NATURAL STATE OF MAN ONE OF WAR. 117 gination are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently' wise, or, unless his memory be hurt by disease or ill constitution of organs, excellently foolish. For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man. 2. NATURAL STATE OF MAN ONE OF WAR.-(" LEVIATHAN," PART I., CHAP. XIII.) In the nature of man there are three principal causes of quarrel : first, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name. man. Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known; and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together; so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace. Whatsoever, therefore, is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and, consequently, no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. 1 i. e., in modern language, extraordinarily. 2 Hobbes refers to Thomas Aquinas-the angel of the schools, as he is called-one of the great philosophers of the middle ages. It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things, that nature should thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade and destroy one another: and he may, therefore, not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire, perhaps, to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him, therefore, consider with himself: when taking a journey, he arms himself, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws, and public officers, armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of his fellow-subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow-citizens, when he locks his doors; and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse man's nature in it. The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them; which, till laws be made, they cannot know; nor can any law be made till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it. It may, peradventure, be thought, there never was such a time nor condition of war as this, and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government use to degenerate into, in a civil war. To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties, neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety,2 no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it. Out of this state in which man by nature is placed, he may come partly by his passions, partly by his reason. The passions which incline men to peace are-fear of death, desire of such things 1 Hobbes, it must be remembered, denied all essential distinction between right and wrong. 2 Propriety, in our older authors, means right of property. 3 An anticipation of the well-known modern lines: "The good old law sufficeth them, The good old law, the simple plan, NATURE OF A COMMONWEALTH. 119 as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement: these articles are they which otherwise are called the Laws of Nature. 3. NATURAL LAWS: NATURE OF A COMMONWEALTH.-(“LEVIATHAN,” PART I., CHAP. XIV.; PART II., CHAP. XVIII.) In the state of nature such as has been already described, every man has a right to everything, and as long as this natural right endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And, consequently, it is a precept, or general rule of reason, that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it; the second, the sum of the right of nature, which is, by all means we can to defend ourselves. From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law that a man be willing when others are so too, as far-forth as for peace, and for defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holdeth this right of doing anything he liketh, so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right as well as he, then there is no reason for any one to divest himself of his; for that were to expose himself to prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. This is that law of the gospel: whatsoever ye require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. The final cause, end, or design of men, who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others, in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as has been shown, to the natural passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants, and observation of the laws of nature. For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in. sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, with- . out the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure man at all. The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend men from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort as that by their own industry, and by the fruits of the earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear their person; and every one to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall act, or cause to be acted, in those things which concern the common peace and safety; and therein to submit their wills every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment. This is more than consent or concord; it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth. This is the generation of that great leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god, to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. 4. COMPARISON OF THE PAPACY WITH THE KINGDOM OF FAIRIES.("LEVIATHAN," PART IV., CHAP. XLVII.) From the time that the Bishop of Rome hath gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St Peter, his whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power. The language, also, which they use, both in the churches and in their public acts, being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language? The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope. The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers. The fairies are spirits and ghosts. Fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine, in monasteries, churches, and churchyards. The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do. So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice. The ecclesiastics take the cream of the land, by donations of ignorant men, that stand in awe of them, and by tithes. So also it is in the fable of fairies, that they enter into the dairies, and feast upon the cream which they skim from the milk. What kind of money is current in the kingdom of fairies, 1 e. g., Shakspere. is not recorded in the story. But the ecclesiastics in their receipts accept of the same money that we do; though when they are to make any payment, it is in canonizations, indulgences, and masses. To this, and such-like resemblances between the Papacy and the kingdom of fairies, may be added this, that as the fairies have no existence but in the fancies of ignorant people, rising from the traditions of old wives or old poets, so the spiritual power of the Pope, without the bounds of his own civil dominion, consisteth only in the fear that seduced people stand in, of their excommunications, upon hearing of false miracles, false traditions, and false interpretations of the Scripture. IX. JEREMY TAYLOR. JEREMY TAYLOR was born at Cambridge in 1613. His father, though following the humble profession of a barber, was able to give his son the first rudiments of a learned education, which was afterwards completed in the university of his native town. After he had been ordained, he had the good fortune to attract the attention of Laud, who, at least, had the merit of encouraging learning, and who appointed him his own chaplain, and procured for him some church preferment. Taylor, of course, espoused the cause of Charles in the civil conflicts, and the monarch, duly appreciating his abilities, kept him in personal attendance on himself during the war. He suffered the usual hardships of civil strife; he was taken prisoner by the Parliamentarians in Wales, and was afterwards, oftener than once, thrown into confinement, but without meeting with any harsh treatment. During the usurpation of Cromwell, he officiated privately to small congregations who still ventured to employ the obnoxious Episcopalian ritual; and his piety, learning, eloquence, and mildness of disposition, secured him patrons both in England and Ireland. Shortly after the Restoration he was made Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland, the see of Dromore being afterwards added to his diocese, and he spent the rest of his life in the assiduous discharge of his duties. He died at Lisburn in 1667. Of his works the chief are "Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying," "Ductor Dubitantium, or Cases of Conscience," Liberty of Prophesying," "Golden Grove," "Life of Christ," besides numerous sermons. 66 In point of eloquence, Taylor stands without a rival at the head of our literature; nor is this the only merit of his writings: they are characterized by genuine and unostentatious piety, extensive learning, and lively and poetical fancy, by the soundness of the moral precepts which they inculcate, and the genial kindliness of spirit which they everywhere breathe. His " Liberty of Prophesying" was the first treatise in the language which formally defended the doctrine of religious toleration, and this alone would lay posterity under deep obligations to Taylor. His style, however, is not entirely free from blemish; his fancy is sometimes too exuberant; his periods sometimes run to an excessive length, and are occasionally obscure; |