378 THE SOCIAL OIJGAKISir. 



tlie same iu tao body natural ; the wealth and r!&amp;lt;-/i(n of all tlia 

 [articular members arc tho ttraiyth ; salus jtopuli, tlio j Ciyih t 

 wifely, its lusiiuss ; co .titml orx, by whom all thinjrs needful fur it 

 to kno\v arc suggested unto it, arc tho memory ; equity and Luct 

 an artificial rcawn and will ; cuiu orJ, lual .h ; acditiun, siXhcas ; 

 jiril icar, death&quot; 



And Hobbes curries this comparison so far as actually 

 to give :i drawing of the Leviathan a vast human-shaped 

 figure, whose body and limbs are made up of multitudes of 

 men. Just noting that these different analogies asserted 

 by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as 

 they are, so completely at variance), we may say that on 

 the whole those of Hobbes are the more plausible. JJut 

 ihey are full of inconsistencies, ll the sovereignty is the 

 SL ul of the body politic, how can it be that magistrates, 

 who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be comparable 

 to joints? Or, again, ho\v can the three mental functions, 

 memory, reason, and will, be severally analogous, the first to 

 counsellors, who are a class of public officers, jind the other 

 t\vo to equity and laws, which are not classes of officers, 

 but abstractions? Or, once more, if magistrates are the 

 artificial joints of society, how can reward and punishment 

 be its nerves? Its nerves must surely be some class of 

 persons, llcward and punishment must in societies, as 1:1 

 individuals, be conditions of the nerves, and not the nerven 

 themselves. 



]&amp;gt;ut the chief errors of these comparisons made by Plato 

 and Hobbes, lie much deeper. IJoth thinkers assume that 

 the organization of a society is comparable, not simply to 

 the organization of a living body in general, but to the or 

 ganization of the human body in particular. There is no 

 warrant whatever for assuming this. Ji is in no way im 

 plied by the evidence; and is simply one of those fancies 

 which we commonly find mixed up with the truths of early 

 speculation. Still more erroneous are the t\vo conceptions 



