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The Elements of Law Natural and Politic

by Thomas Hobbes

1640

To the Right Honourable

William, Earl of Newcastle,

Governor to the Prince his Highness,

one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council

The Epistle Dedicatory

My Most Honoured Lord,

From the two principal parts of our nature, Reason and

Passion, have proceeded two kinds of learning, mathematical and

dogmatical. The former is free from controversies and dispute,

because it consisteth in comparing figures and motion only; in

which things truth and the interest of men, oppose not each

other. But in the later there is nothing not disputable, because

it compareth men, and meddleth with their right and profit; in

which as oft as reason is against a man, so oft will a man be

against reason. And from hence it comes, that they who have

written of justice and policy in general do all invade each

other, and themselves, with contradiction. To reduce this

doctrine to the rules and infallibility of reason, there is no

way, but first, to put such principles down for a foundation, as

passion not mistrusting may not seek to displace: And afterward

to build thereon the truth of cases in the law of nature (which

hitherto have been built in the air) by degrees, till the whole

be inexpugnable. Now (my Lord) the principles fit for such a

foundation, are those which I have heretofore acquainted your

Lordship withal in private discourse; and which, by your command

I have here put into method. To examine cases thereby, between

sovereign and sovereign, or between sovereign and subject, I

leave to them, that shall find leisure, and encouragement

thereto. For my part, I present this to your Lordship, for the

true, and only foundation of such science. For the style, it is

therefore the worse, because whilst I was writing I consulted

more with logic, than with rhetoric. But for the doctrine, it is

not slightly proved; and the conclusions thereof, are of such

nature, as for want of them, government and peace have been

nothing else, to this day, but mutual fear. And it would be an

incomparable benefit to commonwealth, that every man held the

opinions concerning law and policy, here delivered. The ambition

therefore of this book, in seeking by your Lordship's

countenance, to insinuate itself with those whom the matter it

containeth most nearly concerneth, is to be excused. For myself,

I desire no greater honour, than I enjoy already in your

Lordship's known favour; unless it be, that you would be pleased

in continuance thereof, to give me more exercise in your

commands; which, as I am bound by your many great favours, I

shall obey, being

My most honoured Lord

Your Lordship's most humble and obliged Servant

Tho Hobbes

Part I

Human Nature

Chapter 1

The General Division of Man's Natural Faculties

1. The true and perspicuous explication of the Elements of

Laws, Natural and Politic, which is my present scope, dependeth

upon the knowledge of what is human nature, what is a body

politic, and what it is we call a law. Concerning which points,

as the writings of men from antiquity downward have still

increased, so also have the doubts and controversies concerning

the same, and seeing that true knowledge begetteth not doubt, nor

controversy, but knowledge; it is manifest from the present

controversies, that they which have heretofore written thereof,

have not well understood their own subject.

2. Harm I can do none though I err no less than they. For I

shall leave men but as they are in doubt and dispute. But

intending not to take any principle upon trust, but only to put

men in mind what they know already, or may know by their own

experience, I hope to err the less; and when I do, it must

proceed from too hasty concluding, which I will endeavour as much

as I can to avoid.

3. On the other side, if reasoning aright I win not consent

(which may very easily happen) from them that being confident of

their own knowledge weigh not what is said, the fault is not mine

but theirs. For as it is my part to show my reasons, so it is

theirs to bring attention.

4. Man's nature is the sum of his natural faculties and

powers, as the faculties of nutrition, motion, generation, sense,

reason, &c. For these powers we do unanimously call natural, and

are contained in the definition of man, under these words, animal

and rational.

5. According to the two principal parts of man, I divide his

faculties into two sorts, faculties of the body, and faculties of

the mind.

6. Since the minute and distinct anatomy of the powers of the

body is nothing necessary to the present purpose, I will only sum

them up into these three heads, power nutritive, power motive,

and power generative.

7. Of the powers of the mind there be two sorts, cognitive or

imaginative or conceptive; and motive. And first of the

cognitive.

8. For the understanding of what I mean by the power

cognitive, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our

minds continually certain images or conceptions of the things

without us, insomuch that if a man could be alive, and all the

rest of the world annihilated, he should nevertheless retain the

image thereof, and of all those things which he had before seen

and perceived in it; every man by his own experience knowing that

the absence or destruction of things once imagined, doth not

cause the absence or destruction of the imagination itself. This

imagery and representations of the qualities of things without us

is that we call our cognition, imagination, ideas, notice,

conception, or knowledge of them. And the faculty, or power, by

which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call power

cognitive, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving.

Chapter 2

The Cause of Sense

1. Having declared what I mean by the word conception, and

other words equivalent thereunto, I come to the conceptions

themselves, to show their difference, their causes, and the

manner of their production as far as is necessary for this place.

2. Originally all conceptions proceed from the actions of the

thing itself, whereof it is the conception. Now when the action

is present, the conception it produceth is called SENSE, and the

thing by whose action the same is produced is called the OBJECT

of sense.

3. By our several organs we have several conceptions of

several qualities in the objects; for by sight we have a

conception or image composed of colour or figure, which is all

the notice and knowledge the object imparteth to us of its nature

by the eye. By hearing we have a conception called sound, which

is all the knowledge we have of the quality of the object from

the ear. And so the rest of the senses also are conceptions of

several qualities, or natures of their objects.

4. 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 four points:

(1) That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent,

is not the object or thing seen.

(2) That that is nothing without us really which we call an

image or colour.

(3) That the said image or colour is but an apparition unto

us of that motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object

worketh in the brain or spirits, or some internal substance of

the head.

(4) That as in conception by vision, so also in the

conceptions that arise from other senses, the subject of their

inherence is not the object, but the sentient.

5. Every man hath so much experience as to have seen the sun

and other visible objects by reJection in the water and in

glasses, and this alone is sufficient for this conclusion: that

colour and image may be there where the thing seen is not. But

because it may be said that notwithstanding the image in the

water be not in the object, but a thing merely phantastical, yet

there may be colour really in the thing itself; I will urge

further this experience: that divers times men see directly the

same object double, as two candles for one, which may happen by

distemper, or otherwise without distemper if a man will, the

organs being either in their right temper, or equally

distempered. The colours and figures in two such images of the

same thing cannot be inherent both therein, because the thing

seen cannot be in two places: one of these images thereof is not

inherent in the object. But seeing the organs of sight are then

in equal temper or equal distemper, the one of them is no more

inherent than the other, and consequently neither of them both

are in the object; which is the first proposition mentioned in

the precedent section.

6. Secondly, that the image of any thing seen by reJection in

glass or water or the like, is not any thing in or behind the

glass, or in or under the water, every man may prove to himself;

which is the second proposition.

7. For the third, we are to consider first, that upon every

great agitation or concussion of the brain, as it happeneth from

a stroke, especially if the stroke be upon the eye, whereby the

optic nerve suffereth any great violence, there appeareth before

the eyes a certain light, which light is nothing without, but an

apparition only, all that is real being the concussion or motion

of the parts of that nerve. From which experience we may

conclude, that apparition of light without, is really nothing but

motion within. If therefore from lucid bodies there can be

derived motion, so as to affect the optic nerve in such manner as

is proper thereunto, there will follow an image of light

somewhere in that line by which the motion was last derived unto

the eye; that is to say, in the object, if we look directly on

it, and in the glass or water, when we look upon it in the line