Hobbes Leviathan.pdf

LEVIATHAN

by Thomas Hobbes

1651

INTRODUCTION

NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this

also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in

some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as

doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints,

but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further,

imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a

COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and

strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial

soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial

joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to

perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members

are the strength; salus populi (the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are

suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and

civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and

united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.

To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will consider

l First, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both which is man.

Secondly, how, and by what covenants it is made; what are the rights and just power or authority of a sovereign;

and what it is that preserveth and dissolveth it.

Thirdly, what is a Christian Commonwealth.

l Lastly, what is the Kingdom of Darkness.

Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, that wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men.

Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to

show what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is

another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains;

and that is, Nosce teipsum, Read thyself: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance either the barbarous state

of men in power towards their inferiors, or to encourage men of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their betters; but

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Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another,

whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon

what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions.

I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men,- desire, fear, hope, etc.; not the similitude of the objects of

the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, etc.: for these the constitution individual, and particular

education, do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart, blotted and

confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that

searcheth hearts. And though by men's actions we do discover their design sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them

with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come to be altered, is to decipher without a key,

and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust or by too much diffidence, as he that reads is himself a good or evil

man.

But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him only with his acquaintance, which are but few.

He that is to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind: which though it be

hard to do, harder than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly and

perspicuously, the pains left another will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of

doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.

THE FIRST PART

OF MAN

CHAPTER I

OF SENSE

CONCERNING the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly, and afterwards in train or dependence upon one

another. Singly, they are every one a representation or appearance of some quality, or other accident of a body without us,

which is commonly called an object. Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of man's body, and by

diversity of working produceth diversity of appearances.

The original of them all is that which we call sense, (for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first,

totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense). The rest are derived from that original.

To know the natural cause of sense is not very necessary to the business now in hand; and I have elsewhere written of the

same at large. Nevertheless, to fill each part of my present method, I will briefly deliver the same in this place.

The cause of sense is the external body, or object, which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in

the taste and touch; or mediately, as in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of nerves and other

strings and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the brain and heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-

pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself: which endeavour, because outward, seemeth to be some matter

without. And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the eye, in a light, or colour figured;

to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an odour; to the tongue and palate, in a savour; and to the rest of the body, in heat,

cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we discern by feeling. All which qualities called sensible are in the

object that causeth them but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us

that are pressed are they anything else but diverse motions (for motion produceth nothing but motion). But their

appearance to us is fancy, the same waking that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye makes us fancy a

light, and pressing the ear produceth a din; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though

unobserved action. For if those colours and sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed

from them, as by glasses and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where we know the thing we see is in one place; the

appearance, in another. And though at some certain distance the real and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that sense in all cases is nothing else but original

fancy caused (as I have said) by the pressure that is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs,

thereunto ordained.

But the philosophy schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach

another doctrine; and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species, (in

English) a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen; the receiving whereof into the eye is seeing. And for the

cause of hearing, that the thing heard sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible aspect, or audible being seen;

which, entering at the ear, maketh hearing. Nay, for the cause of understanding also, they say the thing understood sendeth

forth an intelligible species, that is, an intelligible being seen; which, coming into the understanding, makes us understand.

I say not this, as disapproving the use of universities: but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a

Commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way what things would be amended in them; amongst which the

frequency of insignificant speech is one.

CHAPTER II

OF IMAGINATION

THAT when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that

when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same

(namely, that nothing can change itself), is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not only other men, but all other

things, by themselves: and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think everything else

grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein

that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is that the schools say, heavy bodies fall downwards

out of an appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them; ascribing appetite, and

knowledge of what is good for their conservation (which is more than man has), to things inanimate, absurdly.

When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinder it) eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in

an instant, but in time, and by degrees, quite extinguish it: and as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves

give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man,

then, when he sees, dreams, etc. For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen,

though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and

apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy, which signifies appearance, and is

as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men and many

other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking.

The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay of the motion made in sense, but an obscuring of it, in such manner as

the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars; which stars do no less exercise their virtue by which they are visible in

the day than in the night. But because amongst many strokes which our eyes, ears, and other organs receive from external

bodies, the predominant only is sensible; therefore the light of the sun being predominant, we are not affected with the

action of the stars. And any object being removed from our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain, yet other

objects more present succeeding, and working on us, the imagination of the past is obscured and made weak, as the voice

of a man is in the noise of the day. From whence it followeth that the longer the time is, after the sight or sense of any

object, the weaker is the imagination. For the continual change of man's body destroys in time the parts which in sense

were moved: so that distance of time, and of place, hath one and the same effect in us. For as at a great distance of place

that which we look at appears dim, and without distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices grow weak and inarticulate:

so also after great distance of time our imagination of the past is weak; and we lose, for example, of cities we have seen,

many particular streets; and of actions, many particular circumstances. This decaying sense, when we would express the

thing itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination, as I said before. But when we would express the decay, and signify

that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory. So that imagination and memory are but one thing, which for

diverse considerations hath diverse names.

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Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Much memory, or memory of many things, is called experience. Again, imagination being only of those things which have

been formerly perceived by sense, either all at once, or by parts at several times; the former (which is the imagining the

whole object, as it was presented to the sense) is simple imagination, as when one imagineth a man, or horse, which he

hath seen before. The other is compounded, when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we

conceive in our mind a centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the actions of

another man, as when a man imagines himself a Hercules or an Alexander (which happeneth often to them that are much

taken with reading of romances), it is a compound imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind. There be also other

imaginations that rise in men, though waking, from the great impression made in sense: as from gazing upon the sun, the

impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after; and from being long and vehemently attent upon

geometrical figures, a man shall in the dark, though awake, have the images of lines and angles before his eyes; which kind

of fancy hath no particular name, as being a thing that doth not commonly fall into men's discourse.

The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call dreams. And these also (as all other imaginations) have been before,

either totally or by parcels, in the sense. And because in sense, the brain and nerves, which are the necessary organs of

sense, are so benumbed in sleep as not easily to be moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no

imagination, and therefore no dream, but what proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of man's body; which inward

parts, for the connexion they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered do keep the same in motion;

whereby the imaginations there formerly made, appear as if a man were waking; saving that the organs of sense being now

benumbed, so as there is no new object which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous impression, a dream

must needs be more clear, in this silence of sense, than are our waking thoughts. And hence it cometh to pass that it is a

hard matter, and by many thought impossible, to distinguish exactly between sense and dreaming. For my part, when I

consider that in dreams I do not often nor constantly think of the same persons, places, objects, and actions that I do

waking, nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts dreaming as at other times; and because waking I often observe

the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that, being awake, I

know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.

And seeing dreams are caused by the distemper of some of the inward parts of the body, diverse distempers must needs

cause different dreams. And hence it is that lying cold breedeth dreams of fear, and raiseth the thought and image of some

fearful object, the motion from the brain to the inner parts, and from the inner parts to the brain being reciprocal; and that

as anger causeth heat in some parts of the body when we are awake, so when we sleep the overheating of the same parts

causeth anger, and raiseth up in the brain the imagination of an enemy. In the same manner, as natural kindness when we

are awake causeth desire, and desire makes heat in certain other parts of the body; so also too much heat in those parts,

while we sleep, raiseth in the brain an imagination of some kindness shown. In sum, our dreams are the reverse of our

waking imaginations; the motion when we are awake beginning at one end, and when we dream, at another.

The most difficult discerning of a man's dream from his waking thoughts is, then, when by some accident we observe not

that we have slept: which is easy to happen to a man full of fearful thoughts; and whose conscience is much troubled; and

that sleepeth without the circumstances of going to bed, or putting off his clothes, as one that noddeth in a chair. For he

that taketh pains, and industriously lays himself to sleep, in case any uncouth and exorbitant fancy come unto him, cannot

easily think it other than a dream. We read of Marcus Brutus (one that had his life given him by Julius Caesar, and was

also his favorite, and notwithstanding murdered him), how at Philippi, the night before he gave battle to Augustus Caesar,

he saw a fearful apparition, which is commonly related by historians as a vision, but, considering the circumstances, one

may easily judge to have been but a short dream. For sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the horror of his rash act,

it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it

made him wake, so also it must needs make the apparition by degrees to vanish: and having no assurance that he slept, he

could have no cause to think it a dream, or anything but a vision. And this is no very rare accident: for even they that be

perfectly awake, if they be timorous and superstitious, possessed with fearful tales, and alone in the dark, are subject to the

like fancies, and believe they see spirits and dead men's ghosts walking in churchyards; whereas it is either their fancy

only, or else the knavery of such persons as make use of such superstitious fear to pass disguised in the night to places they

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

would not be known to haunt.

From this ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and other strong fancies, from vision and sense, did arise the greatest

part of the religion of the Gentiles in time past, that worshipped satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and the like; and nowadays the

opinion that rude people have of fairies, ghosts, and goblins, and of the power of witches. For, as for witches, I think not

that their witchcraft is any real power, but yet that they are justly punished for the false belief they have that they can do

such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can, their trade being nearer to a new religion than to a craft or

science. And for fairies, and walking ghosts, the opinion of them has, I think, been on purpose either taught, or not

confuted, to keep in credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water, and other such inventions of ghostly men.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt but God can make unnatural apparitions: but that He does it so often as men need to fear

such things more than they fear the stay, or change, of the course of Nature, which he also can stay, and change, is no point

of Christian faith. But evil men, under pretext that God can do anything, are so bold as to say anything when it serves their

turn, though they think it untrue; it is the part of a wise man to believe them no further than right reason makes that which

they say appear credible. If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with it prognostics from dreams, false

prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men

would be would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience.

And this ought to be the work of the schools, but they rather nourish such doctrine. For (not knowing what imagination, or

the senses are) what they receive, they teach: some saying that imaginations rise of themselves, and have no cause; others

that they rise most commonly from the will; and that good thoughts are blown (inspired) into a man by God, and evil

thoughts, by the Devil; or that good thoughts are poured (infused) into a man by God, and evil ones by the Devil. Some say

the senses receive the species of things, and deliver them to the common sense; and the common sense delivers them over

to the fancy, and the fancy to the memory, and the memory to the judgement, like handing of things from one to another,

with many words making nothing understood.

The imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature endued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other

voluntary signs, is that we generally call understanding, and is common to man and beast. For a dog by custom will

understand the call or the rating of his master; and so will many other beasts. That understanding which is peculiar to man

is the understanding not only his will, but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of

things into affirmations, negations, and other forms of speech: and of this kind of understanding I shall speak hereafter.

CHAPTER III

OF THE CONSEQUENCE OR TRAIN OF IMAGINATIONS

BY CONSEQUENCE, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to

distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse.

When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every

thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense,

in whole or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our

senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense; and those motions

that immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together after sense: in so much as the former coming

again to take place and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner as water

upon a plain table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense, to one and the same

thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another, succeedeth, it comes to pass in time that in the imagining of

anything, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next; only this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the

same before, at one time or another.

This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is of two sorts. The first is unguided, without design, and inconstant; wherein

there is no passionate thought to govern and direct those that follow to itself as the end and scope of some desire, or other

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