HOBBES, AND HIS QUARRELS;
INCLUDING
AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS CHARACTER.
Why Hobbes disguised his sentiments—why his philosophy degraded him—of the sect of the Hobbists—his Leviathan; its principles adapted to existing circumstances—the author’s difficulties on its first appearance—the system originated in his fears, and was a contrivance to secure the peace of the nation—its duplicity and studied ambiguity illustrated by many facts—the advocate of the national religion—accused of atheism—Hobbe’s religion—his temper too often tried—attacked by opposite parties—Bishop Fell’s ungenerous conduct—makes Hobbes regret that juries do not consider the quarrels of authors of any moment—the mysterious panic which accompanied him through life—its probable cause—he pretends to recant his opinions—he is speculatively bold, and practically timorous—an extravagant specimen of the anti-social philosophy—the SELFISM of Hobbes—his high sense of his works, in regard to foreigners and posterity—his monstrous egotism—his devotion to his literary pursuits—the despotic principle of the Leviathan of an innocent tendency—the fate of systems of opinions.
The history of the philosopher of Malmesbury exhibits a large picture of literary controversy, where we may observe how a persecuting spirit in the times drives the greatest men to take refuge in the meanest arts of subterfuge. Compelled to disguise their sentiments, they will not, however, suppress them; and hence all their ambiguous proceedings, all that ridicule and irony, and even recantation, with which ingenious minds, when forced to their employ, have never failed to try the patience, or the sagacity, of intolerance.[348]
The character of Hobbes will, however, serve a higher moral design. The force of his intellect, the originality of his views, and the keenest sagacity of observation, place him in the first order of minds; but he has mortified, and then degraded man into a mere selfish animal. From a cause we shall discover, he never looked on human nature but in terror or in contempt. The inevitable consequence of that mode of thinking, or that system of philosophy, is to make the philosopher the abject creature he has himself imagined; and it is then he libels the species from his own individual experience.[349] 438 More generous tempers, men endowed with warmer imaginations, awake to sympathies of a higher nature, will indignantly reject the system, which has reduced the unlucky system-maker himself to such a pitiable condition.
Hobbes was one of those original thinkers who create a new era in the philosophical history of their nation, and perpetuate their name by leaving it to a sect.[350]
The eloquent and thinking Madame de Staël has asserted that “Hobbes was an Atheist and a Slave.” Yet I still think that Hobbes believed, and proved, the necessary existence of a Deity, and that he loved freedom, as every sage desires it. It is now time to offer an apology for one of those great men who are the contemporaries of all ages, and, by fervent inquiry, to dissipate that traditional cloud which hangs over one of “those monuments of the mind” which Genius has built with imperishable materials.
The author of the far-famed “Leviathan” is considered as a vehement advocate for absolute monarchy. This singular production may, however, be equally adapted for a republic; and the monstrous principle may be so innocent in its nature, as even to enter into our own constitution, which presumes to be neither.[351]
As “The Leviathan” produced the numerous controversies of Hobbes, a history of this great moral curiosity enters into our subject.
Hobbes, living in times of anarchy, perceived the necessity of re-establishing authority with more than its usual force. But how were the divided opinions of men to melt together, and where in the State was to be placed absolute power? for a remedy of less force he could not discover for that disordered state of society which he witnessed. Was the sovereign or the people to be invested with that mighty power which was to keep every other quiescent?—a topic which had been discussed for ages, and still must be, as the humours of men incline—was, I believe, a matter perfectly indifferent to our philosopher, provided that whatever might be the government, absolute power could somewhere be lodged in it, to force men to act in strict conformity. He discovers his perplexity in the dedication of his work. “In a way beset with those that contend on one side for too great liberty, on the other side for too much authority, ’tis hard to pass between the points of both unwounded.” It happened that our cynical Hobbes had no respect for his species; terrified at anarchy, he seems to have lost all fear when he flew to absolute power—a sovereign remedy unworthy of a great spirit, though convenient for a timid one like his own. Hobbes considered men merely as animals of prey, living in a state of perpetual hostility, and his solitary principle of action was self-preservation at any price.
He conjured up a political phantom, a favourite and fanciful notion, that haunted him through life. He imagined that the many might be more easily managed by making them up into an artificial One, and calling this wonderful political unity the Commonwealth, or the Civil Power, or the Sovereign, or by whatever name was found most pleasing; he personified it by the image of “Leviathan.”[352]
At first sight the ideal monster might pass for an innocent conceit; and there appears even consummate wisdom in erecting a colossal power for our common security; but Hobbes assumed that Authority was to be supported to its extreme pitch. Force with him appeared to constitute right, and unconditional submission then became a duty: these were consequences quite natural to one who at his first step degraded man by comparing him to a watch, and who would not have him go but with the same nicety of motion, wound up by a great key.
To be secure, by the system of Hobbes, we must at least lose the glory of our existence as intellectual beings. He would persuade us into the dead quietness of a commonwealth of puppets, while he was consigning into the grasp of his “Leviathan,” or sovereign power, the wire that was to communicate a mockery of vital motion—a principle of action without freedom. The system was equally desirable to the Protector Cromwell as to the regal Charles. A conspiracy against mankind could not alarm their governors: it is not therefore surprising that the usurper offered Hobbes the office of Secretary of State; and that he was afterwards pensioned by the monarch.
A philosophical system, moral or political, is often nothing more than a temporary expedient to turn aside the madness of the times by substituting what offers an appearance of relief; nor is it a little influenced by the immediate convenience of the philosopher himself; his personal character enters a good deal into the system. The object of Hobbes in 442 his “Leviathan” was always ambiguous, because it was, in truth, one of these systems of expediency, conveniently adapted to what has been termed of late “existing circumstances.” His sole aim was to keep all things in peace, by creating one mightiest power in the State, to suppress instantly all other powers that might rise in insurrection. In his times, the establishment of despotism was the only political restraint he could discover of sufficient force to chain man down, amid the turbulence of society; but this concealed end he is perpetually shifting and disguising; for the truth is, no man loved slavery less.[353]
The system of Hobbes could not be limited to politics: he knew that the safety of the people’s morals required an Established Religion. The alliance between Church and State had been so violently shaken, that it was necessary to cement them once more. As our philosopher had been terrified in his politics by the view of its contending factions, so, in religion, he experienced the same terror at the hereditary rancours of its multiplied sects. He could devise no other means than to attack the mysteries and dogmas of theologians, those after-inventions and corruptions of Christianity, by which the artifices of their chiefs had so long split them into perpetual 444 factions:[354] he therefore asserted that the religion of the people ought to exist, in strict conformity to the will of the State.[355]
When Hobbes wrote against mysteries, the mere polemics sent forth a cry of his impiety; the philosopher was branded with Atheism;—one of those artful calumnies, of which, after 445 a man has washed himself clean, the stain will be found to have dyed the skin.[356]
To me it appears that Hobbes, to put an end to these religious wars, which his age and country had witnessed, perpetually kindled by crazy fanatics and intolerant dogmatists, insisted that the crosier should be carried in the left hand of 447 his Leviathan, and the sword in his right.[357] He testified, as strongly as man could, by his public actions, that he was a Christian of the Church of England, “as by law established,” and no enemy to the episcopal order; but he dreaded the encroachments 448 of the Churchmen in his political system; jealous of that supremacy at which some of them aimed. Many enlightened bishops sided with the philosopher.[358] At a time when Milton sullenly withdrew from every public testimonial of divine worship, Hobbes, with more enlightened views, attended Church service, and strenuously supported an established religion; yet one is deemed a religious man, and the other an Atheist! Were the actions of men to be decisive of their characters, the reverse might be inferred.
The temper of our philosopher, so ill-adapted to contradiction, was too often tried; and if, as his adversary, Harrington, in the “Oceana,” says, “Truth be a spark whereunto objections are like bellows,” the mind of Hobbes, for half a century, was a very forge, where the hammer was always beating, and the flame was never allowed to be extinguished. Charles II. strikingly described his worrying assailants. “Hobbes,” said the king, “was a bear against whom the Church played their young dogs, in order to exercise them.”[359] A strange repartee has preserved the causticity of his wit. Dr. Eachard, perhaps one of the prototypes of Swift, wrote two admirable ludicrous dialogues, in ridicule of Hobbes’s “State of Nature.”[360] These 449 were much extolled, and kept up the laugh against the philosophic misanthropist: once when he was told that the clergy said that “Eachard had crucified Hobbes,” he bitterly retorted, “Why, then, don’t they fall down and worship me?”[361]
“The Leviathan” was ridiculed by the wits, declaimed against by the republicans, denounced by the monarchists, and menaced by the clergy. The commonwealth man, the dreamer of equality, Harrington, raged at the subtile advocate for despotic power; but the glittering bubble of his fanciful “Oceana” only broke on the mighty sides of the Leviathan, wasting its rainbow tints: the mitred Bramhall, at “The Catching of Leviathan, or the Great Whale,” flung his harpoon, demonstrating consequences from the principles of Hobbes, which he as eagerly denied. But our ambiguous philosopher had the hard fate to be attacked even by those who were labouring to the same end.[362] The literary wars of Hobbes were fierce and long; heroes he encountered, but heroes too were fighting by his side. Our chief himself wore a kind of magical armour; for, either he denied the consequences his adversaries deduced from his principles, or he surprised by new conclusions, which many could not discover in them; but by such means he had not only the art of infusing confidence among the Hobbists, but the greater one of dividing his adversaries, who often retreated, rather fatigued than victorious. Hobbes owed this partly to the happiness of a genius which excelled in controversy, but more, perhaps, to the advantage of the ground he occupied as a metaphysician: the usual darkness of that spot is favourable to those shiftings and turnings which the equivocal 450 possessor may practise with an unwary assailant. Far different was the fate of Hobbes in the open daylight of mathematics: there his hardy genius lost him, and his sophistry could spin no web; as we shall see in the memorable war of twenty years waged between Hobbes and Dr. Wallis. But the gall of controversy was sometimes tasted, and the flames of persecution flashed at times in the closet of our philosopher. The ungenerous attack of Bishop Fell, who, in the Latin translation of Wood’s “History of the University of Oxford,” had converted eulogium into the most virulent abuse,[363] without the participation of Wood, who resented it 451 with his honest warmth, was only an arrow snatched from a quiver which was every day emptying itself on the devoted head of our ambiguous philosopher. Fell only vindicated himself by a fresh invective on “the most vain and waspish animal of Malmesbury,” and Hobbes was too frightened to reply. This was the Fell whom it was so difficult to assign a reason for not liking:
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I don’t like thee, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell, But I don’t like thee, Dr. Fell! |
A curious incident in the history of the mind of this philosopher, was the mysterious panic which accompanied him to his latest day. It has not been denied that Hobbes was subject to occasional terrors: he dreaded to be left without company; and a particular instance is told, that on the Earl of Devonshire’s removal from Chatsworth, the philosopher, then in a dying state, insisted on being carried away, though on a feather-bed. Various motives have been suggested to account for this extraordinary terror. Some declared he was afraid of spirits; but he was too stout a materialist![364]—another, that he dreaded assassination; an ideal poniard indeed might scare even a materialist. But Bishop Atterbury, in a sermon on the Terrors of Conscience, illustrates their nature by the character of our philosopher. Hobbes is there accused of attempting to destroy the principles of religion against his own inward conviction: this would only prove the insanity of 452 Hobbes! The Bishop shows that “the disorders of conscience are not a continued, but an intermitting disease;” so that the patient may appear at intervals in seeming health and real ease, till the fits return: all this he applies to the case of our philosopher. In reasoning on human affairs, the shortest way will be to discover human motives. The spirit, or the assassin of Hobbes, arose from the bill brought into Parliament, when the nation was panic-struck on the fire of London, against Atheism and Profaneness; he had a notion that a writ de heretico comburendo was intended for him by Bishop Seth Ward, his quondam admirer.[365] His spirits would sink at those moments; for in the philosophy of Hobbes, the whole universe was concentrated in the small space of Self. There was no length he refused to go for what he calls “the natural right of preservation, which we all receive from the uncontrollable dictates of Necessity.” He exhausts his imagination in the forcible descriptions of his extinction: “the terrible enemy of nature, Death,” is always before him. The “inward horror” he felt of his extinction, Lord Clarendon thus alludes to: “If Mr. Hobbes and some other man were both condemned to death (which is the most formidable thing Mr. Hobbes can conceive)”—and Dr. Eachard rallies him on the infinite anxiety he bestowed on his body, and thinks that “he had better compound to be kicked and beaten twice a day, than to be so dismally tortured about an old rotten carcase.” Death was perhaps the only subject about which Hobbes would not dispute.
Such a materialist was then liable to terrors; and though, 453 when his works were burnt, the author had not a hair singed, the convulsion of the panic often produced, as Bishop Atterbury expresses it, “an intermitting disease.”
Persecution terrified Hobbes, and magnanimity and courage were no virtues in his philosophy. He went about hinting that he was not obstinate (that is, before the Bench of Bishops); that his opinions were mere conjectures, proposed as exercises for the powers of reasoning. He attempted (without meaning to be ludicrous) to make his opinions a distinct object from his person; and, for the good order of the latter, he appealed to the family chaplain for his attendance at divine service, from whence, however, he always departed at the sermon, insisting that the chaplain could not teach him anything. It was in one of these panics that he produced his “Historical Narrative of Heresy, and the Punishment thereof,” where, losing the dignity of the philosophic character, he creeps into a subterfuge with the subtilty of the lawyer; insisting that “The Leviathan,” being published at a time when there was no distinction of creeds in England (the Court of High Commission having been abolished in the troubles), that therefore none could be heretical.[366]
No man was more speculatively bold, and more practically timorous;[367] and two very contrary principles enabled him, through an extraordinary length of life, to deliver his opinions and still to save himself: these were his excessive vanity and his excessive timidity. The one inspired his hardy originality, and the other prompted him to protect himself by any means. His love of glory roused his vigorous intellect, while his fears shrunk him into his little self. Hobbes, engaged in the cause of truth, betrayed her dignity by his ambiguous and abject conduct: this was a consequence of his selfish philosophy; and this conduct has yielded no dubious triumph to the noble school which opposed his cynical principles.
A genius more luminous, sagacity more profound, and morals less tainted, were never more eminently combined than in this very man, who was so often reduced to the most abject state. But the anti-social philosophy of Hobbes terminated in preserving a pitiful state of existence. He who considered nothing more valuable than life, degraded himself by the meanest artifices of self-love,[368] and exulted in the most cynical 455 truths.[369] The philosophy of Hobbes, founded on fear and suspicion, and which, in human nature, could see nothing beyond himself, might make him a wary politician, but always an imperfect social being. We find, therefore, that the philosopher of Malmesbury adroitly retained a friend at court, to protect him at an extremity; but considering all men alike, as bargaining for themselves, his friends occasioned him as much uneasiness as his enemies. He lived in dread that the Earl of Devonshire, whose roof had ever been his protection, should at length give him up to the Parliament! There are no friendships among cynics!
To such a state of degradation had the selfish philosophy reduced one of the greatest geniuses; a philosophy true only for the wretched and the criminal.[370] But those who feel moving 456 within themselves the benevolent principle, and who delight in acts of social sympathy, are conscious of passions and motives, which the others have omitted in their system. And the truth is, these “unnatural philosophers,” as Lord Shaftesbury expressively terms them, are by no means the monsters they tell us they are: their practice is therefore usually in opposition to their principles. While Hobbes was for chaining down mankind as so many beasts of prey, he surely betrayed his social passion, in the benevolent warnings he was perpetually 457 giving them; and while he affected to hold his brothers in contempt, he was sacrificing laborious days, and his peace of mind, to acquire celebrity. Who loved glory more than this sublime cynic?—“Glory,” says our philosopher, “by those whom it displeaseth, is called Pride; by those whom it pleaseth, it is termed a just valuation of himself.”[371] Had Hobbes defined, as critically, the passion of self-love, without resolving all our sympathies into a single monstrous one, we might have been disciplined without being degraded.
Hobbes, indeed, had a full feeling of the magnitude of his labours, both for foreigners and posterity, as he has expressed it in his life. He disperses, in all his works, some Montaigne-like notices of himself, and they are eulogistic. He has not omitted any one of his virtues, nor even an apology for his deficiency in others. He notices with complacency how Charles II. had his portrait placed in the royal cabinet; how it was frequently asked for by his friends, in England and in France.[372] He has written his life several times, in verse and in prose; and never fails to throw into the eyes of his adversaries the reputation he gained abroad and at home.[373] He 458 delighted to show he was living, by annual publications; and exultingly exclaims, “That when he had silenced his adversaries, he published, in the eighty-seventh year of his life, the Odyssey of Homer, and the next year the Iliad, in English verse.”
His greatest imperfection was a monstrous egotism—the fate of those who concentrate all their observations in their own individual feelings. There are minds which may think too much, by conversing too little with books and men. Hobbes exulted he had read little; he had not more than half-a-dozen books about him; hence he always saw things in his own way, and doubtless this was the cause of his mania for disputation.
He wrote against dogmas with a spirit perfectly dogmatic. He liked conversation on the terms of his own political system, provided absolute authority was established, peevishly referring to his own works whenever contradicted; and his friends stipulated with strangers, that “they should not dispute with the old man.” But what are we to think of that pertinacity of opinion which he held even with one as great as himself? Selden has often quitted the room, or Hobbes been driven from it, in the fierceness of their battle.[374] Even to his latest day, the “war of words” delighted the man of confined reading. The literary duels between Hobbes and another hero celebrated in logomachy, the Catholic priest, Thomas White, have been recorded by Wood. They had both passed their eightieth year, and were fond of paying visits to one another: but the two literary Nestors never met to part in cool blood, “wrangling, squabbling, and scolding on philosophical matters,” as our blunt and lively historian has described.[375]
His little qualities were the errors of his own selfish philosophy; his great ones were those of nature. He was a votary to his studies:[376] he avoided marriage, to which he was inclined; and refused place and wealth, which he might have enjoyed, for literary leisure. He treated with philosophic pleasantry his real contempt of money.[377] His health and his studies were the sole objects of his thoughts; and notwithstanding 460 that panic which so often disturbed them, he wrote and published beyond his ninetieth year. He closes the metrical history of his life with more dignity than he did his life itself; for his mind seems always to have been greater than his actions. He appeals to his friends for the congruity of his life with his writings; for his devotion to justice; and for a generous work, which no miser could have planned; and closes thus:—
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And now complete my four-and-eighty years, Life’s lengthen’d plot is o’er, and the last scene appears.[378] |
Of the works of Hobbes we must not conclude, as Hume tells us, that “they have fallen into neglect;” nor, in the style with which they were condemned at Oxford, that “they are pernicious and damnable.” The sanguine opinion of the author himself was, that the mighty “Leviathan” will stand for all ages, defended by its own strength; for the rule of justice, the reproof of the ambitious, the citadel of the Sovereign, and the peace of the people.[379] But the smaller 461 treatises of Hobbes are not less precious. Locke is the pupil of Hobbes, and it may often be doubtful whether the scholar has rivalled the nervous simplicity and the energetic originality of his master.
The genius of Hobbes was of the first order; his works abound with the most impressive truths, in all the simplicity of thought and language, yet he never elevates nor delights. Too faithful an observer of the miserable human nature before him, he submits to expedients; he acts on the defensive; and because he is in terror, he would consider security to be the happiness of man. In Religion he would stand by an established one; yet thus he deprives man of that moral freedom which God himself has surely allowed us. Locke has the glory of having first given distinct notions of the nature of toleration. In Politics his great principle is the establishment of Authority, or, as he terms it, an “entireness of sovereign power:” here he seems to have built his arguments with such eternal truths and with such a contriving wisdom as to adapt his system to all the changes of government. Hobbes found it necessary in his day to place this despotism in the hands of his colossal monarch; and were Hobbes now living, he would not relinquish the principle, though perhaps he might vary the application; for if Authority, strong as man can create it, is not suffered to exist in our free constitution, what will become of our freedom? Hobbes would now maintain his system by depositing his “entireness of sovereign power” in the Laws of his Country. So easily shifted is the vast political machine of the much abused “Leviathan!” The Citizen of Hobbes, like the Prince of Machiavel, is alike innocent, when the end of their authors is once detected, amid those ambiguous means by which the hard necessity of their times constrained their mighty genius to disguise itself.
It is, however, remarkable of Systems of Opinions, that the founder’s celebrity has usually outlived his sect’s. Why are systems, when once brought into practice, so often discovered to be fallacies? It seems to me the natural progress of 462 system-making. A genius of this order of invention long busied with profound observations and perpetual truths, would appropriate to himself this assemblage of his ideas, by stamping his individual mark on them; for this purpose he strikes out some mighty paradox, which gives an apparent connexion to them all: and to this paradox he forces all parts into subserviency. It is a minion of the fancy, which his secret pride supports, not always by the most scrupulous means. Hence the system itself, with all its novelty and singularity, turns out to be nothing more than an ingenious deception carried on for the glory of the inventor; and when his followers perceive they were the dupes of his ingenuity, they are apt, in quitting the system, to give up all; not aware that the parts are as true as the whole together is false; the sagacity of Genius collected the one, but its vanity formed the other!