The Elements of Law Natural and Politic | ||
THE EDITOR'S PREFACE.
THE work which forms the substance of this volume was formerly known in the shape of two separate treatises, of which the former, containing the first thirteen chapters of the first part of the Elements of Law, was entitled Human Nature; or the Fundamental Elements of Policy. Being a discovery of the faculties, acts, and passions of the soul of man, from their original causes: according to such philosophical principles as are not commonly known or asserted. The second treatise contained the rest of the first, together with the second, part, and was entitled De Corpore Politico; or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politic, with discourses upon moral heads, as: of the law of nature; of oaths and covenants; of several kinds of government, with the changes and revolutions of them.
Both these treatises appeared in print for the first time in the year 1650, and a second edition of the former, Human Nature, was issued in the following year.[1] This treatise was furnished with a preface, signed with the initials F.B., in which it is said that a friend of the author's had obtained his leave to publish it, and that it was to constitute the second portion of Hobbes's system of philosophy, the
There is yet another reference in Hobbes's later writings to this work, viz., in the Considerations upon the Reputation, etc., of Thomas Hobbes (English Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. iv. p. 414), where he states that in 1640 he wrote "a little treatise in English" upon the power and rights of sovereignty, of which, "though not printed, many gentlemen had copies, which occasioned much talk of the author; and had not his Majesty dissolved the Parliament, it had brought him into danger of his life."
Of those manuscript copies, the best that have come down to us were consulted and carefully collated (first in 1878, and again more recently) by the present editor, who was thereby led to discover that the text of the printed editions of the work (of which several appeared before Molesworth's edition, notably that contained in the fine folio entitled The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes, London, 1750) has a great many errors and some omissions, especially in that portion of the work known as Human Nature, the second portion, De Corpore Politico, being evidently taken from a better copy, and also more carefully printed. Under these circumstances, it appeared to me that a new edition of the entire work, in its original form, and based upon manuscript authority, was due to the philosopher himself, as well as likely to prove useful to his readers. The MSS. which form the basis of the present edition are as follows: (A) Harl. 4235, (B) Harl. 4236, (C) Egert. 2005, (D) Harl. 6858, (E) Harl. 1325—all in the British Museum; and (H), a copy preserved amongst the Hardwick papers relating to Hobbes.[4] All these copies alike bear the one simple title, Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, and all are co-extensive, except that (D) consists
Here I should not omit to mention that it was by a previous examination of the Hardwick MS. that Professor G. Croom Robertson had been led independently to recognize the original unity of the present work, and to see the importance, for a right understanding of the development of the political doctrine of Hobbes, of the fact that the two parts of this work make up together the "little treatise in
Of the purport of the book itself little need be said here, except that it contains the earliest and shortest, yet at the same time a well-matured, conception of a doctrine which the author not only, as I have already pointed out, incorporated into his tripartite system of philosophy, but also discussed upon the same ground-plan in his famous Leviathan, where he is especially concerned, however, with the consideration of the ecclesiastical law in its relation with the omnipotent state. The fact that in this early treatise this polemical purpose is entirely undeveloped, and the idea of the commonwealth as a magnified human body scarcely so much as foreshadowed, makes a comparison of it with the Leviathan, which is more than three times its size, a highly instructive and interesting task. And it is worthy of remark that the part of this earlier work which treats of Human Nature has been declared by some critics to be the best of the author's compositions. This, as I learn from Dugald Stewart's first dissertation prefixed to the 8th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, was the opinion of Addison; and other very competent judges have spoken of the same treatise in terms of the highest praise. I may quote as an example the words of James Harrington, a contemporary of Hobbes, and himself an author of considerable merit in political philosophy (Prerogative of a Popular Government, book i. ch. 8): "I have opposed (he says) the politics of Mr. Hobbs, to show him what he taught me, with as much disdain as he opposed those of the greatest authors.... Nevertheless, in most other things, I firmly believe that Mr. Hobbs is, and will in future ages be accounted, the best writer at this day in the world. And for his treatises of human nature, and of
With regard to the De Corpore Politico, it is perhaps worth mentioning that very shortly after its appearance long extracts from it were printed in one of the periodicals of the time, the Mercurius Politicus (Jan. 2 and 9, 1651, NOS. 31 to 34): a fact possessing a certain historical interest, inasmuch as the journal in question is said to have been much under the influence of Cromwell, and to have been published "by authority" (Wood, Athen. Oxon. iii. col. 1182, Bliss); and the writer, a certain Marchamont Needham, was a man who always lent his pen to the powerful, writing first for the Presbyterians, afterwards for King Charles I., next for the Commonwealth, and of course, after the Restoration, for the king again.[5]
A few words remain to be said respecting the pieces which are subjoined in the present edition to the Elements of Law. They have never yet been printed, and were not hitherto known to be from the pen of the great philosopher, but a short inspection is sufficient to make their authorship clear to one who is familiar with the other works of Hobbes. The former of the two pieces is a complete though brief treatise on certain fundamental notions in philosophy, as well as on the causes of sense-perception, especially visual, and connects the author's newly conceived idea of local motion from the object to the eye or other organ of sense with the then general doctrine of species emanating from it and received by the soul.
In this and other respects it marks an intermediate stage between the scholastic modes of thought which survived in him from his early Oxford training and the new stream of conceptions generated by his lately acquired knowledge of mathematics and mechanics. As regards the date of this composition, I venture to suggest that it was written as early as the year 1630, since we are repeatedly assured by our author that he had already at that time put forward the opinion "that light is a fancy in the mind, caused by the motion in the brain, which motion again is caused by the motion of the parts of such bodies as we call lucid" (E.W. vii. p. 468, and Opp. Lat. v. p. 303, quoted in a letter of Descartes).
The second piece consists solely of extracts from a large unprinted treatise on optics, written in Latin, and preserved, like the former, in a bulky MS. volume, Harl. 6796. This treatise is evidently the first draft of what was intended as the second section of his system of philosophy, viz. the De Homine, which latter work, however, ultimately came forth in a very much altered form, though even then more than half of it was occupied with optical discussions. From this treatise I have picked out whatever seemed to me to be of interest as bearing upon the history of philosophical speculation generally, and, in particular, such passages as relate to the controversy in which Hobbes engaged with Descartes, a controversy of which there are also traces in the correspondence of the former philosopher with Mersenne. (See Molesworth's edition of Hobbes's Latin Works, vol. V.) A special inquiry would be necessary to ascertain whether the letters, which were written in 1641, are previous or posterior in date to the present treatise, but I have some reasons for supposing that the latter was written immediately after the first appearance of Descartes' Dioptrique in 1637.
POSTSCRIPT.—As the publication of this volume (as well as of the simultaneous one containing Behemoth) has been delayed considerably beyond the date at which the above Preface was written, the Editor is now enabled to refer his readers to the comprehensive monograph on Hobbes recently contributed by Prof. Robertson to the collection of Philosophical Classics for English readers; and also begs to mention a review of this work, written by himself, which has appeared in the Philosophische Monatshefte, June, 1887.
F.T.
HUSUM (SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN),
March, 1889.
But it is worth while to remark that the copies of Human Nature which are to be found in that unique collection in the British Museum called "the King's Pamphlets," have the year of the first edition altered by an old hand to 1649, and the date February 2nd added; and the year of the second edition altered to 1650, with the date December 30th; also in the copy of De Corpore Politico there is added to the year 1650, the date May 4th.
It had been published at Paris, 1642, in 4to (being then entitled Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Tertia), and again at Amsterdam, 1647, in 12mo, together with a Praefatio ad lectores, containing an announcement of the whole plan on which the author was working. But the Sectio Prima, De Corpore, did not follow earlier than 1655 (published in London), and the Sectio Secunda, De Homine, some years later (Lond., 1658).
From a pamphlet addressed in the year 1656 by Hobbes to the two Oxford Professors, Ward and Wallis: English Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. vii. p. 336.
I am greatly indebted to the kindness of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire in allowing me to examine these papers at Hardwick in 1878.
Needham was also the author of a book entitled The case of the
Commonwealth of England stated, etc. (1649), of which a second edition
came out in 1650 with extracts from Salmasius' Defensio Regia and Mr. Hobbes's De
Corpore Politico.
It should not be forgotten that about this time the philosopher himself
made his peace with the new order of things by publishing the Review
and Conclusion of his Leviathan; though he himself asserts
(Considerations l.c. pp. 415, 423) that the work was not
written to secure his own return to England, but to justify and direct
the conduct of a number of gentlemen who compounded, or were willing to
compound, with the Parliament for the saving of their estates from
confiscation. For his own part, he assures us that he never "sought any
benefit either from Oliver or from any of his party," and asks "why [if
the Leviathan had been written in order to gain the favour of
the Parliament] did they not thank him for it, both they and Oliver in
their turns?" This may perhaps serve for a refutation of a rumour spread
by an antagonist (J. Dowell, The Leviathan heretical, 1683),
that Oliver, on gaining the Protectorship, "had proffered him the great
place of being secretary," a statement which has been several times
repeated. Meanwhile it is by a sarcastic verse in the Vita
written by himself in Latin couplets, that the old man himself seems to
account for a certain courtesy bestowed upon him after his return
(Regia conanti calamo defendere
iura. Quis vitio vertat regia iura petens?). And no doubt
he was fully conscious of the wide gulf which separated him from the
orthodox defenders of the divine right of kings: a difference, however,
which many of his critics, up to this day, have not been able to
perceive.
The Elements of Law Natural and Politic | ||