Thomas Hobbes.
THE AUTHOR’S
PREFACE TO THE READER.
Reader, I promise thee here such things, which ordinarily promised do seem to challenge the greatest attention, (whether thou regard the dignity or profit of the matter treated, or the right method of handling it, or the honest motive and good advice to undertake it, or lastly the moderation of the author,) and I lay them here before thine eyes. In this book thou shalt find briefly described the duties of men: first, as men; then as subjects; lastly, as Christians. Under which duties are contained, not only the elements of the laws of nature and of nations, together with the true original and power of justice; but also the very essence of Christian religion itself, so far forth as the measure of this my purpose could well bear it.
Which kind of doctrine, excepting what relates to Christian religion, the most ancient sages did judge fittest to be delivered to posterity, either curiously adorned with verse, or clouded with allegories, as a most beautiful and hallowed mystery of royal authority; lest by the disputations of private men it might be defiled. Other philosophers in the mean time, to the advantage of mankind, did contemplate the faces and motions of things; others, without disadvantage, their natures and causes. But in after times, Socrates is said to have been the first who truly loved this civil science; although hitherto not thoroughly understood, yet glimmering forth as through a cloud in the government of the commonweal: and that he set so great a value on this, that utterly abandoning and despising all other parts of philosophy, he wholly embraced this, as judging it only worthy the labour of his mind. After him comes Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other philosophers, as well Greek as Latin. And now at length all men of all nations, not only philosophers but even the vulgar, have and do still deal with this as a matter of ease, exposed and prostitute to every mother-wit, and to be attained without any great care or study. And, which makes mainly for its dignity, those who suppose themselves to have it, or are in such employment as they ought to have it, do so wonderfully please themselves in its idea, as they easily brook the followers of other arts to be esteemed and styled ingenuous, learned, skilful, and what you will, except prudent: for this name, in regard of civil knowledge, they presume to be due to themselves only. Whether therefore the worth of arts is to be weighed by the worthiness of the persons who entertain them, or by the number of those who have written of them, or by the judgment of the wisest; certainly this must carry it, which so nearly relates to princes, and others engaged in the government of mankind; in whose adulterate species also the most part of men do delight themselves, and in which the most excellent wits of philosophers have been conversant. The benefit of it, when rightly delivered, that is, when derived from true principles by evident connection, we shall then best discern, when we shall but well have considered the mischiefs that have befallen mankind from its counterfeit and babbling form. For in matters wherein we speculate for the exercise of our wits, if any error escape us, it is without hurt; neither is there any loss, but of time only. But in those things which every man ought to meditate for the steerage of his life, it necessarily happens that not only from errors, but even from ignorance itself, there arise offences, contentions, nay, even slaughter itself. Look now, how great a prejudice these are; such and so great is the benefit arising from this doctrine of morality truly declared. How many kings, and those good men too, hath this one error, that a tyrant king might lawfully be put to death, been the slaughter of! How many throats hath this false position cut, that a prince for some causes may by some certain men be deposed! And what bloodshed hath not this erroneous doctrine caused, that kings are not superiors to, but administrators for the multitude! Lastly, how many rebellions hath this opinion been the cause of, which teacheth that the knowledge whether the commands of kings be just or unjust, belongs to private men; and that before they yield obedience, they not only may, but ought to dispute them! Besides, in the moral philosophy now commonly received, there are many things no less dangerous than those, which it matters not now to recite. I suppose those ancients foresaw this, who rather chose to have the science of justice wrapped up in fables, than openly exposed to disputations. For before such questions began to be moved, princes did not sue for, but already exercised the supreme power. They kept their empire entire, not by arguments, but by punishing the wicked and protecting the good. Likewise subjects did not measure what was just by the sayings and judgments of private men, but by the laws of the realm; nor were they kept in peace by disputations, but by power and authority. Yea, they reverenced the supreme power, whether residing in one man or in a council, as a certain visible divinity. Therefore they little used, as in our days, to join themselves with ambitious and hellish spirits, to the utter ruin of their state. For they could not entertain so strange a fancy, as not to desire the preservation of that by which they were preserved. In truth, the simplicity of those times was not yet capable of so learned a piece of folly. Wherefore it was peace and a golden age, which ended not before that, Saturn being expelled, it was taught lawful to take up arms against kings. This, I say, the ancients not only themselves saw, but in one of their fables they seem very aptly to have signified it to us. For they say, that when Ixion was invited by Jupiter to a banquet, he fell in love, and began to court Juno herself. Offering to embrace her, he clasped a cloud; from whence the Centaurs proceeded, by nature half men, half horses, a fierce, a fighting, and unquiet generation. Which changing the names only, is as much as if they should have said, that private men being called to councils of state, desired to prostitute justice, the only sister and wife of the supreme, to their own judgments and apprehensions; but embracing a false and empty shadow instead of it, they have begotten those hermaphrodite opinions of moral philosophers, partly right and comely, partly brutal and wild; the causes of all contentions and bloodsheds. Since therefore such opinions are daily seen to arise, if any man now shall dispel those clouds, and by most firm reasons demonstrate that there are no authentical doctrines concerning right and wrong, good and evil, besides the constituted laws in each realm and government; and that the question whether any future action will prove just or unjust, good or ill, is to be demanded of none but those to whom the supreme hath committed the interpretation of his laws: surely he will not only show us the highway to peace, but will also teach us how to avoid the close, dark, and dangerous by-paths of faction and sedition; than which I know not what can be thought more profitable.
Concerning my method, I thought it not sufficient to use a plain and evident style in what I have to deliver, except I took my beginning from the very matter of civil government, and thence proceeded to its generation and form, and the first beginning of justice. For everything is best understood by its constitutive causes. For as in a watch, or some such small engine, the matter, figure, and motion of the wheels cannot well be known, except it be taken insunder and viewed in parts; so to make a more curious search into the rights of states and duties of subjects, it is necessary, I say, not to take them insunder, but yet that they be so considered as if they were dissolved; that is, that we rightly understand what the quality of human nature is, in what matters it is, in what not, fit to make up a civil government, and how men must be agreed amongst themselves that intend to grow up into a well-grounded state. Having therefore followed this kind of method, in the first place I set down for a principle, by experience known to all men and denied by none, to wit, that the dispositions of men are naturally such, that except they be restrained through fear of some coercive power, every man will distrust and dread each other; and as by natural right he may, so by necessity he will be forced to make use of the strength he hath, toward the preservation of himself. You will object perhaps, that there are some who deny this. Truly so it happens, that very many do deny it. But shall I therefore seem to fight against myself, because I affirm that the same men confess and deny the same thing? In truth I do not; but they do, whose actions disavow what their discourses approve of. We see all countries, though they be at peace with their neighbours, yet guarding their frontiers with armed men, their towns with walls and ports, and keeping constant watches. To what purpose is all this, if there be no fear of the neighbouring power? We see even in well-governed states, where there are laws and punishments appointed for offenders, yet particular men travel not without their sword by their sides for their defences; neither sleep they without shutting not only their doors against their fellow subjects, but also their trunks and coffers for fear of domestics. Can men give a clearer testimony of the distrust they have each of other, and all of all? Now, since they do thus, and even countries as well as men, they publicly profess their mutual fear and diffidence. But in disputing they deny it; that is as much as to say, that out of a desire they have to contradict others, they gainsay themselves. Some object that this principle being admitted, it would needs follow, not only that all men were wicked, (which perhaps though it seem hard, yet we must yield to, since it is so clearly declared by holy writ), but also wicked by nature, which cannot be granted without impiety. But this, that men are evil by nature, follows not from this principle. For though the wicked were fewer than the righteous, yet because we cannot distinguish them, there is a necessity of suspecting, heeding, anticipating, subjugating, self-defending, ever incident to the most honest and fairest conditioned. Much less does it follow, that those who are wicked, are so by nature. For though from nature, that is, from their first birth, as they are merely sensible creatures, they have this disposition, that immediately as much as in them lies they desire and do whatsoever is best pleasing to them, and that either through fear they fly from, or through hardness repel those dangers which approach them; yet are they not for this reason to be accounted wicked. For the affections of the mind, which arise only from the lower parts of the soul, are not wicked themselves; but the actions thence proceeding may be so sometimes, as when they are either offensive or against duty. Unless you give children all they ask for, they are peevish and cry, aye, and strike their parents sometimes; and all this they have from nature. Yet are they free from guilt, neither may we properly call them wicked; first, because they cannot hurt; next, because wanting the free use of reason they are exempted from all duty. These when they come to riper years, having acquired power whereby they may do hurt, if they shall continue to do the same things, then truly they both begin to be, and are properly accounted wicked. Insomuch as a wicked man is almost the same thing with a child grown strong and sturdy, or a man of a childish disposition; and malice the same with a defect of reason in that age when nature ought to be better governed through good education and experience. Unless therefore we will say that men are naturally evil, because they receive not their education and use of reason from nature, we must needs acknowledge that men may derive desire, fear, anger, and other passions from nature, and yet not impute the evil effects of those unto nature. The foundation therefore which I have laid, standing firm, I demonstrate, in the first place, that the state of men without civil society, which state we may properly call the state of nature, is nothing else but a mere war of all against all; and in that war all men have equal right unto all things. Next, that all men as soon as they arrive to understanding of this hateful condition, do desire, even nature itself compelling them, to be freed from this misery. But that this cannot be done, except by compact, they all quit that right they have to all things. Furthermore, I declare and confirm what the nature of compact is; how and by what means the right of one might be transferred unto another to make their compacts valid; also what rights, and to whom they must necessarily be granted, for the establishing of peace; I mean, what those dictates of reason are, which may properly be termed the laws of nature. And all these are contained in that part of this book which I entitle Liberty.
These grounds thus laid, I show further what civil government, and the supreme power in it, and the divers kinds of it are; by what means it becomes so; and what rights particular men, who intend to constitute this civil government, must so necessarily transfer from themselves on the supreme power, whether it be one man or an assembly of men, that, except they do so, it will evidently appear to be no civil government, but the rights which all men have to all things, that is, the rights of war will still remain. Next I distinguish the divers kinds of it, to wit, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy; and paternal dominion, and that of masters over their servants. I declare how they are constituted, and I compare their several conveniences and inconveniences, each with other. Furthermore, I unfold what those things are which destroy it, and what his or their duty is, who rule in chief. Last of all, I explicate the natures of law and of sin; and I distinguish law from counsel, from compact, from that which I call right. All which I comprehend under the title of Dominion.
In the last part of it, which is entitled Religion, lest that right, which by strong reason, in the preceding discourse, I had confirmed the sovereign powers to have over their subjects, might seem to be repugnant to the sacred Scriptures; I show, in the first place, how it repugns not the divine right, for as much as God overrules all rulers by nature, that is, by the dictates of natural reason. In the second, forasmuch as God himself had a peculiar dominion over the Jews, by virtue of that ancient covenant of circumcision. In the third, because God doth now rule over us Christians, by virtue of our covenant of baptism. And therefore the authority of rulers in chief, or of civil government, is not at all, we see, contrary to religion.
In the last place, I declare what duties are necessarily required from us, to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And of those I plainly demonstrate, and conclude out of evident testimonies of holy writ according to the interpretation made by all, that the obedience, which I have affirmed to be due from particular Christian subjects unto their Christian princes, cannot possibly in the least sort be repugnant unto Christian religion.
You have seen my method: receive now the reason which moved me to write this. I was studying philosophy for my mind sake, and I had gathered together its first elements in all kinds; and having digested them into three sections by degrees, I thought to have written them, so as in the first I would have treated of body and its general properties; in the second of man and his special faculties and affections; in the third, of civil government and the duties of subjects. Wherefore the first section would have contained the first philosophy, and certain elements of physic; in it we would have considered the reasons of time, place, cause, power, relation, proportion, quantity, figure, and motion. In the second, we would have been conversant about imagination, memory, intellect, ratiocination, appetite, will, good and evil, honest and dishonest, and the like. What this last section handles, I have now already showed you. Whilst I contrive, order, pensively and slowly compose these matters; (for I only do reason, I dispute not); it so happened in the interim, that my country, some few years before the civil wars did rage, was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an approaching war; and was the cause which, all those other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this third part. Therefore it happens, that what was last in order, is yet come forth first in time. And the rather, because I saw that, grounded on its own principles sufficiently known by experience, it would not stand in need of the former sections. Yet I have not made it out of a desire of praise: although if I had, I might have defended myself with this fair excuse, that very few do things laudably, who are not affected with commendation: but for your sakes, readers, who I persuaded myself, when you should rightly apprehend and thoroughly understand this doctrine I here present you with, would rather choose to brook with patience some inconveniences under government, (because human affairs cannot possibly be without some), than self-opiniatedly disturb the quiet of the public; that, weighing the justice of those things you are about, not by the persuasion and advice of private men, but by the laws of the realm, you will no longer suffer ambitious men through the streams of your blood to wade to their own power; that you will esteem it better to enjoy yourselves in the present state, though perhaps not the best, than by waging war endeavour to procure a reformation for other men in another age, yourselves in the meanwhile either killed or consumed with age. Furthermore, for those who will not acknowledge themselves subject to the civil magistrate, and will be exempt from all public burthens, and yet will live under his jurisdiction, and look for protection from the violence and injuries of others, that you would not look on them as fellow-subjects, but esteem them for enemies and spies; and that ye rashly admit not for God’s word all which, either openly or privately, they shall pretend to be so. I say more plainly, if any preacher, confessor, or casuist, shall but say that this doctrine is agreeable with God’s word, namely, that the chief ruler, nay, any private man may lawfully be put to death without the chief’s command, or that subjects may resist, conspire, or covenant against the supreme power; that ye by no means believe them, but instantly declare their names. He who approves of these reasons, will also like my intentions in writing this book.