ment for the absolute power of princes still further, in a work to which he gave the name of Leviathan. Under this appellation he means the body politic; insinuating, that man is an untameable beast of prey, and that government is the strong chain by which he is kept from mischief. The fundamental principles here maintained are the same as in the book De Cive; but as it inveighs more particularly against ecclesiastical tyranny, with the view of subjecting the consciences of men to the civil authority, it lost the author the favor of some powerful protectors he had hitherto enjoyed among the English divines who attended Charles the Second in France; and he even found it convenient to quit that kingdom, and to return to England, where Cromwell (to whose government his political tenets were now as favorable as they were meant to be to the royal claims) suffered him to remain unmolested. The same circumstances operated to his disadvantage after the Restoration, and 'obliged the King, who always retained for him a very strong attachment, to confer his marks of favor on him with the utmost reserve and circumspection.*

The details which I have entered into, with respect to the History of Hobbes's political writings, will be found, by those who may peruse them, to throw much light on the author's reasonings. Indeed, it is only by thus considering them in their connexion with the circumstances of the times, and the fortunes of the writer, that a just notion can be formed of their spirit and tendency.

The ethical principles of Hobbes are so completely interwoven with his political system, that all which has been said of the one may be applied to the other. It is very remarkable, that Descartes should have thought so highly of the former, as to pronounce Hobbes to be "a much greater master of morality than of metaphysics;" a judgment which is of itself sufficient to mark the very low state of ethical science in France about the middle of the seventeenth century. Mr. Addison, on the other hand, gives a decided preference (among all the books written by Hobbes) to his Treatise on Human Nature; and to

* See Note (H.)

his opinion on this point I most implicitly subscribe; including, however, in the same commendation, some of his other philosophical essays on similar topics. They are the only part of his works which it is possible now to read with any interest; and they every where evince in their author, even when he thinks most unsoundly himself, that power of setting his reader a-thinking, which is one of the most unequivocal marks of original genius. They have plainly been studied with the utmost care, both by Locke and Hume. To the former they have suggested some of the most important observations on the Association of Ideas, as well as much of the sophistry displayed in the first book of his Essay, on the Origin of our Knowledge, and on the factitious nature of our moral principles; to the latter, (among a variety of hints of less consequence) his theory concerning the nature of those established connexions among physical events, which it is the business of the natural philosopher to ascertain,* and the substance of his argument against the scholastic doctrine of general conceptions. It is from the works of Hobbes, too, that our later Necessitarians have borrowed the most formidable of those weapons with which they have combated the doctrine of moral liberty; and from the same source has been derived the leading idea which runs through the philological materialism of Mr. Horne Tooke. It is probable, indeed, that this last author borrowed it, at secondhand, from a hint in Locke's Essay; but it is repeatedly stated by Hobbes, in the most explicit and confident terms. Of this idea, (than which, in point of fact, nothing can be imagined more puerile and unsound,) Mr. Tooke's ety

* The same doctrine, concerning the proper object of natural philosophy (commonly ascribed to Mr. Hume, both by his followers and by his opponents,) is to be found in various writers contemporary with Hobbes. It is stated with uncommon precision and clearness, in a book entitled Scepsis Scientifica, or Confessed Ignorance the way to Science; by Joseph Glanvill, (printed in 1665). The whole work is strongly marked with the features of an acute, an original, and (in matters of science) a somewhat sceptical genius; and, when compared with the treatise on witchcraft, by the same author, adds another proof to those already mentioned, of the possible union of the highest intellectual gifts with the most degrading intellectual weaknesses.

With respect to the Scepsis Scientifica, it deserves to be noticed, that the doctrine maintained in it concerning physical causes and effects does not occur in the form of a detached observation, of the value of which the author might not have been fully aware, but is the very basis of the general argument running through all his discussions.

mologies, when he applies them to the solution of metaphysical questions, are little more than an ingenious expansion, adapted and levelled to the comprehension of the multitude.

The speculations of Hobbes, however, concerning the theory of the understanding, do not seem to have been nearly so much attended to during his own life, as some of his other doctrines, which, having a more immediate reference to human affairs, were better adapted to the unsettled and revolutionary spirit of the times. It is by these doctrines, chiefly, that his name has since become so memorable in the annals of modern literature; and although they now derive their whole interest from the extraordinary combination they exhibit of acuteness and subtilty with a dead-palsy in the powers of taste and of moral sensibility, yet they will be found, on an attentive examination, to have had a far more extensive influence on the subsequent history both of political and of ethical science, than any other publication of the same period.

ANTAGONISTS OF HOBBES.

Cudworth * was one of the first who successfully combated this new philosophy. As Hobbes, in the frenzy of his political zeal, had been led to sacrifice wantonly all the principles of religion and morality to the establishment of his conclusions, his works not only gave offence to the friends of liberty, but excited a general alarm among all sound moralists. His doctrine in particular, that there is no natural distinction between Right and Wrong, and that these are dependent on the arbitrary will of the civil magistrate, was so obviously subversive of all the commonly received ideas concerning the moral constitution of human nature, that it became indispensably necessary, either to expose the sophistry of the attempt, or to admit with Hobbes, that man is a beast of prey, incapable of being governed by any motives but fear, and the desire of selfpreservation.

Between some of these tenets of the courtly Hobbists,

* Born 1617, died 1688.

and those inculcated by the Cromwellian Antinomians, there was a very extraordinary and unfortunate coincidence; the latter insisting, that, in expectation of Christ's second coming, "the obligations of morality and natural law were suspended; and that the elect, guided by an internal principle, more perfect and divine, were superior to the beggarly elements of justice and humanity." It was the object of Cudworth to vindicate, against the assaults of both parties, the immutability of moral distinctions.

In the prosecution of his very able argument on this subject, Cudworth displays a rich store of enlightened and choice erudition, penetrated throughout with a peculiar vein of sobered and subdued Platonism, from whence some German systems, which have attracted no small notice in our own times, will be found, when stripped of their deep neological disguise, to have borrowed their most valuable materials.†

* Hume. For a more particular account of the English Antinomians, see Mosheim, vol. iv. p. 534, et seq.

†The mind (according to Cudworth) perceives, by occasion of outward objects, as much more than is presented to it by sense, as a learned man does in the best written book, than an illiterate person or brute. "To the eyes of both, the same characters will appear; but the learned man, in those characters, will see heaven, earth, sun, and stars; reap profound theorems of philosophy or geometry; learn a great deal of new knowledge from them, and admire the wisdom of the composer; while, to the other, nothing appears but black strokes drawn on white paper. The reason of which is, that the mind of the one is furnished with certain previous inward anticipations, ideas, and instruction, that the other wants."--" In the room of this book of human composition let us now substitute the book of Nature, written all over with the characters and impressions of divine wisdom and goodness, but legible only to an intellectual eye. To the sense, both of man and brute, there appears nothing else in it, but as in the other, so many inky scrawls; that is, nothing but figures and colors. But the mind, which hath a participation of the divine wisdom that made it, upon occasion of those sensible delineations, exerting its own inward activity, will have not only a wonderful scene, and large prospects of other thoughts laid open before it, and variety of knowledge, logical, mathematical, and moral displayed; but also clearly read the divine wisdom and goodness in every page of this great volume, as it were written in large and legible characters."

I do not pretend to be an adept in the philosophy of Kant; but I certainly think I pay it a very high compliment, when I suppose, that, in the Critic of Pure Reason, the leading idea is somewhat analogous to what is so much better expressed in the foregoing passage. To Kant it was probably suggested by the following very acute and decisive remark of Leibnitz on Locke's Essay: "Nempe, nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu nisi ipse intellectus."

In justice to Aristotle, it may be here observed, that, although the general strain of his language is strictly conformable to the scholastic maxim just quoted, he does not seem to have altogether overlooked the important exception to it pointed out by Leibnitz. Indeed, this exception or limitation is very nearly a translation of Aristotle's words. Καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ νοῦς νοητός ἐστιν ὥσπερ τὰ νοητά· ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ τῶν ἄνευ ὕλης, τὸ αὐτό ἔστι τὸ νοοῦν καὶ τὸ νοούμενον. "And the mind itself is an object of knowledge, as well as other things which are intelligible. For, in immaterial beings, that which understands is the same with that which is understood." (De Anima, Lib. iii. cap. 5.) I quote this very curious, and, I suspect, very little known sentence, in order to vindi11

VOL. VI.

Another coincidence between the Hobbists and the Antinomians, may be remarked in their common zeal for the scheme of necessity; which both of them stated in such a way as to be equally inconsistent with the moral agency of man, and with the moral attributes of God.* The strongest of all presumptions against this scheme is afforded by the other tenets with which it is almost universally combined; and, accordingly, it was very shrewdly observed by Cudworth, that the licentious system which flourished in his time (under which title, I presume, he comprehended the immoral tenets of the fanatics, as well as of the Hobbists,) "grew up from the doctrine of the fatal necessity of all actions and events, as from its proper root." The unsettled, and, at the same time, disputatious period, during which Cudworth lived, afforded him peculiarly favorable opportunities of judging from experience, of the practical tendency of this metaphysical dogma; and the result of his observations deserves the serious attention of those who may be disposed to regard it in the light of a fair and harmless theme for the display of controversial subtilty. To argue, in this manner, against a speculative principle from its palpable effects, is not always so illogical as some authors have supposed. "You repeat to me incessantly," says Rousseau to one of his correspondents, "that truth can never be injurious to the world. I myself believe so as firmly as you do; and it is for this very reason I am satisfied that your proposition is false." t

But the principal importance of Cudworth, as an ethical writer, arises from the influence of his argument concerning the immutability of right and wrong on the various theories of morals which appeared in the course of the eighteenth century. To this argument may, more particularly, be traced the origin of the celebrated ques

cate Aristotle against the misrepresentations of some of his present idolaters, who, in their anxiety to secure to him all the credit of Locke's doctrine concerning the Origin of our Ideas, have overlooked the occasional traces which occur in his works, of that higher and sounder philosophy in which he had been educated.

The doctrines of fate or destiny were deemed by the Independents essential to all religion. In these rigid opinions, the whole sectaries, amidst all other differences, unanimously concurred." Hume's History, chap. lvii.

"Vous répétez sans cesse que la vérité ne peut jamais faire de mal aux hommes; je le crois, et c'est pour moi la preuve que ce que vous dites n'est pas la vérité.”