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against his conscience." Proceeding onwards, after a short but interest- 

 ing dissertation, in which he advances a most ingenious and original 

 theory of poetry, namely, that " it pleases for its extravagancy," he 

 asserts the natural equality of all men, maintaining that they are only 

 made different by their passions, all of which passions he reduces to 

 " the more or less desire of power." In this part of his work, Hobbes 

 again anticipates a celebrated modern, Sir Robert Walpole, in his weU- 

 known theory, that every man has his price, — " The value or worth of 

 man is, as of all other things, his price, that is to say, so much 

 as would be given for the use of his power," and " to value a man at a 

 high rate is to honour him." " Civil obedience proceeds from love of 

 ease, or from fear of death ;" " love of virtue from love of praise ;" 

 " hate from difficulty of requiting benefits, and from conscience 

 of deserving tobe hated ;" " confidence and friendship from ignorance." 

 In this manner, by means of his grand, assumption, Hobbes has 

 succeeded in reducing all our moral feelings, passions, and appetites 

 together. And because such are fittest witnesses of the facts of one 

 another, it was and ever will be a very evil act for a man to speak 

 to Motion; making reverence, love, benevolence, admiration, and hope, 

 to proceed from Appetite, or motion towards an object ; sorrow, shame, 

 pity, and anger from Aversion, or motion from an object. All notion of 

 any absolute Good or Evil, Truth or Falsehood, Right or Wrong, he 

 utterly repudiates. At this point we see him gradually ceasing to enlarge 

 on his Moral Theory, and proceeding to raise upon it the superstructure 

 of his Political System. Hobbes's Po'litical Theory may be briefly stated 

 as follows. AU men are by nature equal, and all are alike actuated by one 

 restless ruling passion, the love of power ; and thus it comes to pass 

 that man's natural equality produces an universal competition and an 

 universal diffidence. The consequence of this diffidence (as he calls it) 

 is war ; and thus he supposes that in the earliest stages of society all 

 men would be in a perpetual state of warfare, " and such a warre as is 

 of every man against every man." It is of course evident that such a 

 state of things could not last long ; still, as Hobbes remarks, " The 

 nature of warre consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known dis- 

 position thereto ;" and from this known warlike disposition arises a 

 state of univeral mistrust and suspicion, which lasts as long as anarchy 

 remains. But, as Hobbes says, " Feare and desire incline men to 

 peace ; . . . and reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace 

 upon wliich men may bo brought to agreement. These articles are 

 those which are otherwise called the lawes of nature." He thus afllrms 

 a sense of right to spring from laws, instead of laws from a sense of 



