qui, étant corporels, font que nous nous ressouvenons aussi
     d’elles. Vol. viii., p. 271.

|Gassendi’s attacks on the Meditations.|

97. If the orthodox of the age were not yet prepared for a doctrine
which seemed so favourable at least to natural religion as the
immateriality of the soul, it may be readily supposed, that Gassendi,
like Hobbes, had imbibed too much of the Epicurean theory to acquiesce
in the spiritualising principles of his adversary. In a sportive
style, he addresses him, _O anima!_ and Descartes, replying more
angrily, retorts upon him the name _O caro!_ which he frequently
repeats. Though we may lament such unhappy efforts at wit in these
great men, the names do not ill represent the spiritual and carnal
philosophies; the school that produced Leibnitz, Kant, and Stewart,
contrasted with that of Hobbes, Condillac, and Cabanis.

|Superiority of Descartes.|

98. It was a matter of course that the vulnerable passages of the six
Meditations would not escape the spear of so skilful an antagonist as
Gassendi. But many of his objections appear to be little more than
cavils; and upon the whole, Descartes leaves me with the impression of
his great superiority in metaphysical acuteness. It was indeed
impossible that men should agree, who persisted in using a different
definition of the important word, _idea_; and the same source of
interminable controversy has flowed ever since for their disciples.
Gassendi adopting the scholastic maxim, “Nothing is in the
understanding, which has not been in the sense,” carried it so much
farther than those from whom it came that he denied anything to be an
idea but what was imagined by the mind. Descartes repeatedly desired
both him and Hobbes, whose philosophy was built on the same notion, to
remark that he meant by idea, whatever can be conceived by the
understanding, though not capable of being represented by the
imagination.[241] Thus we imagine a triangle, but we can only
conceive a figure of a thousand sides; we know its existence, and can
reason about its properties, but we have no image whatever in the
mind, by which we can distinguish such a polygon from one of a smaller
or greater number of sides. Hobbes, in answer to this, threw out a
paradox which he has not, at least in so unlimited a manner, repeated,
that by reason, that is, by the process of reasoning, we can infer
nothing as to the nature of things, but only as to their names.[242]
It is singular that a man conversant at least with the elements of
geometry should have fallen into this error. For it does not appear
that he meant to speak only of natural substances, as to which his
language might seem to be a bad expression of what was afterwards
clearly shown by Locke. That the understanding can conceive and reason
upon that which the imagination cannot delineate, is evident not only
from Descartes’ instance of a polygon, but more strikingly by the
whole theory of infinites, which are certainly somewhat more than bare
words, whatever assistance words may give us in explaining them to
others or to ourselves.[243]

     [241] Par le nom d’idée, il veut seulement qu’on entende ici les
     images des choses matérielles dépeintes en la fantaisie
     corporelle; et cela étant supposé, il lui est aisé de montrer
     qu’on ne peut avoir propre et véritable idée de Dieu ni d’un
     ange; mais j’ai souvent averti, et principalement en celui là
     même, que je prends le nom d’idée pour tout ce qui est conçu
     immédiatement par l’esprit; en sorte que, lorsque je veux et que
     je crains, parce que je conçois en même temps que je veux et que
     je crains, ce vouloir et cette crainte sont mis par moi en nombre
     des idées; et je me suis servi de ce mot, parce qu’il étoit déjà
     communément reçu par les philosophes pour signifier les formes
     des conceptions. de l’entendement divin, encore que nous ne
     reconnoissions en Dieu aucune fantaisie ou imagination
     corporelle, et je n’en savois point de plus propre. Et je pense
     avoir assez expliqué l’idée de Dieu pour ceux qui veulent
     concevoir les sens que je donne à mes paroles; mais pour ceux qui
     s’attachent à les entendre autrement que je ne fais, je ne le
     pourrais jamais assez. Vol. i., p. 404. This is in answer to
     Hobbes; the objections of Hobbes, and Descartes’ replies, turn
     very much on this primary difference between ideas and images,
     which alone our countrymen could understand, and ideas as
     intellections, conceptions, νοουμενα [nooumena], incapable of
     being imagined, but not less certainly known and reasoned upon.
     The French is a translation, but made by Clerselier under the eye
     of Descartes, so that it may be quoted as an original.

     [242] Que dirons nous maintenant si peut-être le raisonnement
     n’est rien autre chose qu’un assemblage et un enchaînement de
     noms par ce mot est? D’ou il s’ensuivroit que par la raison nous
     ne concluons rien de tout touchant la nature des choses, mais
     seulement touchant leurs appellations, c’est à dire que par elle
     nous voyons simplement si nous assemblons bien ou mal les noms
     des choses, selon les conventions que nous avons faites à notre
     fantaisie touchant leurs significations, p. 476. Descartes merely
     answered:--L’assemblage qui se fait dans le raisonnement n’est
     pas celui des noms, mais bien celui des choses signifiées par les
     noms; et je m’étonne que le contraire puisse venir en l’esprit de
     personne. Descartes treated Hobbes, whom he did not esteem, with
     less attention than his other correspondents. Hobbes could not
     understand what have been called ideas of reflection, such as
     fear, and thought it was nothing more than the idea of the object
     feared. “For what else is the fear of a lion,” he says, “than the
     idea of this lion, and the effect which it produces in the heart,
     which leads us to run away? But this running is not a thought; so
     that nothing of thought exists in fear but the idea of the
     object.” Descartes only replied, “it is self-evident that it is
     not the same thing to see a lion and fear him, that it is to see
     him only,” p. 483.

     [243] I suspect, from what I have since read, that Hobbes had a
     different, and what seems to me a very erroneous view of
     infinite, or infinitesimal quantities in geometry. For he answers
     the old sophism of Zeno, Quicquid dividi potest in partes
     infinitas est infinitum, in a manner which does not meet the real
     truth of the case: Dividi posse in partes infinitas nihil aliud
     est quam dividi posse in partes _quotcunque quis velit_. Logica
     sive Computatio, c. 5., p. 38 (edit. 1667).

|Stewart’s remarks on Descartes.|

99. Dugald Stewart has justly dwelt on the signal service rendered by
Descartes to psychological philosophy, by turning the mental vision
inward upon itself, and accustoming us to watch the operations of our
intellect, which, though employed upon ideas obtained through the
senses, are as distinguishable from them as the workman from his work.
He has given indeed to Descartes a very proud title, Father of the
experimental philosophy of the human mind, as if he were to man what
Bacon was to nature.[244] By patient observation of what
passed within him, by holding his soul as it were an object in a
microscope, which is the only process of a good metaphysician, he
became habituated to throw away those integuments of sense which hide
us from ourselves. Stewart has censured him for the paradox, as he
calls it, that the _essence_ of mind consists in thinking, and
that of matter in extension. That the act of thinking is as
inseparable from the mind as extension is from matter, cannot indeed
be proved; since, as our thoughts are successive, it is not
inconceivable that there may be intervals of duration between them;
but it can hardly be reckoned a paradox. But whoever should be led by
the word essence to suppose that Descartes confounded the percipient
thinking substance, the Ego, upon whose bosom, like that of the ocean,
the waves of perception are raised by every breeze of sense, with the
perception itself, or even, what is scarcely more tenable, with the
reflective action, or thought; that he anticipated this strange
paradox of Hume in his earliest work, from which he silently withdrew
in his Essays, would not only do great injustice to one of the acutest
understandings that ever came to the subject, but overlook several
clear assertions of the distinction, especially in his answer to
Hobbes. “The thought,” he says, “differs from that which thinks, as
the mode from the substance.”[245] And Stewart has in his earliest
work justly corrected Reid in this point as to the Cartesian
doctrine.[246]

     [244] Dissertation on Progress of Philosophy. The word experiment
     must be taken in the sense of observation. Stewart very early
     took up his admiration for Descartes. “He was the first
     philosopher who stated in a clear and satisfactory manner the
     distinction between mind and matter, and who pointed out the
     proper plan for studying the intellectual philosophy. It is
     chiefly in consequence of his precise ideas with respect to this
     distinction, that we may remark in all his metaphysical writings,
     a perspicuity which is not observable in those of any of his
     predecessors.” Elem. of Philos. of Human Mind, vol. i. (published
     in 1792) note A. “When Descartes,” he says in the dissertation
     before quoted, “established it as a general principle that
     _nothing conceivable by the power of imagination could throw any
     light on the operations of thought_, a principle which I consider
     as exclusively his own, he laid the foundations of the
     experimental philosophy of the human mind. That the same truth
     had been previously perceived more or less distinctly by Bacon
     and others, appears probable from the general complexion of their
     speculations; but which of them has expressed it with equal
     precision, or laid it down as a fundamental maxim in their
     logic?” The words which I have put in italics seem too vaguely
     and not very clearly expressed, nor am I aware that they are
     borne out in their literal sense, by any position of Descartes;
     nor do I apprehend the allusion to Bacon. But it is certain that
     Descartes, and still more his disciples Arnauld and Malebranche,
     take better care to distinguish what can be imagined from what
     can be conceived or understood, than any of the school of
     Gassendi in this or other countries. One of the great merits of
     Descartes as a metaphysical writer, not unconnected with this, is
     that he is generally careful to avoid figurative language in
     speaking of mental operations, wherein he has much the advantage
     over Locke.

     [245] Vol. i., p. 470. Arnauld objected, in a letter to
     Descartes, Comment se peut il faire que la pensée constitue
     l’essence de l’esprit, puisque l’esprit est une substance, et que
     la pensée semble n’en être qu’un mode? Descartes replied that
     thought in general, la pensée, ou la nature que pense, in which
     he placed the essence of the soul, was very different from such
     or such particular acts of thinking, vol. vi., p. 153-160.

     [246] Philosophy of Human Mind, vol. i., note A. See the
     Principia, § 63.

|Paradoxes of Descartes.|

100. Several singular positions which have led to an undue
depreciation of Descartes in general as a philosopher, occur in his
metaphysical writings. Such was his denial of thought, and, as is
commonly said, sensation to brutes, which he seems to have founded on
the mechanism of the bodily organs, a cause sufficient, in his
opinion, to explain all the phænomena of the motions of animals, and
to obviate the difficulty of assigning to them immaterial souls;[247]
his rejection of final causes in the explanation of nature, as
far above our comprehension, and unnecessary to those who had the
internal proof of God’s existence; his still more paradoxical tenet
that the truth of geometrical theorems, and every other axiom of
intuitive certainty, depended upon the will of God; a notion that
seems to be a relic of his original scepticism, but which he
pertinaciously defends throughout his letters.[248] From remarkable
errors, men of original and independent genius are rarely exempt;
Descartes had pulled down an edifice constructed by the labours of
near two thousand years, with great reason in many respects, yet
perhaps with too unlimited a disregard of his predecessors; it was his
destiny, as it had been theirs, to be sometimes refuted and
depreciated in his turn. But the single fact of his having first
established, both in philosophical and popular belief, the
immateriality of the soul, were we even to forget the other great
accessions which he made to psychology, would declare the influence he
has had on human opinion. From this immateriality, however, he did not
derive the tenet of its immortality. He was justly contented to say
that from the intrinsic difference between mind and body, the
dissolution of the one could not necessarily take away the existence
of the other, but that it was for God to determine whether it should
continue to exist; and this determination, as he thought, could only
be learned from his revealed will. The more powerful arguments,
according to general apprehension, which reason affords for the
sentient being of the soul after death, did not belong to the
metaphysical philosophy of Descartes, and would never have been very
satisfactory to his mind. He says, in one of his letters, that “laying
aside what faith assures us of, he owns that it is more easy to make
conjectures for our own advantage and entertain promising hopes, than
to feel any confidence in their accomplishment.”[249]

     [247] It is a common opinion that Descartes denied all life and
     sensibility to brutes. But this seems not so clear. Il faut
     remarquer, he says in a letter to More, where he has been arguing
     against the existence in brutes of any thinking principle, que je
     parle de la pensée, non de la vie, ou du sentiment; car je n’ôte
     la vie à aucun animal, ne la faisant consister que dans la seule
     chaleur du cœur. Je ne leur refuse pas même le sentiment autant
     qu’il dépend des organes du corps, vol. x., p. 208. In a longer
     passage, if he does not express himself very clearly, he admits
     passions in brutes, and it seems impossible that he could have
     ascribed passions to what has no sensation. Much of what he here
     says is very good. Bien que Montaigne et Charron aient dit, qu’il
     y a plus de différence d’homme à homme que d’homme à bête, il
     n’est toutefois jamais trouvé aucune bête si parfaite, qu’elle
     ait usé de quelque signe pour faire entendre à d’autres animaux
     quelque chose que n’eût point de rapport à ses passions; et il
     n’y a point d’homme si imparfait qu’il n’en use; en sorte que
     ceux qui sont sourds et muets inventent des signes particuliers
     par lesquels ils expriment leur pensées; ce qui me semble un très
     fort argument pour prouver que ce qui fait que les bêtes ne
     parlent point comme nous, est qu’elles n’ont aucune pensée, et
     non point que les organes leur manquent. Et on ne peut dire
     qu’elles parlent entre elles, mais que nous ne les entendons pas;
     car _comme les chiens et quelques autres animaux nous expriment
     leurs passions_, ils nous exprimeroient aussi bien leurs pensées
     s’ils en avoient. Je sais bien que les bêtes font beaucoup de
     choses mieux que nous, mais je ne m’en étonne pas; car cela même
     sert à prouver qu’elles agissent naturellement, et par ressorts,
     ainsi qu’un horloge; laquelle montre bien mieux l’heure qu’il
     est, que notre jugement nous l’enseigne.... On peut seulement
     dire que, bien que les bêtes ne fassent aucune action qui nous
     assure qu’elles pensent, toutefois, à cause que les organes de
     leurs corps ne sont pas fort differens des nôtres, on peut
     conjecturer qu’il y a quelque pensée jointe à ces organes, ainsi
     que nous experimentons en nous, bien que la leur soit beaucoup
     moins parfaite; à quoi je n’ai rien à répondre, si non que si
     elles pensoient aussi que nous, elles auroient une ame immortelle
     aussi bien que nous; ce qui n’est pas vraisemblable, à cause
     qu’il n’y a point de raison pour le croire de quelques animaux,
     sans le croire de tous, et qu’il y en a plusieurs trop imparfaits
     pour pouvoir croire cela d’eux, comme sont les huitres, les
     éponges, &c. Vol. ix., p. 425. I do not see the meaning of une
     ame immortelle in the last sentence; if the words had been une
     ame immatérielle, it would be to the purpose. More, in a letter
     to which this is a reply, had argued as if Descartes took brutes
     for insensible machines, and combats the paradox with the
     arguments which common sense furnishes. He would even have
     preferred ascribing immortality to them, as many ancient
     philosophers did. But surely Descartes, who did not acknowledge
     any proofs of the immortality of the human soul to be valid,
     except those founded on revelation, needed not to trouble himself
     much about this difficulty.

     [248] C’est en effet parler de Dieu comme d’un Jupiter ou d’un
     Saturne, et l’assujettir au Styx et aux destinées, que de dire
     que ces vérités sont indépendantes de lui. Ne craignez point, je
     vous prie, d’assurer et de publier partout que c’est Dieu qui a
     établi ces lois en la nature, ainsi qu’un roi établit les lois en
     son royaume. Vol. vi., p. 109. He argues as strenuously the same
     point in p. 132 and p. 307.

     [249] Vol. ix., p. 369.

|His just notion of definitions.|

101. Descartes was perhaps the first who saw that definitions of
words, already as clear as they can be made, are nugatory or
impenetrable. This alone would distinguish his philosophy from that of
the Aristotelians, who had wearied and confused themselves for twenty
centuries with unintelligible endeavours to grasp by definition what
refuses to be defined. “Mr Locke,” says Stewart, “claims this
improvement as entirely his own, but the merit of it unquestionably
belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always
sufficiently attended to it in his researches.”[250] A still more
decisive passage to this effect, than that referred to by Stewart in
the Principia will be found in the posthumous dialogue on the Search
after Truth. It is objected by one of the interlocutors, as it had
actually been by Gassendi, that, to prove his existence by the act of
thinking, he should first know what existence and what thought is. “I
agree with you,” the representative of Descartes replies, “that it is
necessary to know what doubt is, and what thought is, before we can be
fully persuaded of this reasoning; I doubt, therefore I am, or what is
the same, I think, therefore I am. But do not imagine that for this
purpose you must torture your mind to find out the next genus, or the
essential differences, as the logicians talk, and so compose a regular
definition. Leave this to such as teach or dispute in the schools. But
whoever will examine things by himself, and judge of them according to
his understanding, cannot be so senseless as not to see clearly, when
he pays attention, what doubting, thinking, being, are, and as to have
any need to learn their distinctions. Besides, there are things which
we render more obscure, in attempting to define them, because, as they
are very simple and very clear, we cannot know and comprehend them
better than by themselves. And it should be reckoned among the
chief errors that can be committed in science for men to fancy that
they can define that which they can only conceive, and distinguish
what is clear in it from what is obscure, while they do not see the
difference between that which must be defined before it is understood
and that which can be fully known by itself. Now, among things which
can thus be clearly known by themselves, we must put doubting,
thinking, being. For I do not believe any one ever existed so stupid
as to need to know what being is before he could affirm that he is;
and it is the same of thought and doubt. Nor can he learn these things
except by himself, nor be convinced of them but by his own experience,
and by that consciousness and inward witness which every man finds in
himself when he examines the subject. And as we should define
whiteness in vain to a man who can see nothing, while one can open his
eyes and see a white object requires no more, so to know what doubting
is, and what thinking is, it is only necessary to doubt and to
think.”[251] Nothing could more tend to cut short the verbal cavils of
the schoolmen, than this limitation of their favourite exercise,
definition. It is due, therefore, to Descartes, so often accused of
appropriating the discoveries of others, that we should establish his
right to one of the most important that the new logic has to boast.

     [250] Dissertation, ubi, suprá, Stewart, in his Philosophical
     Essays, note A, had censured Reid for assigning this remark to
     Descartes and Locke, but without giving any better reason than
     that it is found in a work written by Lord Stair; earlier,
     certainly, than Locke, but not before Descartes. It may be
     doubtful, as we shall see hereafter, whether Locke has not gone
     beyond Descartes, or at least distinguished undefinable words
     more strictly.

     [251] Vol. xi., p. 369.

|His notion of substances.|

102. He seems, at one moment, to have been on the point of taking
another step very far in advance of his age. “Let us take,” he says,
“a piece of wax from the honey-comb; it retains some taste and smell,
it is hard, it is cold, it has a very marked colour, form, and size.
Approach it to the fire; it becomes liquid, warm, inodorous,
tasteless; its form and colour are changed, its size is increased.
Does the same wax remain after these changes? It must be allowed that
it does; no one doubts it, no one thinks otherwise. What was it then
that we so distinctly knew to exist in this piece of wax? Nothing
certainly that we observed by the senses, since all that the taste,
the smell, the sight, the touch reported to us has disappeared, and
still the same wax remains.” This something which endures under every
change of sensible qualities cannot be imagined; for the imagination
must represent some of these qualities, and none of them are essential
to the thing; it can only be conceived by the understanding.[252]

     [252] Méditation Seconde, i. 256.

|Not quite correct.|

103. It may seem almost surprising to us, after the writings of Locke
and his followers on the one hand, and the chemist with his crucible
on the other, have chased these abstract substances of material
objects from their sanctuaries, that a man of such prodigious
acuteness and intense reflection as Descartes should not have remarked
that the identity of wax after its liquefaction is merely nominal, and
depending on arbitrary language, which in many cases gives new
appellations to the same aggregation of particles after a change of
their sensible qualities; and that all we call substances are but
aggregates of resisting moveable corpuscles, which by the laws of
nature are capable of affecting our senses differently, according to
the combinations they may enter into, and the changes they may
successively undergo. But if he had distinctly seen this, which I do
not apprehend that he did, it is not likely that he would have
divulged the discovery. He had already given alarm to the jealous
spirit of orthodoxy by what now appears to many so self-evident, that
they have treated the supposed paradox as a trifling with words, the
doctrine that colour, heat, smell, and other secondary qualities, or
accidents of bodies, do not exist in them, but in our own minds, and
are the effects of their intrinsic or primary qualities. It was the
the tenet of the schools that these were sensible realities, inherent
in bodies; and the church held as an article of faith, that the
substance of bread being withdrawn from the consecrated wafer, the
accidents of that substance remained as before, but independent, and
not inherent in any other. Arnauld raised this objection, which
Descartes endeavoured to repel by a new theory of transubstantiation;
but it always left a shade of suspicion, in the Catholic church of
Rome, on the orthodoxy of Cartesianism.

|His notions of intuitive truth.|

104. “The paramount and indisputable authority which, in all our
reasonings concerning the human mind, he ascribes to the evidence of
consciousness” is reckoned by Stewart among the great merits of
Descartes. It is certain that there are truths which we know, as it is
called, intuitively, that is, by the mind’s immediate inward glance.
And reasoning would be interminable, if it did not find its ultimate
limit in truths which it cannot prove. Gassendi imputed to Descartes,
that, in his fundamental enthymem, Cogito, ergo sum, he supposed a
knowledge of the major premise, Quod cogitat, est. But Descartes
replied that it was a great error to believe that our knowledge of
particular propositions must always be deduced from universals,
according to the rules of logic; whereas, on the contrary, it is by
means of our knowledge of particulars that we ascend to generals,
though it is true that we descend again from them to infer other
particular propositions.[253] It is probable that Gassendi did not
make this objection very seriously.

     [253] Vol. ii., p. 305. See too the passage, quoted above, in his
     posthumous dialogue.

105. Thus the logic of Descartes, using that word for principles that
guide our reasoning, was an instrument of defence both against the
captiousness of ordinary scepticism, that of the Pyrrhonic school, and
against the disputatious dogmatism of those who professed to serve
under the banner of Aristotle. He who reposes on his own
consciousness, or who recurs to first principles of intuitive
knowledge, though he cannot be said to silence his adversary, should
have the good sense to be silent himself, which puts equally an end to
debate. But so far as we are concerned with the investigation of
truth, the Cartesian appeal to our own consciousness, of which Stewart
was very fond, just as it is in principle, _may_ end in an
assumption of our own prejudices as the standard of belief. Nothing
can be truly self-evident, but that which a clear, an honest, and an
experienced understanding in another man acknowledges to be so.

|Treatise on art of logic.|

106. Descartes has left a treatise highly valuable, but not very much
known, on the art of logic, or rules for the conduct of the
understanding.[254] Once only, in a letter, he has alluded to the name
of Bacon.[255] There are perhaps a few passages in this short tract
that remind us of the Novum Organum. But I do not know that the
coincidence is such as to warrant a suspicion that he was indebted to
it; we may reckon it rather a parallel, than a derivative logic;
written in the same spirit of cautious, inductive procedure, less
brilliant and original in its inventions, but of more general
application than the Novum Organum, which is with some difficulty
extended beyond the province of natural philosophy. Descartes is as
averse as Bacon to syllogistic forms. “Truth,” he says, “often escapes
from these fetters, in which those who employ them remain entangled.
This is less frequently the case with those who make no use of logic,
experience showing that the most subtle of sophisms cheat none but
sophists themselves, not those who trust to their natural reason. And
to convince ourselves how little this syllogistic art serves towards
the discovery of truth, we may remark that the logicians can form no
syllogism with a true conclusion, unless they are already acquainted
with the truth that the syllogism develops. Hence it follows that the
vulgar logic is wholly useless to him who would discover truth for
himself, though it may assist in explaining to others the truth he
already knows, and that it would be better to transfer it as a science
from philosophy to rhetoric.”[256]

     [254] M. Cousin has translated and republished two works
     of Descartes, which had only appeared in Opera Posthuma Cartesii,
     Amsterdam, 1701. Their authenticity, from external and intrinsic
     proofs, is out of question. One of these is that mentioned in the
     text; entitled “Rules for the Direction of the Understanding;”
     which, though logical in its subject, takes most of its
     illustrations from mathematics. The other is a dialogue, left
     imperfect, in which he sustains the metaphysical principles of
     his philosophy. Of these two little tracts, their editor has
     said, that “they equal in vigour and perhaps surpass in
     arrangement the Meditations and Discourse on Method. We see in
     these more unequivocally the main object of Descartes, and the
     spirit of the revolution which has created modern philosophy, and
     placed in the understanding itself the principle of all
     certainty, the point of departure for all legitimate inquiry.
     They might seem written but yesterday, and for the present age.”
     Vol. xi. preface, p. 1. I may add to this, that I consider the
     Rules for the direction of the Understanding as one of the best
     works on logic (in the enlarged sense) which I have ever read;
     more practically useful, perhaps, to young students than the
     Novum Organum; and though, as I have said, his illustrations are
     chiefly mathematical, most of his rules are applicable to the
     general discipline of the reasoning powers. It occupies little
     more than one hundred pages, and I think that I am doing a
     service in recommending it. Many of the rules will, of course, be
     found in later books; some possibly in earlier. This tract, as
     well as the dialogue which follows it, is incomplete, a portion
     being probably lost.

     [255] Si quelqu’un de cette humeur vouloit entreprendre
     d’écrire l’histoire des apparences célestes selon la méthode de
     Verulamius. Vol. vi., p. 210.

     [256] Vol. xi., p. 255.

|Merits of his writings.|

107. It would occupy too much space to point out the many profound and
striking thoughts which this treatise on the conduct of the
understanding, and indeed most of the writings of Descartes contain.
“The greater part of the questions on which the learned dispute are
but questions of words. These occur so frequently that, if
philosophers would agree on the signification of their words,
scarce any of their controversies would remain.” This has been
continually said since; but it is a proof of some progress in wisdom,
when the original thought of one age becomes the truism of the next.
No one had been so much on his guard against the equivocation of
words, or knew so well their relation to the operations of the mind.
And it may be said, generally, though not without exception of the
metaphysical writings of Descartes, that we find in them a perspicuity
which springs from his unremitting attention to the logical process of
inquiry, admitting no doubtful or ambiguous position, and never
requiring from his reader a deference to any authority but that of
demonstration. It is a great advantage in reading such writers that we
are able to discern when they are manifestly in the wrong. The
sophisms of Plato, of Aristotle, of the schoolmen, and of a great many
recent metaphysicians, are disguised by their obscurity; and while
they creep insidiously into the mind of the reader, are always denied
and explained away by partial disciples.

|His notions of free will.|

108. Stewart has praised Descartes for having recourse to the evidence
of consciousness in order to prove the liberty of the will. But he
omits to tell us that the notions entertained by this philosopher were
not such as have been generally thought compatible with free agency in
the only sense that admits of controversy. It was an essential part of
the theory of Descartes that God is the cause of all human actions.
“Before God sent us into the world,” he says in a letter, “he knew
exactly what all the inclinations of our will would be; it is he that
has implanted them in us; it is he also that has disposed all other
things, so that such or such objects should present themselves to us
at such or such times, by means of which he has known that our free
will would determine us to such or such actions, and he has willed
that it should be so; but he has not willed to compel us
thereto.”[257] “We could not demonstrate,” he says at another time,
“that God exists, except by considering him as a being absolutely
perfect; and he could not be absolutely perfect, if there could happen
anything in the world which did not spring entirely from him.... Mere
philosophy is enough to make us know that there cannot enter the least
thought into the mind of man, but God must will and have willed from
all eternity that it should enter there.”[258] This is in a letter to
his highly intelligent friend, the princess Palatine Elizabeth,
granddaughter of James I.; and he proceeds to declare himself strongly
in favour of predestination, denying wholly any particular providence,
to which she had alluded, as changing the decrees of God, and all
efficacy of prayer, except as one link in the chain of his
determinations. Descartes, therefore, whatever some of his disciples
may have become, was far enough from an Arminian theology. “As to free
will,” he says elsewhere, “I own that thinking only of ourselves we
cannot but reckon it independent, but when we think of the infinite
power of God we cannot but believe that all things depend on him, and
that consequently our free will must do so too.... But since our
knowledge of the existence of God should not hinder us from being
assured of our free will, because we feel and are conscious of it in
ourselves, so that if our free will should not make us doubt of the
existence of God. For the independence which we experience and feel in
ourselves, and which is sufficient to make our actions praiseworthy or
blameable, is not incompatible with a dependence of another nature,
according to which all things are subject to God.”[259]

     [257] Vol. ix., p. 374.

     [258] Id. p. 246.

     [259] Vol. ix., p. 368. This had originally been stated
     in the Principia with less confidence, the free will of man and
     predetermination of God being both asserted as true, but their
     co-existence incomprehensible. Vol. iii., p. 86.

|Fame of his system and attacks upon it.|

109. A system so novel, so attractive to the imagination by its bold
and brilliant paradoxes as that of Descartes, could not but excite the
attention of an age already roused to the desire of a new philosophy,
and to the scorn of ancient authority. His first treatises appeared in
French; and, though he afterwards employed Latin, his works were very
soon translated by his disciples, and under his own care. He wrote in
Latin with great perspicuity; in French with liveliness and elegance.
His mathematical and optical writings gave him a reputation which envy
could not take away, and secured his philosophy from that general
ridicule which sometimes overwhelms an obscure author. His very
enemies, numerous and vehement as they were, served to enhance the
celebrity of the Cartesian system, which he seems to have anticipated
by publishing their objections to his Meditations with his own
replies. In the universities, bigoted for the most part to
Aristotelian authority, he had no chance of public reception; but the
influence of the universities was much diminished in France,
and a new theory had perhaps better chances in its favour on account
of their opposition. But the Jesuits, a more powerful body, were in
general adverse to the Cartesian system, and especially some time
afterwards, when it was supposed to have the countenance of several
leading Jansenists. The Epicurean school, led by Gassendi and Hobbes,
presented a formidable phalanx; since it in fact comprehended the wits
of the world, the men of indolence and sensuality, quick to discern
the many weaknesses of Cartesianism, with no capacity for its
excellencies. It is unnecessary to say, how predominant this class was
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in France and
England.

|Controversy with Voet.|

110. Descartes was evidently in considerable alarm lest the church
should bear with its weight upon his philosophy.[260] He had the
censure on Galileo before his eyes, and certainly used some chicane of
words as to the earth’s movement upon this account. It was, however,
in the Protestant country, which he had chosen as his harbour of
refuge, that he was doomed to encounter the roughest storm. Gisbert
Voet, an eminent theologian in the university of Utrecht, and the head
of the party in the church of Holland, which had been victorious in
the synod of Dort, attacked Descartes with all the virulence and
bigotry characteristic of his school of divinity. The famous
demonstration of the being of God he asserted to be a cover for
atheism, and thus excited a flame of controversy, Descartes being not
without supporters in the university, especially Regius, professor of
medicine. The philosopher was induced by these assaults to change his
residence from a town in the province of Utrecht to Leyden. Voet did
not cease to pursue him with outrageous calumny, and succeeded in
obtaining decrees of the senate and university, which interdicted
Regius from teaching that “new and unproved (præsumpta) philosophy” to
his pupils. The war of libels on the Voetian side did not cease for
some years, and Descartes replied with no small acrimony against Voet
himself. The latter had recourse to the civil power, and instituted a
prosecution against Descartes, which was quashed by the interference
of the prince of Orange. But many in the university of Leyden, under
the influence of a notable theologian of that age, named Triglandius,
one of the stoutest champions of Dutch orthodoxy, raised a cry against
the Cartesian philosophy as being favourable to Pelagianism and
popery, the worst names that could be given in Holland; and it was
again through the protection of the prince of Orange that he escaped a
public censure. Regius, the most zealous of his original advocates,
began to swerve from the fidelity of a sworn disciple, and published a
book containing some theories of his own, which Descartes thought
himself obliged to disavow. Ultimately he found, like many benefactors
of mankind, that he had purchased reputation at the cost of peace;
and, after some visits to France, where, probably from the same cause,
he never designed to settle, found an honourable asylum and a
premature death at the court of Christina. He died in 1651, having
worked a more important change in speculative philosophy than any who
had preceded him since the revival of learning; for there could be no
comparison, in that age, between the celebrity and effect of his
writings and those of Lord Bacon. The latter had few avowed enemies,
till it was too late to avow enmity.[261]

     [260] On a tellement assujetti la théologie à Aristotle,
     qu’il est impossible d’expliquer une autre philosophie qu’il ne
     semble d’abord qu’elle soit contre la foi. Et à propos de ceci,
     je vous prie de me mander s’il n’y a rien de déterminé en la foi
     touchant l’étendue du monde: savoir s’il est fini ou plutôt
     infini, et si tout ce qu’on appelle espaces imaginaires soient
     des corps créés et véritables. Vol. vi., p. 73.

     [261] The life of Descartes was written, very fully and
     with the warmth of a disciple, by Baillet, in two volumes quarto,
     1691, of which he afterwards published an abridgment. In this we
     find at length the attacks made on him by the Voetian
     theologians. Brucker has given a long and valuable account of the
     Cartesian philosophy, but not favourable, and perhaps not quite
     fair. Vol. v., p. 200-334. Buhle is, as usual, much inferior to
     Brucker. But those who omit the mathematical portion will not
     find the original works of Descartes very long, and they are well
     worthy of being read.

|Charges of plagiarism.|

111. The prejudice against Descartes, especially in his own country,
was aggravated by his indiscreet and not very warrantable assumption
of perfect originality.[262] No one, I think, can fairly
refuse to own, that the Cartesian metaphysics, taken in their
consecutive arrangement, form truly an original system; and it would
be equally unjust to deny the splendid discoveries he developed in
algebra and optics. But upon every one subject which Descartes
treated, he has not escaped the charge of plagiarism; professing
always to be ignorant of what had been done by others, he falls
perpetually into their track; more, as his adversaries maintained,
than the chances of coincidence could fairly explain. Leibnitz has
summed up the claims of earlier writers to the pretended discoveries
of Descartes; and certainly it is a pretty long bill to be presented
to any author. I shall insert this passage in a note, though much of
it has no reference to this portion of the Cartesian philosophy.[263]
It may perhaps be thought by candid minds, that we cannot apply the
doctrine of chances to coincidence of reasoning in men of acute and
inquisitive spirits, as fairly as we may to that of style or imagery;
but, if we hold strictly that the older writer may claim the exclusive
praise of the philosophical discovery, we must regret to see such a
multitude of feathers plucked from the wing of an eagle.

     [262] I confess, he says in his logic, that I was born
     with such a temper, that the chief pleasure I find in study is
     not from the learning the arguments of others, but by inventing
     my own. This disposition alone impelled me in youth to the study
     of science; hence, whenever a new book promised by its title some
     new discovery, before sitting down to read it, I used to try
     whether my own natural sagacity could lead me to anything of the
     kind, and I took care not to lose this innocent pleasure by too
     hasty a perusal. This answered so often that I at length
     perceived that I arrived at truth, not as other men do after
     blind and precarious guesses, by good luck rather than skill, but
     that long experience had taught me certain fixed rules, which
     were of surprising utility, and of which I afterwards made use to
     discover more truths. Vol. xi., p. 252.

     [263] Dogmata ejus metaphysica, velut circa ideas a
     sensibus remotas, et animæ distinctionem a corpore, et fluxam per
     se rerum materialium fidem, prorsus Platonica sunt. Argumentum
     pro existentia Dei, ex eo, quod ens perfectissimum, vel quo majus
     intelligi non potest, existentiam includit, fuit Anselmi, et in
     libro “Contra insipientem” inscripto extat inter ejus opera,
     passimque a scholasticis examinatur. In doctrina de continuo,
     pleno et loco Aristotelem noster secutus est, Stoicosque in re
     morali penitus expressit, floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia
     libant. In explicatione rerum mechina Leucippum et Democritum
     præeuntes habuit, qui et vortices ipsos jam docuerant. Jordanus
     Brunus easdem fere de magnitudine universi ideas habuisse
     dicitur, quemadmodum et notavit V. CC. Stephanus Spleissius, ut
     de Gilberto nil dicam, cujus magneticæ considerationes tum per
     se, tum ad systema universi applicatæ, Cartesio plurimum
     profuerunt. Explicationem gravitatis per materiæ solidioris
     rejectionem in tangente, quod in physica Cartesiana prope
     pulcherrimum est, didicit ex Keplero, qui similitudine palearum
     motu aquæ in vase gyrantis ad centrum contrusarum rem explicuit
     primus. Actionem lucis in distans, similitudine baculi pressi jam
     veteres adumbravere. Circa iridem a M. Antonio de Dominis non
     parum lucis accepit. Keplerum fuisse primum suum in dioptricis
     magistrum, et in eo argumento omnes ante se mortales longo
     intervallo antegressum, fatetur Cartesius in epistolis
     familiaribus; nam in scriptis, quæ ipse edidit, longè abest a
     tali confessione aut laude, tametsi illa ratio, quæ rationum
     dictionem explicat, et compositione nimirum duplicis conatûs
     perpendicularis ad superficiem et ad eandem paralleli, disertè
     apud Keplerum extet, qui eodem, ut Cartesius, modo æqualitatem
     angulorum incidentiæ et reflexionis hinc deducit. Idque gratam
     mentionem ideo merebatur, quod omnis prope Cartesii ratiocinatio
     huic innititur principio. Legem refractionis primum invenisse
     Willebroodum Snellium, Isaacus Vossius patefecit, quanquam non
     ideo negare ausim, Cartesium in eadem incidere potuisse de suo.
     Negavit in epistolis Vietam sibi lectum, sed Thomæ Harrioti Angli
     libros analyticos posthumos anno 1631 editos vidisse multi vix
     dubitant; usque adeo magnus est eorum consensus cum calculo
     geometriæ Cartesianæ. Sane jam Harriotus æquationem nihilo
     æqualem posuit, et hinc derivavit, quomodo oriatur æquatio ex
     multiplicatione radicum in se invicem, et quomodo radiorum
     auctione, diminutione, multiplicatione aut divisione variari
     æquatio possit, et quomodo proinde natura, et constitutio
     æquationem et radicum cognosci possit ex terminorum habitudine.
     Itaque narrat celeberrimus Wallisius, Robervalium, qui miratus
     erat, unde Cartesio in mentem venisset palmarium illud,
     æquationem ponere æqualem nihilo ad instar unius quantitatis,
     ostenso sibi a Domino de Cavendish libro Harrioti exclamasse, il
     l’a vu! il l’a vu! vidit, vidit. Reductionem quadratoquadratæ
     æquationis ad cubicam superiori jam sæculo invenit Ludovicus
     Ferrarius, cujus vitam reliquit Cardanus ejus familiaris. Denique
     fuit Cartesius, ut a viris doctis dudum notatum est, et ex
     epistolis nimium apparet, immodicus contemptor aliorum, et famæ
     cupiditate ab artificiis non abstinens, quæ parum generosa videri
     possunt. Atque hæc profecto non dico animo obtrectandi viro, quem
     mirificè æstimo, sed eo consilio, ut cuique suum tribuatur, nec
     unus omnium laudes absorbeat; justissimum enim est, ut
     inventoribus suus honos constet, nec sublatis virtutum præmiis
     præclara faciendi studium refrigescat. Leibnitz, apud Brucker, v.
     v. 255.

|Recent increase of his fame.|

112. The name of Descartes as a great metaphysical writer has revived
in some measure of late years; and this has been chiefly owing, among
ourselves, to Dugald Stewart; in France, to the growing disposition of
their philosophers to cast away their idols of the eighteenth century.
“I am disposed,” says our Scottish philosopher, “to date the origin of
the true philosophy of mind from the Principia (why not the earlier
works?) of Descartes, rather than from the Organum of Bacon,
or the Essays of Locke; without, however, meaning to compare the
French author with our two countrymen, either as a contributor to our
stock of _facts_ relating to the intellectual phænomena, or as
the author of any important conclusion concerning the general laws to
which they may be referred.” The excellent edition by M. Cousin, in
which alone the entire works of Descartes can be found, is a homage
that France has recently offered to his memory, and an important
contribution to the studious both of metaphysical and mathematical
philosophy. I have made use of no other, though it might be desirable
for the inquirer to have the Latin original at his side, especially in
those works which have not been seen in French by their author.

                             SECT. IV.

            _On the Metaphysical Philosophy of Hobbes._

|Metaphysical treatise of Hobbes.|

113. The metaphysical philosophy of Hobbes was promulgated in his
treatise on Human Nature, which appeared in 1650. This, with his other
works, De Cive, and De Corpore Politico, were fused into that great
and general system, which he published in 1651 with the title of
Leviathan. The first part of the Leviathan, “Of Man,” follows the
several chapters of the treatise on Human Nature with much regularity;
but so numerous are the enlargements or omissions, so great is the
variance with which the author has expressed the same positions, that
they should much rather be considered as two works, than as two
editions of the same. They differ more than Lord Bacon’s treatise, De
Augmentis Scientiarum, does from his Advancement of Learning. I shall,
however, blend the two in a single analysis, and this I shall
generally give, as far as is possible, consistently with my own
limits, in the very words of Hobbes. His language is so lucid and
concise, that it would be almost as improper to put an algebraical
process in different terms as some of his metaphysical paragraphs.
But, as a certain degree of abridgment cannot be dispensed with, the
reader must not take it for granted, even where inverted commas denote
a closer attention to the text, that nothing is omitted, although, in
such cases, I never hold it permissible to make any change.

|His theory of sensation.|

|Coincident with Descartes.|

114. All single thoughts, it is the primary tenet of Hobbes, are
representations or appearances of some quality of a body without us,
which is commonly called an object. “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.”[264] In
the treatise on Human Nature he dwells long on the immediate causes of
sensation; and if no alteration had been made in his manuscript since
he wrote his dedication to the Earl of Newcastle in 1640, he must be
owned to have anticipated Descartes in one of his most celebrated
doctrines. “Because the image in vision, consisting in colour and
shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that
sense, it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that
the same colour and shape are the very qualities themselves; and for
the same, cause, that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell,
or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received, that the
contrary must needs appear a great paradox; and yet the introduction
of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the
maintenance of that opinion), passing to and fro from the object, is
worse than any paradox, as being a plain impossibility. I shall,
therefore, endeavour to make plain these points: 1. That the subject
wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing
seen. 2. That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an
image or colour. 3. That the said image or colour is but an apposition
unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object
worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some external substance of the
head. 4. That, as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from
the other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object,
but the sentiment.”[265] And this he goes on to prove. Nothing of this
will be found in the Discours sur la Méthode, the only work of
Descartes then published; and, even if we believe Hobbes to have
interpolated this chapter after he had read the Meditations, he has
stated the principle so clearly and illustrated it so copiously, that,
so far especially as Locke and the English metaphysicians took it up,
we may almost reckon him another original source.

     [264] Leviathan, c. 1.

     [265] Hum. Nat., c. 2.

|Imagination and memory.|

115. The second chapter of the Leviathan, “On Imagination,” begins
with one of those acute and original observations we often find in
Hobbes: “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 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.” The physical principle had lately been
established, but the reason here given for the contrary prejudice,
though not the sole one, is ingenious and even true. Imagination he
defines to be “conception remaining, and by little and little decaying
after the act of sense.”[266] This he afterwards expressed less
happily, “the gradual decline of the motion in which sense consists;”
his phraseology becoming more and more tinctured with the materialism
he affected in all his philosophy. Neither definition seems at all
applicable to the imagination which calls up long past perceptions.
“This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean
fancy itself), we call imagination, 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 divers considerations hath divers names.”[267] It is,
however, evident that imagination and memory are distinguished by
something more than their names. The second fundamental error of
Hobbes in his metaphysics, his extravagant nominalism, if so it should
be called, appears in this sentence, as the first, his materialism,
does in that previously quoted.

     [266] Hum. Nat., c. 3.

     [267] Lev., c. 2.

116. The phænomena of dreaming and the phantasms of waking men are
considered in this chapter with the keen observation and cool reason
of Hobbes.[268] I am not sure that he has gone more profoundly into
psychological speculations in the Leviathan than in the earlier
treatise; but it bears witness more frequently to what had probably
been the growth of the intervening period, a proneness to political
and religious allusion, to magnify civil and to depreciate
ecclesiastical power. “If this superstitious fear of spirits were
taken away, and with its prognostics from dreams, false prophecies,
and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty and ambitious
persons abuse the simple people, men 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.”[269]

     [268] Hum. Nat., c. 3.

     [269] Id. ibid.

|Discourse or train of imagination.|

117. The fourth chapter on Human Nature, and the corresponding third
chapter of the Leviathan, entitled On Discourse, or the Consequence
and Train of Imagination, are among the most remarkable in Hobbes, as
they contain the elements of that theory of association, which was
slightly touched afterwards by Locke, but developed and pushed to a
far greater extent by Hartley. “The cause,” he says, “of the coherence
or consequence of one conception to another is their first coherence
or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense: As, for
instance, from St. Andrew the mind runneth to St. Peter, because their
names are read together; from St. Peter to a stone, from the same
cause; from stone to foundation, because we see them together; and for
the same cause from foundation to church, and from church to people,
and from people to tumult; and, according to this example, the mind
may run almost from anything to anything.”[270] This he illustrates in
the Leviathan by the well-known question suddenly put by one, in
conversation about the death of Charles I., “What was the value of a
Roman penny?” Of this _discourse_, as he calls it, in a larger
sense of the word than is usual with the logicians, he mentions
several kinds; and after observing that the remembrance of succession
of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent and what
consequent and what concomitant, is called an experiment, adds that
“to have had many experiments, is what we call experience, which is
nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by
what consequents.”[271]

     [270] Hum. Nat. c. 4, § 2.

     [271] Id.

|Experience.|

118. “No man can have a conception of the future, for the future is
not yet, but of our conceptions of the past we make a future, or
rather call past future relatively.”[272] And again: “The present only
has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only;
but things to come have no being at all; the future being but a
fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the
actions that are present, which with most certainty is done by him
that has most experience, but not with certainty enough. And though it
be called prudence, when the event answereth our expectation, yet in
its own nature it is but presumption.”[273] “When we have
observed antecedents and consequents frequently associated, we take
one for a sign of the other, as clouds foretell rain, and rain is a
sign there have been clouds. But signs are but conjectural, and their
assurance is never full or evident. For though a man have always seen
the day and night to follow one another hitherto, yet can he not
thence conclude they shall do so, or that they have done so,
eternally. Experience concludeth nothing universally. But those who
have most experience conjecture best, because they have most signs to
conjecture by; hence, old men, cæteris paribus, and men of quick
parts, conjecture better than the young or dull.”[274] “But experience
is not to be equalled by any advantage of natural and extemporary wit,
though perhaps many young men think the contrary.” There is a
presumption of the past as well as the future founded on experience,
as when from having often seen ashes after fire, we infer from seeing
them again that there has been fire. But this is as conjectural as our
expectations of the future.[275]

     [272] Human Nat. c. 4, § 7.

     [273] Lev., c. 3.

     [274] Hum. Nat.

     [275] Lev.

|Unconceivableness of infinity.|

119. In the last paragraph of the chapter in the Leviathan, he adds,
what is a very leading principle in the philosophy of Hobbes, but
seems to have no particular relation to what has preceded. “Whatsoever
we imagine is finite; therefore, there is no idea or conception of
anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of
infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or
infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite,
we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds
of the things named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own
inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us
conceive him, for he is incomprehensible and his greatness and power
are inconceivable, but that we may honour him. Also, because
whatsoever, as I said before, we conceive, has been perceived first by
sense, either all at once, or by parts; a man can have no thought,
representing anything, not subject to sense. No man therefore can
conceive anything, but he must conceive it in some place, and indeed
with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts,
nor that anything is all in this place, and all in another place at
the same time, nor that two or more things can be in one and the same
place at once. For none of these things ever have, or can be incident
to sense, but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit without any
signification at all, from deceived philosophers, and deceived or
deceiving schoolmen.” This, we have seen in the last section, had been
already discussed with Descartes. The paralogism of Hobbes consists in
his imposing a limited sense on the word idea or conception, and
assuming that what cannot be conceived according to that sense has no
signification at all.

|Origin of language.|

120. The next chapter, being the fifth in one treatise, and the fourth
in the other, may be reckoned, perhaps, the most valuable as well as
original, in the writings of Hobbes. It relates to speech and
language. “The invention of printing,” he begins by observing, “though
ingenious, compared with the invention of letters, is no great
matter.... But the most noble and profitable invention of all others,
was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their
connection, whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they
are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and
conversation; without which there had been amongst men neither
commonwealth, nor society, nor content nor peace, no more than among
lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself,
that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his
sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this was
sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the experience and use
of the creatures should give him occasion, and to join them in such
manner by degrees, as to make himself understood; and so by succession
of time so much language might be gotten as he had found use for,
though not so copious as an orator or philosopher has need of.”[276]

     [276] Leviathan, c. 4.

|His political theory interferes.|

121. This account of the original of language appears in general as
probable as it is succinct and clear. But the assumption that there
could have been no society or mutual peace among mankind without
language, the ordinary instrument of contract, is too much founded
upon his own political speculations. Nor is it proved by the
comparison to lions, bears, and wolves, even if the analogy could be
admitted; since the state of warfare which he here intimates to be
natural to man, does not commonly subsist in these wild animals of the
same species. _Sævis inter se convenit_ _ursis_, is
an old remark. But taking mankind with as much propensity to violence
towards each other as Hobbes could suggest, is it speech, or reason
and the sense of self-interest, which has restrained this within the
boundaries imposed on it by civil society? The position appears to be,
that man, with every other faculty and attribute of his nature, except
language, could never have lived in community with his fellows. It is
manifest, that the mechanism of such a community would have been very
imperfect. But possessing his rational powers, it is hard to see why
he might not have devised signs to make known his special wants, or
why he might not have attained the peculiar prerogative of his species
and foundation of society, the exchange of what he liked less for what
he liked better.

|Necessity of speech exaggerated.|

122. This will appear more evident, and the exaggerated notions of the
school of Hobbes as to the absolute necessity of language to the
mutual relations of mankind will be checked by considering what was
not so well understood in his age as at present, the intellectual
capacities of those who are born deaf, and the resources which they
are able to employ. It can hardly be questioned, but that a number of
families thrown together in this unfortunate situation, without other
intercourse, could by the exercise of their natural reason, as well as
the domestic and social affections, constitute themselves into a sort
of commonwealth, at least as regular as that of ants and bees; and if
the want of language would deprive them of many advantages of polity,
it would also secure them from much fraud and conspiracy. But those
whom we have known to want the use of speech, have also wanted the
sense of hearing, and have thus been shut out from many assistances to
the reasoning faculties, which our hypothesis need not exclude. The
fair supposition is that of a number of persons merely dumb, and
although they would not have laws or learning, it does not seem
impossible they might maintain at least a patriarchal, if not a
political, society for many generations. Upon the lowest supposition,
they could not be inferior to the Chimpanzees, who are said to live in
communities in the forests of Angola.

|Use of names.|

123. The succession of conceptions in the mind depending wholly on
that they had one to another when produced by the senses, they cannot
be recalled at our choice and the need we have of them, “but as it
chanceth us to hear and see such things as shall bring them to our
mind. Hence, brutes are unable to call what they want to mind, and
often, though they hide food, do not know where to find it. But man
has the power to set up marks or sensible objects, and remember
thereby somewhat past. The most eminent of these are names of
articulate sounds, by which we recall some conception of things to
which we give those names; as the appellation white bringeth to
remembrance the quality of such objects as produce that colour or
conception in us. It is by names that we are capable of science, as
for instance that of number: for beasts cannot number for want of
words, and do not miss one or two out of their young, nor could a man
without repeating orally or mentally the words of number, know how
many pieces of money may be before him.”[277] We have here another
assumption, that the numbering faculty is not stronger in man than in
brutes, and also that the former could not have found out how to
divide a heap of coins into parcels without the use of words of
number. The experiment might be tried with a deaf and dumb child.

     [277] Hum. Nat., c. 5.

|Names universal not realities.|

124. Of names some are proper, and some common to many or universal,
there being nothing in the world universal but names, for the things
named are every one of them individual and singular. “One universal
name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality or
other accidents; and whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing
only, universals recall any one of those many.”[278] “The universality
of one name to many things hath been the cause that men think the
things are themselves universal, and so seriously contend that besides
Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that are, have been, or
shall be in the world, there is yet something else that we call
man--viz., man in general, deceiving themselves by taking the
universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth.[279] For
if one should desire the painter to make him the picture of a
man, which is as much as to say, of a man in general, he meaneth no
more, but that the painter should chuse what man he pleaseth to draw,
which must needs be some of them that are, or have been, or may be,
none of which are universal. But when he would have him to draw the
picture of the king, or any particular person, he limiteth the painter
to that one person he chuseth. It is plain, therefore, that there is
nothing universal but names, which are therefore called
indefinite.”[280]

     [278] Lev. c. 4.

     [279] “An universal,” he says in his Logic, “is not a name of
     many things collectively, but of each taken separately
     (sigillatim sumptorum). Man is not the name of the human species,
     in general, but of each single man, Peter, John and the rest,
     separately. Therefore, this universal name is not the name of any
     thing existing in nature, nor of any idea or phantasm formed in
     the mind, but always of some word or name. Thus, when an animal,
     or a stone, or a ghost (spectrum) or anything else is called
     universal, we are not to understand that any man or stone or
     anything else was, or is, or can be an universal, but only that
     these words animal, stone, and the like are universal names, that
     is, names common to many things, and the conceptions
     corresponding to them in the mind are the images and phantasms of
     single animals or other things. And therefore we do not need, in
     order to understand what is meant by an universal, any other
     faculty than that of imagination, by which we remember that such
     words have excited the conception in our minds sometimes of one
     particular thing, sometimes of another.” Cap. 2, § 9. Imagination
     and memory are used by Hobbes almost as synonyms.

     [280] Hum. Nat., c. 5.

|How imposed.|

125. “By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter
signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things
imagined in the mind into a reckoning of the consequences of
appellations.”[281] Hence he thinks that though a man born deaf and
dumb might by meditation know that the angles of one triangle are
equal to two right ones, he could not, on seeing another triangle of
different shape, infer the same without a similar process. But by the
help of words, after having observed the equality is not consequent on
anything peculiar to one triangle, but on the number of sides and
angles which is common to all, he registers his discovery in a
proposition. This is surely to confound the antecedent process of
reasoning with what he calls the registry, which follows it. The
instance, however, is not happily chosen, and Hobbes has conceded the
whole point in question, by admitting that the truth of the
proposition could be observed, which cannot require the use of
words.[282] He expresses the next sentence with more felicity, “And
thus the consequence found in one particular comes to be registered
and remembered as an universal rule, and discharges our mental
reckoning of time and place; and delivers us from all labour of the
mind saving the first, and makes that which was found true here and
now to be true in all times and places.”[283]

     [281] It may deserve to be remarked that Hobbes himself,
     nominalist as he was, did not limit reasoning to comparison of
     proposition, as some later writers have been inclined to do, and
     as in his objections to Descartes, he might seem to do himself.
     This may be inferred from the sentence quoted in the text, and
     more expressly, though not quite perspicuously, from a passage in
     the Computatio, sive Logica, his Latin treatise published after
     the Leviathan. Quomodo autem animo _sine verbis tacita
     cogitatione ratiocinando addere et subtrahere solemus_ uno aut
     altero exemplo ostendendum est. Si quis ergo e longinquo aliquid
     obscurè videat, etsi nulla sint imposita vocabula, habet tamen
     ejus rei ideam eandem propter quam impositis nunc vocabulis dicit
     eam rem esse corpus. Postquam autem propius accesserit,
     videritque eandem rem certo quodam modo nunc uno, nunc alio in
     loco esse, habebit ejusdem ideam novam, propter quam nunc talem
     rem _animatam_ vocat, &c., p. 2.

     [282] The demonstration of the thirty-second proposition of
     Euclid could leave no one in doubt whether this property were
     common to all triangles, after it had been proved in a single
     instance. It is said, however, to be recorded by an ancient
     writer, that this discovery was first made as to equilateral,
     afterwards as to isosceles, and lastly as to other triangles.
     Stewart’s philosophy of Human Mind, vol. ii., chap., iv., sect. 2
     The mode of proof must have been different from that of Euclid.
     And this might possibly lead us to suspect the truth of the
     tradition. For if the equality of the angles of a triangle to two
     right angles admitted of any _elementary_ demonstration, such as
     might occur in the infancy of geometry, without making use of the
     property of parallel lines, assumed in the twelfth axiom of
     Euclid, the difficulties consequent on that assumption would
     readily be evaded. See the Note on Euclid, i. 29. in Playfair,
     who has given a demonstration of his own, but one which involves
     the idea of motion rather more than was usual with the Greeks in
     their elementary propositions.

     [283] Lev.

|The subject continued.|

126. The equivocal use of names makes it often difficult to recover
those conceptions for which they were designed “not only in the
language of others, wherein we are to consider the drift and occasion
and contexture of the speech, as well as the words themselves, but in
our own discourse, which, being derived from the custom and common use
of speech, representeth unto us not our own conceptions. It is,
therefore, a great ability in a man, out of the words, contexture and
other circumstances of language to deliver himself from equivocation,
and to find out the true meaning of what is said; and this is it we
call understanding.”[284] If speech be peculiar to man, as for aught I
know it is, then is understanding peculiar to him also; understanding
being nothing else but conception caused by speech.”[285] This
definition is arbitrary and not conformable to the usual sense. “True
and false,” he observes afterwards, “are attributes of speech not of
things; where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood,
though there may be error. Hence, as truth consists in the right
ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeks precise truth
hath need to remember what every word he uses stands for and place it
accordingly. In geometry, the only science hitherto known, men begin
by definitions. And every man who aspires to true knowledge, should
examine the definitions of former authors, and either correct them or
make them anew. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves,
according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities,
which at last they see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from
the beginning in which lies the foundation of their errors.... In the
right definition of names, lies the first use of speech, which is the
acquisition of science. And in wrong or no definitions lies the first
abuse from which proceed all false and senseless tenets, which make
those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and
not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of
ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For
between true science and erroneous doctrine, ignorance is in the
middle. Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but
they are the money of fools.”[286]

     [284] Hum. Nat.

     [285] Lev.

     [286] Lev.

|Names differently imposed.|

127. “The names of such things as affect us, that is, which please and
displease us, because all men be not alike affected with the same
thing, nor the same man at all times, are in the common discourse of
men of inconstant signification. For seeing all names are imposed to
signify our conceptions, and all our affections are but conceptions,
when we conceive the same thoughts differently, we can hardly avoid
different naming of them. For though the nature of that we conceive be
the same, yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of
different constitutions of body and prejudices of opinion, gives
everything a tincture of our different passions. And therefore, in
reasoning, a man must take heed of words, which, besides the
signification of what we imagine of their nature, have a signification
also of the nature, disposition and interest of the speaker; such as
are the names of virtues and vices; for one man calleth wisdom what
another calleth fear, and one cruelty, what another justice; one
prodigality, what another magnanimity, and one gravity what another
stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of
any ratiocination. No more can metaphors and tropes of speech, but
these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy,
which the other do not.”[287] Thus ends this chapter of the Leviathan,
which, with the corresponding one in the Treatise of Human Nature,
are, notwithstanding what appear to be some erroneous principles, as
full, perhaps, of deep and original thoughts as any other pages of
equal length on the art of reasoning and philosophy of language. Many
have borrowed from Hobbes without naming him; and in fact he is the
founder of the nominalist school in England. He may probably have
conversed with Bacon on these subjects; we see much of that master’s
style of illustration. But as Bacon was sometimes too excursive to
sift particulars, so Hobbes has sometimes wanted a comprehensive view.

     [287] Lev.

|Knowledge.|

128. “There are,” to proceed with Hobbes, “two kinds of knowledge; the
one, sense, or knowledge original, and remembrance of the same; the
other, science, or knowledge of the truth of propositions, derived
from understanding. Both are but experience, one of things from
without, the other from the proper use of words in language, and
experience being but remembrance, all knowledge is remembrance.
Knowledge implies two things, truth and evidence; the latter is the
concomitance of a man’s conception with the words that signify such
conception in the act of ratiocination.” If a man does not annex a
meaning to his words, his conclusions are not evident to him.
“Evidence is to truth, as the sap to the tree, which, so far as it
creepeth along with the body and branches, keepeth them alive; when it
forsaketh them they die; for this evidence, which is meaning with our
words, is the life of truth.” “Science is evidence of truth, from some
beginning or principle of sense. The first principle of knowledge is
that we have such and such conceptions; the second that we have thus
and thus named the things whereof they are conceptions; the third is
that we have joined those names in such manner as to make true
propositions; the fourth and last is that we have joined these
propositions in such a manner as they be concluding, and the truth of
the conclusion said to be known.”[288]

     [288] Hum. Nat., c. 6.

|Reasoning.|

129. Reasoning is the addition or subtraction of parcels. “In whatever
matter there is room for addition and subtraction, there is room for
reason; and where these have no place, then reason has nothing at all
to do.”[289] This is neither as perspicuously expressed, nor as
satisfactorily illustrated, as is usual with Hobbes; but it is true
that all syllogistic reasoning is dependent upon quantity alone, and
consequently upon that which is capable of addition and subtraction.
This seems not to have been clearly perceived by some writers of the
old Aristotelian school, or perhaps by some others, who, as far as I
can judge, have a notion that the relation of a genus to a species, or
a predicate to its subject, considered merely as to syllogism or
deductive reasoning, is something different from that of a whole to
its parts; which would deprive that logic of its chief boast,
axiomatic evidence. But, as this would appear too dry to some readers,
I shall pursue it farther in a note.[290]

     [289] Lev. c. 5.

     [290] Dugald Stewart (Elements of Philosophy, &c. vol. ii., ch.
     ii., sect. 2) has treated this theory of Hobbes on reasoning, as
     well as that of Condillac, which seems much the same, with great
     scorn, as “too puerile to admit of (i.e. require) refutation.” I
     do not myself think the language of Hobbes either here, or as
     quoted by Stewart from his Latin treatise on Logic, so
     perspicuous as usual. But I cannot help being of opinion that he
     is substantially right. For surely, when we assert that A is B,
     we assert that all things which fall under the class B, taken
     collectively, comprehend A, or that B = A + X: B being here put,
     it is to be observed, not for the _res prædicata_ itself, but for
     the concrete, _de quibus prædicandum est_. I mention this,
     because this elliptical use of the word predicate seems to have
     occasioned some confusion in writers on logic. The predicate
     strictly taken, being an attribute or quality, cannot be said to
     include or contain the subject. But to return, when we say B = A
     + X, or B - X = A, since we do not compare, in such a
     proposition, as is here supposed, A with X, we only mean that A =
     A, or that a certain part of B is the same as itself. Again, in a
     particular affirmative, Some A is B, we assert that part of A, or
     A - Y is contained in B, or that B may be expressed by [A - Y]
     + X. So also when we say, Some A is not B, we equally divide the
     class or genus B into A - Y and X, or assert that B = [A - Y] +
     X; but, in this case, the subject is no longer A - Y, but the
     remainder, or other part of A, namely, Y; and this is not found
     in either term of the predicate. Finally, in the universal
     negative, No A (neither [A - Y] nor Y) is B, the [A - Y] of
     the predicate vanishes or has no value, and B becomes equal to X,
     which is incapable of measurement with A, and consequently with
     either A - Y or Y, which make up A. Now if we combine this with
     another proposition, in order to form a syllogism, and say that C
     is A, we find, as before, that A = C + Z; and substituting this
     value of A in the former proposition, it appears that B = C + Z +
     X. Then, in the conclusion, we have, C is B; that is C is a part
     of C + Z + X. And the same in the three other cases or moods of
     the figure. This seems to be, in plainer terms, what Hobbes means
     by addition or subtraction of parcels, and what Condillac means
     by rather a lax expression, that equations and propositions are
     at bottom the same, or, as he phrases it better, “l’evidence de
     raison consiste uniquement dans l’identité.” If we add to this,
     as he probably intended, non-identity, as a condition of all
     negative conclusions, it seems to be no more than is necessarily
     involved in the fundamental principle of syllogism, the _dictum
     de omni et nullo_; which may be thus reduced to its shortest
     terms; “Whatever can be divided into parts, includes all those
     parts, add nothing else.” This is not limited to mathematical
     quantity, but includes everything which admits of more or less.
     Hobbes has a good passage in his Logic on this; Non putandum est
     computationi, id est, ratiocinationi in numeris tantum locum
     esse, tanquam homo a cæteris animantibus, quod censuisse narratur
     Pythagoras, sola numerandi facultate distinctus esset; nam et
     magnitudo magnitudini, corpus corpori, motus motui, tempus
     tempori, gradus qualitatis gradui, actio actioni, conceptus
     conceptui, proportio proportioni, oratio orationi, nomen nomini,
     in quibus omne philosophiæ genus continetur, adjici adimique
     potest.

     But it does not follow by any means that we should assent to the
     strange passages quoted by Stewart from Condillac and Diderot,
     which reduce all _knowledge_ to identical propositions. Even
     in geometry, where the objects are strictly magnitudes, the
     countless variety in which their relations may be exhibited
     constitutes the riches of that inexhaustible science; and in
     moral or physical propositions, the relation of quantity between
     the subject and predicate, as concretes, which enables them to be
     compared, though it is the sole foundation of all _general
     deductive reasoning_ or syllogism, has nothing to do with the
     other properties or relations, of which we obtain a knowledge by
     means of that comparison. In mathematical reasoning, we infer as
     to quantity through the medium of quantity; in other reasoning,
     we use the same medium, but our inference is as to truths which
     do not lie within that category. Thus, in the hackneyed instance,
     All men are mortal; that is, mortal creatures include men and
     something more, it is absurd to assert, that we only know that
     men are men. It is true that our knowledge of the truth of the
     proposition comes by the help of this comparison of men in the
     subject with men in the predicate; but the very nature of the
     proposition discovers a constant relation between the individuals
     of the human species and that mortality which is predicated of
     them along with others; and it is to this, not in an identical
     equation, as Diderot seems to have thought, that our
     _knowledge_ consists.

     The remarks of Stewart’s friend. M. Prevost of Geneva, on the
     principle of identity as the basis of mathematical science, and
     which the former has candidly subjoined to his own volume, appear
     to me very satisfactory. Stewart comes to admit that the dispute
     is nearly verbal; but we cannot say that he originally treated it
     as such; and the principle itself, both as applied to geometry
     and to logic, is, in my opinion, of some importance to the
     clearness of our conceptions as to those sciences. It may be
     added, that Stewart’s objection to the principle of identity as
     the basis of geometrical reasoning is less forcible in its
     application to syllogism. He is willing to admit that magnitudes
     capable of coincidence by immediate superposition may be reckoned
     identical, but scruples to apply such a word to those which are
     dissimilar in figure, as the rectangles of the means and extremes
     of four proportional lines. Neither one nor the other are, in
     fact, identical as real quantities, the former being necessarily
     conceived to differ from each other by position in space, as much
     as the latter; so that the expression he quotes from Aristotle,
     εν τουτοις ἡ ισοτης ἑνοτης [en toutois hê isotês henotês], or any
     similar one of modern mathematicians, can only refer to the
     abstract magnitude of their areas, which being divisible into the
     same number of equal parts, they are called the same. And there
     seems no real difference in this respect between two circles of
     equal radii and two such rectangles as are supposed above, the
     identity of their magnitudes being a distinct truth, independent
     of any consideration either of their figure or their position.
     But however this may be, the identity of the subject with part of
     the predicate in an affirmative proposition is never fictitious,
     but real. It means that the persons or things in the one are
     strictly the same beings with the persons or things to which they
     are compared in the other, though, through some difference of
     relations, or other circumstance, they are expressed in different
     language. It is needless to give examples, as all those who can
     read this note at all will know how to find them.

     I will here take the liberty to remark, though not closely
     connected with the present subject, that Archbishop Whately seems
     not quite right in saying (Elements of Logic, p. 46), that in
     affirmative propositions the predicate is _never_
     distributed. Besides the numerous instances where this is, in
     point of fact, the case, all which he excludes, there are many in
     which it is involved in the very form of the proposition. Such
     are all those which assert identity or equality, and such also
     are all those particular affirmations which have previously been
     _converted_ from universals. Of the first sort are all the
     theorems in geometry, asserting an equality of magnitude or
     ratios, in which the subject and predicate may always change
     places. It is true that in the instance given in the work quoted,
     that equilateral triangles are equiangular, the converse requires
     a separate proof, and so in many similar cases. But in these the
     predicate is not distributed by the form of the proposition; they
     assert no quality of magnitude.

     The position, that where such equality is affirmed, the predicate
     is not _logically_ distributed, would lead to the
     consequence that it can only be _converted_ into a
     particular affirmation. Thus, after proving that the square of
     the hypothenuse, in all right-angled triangles, is equal to those
     of the sides, we could only infer that the squares of the sides
     are _sometimes_ equal to that of the hypothenuse, which
     could not be maintained without rendering the rules, of logic
     ridiculous. The most general mode of considering the question, is
     to say, as we have done above, that, in an universal affirmative,
     the predicate B (that is, the class of which B is predicated), is
     composed of A the subject, and X, an unknown remainder. But if,
     by the very nature of the proposition, we perceive that X is
     nothing, or has no value, it is plain that the subject measures
     the entire predicate, and vice versâ, the predicate measures the
     subject; in other words, each is taken universally, or
     distributed.

|False reasoning.|

130. A man may reckon without the use of words in particular things,
as in conjecturing from the sight of anything what is likely to
follow; and if he reckons wrong, it is error. But in reasoning
on general words, to fall on a false inference is not error, though
often so called, but absurdity.[291] “If a man should talk to me of a
round quadrangle, or accidents of bread in cheese, or immaterial
substances, or of a free subject, a free will, or any free, but free
from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in error,
but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd;” Some
of these propositions, it will occur, are intelligible in a reasonable
sense, and not contradictory, except by means of an arbitrary
definition which he who employs them does not admit. It will be
observed here, as we have done before, that Hobbes does not confine
reckoning, or reasoning, to universals, or even to words.

     [291] Lev. c. 5.

|Its frequency.|

131. Man has the exclusive privilege of forming general theorems. But
this privilege is allayed by another, that is, by the privilege of
absurdity, to which no living creature is subject, but man only. And
of men those are of all most subject to it, that profess
philosophy.... For there is not one that begins his ratiocination from
the definitions or explications of the names they are to use, which is
a method used only in geometry, whose conclusions have thereby been
made indisputable. He then enumerates seven causes of absurd
conclusions; the first of which is the want of definitions, the others
are erroneous imposition of names. If we can avoid these errors, it is
not easy to fall into absurdity (by which he of course only means any
wrong conclusion) except perhaps by the length of a reasoning.
“For all men,” he says, “by nature reason alike, and well, when they
have good principles. Hence, it appears that reason is not as sense
and memory born with us, nor gotten by experience only, as prudence
is, but attained by industry, in apt imposing of names, and in getting
a good and orderly method of proceeding from the elements to
assertions, and so to syllogisms. Children are not endued with reason
at all till they have attained the use of speech, but are called
reasonable creatures, for the possibility of having the use of reason
hereafter. And reasoning serves the generality of mankind very little,
though with their natural prudence without science they are in better
condition than those who reason ill themselves, or trust those who
have done so.”[292] It has been observed by Buhle, that Hobbes had
more respect for the Aristotelian forms of logic than his master
Bacon. He has in fact written a short treatise, in his Elementa
Philosophiæ, on the subject; observing however therein, that a true
logic will be sooner learned by attending to geometrical
demonstrations than by drudging over the rules of syllogism, as
children learn to walk not by precept but by habit.[293]

     [292] Id. ibid.

     [293] Citius multo veram logicam discunt qui mathematicorum
     demonstrationibus, quam qui logicorum syllogizandi præceptis
     legendis tempus conterunt, haud aliter quam parvuli pueri gressum
     formare discunt non præceptis sed sæpe gradiendo. C. iv., p. 30.
     Atque hæc sufficiunt, (he says afterwards) de syllogismo, qui est
     tanquam gressus philosophiæ; nam et quantum necesse est ad
     cognoscendum unde vim suam habeat omnis argumentatio legitima,
     tantum diximus; et omnia accumulare quæ dici possunt, æque
     superfluum esset ac si quis ut dixi puerulo ad gradiendum
     præcepta dare velit; acquiritur enim ratiocinandi ars non
     præceptis sed usu et lectione eorum librorum in quibus omnia
     severis demonstrationibus transiguntur. C. v., p. 35.

|Knowledge of fact not derived from reasoning.|

132. “No discourse whatever,” he says truly in the seventh chapter of
the Leviathan, “can end in absolute knowledge of fact past or to come.
For as to the knowledge of fact, it is originally sense; and ever
after memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have said
before, is called science, it is not absolute but conditional. No man
can know by discourse that this or that is, has been, or will be,
which is to know absolutely; but only that if this is, that is; if
this has been, that has been; if this shall be, that shall be; which
is to know conditionally, and that not the consequence of one thing to
another, but of one name of a thing to another name of the same thing.
And therefore when the discourse is put into speech and begins with
the definitions of words, and proceeds by connexion of the same into
general affirmations, and of those again into syllogisms, the end or
last sum is called the conclusion, and the thought of the mind by it
signified is that conditional knowledge of the consequence of words
which is commonly called science. But if the first ground of such
discourse be not definitions; or if definitions be not rightly joined
together in syllogisms, then the end or conclusion is again opinion,
namely, of the truth of somewhat said, though sometimes in absurd and
senseless words, without possibility of being understood.”[294]

     [294] Lev. c. 7.

|Belief.|

133. “Belief which is the admitting of propositions upon trust, in
many cases is no less free from doubt than perfect and manifest
knowledge; for as there is nothing whereof there is not some cause, so
when there is doubt, there must be some cause thereof conceived. Now
there be many things which we receive from the report of others, of
which it is impossible to imagine any cause of doubt; for what can be
opposed against the consent of all men, in things they can know and
have no cause to report otherwise than they are, such as is great part
of our histories, unless a man would say that all the world had
conspired to destroy him?”[295] Whatever we believe on the authority
of the speaker, he is the object of our faith. Consequently, when we
believe that the Scriptures are the word of God, having no immediate
revelation from God himself, our belief, faith, and trust is in the
church, whose word we take and acquiesce therein. Hence, all we
believe on the authority of men, whether they be sent from God or not,
is faith in men only.[296] We have no certain knowledge of the truth
of Scripture, but trust the holy men of God’s church succeeding one
another from the time of those who saw the wondrous works of God
Almighty in the flesh. And as we believe the Scriptures to be the word
of God on the authority of the church, the interpretation of the
Scripture in case of controversy ought to be trusted to the church
rather than private opinion.[297]

     [295] Hum. Nat. c. 6.

     [296] Lev. c. 7.

     [297] Lev. c. 9.

|Chart of science.|

134. The ninth chapter of the Leviathan contains a synoptical chart of
human science or “knowledge of consequences,” also called
philosophy. He divides it into natural and civil, the former into
consequences from accidents common to all bodies, quantity and motion,
and those from qualities, otherwise called physics. The first includes
astronomy, mechanics, architecture, as well as mathematics. The second
he distinguishes into consequences from qualities of bodies transient,
or meteorology, and from those of bodies permanent, such as the stars,
the atmosphere, or terrestrial bodies. The last are divided again into
those without sense, and those with sense; and these into animals and
men. In the consequences from the qualities of animals generally he
reckons optics and music; in those from men we find ethics, poetry,
rhetoric, and logic. These altogether constitute the first great head
of natural philosophy. In the second, or civil philosophy, he includes
nothing but the rights and duties of sovereigns and their subjects.
This chart of human knowledge is one of the worst that has been
propounded, and falls much below that of Bacon.[298]

     [298] Hum. Nat., c. 11.

|Analysis of passions.|

135. This is the substance of the philosophy of Hobbes, so far as it
relates to the intellectual faculties, and especially to that of
reasoning. In the seventh and two following chapters of the treatise
on Human Nature, in the ninth and tenth of the Leviathan, he proceeds
to the analysis of the passions. The motion in some internal substance
of the head, if it does not stop there, producing mere conceptions,
proceeds to the heart, helping or hindering the vital motions, which
he distinguishes from the voluntary, exciting in us pleasant or
painful affections, called passions. We are solicited by these to draw
near to that which pleases us, and the contrary. Hence, pleasure,
love, appetite, desire, are divers names for divers considerations of
the same thing. As all conceptions we have immediately by the sense
are delight or pain or appetite or fear, so are all the imaginations
after sense. But as they are weaker imaginations, so are they also
weaker pleasures, or weaker pains.[299] All delight is appetite and
presupposes a further end. There is no utmost end in this world, for
while we live we have desires, and desire presupposes a further end.
We are not, therefore, to wonder that men desire more, the more they
possess; for felicity, by which we mean continual delight, consists
not in having prospered, but in prospering.[300] Each passion, being,
as he fancies, a continuation of the motion which gives rise to a
peculiar conception, is associated with it. They all, except such as
are immediately connected with sense, consist in the conception of a
power to produce some effect. To honour a man, is to conceive that he
has an excess of power over some one with whom he is compared; hence,
qualities indicative of power, and actions significant of it are
honourable; riches are honoured as signs of power, and nobility is
honourable, as a sign of power in ancestors.[301]

     [299] Hum. Nat., c. 7.

     [300] Id. Lev., c. 11.

     [301] Hum. Nat., c. 8.

|Good and evil relative terms.|

136. “The constitution of man’s body is in perpetual mutation, and
hence it is impossible that all the same things should always cause in
him the same appetites and aversions; much less can all men consent in
the desire of any one object. But whatsoever is the object of any
man’s appetite or desire, that is it, which he for his part calls
good, and the object of his hate and aversion, evil, or of his
contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and
contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person using them;
there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of
good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves,
but from the person of the man, where there is no commonwealth, or in
a commonwealth from the person that represents us, or from an
arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and
make his sentence the rule thereof.”[302]

     [302] Lev. c., 6.

|His paradoxes.|

137. In prosecuting this analysis all the passions are resolved into
self-love, the pleasure we take in our own power, the pain we suffer
in wanting it. Some of his explications are very forced. Thus weeping
is said to be from a sense of our want of power. And here comes one of
his strange paradoxes. “Men are apt to weep that prosecute revenge,
when the revenge is suddenly stopped or frustrated by the repentance
of their adversary; _and such are the tears of reconciliation_.”[303]
So resolute was he to resort to anything the most preposterous, rather
than admit a moral feeling in human nature. His account of laughter is
better known, and perhaps more probable, though not explaining the
whole of the case. After justly observing that whatsoever it be that
moves laughter, it must be new and unexpected, he defines it to be “a
sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in
ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own
formerly, for men laugh at the follies of themselves past.” It might
be objected, that those are most prone to laughter, who have least of
this glorying in themselves, or undervaluing of their neighbours.

     [303] Hum. Nat., c. 9. Lev., c. 6 and 10.

|His notion of love.|

138. “There is a great difference between the desire of a man when
indefinite, and the same desire limited to one person, and this is
that love which is the great theme of poets. But notwithstanding their
praises, it must be defined by the word need; for it is a conception a
man hath of his need of that one person desired.”[304] “There is yet
another passion, sometimes called love, but more properly good-will or
charity. There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power
than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but
also to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception
wherein consists charity. In which first is contained that natural
affection of parents towards their children, which the Greeks call
στοργη [storgê], as also that affection wherewith men seek to assist
those that adhere unto them. But the affection wherewith men many
times bestow their benefits on strangers is not to be called charity,
but either contract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship, or fear
which makes them to purchase peace.”[305] This is equally contrary to
notorious truth, there being neither fear nor contract in generosity
towards strangers. It is, however, not so extravagant as a subsequent
position, that in beholding the danger of a ship in a tempest, though
there is pity, which is grief, yet “the delight in our own security is
so far predominant, that men usually are content in such a case to be
spectators of the misery of their friends.”[306]

     [304] Hum. Nat., c. 9.

     [305] Id. ibid.

     [306] Hum. Nat., c. 9. This is an exaggeration of some well-known
     lines of Lucretius, which are themselves exaggerated.

|Curiosity.|

139. As knowledge begins from experience, new experience is the
beginning of new knowledge. Whatever, therefore, happens new to a man,
gives him the hope of knowing somewhat he knew not before. This
appetite of knowledge is curiosity. It is peculiar to man; for beasts
never regard new things except to discern how far they may be useful,
while man looks for the cause and beginning of all he sees.[307] This
attribute of curiosity seems rather hastily denied to beasts. And as
men, he says, are always seeking new knowledge, so are they always
deriving some new gratification. There is no such thing as perpetual
tranquility of mind while we live here, because life itself is but
motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more
than without sense. “What kind of felicity God hath ordained to them
that devoutly honour him, a man shall no sooner know than enjoy, being
joys that now are as incomprehensible, as the word of schoolmen,
beatifical vision, is unintelligible.”[308]

     [307] Id. ibid.

     [308] Lev., c. 6 and c. 11.

|Difference of intellectual capacities.|

140. From the consideration of the passions, Hobbes advances to
inquire what are the causes of the difference in the intellectual
capacities and dispositions of men.[309] Their bodily senses are
nearly alike, whence he precipitately infers there can be no great
difference in the brain. Yet men differ much in their bodily
constitution, whence he derives the principal differences in their
minds; some being addicted to sensual pleasures are less curious as to
knowledge, or ambitious as to power. This is called dullness, and
proceeds from the appetite of bodily delight. The contrary to this is
a quick ranging of mind accompanied with curiosity in comparing things
that come into it, either as to unexpected similitude, in which fancy
consists, or dissimilitude in things appearing the same, which is
properly called judgment; “for to judge is nothing else, but to
distinguish and discern. And both fancy and judgment are commonly
comprehended under the name of wit, which seems to be a tenuity and
agility of spirits, contrary to that restiness of the spirits supposed
in those who are dull.”[310]

     [309] Hum. Nat., c. 10.

     [310] Hum. Nat.

141. We call it levity, when the mind is easily diverted, and the
discourse is parenthetical; and this proceeds from curiosity with too
much equality and indifference; for when all things make equal
impression and delight, they equally throng to be expressed. A
different fault is indocibility, or difficulty of being taught; which
must arise from a false opinion that men know already the truth of
what is called in question; for certainly they are not otherwise so
unequal in capacity as not to discern the difference of what is proved
and what is not, and therefore if the minds of men were all of white
paper, they would all most equally be disposed to acknowledge whatever
should be in right method, and by right ratiocination delivered to
them. But when men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions, and
registered them as authentical records in their minds, it is no less
impossible to speak intelligibly to such men, than to write legibly on
a paper already scribbled over. The immediate cause therefore of
indocibility is prejudice, and of prejudice false opinion of our own
knowledge.[311]

     [311] Hum. Nat.

|Wit and fancy.|

142. Intellectual virtues are such abilities as go by the name of a
good wit, which may be natural or acquired. “By natural wit,” says
Hobbes, “I mean not that which a man hath from his birth, for that is
nothing else but sense; wherein men differ so little from one another
and from brute beasts, as it is not to be reckoned among virtues. But
I mean that wit which is gotten by use only and experience, without
method, culture or instruction, and consists chiefly in celerity of
imagining and steady direction. And the difference in this quickness
is caused by that of men’s passions that love and dislike some one
thing, some another, and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way,
some another; and are held to, and observe differently the things that
pass through their imagination.” Fancy is not praised without judgment
and discretion, which is properly a discerning of times, places, and
persons; but judgment and discretion is commended for itself without
fancy: without steadiness and direction to some end, a great fancy is
one kind of madness, such as they have who lose themselves in long
digressions and parentheses. If the defect of discretion be apparent,
how extravagant soever the fancy be, the whole discourse will be taken
for a want of wit.[312]

     [312] Lev., c. 8.

|Differences in the passions.|

|Madness.|

143. The causes of the difference of wits are in the passions; and the
difference of passions proceeds partly from the different constitution
of the body and partly from different education. Those passions are
chiefly the desire of power, riches, knowledge, or honour; all which
may be reduced to the first, for riches, knowledge, and honour are but
several sorts of power. He who has no great passion for any of these,
though he may be so far a good man as to be free from giving offence,
yet cannot possibly have either a great fancy or much judgment. To
have weak passions is dullness, to have passions indifferently for
everything giddiness and distraction, to have stronger passions for
anything than others have is madness. Madness may be the excess of
many passions; and the passions themselves, when they lead to evil,
are degrees of it. He seems to have had some glimpse of Butler’s
hypothesis as to the madness of a whole people. “What argument for
madness can there be greater, than to clamour, strike, and throw
stones at our best friends? Yet this is somewhat less than such a
multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy
those by whom all their lifetime before they have been protected, and
secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is
the same in every particular man.”[313]

     [313] Id.

|Unmeaning language.|

144. There is a fault in some men’s habit of discoursing which may be
reckoned a sort of madness, which is when they speak words with no
signification at all. “And this is incident to none but those that
converse in questions of matters incomprehensible as the schoolmen, or
in questions of abstruse philosophy. The common sort of men seldom
speak insignificantly, and are therefore by those other egregious
persons counted idiots. But to be assured their words are without
anything correspondent to them in the mind, there would need some
examples; which if any man require let him take a schoolman into his
hands, and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any
difficult point as the Trinity, the Deity, the nature of Christ,
transubstantiation, free will, &c., into any of the modern tongues, so
as to make the same intelligible, or into any tolerable Latin, such as
they were acquainted with, that lived when the Latin tongue was
vulgar.” And after quoting some words from Suarez, he adds: “When men
write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not mad, or intend to make
others so?”[314]

     [314] Lev.

|Manners.|

145. The eleventh chapter of the Leviathan, on manners, by which he
means those qualities of mankind which concern their living together
in peace and unity, is full of Hobbes’s caustic remarks on human
nature. Often acute, but always severe, he ascribes overmuch to a
deliberate and calculating selfishness. Thus, the reverence of
antiquity is referred to “the contention men have with the living, not
with the dead, to these ascribing more than due that they may obscure
the glory of the other.” Thus “to have received from one to whom we
think ourselves equal, greater benefits than we can hope to requite,
disposes to counterfeit love, but really to secret hatred, and
puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor, that in declining
the sight of his creditor, tacitly wishes him where he might never see
him more. For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom; and
unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which is to one’s equal
hateful.” He owns, however, that to have received benefits from a
superior, disposes us to love him; and so it does where we can hope to
requite even an equal. If these maxims have a certain basis of truth
they have at least the fault of those of Rochefoucault; they are made
too generally characteristic of mankind.

|Ignorances and prejudice.|

146. Ignorance of the signification of words disposes men to take on
trust not only the truth they know not, but also errors and nonsense.
For neither can be detected without a perfect understanding of words.
“But ignorance of the causes and original constitution of right,
equity, law and justice disposes a man to make custom and example the
rule of his actions, in such manner as to think that unjust which it
has been the custom to punish, and that just, of the impunity and
approbation of which they can produce an example, or, as the lawyers
which only use this false measure of justice barbarously call it, a
precedent.” “Men appeal from custom to reason and from reason to
custom as it serves their turn, receding from custom when their
interest requires it, and setting themselves against reason, as oft as
reason is against them; which is the cause that the doctrine of right
and wrong is perpetually disputed both by the pen and the sword;
whereas the doctrine of lines and figures is not so, because men care
not in that subject what is truth, as it is a thing that crosses no
man’s ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a
thing contrary to any man’s right of dominion, or to the interest of
men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be
equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine should have been if not
disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed, as
far as he whom it concerned was able.”[315] This excellent piece of
satire has been often quoted, and sometimes copied, and does not
exaggerate the pertinacity of mankind in resisting the evidence of
truth, when it thwarts the interests and passions of any particular
sect or community. In the earlier part of the paragraph it seems not
so easy to reconcile what Hobbes has said with his general notions of
right and justice; since, if these resolve themselves, as is his
theory into mere force, there can be little appeal to reason, or to
anything else than custom and precedent, which are commonly the
exponents of power.

     [315] 1 Lev., c. 11.

|His theory of religion.|

147. In the conclusion of this chapter of the Leviathan as well as in
the next, he dwells more on the nature of religion than he had done in
the former treatise, and so as to subject himself to the imputation of
absolute atheism, or at least of a denial of most attributes which we
assign to the Deity. Curiosity about causes, he says, led men to
search out one after the other, till they came to this necessary
conclusion, that there is some eternal cause which men call God. But
they have no more idea of his nature, than a blind man has of fire,
though he knows that there is something that warms him. So by the
visible things of this world and their admirable order, a man may
conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God, and yet not
have an idea or image of him in his mind. And they that make little
inquiry into the natural causes of things, are inclined to feign
several kinds of powers invisible and to stand in awe of their own
imaginations. And this fear of things invisible is the natural seed of
that which every one in himself calleth religion, and in them that
worship or fear that power otherwise than they do, superstition.

148. As God is incomprehensible, it follows that we can have no
conception or image of the Deity; and consequently all his attributes
signify our inability or defect of power to conceive anything
concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, excepting
only this, that there is a God. Men that by their own meditation
arrive at the acknowledgment of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal
God, chuse rather to confess this is incomprehensible and above their
understanding, than to define his nature by spirit incorporeal, and
then confess their definition to be unintelligible.[316] For
concerning such spirits he holds that it is not possible by natural
means only to come to the knowledge of so much as that there are such
things.[317]

     [316] Lev., c. 12.

     [317] Hum. Nat., c. 11.

|Its supposed sources.|

149. Religion he derives from three sources, the desire of men to
search for causes, the reference of everything that has a beginning to
some cause, and the observation of the order and consequence of
things. But the two former lead to anxiety, for the knowledge
that there have been causes of the effects we see, leads us to
anticipate that they will in time be the causes of effects to come; so
that every man, especially such as are over-provident, is “like
Prometheus, the prudent man, as his name implies, who was bound to the
hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where an eagle feeding on
his liver devoured as much by day as was repaired by night; and so he
who looks too far before him, has his heart all day long gnawed by the
fear of death, poverty or other calamity, and has no repose nor pause
but in sleep.” This is an allusion made in the style of Lord Bacon.
The ignorance of causes makes men fear some invisible agent, like the
gods of the Gentiles; but the investigation of them leads us to a God
eternal, infinite, and omnipotent. This ignorance however, of second
causes, conspiring with three other prejudices of mankind, the belief
in ghosts, or spirits of subtile bodies, the devotion and reverence
generally shown towards what we fear as having power to hurt us, and
the taking of things casual for prognostics, are altogether the
natural seed of religion, which by reason of the different fancies,
judgments, and passions of several men hath grown up into ceremonies
so different that those which are used by one man are for the most
part ridiculous to another. He illustrates this by a variety of
instances from ancient superstitions. But the forms of religion are
changed when men suspect the wisdom, sincerity, or love of those who
teach it, or its priests.[318] The remaining portion of the Leviathan
relating to moral and political philosophy, must be deferred to our
next chapter.

     [318] Lev., c. 12.

150. The Elementa Philosophiæ were published by Hobbes, in 1655, and
dedicated to his constant patron the Earl of Devonshire. These are
divided into three parts; entitled De Corpore, De Homine, and De Cive.
And the first part has itself three divisions; Logic, the First
Philosophy, and Physics. The second part, De Homine, is neither the
treatise of Human Nature, nor the corresponding part of the Leviathan,
though it contains many things substantially found there. A long
disquisition on optics and the nature of vision, chiefly geometrical,
is entirely new. The third part, De Cive, is the treatise by that name
reprinted, as far as I am aware, without alteration.

151. The first part of the first treatise, entitled Computatio sive
Logica, is by no means the least valuable among the philosophical
writings of Hobbes. In forty pages the subject is very well and
clearly explained, nor do I know that the principles are better laid
down, or the rules more sufficiently given in more prolix treatises.
Many of his observations, especially as to words, are such as we find
in his English works, and perhaps his nominalism is more clearly
expressed than it is in them. Of the syllogistic method, at least for
the purpose of demonstration, or teaching others, he seems to have
entertained a favourable opinion, or even to have held it necessary
for real demonstration, as his definition shows. Hobbes appears to be
aware of what I do not remember to have seen put by others, that in
the natural process of reasoning, the minor premise commonly precedes
the major.[319] It is for want of attending to this, that syllogisms,
as usually stated, are apt to have so formal and unnatural a
construction. The process of the mind in this kind of reasoning is
explained, in general, with correctness, and, I believe, with
originality in the following passage, which I shall transcribe from
the Latin, rather than give a version of my own; few probably being
likely to read the present section, who are unacquainted with that
language. The style of Hobbes, though perspicuous, is concise,
and the original words will be more satisfactory than any translation.

     [319] In Whateley’s Logic, p. 90, it is observed, that “the
     _proper order_ is to place the major premise first, and the minor
     second; but this does not constitute the major and minor
     premises,” &c. It may be the proper order in one sense, as
     exhibiting better the foundation of syllogistic reasoning; but it
     is not that which we commonly follow, either in thinking, or in
     proving to others. In the rhetorical use of syllogism it can
     admit of no doubt, that the opposite order is the most striking
     and persuasive; such as in Cato, “If there be a God, he must
     delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.”
     In Euclid’s demonstrations this will be found the form usually
     employed. And, though the rules of grammar are generally
     illustrated by examples, which is beginning with the major
     premise, yet the process of reasoning which a boy employs in
     construing a Latin sentence is the reverse. He observes a
     nominative case, a verb in the third person, and then applies his
     general rule, or major, to the particular instance, or minor, so
     as to infer their agreement. In criminal jurisprudence, the Scots
     begin with the major premise, or relevancy of the indictment,
     when there is room for doubt; the English with the minor, or
     evidence of the fact, reserving the other for what we call motion
     in arrest of judgment. Instances of both orders are common, but
     by far the most frequent are of that which the Archbishop of
     Dublin reckons the less proper of the two. Those logicians who
     fail to direct the student’s attention to this, really do not
     justice to their own favourite science.

152. Syllogismo directo cogitatio in animo respondens est hujusmodi.
Primo concipitur phantasma rei nominatæ cum accidente sive affectu
ejus propter quem appellatur eo nomine quod est in minore propositione
subjectum; deinde animo occurrit phantasma ejusdem rei cum accidente
sive affectu propter quem appellatur, quod est in eadem propositione
prædicatum. Tertio redit cogitatio rursus ad rem nominatam cum affectu
propter quem eo nomine appellatur, quod est in prædicato propositionis
majoris. Postremo cum meminerit eos affectus esse omnes unius et
ejusdem rei, concludit tria illa nomina ejusdem quoque rei esse
nomina; hoc est, conclusionem esse veram. Exempli causa, quando fit
syllogismus hic, Homo est Animal, Animal est Corpus, ergo Homo est
Corpus, occurrit animo imago hominis loquentis vel differentis [sic,
sed lege disserentis], meminitque id quod sic apparet vocari hominem.
Deinde occurrit eadem imago ejusdem hominis sese moventis, meminitque
id quod sic apparet vocari animal. Tertio recurrit eadem imago hominis
locum aliquem sive spatium occupantis, meminitque id quod sic apparet
vocari corpus.[320] Postremo cum meminerit rem illam quæ et
extendebatur secundum locum, et loco movebatur, et oratione utebatur,
unam et eandem fuisse, concludit etiam nomina illa tria, Homo, Animal,
Corpus, ejusdem rei esse nomina, et proinde, Homo est Corpus, esse
propositionem veram. Manifestum hinc est conceptum sive cogitationem
quæ respondens syllogismo ex propositionibus universalibus in animo
existit, nullam esse in iis animalibus quibus deest usus nominum, cum
inter syllogizandum oporteat non modo de re sed etiam alternis vicibus
de diversis rei nominibus, quæ propter diversas de re cogitationes
adhibitæ sunt, cogitare.

     [320] This is the questionable part of Hobbes’s theory of
     syllogism. According to the common and obvious understanding, the
     mind, in the major premise, Animal est Corpus, does not reflect
     on the subject of the minor, Homo, as occupying space, but on the
     subject of the major, Animal, which includes indeed the former,
     but is mentally substituted for it. It may sometimes happen, that
     where this predicate of the minor term is _manifestly_ a
     collective word that comprehends the subject, the latter is not
     as it were absorbed in it, and may be contemplated by the mind
     distinctly in the major; as if we say, John is a man: a man
     feels; we may perhaps have no image in the mind of any man but
     John. But this is not the case where the predicated quality
     appertains to many things visibly different from the subject; as
     in Hobbes’s instance Animal est Corpus, we may surely consider
     other animals as being extended and occupying space besides men.
     It does not seem that otherwise there could be any ascending
     scale from particulars to generals, as far as the reasoning
     faculties, independent of words, are concerned. And if we begin
     with the major premise of the syllogism, this will be still more
     apparent.

153. The metaphysical philosophy of Hobbes, always bold and original,
often acute and profound, without producing an immediate school of
disciples like that of Descartes, struck, perhaps, a deeper root in
the minds of reflecting men, and has influenced more extensively the
general tone of speculation. Locke, who had not read much, had
certainly read Hobbes, though he does not borrow from him so much as
has sometimes been imagined. The French metaphysicians of the next
century found him nearer to their own theories than his more
celebrated rival in English philosophy. But the writer who has built
most upon Hobbes, and may be reckoned, in a certain sense, his
commentator, if he who fully explains and develops a system may
deserve that name, was Hartley. The theory of association is implied
and intimated in many passages of the elder philosopher, though it was
first expanded and applied with a diligent, ingenious and
comprehensive research, if sometimes in too forced a manner, by his
disciple. I use this word without particular inquiry into the direct
acquaintance of Hartley with the writings of Hobbes; the subject had
been frequently touched in intermediate publications, and, in matters
of reasoning, as I have intimated above, little or no presumption of
borrowing can be founded on coincidence. Hartley also resembles Hobbes
in the extreme to which he has pushed the nominalist theory, in the
proneness to materialize all intellectual processes, and either to
force all things mysterious to our faculties into something
imaginable, or to reject them as unmeaning, in the want, much
connected with this, of a steady perception of the difference between
the Ego and its objects, in an excessive love of simplifying and
generalizing, and in a readiness to adopt explanations neither
conformable to reason nor experience, when they fall in with some
single principle, the key that was to unlock every ward of the human
soul.

154. In nothing does Hobbes deserve more credit than in having set an
example of close observation in the philosophy of the human
mind. If he errs, he errs like a man who goes a little out of the
right track, not like one who has set out in a wrong one. The eulogy
of Stewart on Descartes, that he was the father of this experimental
psychology, cannot be strictly wrested from him by Hobbes, inasmuch as
the publications of the former are of an earlier date; but we may
fairly say that the latter began as soon, and prosecuted his inquiries
farther. It seems natural to presume that Hobbes, who is said to have
been employed by Bacon in translating some of his works into Latin,
had at least been led by him to the inductive process he has more than
any other employed. But he has seldom mentioned his predecessor’s
name; and indeed his mind was of a different stamp; less excursive,
less quick in discovering analogies, and less fond of reasoning from
them, but more close, perhaps more patient, and more apt to follow up
a predominant idea, which sometimes becomes one of the “idola specûs”
that deceive him.

                           CHAPTER XXI.

   HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE,
                        FROM 1600 TO 1650.

                             SECT. I.

                       ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Casuists of the Roman Church--Suarez on Moral Law--Selden--Charron--
La Mothe le Vayer--Bacon’s Essays--Feltham--Browne’s Religio
Medici--Other Writers._