166 



These intellectual giants saw, that if we would attain unto wisdom, we 

 must separate Truth and Being from the Perceived and the Perceptible, 

 and that before we can do this, we must also separate that infinitely 

 higher power in man, the " godlike Reason," (as Shakespere calls it,) 

 cognisant about Truth and Being, from its proper subject, the sensuous 

 Understanding cognisant only about the Perceived and the Perceptible. 



But Hobbes thought differently. He opined that Reason was a 

 talent for mathematics ; and so he says, " When a man reasoneth he 

 doth nothing else than conceive a sum total from addition of parcels, or 

 conceive a remainder from subtraction of one sum from another. 



Reason is nothing but reckoning, (i.e. adding and 



subtracting.) From this it appears that reasou is not, 



as sense and memory, bom with us ; nor gotten by experience only, as 

 prudence is, but attained by industry. Childi-en, therefore, are not 

 endued with reason at all till they have attained the use of speech, but 

 are called reasonable creatures, for the possibility apparent of having 

 the use of reason in time to come." So that, according to Hobbes, 

 children difler in nothing from the beasts of the field, but in having 

 five fingers on each hand, and in nothiug whatever from the young 

 monkey, to which they are often assimilated. Thus Ilol^bes has 

 anticipated not only Descartes and Home Togke, but also Helvetius 

 and Lord Monboddo. According to his beautiful science of moral 

 arithmetic, reason is a talent for mathematics, and " this fair world" a 

 world of calculating machines. 



Before we proceed with our analysis of the " Leviathan," we must 

 recall to mind that it is Ilobbes's object to prove that Might=Eight ; — 

 that the monarch for the time being is the rightful moiiarch, and that, 

 therefore, Hobbes, or any other man, might, without compromising his 

 honesty, loyalty, or patriotism, acknowledge CromNvell as his liege 

 lord and master. Thus it became necessary to degrade all those inward 

 passions and feelings, which would naturally rise up in rebellion 

 against such a doctrine by making them out to be nothing more than 

 mere sensations. 



In order to do this, he first (as we have seen) assumes, with the 

 Ionian sophists, that all things are in a perpetual flux or state of 

 motion ; — and that to this motion [Klvrja-is or <p6pa,) every thing spiritual, 

 intellectual, and boclilj-, is to be referred. The motion on the organs 

 of man's body, caused by the action of things we see, hear, or 

 touch, is, according to him, called sense.* This motion he divides 



• " Sense is motion in the organs and interior parts of man's body, caused by the action 

 of the things we see and hear." — Leviathan. 



