called the city , the society , or the republic .

Society can make use of all its authority to force individuals to live together in peace and to join together against the common enemy.

Society is a person whose consent and pacts have authorized action, and in which is preserved the right to make use of the power of all to preserve the peace and common defence.

Society is formed either by institution or by acquisition.

By institution, when by unanimous consent men yield to one alone, or to a certain number among them, the right to govern them, and swear obedience.

The sovereign authority cannot be taken from him who possesses it, even for cause of poor administration.

Whatever he to whom the sovereign authority has been entrusted may do, he cannot be a suspect to the one who conferred it.

Since he cannot be guilty, he cannot be either judged, or chastised, or punished.

It is for the sovereign authority to decide on everything that concerns the preservation of peace and its rupture, and to prescribe rules by which each may know what is his and enjoy it tranquilly.

It is to that authority that belongs the right to declare war, to make peace, to choose ministers, and to create honorific titles.

Monarchy is preferable to democracy, to aristocracy, and to every other form of mixed government.

Society is formed by acquisition or conquests when the sovereign authority over one’s peers is obtained by force, in such a way that the fear of death or of bondage has subjected the multitude to the obedience of one man alone or of several.

Whether society is formed by institution or by acquisition, the sovereign’s rights are the same.

Authority is also acquired by way of engendering, such as the authority of fathers over their children. By arms, such as the authority of tyrants over their slaves.

The authority conferred on a single person or on several is as great as it can be, whatever drawback may result from complete resignation; for nothing here below is without drawbacks.

Fear, freedom, and necessity which are called natural and causal , can subsist together. He is free who can draw from his strength and from his other faculties every advantage he wants.

The laws of society circumscribe freedom, but they do not deprive the sovereign of the power of life and death. If he exerts it against an innocent man, he sins against the gods; he commits an iniquity, but not an injustice: ubi in innocentem exercetur, agit quidem inique, et in deum peccat imperans, non vero injuste agit .

One preserves in society the right to everything that cannot be resigned or transferred, and to everything that is not expressed in the laws on sovereignty. The silence of the laws is in the subjects’ favour. Manet libertas circa res de quibus leges silent pro summo potestatis imperio .​

The subjects have an obligation to the sovereign only for so long as he still has the power to protect them. Obligatio civium erga eum qui summam habet potestatem tandem nec diutius permanere intelligitur, quam manet potentia cives protegendi .

This is the maxim that caused Hobbes to be suspected of abandoning the party of his king, who was then reduced to such extremities that his subjects could no longer expect any help from him. [16]

What is a society? An aggregate of competing interests; a system where, by the authority conferred on one alone, those competing interests are tempered. The system is regular or irregular, either absolute or subordinate, etc.

A minister of the sovereign authority is he who acts in public affairs in the name of the power that governs, and who represents it.

The civil law is a rule that defines good and evil for the citizen; it does not oblige the sovereign: Hac imperans non tenetur .

Long usage gives force of law. The sovereign’s silence means that such was his will.

Civil laws are obligatory only after they have been promulgated.

Reason instructs about natural laws. Civil laws are known only by promulgation.

It belongs neither to the doctors nor to the philosophers to interpret the laws of nature. That is up to the sovereign. It is not truth but authority that makes law: Non veritas, sed auctoritas facit legem .

The interpretation of natural law is a judgement of the sovereign who signifies his will in a particular case.

It is ignorance, or error, or passion, which causes the transgression of the law and crime.

Punishment is a harm inflicted publicly on the transgressor so that the fear of his suffering will contain the others in obedience.

One must regard public law as the citizen’s conscience: Lex publica civi pro conscientia subeunda .

The end of sovereign authority, or the salvation of peoples, is the measure of the extent of the sovereign’s duties: Imperantis officia dimetienda ex fine, qui est salus populi .

Such is Hobbes’s political system. He divided his work into two parts. In the first he deals with civil society, and establishes the principles which we have just explained. In the other, he examines Christian society, and applies to eternal power the same ideas he had formed about temporal power.

Hobbes’s character . Hobbes had received from nature his boldness of thought and the gifts by which one makes an impression on other men. He had a mind that was just and vast, penetrating and profound. His ideas were his own, and his philosophy is out of the ordinary. Although he had studied and learned much, he did not hold acquired knowledge in high enough esteem. This was a result of his penchant for meditation. It generally led him to discovery of the great forces underlying men’s actions. His very errors have better served the progress of the human mind than a host of works woven from commonplace truths. He had the flaw of systematic thinkers, which is to generalise particular facts and bend them skilfully to his hypotheses. The reading of his works requires a mature and circumspect man. No one advances more firmly or is more consistent. Beware of conceding his first principles if you do not want to follow him wherever he chooses to lead you. The philosophy of M. Rousseau of Geneva is almost the opposite of Hobbes’s. One believes that natural man is good and the other believes he is bad. According to the philosopher of Geneva, the state of nature is a state of peace; according to the philosopher of Malmesbury, it is a state of war. The laws and the development of society have made man better, if we are to believe Hobbes, and have made him worse, if we are to believe M. Rousseau. [17] One was born in the midst of tumult and factions; the other lived in society and among scholars. Different times, different circumstances, different philosophy. M. Rousseau is eloquent and moving; Hobbes dry, austere, and vigorous. The latter saw the throne shaken, citizens armed against each other, and his country drenched in blood by the furies of Presbyterian fanaticism, and he had conceived an aversion for its God, its minister, and its altars. The other saw men versed in all forms of knowledge tearing each other apart, hating one another, giving themselves up to their passions, aspiring to prestige, wealth, and honours, and behaving in a manner ill-suited to the enlightenment they had acquired, and he felt contempt for science and scholars. They both went too far. Between the two men’s systems there is another that may be the true one: that, although the state of the human species is in perpetual vicissitude, its goodness and its evil are the same, its happiness and unhappiness circumscribed by limits it cannot exceed. All artificial advantages are compensated by evils, all natural evils by goods. Hobbes, full of confidence in his own judgement, philosophised according to his own lights. He was a good man, a subject attached to his king, a zealous citizen, a simple man, upright, open and benevolent. He had friends and enemies. He was praised and blamed beyond measure; most of those who cannot hear his name without shuddering have not read and are wholly unable to read a single page of his works. Whatever good or bad one may think of him, he left the face of the world as it was. He took little interest in experimental philosophy. He said that if one must give the name of philosopher to someone who conducts experiments, a cook, a perfumer, or a distiller are therefore philosophers. He disparaged Bayle, who disparaged him in return. He fully overturned the idol of the school which Bacon had shaken. [18] He was criticised for bringing new terms into his philosophy, but since he had his own way of looking at things, it was impossible for him to restrict himself to existing words. If he was not an atheist, then it must be admitted that his god differed little from Spinoza’s. His definition of the wicked man seems to me sublime. Hobbes’s wicked man is a robust child: malus est puer robustus . [19] Indeed wickedness is all the greater because reason is weak and the passions are strong. Imagine a six-week-old child having the imbecility of judgement of its age and the passions and strength of a man of forty: you can be sure he would strike his father, rape his mother, and strangle his nurse, [20] and there would be no safety for anyone approaching him. So either Hobbes’s definition is false, or man becomes good in the process of becoming educated. At the head of his biography the following epigraph was placed; it is taken from Angelo Poliziano:

In addition to Hobbes’s philosophical works, there are others which do not enter into our subject.

1. Hobbes published his autobiography Thomae Hobbessii Malmesburiensis Vita in Latin in 1679, but Diderot also may be referring to Johann Brücker on Hobbes: see note 5.

2. De Cive (On the citizen), published in Paris in 1642.

3. Leviathan , Ia, ch. XIII. In this article Diderot always quotes Hobbes in Latin, even though many of his works were published first in English (although the original Leviathan was in English, a revised Latin translation was published in Amsterdam 1668), but the Latin passages in this article are often virtually identical to the translation or paraphrase that immediately precedes them. Diderot quotes them, as he emphasizes further on, in order to assure the reader they are actual, unaltered statements by Hobbes, but he sometimes takes some liberties with or paraphrases him, even in Latin.

4. De Cive , praefatio ad lectores .

5. Actually it is Brücker’s life of Hobbes in Latin that Diderot is quoting here: Johann Jacob Brücker (1696-1770), Historia Critica Philosophiae, (Leipzig, 1742-1744).

6. The future Charles II.

7. Human Nature: or the fundamental elements of policy and De corpore politico (1650). The link is to the third edition (London, 1684).

8. Richard Steele (1672-1726), the co-founder with Joseph Addison of The Spectator , was not, however, a contemporary: their lives overlapped by only a few years.

9. I.e. , Oliver Cromwell’s.

10. Decameron physiologicum: or ten dialogues of natural philosophy, 1678.

11. Almost the same sentence, which Diderot may have taken the licence of rewording, is found in the chapter entitled  De sensione et motu animali  of  De corpore  (part IV, chap. 25 of  Physica sive de naturae phaenomenis ).

12. On Man , chap. 13, De ingeniis et moribus , §9.

13. On Man , chap. 14, De religione , §4.

14. Hobbes, Leviathan; or, the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London, 1651; reprint Oxford, 1881).

15. Probable allusion to the fourth act of Shakespeare’s play where Caesar’s ghost appears to Brutus. Hobbes mentions the vision or phantasm of Brutus in  Leviathan , part I, chapter 2, section 4.

16. In 1647 Hobbes had been named mathematics instructor to the Prince of Wales, the future Charles II, but he was living in Paris when Charles I was executed in January 1649. He abandoned the exiled royalists there in 1651 and returned to London, then ruled by Oliver Cromwell.

17. Both the Discourse on Inequality and the Social Contract had been published by the time this article appeared in 1765, but there is no specific allusion to anything later than the Discourse on Inequality of 1755.

18. Scholasticism, or perhaps Aristotelianism.

19. Ita ut vir malus idem fere sit, quod puer robustus vel vir animo puerili (“an evil man is the same as a robust child, or a man who has the soul of a child”: preface to On the citizen ).

20. In Rameau’s Nephew Diderot writes that if a child had the violence of passion of a man of thirty and were left to his own devices, “he would wring his father’s neck and sleep with his mother.” Since this text was not published during Diderot’s lifetime, the similarity virtually proves that he wrote this section of “Hobbesism.”

21. “Those who condemn us, are perfect buffoons: they pretend to be Curii but live a life of debauchery. They are above all squalling, frivolous, hooded wearers of wooden shoes and rope belts, a scowling flock with bent backs. As they differ from others in their raiment and their ways, with sinister faces they sell indulgences, assume the right to censure and tyrannize, and terrify the common people with their threats.” (Angelo Poliziano, 1454–1494, prologue to Plautus’s Menaechmi [1488], vv. 40-48.)