173 



systems than his own, are grand in their way. His quiet and retired 

 life, which was quite that of a recluse, may serve to explain the 

 extraordinary ignorance of human nature, (especially on its brighter 

 side,) which he so constantly displays.* Something also must be 

 attributed to a natural and somewhat violent reaction from the philo- 

 sophy of the preceding age, which was certainly tainted to a great 

 extent with Neo-Platonic mysticism, f Moreover, like Voltaire, 

 Bentham, and other short-sighted men, Hobbes was wonderfully 

 clear-sighted, as far as he did see, and so had no notion of anything 

 beyond what met his intellectual eye, lying beneath the surface. The 

 chief causes of his errors, however, are the confusion which he makes 

 between the Reason and the Understanding — between Ideas and Concep- 

 tions, between relative and positive Truth, from his utterly ignoring all 

 moral sentiment, and innate sense of duty ;* — and from his unpliiloso- 

 phical method of proceeding from the outward to the inward, instead of 

 the reverse. From Hobbes, as from most other men of one idea, we may 

 learn much, if we know how to read him. He thought for himself, 

 which, as Lessiug says, is better, even if you think wrongly, than not 

 to think at all ; while the originality of his thoughts, and the startling 

 character of his paradoxes, force his readers to think. Another good 

 point in Hobbes is, that he acted thoroughly up to his principles ; and 

 it is, indeed, a good thing, as well as a rare one, when the founder of 

 a philosophical school does act up to his principles — for then we see 

 the tendency of those principles. Did not the disciples of Hobbes and 

 Locke contradict their principles by their deeds every day of their 

 lives, and act more from benevolent instincts and good-hearted impulses 

 than from any fixed principles whatever, it would be pitiable indeed. 



* We must also bear in mind, tliat Hobbes was a wanderer all his life, without a home, 

 and with but lew ties of affection. 



+ Lord Herbert, of Cherbary, for instance (who, in point of authorship, was an imme- 

 diate 'predecessor of Hobbes), maintained that an internal illumination was given to all 

 mankind by means of a closed book in the mind, the clasps of which would only open when 

 nature bade them. The extraordinary doctrines of that philosophic cobbler, the German 

 mystic Jacob Bbhrae, who is said to have numbered among his disciples our unfortunate 

 martyr monarch, are better known. 



t Hobbes, we have seen, denies the existence of any moral faculty. Rishop Butler 

 (" Essay on the Nature of Virtue,") in language very similar to that of Coleridge, already 

 quoted, well says, " That we have a moral approving and disapproving faculty is certain, 

 from our experiencing it in ourselves, and recognizing it in others. It appears from our 

 exercising il unavoidably in our approbation and disapprobation even of feigned characters; 

 from the words right and wrong, odious and amiable, base and worthy, with many others of 

 like signification in all languages. Great part of common language and common behaviour 

 is formed upon the supposition of such a moral faculty, whether called conscience, moral 

 reason, moral sense, or Divine reason; whether considered as a sentiment of llie under 

 fclaiiding, nr as a pereeption I'f the heart, or, whii-h seems the (ruth, as iuchuliiig both." 



