130 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



4. 

 Basis of 

 Order. 



which has happily continued to characterise them — ■ 

 though not in the same degree — up to recent times ; 

 this word is Order, or more definitely the security 

 afforded by a constitutional Government/ 



Even allowing for the Civil War and the Ee volution 

 of 1688 there has, within the last three hundred years, 

 never existed in this country that fundamental sub- 

 version of order of which the French Eevolution has 

 become the typical instance abroad. A regard for the 

 powers that be, for social and political Law and Order, 



^ That security and settlement 

 are the first and indispensable 

 requisites for national prosperity, 

 for civilisation and progress, forms 

 the keynote of the whole of the 

 philosophy of Hobbes (1588-1679), 

 which pi-eached the necessity of an 

 absolute Government, be this mon- 

 archical or democratic, as the only 

 means of preventing a relapse into 

 the original state of nature, the 

 helium omnium contra omnes. Other 

 characteristics of Hobbes' system, 

 the only English system of philo- 

 sophy before Herbert Spencer, do 

 not interest us in this connection. 

 As Groom Robertson ('Hobbes,' 

 Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 

 1886) has clearly shown, the sys- 

 tematic foundation of Hobbes' 

 system belongs to a later phase of 

 Hobbism, and was, to a large ex- 

 tent, a tribute to the mechanical 

 philosophy, the real mathematical 

 principles of which Hobbes under- 

 stood as little as his predecessor 

 Francis Bacon. A panic similar 

 to that which the premonitory 

 symptoms of the Civil War created 

 in Hobbes' mind, prompted, one 

 hundred and fifty years later, 

 Edmund Burke's celebrated denun- 

 ciation of the French Revolution ; 

 though Burke's reaction was largely 

 sentimental, while that of Hobbes 

 was rationalistic. The interval be- 



tween these two periods, the cen- 

 tury which began with the Restora- 

 tion, has been termed by historians 

 the Century of the English Revolu- 

 tion. But it was, on the whole, 

 a peaceful Revolution, an age dur- 

 ing which the English Constitution 

 gradually " broadened down from 

 precedent to precedent." J. R. 

 Green, in his 'History of the Eng- 

 lish People,' introduces his eighth 

 book, bearing the title, 'The Re- 

 volution 1660-1760,' with the fol- 

 lowing words (vol. iii. p. 327) : 

 " From the moment of the Restora- 

 tion we find ourselves all at once 

 among the great currents of 

 thought and activity which have 

 gone on widening and deepening 

 from that time to this. The Eng- 

 land around us becomes our own 

 England, an England whose chief 

 forces are industry and science, 

 the love of popular freedom and 

 of law, an England which presses 

 steadily forward to a larger social 

 justice and equality, and which 

 tends more and more to bring 

 every custom and tradition, religi- 

 ous, intellectual, and political, to 

 the test of pure reason. Between 

 modern thought, on some at least 

 of its more important sides, and 

 the thought of men before the 

 Restoration, there is a great gulf 

 fixed." 



