165 



observation and experience, i.e. of being mere conceptions, is fairly 

 anticipated by, and evidently founded upon, these principles of Hobbes, 

 which had already extensively leavened the spirit of the age, and dis- 

 posed it to the more favourable reception of the Lockian philosophy. 

 From this doctrine, that there is no such thing as an idea, it followa 

 that there is no idea of Truth, and therefore the True must consist in 

 mere words. This conclusion Hobbes expresses thus, "True and false 

 are attributes of speech, not of things ; and where speech is not, there 

 is neither truth nor falsehood." Hobbes has anticipated many great 

 names in literature. Mr. Hallam has shown* that he anticipated Des- 

 cartes ; we have already seen how he anticipated Locke ; and in the passao^e 

 just quoted he has anticipated Home Tooke in his celebrated assertion 

 that truth varies with the man, being nothing more or less than that 

 which each man troiveth. " Seeing then," proceeds Hobbes, " that 

 truth consists in the right ordering oi names in our affirmations, a man 

 that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he 

 uses stands for." Here we may observe an obvious confusion between 

 real and relative truth ; if fact, a curious, if not a cunning, substitution 

 of relative and verbal for real and actual truth. 



The next great step in Hobbes's " Theory of Morals," is to confuse 

 between the Reason and the Understanding, as he has already done 

 between Ideas and Conceptions, and between Real and Relative Truth. 

 And here we must bear in mind the Platonic distinction between the 

 Pure Reason and the sensuous Understanding — a distinction which, up 

 to Hobbes's time, had been observed or implied by almost all our great 

 writers : by Bacon, Hooker, Shakespere, Harrington, Milton, Jeremy 

 Taylor, Leighton, and the other master minds of English literature.! 



• " Literature of Europe," vol. .3, p. 270. Mr. Hallam thinks that, though Locke must 

 have read Hobbes, he did not borrow from him quite so much as is generally supposed. 



+ All these great men have in their writings pre-supposed some intuitive faculty, corres- 

 ponding to the v6riins of Plato, and the " Reiue Vernunfl" of Kant, independent of observa- 

 tion and experience, " call it what you will, the pure reason, lumen siccum, voCs, (puis vo^phv, 

 intellectual tuition, or the like." Bacon terms it " lumen siccum," " lux intellectus," 

 " divine dialectic," and a " sparkle of the purity of man's first estate ; ' and opposes it to the 

 " opinio madida," or " humida," t e. the tuition of the understanding, and to the " reports 

 of the senses," i.e., perception. (.■Vdvuncement of Science, p. 131 and 310.) Hooker's 

 delinilion is admirable : — " By Reason man attaineth unto the knowledge of things that are 

 and are not tensible." He also calls it " the divine power of the soul," and the " li.^ht of the 

 eye of the understanding," from which he expressly distinguishes it. (See " Divine Polity," 

 Bk. I., ch. vii.) Shakespere, too, talks of "large discourse and Godlike reason," answering 

 to Milton's " Reason ducurmve and intuHive." The whole question is fully discussed by 

 Coleridge, ("Aids to Reflection," see Aphorism ix.,) who defines reason as the power 

 " afhrming truths which no sense could perceive, no experiment verify, and no experience 

 confirm," and understanding as " the faculty judging according to sense," or " the power 

 which suliManliates plKDUomeua euhtlui ci» ie undcniunds." 



