Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 52

As "The Leviathan" produced the numerous controversies of Hobbes, a history of this great moral curiosity enters into our subject.

Hobbes, living in times of anarchy, perceived the necessity of re-establis.h.i.+ng authority with more than its usual force. But how were the divided opinions of men to melt together, and where in the State was to be placed _absolute power_? for a remedy of less force he could not discover for that disordered state of society which he witnessed.

Was the sovereign or the people to be invested with that mighty power which was to keep every other quiescent?--a topic which had been discussed for ages, and still must be, as the humours of men incline--was, I believe, a matter perfectly indifferent to our philosopher, provided that whatever might be the government, absolute power could somewhere be lodged in it, to force men to act in strict conformity. He discovers his perplexity in the dedication of his work.

"In a way beset with those that contend on one side for too great liberty, on the other side for too much authority, 'tis hard to pa.s.s between the points of both unwounded." It happened that our cynical Hobbes had no respect for his species; terrified at anarchy, he seems to have lost all fear when he flew to absolute power--a sovereign remedy unworthy of a great spirit, though convenient for a timid one like his own. Hobbes considered men merely as animals of prey, living in a state of perpetual hostility, and his solitary principle of action was self-preservation at any price.

He conjured up a political phantom, a favourite and fanciful notion, that haunted him through life. He imagined that the _many_ might be more easily managed by making them up into an artificial _One_, and calling this wonderful political unity the _Commonwealth_, or the _Civil Power_, or the _Sovereign_, or by whatever name was found most pleasing; he personified it by the image of "Leviathan."[352]

At first sight the ideal monster might pa.s.s for an innocent conceit; and there appears even consummate wisdom in erecting a colossal power for our common security; but Hobbes a.s.sumed that _Authority_ was to be supported to its extreme pitch. _Force_ with him appeared to const.i.tute _right_, and _unconditional submission_ then became a _duty_: these were consequences quite natural to one who at his first step degraded man by comparing him to a watch, and who would not have him go but with the same nicety of motion, wound up by a great key.

To be secure, by the system of Hobbes, we must at least lose the glory of our existence as intellectual beings. He would persuade us into the dead quietness of a commonwealth of puppets, while he was consigning into the grasp of his "Leviathan," or sovereign power, the wire that was to communicate a mockery of vital motion--a principle of action without freedom. The system was equally desirable to the Protector Cromwell as to the regal Charles. A conspiracy against mankind could not alarm their governors: it is not therefore surprising that the usurper offered Hobbes the office of Secretary of State; and that he was afterwards pensioned by the monarch.

A philosophical system, moral or political, is often nothing more than a temporary expedient to turn aside the madness of the times by subst.i.tuting what offers an appearance of relief; nor is it a little influenced by the immediate convenience of the philosopher himself; his personal character enters a good deal into the system. The object of Hobbes in his "Leviathan" was always ambiguous, because it was, in truth, one of these systems of expediency, conveniently adapted to what has been termed of late "existing circ.u.mstances." His sole aim was to keep all things in peace, by creating one mightiest power in the State, to suppress instantly all other powers that might rise in insurrection. In his times, the establishment of despotism was the only political restraint he could discover of sufficient force to chain man down, amid the turbulence of society; but this concealed end he is perpetually s.h.i.+fting and disguising; for the truth is, no man loved slavery less.[353]

The system of Hobbes could not be limited to politics: he knew that the safety of the people's morals required an _Established Religion_. The alliance between Church and State had been so violently shaken, that it was necessary to cement them once more.

As our philosopher had been terrified in his politics by the view of its contending factions, so, in religion, he experienced the same terror at the hereditary rancours of its multiplied sects. He could devise no other means than to attack the mysteries and dogmas of theologians, those after-inventions and corruptions of Christianity, by which the artifices of their chiefs had so long split them into perpetual factions:[354] he therefore a.s.serted that the religion of the people ought to exist, in strict conformity to the will of the State.[355]

When Hobbes wrote against mysteries, the mere polemics sent forth a cry of his impiety; the philosopher was branded with Atheism;--one of those artful calumnies, of which, after a man has washed himself clean, the stain will be found to have dyed the skin.[356]

To me it appears that Hobbes, to put an end to these religious wars, which his age and country had witnessed, perpetually kindled by crazy fanatics and intolerant dogmatists, insisted that the _crosier_ should be carried in the _left_ hand of his Leviathan, and the _sword_ in his right.[357] He testified, as strongly as man could, by his public actions, that he was a Christian of the Church of England, "as by law established," and no enemy to the episcopal order; but he dreaded the encroachments of the Churchmen in his political system; jealous of that _supremacy_ at which some of them aimed. Many enlightened bishops sided with the philosopher.[358] At a time when Milton sullenly withdrew from every public testimonial of divine wors.h.i.+p, Hobbes, with more enlightened views, _attended Church service_, and strenuously supported _an established religion_; yet one is deemed a religious man, and the other an Atheist! Were the actions of men to be decisive of their characters, the reverse might be inferred.

The temper of our philosopher, so ill-adapted to contradiction, was too often tried; and if, as his adversary, Harrington, in the "Oceana," says, "Truth be a spark whereunto objections are like bellows," the mind of Hobbes, for half a century, was a very forge, where the hammer was always beating, and the flame was never allowed to be extinguished. Charles II. strikingly described his worrying a.s.sailants. "Hobbes," said the king, "was a bear against whom the Church played their young dogs, in order to exercise them."[359] A strange repartee has preserved the causticity of his wit. Dr. Eachard, perhaps one of the prototypes of Swift, wrote two admirable ludicrous dialogues, in ridicule of Hobbes's "State of Nature."[360] These were much extolled, and kept up the laugh against the philosophic misanthropist: once when he was told that the clergy said that "Eachard had crucified Hobbes," he bitterly retorted, "Why, then, don't they fall down and _wors.h.i.+p_ me?"[361]

"The Leviathan" was ridiculed by the wits, declaimed against by the republicans, denounced by the monarchists, and menaced by the clergy.

The commonwealth man, the dreamer of equality, Harrington, raged at the subtile advocate for despotic power; but the glittering bubble of his fanciful "Oceana" only broke on the mighty sides of the Leviathan, wasting its rainbow tints: the mitred Bramhall, at "The Catching of Leviathan, or the Great Whale," flung his harpoon, demonstrating consequences from the principles of Hobbes, which he as eagerly denied. But our ambiguous philosopher had the hard fate to be attacked even by those who were labouring to the same end.[362] The literary wars of Hobbes were fierce and long; heroes he encountered, but heroes too were fighting by his side. Our chief himself wore a kind of magical armour; for, either he denied the consequences his adversaries deduced from his principles, or he surprised by new conclusions, which many could not discover in them; but by such means he had not only the art of infusing confidence among the _Hobbists_, but the greater one of dividing his adversaries, who often retreated, rather fatigued than victorious. Hobbes owed this partly to the happiness of a genius which excelled in controversy, but more, perhaps, to the advantage of the ground he occupied as a metaphysician: the usual darkness of that spot is favourable to those s.h.i.+ftings and turnings which the equivocal possessor may practise with an unwary a.s.sailant. Far different was the fate of Hobbes in the open daylight of mathematics: there his hardy genius lost him, and his sophistry could spin no web; as we shall see in the memorable war of twenty years waged between Hobbes and Dr.

Wallis. But the gall of controversy was sometimes tasted, and the flames of persecution flashed at times in the closet of our philosopher. The ungenerous attack of Bishop Fell, who, in the Latin translation of Wood's "History of the University of Oxford," had converted eulogium into the most virulent abuse,[363] without the partic.i.p.ation of Wood, who resented it with his honest warmth, was only an arrow s.n.a.t.c.hed from a quiver which was every day emptying itself on the devoted head of our ambiguous philosopher. Fell only vindicated himself by a fresh invective on "the most vain and waspish animal of Malmesbury," and Hobbes was too frightened to reply. This was the Fell whom it was so difficult to a.s.sign a reason for not liking:

I don't like thee, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell, But I don't like thee, Dr. Fell!

A curious incident in the history of the mind of this philosopher, was the mysterious panic which accompanied him to his latest day. It has not been denied that Hobbes was subject to occasional terrors: he dreaded to be left without company; and a particular instance is told, that on the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re's removal from Chatsworth, the philosopher, then in a dying state, insisted on being carried away, though on a feather-bed. Various motives have been suggested to account for this extraordinary terror. Some declared he was afraid of spirits; but he was too stout a materialist![364]--another, that he dreaded a.s.sa.s.sination; an ideal poniard indeed might scare even a materialist. But Bishop Atterbury, in a sermon on _the Terrors of Conscience_, ill.u.s.trates their nature by the character of our philosopher. Hobbes is there accused of attempting to destroy the principles of religion against his own inward conviction: this would only prove the insanity of Hobbes! The Bishop shows that "the disorders of _conscience_ are not a _continued_, but an _intermitting_ disease;" so that the patient may appear at intervals in seeming health and real ease, till the fits return: all this he applies to the case of our philosopher. In reasoning on human affairs, the shortest way will be to discover human motives. The spirit, or the a.s.sa.s.sin of Hobbes, arose from the bill brought into Parliament, when the nation was panic-struck on the fire of London, against Atheism and Profaneness; he had a notion that a writ _de heretico comburendo_ was intended for him by Bishop Seth Ward, his _quondam_ admirer.[365] His spirits would sink at those moments; for in the philosophy of Hobbes, the whole universe was concentrated in the small s.p.a.ce of SELF. There was no length he refused to go for what he calls "the natural right of preservation, which we all receive from the uncontrollable dictates of NECESSITY." He exhausts his imagination in the forcible descriptions of his extinction: "the terrible enemy of nature, Death," is always before him. The "inward horror" he felt of his extinction, Lord Clarendon thus alludes to: "If Mr. Hobbes and some other man were both condemned to death (which is the most formidable thing Mr. Hobbes can conceive)"--and Dr. Eachard rallies him on the infinite anxiety he bestowed on his _body_, and thinks that "he had better compound to be kicked and beaten twice a day, than to be so dismally tortured about an old rotten carcase." Death was perhaps the only subject about which Hobbes would not dispute.

Such a materialist was then liable to terrors; and though, when his works were burnt, the author had not a hair singed, the convulsion of the panic often produced, as Bishop Atterbury expresses it, "an intermitting disease."

Persecution terrified Hobbes, and magnanimity and courage were no virtues in his philosophy. He went about hinting that he was not obstinate (that is, before the Bench of Bishops); that his opinions were mere conjectures, proposed as exercises for the powers of reasoning. He attempted (without meaning to be ludicrous) to make his _opinions_ a distinct object from his _person_; and, for the good order of the latter, he appealed to the family chaplain for his attendance at divine service, from whence, however, he always departed at the sermon, insisting that the chaplain could not teach him anything. It was in one of these panics that he produced his "Historical Narrative of Heresy, and the Punishment thereof," where, losing the dignity of the philosophic character, he creeps into a subterfuge with the subtilty of the lawyer; insisting that "The Leviathan," being published at a time when there was no distinction of creeds in England (the Court of High Commission having been abolished in the troubles), that therefore none could be heretical.[366]

No man was more speculatively bold, and more practically timorous;[367]

and two very contrary principles enabled him, through an extraordinary length of life, to deliver his opinions and still to save himself: these were his excessive vanity and his excessive timidity. The one inspired his hardy originality, and the other prompted him to protect himself by any means. His love of glory roused his vigorous intellect, while his fears shrunk him into his little self. Hobbes, engaged in the cause of truth, betrayed her dignity by his ambiguous and abject conduct: this was a consequence of his selfish philosophy; and this conduct has yielded no dubious triumph to the n.o.ble school which opposed his cynical principles.

A genius more luminous, sagacity more profound, and morals less tainted, were never more eminently combined than in this very man, who was so often reduced to the most abject state. But the anti-social philosophy of Hobbes terminated in preserving a pitiful state of existence. He who considered nothing more valuable than life, degraded himself by the meanest artifices of self-love,[368] and exulted in the most cynical truths.[369] The philosophy of Hobbes, founded on fear and suspicion, and which, in human nature, could see nothing beyond himself, might make him a wary politician, but always an imperfect social being. We find, therefore, that the philosopher of Malmesbury adroitly retained a friend at court, to protect him at an extremity; but considering all men alike, as bargaining for themselves, his friends occasioned him as much uneasiness as his enemies. He lived in dread that the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re, whose roof had ever been his protection, should at length give him up to the Parliament! There are no friends.h.i.+ps among cynics!

To such a state of degradation had the selfish philosophy reduced one of the greatest geniuses; a philosophy true only for the wretched and the criminal.[370] But those who feel moving within themselves the benevolent principle, and who delight in acts of social sympathy, are conscious of pa.s.sions and motives, which the others have omitted in their system. And the truth is, these "unnatural philosophers," as Lord Shaftesbury expressively terms them, are by no means the monsters they tell us they are: their practice is therefore usually in opposition to their principles. While Hobbes was for chaining down mankind as so many beasts of prey, he surely betrayed his social pa.s.sion, in the benevolent warnings he was perpetually giving them; and while he affected to hold his brothers in contempt, he was sacrificing laborious days, and his peace of mind, to acquire celebrity. Who loved glory more than this sublime cynic?--"_Glory_,"

says our philosopher, "by those whom it displeaseth, is called _Pride_; by those whom it pleaseth, it is termed _a just valuation of himself_."[371] Had Hobbes defined, as critically, the pa.s.sion of _self-love_, without resolving all our sympathies into a single monstrous one, we might have been disciplined without being degraded.

Hobbes, indeed, had a full feeling of the magnitude of his labours, both for foreigners and posterity, as he has expressed it in his life.

He disperses, in all his works, some Montaigne-like notices of himself, and they are eulogistic. He has not omitted any one of his virtues, nor even an apology for his deficiency in others. He notices with complacency how Charles II. had his portrait placed in the royal cabinet; how it was frequently asked for by his friends, in England and in France.[372] He has written his life several times, in verse and in prose; and never fails to throw into the eyes of his adversaries the reputation he gained abroad and at home.[373] He delighted to show he was living, by annual publications; and exultingly exclaims, "That when he had silenced his adversaries, he published, in the eighty-seventh year of his life, the Odyssey of Homer, and the next year the Iliad, in English verse."

His greatest imperfection was a monstrous egotism--the fate of those who concentrate all their observations in their own individual feelings. There are minds which may think too much, by conversing too little with books and men. Hobbes exulted he had read little; he had not more than half-a-dozen books about him; hence he always saw things in his own way, and doubtless this was the cause of his mania for disputation.

He wrote against dogmas with a spirit perfectly dogmatic. He liked conversation on the terms of his own political system, provided absolute authority was established, peevishly referring to his own works whenever contradicted; and his friends stipulated with strangers, that "they should not dispute with the old man." But what are we to think of that pertinacity of opinion which he held even with one as great as himself? Selden has often quitted the room, or Hobbes been driven from it, in the fierceness of their battle.[374] Even to his latest day, the "war of words" delighted the man of confined reading. The literary duels between Hobbes and another hero celebrated in logomachy, the Catholic priest, Thomas White, have been recorded by Wood. They had both pa.s.sed their eightieth year, and were fond of paying visits to one another: but the two literary Nestors never met to part in cool blood, "wrangling, squabbling, and scolding on philosophical matters," as our blunt and lively historian has described.[375]

His little qualities were the errors of his own selfish philosophy; his great ones were those of nature. He was a votary to his studies:[376] he avoided marriage, to which he was inclined; and refused place and wealth, which he might have enjoyed, for literary leisure. He treated with philosophic pleasantry his real contempt of money.[377] His health and his studies were the sole objects of his thoughts; and notwithstanding that panic which so often disturbed them, he wrote and published beyond his ninetieth year. He closes the metrical history of his life with more dignity than he did his life itself; for his mind seems always to have been greater than his actions. He appeals to his friends for the congruity of his life with his writings; for his devotion to justice; and for a generous work, which no miser could have planned; and closes thus:--

And now complete my four-and-eighty years, Life's lengthen'd plot is o'er, and the last scene appears.[378]

Of the works of Hobbes we must not conclude, as Hume tells us, that "they have fallen into neglect;" nor, in the style with which they were condemned at Oxford, that "they are pernicious and d.a.m.nable." The sanguine opinion of the author himself was, that the mighty "Leviathan" will stand for all ages, defended by its own strength; for the rule of justice, the reproof of the ambitious, the citadel of the Sovereign, and the peace of the people.[379] But the smaller treatises of Hobbes are not less precious. Locke is the pupil of Hobbes, and it may often be doubtful whether the scholar has rivalled the nervous simplicity and the energetic originality of his master.

The genius of Hobbes was of the first order; his works abound with the most impressive truths, in all the simplicity of thought and language, yet he never elevates nor delights. Too faithful an observer of the miserable human nature before him, he submits to expedients; he acts on the defensive; and because he is in terror, he would consider security to be the happiness of man. In _Religion_ he would stand by an established one; yet thus he deprives man of that moral freedom which G.o.d himself has surely allowed us. Locke has the glory of having first given distinct notions of the nature of toleration. In _Politics_ his great principle is the establishment of _Authority_, or, as he terms it, an "entireness of sovereign power:" here he seems to have built his arguments with such eternal truths and with such a contriving wisdom as to adapt his system to all the changes of government. Hobbes found it necessary in his day to place this despotism in the hands of his colossal monarch; and were Hobbes now living, he would not relinquish the principle, though perhaps he might vary the application; for if Authority, strong as man can create it, is not suffered to exist in our free const.i.tution, what will become of our freedom? Hobbes would now maintain his system by depositing his "entireness of sovereign power" in the Laws of his Country. So easily s.h.i.+fted is the vast political machine of the much abused "Leviathan!"

The _Citizen_ of Hobbes, like the _Prince_ of Machiavel, is alike innocent, when the end of their authors is once detected, amid those ambiguous means by which the hard necessity of their times constrained their mighty genius to disguise itself.

It is, however, remarkable of _Systems of Opinions_, that the founder's celebrity has usually outlived his sect's. Why are systems, when once brought into practice, so often discovered to be fallacies?

It seems to me the natural progress of system-making. A genius of this order of invention long busied with profound observations and perpetual truths, would appropriate to himself this a.s.semblage of his ideas, by stamping his individual mark on them; for this purpose he strikes out some mighty paradox, which gives an apparent connexion to them all: and to this paradox he forces all parts into subserviency.

It is a minion of the fancy, which his secret pride supports, not always by the most scrupulous means. Hence the system itself, with all its novelty and singularity, turns out to be nothing more than an ingenious deception carried on for the glory of the inventor; and when his followers perceive they were the dupes of his ingenuity, they are apt, in quitting the system, to give up all; not aware that the parts are as true as the whole together is false; the sagacity of Genius collected the one, but its vanity formed the other!

FOOTNOTES:

[348] Shaftesbury has thrown out, on this head, some important truths:--"If men are forbid to speak their minds _seriously_, they will do it _ironically_. If they find it dangerous to do so, they will then redouble their disguise, _invoke themselves into mysteriousness_, and talk so as hardly to be understood. The _persecuting_ spirit has raised the _bantering_ one. The higher the slavery, the more exquisite the buffoonery."--Vol. i. p. 71. The subject of our present inquiry is a very remarkable instance of "involving himself into mysteriousness." To this cause we owe the strong raillery of Marvell; the cloudy "Oracles of Reason" of Blount; and the formidable, though gross burlesque, of Hickeringill, the rector of All-Saints, in Colchester. "Of him (says the editor of his collected works, 1716), the greatest writers of our times trembled at his pen; and as great a genius as Sir Roger L'Estrange's was, it submitted to his _superior way of reasoning_"--that is, to a most extraordinary burlesque spirit in politics and religion. But even he who made others tremble felt the terrors he inflicted; for he complains that "some who have thought his pen too sharp and smart, those who have been galled, sore men where the skin's off, have long lain to catch for somewhat to accuse me--upon such touchy subjects, a man had need have the _dexterity to split a hair_, to handle them pertinently, usefully, and yet _safely_ and _warily_."--Such men, however, cannot avoid their fate: they will be persecuted, however they succeed in "splitting a hair;" and it is then they have recourse to the most absurd _subterfuges_, to which our Hobbes was compelled. Thus also it happened to Woolston, who wrote in a ludicrous way "Blasphemies" against the miracles of Christ; calling them "tales and rodomontados." He rested his defence on this subterfuge, that "it was meant to place the Christian religion on a better footing," &c. But the Court answered, that "if the author of a treasonable libel should write at the conclusion, _G.o.d save the king!_ it would not excuse him."

[349] The moral axiom of Solon "KNOW THYSELF" (_Nosce teipsum_), applied by the ancient sage as a corrective for our own pride and vanity, Hobbes contracts into a narrow principle, when, in his introduction to "The Leviathan," he would infer that, by this self-inspection, we are enabled to determine on the thoughts and pa.s.sions of other men; and thus he would make the taste, the feelings, the experience of the individual decide for all mankind. This simple error has produced all the dogmas of cynicism; for the cynic is one whose insulated feelings, being all of the selfish kind, can imagine no other stirrer of even our best affections, and strains even our loftiest virtues into pitiful motives. Two n.o.ble authors, men of the most dignified feelings, have protested against this principle. Lord Shaftesbury keenly touches the characters of Hobbes and Rochester:--"Sudden courage, says our modern philosopher (Hobbes), is anger. If so, courage, considered as constant, and belonging to a character, must, in his account, be defined constant anger, or anger constantly recurring. All men, says a witty poet (Rochester), would be cowards, if they durst: that the poet and the philosopher both were cowards, may be yielded, perhaps, without dispute! they may have spoken the best of their knowledge."--SHAFTESBURY, vol. i. p. 119.

With an heroic spirit, that virtuous statesman, Lord Clarendon, rejects the degrading notion of Hobbes. When _he_ looked into his own breast, he found that courage was a real virtue, which had induced him, had it been necessary, to have shed his blood as a patriot. But death, in the judgment of Hobbes, was the most terrible event, and to be avoided by any means. Lord Clarendon draws a parallel between a "man of courage" and one of the disciples of Hobbes, "brought to die together, by a judgment they cannot avoid." "How comes it to pa.s.s, that one of these undergoes death, with no other concernment than as if he were going any other journey; and the other with such confusion and trembling, that he is even without life before he dies; if it were true that all men fear alike upon the like occasion?"--_Survey of the Leviathan_, p.

14.

[350] They were distinguished as _Hobbists_, and the opinions as _Hobbianism_. Their chief happened to be born on a Good Friday; and in the metrical history of his own life he seems to have considered it as a remarkable event. An atom had its weight in the scales by which his mighty egotism weighed itself. He thus marks the day of his birth, innocently enough:--

"Natus erat noster Servator h.o.m.o-Deus annos Mille et quingentos, octo quoque undecies."

But the _Hobbists_ declared more openly (as Wood tells us), that "as our Saviour Christ went out of the world on that day to save the men of the world, so another saviour came into the world on that day to save them!"

That the sect spread abroad, as well as at home, is told us by Lord Clarendon, in the preface to his "Survey of the Leviathan." The qualities of the author, as well as the book, were well adapted for proselytism; for Clarendon, who was intimately acquainted with him, notices his confidence in conversation--his never allowing himself to be contradicted--his bold inferences--the novelty of his expressions--and his probity, and a life free from scandal.

"The humour and inclination of the time to all kind of paradoxes," was indulged by a pleasant clear style, an appearance of order and method, hardy paradoxes, and accommodating principles to existing circ.u.mstances.

Who were the sect composed of? The monstrous court of Charles II.--the grossest materialists! The secret history of that court could scarcely find a Suetonius among us. But our author was frequently in the hands of those who could never have comprehended what they pretended to admire; this appears by a publication of the times, int.i.tuled, "Twelve Ingenious Characters, &c." 1686, where, in that of a town-fop, who, "for genteel breeding, posts to town, by his mother's indulgence, three or four wild companions, half-a-dozen bottles of Burgundy, _two leaves of Leviathan_," and some few other obvious matters, shortly make this young philosopher nearly lose his moral and physical existence. "He will not confess himself an Atheist, yet he boasts aloud that he holds his _gospel_ from _the Apostle of Malmesbury_, though it is more than probable he never read, at least understood, ten leaves of _that unlucky author_." If such were his wretched disciples, Hobbes was indeed "an unlucky author," for their morals and habits were quite opposite to those of their master. EACHARD, in the preface to his Second Dialogue, 1673, exhibits a very Lucianic arrangement of his disciples--Hobbes'

"Pit, Box, and Gallery Friends." The _Pit-friends_ were st.u.r.dy practicants who, when they hear that "Ill-nature, Debauchery, and Irreligion were Mathematics and Demonstration, clap and shout, and swear by all that comes from Malmesbury." The _Gallery_ are "a sort of small, soft, little, pretty, fine gentlemen, who having some little wit, some little modesty, some little remain of conscience and country religion, could not hector it as the former, but quickly learnt to chirp and giggle when t'other clapt and shouted." But "the Don-admirers, and _Box-friends_ of Mr. Hobbes are men of gravity and reputation, who will scarce simper in favour of the philosopher, but can make s.h.i.+ft to nod and nod again." Even amid this wild satire we find a piece of truth in a dark corner; for the satirist confesses that "his Gallery-friends, who were such resolved practicants in _Hobbianism_ (by which the satirist means all kinds of licentiousness) would most certainly have been so, had there never been any such man as Mr. Hobbes in the world." Why then place to the account of the philosopher those gross immoralities which he never sanctioned? The life of Hobbes is without a stain! He had other friends besides these "Box, Pit, and Gallery"

gentry--the learned of Europe, and many of the great and good men of his own country.

[351] Hobbes, in defending Thucydides, whom he has so admirably translated, from the charge of some obscurity in his design, observes that "Marcellinus saith he was obscure, on purpose that the common people might not understand him; and not unlikely, for a wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men), that wise men only should be able to commend him." Thus early in life Hobbes had determined on a principle which produced all his studied ambiguity, involved him in so much controversy, and, in some respects, preserved him in an inglorious security.

[352] Hobbes explains the image in his Introduction. He does not disguise his opinion that _Men_ may be converted into _Automatons_; and if he were not very ingenious we might lose our patience. He was so delighted with this whimsical fancy of his "artificial man," that he carried it on to government itself, and employed the engraver to impress the monstrous personification on our minds, even clearer than by his reasonings. The curious design forms the frontispiece of "The Leviathan." He borrowed the name from that sea-monster, that mightiest of powers, which Job has told is not to be compared with any on earth. The sea-monster is here, however, changed into a colossal man, entirely made up of little men from all the cla.s.ses of society, bearing in the right hand the sword, and in the left the crosier. The compartments are full of political allegories. An expression of Lord Clarendon's in the preface to his "Survey of the Leviathan," shows our philosopher's infatuation to this "idol of the Den," as Lord Bacon might have called the intellectual illusion of the philosopher. Hobbes, when at Paris, showed a proof-sheet or two of his work to Clarendon, who, he soon discovered, could not approve of the hardy tenets. "He frequently came to me,"

says his lords.h.i.+p, "and told me his book (_which he would call LEVIATHAN_) was then printing in England. He said, that he knew when I read his book I would not like it, and mentioned some of his conclusions: upon which I asked him, why he would publish such doctrine: to which, after a discourse, _between jest and earnest_, he said, _The truth is, I have a mind to go home!_" Some philosophical systems have, probably, been raised "between jest and earnest;" yet here was a text-book for the despot, as it is usually accepted, deliberately given to the world, for no other purpose than that the philosopher was desirous of changing his lodgings at Paris for his old apartments in London!

[353] The duplicity of the system is strikingly revealed by Burnet, who tells of Hobbes, that "he put all the law in the will of the _prince_ or the _people_; for he writ his book _at first_ in favour of _absolute monarchy_, but turned it afterwards to gratify the _republican party_. These were his true principles, though he had disguised them for deceiving unwary readers." It is certain Hobbes became a suspected person among the royalists. They were startled at the open extravagance of some of his political paradoxes; such as his notion of the necessity of extirpating all the _Greek_ and _Latin_ authors, "by reading of which men from their childhood have gotten a habit of licentious controuling the actions of their sovereigns."--p. 111. But the doctrines of liberty were not found only among the Greeks and Romans; the _Hebrews_ were stern republicans; and liberty seems to have had a n.o.bler birth in the North among our German ancestors, than perhaps in any other part of the globe. It is certain that the Puritans, who warmed over the Bible more than the cla.s.sic historians, had their heads full of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; the hanging of the five kings of Joshua; and the fat king of the Moabites, who in his summer-room received a present, and then a dagger, from the left-handed Jewish Jacobin. Hobbes curiously compares "The _tyrannophobia_, or fear of being strongly governed," to the _hydrophobia_. "When a monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those democratical writers, and, by their poison, men seem to be converted into dogs," his remedy is, "a strong monarch," or "the exercise of entire sovereignty," p. 171; and that the authority he would establish should be immutable, he hardily a.s.serts that "the ruling power cannot be punished for mal-administration." Yet in this elaborate system of despotism are interspersed some strong republican axioms, as The safety of the people is the supreme law,--The public good to be preferred to that of the individual:--and that G.o.d made the one for the many, and not the many for the one. The effect the LEVIATHAN produced on the royal party was quite unexpected by the author. His hardy principles were considered as a satire on arbitrary power, and Hobbes himself as a concealed favourer of democracy. This has happened more than once with such vehement advocates. Our philosopher must have been thunderstruck at the insinuation, for he had presented the royal exile, as Clarendon in his "Survey" informs us, with a magnificent copy of "The Leviathan," written on vellum; this beautiful specimen of calligraphy may still be seen, as we learn from the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for January, 1813, where the curiosity is fully described. The suspicion of Hobbes's principles was so strong, that it produced his sudden dismissal from the presence of Charles II. when at Paris. The king, indeed, said he believed Hobbes intended him no hurt; and Hobbes said of the king, "that his majesty understood his writings better than his accusers." However, happy was Hobbes to escape from France, where the officers were in pursuit of him, amid snowy roads and nipping blasts. The lines in his metrical life open a dismal winter scene for an old man on a stumbling horse:--

"Frigus erat, nix alta, senex ego, ventus acerbus, Vexat equus sternax, et salebrosa via--"

A curious spectacle! to observe, under a despotic government, its vehement advocate in flight!

The ambiguity of "The Leviathan" seemed still more striking, when Hobbes came, at length, to place the right of government merely in what he terms "the Seat of Power,"--a wonderful principle of expediency; for this was equally commodious to the republicans and to the royalists. By this principle, the republicans maintained the right of Cromwell, since his authority was established, while it absolved the royalists from their burdensome allegiance; for, according to "The Leviathan," Charles was the English monarch only when in a condition to force obedience; and, to calm tender consciences, the philosopher further fixed on that precise point of time, "when a subject may obey an unjust conqueror." After the Restoration, it was subtilely urged by the Hobbists, that this very principle had greatly served the royal cause; for it afforded a plea for the emigrants to return, by compounding for their estates, and joining with those royalists who had remained at home in an open submission to the established government; and thus they were enabled to concert their measures in common, for reinstating the old monarchy. Had the Restoration never taken place, Hobbes would have equally insisted on the soundness of his doctrine; he would have a.s.serted the t.i.tle of Richard Cromwell to the Protectorate, if Richard had had the means to support it, as zealously as he afterwards did that of Charles II. to the throne, when the king had firmly re-established it. The philosophy of Hobbes, therefore, is not dangerous in any government; its sole aim is to preserve it from intestine divisions; but for this purpose, he was for reducing men to mere machines. With such little respect he treated the species, and with such tenderness the individual!