HOBBES, THOMAS (1588-1679), English philosopher, sec ond son of Thomas Hobbes, vicar of Westport and Charlton, Wilts, was born, prematurely, at Westport, now part of Malmes bury, on April 5, 1588. His premature birth was due to his mother's fright at the reports of the Armada, and Hobbes at tributed his own timorous disposition to the circumstances of his birth. His father caused a scandal by engaging in a brawl at the church-door, and disappeared, leaving the three children to be brought up by his brother, a well-to-do glover in Malmesbury. Thomas Hobbes went, at four years of age, to the church school at Westport, then to a private school kept by Robert Latimer, and at 15 to Magdalen hall, Oxford. He took little interest in the scholastic philosophy taught there, and devoted his leisure to books of travel and the study of maps and charts.
On graduating (Feb. 5, 16o8) he became private tutor to William Cavendish (1591?-1628), afterwards 2nd earl of Devon shire, and began the connection with the Cavendishes which lasted, with interruptions during the Civil War, until the end of his life. He was a little older than his pupil, was his companion in sport, and in 1610 made a tour in Europe with him. On his travels he found a general revolt against scholasticism, and devoted himself to a closer study of the classics, beginning, after his return to England, the translation of Thucydides, which he published in 1629. The publication was inspired by the troubles of the time, for Hobbes thought the history of the Athenian Commonwealth offered many pertinent lessons for his fellow-citizens.
After his patron's death, Hobbes remained for a short time in the Cavendish household, without being employed, but in 1629 went abroad again, as travelling companion to the son of Sir Gervase Clinton. In 1631 he was called home from Paris to teach the young earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish (1617 84), son of his late patron. He took his pupil to France and Italy in 1634. This third stay abroad is important for Hobbes's intel lectual development. He was already known in intellectual circles in Paris, and now became a regular habitué of the group which gathered round the monk-philosopher, Mersenne, the friend of Descartes. In 1636 he met at Florence Galileo, for whom he always retained the profoundest admiration. At some time be tween his first and second visits abroad, he had for a short time acted as amanuensis to Bacon. He was later to make the ac quaintance of Descartes and of Gassendi. He had, therefore, immediate contact with the great leaders of the revolt against scholasticism. But he does not seem to have been influenced by Bacon, whose inductive method he opposed, and with Descartes his relations were, as will be seen later, unfortunate.
His philosophic awakening is described by Aubrey (Lives, p. 604) as being due to picking up a copy of Euclid and opening it at the 47th proposition of the first book. "By God," he exclaimed, "this is impossible." But he read the proof and "fell in love with geometry." He himself describes, in his Latin verse autobiography, how he was in company with learned men in Paris when the ques tion was asked, "What is sense?" On thinking over the subject it occurred to him that if material things and all their parts were always at rest or in uniform motion there could be no distinction of anything and consequently no perception, and he concluded that the cause of all things must be sought in diversity of motion. He therefore was driven to geometry to examine the modes of motion. This awakening to physical science may be placed in his second journey on the Continent between 1629 and 1631; on his third journey the new interest became an overpowering passion, and he was able to discuss his ideas with Mersenne's circle in Paris and with Galileo in Florence. He now determined to embody his doctrines in a threefold treatise : De Corpore, to show that physical phenomena were explicable in terms of motion ; De homine, to show what specific bodily motions were involved in the phenomena of sensation and knowledge ; and De Give, dis cussing social relations and the proper regulation of society.
The orderly treatment of these subjects was interrupted first by the Civil War and then by the many controversies in which he was engaged. The three treatises were eventually written, but they did not cover the intended ground.
He returned home in 1631 to find king and parliament in the thick of the constitutional struggle. He set to work to prove that certain prerogatives disputed by the parliament were inseparably annexed to the sovereignty, which the parliament did not then deny to the king. By 1640 he had ready a treatise on The Elements of Law, Natural and Politique, in two parts, Human Nature and De corpore politico which were published separately ten years later. In this book his characteristic political doctrine is already crystallized. He maintained that under the social compact implicit in the constitution of the State it is the people, in virtue of the implicit contract, who rule; by that contract every man's natural right was transferred to the monarch. But in his view sovereignty was derived from the people, and he fell foul of both parties, the believers in the divine right of kings and the opponents of the monarchy. He thought the State should be as strong as possible, and that absolute obedience was required of the subject. Neces sarily Hobbes made many modifications and explanations which cannot be given here.
The treatise was privately circulated, and when the strife be came acute in 1640 and Laud and Strafford were sent to the Tower, Hobbes, who was naturally timid, thought he was a marked man, and fled to Paris. Probably his fears were exagger ated. In any case the next 1 i years were spent in exile, chiefly in Paris, where he was soon in contact with later fugitives from England. He rejoined the Mersenne circle, and Mersenne showed him the Meditations of Descartes. Hobbes put in writing certain objections to the Meditations and later to the Dioptrique without disclosing the identity of authorship of the two documents. Des cartes then refused correspondence with him. In 1642 he com pleted his De cive, in which he laid down more explicitly than in the treatise of 1640 the doctrine that peace required that the Church should be completely subordinated to the State. Hobbes's pronounced Erastianism was due to experience of the evil results of sectarian controversy in England and France. He feared anarchy above all else. The De cive was privately circulated, and was not printed until 1647. He now began the preparation of his great work, The Leviathan; or the Matter, Form and Power of a Com monwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, a comprehensive statement of his doctrine of sovereignty. The State might be regarded as a great artificial man or monster, with a life traceable from its generation through human reason under pressure of human needs to its dissolution through civil strife. He was concerned not so much with the power of the sovereign as with the power of the State and its claim on men's allegiance. Incidentally it must wield all sanctions, supernatural as well as natural, against the pretensions of any clergy, Catholic, Anglican or Presbyterian, to the exercise of an imperium in emperio.
Hobbes represented the reaction against the Renaissance and the Reformation. Freedom of conscience had brought anarchy; men must submit to the ruling of the State so that peace and order might be restored. By the time the Leviathan appeared (1651), Charles I. was dead and the Commonwealth established. In the "Review and Conclusion" at the end of the book he had sought to define the circumstances under which submission to a new sovereign becomes legitimate. For this he was later on, freely accused of time-serving. He was, in fact, following out the logic of his original position. So little was he conscious of any disloyalty that he presented a ms. copy, "engrossed in vellum in a marvellous fair hand" (probably the copy in the British Museum, Egerton, mss. 191o) to Charles II. on his return to Paris after the battle of Worcester. Charles had been his pupil in mathematics in 1646-48, but now he was denied audience. The exiled prince's political and clerical advisers were appalled by the Leviathan, though Charles himself bore no malice against his former tutor. Barred from the English exile's court, he was suspected by the French authorities for his attack on the papacy. He fled at the end of 1651, in the middle of a severe winter, to England. His patron, the duke of Devonshire, had submitted in 1646 to the parliament. Hobbes also made his submission to the Commonwealth and was allowed to live quietly in London. He had received a small pension from the earl of Devonshire, and Harvey had left him a small legacy. His house was in Fetter lane, and he took pains to find a church where he could receive the Sacrament according to Anglican rites. His conformity was prob ably due to his loyalty to the monarchy. His personal view on religion was that we can form no idea of God. It lay with the State, now that the time of miracles was past, to decide religious questions. Religion is not philosophy, but law. Not reasoning, but obedience was demanded.
Hobbes was now 63 years of age, but was to retain his vigour for another quarter of a century. He worked at his De corpore, but his difficulty in meeting the objections to his solutions of mathematical problems delayed its publication until 1655. De homine appeared in 1658, but instead of being the comprehensive treatise on psychology which he had originally meditated, it was a mere makeshift ; it included some unpublished work on optics. Meanwhile he was involved in a controversy with Bramhall, bishop of Londonderry, on free-will. He replied to the bishop's Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions by Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance (1656), in which he gave a clear exposition and defence of the psychological doctrine of determinism. The bishop replied in a treatise with an appendix entitled "The Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale." Hobbes took no notice at the time, but ten years later he replied to the charge of atheism of which he says he now heard for the first time.
It is unfortunate that Hobbes was drawn away from his philo sophical and political studies to make excursions into mathematics, in which he had had no training. He was more sensitive to attacks on his solutions of mathematical conundrums, like squaring the circle, than on his political and philosophical positions. He had made enemies at Oxford by attacking in the Leviathan the uni versity system as being founded originally for the support of the papal against the civil authority, and as still working social mis chief by adherence to the old learning. Oxford was therefore quick to avail itself of the opportunities for criticism offered by De corpore (16S 5) and its English translation Concerning Body (1656). Hobbes was involved in a long quarrel with Seth Ward, Savilian professor of astronomy, and John Wallis, author of the great treatise, Arithmetica in finitorum. In this long controversy Hobbes was decidedly worsted. He replied to the attacks on him in Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, one of Geometry, the other of Astronomy, in the University of Oxford (English Works, vol. vii.) in 1656. After more rough thrusts on both sides, Hobbes determined to remain silent; but after his De homine (1658) was through the press, he again prepared for the fray.
In the spring of 166o, he made an onslaught on the new-fangled methods of mathematical analysis in five dialogues entitled Ex amznatio et emendatio mathematicae hodiernae qualis explicatur zn libris Johannis Wallisii, with a sixth dialogue so-called, con sisting entirely of 7o or more propositions on the circle and cycloid. In the Dialogus physicus, live De natura aeris (Latin works, iv. 233-296) he fulminated in 1661 against Boyle and other friends of Wallis who were now forming themselves into a society (incorporated as the Royal Society in 1662) for experi mental research, to the exclusion of himself personally, and in direct contravention of the method of physical erquiry enjoined in the De corpore. Wallis retorted in the scathing satire Hobbius heautontimorumenos (1662). He had apparently been stung to fury by a wanton allusion in Hobbes's latest dialogue to a passage of his former life (his deciphering for the parliament of the king's papers taken at Naseby). Professing to be roused by the attack on his friend Boyle, when he had scorned to lift a finger in defence of himself against the earlier dialogues, he tore them all to shreds with an art of which no general description can give an idea. He roundly charged Hobbes, quite unjustly, with having written Leviathan in support of Oliver's title, and deserting his royal master in distress. Hobbes's answer to these charges took the form of a letter about himself in the third person addressed to Wallis in 1662, under the title of Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners and Religion of Thomas Hobbes (English works, iv. In this piece, which is of great bio graphical value, he told his own and Wallis's "little stories during the time of the late rebellion" so effectively that Wallis, like a wise man, attempted no reply. Thus ended the second bout.
After a time Hobbes began a third period of controversial activity, which did not end, on his side, till his 9oth year. De principiis ratiocinatione geometrarum (1666) (Latin works, iv. was designed to show that there was no less uncertainty and error in the works of the geometers than in those of physical or ethical writers. Quadratura circuli, Cubatio sphaerae, Dupli catio cubi (1669) gave Hobbes's solution of these famous prob lems ; and, in spite of Wallis's refutations he worked them up again in later publications. In 1674, at the age of 86, he published his Principia et problemata aliquot geometrica, ante desperata nunc breviter explicata et demonstrata (Latin works, v. 150-214), con taining in the chapters dealing with questions of principle not a few striking observations, which ought not to be overlooked in the study of his philosophy. His last piece of all, Decameron physio logicum (English works, vii. 69-180), in 1678, was a new set of dialogues on physical questions.
All these controversial writings on mathematics and physics represent but one-half of his activity after the age of 70 ; though, as regards the other half, it is not possible, for a reason that will be seen, to say as definitely in what order the works belonging to the period were produced. From the time of the Restoration he acquired a new prominence. Two or three days after Charles's arrival in London, Hobbes drew in the street the notice of his former pupil, and was at once received into favour. The king relished his wit (he used to say, "Here comes the bear to be baited"), and did not like the old man the less because his presence at court scandalized the bishops or the prim virtue of Chancellor Hyde. He even bestowed on Hobbes a pension (not always paid) of IIoo, and had his portrait hung in the royal closet. But "Hobbism" was freely regarded as equivalent to freethinking and even to atheism, for Hobbes's attack on the Church was regarded as subversive of all religion. His enemies were many and powerful. His eagerness to defend himself against Wallis's imputation of dis loyalty, and his apologetic dedication of the Problemata physica to the king, are evidence of the hostility with which he was being pressed by the Church party as early as 1662 ; but it was not till 1666 that he felt himself seriously in danger. In that year the House of Commons embodied the general superstitious fear arising from the calamities of the Plague and the Great Fire in a bill against atheism and profanity. On Oct. 17 it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness, or against the essence and attributes of God, and in particular the book published in the name of one White, and the book of Hobbes called the Leviathan, and to report the matter with their opinion to the House." (The De medio animarum statu of Thomas White, a heterodox Catholic priest, who contested the immortality of the soul. White [d. 1676] and Hobbes were friends) . Hobbes, then verging upon 8o, burnt such of his papers as he thought might compromise him, and set him self to enquire into the actual state of the law of heresy. The results of his investigation appeared in three short dialogues added (in place of the old "Review and Conclusion," for which the day had passed) as an appendix to his Latin translation of Leviathan (Latin works, iii.). In this appendix, as in the posthumous tract, An Historical Narration concerning Heresy and the Punishment thereof (168o, English works, iv. 385-408), he maintained that, since the High Court of Commission had been put down, there re mained no court of heresy at all to which he was amenable, and that even when it stood nothing was to be declared heresy but what was at variance with the Nicene Creed, as he maintained that the doctrine of Leviathan was not.
After the parliamentary scare Hobbes could never afterwards get permission to print anything on ethical subjects. His Latin works (in 2 vols.) appeared at Amsterdam in 1668, because he could not obtain the censor's license for its publication at London, Oxford or Cambridge. Other writings were not made public till after his death—the king apparently having made it the price of his protection that no fresh provocation should be offered to the popular sentiment. The most important of the works, written about 167o, and thus kept back, is the spirited dialogue Behemoth: the History of the Causes of Civil Wars of England and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on from the year 5640 to the year 5660. (English works, vi. 161-418. Though Behemoth was kept back at the king's express desire, it saw the light, without Hobbes's leave, in 1679 before his death.) To the same period probably belongs the unfinished Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (English works, vi. 1-16o), a trenchant criticism of the constitu tional theory of English government as upheld by Coke. The two thousand and odd Latin elegiac verses in which he gave his view of ecclesiastical encroachment on the civil power may also date from this period; they were first published, nine years after his death, under the title Historia ecclesiastica (Latin works, v. 341-408).
For some time Hobbes was not allowed to utter a word of pro test, whatever might be the occasion that his enemies took to triumph over him. But no Englishman of that day stood in the same repute abroad, and foreigners, noble or learned, who came to England, never forgot to pay their respects to the old man, whose vigour and freshness of intellect no progress of the years seemed able to quench. Among these was the grand-duke of Tuscany (Ferdinand II.), who took away some works and a por trait to adorn the Medicean library.
The autobiography in Latin verse, with its playful humour, occasional pathos and sublime self-complacency, was thrown off at the age of 84. In 1673, he sent forth a translation of four books of the Odyssey (ix.–xii.) in rugged but not seldom happily turned English rhymes ; and, when he found this Voyage of Ulysses eagerly received, he had ready by 1675 a complete translation of both Iliad and Odyssey (English works, x.), prefaced by a lively dissertation "Concerning Virtues of an Heroic Poem," showing his unabated interest in questions of literary style. Even as late as Aug. 1679 he was promising his publisher "somewhat to print in English." He died at Hardwick Hall on Dec. 4 of that year, and was buried in the neighbouring church of Ault Hucknall.
Hobbes was tall and erect in figure. He shaved his beard to avoid the appearance of a venerable philosopher. He used to say that he had been drunk about a hundred times, but he lived a temperate life ; after he was 7o he drank no wine and ate no meat. His favourite exercise was tennis, which he played regularly. Socially he was genial and courteous, though in argument he occa sionally lost his temper. As a friend he was generous and loyal. Intellectually bold in the extreme, he was timid in ordinary life, and is said to have had a horror of ghosts. He read little, and often boasted that he would have known as little as other men if he had read as much. He appears to have had an illegitimate daughter, for whom he made generous provision. In the National Portrait Gallery there is a portrait of him by J. M. Wright, and two others are in the possession of the Royal Society.
It cannot be allowed that Hobbes falls into any regular succes sion from Bacon; neither can it be said that he handed on the torch to Locke. He was the one English thinker of the first rank in the long period of two generations separating Locke from Bacon, but there is no true relation of succession among the three. It would be difficult even to prove any affinity among them beyond the disposition to take sense as a prime factor in subjective ex perience : their common interest in physical science was shared equally by rationalist thinkers of the Cartesian school, and was indeed begotten of the time. Backwards, Hobbes's relations are rather with Galileo and other enquirers who, from the beginning of the 17th century, occupied themselves with the physical world in the manner that has come later to be distinguished by the name of science in opposition to philosophy.
But even more than in external nature, Hobbes was interested in the phenomena of social life as displayed in an age of political revolution. While he was unable, by reason of imperfect training and too tardy development, with all his pains, to make any original contribution to physical science or to mathematics, and was easily worsted by Wallis in mathematical controversy, he attempted a task which no other adherent of the new "mechanical philosophy" conceived—nothing less than such a universal construction of human knowledge as would bring society and man (at once the matter and maker of society) within the same principles of scien tific explanation as were found applicable to the world of Nature. The attempt was premature, but it is Hobbes's distinction to have conceived it, and he must be classed with those philosophers who have sought to order the whole domain of human knowledge. Upon every subject that came within his system, except mathe matics and physics, his thoughts have been productive of thought. As the first storm of opposition died down, thinkers of real weight, beginning with Cumberland and Cudworth, were moved by their aversion to his analysis of the moral nature of man to probe anew the question of the natural springs and the rational grounds of human action; and thus it may be said that Hobbes gave the first impulse to the whole English movement of ethical speculation. In politics the revulsion from his particular conclusions did not prevent the more clear-sighted of his opponents from recognizing the force of his supreme demonstration of the practical irrespon sibility of the sovereign power, wherever seated, in the State ; and, when in a later age the foundations of a positive theory of legis lation were laid in England, the school of Bentham—James Mill, Grote, Molesworth—brought again into general notice the writings of the great publicist of the 17th century, who, however he might, by the force of temperament, himself prefer the rule of one, based his whole political system upon a rational regard to the common weal. Finally, the psychology of Hobbes, though too un developed to attract Locke, when essaying the scientific analysis of knowledge, came in course of time (chiefly through James Mill) to be connected with the theory of associationism developed from within the school of Locke, in different ways, by Hartley and Hume ; nor is it surprising that the later associationists, finding their principle more distinctly formulated in the earlier thinker, should sometimes have been betrayed into affiliating themselves to Hobbes rather than to Locke. For his ethical theories see ETHICS. Hoffding (Hist. of Mod. Phil., i., p. 264) summed up Hobbes's contribution to philosophical thought as follows : "Hobbes is an acute and energetic thinker. He instituted the best thought-out attempt of modern times to make our knowledge of natural science the foundation of all our knowledge of existence. The system he constructed is the most profound materialistic system of modern times. Moreover, Hobbes's works, which are distinguished by their powerful and clear exposition, contain many interesting ob servations on logic and psychology. He may be called the founder of English psychology, that is, of the English school of philosophy. It was his ethical and political views, however, which exerted the greatest influence on his contemporaries. His sturdy, although one-sided, naturalism, challenged men's opinions and brought them into a state of flux. In the sphere of mental science he effected a breach with scholasticism similar to that instituted by Copernicus in astronomy, Galileo in physics, and Harvey in phys iology. Hobbes, with justifiable pride, ranges himself alongside of these men as the founder of sociology : this science (as he remarks in the preface to the De corpore), is no older than his own De cive. The naturalistic basis which he gave to ethics and politics originated a movement which has been strikingly com pared to that inaugurated by Darwin in the 19th century." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Sufficient information is given in the Vitae HobBibliography.-Sufficient information is given in the Vitae Hob- bianae auctarium (Latin works, i. p. 65 seq.) concerning the early editions of Hobbes's separate works and the works of his opponents to the end of the 57th century. In the 18th century, after Clarke's Boyle Lectures of 1704-05, the opposition was less express. In 1750 The Moral and Political Works were collected, with life, etc., by Dr. Campbell, in a folio edition. In 1812 the Human Nature and the Liberty and Necessity (with supplementary extracts from the Ques tions of 1656) were edited by Philip Mallet, and in 1839-45 by Molesworth. The Elements of Law was printed by F. Tunnies from the oldest ms. in 1888. There are numerous reprints of the Leviathan. Of translations may he mentioned Les Elemens philosophiques du citoven (1649) and Le Corps politique (1652), both by S. de Sorbiere, conjoined with Le Traite de la nature humaine, by d'Holbach, in 1787, under the general title Les Oeuvres philosophiques et politiques de Thomas Hobbes; a translation of the first section, "Computatio sive logics," of the De corpore, included by Destutt de Tracy with his Elemens d'ideologie (1804) ; a translation of Leviathan into Dutch in 1678, and another (anonymous) into German (Halle, 1794, 2 vols.) ; a translation of the De cive by J. H. v. Kirchmann (Leipzig, 1873) . Important later editions are those of Ferdinand funnies, Behemoth (1889) , on which see Croom Robertson s Philosophical Remains (1894) , P. 451; Elements of Law (1889) .
Three accounts of Hobbes's life were first published together in 1681, two years after his death, by R. B. (Richard Blackbourne, a friend of Hobbes's admirer, John Aubrey), and reprinted, with complimentary verses by Cowley and others, at the beginning of Sir W. Molesworth's collection of the Latin Works: (I) T. H. Malmesb. vita (pp. 13-21), written by Hobbes himself, or (as also reported) by T. Rymer, at his dictation; (2) Vitae Hobbinae auctarium (pp. 22-80), turned into Latin from Aubrey's English; (3) T. H. Malmesb. vita carmine expressa (pp. 81-99), written by Hobbes at the age of 84 (first published by itself in 168o). The Life of Mr. T. H. of Malmesburie, printed among the Lives of Eminent Men in 1813, from Aubrey's papers in the Bodleian, etc. (vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. , contains scme interesting particulars not found in the Auctarium. All that is of any importance for Hobbes's life is contained in G. Croom Robertson's Hobbes (i886) in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, and Sir Leslie Stephen's Hobbes (1904) in the "English Men of Letters" sc r:es, both of which cover his phil osophy. See also F. Tunnies, Hobbes Leben and Lehre (1896), Hobbes-Analekten (1904) ; G. Zart, Einfluss der englischen Philosophie seit Bacon auf die deutsche Philosophie des 18ten Jahrh. (1881) G. Brandt, Thomas Hobbes: Grundlinien seiner Philosophie (1895) ; G. Lyon La Philos. de Hobbes (1893) ; J. M. Robertson, Pioneer Humanists (19o7) ; J. Rickaby, Free Will and Four English Phil osophers (1906) ; J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories (1895) ; W. Graham, English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine (1899) ; W. J. H. Campion, Outlines of Lectures on Political Science (18g 5) ; M. Frischeisen-Kohler, Zur Erkenntnislehre and Metaphysik des Thomas Hobbes (1914) ; H. Hoffding, Hist. of Modern Philosophy, vol. i. (Iqoo) . Full bibliography in t)besweg, Grundriss der Gesch. der Phil., bd. iii. (1q14).