388 GOVERNMENT ix 



who lay behind the Filmerian outpost. In the 

 second essay, " On Civil Government," which 

 alone has any interest to us at the present day, 

 the theory of State omnipotence propounded by 

 Hobbes (and supposed, though wrongfully, to 

 have been invented in the interests of monarchy) 

 is vigorously assaulted. 



Hobbes was a thinker and writer of marvellous 

 power, and, take him altogether, is probably the 

 greatest of English philosophers; but it AVUS 

 given to him, as little as to Locke, to escape 

 from entanglement in the a priori speculations 

 which had come down mainly from the Roman 

 jurists. 1 Setting out from the assumption of the 



1 Hobbes's conception of the State may be sufficiently gathered 

 from the following passages extracted from the Philosophical 

 Rudiments concerning Government and Society (1651): "All 

 men, therefore, among themselves are by nature equal ; the 

 inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law " 

 (chap. i. 3). "Nature hath given to every one a right to all" 

 (ibid. 10). "The natural state of men before they entered into 

 society was .... a war of all men against all men" (ibid. 12). 

 In whatever man or body of men dominion or governmental 

 authority is vested, "each citizen has conveyed all his strength 

 and power to that man or council" (chap. v. 11). The supivmi! 

 power is absolute (chap. vi. 13), and comparable to the soul of 

 the city as its will (ibid. 19). "The will of every citizen is in 

 all things comprehended in the will of the city, and the city is 

 not tied to the civil laws," and the will of the depository of 

 dominion is the will of the city (chap. vi. 14). Judging of 

 good and evil does not belong to private citizens (chap. xii. 1 ), 

 nor do they possess any rights or liberties except such as the 

 sovereign grants. All power, temporal and spiritual, is united 

 (under Christ) in the sovereign authority of a Christian city, and 

 absolute obedience is due to it. When the sovereign is IK it 

 Christian, and his commands are contrary to those of the Church, 

 the subject must, disobeying but not resisting, "go to Christ by 

 martyrdom " (chap, xviii. 13). 



