17-2 



of leamiug and ability — the friend of Seldeu, Harvey, and Cowley* — 

 could maintain, and not only maintain, but with an Englishman's 

 earnestness and sincerity, require others to believe this view of 

 humanity to be the true one, — could advocate a doctrine which reduces 

 everything to locomotion ; which makes Appetite the great " primum 

 mobile," and supposes men to be a set of steam-engines, running 

 against each other with a mutual implacable hatred, and only restrained 

 by the intervention of a set of provisional tram-roads, formed so as to 

 allow to each the greatest possible latitude, and the creation of a 

 despotic Leviathan, or engineer, with an unlimited irresponsible power 

 over all, to see that each keeps to his own line. 



And now that we have briefly analysed the moral and political 

 philosophy of Hobbes, and shown but little charity to his principles, 

 let us manifest some for the man. There is, as 1 have shown, much 

 to admire in his character ; and there is also much to account for his 

 adoption of those pernicious principles which he so ably promulgated, 

 and was the first to bring into fashion. It has been said, with a 

 certain degree of truth, that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists, 

 Nominalists or Realists ; and Hobbes was by nature a Nominalist.f 

 Thus the very constitution of his mind, and his natural tone of 

 thought, would of themselves incline to the sensualistic school of 

 plulosophers. Moreover, Hobbes lived and wrote in times of civil 

 war, when the bad passions, to which he attributes so much, are most 

 prominently and distinctly brought forward. That Hobbes had medi- 

 tated much and deeply upon the nature and consequences of these 

 passions, is likely enough from his constant study of Thucydides, (one of 

 his few favourite authors) — a study which enabled him to perceive that 

 the working of the same passions and feelings in his own times, were 

 silently paving the way for troubles similar to those of which the 

 Athenian historian wrote. Moreover, Hobbes was a late learner and 

 self-taught, both of which, in some measure, account for the dogmatical 

 character of his writings. Indeed, the sincerity and downright hearti- 

 ness with which he brings forward and urges his one idea, bending all 

 else to it, and the thorough contempt which he entertains for all other 



* Hobbes was also intimate wiili Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes, and others. 



+ Hobbes studied the logic of the Nominalists, when at Oxford. See Ritter's " Geschichte 

 der Xeuern Philosophic." vol. ii. p. 453. Hobbes may also have been partially infliieDCed 

 liy one side of Bacon's writings ; for the most dangerous errors are those which are the shadows 

 " and ghosts of truth," caricatures of some great truth, partial truth, lying at the bottom 

 of every widely-spread error, otherwise it could never become widely spread; and Hobbes had 

 none of that true science, which Novalis beautifully defines to be " a voiceless knowledge 

 of what is knowledge," to' guide liim. 



