195 



part of the subject to obey — ia words, precisely corresponds to the ques- 

 tion thus stated. 



But to reach this couclaaiou, Hobbes is compelled to assume the exist- 

 ence of an imaginary contract or covenant between the individual mem- 

 bers of the State — not with the sovereign, but with each other, — by which 

 this unlimited right or power is conferred upon him ; which is a manifest 

 petitio principii, of the most glaring kind, belonging to the class of what 

 are called legal fictions ; which are erroneously supposed to be peculiar to 

 lawyers — but are also used, or ratlier misused, by philosophers. These 

 consist in the conscious assumption as true of propositions known to be 

 false — as for instance, in the legal maxim that the husband and wife con- 

 stitute one person, or in the essentially similar proposition involved in the 

 notion of a corporation or body politic, that the several members of a 

 society, as for instance the State, constitute a person, {i) 



But the assumption of a social contract is not, of itself, sufficient to 

 establish the desired conclusion. For it may be reasoned that certain 

 conditions are necessarily implied in such a contract — as, for instance, 

 that performance by the sovereign of his functions is a condition of the 

 contract ; or even that the power of the sovereign might be divested in 

 the same way it was conferred ; or that other consequences might follow 

 such as are in fact drawn by Locke, Rousseau and others. Hence, it was 

 assumed by Ilobbes that the supposed contract of the individual members 

 of the State is unconditional, that it is irrevocable, and finally — to cover 

 all points — that its efi"ect has been to transfer to the sovereign, not only 

 "all their powers and strength," but even their wills, so as "to reduce 

 all their wills, by plurality of voices, to one will," and thus to create, not 

 merely "a consent or concord," but "a real unity of them all in one and 

 the same person."* From which he concludes, that "every subject is 

 . . . . author of all the actions and judgments of the sovereign." f And 

 "that nothing that the sovereign representative can do a subject, on 

 what pretense whatever, can properly be called injustice, or injury ; be- 

 cause every subject is author of every act the sovereign doth." Hence 

 the killing of Uriah by David "was not an injury to Uriah, .... be- 

 cause the right to do what he pleased was given him by Uriah himself; " X 

 who, being the author of the act, in fact — upon the principle, qui facit 

 per alium, facit per se — committed suicide. 



This extravagant conception of Hobbes is revived in modern times by 

 Mr. Bluntschli and others ; the fundamental principle of whose doctrine 

 is that the State is an "organized being," or an "organism," having a 

 soul and body, a conscience and active organs, and also a will which is 

 different from the individual wills of all individuals aud different from 

 the sum of them, and even that it is of the masculine gender ; in fine, 

 that it is a " moral organized masculine personality, or, more shortly 

 .... the political original national person of a definite country " 

 (Bluntschli's Theory of the Slate, Bk. i, Cli. i). Or, as expressed by an- 



* Leviathan, Si. iId.,S6. t Id., 101, 102. 



