411 



HOBBES, THOMAS. 



-HOBBIMA, MINDEKHOUT. 



library at Florence. He received many similar visits from foreigners 

 of distinction, all of whom were curious to see one whose name and 

 opinions were known throughout Europe. 



In 1672 Hobbes wrote his own life in Latin verse, being then in 

 his eighty-fifth year; and in 1675 he published his translation iu 

 verse of the Iliad and Odyssey. He had previously, by way of feeler, 

 published four books of the Odyssey ; and the reception which they 

 had met with had encouraged him to undertake the whole. But how- 

 ever favourable mi,'ht have been the reception at the time, the popu- 

 larity of this translation has certainly long since ceased ; it is wholly 

 wanting in Homeric fire, bald and vulgar in style and diction ; and it 

 must be allowed that the fame of the philosopher is anything but 

 heightened by his efforts as a poet. Hobbes had now retired to the 

 Earl of Devonshire's seats, Chatsworth and Hardwicke, in Derbyshire ; 

 but notwithstanding his advanced age, he still continued to write and 

 publish. His ' Dispute with Laney, bishop of Ely, concerning Liberty 

 and Necessity,' appeared in 1676; and in 1678 his 'Decameron 

 Physiologieum, or Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy ; ' to which 

 was added, a book entitled ' A Dialogue between a Philosopher and 

 a Student of the Common Law of England.' In 1679 he sent his 

 Behemoth, or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660' to a 

 bookseller, with a letter in which he requested him not to publish it 

 until a fitting occasion offered. It appears from this letter that 

 Hobbes, being anxious to publish the book some time before, had with 

 that view shown it to the king, who refused his permission; and for 

 this reason Hobbes would not now allow the bookseller to publish it. 

 It appeared however almost immediately after Hobbes's death, which 

 took place on the 4th of December 1679, when he was in his ninety- 

 second year. The immediate cause of his death was a paralytic 

 stroke. 



The quality which chiefly strikes us, in contemplating the personal 

 character of Hobbes, is its independence. Placed during the greater 

 part of his life in circumstances which would have made any other 

 wan, despite himself, a courtier the inmate of a noble house and 

 tutor to a king, amid the temptations of society he steadily pursued 

 philosophy, and at the risk of losing great friends, and indeed with 

 the actual sacrifice of royal favour, constantly put forth and clung to 

 opinions which were then most startling and obnoxious. His inde- 

 pendence in smaller things may be gathered from the following 

 account of his daily mode of life in the Earl of Devonshire's house, 

 which is given by Dr. Keunet iu his 'Memoirs of the Cavendish 

 Family,' and which is interesting if only because it relates to so remark- 

 able a man as Hobbes. "His professed rule of health wa* to dedicate 

 the morning to his exercise, and the afternoon to his studies. At his 

 first rising therefore he walked out and climbed any hill within his 

 reach ; or, if the weather was not dry, he fatigued himself within 

 doors by some exercise or other, to be a sweat. . . . After this he 

 took a comfortable breakfast ; and then went round the lodgings to 

 wait upon the earl, the countess, and the children, and any consider- 

 able strangers, paying some short addresses to all of them. He kept 

 these rounds till about twelve o'clock, when he had a little dinner 

 provided for him, which he ate always by himself without ceremony. 

 Soon after dinner he retired to his study, and had his caudle with ten 

 or twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him; then shutting his door, he 

 fell to smoking, thinking, and writing for several hours." We are 

 told that he wax testy and peevish in conversation, more particularly 

 in his latter years, and that he did not easily brook contradiction. 

 And there can be no doubt that his independence was often displayed 

 in that excess in which it takes the name of arrogance. It was one 

 of his boasts, for instance, " that though physics were a new science, 

 yet civil philosophy was still newer, since it could not be styled older 

 than his book ' De Give.'" Such indeed was his usual tone in 

 speaking of his own performances. Another proof of his arrogance is 

 supplied by his mathematical controversies. But after all there is 

 something that we cannot resist admiring in independence of others' 

 opinions, when carried even to the excess in which Hobbes's character 

 displays it. If we leave out of account his arrogance, Hobbes seems 

 to have been a man of much amiability, as well as strength of 

 character. 



Turning from the man to the author, we must content ourselves 

 with very few words on a subject worthy of a volume. For Hobbes 

 is indeed, as Mr. Mill remarks, "a great name in philosophy, on account 

 both of the value of what he taught and the extraordinary impulse 

 which he communicated to the spirit of free inquiry in Europe." 

 (' Fragment on Mackintosh,' p. 19.) Ho may be considered the father 

 of English psychology, as well as (what every one must allow him to 

 be) th : first great English writer on the science of government. Let 

 it be remarked also (for it is from losing sight of this that some of the 

 most important misconceptions of Hobbes's views have arisen) that 

 though he wrote on psychology, and much of hU fame is as a psycho- 

 logist, his psychology, like that of Beutham, was only auxiliary and 

 iu the way of prelude to his writings on government, and he should 

 always emphatically be viewed as a writer on government. And even 

 were his psychology left entirely out of account, his writings on 

 government, of which the ' Leviathan,' the ' De Cive,' and the small 

 treatise ' De Corpore Politico,' are the chief, would be a sufficient 

 >rt to immortal fame. 



The views of Hobbes on government, as contained iu his political 



treatises, may be thus briefly stated. He views government as a 

 refuge, dictated by reason or the law of nature, from the evils of a 

 state of nature, which he chooses to call (and this one would think 

 was a matter of small import, though, strange to say, it has ever 

 been one of ths chief charges brought against Hobbes) a " state of 

 war." The government thus recommended is formed (he imagines) 

 by a covenant or contract entered into between those who are to bo 

 subjects and those who are to be rulers, and ever after tacitly adopted 

 by all future sets of subjects and future sets of rulers. And the 

 subjects having covenanted complete unconditional obedience to their 

 rulers, and the duty of obedience being directly referred to this 

 covenant, Hobbes views obedience as a religious duty, and the 

 supremacy of the rulers, on the other hand, as a divine right. As 

 regards forms of government, he prefers, on account of its greater 

 vigour and aptitude for busiuess, a monarchy ; but he strongly and 

 zealously inculcates at the same time the necessity of a sound educa- 

 tion of the people. But whatever be the form of government, he 

 contends that the government must be possessed of supreme powers, 

 else it would not be the government. And beiug himself iu favour 

 of a government of one, or a monarchy, he ever insists ou the 

 supremacy of the monarch and on the duty of unconditional obedienco 

 to his laws. Thus it is that the decriers of Hobbes, losing sight of 

 his views on the education of the people, and confounding monarchy 

 with tyranny, and supreme with arbitrary power, have nicknamed him 

 " the apologist of tyranny." And because, carrying out his views as 

 to the supremacy of government, he has required submission to the 

 mode of faith which the monarch establishes, and, writing not on 

 moral but on political science, has chosen to define tho words 'just' 

 and 'unjust' with a direct reference to the laws which the monarch 

 ordains, and which it is the duty of the subjects to obey, he has been 

 denounced as contemning religion, and as a confounder of moral dis- 

 tinctions. But Hobbes does not take upon himself to say that the 

 monarch's opinion is the test either of true religion or true morals ; 

 and indeed, in many parts of his works distinctly asserts the pre- 

 eminent merits of one form of faith and the independence of morality, 

 which is, as it should be, his criterion of the goodness of law. 

 According to Hobbes, what is established by law must be obeyed ; but 

 there is nothing in his views to prevent attempts which are conform- 

 able with the laws to alter what in the laws is wrong. 



There is no douot that in Hobbes's views, as we have stated them, 

 there is some error. His hypothesis of a covenant as the origin of 

 government, for instance, is a fiction which has now loug been exploded 

 in this country. But this is an error solely speculative, and of little 

 importance; for all the valuable conclusions which Hobbes seeks to 

 derive from his fiction may be got at, without its aid, by means, for 

 instance, of the principle of utility. As to the grave charges which 

 have been so sedulously brought against Hobbes, from the first appear- 

 ance of his works to the present time, they have no other foundation 

 than ignorance and prejudice. 



The number of works to which Hobb3s"s writings gave rise is very 

 great. " The Philosopher of Maluiesbury," says Dr. Warburton, 

 " was the terror of the last age, as Tiudall and Collins are of this. 

 The press sweat with controversy, and every young churchman-mili- 

 tant would try his arms in thundering on Hobbes's steel cap." (' Divine 

 Legation,' vol. ii. p. 9, Preface.) His principal antagonists were 

 Clarendon, in a work named ' A Brief View of the Dangerous and 

 Pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes's book entitled 

 Leviathan ; ' Cud worth, in his treatise on ' Eternal and Immutable 

 Morality ; ' and Bishop Cumberland, in his Latin work on the ' Laws 

 of Nature.' Bishop Bramhall published a book called ' The Catching 

 of the Leviathan,' to which Hobbes replied. We may also mention 

 Archbishop Tenison's ' Creed of Mr. Hobbes examined," and Dr. Each- 

 ard's ' Dialogues on Hobbes.' And, in addition to direct and professed 

 attacks on Hobbes, there are numerous references to his views for the 

 purpose of censure in Harrington's ' Ocean*,' and in Henry More's 

 writings. 



Until recently there was no complete edition of even the English 

 writings of the ' Philosopher of Malmesbury.' But this want has been 

 well supplied by the handsome edition published at the cost and uuder 

 the superintendence of the late Sir William Molesworth, under the 

 title of ' The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, now 

 first collected and edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart.,' l(i vols. 

 8vo. 



HOBBIMA, MINDERHOUT, one of the most eminent of the 

 Flemish landscape painters, waa boru at Antwerp, as is supposed about 

 the year 1611. It is not known by whom he was instructed, but his 

 works evince the most assiduous and successful study of nature. His 

 subjects are in general simple country scenes, the slope of a hill with 

 shrubs and trees, the borders of a forest, a winding path leading to a 

 distant village, or to some ruin, building, or piece of water, often 

 carrying the eye to an almost evanescent distance; such are the mate- 

 rials to which, by accurate perspective, clearness, aud fullness of 

 colour, and the most careful execution, with a free aud light pencil, 

 he gives an unrivalled charm. His works are scarce and eagerly sought 

 after. Some of his very finest productions are in England, in Sir R. 

 Peel's collection, aud the Grosvenor Gallery. The largest and, in the 

 opinion of Dr. Waagen, the finest of his works is iu the possession of 

 Lord Hatherton, who has refused 3000i. for it. The National Gallery 



