1651

                                   LEVIATHAN

                                by Thomas Hobbes
INTRODUCTION

                             INTRODUCTION

  NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by
the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated,
that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion
of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within,
why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves
by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For
what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many
strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the
whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet
further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature,
man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH,
or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though
of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection
and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an
artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the
magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial
joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the
sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty)
are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and
riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi
(the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things
needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity
and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition,
sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by
which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together,
and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced
by God in the Creation.

  To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will consider

  First, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both which is man.

  Secondly, how, and by what covenants it is made; what are the rights
and just power or authority of a sovereign; and what it is that
preserveth and dissolveth it.

  Thirdly, what is a Christian Commonwealth.

  Lastly, what is the Kingdom of Darkness.

  Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, that
wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men.
Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give
no other proof of being wise, take great delight to show what they
think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another
behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late
understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if
they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce teipsum, Read thyself:
which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance either the
barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors, or to
encourage men of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their
betters; but to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and
passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another,
whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he
does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he
shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of
all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of
passions, which are the same in all men,- desire, fear, hope, etc.;
not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the
things desired, feared, hoped, etc.: for these the constitution
individual, and particular education, do so vary, and they are so easy
to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart,
blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying,
counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him
that searcheth hearts. And though by men's actions we do discover
their design sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our
own, and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come
to be altered, is to decipher without a key, and be for the most
part deceived, by too much trust or by too much diffidence, as he that
reads is himself a good or evil man.

  But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it
serves him only with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is
to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this, or that
particular man; but mankind: which though it be hard to do, harder
than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall have set down
my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another
will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself.
For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.

                            THE FIRST PART

                                OF MAN

                              CHAPTER I

                               OF SENSE

  CONCERNING the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly,
and afterwards in train or dependence upon one another. Singly, they
are every one a representation or appearance of some quality, or other