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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
