it
only seems intelligible as the avenue and vestibule to another life.

THOMAS HOBBES

The Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes was born at Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England, April 5,
1588, and died at Hardwick Dec. 4, 1679. When comparatively a young
man he was secretary to Francis Bacon. He spent many years abroad,
met Galileo, and corresponded with Descartes. But he did not begin
to produce until in advanced middle age. "Leviathan, or the Matter,
Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil,"
appeared in 1651. His special impulse to the construction of a
science of politics came from the Great Rebellion, his detestation
of the principles on which it was based, and his dissatisfaction
with the theory of "divine right" as a bafis for the absolutism
which he counted a necessity. The "Leviathan" is the commonwealth,
or state, conceived as an "artificial man," and this gives the
title to this famous work. But this essay towards a science of
politics was only a fragment of that complete and all-inclusive
structure which he contemplated. Although in this sense only a
fragment, it has largely influenced all political theorising since
his day: and it contains the most definite enunciation of the
doctrine of the social contract, which took so different and so
revolutionary a shape in the hands of Rousseau.

_I.--Of Man_

Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world, is by the
art of man so imitated that he can make an artificial animal. For by art
is created that great leviathan called a commonwealth or state, which is
but an artificial man; in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul,
as giving life and motion; the magistrates and other officers the
joints; reward and punishment the nerves; concord, health; discord,
sickness; lastly, the pacts or covenants by which the parts were first
set together resemble the "fiat" of God at the Creation.

To describe this artificial man, I will consider: First, the matter and
the artificer, both which is man; secondly, how it is made; thirdly,
what is a Christian commonwealth; lastly, what is the kingdom of
darkness.

And first, of man. The thoughts of man are, singly, every one a
representation of some quality or accident of a body without us, called
an object. There is no conception in the mind which has not first been
begotten upon the organs of sense. The