HOBBES, Thomas, English moralist, phi losopher and political scientist: b. within the borough of Malmsbury, Wiltshire, 5 April 1588; d. Hardwicke, Derbyshire, 4 Dec_ 1679. Thomas Hobbes is eminent as writer on the theory of government, on psychology and on metaphysics and as master of a vigorous and picturesque English style. He was born in the year of the Spanish Armada, 1588, and lived to be 91 years old, active to the end in mind and in body. He was the son of a poor Eng lish vicar, was educated by his uncle, a pros perous glover, and spent the last five of his student years at Magdalen College, Oxford. The Oxford of that period was given over to a restricted and arid scholasticism, barring out mathematics,. for example, as a black art ; and Hobbes retained through life .a vivid memory of the pedantry and narrowness of the Oxford of his youth. At the end of these student years, in 1608, he was employed by Cavendish, afterward Earl of Devonshire, as tutor to his son; and he remained for the next 20 years in the service of this same great family and throughout his life in close and friendly con nection with it. Two years of travel with his pupil on the Continent were followed by 18 years in England — a service terminated only by the death of his former pupil and con stant friend, the second Earl. During these years Hobbes devoted himself to classical study, which bore fruit in his vigorous translation of Thucydides, published in 1628. The three suc ceeding years were spent on the Continent, at first in travel with another English youth, later in the eager study, mainly at Paris, of mathematics and natural science. Hobbes him self tells us with what astonishment and de light he first, in 1628, when he was 40 years old, saw and read Euclid's In 1631 he became tutor to the third Earl of Devonshire, son of his late patron and first pupil. With him he made, in 1634, a third continental jour ney learned to know Galileo during his sojourn Italy, taly, and was admitted, in Paris, to the fellowship of a group of mathematicians and scientists. He must have been pondering on problems of politics and of psychology in the intervals of his study of physics and geometry, for his next book, which circulated in manu script as early as 1640, set forth his theory of human nature and of the body politic. The publication even privately of this doctrine i brought its author into prominence ana strongly influenced the course of his life.
The psychology of Hobbes forms the basis both of his political and of his metaphysical doctrine. He distinguishes the "cognitive (or conceptive))) faculty from the °motive* faculty of the mind, and recognizes five senses, to which he adds °a sixth sense, but internal, . . . commonly called remembrance' He defines the affective consciousness as °motion about the heart? which "when it helpeth is called pleasure . . but when it hindereth the vital motion is called pain.' And he ends with a discussion of the passions which reduces will to desire and conceives each emotion from a narrowly individualistic standpoint. to endeavour,' he says, ais appetite' and in the race of life, tcontinually to out-go the next before Is felicity.' The foundation of the political system of Hobbes is the teaching that men °are by nature equal' and self-seeking; that many men at the same time have an appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide'; that con sequently °every man is enemy to every other' and that °during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they seek such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from invasion of foreigners and are in that condition which is called War.'
"The only way,' Hobbes continues, "to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to de fend them from invasion of Foreigners and the injuries of one another . . . is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Hobbes accordingly conceives of a government as formed by a mutual con tract of individuals, of whom each seeks simply his own preservation, happiness and security. The contract, he insists, is between each indi vidual °subject" and every other—not at all, between subject and sovereign. It is made, he says, °by covenant of every man with every man . . . as if every man should say, I as thorize and give up my Right of Governing myself to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him." Upon this theory, that the covenant of every citizen with every other underlies government, Hobbes bases his well known doctrine of the absolute right of the sovereign. For, he argues, all the governed (are bound, every man to every man to Own and be reputed Author of all, that he that al ready is their Sovereign, shall do, and judge fit to be done.' In other words aevery Subject is Author of every Act the Sovereign Both.' Hobbes asserts unambiguously the subor dination of church to state. "The Kingdom of Christ,* he declares, °is not of this world; therefore neither can his ministers (unless they be Kings) require obedience in His name.' It follows, he teaches, *that every Christian Sovereign [isl the supreme Pastor of his own Subjects'; and that every subject is bound to obey the command of his sovereign with re gard not only to the forms of religious wor ship but to the nature of the doctrines openly professed. Such conformity to the will of even an 'infidel sovereign' does not conflict, Hobbes insists, with our duty to God. For God requires of us only faith and obedience to his laws. °And when the Civil Sovereign is an Infidel, every one of his own Subjects that resisteth him sinneth against the Laws of God (for such are the Laws of Nature) and rejecteth the counsel of the Apostles that admonisheth all Christians to obey their Princes. . . . And for their Faith it is internal and in visible; they have the license that Nauman had, and need not put themselves into danger for it. But if they do, they ought to expect their reward in Heaven, and not complain of their Lawful Sovereign; much less make war upon him.' It is not possible, within the limits of this article, to outline the ingenious argument by which Hobbes seeks to foist upon a present generation, the responsibilities of a social con tract which a past generation made. Still less is it possible to present an adequate criticism of the conception of Hobbes. Psychologists and sociologists have long since agreed that his psychology and his political theory are alike defective; that societies and governments grow, and are not manufactured i and that sympathy no less than selfishness is a basal instinct. Yet Hobbes' theory of society is still worth studying, not only because it is expressed in such vigorous English, nor even mainly be cause of the influence it exerted on Rousseau and Spinoza (qq.v.), but primarily because it so ruthlessly depicts society as it would be if men were no more than self-seeking and egoistic.