596 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
tion to this worke, I will give much more to those that shall labour to make it 
perfect, and that any man may adde something dayly unto it, for that from 
time to time they have more certaine advice from all parts, especially from those 
countries which have not been much frequented, either by reason of the distance, 
or for their barbarousnesse.’ For his own part, however, he had clearly done 
his best with the materials which he had. The ‘Order of all the Estates contained 
within this booke’ includes (besides all European states) ‘the kingdomes of 
Tartary, China, Japan, Pegu, the Great Mogul, Calicut, Narsinge, and Persia ; 
the Turkes Estate in Europe, Africke and Asia (including the ancient kingdomes 
of Egypt, Judaea, Arabia, &c.), the empire of Presbiter John, the Estate of the 
King of Monomotapa, the realme of Congo, and the Empire of Morocco’; and 
consequently was very fairly abreast of the travels and compilations of the day. 
His frank confession, therefore, that he knows only this, and wishes to know 
more, coupled with his total neglect of America, suggests that there may be 
real significance in the nude American on his title-page ; and that America was 
not regarded as offering any regular constitutions. 
Now it is certainly remarkable that, with the exception of a few European 
republics, all the ‘Estates, Empires, and Principallities of the World,’ which the 
author thinks worth describing, and in particular all the non-European states 
are personal monarchies of more or less absolute type: and this from a man 
who is expressly throwing classical and medieval experience to the winds, and 
setting out to describe men as he finds them. 
Peter Heylin and the Cosmographers. 
Nor is this peculiarity confined to Grimstone’s treatise. The standard 
English cosmography of the early seventeenth century is that of Peter Heylin, 
the learned, witty, and pugnacious chaplain of Archbishop Laud. Its method 
of treatment is closely modelled upon that of Grimstone ; the sequence of topics 
is the same, and there is a good deal of matter common to the two, though 
Heylin of course is far more encyclopedic in his treatment, and includes many 
regions and ‘ estates’ which do not occur in Grimstone. Here, too, with hardly 
an exception, the constitutions which are described are despotic ; and as in 
Grimstone, particular attention is given to the brutal kingships of Western and 
Southern Africa. Almost the only exceptions are the cases where the royal 
power is not yet fully established, and others in which, to the best of Heylin’s 
knowledge, there is no settled form of government. 
In fact, if an unprejudiced inquirer were to attempt, with only the materials 
available in Heylin’s time, to generalise as to the political evolution of the Old 
World outside Europe, I do not see how he could fail to arrive at the conclusion, 
first, that the natural and primitive state of man was, in the words of Hobbes, 
‘ poor, nasty, and brutish ; in continual feare, and danger of violent death’ ; 
and secondly, that wherever man had emerged from this primitive condition 
it had been by submission, more or less voluntary, and more or less by way of a 
pis aller, to an absolute despotism, usually exercised by a single imperial master 
who, like Ischia of Tombutum, had superseded by common consent a number 
of smaller despots. 
Thomas Hobbes. 
Hobbes himself does not often make mention of ethnographic matters. His 
outlook is, of course, primarily political, and his analysis, so far asit is not political, 
is psychological. Moreover, he is reticent throughout as to his sources. Now 
and then, however, he does lift the veil, and betrays an interest in the reports of 
travellers, and even a certain dependence on them. 
On the vexed question of the ‘naturalness’ of patriarchal rule, on which 
Hobbes differs as violently as usual from the current Aristotelianism, his general 
attitude, though not positively that of an anthropologist, is at all events in 
agreement with the contemporary trend of observation. ‘When the parents 
are in the State of Nature,’ he says, ‘ the dominion there over the child should 
belong equally to both ; and he be equally subject to both ; which is impossible, 
for no man can obey two Masters.’ In civilised states, he goes on the law decides 
