40. Spinoza, like Bacon, found the assumption of ends which things were meant to fulfil in the way of accurate inquiry into what things are (materially) and do. He held Plato and Aristotle cheap as compared with Democritus and Epicurus (Epist. LX. 13). Accordingly he considers the individual apart from his vocation as a member of society, the state apart from its office as enabling the individual to fulfil that vocation. Each, so considered, is merely a vehicle of so much power (natural force). On the other hand, he recognises a difference between a higher and lower, a better and worse, state of civil society, and a possibility of seeking the better state because it is understood to be better. And this is to admit the possibility of the course of human affairs being affected by the conception of a final cause. It is characteristic of Spinoza that while he never departs from the principle 'homo naturae pars,' he ascribes to him the faculty of understanding the order of nature, and of conforming to it or obeying it in a new way on account of that understanding. In other words, he recognised the distinction called by Kant the distinction between determination according to law and determination according to the consciousness of law; though in his desire to assert the necessity of each kind of determination he tends to disguise the distinction and to ignore the fact that, if rational determination (or the determination by a conception of a law) is a part of nature, it is so in quite a different sense from determination merely according to laws of nature. As he puts it, the clear understanding that we are parts of nature, and of our position in the universe of things, will yield a new character. We shall only then desire what is ordained for us and shall find rest in the truth, in the knowledge of what is necessary. This he regards as the highest state of the individual, and the desire to attain it he evidently considers the supreme motive by which the individual should be governed. The analogue in political life to this highest state of the individual is the direction of the 'imperium' by a 'libera multitudo' to the attainment of 'pax vitaeque securitas' in the high sense which he attaches to those words in Tract. Pol. cap. V. [1]
[1] Cp. Eth. IV. Appendix, xxxii. 'Ea quae nobis eveniunt contra id, quod nostrae utilitatis ratio postulat, aequo animo feremus, si conscii simus nos functos nostro officio fuisse, et potentiam, quam habemus, non potuisse se eo usque extendere, ut eadem vitare possemus, nosque partem totius naturae esse, cujus ordinem sequimur. Quod si clare et distincte intelligamus, pars illa nostri, quae intelligentia definitur, hoc est, pars melior nostri, in eo plane acquiescet et in ea acquiescentia perseverare conabitur. Nam quatenus intelligimus, nihil appetere nisi id, quod necessarium est, nec absolute nisi in veris acquiescere possumus; adeoque quatenus haec recte intelligimus, eatenus conatus melioris partis nostri cum ordine totius naturae convenit.' Eth. IV. Preface … 'Per bonum … intelligam id, quod certo scimus medium esse, ut ad exemplar humanae naturae, quod nobis proponimus, magis magisque accedamus…. Deinde homines perfectiores aut imperfectiores dicemus, quatenus ad hoc idem exemplar magis aut minus accedunt.'
41. The conclusion, then, is that Spinoza did really, though not explicitly, believe in a final cause determining human life. That is to say, he held that the conception of an end consisting in the greater perfection of life on the part of the individual and the community might, and to some extent did, determine the life of the individual and the community. He would have said no doubt that this end, like every good, existed only in our consciousness; that it was 'nihil positivum in rebus in se consideratis' (Ethics, IV. Preface); but an existence of the end in human consciousness, determining human action, is a sufficiently real existence, without being 'positivum in rebus.' But he made the mistake of ignoring the more confused and mixed forms in which the conception of this end operates; of recognising it only in the forms of the philosophic 'amor Dei,' or in the wisdom of the exceptional citizen, whom alone he would admit 'ratione duci.' And in particular he failed to notice that it is the consciousness of such an end to which his powers may be directed, that constitutes the individual's claim to exercise them as rights, just as it is the recognition of them by a society as capable of such direction which renders them actually rights; in short that, just as according to him nothing is good or evil but thinking makes it so, so it is only thinking that makes a might a right,—a certain conception of the might as relative to a social good on the part at once of the person or persons exercising it, and of a society which it affects.
C. HOBBES.
42. All the more fruitful elements in Spinoza's political doctrine are lacking in that of Hobbes, but the principle of the two theories is very much the same. Each begins with the supposition of an existence of human individuals, unaffected by society, and each struggling for existence against the rest, so that men are 'natura hostes.' Each conceives 'jus naturale' as = 'potentia naturalis.' But Spinoza carries out this conception much more consistently. He does not consider that the natural right, which is might, ceases to exist or becomes anything else when a multitude combine their natural rights or mights in an 'imperium.' If the ostensible 'imperium' comes into collision with the powers of individuals, single or combined, among those who have hitherto been subject to it, and proves the weaker, it ipso facto ceases to be an 'imperium.' Not having superior power, it no longer has superior right to the 'subditi.' It is on this principle, as we have seen, that he deals with the question of limitations to the right of a sovereign. Its rights are limited because its powers are so. Exercised in certain ways and directions they defeat themselves. Thus as he puts it in Epist. L. (where he points out his difference from Hobbes), 'Supremo magistratui in qualibet urbe non plus in subditos juris, quam juxta mensuram potestatis, qua subditum superat, competere statuo.' Hobbes, on the other hand, supposes his sovereign power to have an absolute right to the submission of all its subjects, singly or collectively, irrespectively of the question of its actual power against them. This right he considers it to derive from a covenant by which individuals, weary of the state of war, have agreed to devolve their 'personae,' in the language of Roman law, upon some individual or collection of individuals, which is henceforward to represent them, and to be considered as acting with, their combined powers. This covenant being in the nature of the case irrevocable, the sovereign derives from it an indefeasible right to direct the actions of all members of the society over which it is sovereign.
43. The doctrine may be found in Leviathan, Part II., chapter 17. In order 'to erect such a common power as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners and the injuries of one another,' men 'confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of men,' … i.e. 'appoint one man or assembly of men to bear their person…. This is more than consent and concord; it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such a manner as if every man should say to every man, 'I authorise, and give up my right of governing myself to this man or this assembly of men, on condition that thou give up thy right to him and authorise all his actions in like manner.' This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth, in Latin civitas … which (to define it) is one person, of whose acts a great multitude by mutual covenant one with another have made themselves everyone the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence. And he that carrieth this person is called sovereign, and said to have sovereign power; and everyone besides, his subject.'
44. In order to understand the form in which the doctrine is stated, we have to bear in mind the sense in which 'persona' is used by the Roman lawyers, as = either a complex of rights, or the subject (or possessor) of those rights, whether a single individual or a corporate body. In this sense of the word, a man's person is separable from his individual existence as a man. 'Unus homo sustinet plures personas.' A magistrate, e.g., would be one thing in respect of what he is in himself, another thing in respect of his 'persona' or complex of rights belonging to him as a magistrate, and so too a monarch. On the same principle, a man, remaining a man as before, might devolve his 'persona,' the complex of his rights, on another. A son, when by the death of his father according to Roman law he was delivered from 'patria potestas' and became in turn head of a family, acquired a 'persona' which he had not before, the 'persona' which had previously belonged to the father. Again, to take a modern instance, the fellows of a college, as a corporation, form one 'persona,' but each of them would bear other 'persons,' if, e.g., they happened to be magistrates, or simply in respect of their rights as citizens. Thus 'one person' above = one sustainer of rights; while in the second passage, … 'carrieth this person,' it rather = the rights sustained.
45. Hobbes expressly states that the sovereign 'person' may be an assembly of men, but the natural associations of the term, when the sovereign is spoken of as a person, favour the development of a monarchical doctrine of sovereignty.
Sovereign power is attained either by acquisition or institution. By acquisition, when a man makes his children and their children, or a conqueror his enemies, to submit under fear of death. By institution, when men agree among themselves to submit to some man or assembly 'on confidence to be protected against all others.' Hobbes speaks (II. 17, end) as if there were two ways by which a commonwealth and a sovereign defined as above could be brought into existence, but clearly a sovereign by acquisition is not a sovereign in the sense explained. He does not 'carry a person of whose acts a great multitude by mutual covenant one with another, have made themselves everyone the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence.' And what Hobbes describes in the sequel (c. 18) are, as he expressly says, rights of sovereigns by institution; but he seems tacitly to assume that every sovereign may claim the same, though he could hardly have supposed that the existing sovereignties were in their origin other than sovereignties by acquisition.
'A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men covenant, everyone with everyone, that to whatsoever man or assembly of men shall be given by the major part the right to represent the person of them all, everyone, as well he that voted for it as he that voted against it, shall authorise all the actions and judgments of that man or assembly of men, in the same manner as if they were his own, to the end to live peaceably amongst themselves, and to be protected against other men' (c. 18). Here a distinction is drawn between the covenant of all with all to be bound by the act of the majority in appointing a sovereign, and that act of appointment itself which is not a covenant of all with all. The natural conclusion would be that it was no violation of the covenant if the majority afterwards transferred the sovereign power to other hands. But in the sequel Hobbes expressly makes out such a transference to be a violation of the original compact. This is an instance of his desire to vindicate the absolute right of a de facto monarch.