No More Learning

In the censure' of authors, the
Elizabethans had seldom gone beyond the repetition of a few
traditional phrases. Impassioned on the subject of poetry in
general, its antiquity, its dignity, its beauty, they became timid
and reserved so soon as they faced the concrete problem which
every critic must face in the individual poet or the individual
6


## p. 271 (#287) ############################################

The Roll-Call
271
a
poem. Their method, for the most part, was the method of the
'roll-call,' a catalogue of poets, in which one name follows another,
each with its tag of critical comment. These comments are limited
by a narrow range of critical terminology, a few words of praise or
blame, some commonplace, some more highly coloured, and the
judgments that they express are those of a well established literary
tradition or of the common opinion of their time. The first ex-
tended critique in English seems to be that which Sidney, in his
Defence of Poesie, devotes to the tragedy of Gorboduc; here, for
the first time, critical principles are applied systematically to a
work of English literature. Yet, Sidney has little to say of Gorboduc
except that it has ignored the dramatic unities; he has few terms
with which to express its positive qualities, its special beauties or
defects, and no method of summing up the general effect in the
form of literary portraiture or appreciation. In the case of other
works, he adheres to the method of the roll-call. 'I account the
Mirrour of Magistrates meetely furnished of beautiful parts; and
in the Earle of Surries Liricks many things tasting of a noble birth,
and worthy of a noble minde. '
This is the staple of his judgment of authors. Nor do his
contemporaries and his successors stray beyond the range of the
roll-call. Of the seventy-four chapters of Puttenham's Arte of
English Poesie, which attempts to cover the whole field of poetical
criticism, a single chapter is devoted to a 'censure' of the English
poets; and here we are told that ‘for dittie and amourous ode
I finde Sir Walter Rawleyghs vayne most loftie, insolent, and
passionate; Maister Edward Dyar, for elegy most sweet, solempne,
and of high conceit; Gascon, for a good meeter and for a plentifull
vayne,’ etc. This is a typical example of roll-call criticism, the
most primitive form of literary characterisation ; literary history,
unguided by any organic principle, is as yet unable to express
itself save by adding name to name and epithet to epithet.
Harington, it is true, argues against the charge that 'Ariosto
wanteth art,' and repeats some of the commonplaces of Italian
criticism; but, for the rest, he is limited to disjointed and in-
temperate eulogy, the same incense that Sidney burnt at the
altar of Vergil. It is tradition and not criticism which speaks in
both. As they approach the poets of their own tongue, even more
as they approach their own time, they lose their certainty of
utterance; they have no terminology to give precision to their
vague impressions; they have no form or method which gives
unity or logic to their disjointed thoughts. It is at this point that
>
6


## p. 272 (#288) ############################################

272
Jacobean and Caroline Criticism
Jonson enters the field. It is not merely that he makes Quintilian
and Scaliger native to English criticism, by translating or para-
phrasing their ideas in a language both sane and robust; but,
under their guidance, he attempts the literary ‘portrait. ' Yet,
note how cautiously he works this new vein. The brief note on
Shakespeare in Discoveries is made up of classical echoes; and
the masterly portrait of Bacon as an orator follows, almost word
for word, the elder Seneca's description of Severus Cassius. Such
a portrait was as yet impossible in English, and, not unwisely,
Jonson leans heavily on Roman crutches. But it is in the famous
lines to Shakespeare that he is at his best, for the uplift of verse
has helped him to sureness and swiftness of speech. This is the
first adequate tribute to a great English poet; this, and the portrait
of Bacon, are the first of their kind in English.
The first training in adequate characterisation of the poets
seems, then, to have been given (however tentatively) by Jonson,
and it was certainly among his own disciples that literary por-
traiture first began to flourish. Verse rather than prose was
the surer vehicle, and the chief training ground seems to have
been the commendatory verses prefixed to plays and poems.
Those, for example, that appeared in Jonsonus Virbius (1638),
or in the 1647 folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, contain some
of the most acute criticism of the first half of the seventeenth
century, amid much that is the merest distortion of ingenious
eulogy. But what is new (and effective for criticism) in them is
the complete realisation of a great literary background. Shake-
speare, Fletcher, Jonson, Spenser, had imposed themselves on
criticism; and criticism grew rich (as it always does) by accepting
and passing these great poets as current coin of the realm. There
was a more or less serious attempt to understand them, to appraise
them, to express their significance; they jostled one another in
every discussion; and it was the most natural thing in the world
to compare and contrast them. It is this comparative criticism
which is employed to good use in these commendatory verses.
A few lines from Cartwright's tribute to Fletcher will illustrate the
acuteness of some of this criticism:
Jonson hath writ things lasting and divine,
Yet his love-scenes, Fletcher, compard to thine,
Are cold and frosty, and express love so,
As heat with ice, or warm fires mix'd with snow . . .
Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lies
l' the ladies' questions and the fools' replies;


## p. 273 (#289) ############################################

Literary Appreciation
273
Old-fashion'd wit, which walk'd from town to town
In turn'd hose, which our fathers call'd the clown,
Whose wit our nice times would obsceneness call,
And which made bawdry pass for comical.
a
6
Yet, elsewhere, for the most part, critics continued to follow the
roll-call; and even Jonson, here bookish rather than critical, uses
it in a brief note on the chief writers of English prose (embedded
in the borrowed material of Discoveries) and in other places. His
curt dicta in conversation with Drummond seem almost typical
of the method of contemporary criticism; and, despite all the
changes of time, this method retained its vogue up to the middle
of the century. Peacham, Bolton, Drayton, Alexander, Reynolds,
Suckling, all employ it, though some of them have amplified its
narrow scope or transformed it even in using it. Bolton, in Hyper-
critica (1618 ? ), gives a catalogue of bis favourite poets in crabbed
prose; Drayton, in the Epistle to Henry Reynolds, of Poets and
Poesy (1627), strings together a necklace of famous names on a
silken thread of verse. Drayton's comments are brief, but often
singularly appropriate and just; some of them have remained
memorable utterances of poetic criticism, as in the lines on the
'fine madness' of Marlowe and the kinship of his genius with the
'brave translunary things' of the first poets. But, after all, they
retain the marks of the roll-call; singly, as it were, they are
mere obiter dicta, like Jonson's conversations with Drummond,
utterances oracular and compact; together, they have no other
framework than that furnished by the familiar epistle in verse.
Neither singly nor jointly do they give any consistent criticism
of poets or poetry.
In Reynolds's Mythomystes, there is a serious attempt to arrive
at some consistency in the criticism of poetry by means of a
systematic interpretation of its content. But the allegorical
method, complicated here by an admixture of Neoplatonism and
cabalism, though it may offer opportunities for subtle interpretation
of mythological or mystical poetry, fails to explain most of the
moderns; and, in his brief introductory survey of modern poetry,
Reynolds does not divest himself of the cataloguing spirit of his
predecessors.
Though efforts to enrich the content and amplify the scope
of the roll-call failed, an attempt to bind its disjecta membra
into some kind of unity may be said to have succeeded temporarily.
As the Italians had bound their novelle together by an artificial
framework, so critics adopted a device from classical mythology to
18
E. L. VII.
CH. XI.


## p. 274 (#290) ############################################

274 Jacobean and Caroline Criticism
perform a similar function. This new framework makes of the
term roll-call no longer a metaphor but a poetic fact. In Suck-
ling's Sessions of the Poets (1637? ), the poets of the time are
represented as claimants for the laureateship at the court of Apollo;
each argues his claims, and hears them discussed by his fellows;
until, finally, Apollo decides in favour of a rich alderman whose
money makes up for his lack of skill. The discussion is rather
personal than literary, the talk of a coterie of artists and wits, and
is interesting as indicating the flavour of literary discussion during
the first Caroline period, much as the conversations of Jonson and
Drummond shed light on Jacobean taste. Yet, even here, not
much has been added since Jonson's day, for lady Would-be, in
the third act of Volpone, anticipates, by more than thirty years,
the very note of Suckling's criticism, in such lines as these:
Hee (Guarini] has so moderne and facile a veine,
Fitting the time, and catching the court-eare;
Your Petrarch is more passionate, yet hee
In dayes of sonnetting trusted 'hem [i. e. plagiarists) with much;
Dante is hard, and few can understand him;
But for a desperate wit, there's Aretine!
Only his pictures are a little obscene.
The Italian poet Caporali, taking a hint from Lucian, had first
systematically used mythological allegory for the purpose of literary
criticism or satire; and, in Spain, Cervantes had followed his
example in the Voyage to Parnassus. But it was the Italian
proseman Boccalini who, in his Ragguagli di Parnaso, gave
European prestige to this form; his work was translated and
imitated in all the languages of Europe; and, in England, besides
Suckling, Sheppard's Socratic Session, or the Arraignment and
Conviction of Julius Scaliger (1651) and Wither's(? ) Great Assises
holden in Parnassus (1645) illustrate the character of its influence.
This framework transfigures the dead bones of the old roll-call,
and, in Suckling and others, gives wit and fancy an opportunity to
enliven the casual utterances of criticism.
As we follow the course of the seventeenth century, we note
that the tags which follow the names of the roll-call develop in
amplitude. They still remain more or less conventional, but they
have been extended from a brief clause or a succession of adjectives
to sentences and paragraphs. Thus, D'Avenant, in a page or two,
traces the growth of epic poetry from Homer to Spenser, devoting
to each poet a paragraph of his own; and though, for example,
that on Spenser merely objects to the 'obsolete language,' the


## p. 275 (#291) ############################################

The Old and the New
275
unlucky choice of the stanza' and the allegory, critical utterance
has become more facile and self-expressive, has, in fact, developed
a manner of its own. But it was not until the age of Dryden that
the roll-call disappears entirely, and is displaced by the critical
study of a poet and his work. The critique of The Silent Woman,
the literary portraits of Jonson, Shakespeare and Fletcher, in An
Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), mark a new stage in the growth
of English criticism. The commendatory verses of many poets,
the new aesthetic of Hobbes, the prose style of Cowley and
D'Avenant, and many tentatives in the art of character-writing
have made such things possible; but it is the discours and examens
of Corneille (1660) that furnished Dryden with his true models.
With Dryden, then, the intensive study of works of literature
begins, and displaces the mere tags and epithets of the older
criticism. But literary history was not born in England for an-
other quarter of a century; and, in Rymer's View of Tragedy
(1693), despite an exaggerated animus against Elizabethan tragedy,
real learning was placed at the service of criticism, and the first
connected account of the rise of modern literatures attempted.
The critical literature of the first half of the century is interest-
ing, therefore, for its direction, rather than for any accomplishment
of its own. It revolutionised aesthetic principles, but accomplished
little or nothing in the field of concrete criticism. It did not
adequately explain or appraise the works of the great poets and
playwrights of the Elizabethan age. Englishmen were slowly
beginning to realise the greatness of their literary past, but
criticism did little to direct or encourage this new taste. The
playwrights themselves scattered comments on their own art
throughout their plays, and the modern scholar may arrange
these isolated utterances at his pleasure into a unified code; yet,
no critic of this age brought order and meaning out of the chaos
of hints and hopes, and the romantic drama remained without
its thoroughgoing exponents or analysts. New ideas in respect
to poetry were, indeed, being developed. But, though Jonson
elaborated a classical point of view and Hobbes a new aesthetic,
these ideas were not consistently or intelligently applied to the
literary heritage of the English people. Not until after the
.
restoration was the clash of romantic and classical achievement
truly apprehended, and its meaning analysed and explained.
a
18-2


## p. 276 (#292) ############################################

CHAPTER XII
HOBBES AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
THE philosophical writings which belong to the period following
Bacon's death show but slight traces of Bacon's influence. His
genius was recognised, and he was quoted, now and again, on special
points; but his leading doctrines were generally ignored. No new
logic appeared on the lines described in his Novum Organum.
The writers of logical treatises followed the traditional scholastic
method, or adopted the modifications of it introduced by Ramus.
Even Milton's logic, which is founded on that of Ramus, pays no
attention to the Baconian revolution. It is worthy of note that, in
the middle of the sixteenth century, a beginning had been made at
writing works on logic in English. In 1552, Thomas Wilson pub-
lished The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. The
innovation was not without danger at the time, if it be true that his
publication on this subject in a vulgar tongue led to the author's
imprisonment by the inquisition at Rome. His example was
followed, in safer circumstances, by Ralph Lever, who, in his Arte
of Reason rightly termed Witcraft, teaching a perfect way to argue
and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words of
English derivation in place of the traditional terminology-foreset
and backset for 'subject' and 'predicate,' inholder and inbeer for
‘substance’and 'accident,' saywhat for 'definition' and so on. This
attempt was never taken seriously; and a considerable time had
to elapse before English became the usual language for books
on logic. In the seventeenth century, as well as in the sixteenth,
the demands of the universities made the use of Latin almost
essential for the purpose. The work of Richard Crakanthorp,
Logicae libri quinque de Praedicabilibus (1622), was one of the
best known of these text-books. The question of method, which
had ruled the thought of Bacon, was less prominent in the English
philosophy of the following period and did not lead to any new
work of importance.


## p. 277 (#293) ############################################

Fotherby and Hakewill
277
Religion is as powerful a stimulus to philosophical thought as
science is, and it is apt to lead more directly to the study of ultimate
problems. It was the chief interest in the speculative writings of
Herbert of Cherbury, and the same interest is even more directly
obvious in other writings. In 1599, Sir John Davies had published
his philosophical poem Nosce Teipsum, in which a view of the
nature of the soul and arguments for its immortality are 'ex-
pounded in two elegies. ' Utilising Platonic, as well as Aristotelian,
ideas, the author worked out a spiritual philosophy in which the
soul is regarded as akin to the universal order,
For Nature in man's heart her lawes doth pen;
Prescribing truth to wit, and good to will,
Which doe accuse, or else excuse all men,
For every thought or practise, good or ill:
and, therefore, the soul can find no true satisfaction in earthly
things:
Wit, seeking Truth, from cause to cause ascends,
And never rests till it the first attaine:
Will, seeking Good, finds many middle ends,
But never stayes, till it the last doe gaine.
The same influence led to work of a philosophical kind among
theologians, usually conveyed in a scholastic manner. In his
Atheomastix (1622), Martin Fotherby, bishop of Salisbury, relied
chiefly on St Thomas Aquinas in his demonstration of the being of
God, and maintained that there is a 'natural prenotion' that there
is a God. The work of George Hakewill, archdeacon of Surrey,
entitled An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence
of God (1627), touches on philosophy without being genuinely philo-
sophical in character. Bacon is referred to for his ‘noble and
worthy endeavour. . . so to mix and temper practice and speculation
together, that they may march hand in hand'; but his new method
is not spoken of, though both Ramus and Lully are referred to in
the section on advances in logic. Nor does the discussion on truth
contain any observations beyond the ordinary commonplaces: it does
not show any knowledge of Herbert of Cherbury's enquiry, and can
hardly have suggested ideas to lord Brooke. The real importance
of the book lies in the fact that the author's eyes are turned to the
future, not to the past. It is an elaborate argument against the
view that the history of the world is a record of deterioration from
an earlier golden age. As described on the title-page, it is 'an
examination and censure of the common error touching nature's
perpetual and universal decay. '
a


## p. 278 (#294) ############################################

278 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
Much more important is the work of lord Brooke, in whom the
puritan temper was combined with the mystic. Robert Greville,
cousin and adopted son of Fulke Greville, first lord Brooke, was
born in 1608, and entered parliament in 1628. In the civil war,
he acted as a general of the parliamentary army, gained the victory
of Kineton in 1642, took Stratford-on-Avon in February 1643 and
was killed at the attack on Lichfield a few weeks later. He was an
ardent puritan, and, in 1641, wrote A Discourse opening the nature
of that Episcopacie which is exercised in England, aimed at the
political power of the bishops. In the same year was published
his philosophical work The Nature of Truth. In this work, he
refuses to distinguish between philosophy and theology. What
is true philosophy but divinity ? ' he asks, and if it be not true, it
is not philosophy. He appeals to reason and reflection alone for
an answer to his question; but his method differs from that of
Herbert of Cherbury in dealing with the same subject: it is less
logical and thorough, and more mystical. He had 'dived deep,' his
editor says, “into prophetic mysteries. ' He was also well read in
,
speculative, especially Neoplatonic, writings. The revival of
Platonism had already affected English literature; its influence
may be seen in the works of Sir Thomas More, and in Davies's
Nosce Teipsum, and it had coloured the Aristotelianism of Everard
Digby; but Brooke was the first Englishman to present in an
original treatise the fundamental ideas which, later in the same
century, bore riper fruit in the works of the Cambridge Platonists.
The two doctrines of the unity of reality and the emanation of all
things from God rule his thought; and he thinks that difficulties
about truth are solved when we see that the understanding, the
soul, light and truth are all one : 'all being is but one emanation
from above, diversified only in our apprehension. Faith and
reason differ in degree only, not in nature; knowledge and affec-
tion are but several shapes under which truth is present to our
view: 'what good we know, we are; our act of understanding
being an act of union. ' The author goes on to explain that all the
diversities of things-even space and time themselves—are without
reality and are only appearances to our apprehension. The whole
physical world, accordingly, is merely phenomenal; in it, there is
no true being, nor are there any true causes, though it is allow-
able, 'when you see some things precede others,' to 'call the one a
cause the other an effect. ' In these expressions have been found
anticipations of the idealism of Berkeley and of Hume's theory of
causation. In presenting his doctrine, Brooke wrote like a seer,


## p. 279 (#295) ############################################

Nathanael Culverwel
279
>
rather than as a logician who has tested its consistency and
adequacy. But he had the seer's vision, and the vision gave him
courage, ‘for if we knew this truth,' he says,
that all things are one, how cheerfully, with what modest courage, should we
undertake any action, reincounter any occurrence, knowing that that distinc-
tion of misery and happiness, which now 80 perplexeth us, has no being
except in the brain.
Nathanael Culverwel, fellow of Emmanuel college, Cambridge
(B. A. 1636), was thrown among the group of men who afterwards
became famous as the Cambridge Platonists. Whichcote and
Cudworth (both, originally, of Emmanuel), and Henry More of
Christ's college, were his contemporaries. But he can hardly be
counted as belonging to the group. He was not a Platonist.
Unlike More, he would not come to terms with the doctrine of the
pre-existence of souls, and he even rejected the theory of ideas.
The mysticism of lord Brooke was, also, alien to him ; he had no
sympathy with the union of contradictories; and he quotes with
approval the criticism of Brooke published, in 1643, by John
Wallis, under the title Truth tried. Nor can Culverwel be
described as a "latitude man. He remained constant to Cal-
vinism, and, on the whole, to the puritan spirit. But he was far
removed from the extremists of his party, of whom he writes that
'if you do but offer to make a syllogism, they will straightway cry
it down for carnal learning. The purpose of his book Of the Light
of Nature (published, posthumously, in 1652) is to show the true
relation between faith and reason: 'to give faith her full scope
and latitude, and to give reason also her just bounds and limits.
This,' he says, 'is the first-born, but the other has the blessing.
Two propositions sum up his doctrine:
(1) That all the moral law is founded in natural and common light, in the
light of reason; and (2) That there is nothing in the mysteries of the gospel
contrary to the light of reason.
The law of nature belongs to reason, not to sense, and is essential
to a rational creature. The voice of reason promulgates the law;
but its obligation and binding virtue rest
partly in the excellency and equity of the commands themselves; but they
principally depend upon the sovereignty and authority of God himself, thus
contriving and commanding the welfare of His creature, and advancing a
rational nature to the just perfection of its being.
As Aquinas holds, the law of nature is a copy of the eternal law,
and 'this eternal law is not really distinguished from God himself. '
This view of the laws of nature is not altogether new, even in
>


## p. 280 (#296) ############################################

280 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
English. Hooker had already given classical expression to a
doctrine essentially the same and drawn from similar sources. But
no one had a clearer view than Culverwel of the essence of the
doctrine. He never inclines to the theory that all knowledge
arises out of sensation, and yet he never lapses into mysticism.
His theory is a pure and elevated rationalism, though he holds
that our reason needs illumination from the fuller light of faith.
His style is worthy of the subject, if, perhaps, too full of learned
references and, occasionally, oratorical; and it is hardly too much
to say of the book that “it is almost a poem in its grandeur
and harmony of conception, and the lyrical enthusiasm with which
it chants the praise of reason? '
The doctrine of a law of nature was commonly relied upon by
the more philosophical writers who dealt with the details of moral
duty. Among the moralists of this class may be reckoned William
Perkins, author of Armilla aurea (1590) (Englished as A Golden
Chaine, 1600), and of The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience
(1608); William Ames, a Calvinistic theologian, who wrote De
Conscientia et ejus jure vel casibus (1630); and Robert Sanderson,
bishop of Lincoln, who wrote not only a Latin compendium of
logic (Oxford, 1615), but many works besides, including De
juramenti promissorii obligatione (1647), and De obligatione
conscientiae. The former of these is said to have been trans-
lated into English by king Charles during his imprisonment.
Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich and satirist, was the author of
Characters of Vertues and Vices (1608) and of Decisions of diverse
Practicall cases of Conscience (1649). But the greatest work of
the kind in English, and, perhaps, the greatest treatise on
casuistry ever written by a protestant theologian, is the Ductor
Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor (1660). Publishing shortly after
the restoration, and dedicating his book to the king, the author
rejoices that ‘now our duty stands on the sunny side. ' He pro-
fesses to open out a way untrodden before. He will not collect
individual cases of conscience, for they are infinite; but he seeks
to provide a 'general instrument of moral theology, by the rules
and measures of which the guides of souls may determine the
particulars that shall be brought before them. ' The work opens
with a description of conscience as a reflection of the divine law-
'the brightness and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless
mirror of the divine majesty, and the image of the goodness of
Tulloch, J. , Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seven-
teenth Century, vol. II, p. 411.


## p. 281 (#297) ############################################

John Selden
281
God. ' It proceeds to describe the characteristics of individual
consciences when brought into contact with the problems of
conduct; it passes on to an enquiry into the nature of law in
general, and of particular laws, divine and human; and it closes
with a discussion of the nature and causes of good and evil. The
whole forms a comprehensive treatise on Christian ethics, based,
undoubtedly, on traditional scholastic doctrines, but holding firmly
to the inwardness of morality, and illustrated by an extraordinary
wealth of concrete examples.
It is only to a small extent that the writings of John Selden,
historian, jurist and political writer, fall within the scope of this
chapter. His treatise De Dis Syris (1617), his Historie of Tithes
(1618) and most of his other works lie beyond its range. But, in
his treatment of the law of nature, he enters upon topics which are
common to him and the philosophers. In his Mare Clausum (1635),
he maintains two propositions against Grotius : first, that, by the
law of nature, the sea is not common to all men, but is capable of
private sovereignty or proprietorship, equally with the earth; and,
secondly, that the king of Great Britain is sovereign of the sur-
rounding seas, as an individual and perpetual appanage of the
British empire. As was usual in his day and for long afterwards,
he identified the law of nature with international law. This
identification is seen in the title of his work De jure naturali et
gentium justa disciplinam Hebraeorum (1640). But here he has
in view not the law or custom which regulates the relation of state
to state, but the natural or moral law which is common to all men
independently of positive enactment divine or human. With the
wealth of learning in which he was without a rival in his day, he
traces the opinions of the Jews on the subject of moral obligation,
and, at the same time, brings out his own view of the law of nature.
He holds, with most jurists, that law requires an authority to pre-
scribe it, and that, therefore, reason cannot be the source of law.
At the same time, he allows that God has imprinted certain moral
rules in the minds of all men.
Speculation on these and kindred topics was soon to enter
upon a new stage under the impulse derived from the original
mind of Hobbes. Before his work is dealt with, two other writers
may be mentioned. Sir Kenelm Digby, remarkable in many
departments of life and letters, was, also, a philosopher, and wrote
a treatise on the immortality of the soul (1644). In 1655, Thomas
Stanley, well known as a classical scholar, published the first
History of Philosophy written in the English language.


## p. 282 (#298) ############################################

282 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, adjoining Malmesbury
in Wiltshire, on 5 April 1588. His father, the vicar of the
parish, says Aubrey,
was one of the ignorant Sir Johns of Queen Elizabeth's time, could only read
the prayers of the church and the homilies, and valued not learning, as
not knowing the sweetness of it.
His mother came of yeoman stock. Of her, we know nothing
beyond the story of her dread of the Spanish Armada; the air was
full of rumours of its approach; and her terror led to the premature
birth of her second son. As he put it long afterwards, “she brought
forth twins-myself and fear. The expression is significant, used,
as it was, when he could look back on more than eighty years of
life, begun amidst the terror of invasion and afterwards harassed
by civil war and unstable government. To seek peace and follow
it became, in his view, the fundamental law of nature; and the
philosopher was himself (to use his own phrase) a ‘man of feminine
courage. The first of all that fled at the threat of civil war, he was
afterwards quick to return when the French government seemed
likely to offer less protection than the commonwealth. But the
importance of these events for his life and doctrine has sometimes
been exaggerated. He had passed his fiftieth year before the
threat of danger touched him, and, by that time, he had already
completed a work which contains, in outline, the essential features
of his philosophy.
Throughout the long years of preparation
which fitted him to take his place among the greatest of modern
philosophers, Hobbes led a sheltered and leisured life, and it is not
to be supposed that dreams of the Armada disturbed his quiet.
His education was provided for by an uncle, a solid tradesman and
alderman of Malmesbury. He was already a good Latin and
Greek scholar when, not yet fifteen, he was sent to Magdalen hall,
Oxford. The studies of the university were then at a low ebb;
and no subsequent reforms affected his low opinion of them. Yet
he seems to have learned the logic and physics of Aristotle, as
they were then taught, though he preferred to‘lie gaping on maps
at the stationers' shops. On leaving Oxford, in 1608, he became
companion to the eldest son of lord Cavendish of Hardwicke (after-
wards created earl of Devonshire), and his connection with the
Cavendish family lasted (although not without interruptions) till
his death. Through this connection, he gained security and leisure
for his own work, opportunities of travel and ready admission to
the society of statesmen and scholars.
Three times in his life, Hobbes travelled on the continent with
a


## p. 283 (#299) ############################################

Thomas Hobbes
283
a
a pupil. His first journey was begun in 1610, and in it he visited
France, Germany and Italy, learning the French and Italian
languages, and gaining experience, but not yet conscious of his
life's work. On his return the date is uncertain), he settled down
with his young lord at Hardwick and in London. His secretarial
duties were light, and he set himself to become a scholar; with the
society and books at his command, he did not 'need the university'
(he said); he read the historians and poets both Greek and Latin,
and taught himself a clear and accurate Latin style. To these studies,
his first published work bears witness—an English translation of
Thucydides, sent to press in 1628, but completed some years
earlier. To this period, also, belongs his acquaintance with Bacon,
Herbert of Cherbury, Ben Jonson and other leading men of the
time. Of his association with Bacon (probably sometime in the
years between 1621 and 1626), we know little beyond what Aubrey
tells us—that he translated some of Bacon's essays into Latin, that,
on occasion, he would attend with ink and paper and set down
Bacon's thoughts when he contemplated and dictated 'in his
delicious walks at Gorhambury' and that his lordship would often
say that he better liked Mr Hobbes's taking his thoughts, than
any of the others, because he understood what he wrote. There
is no evidence, however, that their discourse turned on strictly
philosophical questions; nor does it appear that philosophical
interest had, as yet, become dominant in Hobbes's mind; certainly,
he was never a pupil of Bacon; and it is an error to attempt, as
has sometimes been done, to affiliate his philosophy to the Baconian.
They agreed in their opposition to medievalism, and both attempted
to elaborate a comprehensive scheme; the vague term 'empirical'
may, also, be applied to both; but Hobbes set small store by
experiment, and his system differed fundamentally from Bacon's
in method, temper and scope. One important point only was
common to both—their acceptance of the mechanical theory; and,
for this theory, there is ample evidence, external as well as internal,
that Hobbes was directly indebted not to Bacon but to Galileo.
Hobbes's master and friend died in 1628, two years after the
death of the first earl; his son and successor was a boy of eleven ;
his widow did not need the services of a secretary; and, for a time,
there was no place in the household for Hobbes. In 1629, he left for
the continent again with a new pupil, returning from this second
journey in 1631 to take charge of the young earl's education. Little
is known of his travels, but this period of his life is remarkable for
1 English Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. 1v, pp. 436–7; vol. VII, p. 117.


## p. 284 (#300) ############################################

284 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
two things—his introduction to the study of geometry, and his first
effort towards a philosophy. As regards the former, there is no
reason for doubting Aubrey's story, which throws light both on his
early education and on the controversies of his later years.
He was forty years old before he looked on geometry, which happened
accidentally; being in a gentleman's library in . . . Euclid's Elements lay
open, and it was the 47 prop. lib. 1. So he reads the proposition, ‘By G
says he, 'this is impossible! ' So he reads the demonstration of it, which
referred him back to another, which also he read, et sic deinceps, that at last
he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with
geometry.
About this time also, or soon afterwards, his philosophical views
began to take shape. Among his manuscripts, there is a Short
Tract on First Principles', which has been conjectured to belong
to the year 1630 and cannot have been much later. It shows the
author so much impressed by his reading of Euclid as to adopt the
geometrical form (soon afterwards used by Descartes) for the
expression of his argument. It shows, further, that he had already
fixed on the conception of motion as fundamental for the explana-
tion of things, but, also, that he had not yet relinquished the
scholastic doctrine of species in explaining action and perception.
When Hobbes made his third visit to the continent, which
lasted from 1634 to 1637 and on which he was accompanied by the
young earl of Devonshire, he is found taking his place among
philosophers. At Paris, he was an intimate of Mersenne, who
was the centre of a scientific circle that included Descartes and
Gassendi; and, at Florence, he held discourse with Galileo. There
is an earlier record, in January 1633, of Hobbes searching the
shops in London for a copy of Galileo's Dialogue, and searching
vainly, as the small supply had been sold out. And now he seems
to have arrived at the view that not only is motion the fundamental
conception for explaining the physical world, but that man and
society also can be explained on the same mechanical theory.
After his return to England, he wrote, with a view to publication,
a sketch of his new theory, to which he gave the title Elements of
Law natural and politic. The physical doctrine of which he had
taken firm hold lies at the basis of this work, but it deals in detail
only with the mind of man and the principles of social order. The
introduction to his Thucydides had already shown his interest in
the latter subject, and the side of politics to which he leaned
himself, by the emphasis he laid on the historian's preference for
1 Printed as an appendix to Hobbes's Elements of Law, edited by Tönnies, F. , 1889.


## p. 285 (#301) ############################################

Hobbes in France
285
:
the monarchical form of government. In his dedication of The
Elements (dated 9 May 1640), Hobbes says that his object is to
reduce the doctrine of justice and policy in general to the rules
and infallibility of reason' after the fashion of mathematics. This
volume is the little treatise in English' to which he afterwards
referred as written in the days of the Short parliament.
Of this treatise, though not printed, many gentlemen had copies, which
occasioned much talk of the anthor: and had not his majesty dissolved the
parliament, it had brought him into danger of his life.
The treatise was never published by Hobbes, nor did it appear
as a connected whole until 1889, although, in 1650, probably with
his consent, its first thirteen chapters were issued with the title
Human Nature, and the remainder of the volume as a separate
work De Corpore Politico. In November 1640, when the Long
parliament began to show its activity, Hobbes fled to France,
where he remained for the next eleven years.
These years were fruitful in many ways. From the beginning,
he was in constant intercourse with Mersenne and the brilliant
group of men of science who frequented his monastery. Soon, too,
he was followed to Paris by other English emigrants of the royalist
party, among whom was the marquis of Newcastle, a member of the
Cavendish family, to whom the unpublished Elements of Law had
been dedicated. By his influence, Hobbes was appointed to teach
mathematics to Charles, prince of Wales, who arrived in Paris in
1646. His position in the exiled court was ultimately rendered
impossible by the suspicions of its clerical members; but Charles's
friendship was of importance to him in later years, after the
restoration of the monarchy. It was Newcastle's desire to hear
both sides of a question that led, during his residence in France, to
discussion, and, afterwards, to a somewhat acrimonious controversy
on the problem of free-will, with John Bramhall, bishop of Derry. Of
greater interest is another literary correspondence which followed
close upon his arrival in Paris. Mersenne was then collecting the
opinions of scholars on the forthcoming treatise by Descartes,
Meditationes de prima philosophia, and, in January 1641, Hobbes's
objections were ready and forwarded to his great contemporary in
Holland. These, with the replies of Descartes, afterwards appeared
as the third set of Objectiones when the treatise was published.
Further communications followed on the Dioptrique which had
appeared along with the famous Discours de la méthode in 1637.
Descartes did not discover the identity of his two critics; but
he did not approve of either; and, indeed, as regards the subject-


## p. 286 (#302) ############################################

286 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
matter of Meditationes, the thinking of the two philosophers
moved in such different worlds that mutual understanding was
almost impossible. To Descartes, mind was the primal certainty
and independent of material reality. Hobbes, on the other hand,
had already fixed on motion as the fundamental fact, and his
originality consisted in his attempt to use it for the explanation
not of nature only but, also, of mind and society. Two or three
years after his correspondence with Descartes, Hobbes contributed
a summary of his views on physics and a Tractatus Opticus to
works published by Mersenne.
At latest, by the beginning of his residence in Paris in 1640,
Hobbes had matured the plan for his own philosophical work. It was
to consist of three treatises, dealing, respectively, with matter or
body, with human nature and with society. It was his intention, he
says, to have dealt with these subjects in this order, but his country
‘was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion,
and the obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an
approaching war,' and this cause, as he said, “ripened and plucked
from me this third part of the system-the book De Cive, pub-
lished at Paris in 1642. Hobbes's first political publication was
thus directly occasioned by the troubles of the time. Only
a small edition seems to have been printed. Gassendi spoke of
the difficulty of procuring a copy, and expressed his satisfaction
when the author allowed a new and enlarged edition to be printed
at the Elzevir press in Amsterdam in 1647. In this edition, the
description of the book as the third part of a philosophical system
was removed, at the publisher's request, from the title-page, and
a new preface was added in which the author explained his
plan. The book was a tract for the times as well as a philoso-
phical treatise; but it was not till four years later, when stable
government seemed to have been re-established by the common-
wealth, that he had it published in London, in an English version
from his own hand, as Philosophical Rudiments concerning Govern-
ment and Society. The same year, 1651, saw the publication, also
in London, of his greatest work, Leviathan, and his own return to
England, which now promised a safer shelter to the philosopher
than France, where he feared the clergy and was no longer in
favour with the remnant of the exiled English court. In the
case of De Cive and, still more, in that of Leviathan, the political
situation led to greater fulness of detail and, also, to a more fervid
manner of utterance than had been shown in his earliest treatise.
In particular, the danger arising from the claim to independence or


## p. 287 (#303) ############################################

Hobbes's Later Years
287
<
to direction on the part of the ecclesiastical power gave occasion for
a much more comprehensive treatment of the subject of religion.
As early as 1641, he had expressed the opinion that the dispute
between the spiritual and civil power has of late more than any
other thing in the world, been the cause of civil wars in all places
of Christendom,' and had urged that all church government
depend on the state and authority of the kingdom, without which
there can be no unity in the church. This was not palatable
doctrine to any of the sects, and there was much more to cause
them alarm in the theological discussions contained in his
Leviathan. But, after the restoration, in a dedication to the
king, he was able to claim that all had been propounded with
submission to those that have the power ecclesiastical, holding
that he had not given any ground of offence 'unless it be for
making the authority of the church wholly upon the regal power;
which I hope your majesty will think is neither atheism nor
heresy'
The last twenty-eight years of Hobbes's long life were spent in
England; and there he soon returned to the house of his old pupil
the earl of Devonshire, who had preceded him in submitting to the
commonwealth, and, like him, welcomed the king on his return.
For a year or two after his home-coming, Hobbes resided in
London, busied with the completion of his philosophical system,
the long-delayed first part of which, De Corpore, appeared in
1655, and the second part, De Homine, in 1656. The latter work
contains little or nothing of importance that Hobbes had not said
already; but the former deals with the logical, mathematical and
physical principles which were to serve as foundation for the
imposing structure he had built. A new world had been revealed
to him, many years ago, when, at the age of forty, he had first
chanced upon Euclid's Elements. He had designed that his own
philosophy should imitate the certainty of mathematics. In the
dedication to his first treatise, he had called mathematics the one
branch of learning that is 'free from controversies and dispute. '
Yet, strangely enough, when we remember how provocative of
controversy were all his leading views, it was disputes about the
most certain of all subjects that filled and harassed the last five
and twenty years of his life.
The author of Leviathan could hardly have expected to escape
controversy, and he did not do anything to avoid it. The views of
human nature set forth in the book became, for generations, the
favourite battle-ground for contending philosophies; its political
theory was not fitted to please either party; and on its religious


## p. 288 (#304) ############################################

288 Hobbes ana Contemporary Philosophy
doctrine, the clergy would have something to say when they
came to their own again. His dispute with Bramhall on the
question of free-will began in his Paris days and has been already
recorded. But it was not allowed to be forgotten. In 1654, the
tract Of Liberty and Necessity, which he had written eight years
before in reply to the bishop's arguments, was published by some
person unnamed, into whose hands it had fallen. Not suspecting
Hobbes's innocence in the matter of the publication, Bramhall
replied with some heat on the personal question and much fulness
on the matter in hand in the following year; and this led to
Hobbes's elaborate defence in The Questions concerning Liberty,
Necessity, and Chance, published in 1656. By this time, however,
the storm of controversy had already broken out in another
quarter. Hobbes remembered Oxford as it was in his student days,
and made little allowance for altered manners and the reform of
studies. In the fourth part of Leviathan, which is devoted to "the
kingdom of darkness,' he had taken occasion to pronounce judg-
ment on the universities: they are a bulwark of papal power;
their philosophy is but ‘Aristotelity’; for them, 'till very late
times,' geometry was but an 'art diabolical. ' But Oxford had
undergone a change since the days when Hobbes could afford to
despise its learning. In particular, the Savilian professorships,
founded in the interval, were held by two men of eminence, Seth
Ward and John Wallis—the latter, a mathematician of the first
rank. They were acknowledged masters of a science in which
Hobbes seems to have been only a brilliant and capricious
amateur—the greatest of circle-squarers. The dispute began,
—
mildly enough, in a vindication of the university by Ward against
another critic, Hobbes being dealt with in an appendix. This was
in 1654; but, next year, Hobbes's own mathematical discoveries
were published with much parade in De Corpore. The opportunity
was then seized by Wallis, who, in a few months, was ready with a
a
reply in which the pretended demonstrations were torn to shreds.
From this time onwards, the war of pamphlets waged unremittingly.
Hobbes maintained his opinions with a tenacity which would have
been wholly admirable if they had been better grounded ; and he
was bold enough to carry the war into the enemy's camp, though
with unfortunate results, and to engage other adversaries, such as
Robert Boyle, but with no better success. It is unnecessary to
follow the controversy in detail, but, incidentally, it produced
1 A lucid and admirable sketch of its successive stages is given in Croom Robert-
son's monograph on Hobbes (1886). It should be added, however, that Tönnies
(Hobbes, 1896, p. 55) is of opinion that Robertson has dealt too hardly with Hobbes in
his account of the controversy.


## p. 289 (#305) ############################################

Hobbes's Later Works
289
one document of great personal interest-a defence of his own
reputation in the form of a letter to Wallis, written in 1662.
In addition to these and connected controversies, more serious
trouble threatened the philosopher's later years. After the
restoration, he was well received by the king, who took pleasure
in his conversation. But he had an enemy in the clergy; his
opinions were notorious; it was easy to connect them with the
moral licence shown in high places; and, after the great Plague
and the great Fire, at a time when recent disaster made men's
consciences sensitive and their desires welcome a scape-goat,
Hobbes was in no little danger. A bill aimed at blasphemous
literature actually passed the Commons in January 1667, and
Leviathan was one of two books mentioned in it. The bill never
got through both houses; but Hobbes was seriously frightened;
he is said to have become more regular at church and communion;
he studied the law of heresy, also, and wrote a short treatise on
the subject, proving that there was no court by which he could be
judged. But he was not permitted to excite the public conscience
by further publications on matters of religion. A Latin translation
of Leviathan (containing a new appendix bringing its theology
into line with the Nicene creed) was issued at Amsterdam in 1668.
Other works, however, dating from the same year, were kept back
-the tract on Heresy, the answer to Bramhall's attack on
Leviathan and Behemoth : the History of the Causes of the Civil
Wars of England. About the same time was written his Dialogue
between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of
England. His Historia Ecclesiastica, in elegiac verse, dates from
about his eightieth year. When he was eighty-four, he wrote his
autobiography in Latin verse. Neither age nor controversy
seemed to tire him. Although controversy had the last word—he
published Decameron Physiologicum at the age of ninety-he
turned in old age for solace and employment to the literature which
had been his first inspiration. In 1673, he published a translation
in rimed quatrains of four books of the Odyssey; and he had com-
pleted both Iliad and Odyssey when, in 1675, he left London for the
last time. Thereafter, he lived with the Cavendish family at one of
their seats in Derbyshire. He died at Hardwick on 4 December 1679.
Hobbes is one of a succession of English writers who are as
remarkable for their style as for the originality of their thought.
Bacon, Hobbes, Berkeley and Hume—to mention only the greatest
names-must be counted amongst the masters of language, wher-
ever language is looked upon as conveying a meaning. And, in
19
E. L. VII.
CH. XII.


## p. 290 (#306) ############################################

290 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
ance.
each case, the style has an individual quality which suits the
thought and the time. Bacon's displays a wealth of imagery and
a
allusion significant of the new worlds which man's mind was to
enter into and to conquer; it has the glamour not of enchantment
but of discovery; greater precision and restraint of imagery would
not have befitted the pioneer of so vast an adventure. The musical
eloquence of Berkeley is the utterance of a soul rapt in one
clear vision and able to read the language of God in the form
and events of the world. Hume writes with the unimpassioned
lucidity of the observer, intent on technical perfection in the way
of conveying his meaning, but with no illusions as to its import-
Hobbes differs from all three, and, in his own way, is
supreme. There is no excess of imagery or allusion, though both
are at hand when wanted. There is epigram; but epigram is not
multiplied for its own sake. There is satire; but it is always kept
in restraint. His work is never embellished with ornament: every
ornament is structural and belongs to the building. There is
never a word too many, and the right word is always chosen. His
materials are of the simplest; and they have been formed into
a living whole, guided by a great thought and fired by the passion
for a great cause.
Aubrey tells us something of his method of work:
He had read much, if one considers his long life, but his contemplation
was much more than his reading. He was wont to say, that if he had read as
much as other men, he should have continued still as ignorant as other men.
The manner of writing (Leviathan) was thus. He walked much and con-
templated, and he had in the head of his cane a pen and ink-horn, carried
always a note-book in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently
entered it into his book, or otherwise might have lost it.
This careful forethought for idea and phrase was always controlled
by the dominant purpose, which was to convince by demonstration.
How the method worked may be seen from a characteristic
passage. Speaking of undesigned trains of thought, he says
And yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man may oft-times perceive
the way of it, and the dependance of one thought upon another. For in a
discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent, than to
ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence
to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the
thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that
brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the
thought of the 30 pence, which was the price of that treason; and thence
easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for
thought is quick.
Here, the illustration strikes home; the sarcasm hits the party he
hated most; and the last four words clinch the whole and bring


## p. 291 (#307) ############################################

Elements of Law and De Cive
291
back the discourse to the matter in hand. Attention is arrested,
not diverted, so that the single paragraph in which these sentences
occur may be taken as having started the line of thought which
issued in the theory of association, for a long time dominant in
English psychology.
To understand the underlying ideas of Hobbes's philosophy,
portions of his Latin work De Corpore must be kept in view ; but
his lasting fame as a writer rests upon three books : Elements of
Law, Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and
Society (the English version of De Cive) and Leviathan. The first of
these books is a sketch, in clear outline and drawn with unfaltering
hand, of the bold and original theory which he afterwards worked
out and applied, but never altered in substance. It contains less
illustration and less epigram than the later works, but it yields to
neither of them in lucidity or in confidence. The circumstances
which led to its issue in two fragments, arbitrarily sundered from
one another, have hindered the general recognition of its greatness.
Nor did it appear at all till De Cive was well known and Leviathan
ready for press. The latter works are less severe in style: they
have a glow from the 'bright live coal' which (we are told) seemed
to shine from Hobbes's eye when he spoke. De Cive is restricted
to the political theory; but his whole view of human life and the
social order is comprehended in Leviathan.
The title-page of this book depicts its purpose. The upper
half of the page has, in the foreground, a walled town with tall
church spires; behind, the country rises towards a hill out of
which emerges the figure of a man from the waist upwards ; a
crown is on his head; his right hand wields a sword, his left grasps
a crosier; his coat of mail consists of a multitude of human figures,
with their faces turned to him, as in supplication. On the lower
half of the page, on either side the title, are represented a castle
and a church, a coronet and a mitre, a cannon and lightning,
implements of war and weapons of argument, a battle-field and
a dispute in the schools. Over all runs the legend Non est
potestas super terram quae comparetur ei. This is the design of
that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that
mortal God,' whose generation and power Hobbes sets out to
describe.
The figure of the leviathan dominates the whole book, and
Hobbes argues over and over again that there is no alternative
between absolute rule and social anarchy. Its lurid picture of
the state of nature, contrasted with the peace and order instituted
1942


## p. 292 (#308) ############################################

292 Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
by sovereign power, undoubtedly reflects the troubles and emotions
of the time; but it is no mere seventeenth century version of In
darkest England and the way out. Far less is Hobbes's whole
philosophy to be put down to the fear of civil tumult and the
desire to think out a theory of government adequate to its
restraint. Leviathan is a work of great and enduring importance
just because it is not a mere political pamphlet. It owes life and
colour to the time at which it was written; but another force also
contributed to its making—a conception of larger scope, which
gives it the unity of a philosophical masterpiece.
This underlying conception and all the author's most striking
ideas are to be found in the treatise completed in 1640—when politi-
cal troubles were obviously at hand, but, as yet, no personal danger
threatened. In logic and lucidity, this earlier treatise is not surpassed
by the later work, though it fails to give the same constant impression
of reality. It is a text-book such as philosophers have sometimes
written for statesmen, to instruct them in the principles of their craft;
and it did not entirely escape the usual fate of such efforts. Before
Hobbes set about writing it, the fundamental idea of a philosophy had
taken root in his mind; and this idea he owed to the new mechanical
theory, and, in particular, to Galileo's teaching. Motion, he came to
think, was the one reality; all other things are but ‘fancies, the off-
spring of our brains. He did not now, or, indeed, afterwards, work
out a mechanical theory of the physical universe, as Descartes, for
instance, was doing. But he had a bolder—if an impossible-project.
Descartes restricted mechanism to the extended world, maintained
the independence of mental existence and held the latter to be of
all things most certain. Hobbes did not thus limit the applications
of his new idea. He thought he could pass from external motions
to the internal motions of men,' and, thence, to sovereignty and
justice. This is his own account, and it agrees with what we know
otherwise. Neither the mechanical theory, nor the psychology, is
an afterthought introduced to bolster up a foregone political con-
clusion. They have their roots too deep in Hobbes's mind. It is
true, the desired transitions could not logically be made, and
Hobbes found out the difficulty later. But, when civil disturbance
forced his hand and led to the elaboration of his ethical and
political doctrine, this doctrine was found to be in harmony with
the idea from which his view of the universe started. The external
and mechanical character of the political theory is an indication of
its unreality, but it bears witness, also, to the unity of conception
that dominates the whole philosophy.
6


## p. 293 (#309) ############################################

Leviathan
293
All things, according to Hobbes, ‘have but one universal cause,
which is motion. But, for him, as for other writers of his day,
'
'motion' is not a merely abstract conception; it includes move-
ment of masses or of particles.