SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTll'S EDITION OE HOBBES.

Tne philosophical public are much indebted to Sir WILLIAM Mosesworrn for this new edition of the works of HOBBES, which he is in course of publishing, and of which two volumes, one Eng- lish and one Latin, are now lying on our table. A complete body of the works of this eminent man has be- come almost unattainable. No full and authorized collection of them was ever published : and the only two partial collections that appeared—the two Latin volumes in quarto, printed at Am- sterdam in 1668, and the English volume in folio, printed in Lon- don in 17t0—are each very scarce and extravagantly dear. There are, besides, many other tractates, which exist only in their sepa- rate state, and cannot be procured at all without much difficulty. No new edition, even of the best and most instructive of Honnes's treatises, has ever been presented to the public for the last century and a half, with the single exception of the English folio in 1750. This neglect is not very creditable to the intellectual character of the nation ; and the causes of it, when we trace them out in detail, suggest very discouraging conclusions as to the spirit infused into the English reading classes by our systems of education.

It is indeed true, that, in regard to physical and mathematical researches, Honnes and all his contemporaries (if we except only NEWTON) have been so much outstripped and left behind by suc- ceeding inquirers, as to leave to their works no other interest than that of historical curiosity. There is, moreover, interspersed throughout the works of HOBBES, a good deal of the theological polemics so fashionable in his time—controversies respecting the interpretation of Scriptural passages, and attempts to show that his conclusions in morals and politics are sustained by the autho- rity of the sacred writings, or at least are perfectly reconcileable with that authority. In the same age and in a similar spirit, At,- osissox SYDNEY, throughout his "Treatise on Government," seeks to demonstrate at length that Democracy is the form of polity which the Scriptures especially sanction. Such references to the facts and sayings of the Bible, although they have now passed out of date and are no longer regarded as relevant to political discus- sions, were almost universal in the controversies of the seventeenth century. These considerations in part explain the little attention which has been paid to Hoanes's writings by the ages which have suc- ceeded him. But let it be observed, that both the imperfection in the mode of physical reasoning and the intermixture of Scriptural polemics, is more predominant in the writings of Lord 13,scois than in those of Hownes ; yet the former, nevertheless, occupies a prominent place in the library of reading men, and is constantly cited with a kind of superstitious reverence as the " Master of Wisdom," to use an expression of the late Sir JAMES MACKIN- TOSir, in his Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopaedia. There is doubtless much of striking remark, of enlarged anticipation, and of aphoristic and illustrative expression, scattered throughout Lord BACON'S works; but we venture to affirm, that in all those qualities which go to make up the philosophical investigator—in the clear apprehension and searching analysis of intellectual diffi- culties, in systematic following out of deductions from his premises, in perspicuous exposition of the most perplexed subjects, and in earnest application of his mind to the discovery of the truth, whether the truth when attained be of a welcome or of an unwel- come character—in all these great mental endowments, the supe- riority of lionises to BACON is most decisive and unquestionable. If we look even for short and pithy sentences, lit to be quoted with effect, we shall find at least as many in the works of the former as in those of the latter.

To what causes, then, are the marked neglect and the compara- tive discredit of Holmes to be attributed ? Had the tendency of English education been such as to inspire the reading public with any sincere love of truth, or with any serious anxiety to verify their own conclusions on the most important topics connected with hu- man society—had it not been untbrtunately the fact, as Bishop BUTLER has remarked, that even amongst the number of persons who desire to know what has been said, not one in a hundred cares to find out what is true—we are persuaded that the moral, the metaphysical, and the political works of Iionims would have been considered as entitled to a very distinguished place in the esteem of every instructed man. For, in order to peruse them with inte- rest and advantage, it is by no means necessary that the reader should sit down with the submissive faith of a disciple, or that lie should acquiesce implicitly in the conclusions which he finds laid out for him. No thine of mind can be less suitable fin' the perusal of Holmes, who addresses himself exclusively to the rational con- victions of every man, and who disdains, more perhaps than any other philosopher ancient or modern, all indirect and underhand methods of procuring mere passive adhesion. There is a fearless simplicity and straightfbrwardness in his manner, which, while it conveys his own meaning without reserve, operates at the same

time most powerfully to awaken a train of original reflection in the reader ; and this fruit of his writings, rare and valuable to the last degree, is admitted even by the least friendly critics. " Hobbes is a writer," says DUGALD STEWART, " who redeems his wildest paradoxes by the new lights which he strikes out in defending them." Mr. STEWART'S eulogy is qualified by a censure which is altogether undeserved; for there is nothing in HOBBES'S opinions which can with any justice be called wild paradox. There are some conclusions which arc untrue, and others which are only par- tially true; there are also some which appear to be paradoxical, because the qualifications necessary to be annexed to them are not carefully stated. The most unsound of all his opinions is the fic- tion of an original covenant as the proximate basis of government and of its obligations ; but this is neither a discovery of his own, nor does he stand at all alone in the support of it. The remark just cited from DUGALD STEWART, less unjust, in- deed, than the greater number of the criticisms levelled at Holmes, exhibits one of the many impediments which have circumscribed the reputation and the influence of this eminent thinker amongst those who succeeded him. He dared to depart from received opinions ; and not only from those opinions which were current among the Aristotelians of his own day, (for that would have been considered by Mr. STEWART as a title to admiration,) but also from the opinions prevalent among the greater number of meta- physical writers of the present day, and which the Scotch school, the least analytical of all writers who ever meddled with philo- sophy, have taken under their especial protection. But it is not simply to his deviation from received and popular methods of thinking, that the subsequent discredit of HOBBES as a philosopher is to be attributed. He not only questioned custom- ary prejudices, but he also exasperated powerful classes of men, and especially that class which is rarely offended with impu- nity—the priests. It was essential to his principles of government to prove that there could be only one supreme power in the state, and that the ecclesiatical power both must be and ought to be subordinate to the civil. Such a doctrine was well calculated to rouse the antipathies both of the Roman Catholic and of the Pres- byterian clergy ; but we might have expected that the clergy of the Church of England would have listened to it with patience, since they could not well forget that their brethren, from the time of HENRY the Eighth down to ELIZABETH, had altered more than once both their frith and their discipline in obedience to the secular authority. Yet so it happened, that the clergy of the Church of England were no less irritated than the Roman Catholics with this doctrine of the inherent supremacy of the civil power; and HOBBES became the object of fierce hatred from ecclesiastics of all deno- minations. He tells us, in his own curious autobiography, written in Latin verse, which appears in the first volume of Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH'S edition, page xciv- " Leviathan denim at totum mili fecerat hostem ; Hostis Theolosinn nidus uterque fuit. Nam ilium Papahs Regni contrecto tumoral], Hos, licet abscissos, Mere visas cram.

Contra Leviathan, prim, couvicia scribunt, Et causa, ut Liner plus legeretur, mint."

Whatever effect the clergy may have unintentionally produced in promoting the circulation of the " Leviathan " during HOBBES'S life, has been effectually reversed since his death. Their unani- mous outcry has branded him with the stigma of impiety and atheism, and placed his writings on the index ,of prohi- bited books. Nevertheless, there is not, so far as we are aware, a

single sentence in his writings which either discloses such senti- ments in himself, or is calculated to inspire them in others : the tone in which he speaks both of religion and of the Divine Being is uniformly reverential. But the denunciations of the clergy, how- ever unfounded, have not been the less successful : the works of Holmes have been decried as irreligious, and this is one powerful reason why they have been comparatively so little studied. We may add, that IIonnEs incurred the enmity of the clergy, not simply by overthrowing their pretensions to a jurisdiction inde-

pendent of the civil power, but also by exposing their e glarims de- fects as teachers of youth and administrators of the Universities. The passages in which this exposure is perforated are among the most striking and emphatic of all his writings.

It might have been anticipated that the man who incurred so much obloquy by his protest against sacerdotal ascendancy, would at least have been signally extolled by that civil power the im- portance of which he took so much pains to magnify. But no such countenance was shown to him. And it is a remarkable tes- timony to the single-minded purpose and really philanthropic spirit which pervade his works, that they have never found favour with the commonplace rulers of mankind. A sovereign like FREDERICK the Second of Prussia, both animated with beneficent intentions towards his subjects and possessing sufficient force of personal character to conceive and work out his designs, might perhaps take delight in the relation of subject and government as depicted by Ilonims. But the monarchical form, as it has com- monly existed, and still continues to exist, in most countries of Europe, has been a government not of the monarch alone, but of the monarch in confederacy with various powerful classes and fraternities, which have aided him in keeping down the people, and whose interest has been much more at variance with the public good than the interest of the monarch himself. Now the doctrine of lionises, despotic as it may be, is at any rate an equalizing doctrine ; not sanctioning the enthronement of any favoured or predominant class to intercept for themselves the

rays emanating from the governing power, but enforcing a like claim on the part of every subject to partake in this common benefit. Such recognition of a supreme power nakedly and simply, apart from its accompanying congeries of auxiliary sinister interests, and exerting itself without favour or preference for the protection-of the entire people, might have found favour at court had it been published under the vigorous and self-directing Queen ELIZABETH ; but it was not likely to be of much avail to its author either during the precarious tenure of the Commonwealth, or amidst the intrigues and personal helplessness of CUARLES the Second.* In truth, it is this repudiation of all idea of privileged classes—falsely calling themselves checks upon the supreme power, but in reality frater- nizing with it and perverting it to their own purposes—which has con- tributed to render the political theories of HOBBES odious in Eng- land, quite as much as his denial of constitutional securities to the people at large. He has paid the forfeit of his anti-oligarchical as much as of his anti-popular tendencies. Again, it is a standing reproach against his political writings, that they degrade the dignity of mankind : and this imputation may be well.founded, if we compare them with the best and most liberal theories of government. But if we compare them with any political doctrines which have ever been generally recognized or practically acted upon in England, we shall find them the very reverse of degrading. The system of HonnEs is based wholly upon the willing and deliberate submission of the people to their existing rulers; which he professes to obtain simply by appealing to their reason, and by demonstrating that submission is essential to their safety as well as to their comfort. Such a doctrine both supposes and favours the widest diffusion of intelligence among the body of the people ; and the French Economists, who repro- duced a similar system in the last half of' the eighteenth century, laid greater stress upon this necessary basis of universal instruc- tion, than upon any other part of their reasonings. Contrast the state of passive and animal subservience to which the non-voting multitude have always been held bound inthe theories most cur- rent among English politicians, with the rational obedience and exercised understanding supposed by HOBBES and the French Economists, and we are very sure that it is not the latter who will appear chargeable with inculcating principles debasing to the human race. The persons most interested in these writings, within our own observation, have usually been men of Radical principles, who entertained the loftiest ideas both of the functions of govern- ment and of the possible training of the people—men who agreed with HOBBES in his antipathy to those class-interests which con- stitute the working forces of modern pseudo-representative mo- narchy—but who differed from him by thinkimsb that their best chance for combining rational submission on the part of the governed with enlarged and beneficent views on the part of the governors, was to be found in a well-organized representative system.

The moral and metaphysical doctrines of HonnEs have not escaped similar charges to those which have been advanced against his politics. He deduced all the passions, appetites, and sympa- thies of man from the simple feelings of pleasure and pain ; he derived moral obligation from the rational desire entertained by every man of his own conservation and happiness ; he judged of moral right and wrong by the test of utility. These doctrines are disagreeable to a large proportion of readers and writers, as giving a degrading representation of the human race ; and the censure which they have drawn upon the author has been another of the causes which have operated to restrict the circle of his readers.

The "Leviathan" was published in London in 1652, during the time of the Commonwealth, while Cnalti.es the Second was an exile at Paris, and while Holum was at Paris also. The expatriated Royalists who surrounded CHARLES, many of them zealous Churchmen and scholars of the Universities, read it with the strongest repuginwee, and denounced it as an apology for CnnatwELL Roams became the object of their bitter enmity, and was even forbidden to appear in presence of the young King, though he had previously officiated as his mathematical teacher. So violent was the enmity of the Royalists, that HOBBES was actually afraid that they would assassinate him : and he called to mind the fate of Dr. Donisr.a.us and Mr. ASCHAM, ambassa-• dors of the English Commonwealth at the Hague and Madrid, who had both been murdered by Royalist assassins, in those capitals. Such was his appre- hension, that he, the loyal tutor of CliAltLES the Second, found himselfcompelled to leave Par::: immediately, and to seek protection under the Commonwealth of England. It was mid-winter, and the snow was on the ground : he had to un- dertake the journey at this inclement season, though lie was then sixty-four years of age. with bad roads and upon a tumbledown horse. On arrivingiu London, he reported himself to the Council of State; who did not in any way molest him : every man in England Ole says) might study or write what he chose, provided lie would be content to live more loci." his own account of these events—his estimate of the morality of the Royalists, and his idea of the cha- racter of those councillors by whom both CHARLES the First and CHARLES the Second were guided—is eminently curious. 44 Lutetiam ad regent multus venit hole scholaris

Expulsus patritt, tristis, egenus, onus. Hue bait usque mein studiis pax, multiplicata

Dam fitment mums octo per octo moos Sed melts ille e. Leviathan] simul atque scholaribus illis

Lectus erat, Jan: dissiluere forts.

Nan: Regi accuser falsb, quasi facta probarem Impia Cromwelli, jus scelerique darem. Creditur ; adversis in partibus ease videbar ; Perpetuit jubeor Regis ahesse domo.

Tune emit in mentem mihi Derislaus et Aseham;

Tunquam prescript° terror nhique ;tderat.

Nee de rcgc queri licuit. Nan: tune aduleseens

Credit& ille, quibus credidit ante, pater. In patriam redco tutehe non beta: certus, Sod Hullo potui tutior esse loco : Frigus erat, nix alts, senex ego, ventus acerbus; exat equus sternax et salebrosa. via."—(P. =Hi.)

Wo to the philosopher who will not condescend to flatter in his picture of man ! Divines in the pulpit may depict the incorrigible wickedness of man in the darkest and most overcharged colours,

' and their sermons are extolled by. every religious person ; but let any moralist so conduct his analysis of the human heart, as to bring out a result not congenial to the sympathies of sentimentalists, and he sets the reading public against him—he is refuted beforehand, or worse than refuted, for he is laid aside unread. It seems to us that this disposition—to test metaphysical tenets by examining, not whether they are. true and can be substantiated by sufficient evidence, but whether the admission of them as truths would tend to exhibit man as a better and more admirable being—bas become more fashionable of late years than ever it was before ; at least it has been largely adopted by the Scotch metaphysicians, as well as by the modern French school, (an emanation from the Scotch,) in their multiplied attacks on the French philosophy of the eighteenth century. And the frequency of such attacks is to us a proof that, however much physical science, which has no adverse predisposi- tions to conquer, may have been enlarged and perfected in its de- tails, there is very little of reverence among us for the purity of philosophical truth. For the argument really involved in this mode of handling the question is, that the truth or falsehood of any posi- tion in morals is a matter of small moment ; that although it be true, it ought to be stifled and put down, if the belief of it would tend to lower our estimate of human nature ; and that although it be false, it ought to be held sacred and unqestioned, if it would lead us to entertain a higher notion of our species. This is not indeed expressly stated, perhaps it is not deliberately intended, by those who run down IlonnEs as preaching tenets debasing to human nature ; but unless it be assumed as a postulate, the cry against him on such a ground can have neither force nor meaning. To admit or reject particular doctrines, not on account of the weight of affirmative or negative evidence, but on account of the inferences to which they may give rise respecting the excellence or turpitude of human nature, is in effect to-subvert the whole scien- tific edifice of moral and metaphysical philosophy—to degrade the science into a mere assemblage of conventional fictions, which it is dangerous to scrutinize and criminal to overthrow. The less ana- lytical philosophers have been generally but too ready to employ this method of discrediting those who pushed the process of analysis further than themselves, unconscious that they were at the same time undermining the fithrie and destroying the trust- worthiness even of such doctrines as were common to both. If Roams had spoken of human nature in terms of the most stinging Cynicism, or with the sternness of an Antinontian divine, it would still have been unworthy of sound philosophy to employ this method of refuting hint: but, in reality, lie has dealt in no such unmeasured censure. Ile speaks of mankind like a shrewd and penetrating observer, applying his remark- able powers of analysis to the phccnomena which he saw before him. Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH complains that HOBBES " strikes the affections out of his map of human nature :" and others have alleged in like manner that he denies the existence of any benevo- lence in man, because he treats the benevolent as well as the other affections as being not inherent or original, but as derivative, and resolvable into the primary sentiments of pleasure and pain. It is common with metaphysicians of the Scotch school to represent such a doctrine as tantamount to a denial of the existence and effi- cacy of the benevolent affections : but this is a great injustice ; for our compound and derivative feelings are just as real, and just as much a part of human nature, as our simple and original feelings. And it would be full as reasonable to say that Bishop BERKELEY, when he showed that the perception of distance by the eye was not original, but acquired, denied the reality of the visual power in human nature—as to accuse IIonnus of disputing the fact that there were benevolent affections, because he disputes their title to originality.

Undeserved as the accusations against IIonnEs are, they have been repeated by so many mouths, and echoed so loudly by the many powerful classes whose hostility he provoked, that he has been condemned to comparative oblivion and discredit with poste- rity : a memorable contrast to the incessant controversial attack of which he was the object throughout the greater part of his life. Ile followed the impulse of his own fearless and original intellect, without taking any pains to conciliate the distributors of fame; and assuredly lie has thund no mercy at their hands. The injustice of which they have been guilty towards him, however, may even yet be partially repaired ; at least the chance of such reparation will be increased by this new and convenient edition of his works.

The long Mit of IlonnEs, from 1588 to 1679, covered most re- markable changes both in polities and in philosophy. He was the son of a clergyman at Malmesbury ; was sent early to Oxford ; and was recommended on leaving Magdalen College to be the fellow- student and companion of the Earl of DovoNsurax, with whom he passed no less than twenty years, until the Earl's decease,—years, as he himself says, by far the happiest of his whole life, which often afforded hint grateful dreams in his old age ; for he had ample leisure, a large command of books, and the opportunity of travel- ling with his patron and friend over a large portion of the Conti- nent. On the death of this nobleman, after a short interval spent at Paris, he officiated as tutor to the young Earl; in which capacity he remained seven years, partly occupied in travelling with his pupil. Ilis studies during this early part of his life seem to have been chiefly classical and literary ; and it was during this period that he executed his translation of TnecymnEs in whom he delighted more than in any other Grecian author, and who con- firmed him in that aversion to democracy and civil broils to which his constitutional timidity naturally predisposed him. It was•not before the age of forty that he began to addict himself to mathe- matical or philosophical studies. When about that age, according to ArmtEY, he accidentally opened a copy of EUCLID, in the library of a friend, at the 47th Proposition of the 1st Book ; and on reading the Theorem,he was so astonished that he exclaimed—" By God, this is impossible !" nor was he satisfied until he had studied the preced- ing- demonstrations back to the commencement. From hencefor- ward his meditations were largely turned towards mathematics and physics; a disposition which was much encouraged by the conversa- tion of Father MERSENNE at Paris. Father MaaSENNE formed the centre of a philosophical society in that capital; and Honnas dwells with delight and gratitude both on his devotion to science and on the disintersted zeal with which he bent himself to promote the studies of his friends. The physical and mathematical reason- ings of Roams were embodied in the treatise " De Corpore ;" the completion of which, however, was long postponed and much in- terrupted, first by the treatise " De Cive," next by the "Levia- than," lastly by the essays " On Human Nature " and "De Cor- pore Politico." The last two, together with the " Discourse on Libertyand Necessity," constitute what is called the "Tripos." In 1640, he quitted England for Paris, in consequence of the menacing aspect of' politica and the approach of the civil war. In 1652, the offence caused to the Royalists at Paris by the publication of the "Leviathan" compelled him, as we have already mentioned, to return to England ; which he never afterwards quitted. His de- clining years, to the time of hia death, were passed at Chatsworth. The former Earl of DEVONSHIRE, with whom he had passed twenty years as a companion, had bequeathed to him an annuity, which sufficed for his very modest wants, and even enabled him to make over his small landed patrimony to his nephew.

We have left ourselves no space for any detailed account of the contents of the two volumes which Sir Wiamam AIOLESWORTH has already published. The treatise "Dc Corpore" is contained in both, the Latin in one, the English in the other : to the first is pre- fixed his Latin biography, together with the "Vitae Robbie= Anctarium," which had already appeared in the previous folio edition. We will only remark, that the first two sections of the treatise " De Corpore," entitled " Computatio, sive Logica," and "Philosophia Prima," appear to its among the most instructive and valuable of his works ; exhibiting a rare combination of analytical sagacity with condensed and perspicuous expression, and assisting most powerfully to unravel those extreme abstractions, without the comprehension of which no man can successfully cope with the difficulties of mental philosophy. We trust it will enter into the scheme of Sir WILLIAM MOLES.. WORTH to annex to his edition of this distinguished man a critical biography and a coherent exposition of the sequence and modifi- cations of his philosophical tenets. The great lines which con- nect them with each other are indeed sufficiently marked out by Hounas—De Corpore, De Homine, De Cive : but much might be

done by an able biographer in fidnishing the requisite illustrations and elucidations ; and a more stirring period, either in politics or in philosophy, is scarcely to be found throughout the range of history. It seems highly probable, that if the English political troubles had not broken out in 1640, the whole intellectual career of Honaas would have been greatly altered : he would have been much more eminent as a mathematician and physical philosopher, and much less known as a writer ou politics. Both the treatise "De Cive " and the " Leviathan " were the direct offspring of the English civil war ; and he himself tells its that they broke very unseasonably the continuity of his mathematical and physical studies.