SOURCE: "The State," in Hobbes, 1904. Reprint by The University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 173-236.

THE STATE¹

1. Contemporary Controversies

We come now to the third part of Hobbes's philosophy. He is to base a science of politics upon the doctrines already expounded. We become aware that there is a certain breach of continuity. To understand his line of thought, it is necessary to take note both of the problems in which he was specially interested, and the form into which the arguments had been moulded by previous thinkers. He applies to the questions of the day certain conceptions already current in political theory, though he uses them in such a way as materially to alter their significance.

Hobbes's theory in the first place involves the acceptance of a so-called "Law of Nature." "Nature," as we know, is a word contrived in order to introduce as many equivocations as possible into all the theories, political, legal, artistic, or literary, into which it enters. The "Law of Nature," as writers upon jurisprudence tell us, was invented by Roman lawyers with the help of Stoic philosophers. The lawyers, having to deal with the legal systems of the numerous races which came into contact with Rome, were led to recognise a certain body of laws common to all. Such law came to be considered as laid down by Nature. It was a product of the human nature common to Greeks and Romans, and not affected by the special modifications by which Romans are distinguished from Greeks. It belonged to the genus man, not to the species nation. The philosopher, meanwhile, took the Law of Nature to be law imposed by the divine author of nature, discoverable by right reason, and therefore common to all reasoning beings. The law in either case is "natural" because universally valid. But this may cover two diverging conceptions. To the man of science "nature" means everything actually existing. One quality cannot be more "natural" than another, though it may be more widely diffused. A scientific investigator of jurisprudence would inquire what systems of law prevail in different countries, and would seek to discover the causes of uniformity or difference. The inquirer is so far simply concerned with the question of fact, and to him the exceptional is just as much a natural product as the normal legislation. The scientific point of view is that from which one might expect Hobbes to treat the question. He accepts, however, the Law of Nature in another sense. It meant an ideal, not an actual law, and tells us what ought to be, not what is. There may of course be a presumption that a law (if there is such law) which is universally accepted is also dictated by reason; or a state may be so happily constituted that the perception that a law is reasonable may involve its acceptance in the actual system. But in any case the Law of Nature is supposed to be the type to which the actual law should be made to conform, and therefore implies a contrast and occasional conflict between the two systems.

Hobbes's view implies another distinction. Every one admits that laws may rightly vary according to circumstances within certain limits. There are laws, we may say, which it is right to obey because they are the law, and others which are the law because it is right to obey them. In England the law of the road tells carriages to keep to the left, and in France to keep to the right. We clearly ought to obey each rule in its own country. But there are other cases. In some countries the law permits or enforces rules of marriage which in other countries are held to be immoral and revolting. Is it true in this case also that each law is right in its own country, or is one set of laws to be condemned as contrary to the Law of Nature? Given the Law of Nature, that is, how are we to decide what sphere of discretion is to be left to the legislator? Can he deal with the most vital as well as the most trivial relations, or how is his proper sphere of authority to be defined? Where does "positive" law begin and natural law end? This involves the problem, how far does the power of the legislature extend, or what is the relation between the sovereign and the subject. That was a problem which had not been discussed in the classical philosophy. Man as a "political animal" was so identified with the State that citizenship was an essential part of him. Different forms of government might be compared, but the individual could not be conceived as existing independently of the State. To Hobbes the State had become an "artificial" construction, and therefore its relation to the units of which it was constructed had to be settled and was vitally important.

The theory of sovereignty had become interesting when there were rival claimants to sovereignty. The Christian Church, beginning as a voluntary association outside the State, and appealing to men in their individual capacity, had become a gigantic organisation with an elaborate constitution and legal system. It had come into collision, alliance, and rivalry with the empire. According to the accepted theory, both powers had legitimate claims to allegiance. Pope and emperor were compared to the sun and moon, though it might be disputed which was the sun and which was the moon, or whether they were not rather two independent luminaries. In the great controversies which arose, the Church had an obvious advantage. It derived its authority from direct revelation. It represented on earth the supreme Being, and was entrusted by him with power to enforce the moral laws which coincide with the Law of Nature. As the empire could claim no special revelation, the advocates of its claims had to find some independent support for them in the Law of Nature. To the question, then, whence is derived the obligation to obey the State, or rather the ruler, there was but one obvious answer. "All obligation," says Hobbes, "derives from contract." It is part of the Law of Nature that man should observe compacts. If therefore the relation between sovereign and subject depends upon a compact, there is a sufficient obligation to obedience though the ruler has not a special commission from God. It could not, it is true, be proved that such a compact had ever been made, nor that, if made in one generation, it would be binding on the next, nor was it possible to say what were the exact terms of the supposed compact. But such cavils were trifles. They could be met by saying that there was an "implicit" contract, and that it, no doubt, prescribed reasonable terms. This theory was gradually developed in the middle ages, and when Hobbes was a young man it had acquired especial currency from the great book in which Grotius had adopted it, when applying the Law of Nature to regulate the ethics of peace and war.²

This set of conceptions gives Hobbes's starting-point, though in his hands the Law of Nature and the social compact received a peculiar development, or, indeed, seemed to be turned inside out. He applied them to the great controversies in which he and his contemporaries were specially interested. The complicated struggles of the Reformation period had raised issues which were still undecided. Church and State, whatever the theory of their relations, were so closely connected as to form parts of one organism, and a separation of them, such as is contemplated by modern speculation, was unthinkable. If the two bodies had conflicting claims, they were also reciprocally necessary. Their systems of legislation were not independent, but interpenetrating. Each implied the other, and the State was bound to suppress heresy, as the Church to condemn rebellion. The disruption of the old system implied both civil and foreign war. The lines of cleavage ran through both Church and State, and in each fragment the ecclesiastical and secular system had to readjust their relations. When in England Henry VIII. renounced the authority of the pope, he had to become a bit of a pope himself. In Scotland the Church, though it might suppose that it had returned to primitive purity, could not be expected for that reason to relinquish its claims to authority over the laity. In the famous "Monarchomachist" controversy, Jesuits agreed with Scottish Protestants and French Huguenots in defending tyrannicide. They had a common interest in limiting the claims of the secular power. Jacques Clement and Ravaillac gave a pointed application in France to the Jesuit doctrine; and the Scots had to make a case against Queen Mary. Meanwhile the claims of the Catholic Church were the cause or the pretext of the warfare which culminated in the Spanish Armada. The patriotic Englishman regarded the pope as the instigator or accomplice of the assailants of our national independence. Persecution of priests seemed to be necessary, even if cruel, when priests were agents of the power which supported hostile fleets and inspired murderous conspiracies. Throughout the seventeenth century the protestant Englishman suffered from "papacy" on the brain, and his fear flashed into panic for the last time when Hobbes was dying. During his youth the keenest controversy had been raging over the claims of the papacy. James I. himself and his most learned divines, such as Andrewes and Donne, were arguing against the great Catholic divines, Suárez and Bellarmine. The controversy turned especially upon the imposition of the oath renouncing the doctrine of the right of the pope to depose kings. To that right was opposed the "divine right of kings": thereby being meant, not that kings had a "right divine to govern wrong," but that the king's right was as directly derived from Heaven as the rights of the Church.

Hobbes, as we shall see, was deeply impressed by these problems. The power of the Catholic Church to enforce its old claims was rapidly disappearing; but men are often most interested in discussing the means of escaping the dangers of the day before yesterday. While Hobbes was elaborating his system, great political issues seemed to turn upon the relation between the spiritual and secular authority. Meanwhile the purely political were inextricably mixed up with ecclesiastical questions. James's formula, "no bishop, no king," expressed the fact. The Church of England was in the closest alliance with the royal authority; "passive obedience" to the king became almost an essential doctrine, even with liberal Anglican divines; and the rebellion was the outcome of the discontent in both spheres. In England the claim of parliament to a share of power came first, but the power was to be applied on behalf of religious Puritanism. In Scotland the Church question was most prominent; but the Church, in the rule of which, as James complained, Tom, Dick, and Harry had claimed to have a voice, also represented the aspirations of the nation. The political problem was equally important, whatever might be the motives for demanding political power. The question in England was whether the ancient parliamentary institutions were to be preserved and developed, or to be allowed to fall into decay as in other European countries where the State was being organised on different lines. In later days, writers, who held the British Constitution to be an embodiment of perfect wisdom, naturally venerated the Hampdens and Eliots as representatives of the ultimately victorious, and therefore rightful cause.

As Hobbes altogether condemned their principles, we must remind ourselves how things appeared at the time. To men who desired a vigorous national government—which is surely a very reasonable desire—the claims of the parliamentary party appeared to be a hopeless obstacle. All men admitted that the king was to have the fullest authority over the national policy; he might make war or peace without consulting anybody; and if he could make it at his own expense, parliament had no ground for interference. The only thing which it could do was to refuse money if he wanted it for a policy which it disliked. It was as if the crew of a ship of war gave the command unreservedly to the captain, but, if they disliked the direction in which he was steering, showed disapproval by turning off the steam. That obviously would be a clumsy method. Parliament did not superintend or give general directions, but could throw the whole system out of gear when it pleased. We know, of course, how the struggle resulted in the supremacy of parliament, and of that party organisation which enabled it to act as a unit, and to regulate the whole national policy with a certain continuity of purpose. In Hobbes's time not only could such a system, as historians agree, occur to no one, but if it had occurred it would have been impracticable. To be efficient it required, not merely an exposition of principles, but the development of a mutual understanding between the different classes, which was not less essential because not expressed in any legal document. The art of parliamentary government has to be learnt by practice.

Another remark is now pretty obvious. The British people managed to work out a system which had, as we all believe, very great advantages and may justify some of the old panegyrics. Men could speak more freely—if not always more wisely—in England than elsewhere, and individual energy developed with many most admirable, if with some not quite admirable consequences. But the success was won at a cost. The central authority of the State was paralysed; and many observers may admit that in securing liberty at the price of general clumsiness and inefficiency of all the central administrative functions, the cost has been considerable. It is desirable to remember this point when we come to Hobbes's special theories. To him the demands of the parliamentary party appeared to imply a hopeless disorganization of the political machinery. His political writings, though professing to be a piece of abstract logic, are also essentially aimed at answering these questions. The vital problem involved was, as he thought, what is sovereignty and who should be sovereign? The State, on one side, was struggling with the Church—whether the Church of Rome or the Church of Scotland,—and, on the other hand, the supreme power was claimed for king alone, for parliament alone, and for some combination of the two. What will a scientific analysis enable us to say as to the general nature of the supreme power and as to the best constitution of a body politic. The country, as he says, for some years before the civil war, "was boiling over with questions concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience due from subjects": a state of things which "ripened and plucked" from him the third part of his philosophy before the other parts were ready.

2. The Social Contract

Hobbes's political theories are expounded in the De Corpore Politico (the little treatise of 1640), the De Cive, and the Leviathan. The title of the last of these works is suggested by certain words in the Book of Job: "Non est potestas super terram quœ comparetur ei." They are printed at the head of the quaint allegorical title-page, where a composite giant, his body made of human beings, holds the sword in one and a crosier in the other hand, while beneath him is a wide country with a town, a fort, and a church in the foreground, and below it are various symbols of temporal and spiritual power. The great Leviathan, he tells us, is that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. But he is also a machine. We are to take him to pieces in imagination, as we actually take to pieces a watch to understand its construction. We have already seen the statement of Hobbes's method. It is impossible to deduce the properties of this complex mechanism by the synthetical method; but by analysing the observed "motions of the mind" we can discover its essential principles. Justice, he says, means giving to each man his own. How does a man come to have an "own"? Because community of goods breeds contention, while reason prescribes peace. From the regulation of the "concupiscible" nature by the "rational" arises the system of moral and civil laws embodied in the great Leviathan. We have to examine this process in detail. Men have, as we have seen, "a perpetual and restless desire of power after power." In the next place, men are naturally equal. The weakest in body, at any rate, may kill the strongest, and there is a still greater equality in mind. This doctrine of natural equality he tries to establish by rather quaint arguments. "Every man," he says, "thinks himself as wise, though not as witty or learned as his neighbours. What better proof can there be of equality of distribution than that every man is contented with his share?" That is hardly convincing; but what Hobbes means to say is that no man has such a superiority over his fellows as would make him secure in the chaotic struggle of "the state of nature." When two men want the same thing, therefore, each will have a chance. Competition, diffidence (a distrust of each other), and glory (the desire, we may say, for prestige) are the three principal causes of quarrel. "The first maketh men invade for gain; the second for safety; the third for reputation." When there is no common power to overawe, there will be a "war of every man against every man." War, he explains, is not confined to actual fighting, but exists where there is a "known disposition thereto" and "no assurance to the contrary." So long as this state continues, "there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain," and (besides many other wants) "no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Do you object to this account of man? Look at experience. Does not a man arm himself when he is going a journey? Does he not lock the chests in his own house, although he knows that there are public officers to protect them? What opinion does that imply of his fellow subjects or of his servants? "Does he not as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do by my words?"

But was there ever such a "state of nature"? Not perhaps over the whole world, though in America many savages live in this nasty and brutish fashion. If, however, that were not so with particular men, "yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators; having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one another—that is their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms—and continual spies upon their neighbours." The argument is certainly not obsolete, nor the remark which follows. "Because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men." Now where every man is at war with every man, "the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place. Where there is no common power there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues." Justice and injustice "relate to men in society, not in solitude." In such a state of things, there can be "no mine and thine distinct, but only that to be every man's that he can get and for so long as he can keep it."

as Wordsworth puts it. This is the "ill condition" in which man is placed "by mere nature." There is a possibility of his getting out of it, partly because some passions, fear of death, desire of comfort, and hope of securing it induce men to peace, and partly because "reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace."

This is Hobbes's famous theory that the "state of nature" is a state of war. It does not imply, he says, that men are "evil by nature." The desires are not themselves wicked, though at times they may cause wicked actions. "Children grow peevish and do hurt if you do not give them all they ask for; but they do not become wicked till, being capable of reason, they continue to do hurt." A wicked man is a child grown strong and sturdy; and malice is a defect of reason at the age when reasonable conduct is to be expected. Nature provides the faculties but not the education. The doctrine should be tested by its truth, not by its pleasantness. Hobbes accepts in part the method of Machiavelli, who clearly announced that he was concerned with what actually happened, not with what ought to happen. To adopt that plan is to undertake to tell unpleasant truths, and to tell unpleasant truths is, according to most readers, to be "cynical." Hobbes incurred the blame; but, at least, he was so far pursuing the truly scientific method. Up to this point, indeed, he was taking the line which would be followed by a modern inquirer into the history of institutions. Warfare is part of the struggle for existence out of which grow states and the whole organisation of civilised societies. A modern would maintain, like Hobbes, that in admitting the part played by selfish force in the development of society, he does not assert the wickedness of human nature. He only asserts that the good impulses cannot acquire the desirable supremacy until a peaceful order has been established by the complex struggles and alliances of human beings, swayed by all their passions and ambitions. But here we come upon an element in Hobbes's theory of which I have already spoken, namely, the Law of Nature. The "laws of human nature," in the scientific sense, expressing the way in which human beings actually behave, are identified with the Law of Nature as an ideal or divine law, which declares how men ought to behave. Hobbes professes to show that the sovereign has certain "rights" as well as certain powers; and, moreover, that those rights are far from being recognised in many countries and especially in England. He is not simply pointing out how it came to pass that Charles I. and his parliament had got into conflict, and thence inferring the best mode of settling the disputed points; but he desires to show that the "Law of Nature" decides the question of their conflicting rights. The "Nature" which prescribes the right cannot be identical with the "Nature" which gives the power and determines the facts.

Hobbes's next point, therefore, is to show what are the "Laws of Nature." Every man has a right, he says, to use his own power for his own preservation. A "Law of Nature" is a precept found out by reason, forbidding him to do the contrary: that is, to destroy himself or his means of self-preservation. Now, in the "state of nature" just described, every man has a right to everything—even to another man's body. He has a "right," that is, because nature makes self-preservation the sole aim of each man, even when it implies the destruction of others. But it is plain that, while this is the case, no man's life or happiness is secure. "Nature," therefore, orders men to get out of the "state of nature" as soon as they can. Hence we have the twofold principle. It is the "fundamental law of nature" that every man should "seek peace and follow it"; and the fundamental "right of nature" is that a man should defend himself by every means he can. Peace makes self-defence easy. It follows that a man should "lay down his right to all things" if other men will lay down theirs. This is identified by Hobbes with the "law of the Gospel": "Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them" or (which he takes to be equivalent), "Quod tibi fieri non vis alteri ne feceris." A man may simply renounce or he may transfer a right. In either case, he is said to be "obliged" not to interfere with the exercise of a right by those to whom he has abandoned or granted it. It is his "duty" not to make his grant void by hindering men from using the right; and such hindrance is called "injustice." We thus have Hobbes's definitions of Obligation, Duty, and Justice. Injustice, he observes, is like an absurdity in logic. It is a contradiction of what you had voluntarily asserted that you would do.

From these definitions, Hobbes proceeds to deduce other "Laws of Nature," and finds no less than nineteen. The third law (after those prescribing peace and self-defence) is that men should keep their "covenants." He afterwards deduces the duties of gratitude, sociability, admission of equality—the breach of which is pride—equity, and so forth. If, he says, the "deduction" seems "too subtile," they may all be regarded as corollaries from the "golden rule." That rule, however, is itself deducible from the rule of "self-preservation." We do good to others in order that they may do good to us. "No man giveth," as he says, by way of proving that gratitude is a virtue, "but with intention of good to himself." … "Of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good." That, one would rather have supposed, is a reason for not being "grateful" to anybody. We must interpret "gratitude" in the prospective sense—with an eye to the favours to come. It is prudent to pay your debts in order to keep up your credit. In one case he seems to deviate a little from his egoism. Justice means keeping covenants—obedience, that is, to his "third law." A man who does a just action from fear, as he remarks, is not therefore a just man; his "will is not framed by the justice, but by the apparent benefit of what he is to do. That which gives to human actions the relish of justice is a certain nobleness or gallantness of courage, rarely found, by which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment of his life to fraud or breach of promise." He should have held, it would seem, that the will is always framed by the "apparent benefit." The inconsistency (if there be one, for even this appears to be a case of "glory") is explicable. Hobbes has to deduce all the "Laws of Nature" from the law of self-preservation. That, no doubt, may show the expediency of making a "covenant" with your neighbours, and even the expediency of generally keeping it. But it must also be granted that there are occasions in which expediency is in favour of breaking covenants. The just man, the ordinary moralist would say, is a man who keeps his word even to his own disadvantage. That, on the strictest interpretation of Hobbes, is impossible. Nobody can do it. Justice, however, in the sense of "covenant-keeping," is so essential a part of his system, that he makes an implicit concession to a loftier tone of morality, and admits that a man may love justice for its own sake. This, however, seems to be an oversight. Hobbes is content to take for granted that each man will profit by that which is favourable to all, or that the desire for self-preservation will always make for the preservation of society. The Law of Nature, we see, is simply an application of the purely egoistic law of self-preservation. It represents the actual forces which (in Hobbes's view) mould and regulate all human institutions. But in sanctioning so respectable a virtue as "justice," it takes a certain moral colouring, and may stand for the ideal Law of Nature or Reason to which the actual order ought to conform.

There is another reserve to be made: the laws of nature are not properly laws. They are only "theorems concerning what conduceth" to self-preservation. They become laws proper when they are "delivered in the Word of God"; and he proceeds in the De Cive to prove them by a number of texts, and comes to the edifying conclusion that the "Law of Nature" is the Law of Christ. It is a theorem, for example, that to keep your word tends to self-preservation. But law means the command of a rightful superior; and until such a command has been given, it is not properly a "Law of Nature" that you should keep your word. The laws are always binding in foro interno; you are always bound to desire that they should come into operation; but they are not always binding in foro externo; that is, you are not always bound to "put them in act." Self-preservation is the fundamental law. But till other people keep the laws, obedience to them does not tend to self-preservation. If you are peaceful and truthful when other men are not, you will "procure your own certain ruin, contrary to all the Laws of Nature." That obviously will be the case in the "state of nature" where fraud and force are the cardinal virtues. There is, no doubt, a truth in this contention. The moral law, to become operative in fact, requires a certain amount of reciprocity. Actual morality clearly depends upon the stage of social evolution. In a primitive society, where men have to defend themselves by the strong hand, we can hardly condemn the man who accepts the standard methods. Achilles would be a brutal ruffian to-day; but when Troy was besieged, he was a hero deserving admiration. He was perhaps in the true line of development. The chief of a savage tribe is, on the whole, preparing the way for a peaceful order. Even in the present day a philanthropist living in one of the regions where the first-comer is ready to shoot him at sight, might think it right to carry a revolver in his pocket, and, if necessary, to anticipate the shooting. Moral rules become useful in proportion as society perceives their value, and is more or less inclined to adopt them in practice. Otherwise, the man whose morality was of a higher type would be thrown away or summarily stamped out. Ought a man to be several generations in advance of his time? That is a pretty problem which I do not undertake to solve. In any case, Hobbes had a real and important meaning. He saw, that is, that the development of morality implies the growth of a certain understanding between the individuals composing the society, and that until this has been reached ideal morality proper to a higher plane of thought is impracticable if not undesirable. This leads to the theory of the social contract—the mutual agreement by which the great Leviathan is constructed.

The Law of Nature prescribes peace as a condition of security. But the law is "contrary to our natural passions," and "covenants without the sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all." It is therefore essential to create a common power to keep men in awe. Such creatures as bees and ants do, indeed, live at peace with each other and are therefore called by Aristotle "political creatures." Why cannot men do so? Because men compete and have private aims different from the common good. Men too can talk and therefore reason; they are "most troublesome when most at ease," because they then love to show their wisdom and control their rulers. The great difference, however, is that their agreement is "by covenant, which is artificial," whereas bees agree by "nature." By "artificial" we must here understand what is made by reason. Since men can live, for they do sometimes live in a "state of nature," a political society is not essential to man as man. It is a product of his voluntary action, and therefore implies a conscious deliberation. The only way, then, in which the common power can be erected and security established, is that men should "confer all their power and strength upon one man or one assembly of men." Then wills will be "reduced into one will, and every man acknowledge himself to be the author of whatsoever is done by the ruler so constituted." "This is more than consent or concord; it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man; in such manner as if every man should say to every man: 'I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or this assembly of men, on this condition that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner."' The Leviathan, or mortal god, is instituted by this covenant. He is the vital principle of political association, and from it Hobbes will proceed to deduce the whole of his doctrine.

Before considering its terms, one remark may be made. It is sometimes asked whether the expounders of the "social contract" in various forms meant to be understood historically. Did they mean to assert that at some remote period a number of men had held a convention, like the American States, and signed articles of association, to bind themselves and their posterity? Occasionally they seem to be driven to accept that position. Hobbes, however, can hardly have entertained such a belief. He is as ready as anybody to give an historical account of the origin of actual constitutions. In his Dialogue upon the Common Law, for example, he, like Montesquieu, traces the origin of the British Constitution to the forests of Germany, and the system once prevalent among the "savage and heathen" Saxons. He recognises in the Leviathan that governments may arise from conquest or the development of the family as well as by "institution," and endeavours to show that the nature of sovereignty will be the same in whatever way it may have originated. A contract, it always has to be admitted, may be "implicit" (that is, may really be no contract at all), and there can be no doubt that, in point of fact, the social contract, if it exists, must at the present day be of that kind. Nobody is ever asked whether he will or will not agree to it. Men, as members of a political society, accept a certain relation to the sovereign, and unless they did so the society would be dissolved. That such an understanding exists, and is a condition of the existence of the State, would be enough for Hobbes, whatever the origin of the understanding. As we shall presently see, he would be more consistent, if not more edifying, if he threw the contract overboard altogether.

We must look more closely at the terms of the hypothetical contract. The first point is that Hobbes's version differs from the earlier forms in this, that it is not a contract between the subject and the sovereign, but between the subjects themselves. The sovereign is created by it, but is not a party to it. This is Hobbes's special and most significant contribution to the theory. His reason is plain. Men, in a state of nature, that is, not acknowledging any commòn authority, cannot make a contract collectively. They are, in that case, simply a "multitude." His own theory, he says in a note to the De Cive, depends upon clearly understanding the different senses in which this word may be used. A multitude means first a multitude of men. Each has his own will and can make compacts with his neighbours. There may be as many compacts as there are men, or pairs of men, but there is then no such thing as a common will or a contract of the multitude considered as a unit. This first becomes possible when they have each agreed that the will of some one man or of a majority shall be taken for the will of all. Then the multitude becomes a "person," and is generally called a "people." One man is a "natural person," and their common representative is an "artificial person," or, as he puts it, "bears the person of the people." It is, therefore, impossible to take the social contract as made between the sovereign and the subjects. Till they have become an "artificial person" they cannot make a contract as a whole. This social contract is presupposed in all other contracts. It must be at the foundation of all corporate action, and a compact between the sovereign and the subjects would suppose the previous existence of a unity which is only created by the contract itself. In the "state of nature" men can promise but cannot make a binding contract. A contract means an exchange of promises, and in a "state of nature" neither party can depend upon the other keeping his word. Obligation follows security. It seems rather difficult, perhaps, to see how you can ever get out of the state of nature, or why the agreement of each man to take the sovereign will for his own, is more likely to be observed than any other agreement. Hobbes, however, assumes that this is possible; and when the Leviathan has once been constructed, it embodies the common will. The multitude becomes a person, and law, natural and civil, becomes binding.

3. The Leviathan

We have thus got our sovereign. His will is the will of all. He is under no obligation to his subjects, but is the source of all obligation. The ultimate justification of his existence, however, is still the desire for self-preservation, and for peace as an essential condition. Hence, indeed, arise the only limitations to the power of the sovereign which Hobbes admits. Since I aim at my own security, I cannot lay down the right of resisting men who would kill me, or even men "who would inflict wounds or imprisonment." I may indeed agree that you shall kill me, but I cannot agree that I will not resist you. A criminal may be properly put to death, for he has agreed to the law; but he must be guarded on his way to execution, for he has not bargained not to run away. He adds another quaint exception. A man may refuse to serve as a soldier, at least if he can offer a substitute. "And," he adds, "there is allowance to be made for natural timorousness, not only to women, of whom no such dangerous duty is expected, but also to men of feminine courage." (They may have been born in 1588.) In such cases, it seems, disobedience does not "frustrate the end for which sovereignty was ordained." The principle applies to the case of de facto government—when the sovereign cannot defend me I need not obey him.

With these exceptions, the power of the sovereign is unlimited. The "mortal god" is omnipotent. The covenant once made is indefeasible. The parties to it cannot make a new covenant inconsistent with it. They cannot transfer their allegiance without the consent of the sovereign. Since there is no power of revising the covenant, it cannot be broken without injustice. Hobbes, we see, speaks of the sovereign as "representing" the subjects. But he does not "represent" them as a member of parliament represents his constituents, or as a delegate bound to carry out their wishes. He "represents" them in the sense that whatever he does is taken to be done by them. They are as responsible for all his actions as though he was their volition incorporated. It follows that his power can never be forfeited. The subjects have done whatever he has done, and in resisting him would be calling themselves to account. The social contract, considered as a covenant with the ruler, was alleged as a justification of rebellion. Hobbes inverts the argument. It can never be right to allege a "covenant" with the ruler because that would justify rebellion. Since there is no common judge in such a case, this would mean an appeal to the power of the sword, and the power of the sword is what you have abandoned in covenanting. No individual again can dissent. If he does, he "may justly be destroyed" by the rest. If he consented to covenant, he implicitly consented to the covenant actually made. But, if not, he is left in the state of nature and may, therefore, "without injustice be destroyed by any man whatsoever."

The Leviathan, thus constituted, has therefore an indefeasible title and is irresponsible. He is the ultimate authority from whom all rights are derived. The end of his institution is peace. A right to the end implies a right to the means. The sovereign may do whatever promotes peace. Since men's actions proceed from their opinions, he may suppress the publication of opinions tending in his opinion to disturb the peace. Since contention arises from the clashing of rights, he must determine men's rights; or, in other words, must be the supreme legislator. The law means the command of the sovereign, and whatever he commands is therefore law. He must, again, have the "right of judicature"; the right to hear and decide all controversies arising out of the law. The sword of justice belongs to him, and "the sword of justice must go with the sword of war." The sovereign has to protect the people against foreign enemies as well as to protect each man against his neighbour. He must decide upon war and peace; and when war is necessary must decide what forces are necessary; and, further, must decide how much money is required to pay for them. "The command of the militia" (the military forces in general), "without other institution, maketh him that hath it sovereign; and, therefore, whosoever is made general of an army, he that hath the sovereign power is always generalissimo." Other powers, such as the appointment of ministers, the distribution of honours, and the infliction of punishments, obviously follow.

The Leviathan, thus invested with fullest power of legislature, judicature, and military command, with authority over opinion, and right to levy taxes, appeared to Hobbes's contemporaries to be a terrible portent. Charles I., trying to dispense with parliaments, Cromwell ruling by armed force, Louis XIV. declaring himself to be the State, might be taken as avatars of the monster. Lovers of liberty of thought or action were shocked by a doctrine fit only for the graceless and abject courtiers of the Restoration. The doctrine, however, must be considered on more general grounds. Hobbes, in the first place, is not here arguing for one form of government more than for another. He prefers monarchy; but his special point is that in every form, monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic, there must be a "sovereign"—an ultimate, supreme, and single authority. Men, he says, admit the claim of a popular State to "absolute dominion," but object to the claim of a king, though he has the same power and is not more likely, for reasons given, to abuse it. The doctrine which he really opposes is that of a "mixed government." As "some doctors" hold that there are three souls in one man, others hold that there can be more souls than one in a commonwealth. That is virtually implied when they say that "the power of levying money, which is the nutritive faculty," depends on a "general assembly"; the "power of conduct and command, which is the motive faculty, on one man; and the power of making laws, which is the rational faculty, on the accidental consent, not only of those two last, but of a third": this is called "mixed monarchy." "In truth it is not one independent commonwealth, but three independent factions; nor one representative person but three. In the Kingdom of God there may be three persons independent without breach of unity in God that reigneth; but where men reign that be subject to diversity of opinions, it cannot be so. And therefore if the king bear the person of the people, the general assembly bear the person of the people, and another assembly bear the person of a part of the people, they are not one person, nor one sovereign, but three persons and three sovereigns." That is to say, the political, like the animal organism, is essentially a unit. So far as there is not somewhere a supreme authority, there is anarchy or a possibility of anarchy. The application to Hobbes's own times is obvious. The king, for example, has a right to raise ship-money in case of necessity. But who has a right to decide the question of necessity? If the king, he could raise taxes at pleasure. If the parliament, the king becomes only their pensioner. At the bottom it was a question of sovereignty, and Hobbes, holding the king to be sovereign, holds that Hampden showed "an ignorant impatience of taxation." "Mark the oppression! A parliament man of £500 a year, landtaxed 20s." Hampden was refusing to contribute to his own defence. "All men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, through which every little payment appeareth a great grievance." Parliament remonstrated against arbitrary imprisonment, the Star Chamber, and so forth; but it was their own fault that the king had so to act. Their refusal to give money "put him (the king) upon those extraordinary ways, which they call illegal, of raising money at home." The experience of the Civil War, he says in the Leviathan, has so plainly shown the mischief of dividing the rights of the sovereign that few men in England fail to see that they should be inseparable and should be so acknowledged "at the next return of peace."

Men did in fact come to acknowledge it though not for some generations, and then by virtually transferring sovereignty from the king to the parliament. A confused state of mind in the interval was implied in the doctrine which long prevailed, of the importance of a division between the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, and in the doctrine that the British Constitution represented a judicious mixture of the three elements, aristocracy, monarchy, and democracy, whose conflicts were regulated by an admirable system of checks and balances. Whatever truth may have been expressed in such theories, they were erroneous so far as inconsistent with Hobbes's doctrine. A division of the governmental functions is of course necessary, and different classes should be allowed to exercise an influence upon the State. But the division of functions must be consistent with the recognition of a single authority which can regulate and correlate their powers; and a contest between classes, which do not in some way recognise a sovereign arbitrator, leads to civil war or revolution. Who is the sovereign, for example, was the essential question which in the revolt of the American colonies, and in the secession of the Southern States, had to be answered by bullets. So long as that question is open, there is a condition of unstable equilibrium or latent anarchy. The State, as Hobbes puts it, should have only one soul, or as we may say, the political organism should have the unity corresponding to a vital principle.

The unity of the Leviathan seemed to imply arbitrary power. Since the king had the power of the sword, said Hobbes, he must also have the power of the purse. The logic might be good, but might be applied the other way. The true Englishman was determined not to pay the money till he knew how it was to be spent; and complained of a loss of liberty if it was taken by force. Hobbes's reply to this is very forcible and clears his position. He agreed with Johnson that the cry for liberty was cant. What, he asks, in his De Cive, is meant by liberty? If an exemption from the laws, it can exist in no government whatever. If it consist in having few laws, and only those such as are necessary to peace, there is no more liberty in a democracy than in a monarchy. What men really demand is not liberty but "dominion." People are deceived because in a democracy they have a greater share in public offices or in choosing the officers. It does not follow that they have more liberty in the sense of less law. Hobbes was putting his finger upon an ambiguity which has continued to flourish. Liberty may either mean that a man is not bound by law or that he is only bound by laws which he has made (or shared in making) himself. We are quite aware at the present day that a democracy may use the liberty, which in one sense it possesses, by making laws which are inconsistent with liberty in the other sense.

The problem, so much discussed in our times, as to the proper limits of government interference had not then excited attention. Hobbes seems to incline towards non-interference. Subjects grow rich, he says, by "the fruits of the earth and water, labour and thrift" (land, labour, and capital), and the laws should encourage industry and forbid extravagance. The "impotent" should be supported and the able-bodied set to work; taxes should be equal, and laid upon consumption, which (as he thinks) will encourage saving, and extravagance should be punished. So far his principles are those which his contemporaries fully accepted. But he adds emphatically that the laws should not go too far. "As water enclosed on all hands with banks, stands still and corrupts, so subjects, if they might do nothing without the command of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy." They must not, however, be left too much to themselves. "Both extremes are faulty, for laws were not invented to take away but to direct men's actions, even as nature ordained the banks not to stay, but to guide the course of the stream; it is therefore against sound policy that there should be more laws than necessarily serve for the good of the magistrate and his subjects." Laws, moreover, should be clear, simple, and directed not to revenge, but to correction. "Leaders of a commotion should be punished; not the poor seduced people. To be severe to the people, is to punish that ignorance which may in great part be imputed to the sovereign, whose fault it was that they were no better instructed." This is, perhaps, the only remark of Hobbes which would be endorsed by Tolstoi. Hobbes was in favour of a despotic rule; but he was anxious that it should be thoroughly humane, and was fully sensible that the English laws were in great need of reform.

Such questions, however, were then in the background. The real issue with his contemporaries was different. Although his theory of sovereignty is avowedly independent of the particular form of government, he has a leaning to monarchy. He confesses that he has not proved this advantage demonstratively: "the one thing in the whole book," he adds, in regard to which he will make that modest admission. His grounds are mainly that a king has a direct interest in promoting the welfare of his subjects, while popular leaders are prompted by vain glory and jealousy of each other, and popular assemblies are swayed by orators, for whom he always expresses contempt. "A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators, interrupted sometimes with the temporary monarchy of one orator": a Pym or a Gladstone. Hobbes's dislike to popular rule may be due in part to a certain intellectual difficulty. A sovereign must needs be a unit. But Hobbes is not comfortable with abstractions, or with so vague a body as the sovereign in a complex political system. He likes to have a king—a concrete, tangible individual in whom his principles may be incarnated. This prevents him from recognising one development of his theory which none the less was implied from the first. He perceives with perfect clearness and asserts in the most vigorous way that the division of sovereignty was the real weakness of the English system. His prejudices lead him to throw the whole blame upon the popular leaders. But a man of science should see that it is little to the purpose to blame individuals. Their discontent is a fact: a philosophical reformer should aim not at denouncing the symptoms, but at removing the causes of discord. It was clearly hopeless to persuade either side that it was in the wrong; but he might have tried to give an impartial diagnosis of the disease. He might then have admitted that the true solution might be, not to give the power of the purse to the king, but to give the power of the sword to the parliament. If he had contemplated that proposition, he might have foreseen (I do not mean that any human being could wholly have foreseen) that his theory would apply to a radically changed order.

In fact, Hobbes's Leviathan represents what is called "the modern State." Supremacy of the law, absolute authority of the governing power, and unity of the administrative system may be most fully realised when the "sovereign" is not an individual but an organic body. Government represents or "bears the person of the people," not in Hobbes's sense, that whatsoever the sovereign wills becomes their will, but in the inverse sense, that whatever they will becomes his will. Similar consequences follow in either version. Hobbes, for example, believes in the equality of man. It is one of his laws of nature that "every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature." Even if men were not equal, they would only make the compact on conditions of equality. Inequality of subjects, he says elsewhere, is made by the sovereign; and therefore all must be equal before the sovereign, as kings and subjects are equal before the King of Kings. Crimes of great men are "not extenuated but aggravated by the greatness of their persons." If they are favoured, "impunity maketh insolence; insolence hatred; and hatred an endeavour to pull down all oppressing and contumelious greatness, though with the ruin of the commonwealth." No subject can acquire any rights which will impede the full exercise of the sovereign power. The property of subjects in lands, for example, "consisteth in right to exclude all other subjects from the use of them, and not to exclude their sovereign, be it an assembly or a monarch." If land is not to be nationalised, the landowner's right is never absolute. So in all "systems subject—that is, in all associations of any kind—no power can be enjoyed except what the sovereign chooses to allow." They must be thoroughly subordinate to his will, though in practice they have an awkward tendency to independence. Among the diseases of a commonwealth, Hobbes reckons great towns able to furnish an army (London, of course, is in his mind) "as well as the great number of corporations which are, as it were, many lesser commonwealths in the bowels of the greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man." The principle is evidently fatal to privileged estates or corporations. The king or sovereign may call in councillors; but they must remain councillors only. That, for example, is the case with the House of Commons. But the House of Lords has no better claim. "Good counsel comes not by inheritance." The claim of certain persons to have a place in the highest council by inheritance is derived "from the conquests of the ancient Germans." Their chiefs were able to extract privileges for their posterity. Such privileges, however, are inconsistent with sovereign power, and if men contend for them as a right, they "must needs by degrees let them go," and be content with the honour due to their natural abilities.

This consequence of the supremacy of the sovereign illustrates one curious contrast between Hobbes and his opponents. The parliamentary party had to defend privilege against prerogative; and privilege has to be defended by precedent. The party, therefore, which would in modern phrase claim to be the "party of progress," justified itself by appealing to antiquity. When, indeed, you cut off a king's head you have to appeal to general principles. Constitutional precedents are not available. Milton had to claim indefeasible rights for the people, and men like honest John Lilburne used language which anticipated Paine's Rights of Man. But in the earlier stages of the quarrel, Coke's gigantic knowledge of old records, and superstitious reverence for the common law, that is, for tradition and custom, was a stronghold of the party. Hobbes rejects the whole doctrine. An absolute political theory could not fit into the constitutional tradition or justify the heterogeneous products of historical accidents. His treatise on the common law expresses his aversion to Coke. He had already quoted him in the Leviathan to show how men's judgments were "perverted by trusting to precedent." "If the man who first judged, judged unjustly, no injustice can be a pattern of justice to succeeding judges." No custom, again, can justify itself. If "use obtaineth the authority of a law, it is not the length of time that maketh the authority, but the will of the sovereign signified by his silence." The tacit consent of a ruler may make a custom law. But "many unjust actions and unjust sentences go uncontrolled for a longer time than any man can remember." Only "reasonable" customs should be law, and evil customs should be abolished. The sovereign must decide what is reasonable and what should be abolished.

According to Hobbes, then, all political machinery is absolutely subordinate to the sovereign. His power is the sole working force, and every resisting element must be ejected or brought under control. The law is the expression of his will, and though he may enforce rules which have grown up independently, they can only exist on sufferance or by his tacit consent. In that respect Hobbes was at one with the most thoroughgoing revolutionists who ever proposed to rearrange the political order upon an ideal plan, and to abolish all traditional law which is not in conformity with the dictates of reason. As a matter of fact, Hobbes's legal doctrine came to life again in the hands of Bentham and his follower, Austin, the legal lights of the "philosophical radicals." Maine observes that they had scarcely anything to add to Hobbes's analysis of the meaning of law. Hobbes puts his theory with all possible clearness in the De Cive and the Leviathan. "A law is a command of that person, whose precept contains in it the reason of obedience." The "civil law" is the command of the sovereign. We are bound to obey it, because it is his command, as soon as we know it to be his. It must therefore be promulgated in order that we may know it, and have a "penalty annexed to it" in order that we may obey it; for "vain is that law which may be broken without punishment." When we are solemnly informed that a law is a command of the sovereign, enforced by a "sanction," the impulse of the unregenerate mind is to reply, "that is what I always supposed." Parliament and the policeman are phenomena too obvious to be overlooked; the great manufactory which is always turning out laws, and the rod which will smite us if we do not obey are always with us. What else should a law be than a rule made by one and enforced by the other? We are told in reply that great confusion has arisen by confounding such laws with "Laws of Nature," laws which are supposed to exist in some transcendental world, and yet to supply the necessary basis for the laws of actual life, and which have to be applied to life by the help of such shifty and ambiguous hypotheses as the social contract. I do not doubt that that is true, but it suggests one question. Austin and his disciples were always exposing the absurdity of the Law of Nature and the social contract, and yet their own doctrine coincides with that of Hobbes, who professes to make these theories an integral part of his system.

The explanation is simple, and gives the essence of Hobbes. According to Hobbes, in fact, the Law of Nature has a singularly limited sphere of action. It only exists, one may say, in order to repeal itself. Before the social contract, he says, every man has a right to everything, which is practically equivalent to nobody having a right to anything; for if the same thing belongs to two men, neither has a right against the other. But the contract is itself made by every man resigning all his rights to the sovereign. When he has thus made them over, he can no longer make any claims under the Law of Nature. The sovereign may command him to do anything (except, indeed, to help to hang himself) and he is bound to obey. The Law of Nature orders him to obey the positive law, and does nothing else. This comes, however, of being thoroughly logical, after making one initial error. The Law of Nature is simply the law of self-preservation, and whatever necessarily follows from it. But in what sense of "law" can we call self-preservation a law? In one sense it is what Hobbes calls a "theorem," not a law. It is (assuming its truth) a statement of fact. All men do aim at self-preservation. That is their one actual and, indeed, their one possible principle. If so, it cannot be a "law" at all in the ethical or strictly legal sense. It expresses an essential condition of man's nature, and not a law imposed upon him from without. Men act for their own preservation as stones fall by gravitation. It is a way they have, and they cannot have any other. Taking for granted the truth of the "theorem," it will enable us to show how political institutions and "civil laws" have come into existence, but it does not show that they are right or wrong. It is as irrelevant to introduce that confusion as it would be to say that the angles of a triangle ought to be equal to two right angles. Hobbes's real theory comes out when we drop the imaginary contract altogether. We assume "self-preservation" as the universal instinct and, moreover, we must provisionally accept Hobbes's thoroughgoing egoism. Then so long as there is no common superior, the instinct produces competition and war, and implies the nasty, brutish "state of nature." How do men get out of it? Historically, he replies, governments may be made by conquest or developed out of the family, "which is a little monarchy." In both cases sovereignty is acquired by "force" and the subjects submit from fear. Governments, also, are made by "institution," that is, by the social contract; and in this case the motive is still fear, but fear of one another. Admitting, then, that even as an historical fact, sovereignty has been made by "institution" or contract, the essential motive is still the same. Each man sees that he will be better off, or preserve his life and means of living better if he and his will obey a sovereign than if they remain masterless. The hypothesis that States were deliberately contrived and made by a bargain between the separate atoms is, of course, absurd historically, but is also irrelevant to Hobbes. The essential point is simply that settled order is so much more favourable to self-preservation than anarchy that every one has a sufficient interest in maintaining it. Peace, as he tells us, means all the arts and sciences that distinguish Europeans from Choctaws. The original contractors can scarcely be supposed to have foreseen that. But at least it gives a very good reason for obedience.

This comes out curiously in Hobbes's "exceptions" to the obligation of the contract. Men are not bound to kill themselves because the tacit "consideration" for accepting the contract was the preservation of life and the means of life. He was logically bound to go further. If upon that ground they may repudiate the contract, they may break it whenever the end is frustrated, that is, whenever by keeping it they will be in a worse position. Moreover, since nobody ever acts, except for his own good, they certainly will break it whether it is binding or not. In other words, the supposed contract is merely another version of the first principle of egoism: a man will always do what seems to be for his own interest. By calling it a contract he gets the appearance of extending the obligation to a wider sphere—to cases, that is, in which a man's interest is opposed to his contract. But it is only an appearance. It is indeed true that when a sovereign has once been set up, fraud and force cease to pay, as a general rule, and honesty becomes the best policy. But that is more simply expressed without reference to a contract. It merely means that the most selfish of mankind finds that it is worth while to have a policeman round the corner. Indeed the more selfish he is the greater may be the convenience. By abandoning my supposed right to all things, I get an effectual right to most things; and that may be called a bargain, but it is a bargain which I shall only keep, and indeed can only keep, according to Hobbes, so long as the balance of profit is on my side. That is, it is not a bargain at all.

The facts, however, remain, and Hobbes manages to state a clear and coherent scheme. His position may be compared to that of the old economists. They used to maintain that in taking for granted the selfishness of mankind they were making a legitimate abstraction. Men, it is true, are not simply selfish, they have other motives than a love of money; but the love of money is so prominent an instinct in economic masses that we may consider it as the sole force at work, and so we may get a theory which will be approximately true, though requiring correction when applied to concrete cases. Hobbes virtually considers the political system in so far as it is based upon selfish motives and is worked by individual interests. No doubt such motives are tolerably prevalent. The obvious and most assignable motive for obeying the law is fear of the hangman; and all manner of selfish interests are furthered by maintaining a settled system of government. He thus obtains a clear conception of one important aspect of the political order. It means organised force. The State is held together by armies which protect us from invasion, and by the administrative system which preserves order at home. These are undeniable facts which it is as well to recognise clearly, and which are most vigorously set forth in Hobbes's Leviathan.

Certain limits to the value of his theory are equally plain. In the Leviathan Hobbes says that the "public ministers" are parts organical of the commonwealth, and compares the judges to the "organs of voice," the executive to the hands, ambassadors to eyes, and so forth. The analogy between the political and the individual organism is implied in the whole theory. But the Leviathan is an "artificial" body, and "artificial" means mechanical construction. The individual is the ultimate unit, and though he resigns his rights to the sovereign, it is always for his own personal advantage. The comparison to a body suggests the modern phrase "the social organism," but the "artificial" indicates that Hobbes does not really interpret the Leviathan as an organism. It is a big machine or set of atoms held together by external bonds. Hobbes's egoism forces him to the doctrine that the particles gravitate together simply from fear—fear of the magistrate or fear of your neighbour. Sympathy is ignored, and such sentiments as patriotism or public spirit or philanthropy are superficial modifications of selfishness, implying a readiness to adopt certain precautions for securing our own lives and properties. This involves a one-sided view of the conditions of social and political welfare. It may be fully admitted that organised force is essential to a civilised society, that it cannot exist or develop without its military and judicial bodies, its soldiers and its judges, its hangmen, gaolers, and policemen, its whole protective apparatus. An animal cannot live without its teeth and claws. What is overlooked is the truth that other parts of the system are equally essential, and that there is a reciprocal dependence indicated by the word "organic." Society is held together not simply by the legal sanctions, but by all the countless instincts and sympathies which bind men together, and by the spontaneous associations which have their sources outside of the political order. It may be granted to Hobbes that peace is an essential condition of progress, and that the sovereign must be created to keep the peace. It is equally true that the sovereign derives his power from other sources than mutual "fear" or dread of the "legal sanctions." Society could not get on without the policeman; but the policeman could not keep order by the simple force of his truncheon. Force must be "organised," but it cannot be organised out of simple egoism and fear. So when Hobbes defines law as the command of the sovereign, he is stating what in a fully developed State is an undeniable fact. The law is the system of rules promulgated and enforced by the sovereign power in spite of any conflicting customs. Historically speaking, laws are not the less the product of customs which have grown up spontaneously; they are the causes, not the effects of the sovereign's authority; and in the last resort the sovereign power must still rest upon custom; that is, upon all the complex motives from which arises loyalty to the State, and upon which its vitality depends.

Hobbes's position was indeed inevitable. The conception of sociology as a science, in which the political order is regarded as only part of the whole social system, had not yet arisen. That could not happen until historical methods of inquiry had begun to show their power, and the necessity of treating political questions in connection with the intellectual or the industrial evolution began to be perceived. The "social contract" theory helped Hobbes to pass over in summary fashion the great historical problems as to the way in which the State has actually been developed; and therefore the State itself could be regarded as held together by the purely political and legal forces. When he had deduced the sovereign power from the principle of self-preservation, he seemed to himself to have explained everything. He had got to the one force which held the units together, as gravitation holds together the solar system. The relation between subject and sovereign is the one bond from which all others may be deduced. The thoroughgoing acceptance of this assumption leads to some of the singular results by which he startled his contemporaries, though he announces them with superlative calmness as demonstrated truths.

There are, as he has to admit, two sets of laws which may occasionally conflict with the laws of the State. In the first place, there is the moral law. Hobbes was perfectly well aware that a king might be a fool or a brute. It seemed to follow that laws might be contrary to the dictates of morality. His opponents could point out to him that some of the Roman emperors had been far from model characters. Besides their other weaknesses, they had occasionally thought it right to give Christians to lions. Again, the Christian Church claimed obedience, and Hobbes was an orthodox Christian. What is the subject to do if his sovereign orders him to break the moral law or to deny the truth of religion?

4. The Moral Law

Hobbes does not shrink from the logical result of his principles. The moral law, he holds, is the Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, as we have seen, means essentially the law of self-preservation, and from that is deduced the "virtue" of justice, from which all other laws of nature are corollaries. Justice means keeping covenants, which becomes operative when a "coercive power" is constituted; that is, at the institution of the social contract. This contract therefore is at the base of all moral as well as of all political relations. It is presupposed in all particular contracts. Justice, the cardinal or rather the sole virtue, means keeping covenants, but also keeping the primitive contract to which all others owe their binding force. It implies, therefore, unconditional obedience to the sovereign who is the social contract incarnate. The sovereign cannot be unjust to a subject; for every subject is himself author of all that the sovereign does. Laws are the "rules of just and unjust; nothing being reputed unjust that is not contrary to some law." "The Law of Nature and the civil law contain each other and are of equal extent." "Justice, gratitude, and other moral virtues" are merely "qualities that dispose men to peace and obedience" until the commonwealth is instituted. Then they become laws, "for it is the sovereign power that obliges men to obey them." Thus the Law of Nature is part of the civil law, and "reciprocally the civil law is part of the dictates of nature."

Nobody, I believe, ever followed Hobbes in this audacious identification of law and morality. I must try to make some apology for a most estimable old gentleman misled by an excessive passion for logic. In the first place, it may be held that, whatever be the ultimate meaning of morality, the actual morality of a race is evolved in constant correlation with its social organisation. Hobbes, who substituted the social contract for this process, and regarded sovereignty as the sole bond of union, could only approximate to this doctrine by making moral obligations a product of the sovereign will. It would be outrageous, no doubt, to suppose that a sovereign could make the moral law at his pleasure, so that lying might become a virtue or gratitude a vice if the lawgiver chose to alter the law. That is not Hobbes's meaning. Honesty, gratitude, and the like are, we see, useful qualities and parts of the Law of Nature as tending to self-preservation. The sovereign of course cannot alter that fact. What he can do is to make them obligatory by establishing the state of security which makes their exercise possible or prudent for the individual. In the "state of nature" the conduct would be self-destructive which, when the commonwealth is formed, becomes self-preservative. But, we may ask, will the power thus constituted aim at the end for which it was instituted? May not the sovereign do wrong? May he not be a brutal tyrant, or lay down laws which are immoral, because inconsistent with the welfare of the people? Is it in that case our duty to obey them? Must we submit to oppression or enslave our neighbours because the sovereign, whether king or parliament, commands it? Hobbes admits the possibility. "They that have the sovereign power may commit iniquity, but not injustice or injury in the proper signification." That is, the sovereign's immorality gives no right to the subject to disobey or even to protest. The reason is that the only alternative is anarchy. Bad laws are better than no laws. "Good," as we have seen, means what a man desires and evil what he eschews. "One counts that good which another counts evil; and the same man what now he esteemed for good, he immediately after looks on as evil; and the same thing which he calls good in himself he terms evil in another." There is no such thing as absolute good. Hence it is impossible to make a common rule from the tastes of "particular" men. We have to consider what is reasonable; but "there are no other reasons in being but those of particular men and that of the city; it follows that the city is to determine what with reason is culpable." We are bound to obey the laws before we know what the laws are; for the State must precede the law. Therefore "no civil law whatever can be against the Law of Nature." The Law of Nature may forbid theft and adultery; but till we have civil laws we do not know what theft and adultery are. When the Spartans permitted their youth to take other men's goods, the taking was not theft. In other words, all law becomes positive law, for the Law of Nature only orders us to obey the law of the sovereign. It has been said that "whatsoever a man does against his conscience is sin." That is true in the "state of nature," where a man has no rule but his own reason. "It is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth, because the law is the public conscience by which he hath already undertaken to be guided." Otherwise nobody would obey further than it seemed good in his own eyes.

The subject, then, hands over the whole responsibility to the sovereign. Then "it is in the laws of a commonwealth as it is in the laws of gaming; whatsoever the gamesters all agree on is injustice to none of them." Are then the laws as arbitrary as the laws of a game? To that Hobbes has his answer: "The safety of the people is the supreme law." The sovereign is "obliged by the Law of Nature" to procure this end, "and to render an account thereof to God and to none but Him." Remembering the peculiarity of Hobbes's theology, it may seem that this responsibility is perhaps illusory. It is more to his purpose that, as he puts it, "the good of the sovereign and people cannot be separated." "It is a weak sovereign that has weak subjects, and a weak people whose sovereign wanteth power to rule them at his will." It is clearly to the interest of the sovereign, as it is also his duty, to maintain order. But to maintain order is, according to Hobbes, to enforce morality. The sovereign has to instruct his people in the "fundamental rights" of his office. To do so is "not only his duty, but his benefit also, and security against the danger that may arise to himself in his natural person from rebellion." He proceeds in his quaint fashion to point out that this duty of instructing the people is the duty of impressing upon them the Ten Commandments. Since kings are mortal gods, the commandments of the first table are applicable to them as well as to the Supreme Being. Clearly a man who proves that kings not only should but naturally will adopt the Ten Commandments is preaching a sound morality.

It is necessary, however, to remember Hobbes's general ethical conception. Every man acts simply for his own good. Every man, again, interprets "good" as that which pleases him. Order can only be established when every man sees that he will get more good for himself by submitting to a common authority. When that is securely established, the individual will be repaid for sacrificing that right to everything which he could not enforce. But when that is done, the moral law is made supreme. For morality, according to Hobbes, is summed up in justice; that is, in observing the general contract according to which the distribution of good things is regulated and men are obliged to keep their particular contracts. Equality before the law and equality of taxation are also implied, for inequality leads to discontent. But in other respects every man may, and of course will be guided by his own conceptions of "good." As I have said before, Hobbes is not in favour of extending the sphere of legislation. Laws are "like hedges," set "not to stop travellers but to keep them in their way. And therefore a law which is not needful, having not the true end of law, is not good." "Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money; which, where the right of sovereign power is acknowledged, are superfluous; and where it is not acknowledged, insufficient to defend the people."

This, it seems, is the essential meaning of Hobbes's identification of law and morality. They are, according to him, different aspects of the virtue which he calls justice. That means that a man acts morally so far as he pursues his own ends without harming his neighbour; and legally, so far as he obeys the sovereign who enforces the security without which it is not a man's interest to act morally. No doubt this is a totally inadequate view of morality. It is the legal or purely external conception which supposes that the moral, like the positive law, is satisfied by obeying certain "sanctions" which make bad conduct unprofitable. But it does not imply that the moral law is "arbitrary" or made at will by the sovereign. It is the law of "self-preservation" regarded from a purely egoistic point of view….

Notes

¹ Hobbes's political theory is given in three books: the De Corpore Politico, which was the second part of his first treatise, and is reprinted in the fourth volume of the English works; the De Cive, which is in the Latin works, vol. iii., and an English translation of which, by Hobbes himself, forms the second volume of the English works; and the Leviathan, which forms the third volume of the English works.

² A very remarkable book, the Politics of Johannes Althusius (1557–1636), that appeared in 1603, anticipated much that Hobbes afterwards said, and played a considerable part in the evolution of the theory of "Naturrecht." Professor Gierke's most learned and interesting book upon Althusius gives a full account of his doctrine and of his relation to Hobbes among many others.