Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.”
[47] “Les troupes réglées, peste et dépopulation de l’Europe, ne sont bonnes qu’a deux fins: ou pour attaquer et conquérir les voisins, ou pour enchâiner et asservir les citoyens.” (Gouvernement de Pologne, Ch. XII.)
[48] Hobbes realises clearly that there probably never was such a state of war all over the world nor a state of nature conforming to a common type. The case is parallel to the use of the term “original contract” as an explanation of the manner in which the civil state came to be formed. (Cf. p. 52, note.)
See also Hume (Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Sect. III. Part I.). “This poetical fiction of the golden age is, in some respects, of a piece with the philosophical fiction of the state of nature; only that the former is represented as the most charming and most peaceable condition, which can possibly be imagined; whereas the latter is painted out as a state of mutual war and violence, attended with the most extreme necessity.” This fiction of a state of nature as a state of war, says Hume, (in a note to this passage) is not the invention of Hobbes. Plato (Republic, II. III. IV.) refutes a hypothesis very like it, and Cicero (Pro Sext. l. 42) regards it as a fact universally acknowledged.
Cf. also Spinoza (Tract. Pol. c. ii. § 14): “Homines ex natura hostes.” And (c. v. § 2): “Homines civiles non nascuntur sed fiunt.” These expressions are to be understood, says Bluntschli (Theory of the State, IV. Ch. vi., p. 284, note a), “rather as a logical statement of what would be the condition of man apart from civil society, than as distinctly implying a historical theory.”
While starting from the same premises, Spinoza carries Hobbes’ political theories to their logical conclusion. If we admit that right lies with might, then right is with the people in any revolution successfully carried out. (But see Hobbes’ Preface to the Philosophical Rudiments and Kant’s Perpetual Peace, p. 188, note.) Spinoza, in a letter, thus alludes to this point of difference:—“As regards political theories, the difference which you inquire about between Hobbes and myself, consists in this, that I always preserve natural right intact, and only allot to the chief magistrates in every state a right over their subjects commensurate with the excess of their power over the power of the subjects. This is what always takes place in the state of nature.” (Epistle 50, Works, Bohn’s ed., Vol. II.)
[49] The italics are mine.—[Tr.]
[50] Professor Paulsen (Immanuel Kant, 2nd ed., 1899, p. 359—Eng. trans., p. 353) points out that pessimism and absolutism usually go together in the doctrines of philosophers. He gives as instances Hobbes, Kant and Schopenhauer.
Hobbes (On Dominion, Ch. X. 3, seq.) regarded an absolute monarchy as the only proper form of government, while in the opinion of Locke, (On Civil Government, II. Ch. VII. §§ 90, 91) it was no better than a state of nature. Kant would not have gone quite so far. As a philosopher, he upheld the sovereignty of the people and rejected a monarchy which was not governed in accordance with republican principles; as a citizen, he denied the right of resistance to authority. (Cf. Perpetual Peace, pp. 126, 188, note.)