HOBBES

LITERATURE.

THE BOOK OF THE WEEK.

"Hobbes." By Sir Leslie Stephen. London: Macmillan.

In the whole period between Bacon and Locke there was no greater English thinker than Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, Author of the "Leviathan." Foremost among his admirers was the late Sir James Stephen, whoso article on Hobbes in the "Dictionary of National Biography" is one of the most able and scholarly in that magnificent work. The present volume Is much more than a mere expansion of that article; it is a thoroughly exhaustive estimate of the character and methods of one who has been described as "the Herbert Spencer of the seventeenth century." Born in 1588, the year of the Armada, Hobbes lived till 1679, when Charles II's reign was drawing to a close." In his early fears he made a "grand tour" with the heir to the earldom of Devonshire, and years later, still as a tutor, he revisited the Continent. He made acquaintance With the great Galileo, who had then made his famous recantation, and was living in 1636 at Florence, a prisoner of the Inquisition. His opportunities for study and reflection were many, but Hobbes' intellectual powers were of rather slow growth, though his powers of reasoning once developed were of no ordinary kind. He applied them, untrammelled by traditional interpretations, to the entire intellectual world, and so drastic was his method of setting out his crucial doctrine of political absolutism that he considered it necessary, to flee to France when the Long Parliament first met. For his writings were demoted to a vindication of monarchical rule. Originally persons lived in a natural condition, meaning one in which there were no laws, no protection for life and property; in fact, under conditions that made life "poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, short." The originators of the "social control" becoming sensible of these disadvantages of existence agreed to place themselves under the rule of one person, surrendering to him all rights they possessed in a state of nature. That was the beginning of kingship, and so long as the king by his rule satisfied the people's instinct of self-preservation he could not be touched. But the champions of the Stuart dynasty saw that Hobbes' principles could as easily be turned to the support of Parliamentary autocracy as to that of the divine right of kings, for it was part of his doctrine that submission to a de facto government is right. But the doctrine that social control and the acts of government are explained by self-interest seeking personal safety through a "social contract," resting on force as its sole sanction, contains only one side of the truth:—

The assumption that human nature is a simple thing, and will yield up its secrets to one master key, is one of the most venerable illusions of a philosophic mind. Directly you begin to analyse human nature from the standpoint of reason it seems that the only motive on which any one acts is a selfish one—a deliberate regard for self. The first stage of human action is undoubtedly an instinctive one. Human beings pursue their various activities, they eat, they drink, they love, they desire, they marry, and are given in marriage, owing to certain vague and primary impulses which belong to them largely as animals, just defined on the borders of the human sphere. Then comes a second stage of reflection, and the one thing that seems certain about the human being is that he has a keen regard for his own welfare, and that, indeed, without this self-love he could not have survived. What more easy than to say that men are fundamentally selfish, and that all their feelings, actions, management of life depend on an enlightened self-interest? It has always happened thus in the history of human thought. When moral philosophy began in Greece the figure of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, appeared early. After the break-up of the Greek State system Epicurus was the favorite philosopher. And, in precisely similar fashion, at the birth of modern moral philosophy in England, we get figures like Mandeville and Hobbes. The first systematic attempt to explain human nature results in the doctrines known as Hedonism.

Hobbes resolves all human conduct into pure egotism. Pity or compassion is the pain arising from the consideration that what has happened to another may happen to ourselves. Benevolence is inspired by the fear that we ourselves may also suffer, and by the hope that in time of need our own good deeds may be remembered to our credit. Laughter is sudden self-glorification. This is more particularly evidenced in the laughter provoked by practical joking. Half the enjoyment experienced by a coarse person at the spectacle of another subjected to some inconvenient or humiliating ordeal arises from a subtle consciousness of his own exemption. All this may be true, and yet sympathy and fellow-feeling may provide a greater part of the basis on which communities and States are reared than Hobbes would allow. For nothing is more natural and primitive than sympathy, and sympathy is not selfish but altruistic. Hobbes was at war with the ecclesiastical spirit. The clergy were afraid of him, and the fear was reciprocated.

Hobbes was certainly afraid of the clergy. The years 1665 and 1666 were marked by the plague and the fire of London, which naturally startled contemporaries. The fire of London might, perhaps, be put down to the Papists, as was recorded on the monument, but they could hardly have been responsible for the plague. That was doubtless a manifestation of Divine wrath; and to the question, what had provoked it? the obvious answer was Hobbes. A Bill was brought into Parliament for the suppression of atheism and profaneness, and a committee was instructed to receive information about "Mr. Hobbes' 'Leviathan.' " But though, according to Aubrey, some of the bishops "made a motion to have the good old gentleman burnt for a heretic," Hobbes lived undisturbed to an incredible age.

Hobbes was the first to put into definite form the antagonism of science towards a recognised theology. This is a point Sir Leslie Stephen brings out with admirable lucidity.

Bacon was no opponent of the Church; Boyle was as conspicuous for his piety as for his scientific zeal. But in Hobbes the spirit of science first becomes dogmatic and aggressive. It lays down principles which are absolutely subversive of all creeds. Hobbes waged war with the Middle Ages, with scholasticism in all its forms, and with the doctors of the Church. It is quite true that he professes to believe in the Scriptures, and that he thinks his arguments quite compatible with the existence of spirits and angels and the person of the Divine Creator of the world. But in reality his analysis of what we mean by cause destroys the very notion of a first cause, and substitutes for it the idea of an endless progression. In every man at every age there will be found some doctrines which he either inherits or emotionally believes or professes as a matter of obvious practical expediency. Hobbes was as obstinate and prejudiced as most of those whom he remorselessly attacked. He prided himself on squaring the circle, for instance, even after the foremost mathematicians of his age had proved his errors. According to the strict lines of Hobbes' systematic philosophy there can be no such thing as spirit or soul, no such thing as free will, and no Providence, according to any ordinary interpretation of the term. In his thorough-going materialism Hobbes was the pioneer of that long conflict between science and religion which occupied the two centuries which followed him.

 The Advertiser 28 October 1905,