105. Thus the logic of Descartes, using that word for principles that

guide our reasoning, was an instrument of defence both against the

captiousness of ordinary scepticism, that of the Pyrrhonic school, and

against the disputatious dogmatism of those who professed to serve

under the banner of Aristotle. He who reposes on his own

consciousness, or who recurs to first principles of intuitive

knowledge, though he cannot be said to silence his adversary, should

have the good sense to be silent himself, which puts equally an end to

debate. But so far as we are concerned with the investigation of

truth, the Cartesian appeal to our own consciousness, of which Stewart

was very fond, just as it is in principle, _may_ end in an

assumption of our own prejudices as the standard of belief. Nothing

can be truly self-evident, but that which a clear, an honest, and an

experienced understanding in another man acknowledges to be so.

|Treatise on art of logic.|

106. Descartes has left a treatise highly valuable, but not very much

known, on the art of logic, or rules for the conduct of the

understanding.[254] Once only, in a letter, he has alluded to the name

of Bacon.[255] There are perhaps a few passages in this short tract

that remind us of the Novum Organum. But I do not know that the

coincidence is such as to warrant a suspicion that he was indebted to

it; we may reckon it rather a parallel, than a derivative logic;

written in the same spirit of cautious, inductive procedure, less

brilliant and original in its inventions, but of more general

application than the Novum Organum, which is with some difficulty

extended beyond the province of natural philosophy. Descartes is as

averse as Bacon to syllogistic forms. “Truth,” he says, “often escapes

from these fetters, in which those who employ them remain entangled.

This is less frequently the case with those who make no use of logic,

experience showing that the most subtle of sophisms cheat none but

sophists themselves, not those who trust to their natural reason. And

to convince ourselves how little this syllogistic art serves towards

the discovery of truth, we may remark that the logicians can form no

syllogism with a true conclusion, unless they are already acquainted

with the truth that the syllogism develops. Hence it follows that the

vulgar logic is wholly useless to him who would discover truth for

himself, though it may assist in explaining to others the truth he

already knows, and that it would be better to transfer it as a science

from philosophy to rhetoric.”[256]

[254] M. Cousin has translated and republished two works

of Descartes, which had only appeared in Opera Posthuma Cartesii,

Amsterdam, 1701. Their authenticity, from external and intrinsic

proofs, is out of question. One of these is that mentioned in the

text; entitled “Rules for the Direction of the Understanding;”

which, though logical in its subject, takes most of its

illustrations from mathematics. The other is a dialogue, left

imperfect, in which he sustains the metaphysical principles of

his philosophy. Of these two little tracts, their editor has

said, that “they equal in vigour and perhaps surpass in

arrangement the Meditations and Discourse on Method. We see in

these more unequivocally the main object of Descartes, and the

spirit of the revolution which has created modern philosophy, and

placed in the understanding itself the principle of all

certainty, the point of departure for all legitimate inquiry.

They might seem written but yesterday, and for the present age.”

Vol. xi. preface, p. 1. I may add to this, that I consider the

Rules for the direction of the Understanding as one of the best

works on logic (in the enlarged sense) which I have ever read;

more practically useful, perhaps, to young students than the

Novum Organum; and though, as I have said, his illustrations are

chiefly mathematical, most of his rules are applicable to the

general discipline of the reasoning powers. It occupies little

more than one hundred pages, and I think that I am doing a

service in recommending it. Many of the rules will, of course, be

found in later books; some possibly in earlier. This tract, as

well as the dialogue which follows it, is incomplete, a portion

being probably lost.

[255] Si quelqu’un de cette humeur vouloit entreprendre

d’écrire l’histoire des apparences célestes selon la méthode de

Verulamius. Vol. vi., p. 210.

[256] Vol. xi., p. 255.

|Merits of his writings.|

107. It would occupy too much space to point out the many profound and

striking thoughts which this treatise on the conduct of the

understanding, and indeed most of the writings of Descartes contain.

“The greater part of the questions on which the learned dispute are

but questions of words. These occur so frequently that, if

philosophers would agree on the signification of their words,

scarce any of their controversies would remain.” This has been

continually said since; but it is a proof of some progress in wisdom,

when the original thought of one age becomes the truism of the next.

No one had been so much on his guard against the equivocation of

words, or knew so well their relation to the operations of the mind.

And it may be said, generally, though not without exception of the

metaphysical writings of Descartes, that we find in them a perspicuity

which springs from his unremitting attention to the logical process of

inquiry, admitting no doubtful or ambiguous position, and never

requiring from his reader a deference to any authority but that of

demonstration. It is a great advantage in reading such writers that we

are able to discern when they are manifestly in the wrong. The

sophisms of Plato, of Aristotle, of the schoolmen, and of a great many

recent metaphysicians, are disguised by their obscurity; and while

they creep insidiously into the mind of the reader, are always denied

and explained away by partial disciples.

|His notions of free will.|

108. Stewart has praised Descartes for having recourse to the evidence

of consciousness in order to prove the liberty of the will. But he

omits to tell us that the notions entertained by this philosopher were

not such as have been generally thought compatible with free agency in

the only sense that admits of controversy. It was an essential part of

the theory of Descartes that God is the cause of all human actions.

“Before God sent us into the world,” he says in a letter, “he knew

exactly what all the inclinations of our will would be; it is he that

has implanted them in us; it is he also that has disposed all other

things, so that such or such objects should present themselves to us

at such or such times, by means of which he has known that our free

will would determine us to such or such actions, and he has willed

that it should be so; but he has not willed to compel us

thereto.”[257] “We could not demonstrate,” he says at another time,

“that God exists, except by considering him as a being absolutely

perfect; and he could not be absolutely perfect, if there could happen

anything in the world which did not spring entirely from him.... Mere

philosophy is enough to make us know that there cannot enter the least

thought into the mind of man, but God must will and have willed from

all eternity that it should enter there.”[258] This is in a letter to

his highly intelligent friend, the princess Palatine Elizabeth,

granddaughter of James I.; and he proceeds to declare himself strongly

in favour of predestination, denying wholly any particular providence,

to which she had alluded, as changing the decrees of God, and all

efficacy of prayer, except as one link in the chain of his

determinations. Descartes, therefore, whatever some of his disciples

may have become, was far enough from an Arminian theology. “As to free

will,” he says elsewhere, “I own that thinking only of ourselves we

cannot but reckon it independent, but when we think of the infinite

power of God we cannot but believe that all things depend on him, and

that consequently our free will must do so too.... But since our

knowledge of the existence of God should not hinder us from being

assured of our free will, because we feel and are conscious of it in

ourselves, so that if our free will should not make us doubt of the

existence of God. For the independence which we experience and feel in

ourselves, and which is sufficient to make our actions praiseworthy or

blameable, is not incompatible with a dependence of another nature,

according to which all things are subject to God.”[259]

[257] Vol. ix., p. 374.

[258] Id. p. 246.

[259] Vol. ix., p. 368. This had originally been stated

in the Principia with less confidence, the free will of man and

predetermination of God being both asserted as true, but their

co-existence incomprehensible. Vol. iii., p. 86.

|Fame of his system and attacks upon it.|

109. A system so novel, so attractive to the imagination by its bold

and brilliant paradoxes as that of Descartes, could not but excite the

attention of an age already roused to the desire of a new philosophy,

and to the scorn of ancient authority. His first treatises appeared in

French; and, though he afterwards employed Latin, his works were very

soon translated by his disciples, and under his own care. He wrote in

Latin with great perspicuity; in French with liveliness and elegance.

His mathematical and optical writings gave him a reputation which envy

could not take away, and secured his philosophy from that general

ridicule which sometimes overwhelms an obscure author. His very

enemies, numerous and vehement as they were, served to enhance the

celebrity of the Cartesian system, which he seems to have anticipated

by publishing their objections to his Meditations with his own

replies. In the universities, bigoted for the most part to

Aristotelian authority, he had no chance of public reception; but the

influence of the universities was much diminished in France,

and a new theory had perhaps better chances in its favour on account

of their opposition. But the Jesuits, a more powerful body, were in

general adverse to the Cartesian system, and especially some time

afterwards, when it was supposed to have the countenance of several

leading Jansenists. The Epicurean school, led by Gassendi and Hobbes,

presented a formidable phalanx; since it in fact comprehended the wits

of the world, the men of indolence and sensuality, quick to discern

the many weaknesses of Cartesianism, with no capacity for its

excellencies. It is unnecessary to say, how predominant this class was

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in France and

England.

|Controversy with Voet.|

110. Descartes was evidently in considerable alarm lest the church

should bear with its weight upon his philosophy.[260] He had the

censure on Galileo before his eyes, and certainly used some chicane of

words as to the earth’s movement upon this account. It was, however,

in the Protestant country, which he had chosen as his harbour of

refuge, that he was doomed to encounter the roughest storm. Gisbert

Voet, an eminent theologian in the university of Utrecht, and the head

of the party in the church of Holland, which had been victorious in

the synod of Dort, attacked Descartes with all the virulence and

bigotry characteristic of his school of divinity. The famous

demonstration of the being of God he asserted to be a cover for

atheism, and thus excited a flame of controversy, Descartes being not

without supporters in the university, especially Regius, professor of

medicine. The philosopher was induced by these assaults to change his

residence from a town in the province of Utrecht to Leyden. Voet did

not cease to pursue him with outrageous calumny, and succeeded in

obtaining decrees of the senate and university, which interdicted

Regius from teaching that “new and unproved (præsumpta) philosophy” to

his pupils. The war of libels on the Voetian side did not cease for

some years, and Descartes replied with no small acrimony against Voet

himself. The latter had recourse to the civil power, and instituted a

prosecution against Descartes, which was quashed by the interference

of the prince of Orange. But many in the university of Leyden, under

the influence of a notable theologian of that age, named Triglandius,

one of the stoutest champions of Dutch orthodoxy, raised a cry against

the Cartesian philosophy as being favourable to Pelagianism and

popery, the worst names that could be given in Holland; and it was

again through the protection of the prince of Orange that he escaped a

public censure. Regius, the most zealous of his original advocates,

began to swerve from the fidelity of a sworn disciple, and published a

book containing some theories of his own, which Descartes thought

himself obliged to disavow. Ultimately he found, like many benefactors

of mankind, that he had purchased reputation at the cost of peace;

and, after some visits to France, where, probably from the same cause,

he never designed to settle, found an honourable asylum and a

premature death at the court of Christina. He died in 1651, having

worked a more important change in speculative philosophy than any who

had preceded him since the revival of learning; for there could be no

comparison, in that age, between the celebrity and effect of his

writings and those of Lord Bacon. The latter had few avowed enemies,

till it was too late to avow enmity.[261]

[260] On a tellement assujetti la théologie à Aristotle,

qu’il est impossible d’expliquer une autre philosophie qu’il ne

semble d’abord qu’elle soit contre la foi. Et à propos de ceci,

je vous prie de me mander s’il n’y a rien de déterminé en la foi

touchant l’étendue du monde: savoir s’il est fini ou plutôt

infini, et si tout ce qu’on appelle espaces imaginaires soient

des corps créés et véritables. Vol. vi., p. 73.

[261] The life of Descartes was written, very fully and

with the warmth of a disciple, by Baillet, in two volumes quarto,

1691, of which he afterwards published an abridgment. In this we

find at length the attacks made on him by the Voetian

theologians. Brucker has given a long and valuable account of the

Cartesian philosophy, but not favourable, and perhaps not quite

fair. Vol. v., p. 200-334. Buhle is, as usual, much inferior to

Brucker. But those who omit the mathematical portion will not

find the original works of Descartes very long, and they are well

worthy of being read.

|Charges of plagiarism.|

111. The prejudice against Descartes, especially in his own country,

was aggravated by his indiscreet and not very warrantable assumption

of perfect originality.[262] No one, I think, can fairly

refuse to own, that the Cartesian metaphysics, taken in their

consecutive arrangement, form truly an original system; and it would

be equally unjust to deny the splendid discoveries he developed in

algebra and optics. But upon every one subject which Descartes

treated, he has not escaped the charge of plagiarism; professing

always to be ignorant of what had been done by others, he falls

perpetually into their track; more, as his adversaries maintained,

than the chances of coincidence could fairly explain. Leibnitz has

summed up the claims of earlier writers to the pretended discoveries

of Descartes; and certainly it is a pretty long bill to be presented

to any author. I shall insert this passage in a note, though much of

it has no reference to this portion of the Cartesian philosophy.[263]

It may perhaps be thought by candid minds, that we cannot apply the

doctrine of chances to coincidence of reasoning in men of acute and

inquisitive spirits, as fairly as we may to that of style or imagery;

but, if we hold strictly that the older writer may claim the exclusive

praise of the philosophical discovery, we must regret to see such a

multitude of feathers plucked from the wing of an eagle.

[262] I confess, he says in his logic, that I was born

with such a temper, that the chief pleasure I find in study is

not from the learning the arguments of others, but by inventing

my own. This disposition alone impelled me in youth to the study

of science; hence, whenever a new book promised by its title some

new discovery, before sitting down to read it, I used to try

whether my own natural sagacity could lead me to anything of the

kind, and I took care not to lose this innocent pleasure by too

hasty a perusal. This answered so often that I at length

perceived that I arrived at truth, not as other men do after

blind and precarious guesses, by good luck rather than skill, but

that long experience had taught me certain fixed rules, which

were of surprising utility, and of which I afterwards made use to

discover more truths. Vol. xi., p. 252.

[263] Dogmata ejus metaphysica, velut circa ideas a

sensibus remotas, et animæ distinctionem a corpore, et fluxam per

se rerum materialium fidem, prorsus Platonica sunt. Argumentum

pro existentia Dei, ex eo, quod ens perfectissimum, vel quo majus

intelligi non potest, existentiam includit, fuit Anselmi, et in

libro “Contra insipientem” inscripto extat inter ejus opera,

passimque a scholasticis examinatur. In doctrina de continuo,

pleno et loco Aristotelem noster secutus est, Stoicosque in re

morali penitus expressit, floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia

libant. In explicatione rerum mechina Leucippum et Democritum

præeuntes habuit, qui et vortices ipsos jam docuerant. Jordanus

Brunus easdem fere de magnitudine universi ideas habuisse

dicitur, quemadmodum et notavit V. CC. Stephanus Spleissius, ut

de Gilberto nil dicam, cujus magneticæ considerationes tum per

se, tum ad systema universi applicatæ, Cartesio plurimum

profuerunt. Explicationem gravitatis per materiæ solidioris

rejectionem in tangente, quod in physica Cartesiana prope

pulcherrimum est, didicit ex Keplero, qui similitudine palearum

motu aquæ in vase gyrantis ad centrum contrusarum rem explicuit

primus. Actionem lucis in distans, similitudine baculi pressi jam

veteres adumbravere. Circa iridem a M. Antonio de Dominis non

parum lucis accepit. Keplerum fuisse primum suum in dioptricis

magistrum, et in eo argumento omnes ante se mortales longo

intervallo antegressum, fatetur Cartesius in epistolis

familiaribus; nam in scriptis, quæ ipse edidit, longè abest a

tali confessione aut laude, tametsi illa ratio, quæ rationum

dictionem explicat, et compositione nimirum duplicis conatûs

perpendicularis ad superficiem et ad eandem paralleli, disertè

apud Keplerum extet, qui eodem, ut Cartesius, modo æqualitatem

angulorum incidentiæ et reflexionis hinc deducit. Idque gratam

mentionem ideo merebatur, quod omnis prope Cartesii ratiocinatio

huic innititur principio. Legem refractionis primum invenisse

Willebroodum Snellium, Isaacus Vossius patefecit, quanquam non

ideo negare ausim, Cartesium in eadem incidere potuisse de suo.

Negavit in epistolis Vietam sibi lectum, sed Thomæ Harrioti Angli

libros analyticos posthumos anno 1631 editos vidisse multi vix

dubitant; usque adeo magnus est eorum consensus cum calculo

geometriæ Cartesianæ. Sane jam Harriotus æquationem nihilo

æqualem posuit, et hinc derivavit, quomodo oriatur æquatio ex

multiplicatione radicum in se invicem, et quomodo radiorum

auctione, diminutione, multiplicatione aut divisione variari

æquatio possit, et quomodo proinde natura, et constitutio

æquationem et radicum cognosci possit ex terminorum habitudine.

Itaque narrat celeberrimus Wallisius, Robervalium, qui miratus

erat, unde Cartesio in mentem venisset palmarium illud,

æquationem ponere æqualem nihilo ad instar unius quantitatis,

ostenso sibi a Domino de Cavendish libro Harrioti exclamasse, il

l’a vu! il l’a vu! vidit, vidit. Reductionem quadratoquadratæ

æquationis ad cubicam superiori jam sæculo invenit Ludovicus

Ferrarius, cujus vitam reliquit Cardanus ejus familiaris. Denique

fuit Cartesius, ut a viris doctis dudum notatum est, et ex

epistolis nimium apparet, immodicus contemptor aliorum, et famæ

cupiditate ab artificiis non abstinens, quæ parum generosa videri

possunt. Atque hæc profecto non dico animo obtrectandi viro, quem

mirificè æstimo, sed eo consilio, ut cuique suum tribuatur, nec

unus omnium laudes absorbeat; justissimum enim est, ut

inventoribus suus honos constet, nec sublatis virtutum præmiis

præclara faciendi studium refrigescat. Leibnitz, apud Brucker, v.

v. 255.

|Recent increase of his fame.|

112. The name of Descartes as a great metaphysical writer has revived

in some measure of late years; and this has been chiefly owing, among

ourselves, to Dugald Stewart; in France, to the growing disposition of

their philosophers to cast away their idols of the eighteenth century.

“I am disposed,” says our Scottish philosopher, “to date the origin of

the true philosophy of mind from the Principia (why not the earlier

works?) of Descartes, rather than from the Organum of Bacon,

or the Essays of Locke; without, however, meaning to compare the

French author with our two countrymen, either as a contributor to our

stock of _facts_ relating to the intellectual phænomena, or as

the author of any important conclusion concerning the general laws to

which they may be referred.” The excellent edition by M. Cousin, in

which alone the entire works of Descartes can be found, is a homage

that France has recently offered to his memory, and an important

contribution to the studious both of metaphysical and mathematical

philosophy. I have made use of no other, though it might be desirable

for the inquirer to have the Latin original at his side, especially in

those works which have not been seen in French by their author.

SECT. IV.

_On the Metaphysical Philosophy of Hobbes._

|Metaphysical treatise of Hobbes.|

113. The metaphysical philosophy of Hobbes was promulgated in his

treatise on Human Nature, which appeared in 1650. This, with his other

works, De Cive, and De Corpore Politico, were fused into that great

and general system, which he published in 1651 with the title of

Leviathan. The first part of the Leviathan, “Of Man,” follows the

several chapters of the treatise on Human Nature with much regularity;

but so numerous are the enlargements or omissions, so great is the

variance with which the author has expressed the same positions, that

they should much rather be considered as two works, than as two

editions of the same. They differ more than Lord Bacon’s treatise, De

Augmentis Scientiarum, does from his Advancement of Learning. I shall,

however, blend the two in a single analysis, and this I shall

generally give, as far as is possible, consistently with my own

limits, in the very words of Hobbes. His language is so lucid and

concise, that it would be almost as improper to put an algebraical

process in different terms as some of his metaphysical paragraphs.

But, as a certain degree of abridgment cannot be dispensed with, the

reader must not take it for granted, even where inverted commas denote

a closer attention to the text, that nothing is omitted, although, in

such cases, I never hold it permissible to make any change.

|His theory of sensation.|

|Coincident with Descartes.|

114. All single thoughts, it is the primary tenet of Hobbes, are

representations or appearances of some quality of a body without us,

which is commonly called an object. “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.”[264] In

the treatise on Human Nature he dwells long on the immediate causes of

sensation; and if no alteration had been made in his manuscript since

he wrote his dedication to the Earl of Newcastle in 1640, he must be

owned to have anticipated Descartes in one of his most celebrated

doctrines. “Because the image in vision, consisting in colour and

shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that

sense, it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that

the same colour and shape are the very qualities themselves; and for

the same, cause, that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell,

or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received, that the

contrary must needs appear a great paradox; and yet the introduction

of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the

maintenance of that opinion), passing to and fro from the object, is

worse than any paradox, as being a plain impossibility. I shall,

therefore, endeavour to make plain these points: 1. That the subject

wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing

seen. 2. That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an

image or colour. 3. That the said image or colour is but an apposition

unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object

worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some external substance of the

head. 4. That, as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from

the other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object,

but the sentiment.”[265] And this he goes on to prove. Nothing of this

will be found in the Discours sur la Méthode, the only work of

Descartes then published; and, even if we believe Hobbes to have

interpolated this chapter after he had read the Meditations, he has

stated the principle so clearly and illustrated it so copiously, that,

so far especially as Locke and the English metaphysicians took it up,

we may almost reckon him another original source.

[264] Leviathan, c. 1.

[265] Hum. Nat., c. 2.

|Imagination and memory.|

115. The second chapter of the Leviathan, “On Imagination,” begins

with one of those acute and original observations we often find in

Hobbes: “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 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.” The physical principle had lately been

established, but the reason here given for the contrary prejudice,

though not the sole one, is ingenious and even true. Imagination he

defines to be “conception remaining, and by little and little decaying

after the act of sense.”[266] This he afterwards expressed less

happily, “the gradual decline of the motion in which sense consists;”

his phraseology becoming more and more tinctured with the materialism

he affected in all his philosophy. Neither definition seems at all

applicable to the imagination which calls up long past perceptions.

“This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean

fancy itself), we call imagination, 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 divers considerations hath divers names.”[267] It is,

however, evident that imagination and memory are distinguished by

something more than their names. The second fundamental error of

Hobbes in his metaphysics, his extravagant nominalism, if so it should

be called, appears in this sentence, as the first, his materialism,

does in that previously quoted.

[266] Hum. Nat., c. 3.

[267] Lev., c. 2.

116. The phænomena of dreaming and the phantasms of waking men are

considered in this chapter with the keen observation and cool reason

of Hobbes.[268] I am not sure that he has gone more profoundly into

psychological speculations in the Leviathan than in the earlier

treatise; but it bears witness more frequently to what had probably

been the growth of the intervening period, a proneness to political

and religious allusion, to magnify civil and to depreciate

ecclesiastical power. “If this superstitious fear of spirits were

taken away, and with its prognostics from dreams, false prophecies,

and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty and ambitious

persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than

they are for civil obedience. And this ought to be the work of the

schools; but they rather nourish such doctrine.”[269]

[268] Hum. Nat., c. 3.

[269] Id. ibid.

|Discourse or train of imagination.|

117. The fourth chapter on Human Nature, and the corresponding third

chapter of the Leviathan, entitled On Discourse, or the Consequence

and Train of Imagination, are among the most remarkable in Hobbes, as

they contain the elements of that theory of association, which was

slightly touched afterwards by Locke, but developed and pushed to a

far greater extent by Hartley. “The cause,” he says, “of the coherence

or consequence of one conception to another is their first coherence

or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense: As, for

instance, from St. Andrew the mind runneth to St. Peter, because their

names are read together; from St. Peter to a stone, from the same

cause; from stone to foundation, because we see them together; and for

the same cause from foundation to church, and from church to people,

and from people to tumult; and, according to this example, the mind

may run almost from anything to anything.”[270] This he illustrates in

the Leviathan by the well-known question suddenly put by one, in

conversation about the death of Charles I., “What was the value of a

Roman penny?” Of this _discourse_, as he calls it, in a larger

sense of the word than is usual with the logicians, he mentions

several kinds; and after observing that the remembrance of succession

of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent and what

consequent and what concomitant, is called an experiment, adds that

“to have had many experiments, is what we call experience, which is

nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by

what consequents.”[271]

[270] Hum. Nat. c. 4, § 2.

[271] Id.

|Experience.|

118. “No man can have a conception of the future, for the future is

not yet, but of our conceptions of the past we make a future, or

rather call past future relatively.”[272] And again: “The present only

has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only;

but things to come have no being at all; the future being but a

fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the

actions that are present, which with most certainty is done by him

that has most experience, but not with certainty enough. And though it

be called prudence, when the event answereth our expectation, yet in

its own nature it is but presumption.”[273] “When we have

observed antecedents and consequents frequently associated, we take

one for a sign of the other, as clouds foretell rain, and rain is a

sign there have been clouds. But signs are but conjectural, and their

assurance is never full or evident. For though a man have always seen

the day and night to follow one another hitherto, yet can he not

thence conclude they shall do so, or that they have done so,

eternally. Experience concludeth nothing universally. But those who

have most experience conjecture best, because they have most signs to

conjecture by; hence, old men, cæteris paribus, and men of quick

parts, conjecture better than the young or dull.”[274] “But experience

is not to be equalled by any advantage of natural and extemporary wit,

though perhaps many young men think the contrary.” There is a

presumption of the past as well as the future founded on experience,

as when from having often seen ashes after fire, we infer from seeing

them again that there has been fire. But this is as conjectural as our

expectations of the future.[275]

[272] Human Nat. c. 4, § 7.

[273] Lev., c. 3.

[274] Hum. Nat.

[275] Lev.

|Unconceivableness of infinity.|

119. In the last paragraph of the chapter in the Leviathan, he adds,

what is a very leading principle in the philosophy of Hobbes, but

seems to have no particular relation to what has preceded. “Whatsoever

we imagine is finite; therefore, there is no idea or conception of

anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of

infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or

infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite,

we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds

of the things named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own

inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us

conceive him, for he is incomprehensible and his greatness and power

are inconceivable, but that we may honour him. Also, because

whatsoever, as I said before, we conceive, has been perceived first by

sense, either all at once, or by parts; a man can have no thought,

representing anything, not subject to sense. No man therefore can

conceive anything, but he must conceive it in some place, and indeed

with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts,

nor that anything is all in this place, and all in another place at

the same time, nor that two or more things can be in one and the same

place at once. For none of these things ever have, or can be incident

to sense, but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit without any

signification at all, from deceived philosophers, and deceived or

deceiving schoolmen.” This, we have seen in the last section, had been

already discussed with Descartes. The paralogism of Hobbes consists in

his imposing a limited sense on the word idea or conception, and

assuming that what cannot be conceived according to that sense has no

signification at all.

|Origin of language.|

120. The next chapter, being the fifth in one treatise, and the fourth

in the other, may be reckoned, perhaps, the most valuable as well as

original, in the writings of Hobbes. It relates to speech and

language. “The invention of printing,” he begins by observing, “though

ingenious, compared with the invention of letters, is no great

matter.... But the most noble and profitable invention of all others,

was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their

connection, whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they

are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and

conversation; without which there had been amongst men neither

commonwealth, nor society, nor content nor peace, no more than among

lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself,

that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his

sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this was

sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the experience and use

of the creatures should give him occasion, and to join them in such

manner by degrees, as to make himself understood; and so by succession

of time so much language might be gotten as he had found use for,

though not so copious as an orator or philosopher has need of.”[276]

[276] Leviathan, c. 4.

|His political theory interferes.|

121. This account of the original of language appears in general as

probable as it is succinct and clear. But the assumption that there

could have been no society or mutual peace among mankind without

language, the ordinary instrument of contract, is too much founded

upon his own political speculations. Nor is it proved by the

comparison to lions, bears, and wolves, even if the analogy could be

admitted; since the state of warfare which he here intimates to be

natural to man, does not commonly subsist in these wild animals of the

same species. _Sævis inter se convenit_ _ursis_, is

an old remark. But taking mankind with as much propensity to violence

towards each other as Hobbes could suggest, is it speech, or reason

and the sense of self-interest, which has restrained this within the

boundaries imposed on it by civil society? The position appears to be,

that man, with every other faculty and attribute of his nature, except

language, could never have lived in community with his fellows. It is

manifest, that the mechanism of such a community would have been very

imperfect. But possessing his rational powers, it is hard to see why

he might not have devised signs to make known his special wants, or

why he might not have attained the peculiar prerogative of his species

and foundation of society, the exchange of what he liked less for what

he liked better.

|Necessity of speech exaggerated.|

122. This will appear more evident, and the exaggerated notions of the

school of Hobbes as to the absolute necessity of language to the

mutual relations of mankind will be checked by considering what was

not so well understood in his age as at present, the intellectual

capacities of those who are born deaf, and the resources which they

are able to employ. It can hardly be questioned, but that a number of

families thrown together in this unfortunate situation, without other

intercourse, could by the exercise of their natural reason, as well as

the domestic and social affections, constitute themselves into a sort

of commonwealth, at least as regular as that of ants and bees; and if

the want of language would deprive them of many advantages of polity,

it would also secure them from much fraud and conspiracy. But those

whom we have known to want the use of speech, have also wanted the

sense of hearing, and have thus been shut out from many assistances to

the reasoning faculties, which our hypothesis need not exclude. The

fair supposition is that of a number of persons merely dumb, and

although they would not have laws or learning, it does not seem

impossible they might maintain at least a patriarchal, if not a

political, society for many generations. Upon the lowest supposition,

they could not be inferior to the Chimpanzees, who are said to live in

communities in the forests of Angola.

|Use of names.|

123. The succession of conceptions in the mind depending wholly on

that they had one to another when produced by the senses, they cannot

be recalled at our choice and the need we have of them, “but as it

chanceth us to hear and see such things as shall bring them to our

mind. Hence, brutes are unable to call what they want to mind, and

often, though they hide food, do not know where to find it. But man

has the power to set up marks or sensible objects, and remember

thereby somewhat past. The most eminent of these are names of

articulate sounds, by which we recall some conception of things to

which we give those names; as the appellation white bringeth to

remembrance the quality of such objects as produce that colour or

conception in us. It is by names that we are capable of science, as

for instance that of number: for beasts cannot number for want of

words, and do not miss one or two out of their young, nor could a man

without repeating orally or mentally the words of number, know how

many pieces of money may be before him.”[277] We have here another

assumption, that the numbering faculty is not stronger in man than in

brutes, and also that the former could not have found out how to

divide a heap of coins into parcels without the use of words of

number. The experiment might be tried with a deaf and dumb child.

[277] Hum. Nat., c. 5.

|Names universal not realities.|

124. Of names some are proper, and some common to many or universal,

there being nothing in the world universal but names, for the things

named are every one of them individual and singular. “One universal

name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality or

other accidents; and whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing

only, universals recall any one of those many.”[278] “The universality

of one name to many things hath been the cause that men think the

things are themselves universal, and so seriously contend that besides

Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that are, have been, or

shall be in the world, there is yet something else that we call

man--viz., man in general, deceiving themselves by taking the

universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth.[279] For

if one should desire the painter to make him the picture of a

man, which is as much as to say, of a man in general, he meaneth no

more, but that the painter should chuse what man he pleaseth to draw,

which must needs be some of them that are, or have been, or may be,

none of which are universal. But when he would have him to draw the

picture of the king, or any particular person, he limiteth the painter

to that one person he chuseth. It is plain, therefore, that there is

nothing universal but names, which are therefore called

indefinite.”[280]

[278] Lev. c. 4.

[279] “An universal,” he says in his Logic, “is not a name of

many things collectively, but of each taken separately

(sigillatim sumptorum). Man is not the name of the human species,

in general, but of each single man, Peter, John and the rest,

separately. Therefore, this universal name is not the name of any

thing existing in nature, nor of any idea or phantasm formed in

the mind, but always of some word or name. Thus, when an animal,

or a stone, or a ghost (spectrum) or anything else is called

universal, we are not to understand that any man or stone or

anything else was, or is, or can be an universal, but only that

these words animal, stone, and the like are universal names, that

is, names common to many things, and the conceptions

corresponding to them in the mind are the images and phantasms of

single animals or other things. And therefore we do not need, in

order to understand what is meant by an universal, any other

faculty than that of imagination, by which we remember that such

words have excited the conception in our minds sometimes of one

particular thing, sometimes of another.” Cap. 2, § 9. Imagination

and memory are used by Hobbes almost as synonyms.

[280] Hum. Nat., c. 5.

|How imposed.|

125. “By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter

signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things

imagined in the mind into a reckoning of the consequences of

appellations.”[281] Hence he thinks that though a man born deaf and

dumb might by meditation know that the angles of one triangle are

equal to two right ones, he could not, on seeing another triangle of

different shape, infer the same without a similar process. But by the

help of words, after having observed the equality is not consequent on

anything peculiar to one triangle, but on the number of sides and

angles which is common to all, he registers his discovery in a

proposition. This is surely to confound the antecedent process of

reasoning with what he calls the registry, which follows it. The

instance, however, is not happily chosen, and Hobbes has conceded the

whole point in question, by admitting that the truth of the

proposition could be observed, which cannot require the use of

words.[282] He expresses the next sentence with more felicity, “And

thus the consequence found in one particular comes to be registered

and remembered as an universal rule, and discharges our mental

reckoning of time and place; and delivers us from all labour of the

mind saving the first, and makes that which was found true here and

now to be true in all times and places.”[283]

[281] It may deserve to be remarked that Hobbes himself,

nominalist as he was, did not limit reasoning to comparison of

proposition, as some later writers have been inclined to do, and

as in his objections to Descartes, he might seem to do himself.

This may be inferred from the sentence quoted in the text, and

more expressly, though not quite perspicuously, from a passage in

the Computatio, sive Logica, his Latin treatise published after

the Leviathan. Quomodo autem animo _sine verbis tacita

cogitatione ratiocinando addere et subtrahere solemus_ uno aut

altero exemplo ostendendum est. Si quis ergo e longinquo aliquid

obscurè videat, etsi nulla sint imposita vocabula, habet tamen

ejus rei ideam eandem propter quam impositis nunc vocabulis dicit

eam rem esse corpus. Postquam autem propius accesserit,

videritque eandem rem certo quodam modo nunc uno, nunc alio in

loco esse, habebit ejusdem ideam novam, propter quam nunc talem

rem _animatam_ vocat, &c., p. 2.

[282] The demonstration of the thirty-second proposition of

Euclid could leave no one in doubt whether this property were

common to all triangles, after it had been proved in a single

instance. It is said, however, to be recorded by an ancient

writer, that this discovery was first made as to equilateral,

afterwards as to isosceles, and lastly as to other triangles.

Stewart’s philosophy of Human Mind, vol. ii., chap., iv., sect. 2

The mode of proof must have been different from that of Euclid.

And this might possibly lead us to suspect the truth of the

tradition. For if the equality of the angles of a triangle to two

right angles admitted of any _elementary_ demonstration, such as

might occur in the infancy of geometry, without making use of the

property of parallel lines, assumed in the twelfth axiom of

Euclid, the difficulties consequent on that assumption would

readily be evaded. See the Note on Euclid, i. 29. in Playfair,

who has given a demonstration of his own, but one which involves

the idea of motion rather more than was usual with the Greeks in

their elementary propositions.

[283] Lev.

|The subject continued.|

126. The equivocal use of names makes it often difficult to recover

those conceptions for which they were designed “not only in the

language of others, wherein we are to consider the drift and occasion

and contexture of the speech, as well as the words themselves, but in

our own discourse, which, being derived from the custom and common use

of speech, representeth unto us not our own conceptions. It is,

therefore, a great ability in a man, out of the words, contexture and

other circumstances of language to deliver himself from equivocation,

and to find out the true meaning of what is said; and this is it we

call understanding.”[284] If speech be peculiar to man, as for aught I

know it is, then is understanding peculiar to him also; understanding

being nothing else but conception caused by speech.”[285] This

definition is arbitrary and not conformable to the usual sense. “True

and false,” he observes afterwards, “are attributes of speech not of

things; where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood,

though there may be error. Hence, as truth consists in the right

ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeks precise truth

hath need to remember what every word he uses stands for and place it

accordingly. In geometry, the only science hitherto known, men begin

by definitions. And every man who aspires to true knowledge, should

examine the definitions of former authors, and either correct them or

make them anew. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves,

according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities,

which at last they see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from

the beginning in which lies the foundation of their errors.... In the

right definition of names, lies the first use of speech, which is the

acquisition of science. And in wrong or no definitions lies the first

abuse from which proceed all false and senseless tenets, which make

those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and

not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of

ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For

between true science and erroneous doctrine, ignorance is in the

middle. Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but

they are the money of fools.”[286]

[284] Hum. Nat.

[285] Lev.

[286] Lev.

|Names differently imposed.|

127. “The names of such things as affect us, that is, which please and

displease us, because all men be not alike affected with the same

thing, nor the same man at all times, are in the common discourse of

men of inconstant signification. For seeing all names are imposed to

signify our conceptions, and all our affections are but conceptions,

when we conceive the same thoughts differently, we can hardly avoid

different naming of them. For though the nature of that we conceive be

the same, yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of

different constitutions of body and prejudices of opinion, gives

everything a tincture of our different passions. And therefore, in

reasoning, a man must take heed of words, which, besides the

signification of what we imagine of their nature, have a signification

also of the nature, disposition and interest of the speaker; such as

are the names of virtues and vices; for one man calleth wisdom what

another calleth fear, and one cruelty, what another justice; one

prodigality, what another magnanimity, and one gravity what another

stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of

any ratiocination. No more can metaphors and tropes of speech, but

these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy,

which the other do not.”[287] Thus ends this chapter of the Leviathan,

which, with the corresponding one in the Treatise of Human Nature,

are, notwithstanding what appear to be some erroneous principles, as

full, perhaps, of deep and original thoughts as any other pages of

equal length on the art of reasoning and philosophy of language. Many

have borrowed from Hobbes without naming him; and in fact he is the

founder of the nominalist school in England. He may probably have

conversed with Bacon on these subjects; we see much of that master’s

style of illustration. But as Bacon was sometimes too excursive to

sift particulars, so Hobbes has sometimes wanted a comprehensive view.

[287] Lev.

|Knowledge.|

128. “There are,” to proceed with Hobbes, “two kinds of knowledge; the

one, sense, or knowledge original, and remembrance of the same; the

other, science, or knowledge of the truth of propositions, derived

from understanding. Both are but experience, one of things from

without, the other from the proper use of words in language, and

experience being but remembrance, all knowledge is remembrance.

Knowledge implies two things, truth and evidence; the latter is the

concomitance of a man’s conception with the words that signify such

conception in the act of ratiocination.” If a man does not annex a

meaning to his words, his conclusions are not evident to him.

“Evidence is to truth, as the sap to the tree, which, so far as it

creepeth along with the body and branches, keepeth them alive; when it

forsaketh them they die; for this evidence, which is meaning with our

words, is the life of truth.” “Science is evidence of truth, from some

beginning or principle of sense. The first principle of knowledge is

that we have such and such conceptions; the second that we have thus

and thus named the things whereof they are conceptions; the third is

that we have joined those names in such manner as to make true

propositions; the fourth and last is that we have joined these

propositions in such a manner as they be concluding, and the truth of

the conclusion said to be known.”[288]

[288] Hum. Nat., c. 6.

|Reasoning.|

129. Reasoning is the addition or subtraction of parcels. “In whatever

matter there is room for addition and subtraction, there is room for

reason; and where these have no place, then reason has nothing at all

to do.”[289] This is neither as perspicuously expressed, nor as

satisfactorily illustrated, as is usual with Hobbes; but it is true

that all syllogistic reasoning is dependent upon quantity alone, and

consequently upon that which is capable of addition and subtraction.

This seems not to have been clearly perceived by some writers of the

old Aristotelian school, or perhaps by some others, who, as far as I

can judge, have a notion that the relation of a genus to a species, or

a predicate to its subject, considered merely as to syllogism or

deductive reasoning, is something different from that of a whole to

its parts; which would deprive that logic of its chief boast,

axiomatic evidence. But, as this would appear too dry to some readers,

I shall pursue it farther in a note.[290]

[289] Lev. c. 5.

[290] Dugald Stewart (Elements of Philosophy, &c. vol. ii., ch.

ii., sect. 2) has treated this theory of Hobbes on reasoning, as

well as that of Condillac, which seems much the same, with great

scorn, as “too puerile to admit of (i.e. require) refutation.” I

do not myself think the language of Hobbes either here, or as

quoted by Stewart from his Latin treatise on Logic, so

perspicuous as usual. But I cannot help being of opinion that he

is substantially right. For surely, when we assert that A is B,

we assert that all things which fall under the class B, taken

collectively, comprehend A, or that B = A + X: B being here put,

it is to be observed, not for the _res prædicata_ itself, but for

the concrete, _de quibus prædicandum est_. I mention this,

because this elliptical use of the word predicate seems to have

occasioned some confusion in writers on logic. The predicate

strictly taken, being an attribute or quality, cannot be said to

include or contain the subject. But to return, when we say B = A

+ X, or B - X = A, since we do not compare, in such a

proposition, as is here supposed, A with X, we only mean that A =

A, or that a certain part of B is the same as itself. Again, in a

particular affirmative, Some A is B, we assert that part of A, or

A - Y is contained in B, or that B may be expressed by [A - Y]

+ X. So also when we say, Some A is not B, we equally divide the

class or genus B into A - Y and X, or assert that B = [A - Y] +

X; but, in this case, the subject is no longer A - Y, but the

remainder, or other part of A, namely, Y; and this is not found

in either term of the predicate. Finally, in the universal

negative, No A (neither [A - Y] nor Y) is B, the [A - Y] of

the predicate vanishes or has no value, and B becomes equal to X,

which is incapable of measurement with A, and consequently with

either A - Y or Y, which make up A. Now if we combine this with

another proposition, in order to form a syllogism, and say that C

is A, we find, as before, that A = C + Z; and substituting this

value of A in the former proposition, it appears that B = C + Z +

X. Then, in the conclusion, we have, C is B; that is C is a part

of C + Z + X. And the same in the three other cases or moods of

the figure. This seems to be, in plainer terms, what Hobbes means

by addition or subtraction of parcels, and what Condillac means

by rather a lax expression, that equations and propositions are

at bottom the same, or, as he phrases it better, “l’evidence de

raison consiste uniquement dans l’identité.” If we add to this,

as he probably intended, non-identity, as a condition of all

negative conclusions, it seems to be no more than is necessarily

involved in the fundamental principle of syllogism, the _dictum

de omni et nullo_; which may be thus reduced to its shortest

terms; “Whatever can be divided into parts, includes all those

parts, add nothing else.” This is not limited to mathematical

quantity, but includes everything which admits of more or less.

Hobbes has a good passage in his Logic on this; Non putandum est

computationi, id est, ratiocinationi in numeris tantum locum

esse, tanquam homo a cæteris animantibus, quod censuisse narratur

Pythagoras, sola numerandi facultate distinctus esset; nam et

magnitudo magnitudini, corpus corpori, motus motui, tempus

tempori, gradus qualitatis gradui, actio actioni, conceptus

conceptui, proportio proportioni, oratio orationi, nomen nomini,

in quibus omne philosophiæ genus continetur, adjici adimique

potest.

But it does not follow by any means that we should assent to the

strange passages quoted by Stewart from Condillac and Diderot,

which reduce all _knowledge_ to identical propositions. Even

in geometry, where the objects are strictly magnitudes, the

countless variety in which their relations may be exhibited

constitutes the riches of that inexhaustible science; and in

moral or physical propositions, the relation of quantity between

the subject and predicate, as concretes, which enables them to be

compared, though it is the sole foundation of all _general

deductive reasoning_ or syllogism, has nothing to do with the

other properties or relations, of which we obtain a knowledge by

means of that comparison. In mathematical reasoning, we infer as

to quantity through the medium of quantity; in other reasoning,

we use the same medium, but our inference is as to truths which

do not lie within that category. Thus, in the hackneyed instance,

All men are mortal; that is, mortal creatures include men and

something more, it is absurd to assert, that we only know that

men are men. It is true that our knowledge of the truth of the

proposition comes by the help of this comparison of men in the

subject with men in the predicate; but the very nature of the

proposition discovers a constant relation between the individuals

of the human species and that mortality which is predicated of

them along with others; and it is to this, not in an identical

equation, as Diderot seems to have thought, that our

_knowledge_ consists.

The remarks of Stewart’s friend. M. Prevost of Geneva, on the

principle of identity as the basis of mathematical science, and

which the former has candidly subjoined to his own volume, appear

to me very satisfactory. Stewart comes to admit that the dispute

is nearly verbal; but we cannot say that he originally treated it

as such; and the principle itself, both as applied to geometry

and to logic, is, in my opinion, of some importance to the

clearness of our conceptions as to those sciences. It may be

added, that Stewart’s objection to the principle of identity as

the basis of geometrical reasoning is less forcible in its

application to syllogism. He is willing to admit that magnitudes

capable of coincidence by immediate superposition may be reckoned

identical, but scruples to apply such a word to those which are

dissimilar in figure, as the rectangles of the means and extremes

of four proportional lines. Neither one nor the other are, in

fact, identical as real quantities, the former being necessarily

conceived to differ from each other by position in space, as much

as the latter; so that the expression he quotes from Aristotle,

εν τουτοις ἡ ισοτης ἑνοτης [en toutois hê isotês henotês], or any

similar one of modern mathematicians, can only refer to the

abstract magnitude of their areas, which being divisible into the

same number of equal parts, they are called the same. And there

seems no real difference in this respect between two circles of

equal radii and two such rectangles as are supposed above, the

identity of their magnitudes being a distinct truth, independent

of any consideration either of their figure or their position.

But however this may be, the identity of the subject with part of

the predicate in an affirmative proposition is never fictitious,

but real. It means that the persons or things in the one are

strictly the same beings with the persons or things to which they

are compared in the other, though, through some difference of

relations, or other circumstance, they are expressed in different

language. It is needless to give examples, as all those who can

read this note at all will know how to find them.

I will here take the liberty to remark, though not closely

connected with the present subject, that Archbishop Whately seems

not quite right in saying (Elements of Logic, p. 46), that in

affirmative propositions the predicate is _never_

distributed. Besides the numerous instances where this is, in

point of fact, the case, all which he excludes, there are many in

which it is involved in the very form of the proposition. Such

are all those which assert identity or equality, and such also

are all those particular affirmations which have previously been

_converted_ from universals. Of the first sort are all the

theorems in geometry, asserting an equality of magnitude or

ratios, in which the subject and predicate may always change

places. It is true that in the instance given in the work quoted,

that equilateral triangles are equiangular, the converse requires

a separate proof, and so in many similar cases. But in these the

predicate is not distributed by the form of the proposition; they

assert no quality of magnitude.

The position, that where such equality is affirmed, the predicate

is not _logically_ distributed, would lead to the

consequence that it can only be _converted_ into a

particular affirmation. Thus, after proving that the square of

the hypothenuse, in all right-angled triangles, is equal to those

of the sides, we could only infer that the squares of the sides

are _sometimes_ equal to that of the hypothenuse, which

could not be maintained without rendering the rules, of logic

ridiculous. The most general mode of considering the question, is

to say, as we have done above, that, in an universal affirmative,

the predicate B (that is, the class of which B is predicated), is

composed of A the subject, and X, an unknown remainder. But if,

by the very nature of the proposition, we perceive that X is

nothing, or has no value, it is plain that the subject measures

the entire predicate, and vice versâ, the predicate measures the

subject; in other words, each is taken universally, or

distributed.

|False reasoning.|

130. A man may reckon without the use of words in particular things,

as in conjecturing from the sight of anything what is likely to

follow; and if he reckons wrong, it is error. But in reasoning

on general words, to fall on a false inference is not error, though

often so called, but absurdity.[291] “If a man should talk to me of a

round quadrangle, or accidents of bread in cheese, or immaterial

substances, or of a free subject, a free will, or any free, but free

from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in error,

but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd;” Some

of these propositions, it will occur, are intelligible in a reasonable

sense, and not contradictory, except by means of an arbitrary

definition which he who employs them does not admit. It will be

observed here, as we have done before, that Hobbes does not confine

reckoning, or reasoning, to universals, or even to words.

[291] Lev. c. 5.

|Its frequency.|

131. Man has the exclusive privilege of forming general theorems. But

this privilege is allayed by another, that is, by the privilege of

absurdity, to which no living creature is subject, but man only. And

of men those are of all most subject to it, that profess

philosophy.... For there is not one that begins his ratiocination from

the definitions or explications of the names they are to use, which is

a method used only in geometry, whose conclusions have thereby been

made indisputable. He then enumerates seven causes of absurd

conclusions; the first of which is the want of definitions, the others

are erroneous imposition of names. If we can avoid these errors, it is

not easy to fall into absurdity (by which he of course only means any

wrong conclusion) except perhaps by the length of a reasoning.

“For all men,” he says, “by nature reason alike, and well, when they

have good principles. Hence, it appears that reason is not as sense

and memory born with us, nor gotten by experience only, as prudence

is, but attained by industry, in apt imposing of names, and in getting

a good and orderly method of proceeding from the elements to

assertions, and so to syllogisms. Children are not endued with reason

at all till they have attained the use of speech, but are called

reasonable creatures, for the possibility of having the use of reason

hereafter. And reasoning serves the generality of mankind very little,

though with their natural prudence without science they are in better

condition than those who reason ill themselves, or trust those who

have done so.”[292] It has been observed by Buhle, that Hobbes had

more respect for the Aristotelian forms of logic than his master

Bacon. He has in fact written a short treatise, in his Elementa

Philosophiæ, on the subject; observing however therein, that a true

logic will be sooner learned by attending to geometrical

demonstrations than by drudging over the rules of syllogism, as

children learn to walk not by precept but by habit.[293]

[292] Id. ibid.

[293] Citius multo veram logicam discunt qui mathematicorum

demonstrationibus, quam qui logicorum syllogizandi præceptis

legendis tempus conterunt, haud aliter quam parvuli pueri gressum

formare discunt non præceptis sed sæpe gradiendo. C. iv., p. 30.

Atque hæc sufficiunt, (he says afterwards) de syllogismo, qui est

tanquam gressus philosophiæ; nam et quantum necesse est ad

cognoscendum unde vim suam habeat omnis argumentatio legitima,

tantum diximus; et omnia accumulare quæ dici possunt, æque

superfluum esset ac si quis ut dixi puerulo ad gradiendum

præcepta dare velit; acquiritur enim ratiocinandi ars non

præceptis sed usu et lectione eorum librorum in quibus omnia

severis demonstrationibus transiguntur. C. v., p. 35.

|Knowledge of fact not derived from reasoning.|

132. “No discourse whatever,” he says truly in the seventh chapter of

the Leviathan, “can end in absolute knowledge of fact past or to come.

For as to the knowledge of fact, it is originally sense; and ever

after memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have said

before, is called science, it is not absolute but conditional. No man

can know by discourse that this or that is, has been, or will be,

which is to know absolutely; but only that if this is, that is; if

this has been, that has been; if this shall be, that shall be; which

is to know conditionally, and that not the consequence of one thing to

another, but of one name of a thing to another name of the same thing.

And therefore when the discourse is put into speech and begins with

the definitions of words, and proceeds by connexion of the same into

general affirmations, and of those again into syllogisms, the end or

last sum is called the conclusion, and the thought of the mind by it

signified is that conditional knowledge of the consequence of words

which is commonly called science. But if the first ground of such

discourse be not definitions; or if definitions be not rightly joined

together in syllogisms, then the end or conclusion is again opinion,

namely, of the truth of somewhat said, though sometimes in absurd and

senseless words, without possibility of being understood.”[294]

[294] Lev. c. 7.

|Belief.|

133. “Belief which is the admitting of propositions upon trust, in

many cases is no less free from doubt than perfect and manifest

knowledge; for as there is nothing whereof there is not some cause, so

when there is doubt, there must be some cause thereof conceived. Now

there be many things which we receive from the report of others, of

which it is impossible to imagine any cause of doubt; for what can be

opposed against the consent of all men, in things they can know and

have no cause to report otherwise than they are, such as is great part

of our histories, unless a man would say that all the world had

conspired to destroy him?”[295] Whatever we believe on the authority

of the speaker, he is the object of our faith. Consequently, when we

believe that the Scriptures are the word of God, having no immediate

revelation from God himself, our belief, faith, and trust is in the

church, whose word we take and acquiesce therein. Hence, all we

believe on the authority of men, whether they be sent from God or not,

is faith in men only.[296] We have no certain knowledge of the truth

of Scripture, but trust the holy men of God’s church succeeding one

another from the time of those who saw the wondrous works of God

Almighty in the flesh. And as we believe the Scriptures to be the word

of God on the authority of the church, the interpretation of the

Scripture in case of controversy ought to be trusted to the church

rather than private opinion.[297]

[295] Hum. Nat. c. 6.

[296] Lev. c. 7.

[297] Lev. c. 9.

|Chart of science.|

134. The ninth chapter of the Leviathan contains a synoptical chart of

human science or “knowledge of consequences,” also called

philosophy. He divides it into natural and civil, the former into

consequences from accidents common to all bodies, quantity and motion,

and those from qualities, otherwise called physics. The first includes

astronomy, mechanics, architecture, as well as mathematics. The second

he distinguishes into consequences from qualities of bodies transient,

or meteorology, and from those of bodies permanent, such as the stars,

the atmosphere, or terrestrial bodies. The last are divided again into

those without sense, and those with sense; and these into animals and

men. In the consequences from the qualities of animals generally he

reckons optics and music; in those from men we find ethics, poetry,

rhetoric, and logic. These altogether constitute the first great head

of natural philosophy. In the second, or civil philosophy, he includes

nothing but the rights and duties of sovereigns and their subjects.

This chart of human knowledge is one of the worst that has been

propounded, and falls much below that of Bacon.[298]

[298] Hum. Nat., c. 11.

|Analysis of passions.|

135. This is the substance of the philosophy of Hobbes, so far as it

relates to the intellectual faculties, and especially to that of

reasoning. In the seventh and two following chapters of the treatise

on Human Nature, in the ninth and tenth of the Leviathan, he proceeds

to the analysis of the passions. The motion in some internal substance

of the head, if it does not stop there, producing mere conceptions,

proceeds to the heart, helping or hindering the vital motions, which

he distinguishes from the voluntary, exciting in us pleasant or

painful affections, called passions. We are solicited by these to draw

near to that which pleases us, and the contrary. Hence, pleasure,

love, appetite, desire, are divers names for divers considerations of

the same thing. As all conceptions we have immediately by the sense

are delight or pain or appetite or fear, so are all the imaginations

after sense. But as they are weaker imaginations, so are they also

weaker pleasures, or weaker pains.[299] All delight is appetite and

presupposes a further end. There is no utmost end in this world, for

while we live we have desires, and desire presupposes a further end.

We are not, therefore, to wonder that men desire more, the more they

possess; for felicity, by which we mean continual delight, consists

not in having prospered, but in prospering.[300] Each passion, being,

as he fancies, a continuation of the motion which gives rise to a

peculiar conception, is associated with it. They all, except such as

are immediately connected with sense, consist in the conception of a

power to produce some effect. To honour a man, is to conceive that he

has an excess of power over some one with whom he is compared; hence,

qualities indicative of power, and actions significant of it are

honourable; riches are honoured as signs of power, and nobility is

honourable, as a sign of power in ancestors.[301]

[299] Hum. Nat., c. 7.

[300] Id. Lev., c. 11.

[301] Hum. Nat., c. 8.

|Good and evil relative terms.|

136. “The constitution of man’s body is in perpetual mutation, and

hence it is impossible that all the same things should always cause in

him the same appetites and aversions; much less can all men consent in

the desire of any one object. But whatsoever is the object of any

man’s appetite or desire, that is it, which he for his part calls

good, and the object of his hate and aversion, evil, or of his

contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and

contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person using them;

there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of

good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves,

but from the person of the man, where there is no commonwealth, or in

a commonwealth from the person that represents us, or from an

arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and

make his sentence the rule thereof.”[302]

[302] Lev. c., 6.

|His paradoxes.|

137. In prosecuting this analysis all the passions are resolved into

self-love, the pleasure we take in our own power, the pain we suffer

in wanting it. Some of his explications are very forced. Thus weeping

is said to be from a sense of our want of power. And here comes one of

his strange paradoxes. “Men are apt to weep that prosecute revenge,

when the revenge is suddenly stopped or frustrated by the repentance

of their adversary; _and such are the tears of reconciliation_.”[303]

So resolute was he to resort to anything the most preposterous, rather

than admit a moral feeling in human nature. His account of laughter is

better known, and perhaps more probable, though not explaining the

whole of the case. After justly observing that whatsoever it be that

moves laughter, it must be new and unexpected, he defines it to be “a

sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in

ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own

formerly, for men laugh at the follies of themselves past.” It might

be objected, that those are most prone to laughter, who have least of

this glorying in themselves, or undervaluing of their neighbours.

[303] Hum. Nat., c. 9. Lev., c. 6 and 10.

|His notion of love.|

138. “There is a great difference between the desire of a man when

indefinite, and the same desire limited to one person, and this is

that love which is the great theme of poets. But notwithstanding their

praises, it must be defined by the word need; for it is a conception a

man hath of his need of that one person desired.”[304] “There is yet

another passion, sometimes called love, but more properly good-will or

charity. There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power

than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but

also to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception

wherein consists charity. In which first is contained that natural

affection of parents towards their children, which the Greeks call

στοργη [storgê], as also that affection wherewith men seek to assist

those that adhere unto them. But the affection wherewith men many

times bestow their benefits on strangers is not to be called charity,

but either contract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship, or fear

which makes them to purchase peace.”[305] This is equally contrary to

notorious truth, there being neither fear nor contract in generosity

towards strangers. It is, however, not so extravagant as a subsequent

position, that in beholding the danger of a ship in a tempest, though

there is pity, which is grief, yet “the delight in our own security is

so far predominant, that men usually are content in such a case to be

spectators of the misery of their friends.”[306]

[304] Hum. Nat., c. 9.

[305] Id. ibid.

[306] Hum. Nat., c. 9. This is an exaggeration of some well-known

lines of Lucretius, which are themselves exaggerated.

|Curiosity.|

139. As knowledge begins from experience, new experience is the

beginning of new knowledge. Whatever, therefore, happens new to a man,

gives him the hope of knowing somewhat he knew not before. This

appetite of knowledge is curiosity. It is peculiar to man; for beasts

never regard new things except to discern how far they may be useful,

while man looks for the cause and beginning of all he sees.[307] This

attribute of curiosity seems rather hastily denied to beasts. And as

men, he says, are always seeking new knowledge, so are they always

deriving some new gratification. There is no such thing as perpetual

tranquility of mind while we live here, because life itself is but

motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more

than without sense. “What kind of felicity God hath ordained to them

that devoutly honour him, a man shall no sooner know than enjoy, being

joys that now are as incomprehensible, as the word of schoolmen,

beatifical vision, is unintelligible.”[308]

[307] Id. ibid.

[308] Lev., c. 6 and c. 11.

|Difference of intellectual capacities.|

140. From the consideration of the passions, Hobbes advances to

inquire what are the causes of the difference in the intellectual

capacities and dispositions of men.[309] Their bodily senses are

nearly alike, whence he precipitately infers there can be no great

difference in the brain. Yet men differ much in their bodily

constitution, whence he derives the principal differences in their

minds; some being addicted to sensual pleasures are less curious as to

knowledge, or ambitious as to power. This is called dullness, and

proceeds from the appetite of bodily delight. The contrary to this is

a quick ranging of mind accompanied with curiosity in comparing things

that come into it, either as to unexpected similitude, in which fancy

consists, or dissimilitude in things appearing the same, which is

properly called judgment; “for to judge is nothing else, but to

distinguish and discern. And both fancy and judgment are commonly

comprehended under the name of wit, which seems to be a tenuity and

agility of spirits, contrary to that restiness of the spirits supposed

in those who are dull.”[310]

[309] Hum. Nat., c. 10.

[310] Hum. Nat.

141. We call it levity, when the mind is easily diverted, and the

discourse is parenthetical; and this proceeds from curiosity with too

much equality and indifference; for when all things make equal

impression and delight, they equally throng to be expressed. A

different fault is indocibility, or difficulty of being taught; which

must arise from a false opinion that men know already the truth of

what is called in question; for certainly they are not otherwise so

unequal in capacity as not to discern the difference of what is proved

and what is not, and therefore if the minds of men were all of white

paper, they would all most equally be disposed to acknowledge whatever

should be in right method, and by right ratiocination delivered to

them. But when men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions, and

registered them as authentical records in their minds, it is no less

impossible to speak intelligibly to such men, than to write legibly on

a paper already scribbled over. The immediate cause therefore of

indocibility is prejudice, and of prejudice false opinion of our own

knowledge.[311]

[311] Hum. Nat.

|Wit and fancy.|

142. Intellectual virtues are such abilities as go by the name of a

good wit, which may be natural or acquired. “By natural wit,” says

Hobbes, “I mean not that which a man hath from his birth, for that is

nothing else but sense; wherein men differ so little from one another

and from brute beasts, as it is not to be reckoned among virtues. But

I mean that wit which is gotten by use only and experience, without

method, culture or instruction, and consists chiefly in celerity of

imagining and steady direction. And the difference in this quickness

is caused by that of men’s passions that love and dislike some one

thing, some another, and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way,

some another; and are held to, and observe differently the things that

pass through their imagination.” Fancy is not praised without judgment

and discretion, which is properly a discerning of times, places, and

persons; but judgment and discretion is commended for itself without

fancy: without steadiness and direction to some end, a great fancy is

one kind of madness, such as they have who lose themselves in long

digressions and parentheses. If the defect of discretion be apparent,

how extravagant soever the fancy be, the whole discourse will be taken

for a want of wit.[312]

[312] Lev., c. 8.

|Differences in the passions.|

|Madness.|

143. The causes of the difference of wits are in the passions; and the

difference of passions proceeds partly from the different constitution

of the body and partly from different education. Those passions are

chiefly the desire of power, riches, knowledge, or honour; all which

may be reduced to the first, for riches, knowledge, and honour are but

several sorts of power. He who has no great passion for any of these,

though he may be so far a good man as to be free from giving offence,

yet cannot possibly have either a great fancy or much judgment. To

have weak passions is dullness, to have passions indifferently for

everything giddiness and distraction, to have stronger passions for

anything than others have is madness. Madness may be the excess of

many passions; and the passions themselves, when they lead to evil,

are degrees of it. He seems to have had some glimpse of Butler’s

hypothesis as to the madness of a whole people. “What argument for

madness can there be greater, than to clamour, strike, and throw

stones at our best friends? Yet this is somewhat less than such a

multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy

those by whom all their lifetime before they have been protected, and

secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is

the same in every particular man.”[313]

[313] Id.

|Unmeaning language.|

144. There is a fault in some men’s habit of discoursing which may be

reckoned a sort of madness, which is when they speak words with no

signification at all. “And this is incident to none but those that

converse in questions of matters incomprehensible as the schoolmen, or

in questions of abstruse philosophy. The common sort of men seldom

speak insignificantly, and are therefore by those other egregious

persons counted idiots. But to be assured their words are without

anything correspondent to them in the mind, there would need some

examples; which if any man require let him take a schoolman into his

hands, and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any

difficult point as the Trinity, the Deity, the nature of Christ,

transubstantiation, free will, &c., into any of the modern tongues, so

as to make the same intelligible, or into any tolerable Latin, such as

they were acquainted with, that lived when the Latin tongue was

vulgar.” And after quoting some words from Suarez, he adds: “When men

write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not mad, or intend to make

others so?”[314]

[314] Lev.

|Manners.|

145. The eleventh chapter of the Leviathan, on manners, by which he

means those qualities of mankind which concern their living together

in peace and unity, is full of Hobbes’s caustic remarks on human

nature. Often acute, but always severe, he ascribes overmuch to a

deliberate and calculating selfishness. Thus, the reverence of

antiquity is referred to “the contention men have with the living, not

with the dead, to these ascribing more than due that they may obscure

the glory of the other.” Thus “to have received from one to whom we

think ourselves equal, greater benefits than we can hope to requite,

disposes to counterfeit love, but really to secret hatred, and

puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor, that in declining

the sight of his creditor, tacitly wishes him where he might never see

him more. For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom; and

unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which is to one’s equal

hateful.” He owns, however, that to have received benefits from a

superior, disposes us to love him; and so it does where we can hope to

requite even an equal. If these maxims have a certain basis of truth

they have at least the fault of those of Rochefoucault; they are made

too generally characteristic of mankind.

|Ignorances and prejudice.|

146. Ignorance of the signification of words disposes men to take on

trust not only the truth they know not, but also errors and nonsense.

For neither can be detected without a perfect understanding of words.

“But ignorance of the causes and original constitution of right,

equity, law and justice disposes a man to make custom and example the

rule of his actions, in such manner as to think that unjust which it

has been the custom to punish, and that just, of the impunity and

approbation of which they can produce an example, or, as the lawyers

which only use this false measure of justice barbarously call it, a

precedent.” “Men appeal from custom to reason and from reason to

custom as it serves their turn, receding from custom when their

interest requires it, and setting themselves against reason, as oft as

reason is against them; which is the cause that the doctrine of right

and wrong is perpetually disputed both by the pen and the sword;

whereas the doctrine of lines and figures is not so, because men care

not in that subject what is truth, as it is a thing that crosses no

man’s ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a

thing contrary to any man’s right of dominion, or to the interest of

men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be

equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine should have been if not

disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed, as

far as he whom it concerned was able.”[315] This excellent piece of

satire has been often quoted, and sometimes copied, and does not

exaggerate the pertinacity of mankind in resisting the evidence of

truth, when it thwarts the interests and passions of any particular

sect or community. In the earlier part of the paragraph it seems not

so easy to reconcile what Hobbes has said with his general notions of

right and justice; since, if these resolve themselves, as is his

theory into mere force, there can be little appeal to reason, or to

anything else than custom and precedent, which are commonly the

exponents of power.

[315] 1 Lev., c. 11.

|His theory of religion.|

147. In the conclusion of this chapter of the Leviathan as well as in

the next, he dwells more on the nature of religion than he had done in

the former treatise, and so as to subject himself to the imputation of

absolute atheism, or at least of a denial of most attributes which we

assign to the Deity. Curiosity about causes, he says, led men to

search out one after the other, till they came to this necessary

conclusion, that there is some eternal cause which men call God. But

they have no more idea of his nature, than a blind man has of fire,

though he knows that there is something that warms him. So by the

visible things of this world and their admirable order, a man may

conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God, and yet not

have an idea or image of him in his mind. And they that make little

inquiry into the natural causes of things, are inclined to feign

several kinds of powers invisible and to stand in awe of their own

imaginations. And this fear of things invisible is the natural seed of

that which every one in himself calleth religion, and in them that

worship or fear that power otherwise than they do, superstition.

148. As God is incomprehensible, it follows that we can have no

conception or image of the Deity; and consequently all his attributes

signify our inability or defect of power to conceive anything

concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, excepting

only this, that there is a God. Men that by their own meditation

arrive at the acknowledgment of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal

God, chuse rather to confess this is incomprehensible and above their

understanding, than to define his nature by spirit incorporeal, and

then confess their definition to be unintelligible.[316] For

concerning such spirits he holds that it is not possible by natural

means only to come to the knowledge of so much as that there are such

things.[317]

[316] Lev., c. 12.

[317] Hum. Nat., c. 11.

|Its supposed sources.|

149. Religion he derives from three sources, the desire of men to

search for causes, the reference of everything that has a beginning to

some cause, and the observation of the order and consequence of

things. But the two former lead to anxiety, for the knowledge

that there have been causes of the effects we see, leads us to

anticipate that they will in time be the causes of effects to come; so

that every man, especially such as are over-provident, is “like

Prometheus, the prudent man, as his name implies, who was bound to the

hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where an eagle feeding on

his liver devoured as much by day as was repaired by night; and so he

who looks too far before him, has his heart all day long gnawed by the

fear of death, poverty or other calamity, and has no repose nor pause

but in sleep.” This is an allusion made in the style of Lord Bacon.

The ignorance of causes makes men fear some invisible agent, like the

gods of the Gentiles; but the investigation of them leads us to a God

eternal, infinite, and omnipotent. This ignorance however, of second

causes, conspiring with three other prejudices of mankind, the belief

in ghosts, or spirits of subtile bodies, the devotion and reverence

generally shown towards what we fear as having power to hurt us, and

the taking of things casual for prognostics, are altogether the

natural seed of religion, which by reason of the different fancies,

judgments, and passions of several men hath grown up into ceremonies

so different that those which are used by one man are for the most

part ridiculous to another. He illustrates this by a variety of

instances from ancient superstitions. But the forms of religion are

changed when men suspect the wisdom, sincerity, or love of those who

teach it, or its priests.[318] The remaining portion of the Leviathan

relating to moral and political philosophy, must be deferred to our

next chapter.

[318] Lev., c. 12.

150. The Elementa Philosophiæ were published by Hobbes, in 1655, and

dedicated to his constant patron the Earl of Devonshire. These are

divided into three parts; entitled De Corpore, De Homine, and De Cive.

And the first part has itself three divisions; Logic, the First

Philosophy, and Physics. The second part, De Homine, is neither the

treatise of Human Nature, nor the corresponding part of the Leviathan,

though it contains many things substantially found there. A long

disquisition on optics and the nature of vision, chiefly geometrical,

is entirely new. The third part, De Cive, is the treatise by that name

reprinted, as far as I am aware, without alteration.

151. The first part of the first treatise, entitled Computatio sive

Logica, is by no means the least valuable among the philosophical

writings of Hobbes. In forty pages the subject is very well and

clearly explained, nor do I know that the principles are better laid

down, or the rules more sufficiently given in more prolix treatises.

Many of his observations, especially as to words, are such as we find

in his English works, and perhaps his nominalism is more clearly

expressed than it is in them. Of the syllogistic method, at least for

the purpose of demonstration, or teaching others, he seems to have

entertained a favourable opinion, or even to have held it necessary

for real demonstration, as his definition shows. Hobbes appears to be

aware of what I do not remember to have seen put by others, that in

the natural process of reasoning, the minor premise commonly precedes

the major.[319] It is for want of attending to this, that syllogisms,

as usually stated, are apt to have so formal and unnatural a

construction. The process of the mind in this kind of reasoning is

explained, in general, with correctness, and, I believe, with

originality in the following passage, which I shall transcribe from

the Latin, rather than give a version of my own; few probably being

likely to read the present section, who are unacquainted with that

language. The style of Hobbes, though perspicuous, is concise,

and the original words will be more satisfactory than any translation.

[319] In Whateley’s Logic, p. 90, it is observed, that “the

_proper order_ is to place the major premise first, and the minor

second; but this does not constitute the major and minor

premises,” &c. It may be the proper order in one sense, as

exhibiting better the foundation of syllogistic reasoning; but it

is not that which we commonly follow, either in thinking, or in

proving to others. In the rhetorical use of syllogism it can

admit of no doubt, that the opposite order is the most striking

and persuasive; such as in Cato, “If there be a God, he must

delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.”

In Euclid’s demonstrations this will be found the form usually

employed. And, though the rules of grammar are generally

illustrated by examples, which is beginning with the major

premise, yet the process of reasoning which a boy employs in

construing a Latin sentence is the reverse. He observes a

nominative case, a verb in the third person, and then applies his

general rule, or major, to the particular instance, or minor, so

as to infer their agreement. In criminal jurisprudence, the Scots

begin with the major premise, or relevancy of the indictment,

when there is room for doubt; the English with the minor, or

evidence of the fact, reserving the other for what we call motion

in arrest of judgment. Instances of both orders are common, but

by far the most frequent are of that which the Archbishop of

Dublin reckons the less proper of the two. Those logicians who

fail to direct the student’s attention to this, really do not

justice to their own favourite science.

152. Syllogismo directo cogitatio in animo respondens est hujusmodi.

Primo concipitur phantasma rei nominatæ cum accidente sive affectu

ejus propter quem appellatur eo nomine quod est in minore propositione

subjectum; deinde animo occurrit phantasma ejusdem rei cum accidente

sive affectu propter quem appellatur, quod est in eadem propositione

prædicatum. Tertio redit cogitatio rursus ad rem nominatam cum affectu

propter quem eo nomine appellatur, quod est in prædicato propositionis

majoris. Postremo cum meminerit eos affectus esse omnes unius et

ejusdem rei, concludit tria illa nomina ejusdem quoque rei esse

nomina; hoc est, conclusionem esse veram. Exempli causa, quando fit

syllogismus hic, Homo est Animal, Animal est Corpus, ergo Homo est

Corpus, occurrit animo imago hominis loquentis vel differentis [sic,

sed lege disserentis], meminitque id quod sic apparet vocari hominem.

Deinde occurrit eadem imago ejusdem hominis sese moventis, meminitque

id quod sic apparet vocari animal. Tertio recurrit eadem imago hominis

locum aliquem sive spatium occupantis, meminitque id quod sic apparet

vocari corpus.[320] Postremo cum meminerit rem illam quæ et

extendebatur secundum locum, et loco movebatur, et oratione utebatur,

unam et eandem fuisse, concludit etiam nomina illa tria, Homo, Animal,

Corpus, ejusdem rei esse nomina, et proinde, Homo est Corpus, esse

propositionem veram. Manifestum hinc est conceptum sive cogitationem

quæ respondens syllogismo ex propositionibus universalibus in animo

existit, nullam esse in iis animalibus quibus deest usus nominum, cum

inter syllogizandum oporteat non modo de re sed etiam alternis vicibus

de diversis rei nominibus, quæ propter diversas de re cogitationes

adhibitæ sunt, cogitare.

[320] This is the questionable part of Hobbes’s theory of

syllogism. According to the common and obvious understanding, the

mind, in the major premise, Animal est Corpus, does not reflect

on the subject of the minor, Homo, as occupying space, but on the

subject of the major, Animal, which includes indeed the former,

but is mentally substituted for it. It may sometimes happen, that

where this predicate of the minor term is _manifestly_ a

collective word that comprehends the subject, the latter is not

as it were absorbed in it, and may be contemplated by the mind

distinctly in the major; as if we say, John is a man: a man

feels; we may perhaps have no image in the mind of any man but

John. But this is not the case where the predicated quality

appertains to many things visibly different from the subject; as

in Hobbes’s instance Animal est Corpus, we may surely consider

other animals as being extended and occupying space besides men.

It does not seem that otherwise there could be any ascending

scale from particulars to generals, as far as the reasoning

faculties, independent of words, are concerned. And if we begin

with the major premise of the syllogism, this will be still more

apparent.

153. The metaphysical philosophy of Hobbes, always bold and original,

often acute and profound, without producing an immediate school of

disciples like that of Descartes, struck, perhaps, a deeper root in

the minds of reflecting men, and has influenced more extensively the

general tone of speculation. Locke, who had not read much, had

certainly read Hobbes, though he does not borrow from him so much as

has sometimes been imagined. The French metaphysicians of the next

century found him nearer to their own theories than his more

celebrated rival in English philosophy. But the writer who has built

most upon Hobbes, and may be reckoned, in a certain sense, his

commentator, if he who fully explains and develops a system may

deserve that name, was Hartley. The theory of association is implied

and intimated in many passages of the elder philosopher, though it was

first expanded and applied with a diligent, ingenious and

comprehensive research, if sometimes in too forced a manner, by his

disciple. I use this word without particular inquiry into the direct

acquaintance of Hartley with the writings of Hobbes; the subject had

been frequently touched in intermediate publications, and, in matters

of reasoning, as I have intimated above, little or no presumption of

borrowing can be founded on coincidence. Hartley also resembles Hobbes

in the extreme to which he has pushed the nominalist theory, in the

proneness to materialize all intellectual processes, and either to

force all things mysterious to our faculties into something

imaginable, or to reject them as unmeaning, in the want, much

connected with this, of a steady perception of the difference between

the Ego and its objects, in an excessive love of simplifying and

generalizing, and in a readiness to adopt explanations neither

conformable to reason nor experience, when they fall in with some

single principle, the key that was to unlock every ward of the human

soul.

154. In nothing does Hobbes deserve more credit than in having set an

example of close observation in the philosophy of the human

mind. If he errs, he errs like a man who goes a little out of the

right track, not like one who has set out in a wrong one. The eulogy

of Stewart on Descartes, that he was the father of this experimental

psychology, cannot be strictly wrested from him by Hobbes, inasmuch as

the publications of the former are of an earlier date; but we may

fairly say that the latter began as soon, and prosecuted his inquiries

farther. It seems natural to presume that Hobbes, who is said to have

been employed by Bacon in translating some of his works into Latin,

had at least been led by him to the inductive process he has more than

any other employed. But he has seldom mentioned his predecessor’s

name; and indeed his mind was of a different stamp; less excursive,

less quick in discovering analogies, and less fond of reasoning from

them, but more close, perhaps more patient, and more apt to follow up

a predominant idea, which sometimes becomes one of the “idola specûs”

that deceive him.

CHAPTER XXI.

HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE,

FROM 1600 TO 1650.

SECT. I.

ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Casuists of the Roman Church--Suarez on Moral Law--Selden--Charron--

La Mothe le Vayer--Bacon’s Essays--Feltham--Browne’s Religio

Medici--Other Writers._

1. In traversing so wide a field as moral and political philosophy, we

must still endeavour to distribute the subject according to some order

of subdivision, so far at least as the contents of the books

themselves which come before us will permit. And we give the first

place to those which, relating to the moral law both of nature and

revelation, connect the proper subject of the present chapter with

that of the second and third.

|Casuistical writers.|

|Importance of confession.|

2. We meet here a concourse of volumes occupying no small space in old

libraries, the writings of the casuists, chiefly within the Romish

church. None perhaps in the whole compass of literature are more

neglected by those who do not read with what we may call a

professional view; but to the ecclesiastics of that communion they

have still a certain value, though far less than when they were first

written. The most vital discipline of that church, the secret of the

power of its priesthood, the source of most of the good and evil it

can work, is found in the confessional. It is there that the keys are

kept; it is there that the lamp burns whose rays diverge to every

portion of human life. No church that has relinquished this

prerogative can ever establish a permanent dominion over mankind; none

that retains it in effective use can lose the hope or the prospect of

being their ruler.

|Necessity of rules for the confessor.|

3. It is manifest that in the common course of this rite, no

particular difficulty will arise, nor is the confessor likely to weigh

in golden scales the scruples or excuses of ordinary penitents. But

peculiar circumstances might be brought before him, wherein there

would be a necessity for possessing some rule, lest by sanctioning the

guilt of the party before him he should incur as much of his own.

Treatises therefore of casuistry were written as guides to the

confessor, and became the text books in every course of ecclesiastical

education. These were commonly digested in a systematic order, and,

what is the unfailing consequence of system, or rather almost part of

its definition, spread into minute ramifications, and aimed at

comprehending every possible emergency. Casuistry is itself allied to

jurisprudence, especially to that of the canon law; and it was natural

to transfer the subtlety of distinction and copiousness of partition

usual with the jurists, to a science which its professors were apt to

treat upon very similar principles.

|Increase of casuistical literature.|

4. The older theologians seem, like the Greek and Roman moralists,

when writing systematically, to have made general morality their

subject, and casuistry but their illustration. Among the monuments of

their ethical philosophy, the Secunda Secundæ of Aquinas is

the most celebrated. Treatises however of casuistry, which is the

expansion and application of ethics, may be found both before and

during the sixteenth century; and while the confessional was actively

converted to so powerful an engine, they could not conveniently be

wanting. Casuistry indeed is not much required by the church in an

ignorant age; but the sixteenth century was not an age of ignorance.

Yet it is not till about the end of that period that we find

casuistical literature burst out, so to speak, with a profusion of

fruit. “Uninterruptedly afterwards,” says Eichhorn, “through the whole

seventeenth century, the moral and casuistical literature of the

church of Rome was immensely rich; and it caused a lively and

extensive movement in a province which had long been at peace. The

first impulse came from the Jesuits, to whom the Jansenists opposed

themselves. We must distinguish from both the theological moralists,

who remained faithful to their ancient teaching.”[321]

[321] Geschichte der Cultur, vol. vi., part i, p. 390.

|Distraction of subjective and objective morality.|

5. We may be blamed, perhaps, for obtruding a pedantic terminology, if

we make the most essential distinction in morality, and one for want

of which, more than any other, its debatable controversies have

arisen, that between the subjective and objective rectitude of

actions; in clearer language, between the provinces of conscience and

of reason, between what is well meant, and what is well done. The

chief business of the priest is naturally with the former. The walls

of the confessional are privy to the whispers of self-accusing guilt.

No doubt can ever arise as to the subjective character of actions

which the conscience has condemned, and for which the penitent seeks

absolution. Were they even objectively lawful, they are sins in him,

according to the unanimous determination of casuists. But though what

the conscience reclaims against is necessarily wrong, relatively to

the agent, it does not follow that what it may fail to disapprove is

innocent. Chuse whatever theory we may please as to the moral standard

of actions, they must have an objective rectitude of their own,

independently of their agent, without which there could be no

distinction of right and wrong, or any scope for the dictates of

conscience. The science of ethics, as a science, can only be

conversant with objective morality. Casuistry is the instrument of

applying this science, which, like every other, is built on reasoning,

to the moral nature and volition of man. It rests for its validity on

the great principle, that it is our duty to know, as far as lies in

us, what is right as well as to do what we know to be such. But its

application was beset with obstacles; the extenuations of ignorance

and error were so various, the difficulty of representing the moral

position of the penitent to the judgment of the confessor by any

process of language so insuperable, that the most acute understanding

might be foiled in the task of bringing home a conviction of guilt to

the self-deceiving, sinner. Again, he might aggravate needless

scruples, or disturb the tranquil repose of innocence.

|Directory office of the confessor.|

6. But though past actions are the primary subject of auricular

confession, it was a necessary consequence that the priest would be

frequently called upon to advise as to the future, to bind or loose

the will in incomplete or meditated lines of conduct. And as all

without exception must come before his tribunal, the rich, the noble,

the counsellors of princes, and princes themselves, were to reveal

their designs, to expound their uncertainties, to call, in effect, for

his sanction in all they might have to do, to secure themselves

against transgression by shifting the responsibility on his head. That

this tremendous authority of direction, distinct from the rite of

penance, though immediately springing from it, should have produced a

no more overwhelming influence of the priesthood than it has actually

done, great as that has been, can only be ascribed to the reaction of

human inclinations which will not be controlled, and of human reason

which exerts a silent force against the authority it acknowledges.

|Difficulties of casuistry.|

7. In the directory business of the confessional, far more than in the

penitential, the priest must strive to bring about that union between

subjective and objective rectitude in which the perfection of a moral

act consists, without which in every instance, according to their

tenets, some degree of sinfulness, some liability to punishment

remains, and which must at least be demanded from those who have been

made acquainted with their duty. But when he came from the broad lines

of the moral law, from the decalogue and the Gospel, or even from the

ethical systems of theology, to the indescribable variety of

circumstance which his penitents had to recount, there arose a

multitude of problems, and such as perhaps would most command

his attention, when they involved the practice of the great, to which

he might hesitate to apply an unbending rule. The questions of

casuistry, like those of jurisprudence, were often found to turn on

the great and ancient doubt of both sciences, whether we should abide

by the letter of a general law, or let in an equitable interpretation

of its spirit. The consulting party would be apt to plead for the one;

the guide of conscience would more securely adhere to the other. But

he might also perceive the severity of those rules of obligation which

conduce, in the particular instance, to no apparent end, or even

defeat their own principle. Hence, there arose two schools of

casuistry: first in the practice of confession, and afterwards in the

books intended to assist it; one strict and uncomplying, the other

more indulgent and flexible to circumstances.

|Strict and lax schemes of it.|

8. The characteristics of these systems were displayed in almost the

whole range of morals. They were, however, chiefly seen in the rules

of veracity and especially in promissory obligations. According to the

fathers of the church, and to the rigid casuists in general, a lie was

never to be uttered, a promise was never to be broken. The precepts,

especially of revelation, notwithstanding their brevity and

figurativeness, were held complete and literal. Hence, promises

obtained by mistake, fraud, or force, and, above all, gratuitous vows,

where God was considered as the promisee, however lightly made, or

become intolerably onerous by supervenient circumstances, were

strictly to be fulfilled, unless the dispensing power of the church

might sometimes be sufficient to release them. Besides the respect due

to moral rules, and especially those of Scripture, there had been from

early times in the Christian church a strong disposition to the

ascetic scheme of religious morality; a prevalent notion of the

intrinsic meritoriousness of voluntary self-denial, which

discountenanced all regard in man to his own happiness, at least in

this life, as a sort of flinching from the discipline of suffering.

And this had doubtless its influence upon the severe casuists.

|Convenience of the latter.|

9. But there had not been wanting those who, whatever course they

might pursue in the confessional, found the convenience of an

accommodating morality in the secular affairs of the church. Oaths

were broken, engagements entered into without faith, for the ends of

the clergy, or of those whom they favoured in the struggles of the

world. And some of the ingenious sophistry, by which these breaches of

plain rules are usually defended, was not unknown before the

Reformation. But casuistical writings at that time were comparatively

few. The Jesuits have the credit of first rendering public a scheme of

false morals, which has been denominated from them, and enhanced the

obloquy that overwhelmed their order. Their volumes of casuistry were

exceedingly numerous; some of them belong to the last twenty years of

the sixteenth, but a far greater part to the following century.

|Favoured by the Jesuits.|

10. The Jesuits were prone for several reasons to embrace the laxer

theories of obligation. They were less tainted than the old monastic

orders with that superstition which had flowed into the church from

the east, the meritoriousness of self-inflicted suffering for its own

sake. They embraced a life of toil and danger, but not of habitual

privation and pain. Dauntless in death and torture, they shunned the

mechanical asceticism of the convent. And, secondly, their eyes were

bent on a great end, the good of the Catholic church, which they

identified with that of their own order. It almost invariably happens,

that men who have the good of mankind at heart, and actively prosecute

it, become embarrassed, at some time or other, by the conflict of

particular duties with the best method of promoting their object. An

unaccommodating veracity, an unswerving good faith, will often appear

to stand, or stand really, in the way of their ends; and hence the

little confidence we repose in enthusiasts, even when, in a popular

mode of speaking, they are most sincere; that is, most convinced of

the rectitude of their aim.

|The causes of this.|

11. The course prescribed by Loyola led his disciples not to solitude,

but to the world. They became the associates and counsellors, as well

as the confessors of the great. They had to wield the powers of the

earth for the service of heaven. Hence, in confession itself, they

were often tempted to look beyond the penitent, and to guide his

conscience rather with a view to his usefulness than his integrity. In

questions of morality, to abstain from action is generally the means

of innocence, but to act is indispensable for positive good. Thus

their casuistry had a natural tendency to become more objective, and

to entangle the responsibility of personal conscience in an

inextricable maze of reasoning. They had also to retain their

influence over men not wholly submissive to religious control, nor

ready to abjure the pleasant paths in which they trod; men of the

court and the city, who might serve the church though they did not

adorn it, and for whom it was necessary to make some compromise in

furtherance of the main design.

|Extravagance of the strict casuists.|

12. It must also be fairly admitted, that rigid casuists went to

extravagant lengths. Their decisions were often not only harsh, but

unsatisfactory; the reason demanded in vain a principle of their iron

law; and the common sense of mankind imposed the limitations, which

they were incapable of excluding by anything better than a dogmatic

assertion. Thus, in the cases of promissory obligation, they were

compelled to make some exceptions, and these left it open to rational

inquiry whether more might not be found. They diverged unnecessarily,

as many thought, from the principles of jurisprudence; for the jurists

built their determinations, or professed to do so on what was just and

equitable among men; and though a distinction, frequently very right,

was taken between the _forum exterius_ and _interius_, the

provinces of jurisprudence and casuistry, yet the latter could not, in

these questions of mutual obligation, rest upon wholly different

ground from the former.

|Opposite faults of Jesuits.|

13. The Jesuits, however, fell rapidly into the opposite extreme.

Their subtlety in logic, and great ingenuity in devising arguments,

were employed in sophisms that undermined the foundations of moral

integrity in the heart. They warred with these arms against the

conscience which they were bound to protect. The offences of their

casuistry, as charged by their adversaries, are very multifarious. One

of the most celebrated is the doctrine of equivocation; the innocence

of saying that which is true in a sense meant by the speaker, though

he is aware that it will be otherwise understood. Another is that of

what was called probability; according to which it is lawful, in

doubtful problems of morality, to take the course which appears to

ourselves least likely to be right, provided any one casuistical

writer of good repute has approved it. The multiplicity of books, and

want of uniformity in their decisions, made this a broad path for the

conscience. In the latter instance, as in many others, the

_subjective_ nature of moral obligation was lost sight of; and to

this the scientific treatment of casuistry inevitably contributed.

14. Productions so little regarded as those of the Jesuitical casuists

cannot be dwelt upon. Thomas Sanchez of Cordova, is author of a large

treatise on matrimony, published in 1592; the best, as far as the

canon law is concerned, which has yet been published. But in the

casuistical portion of this work, the most extraordinary indecencies

occur, such as have consigned it to general censure.[322] Some of

these, it must be owned, belong to the rite of auricular confession

itself, as managed in the church of Rome, though they give scandal by

their publication and apparent excess beyond the necessity of the

case. The Summa Casuum Conscientiæ of Toletus, a Spanish Jesuit and

cardinal, which, though published in 1602, belongs to the sixteenth

century, and the casuistical writings of Less, Busenbaum, and Escobar,

may just be here mentioned. The Medulla Casuum Conscientiæ of the

second (Munster, 1645), went through fifty-two editions, the Theologia

Moralis of the last (Lyon, 1646), through forty.[323] Of the

opposition excited by the laxity in moral rules ascribed to the

Jesuits, though it began in some manner during this period, we shall

have more to say in the next.

[322] Bayle, art. Sanchez, expatiates on this, and condemns the

Jesuit; Catilina Cethegum. The later editions of Sanchez De

Matrimonia, are _castigate_.

[323] Ranke, die Päpste, vol. iii.

|Suarez. De Legibus.|

15. Suarez of Granada, by far the greatest man in the department of

moral philosophy whom the order of Loyola produced in this age, or

perhaps in any other, may not improbably have treated of casuistry in

some part of his numerous volumes. We shall, however, gladly leave

this subject to bring before the reader a large treatise of Suarez, on

the principles of natural law, as well as of all positive

jurisprudence. This is entitled, Tractatus de legibus ac Deo

legislatore in decem libros distributus, utriusque fori hominibus non

minus utilis, quam necessarius. It might, with no great impropriety,

perhaps, be placed in any of the three sections of this chapter,

relating not only to moral philosophy, but to politics in some degree,

and to jurisprudence.

|Titles of his ten books.|

16. Suarez begins by laying down the position, that all legislative,

as well as all paternal, power is derived from God, and that the

authority of every law resolves itself into his. For either

the law proceeds immediately from God; or, if it be human, it proceeds

from man as his vicar and minister. The titles of the ten books of

this large treatise are as follows: 1. On the nature of law in

general, and on its causes and consequences; 2. On eternal, natural

law, and that of nations; 3. On positive human law in itself,

considered relatively to human nature, which is also called civil law;

4. On positive ecclesiastical law; 5. On the differences of human

laws, and especially of those that are penal, or in the nature of

penal; 6. On the interpretation, the alteration, and the abolition of

human laws; 7. On unwritten law, which is called custom; 8. On those

human laws which are called favourable, or privileges; 9. On the

positive divine law of the old dispensations; 10. On the positive

divine law of the new dispensation.

|Heads of the second book.|

17. This is a very comprehensive chart of general law, and entitles

Suarez to be accounted such a precursor of Grotius and Puffendorf as

occupied most of their ground, especially that of the latter, though

he cultivated it in a different manner. His volume is a closely

printed folio of 700 pages in double columns. The following heads of

chapters in the second book will show the questions in which Suarez

dealt, and in some degree his method of stating and conducting them.

1. Whether there be any eternal law, and what is its necessity; 2. On

the subject of eternal law, and on the acts it commands; 3. In what

act (actus, not actio, a scholastic term as I conceive), the eternal

law exists (existit), and whether it be one or many; 4. Whether the

eternal law be the cause of other laws, and obligatory through their

means; 5. In what natural law consists; 6. Whether natural law be a

preceptive divine law; 7. On the subject of natural law, and on its

precepts; 8. Whether natural law be one; 9. Whether natural law bind

the conscience; 10. Whether natural law obliges not only to the act

(actus) but to the mode (modum) of virtue. This obscure question seems

to refer to the subjective nature, or motive, of virtuous actions, as

appears by the next; 11. Whether natural law obliges us to act from

love or charity (ad modum operandi ex caritate); 12. Whether natural

law not only prohibits certain actions, but invalidates them when

done; 13. Whether the precepts of the law of nature are intrinsically

immutable; 14. Whether any human authority can alter or dispense with

the natural law; 15. Whether God by his absolute power can dispense

with the law of nature; 16. Whether an equitable interpretation can

ever be admitted in the law of nature; 17. Whether the law of nature

is distinguishable from that of nations; 18. Whether the law of

nations enjoins or forbids anything; 19. By what means we are to

distinguish the law of nature from that of nations; 20. Certain

corollaries; and that the law of nations is both just, and also

mutable.

|Character of such scholastic treatises.|