3. And, certainly, I am fully persuaded that experience has revealed all
conceivable sorts of commonwealth, which are consistent with men's
living in unity, and likewise the means by which the multitude may be
guided or kept within fixed bounds. So that I do not believe that we can
by meditation discover in this matter anything not yet tried and
ascertained, which shall be consistent with experience or practice. For
men are so situated, that they cannot live without some general law. But
general laws and public affairs are ordained and managed by men of the
utmost acuteness, or, if you like, of great cunning or craft. And so it
is hardly credible, that we should be able to conceive of anything
serviceable to a general society, that occasion or chance has not
offered, or that men, intent upon their common affairs, and seeking
their own safety, have not seen for themselves.

4. Therefore, on applying my mind to politics, I have resolved to
demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce
from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of,
but only such things as agree best with practice. And that I might
investigate the subject-matter of this science with the same freedom of
spirit as we generally use in mathematics, I have laboured carefully,
not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions; and
to this end I have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger,
envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in
the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent
to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of
the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary,
and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand
their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them
aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses.

5. For this is certain, and we have proved its truth in our Ethics, [1]
that men are of necessity liable to passions, and so constituted as to
pity those who are ill, and envy those who are well off; and to be prone
to vengeance more than to mercy: and moreover, that every individual
wishes the rest to live after his own mind, and to approve what he
approves, and reject what he rejects. And so it comes to pass, that, as
all are equally eager to be first, they fall to strife, and do their
utmost mutually to oppress one another; and he who comes out conqueror
is more proud of the harm he has done to the other, than of the good he
has done to himself. And although all are persuaded, that religion, on
the contrary, teaches every man to love his neighbour as himself, that
is to defend another's right just as much as his own, yet we showed that
this persuasion has too little power over the passions. It avails,
indeed, in the hour of death, when disease has subdued the very
passions, and man lies inert, or in temples, where men hold no traffic,
but least of all, where it is most needed, in the law-court or the
palace. We showed too, that reason can, indeed, do much to restrain and
moderate the passions, but we saw at the same time, that the road, which
reason herself points out, is very steep; [2] so that such as persuade
themselves, that the multitude or men distracted by politics can ever be
induced to live according to the bare dictate of reason, must be
dreaming of the poetic golden age, or of a stage-play.

6. A dominion then, whose well-being depends on any man's good faith,
and whose affairs cannot be properly administered, unless those who are
engaged in them will act honestly, will be very unstable. On the
contrary, to insure its permanence, its public affairs should be so
ordered, that those who administer them, whether guided by reason or
passion, cannot be led to act treacherously or basely. Nor does it
matter to the security of a dominion, in what spirit men are led to
rightly administer its affairs. For liberality of spirit, or courage, is
a private virtue; but the virtue of a state is its security.

7. Lastly, inasmuch as all men, whether barbarous or civilized,
everywhere frame customs, and form some kind of civil state, we must
not, therefore, look to proofs of reason for the causes and natural
bases of dominion, but derive them from the general nature or position
of mankind, as I mean to do in the next chapter.

------

1. Ethics, iv. 4, Coroll. iii. 31, note; 32, note.

2. Ibid., v. 42, note. 

------------------------

CHAPTER II.

OF NATURAL RIGHT.

IN our Theologico-Political Treatise we have treated of natural and
civil right, [1] and in our Ethics have explained the nature of
wrong-doing, merit, justice, injustice, [2] and lastly, of human
liberty. [3] Yet, lest the readers of the present treatise should have
to seek elsewhere those points, which especially concern it, I have
determined to explain them here again, and give a deductive proof of
them.

2. Any natural thing whatever can be just as well conceived, whether it
exists or does not exist. As then the beginning of the existence of
natural things cannot be inferred from their definition, so neither can
their continuing to exist. For their ideal essence is the same, after
they have begun to exist, as it was before they existed. As then their
beginning to exist cannot be inferred from their essence, so neither can
their continuing to exist; but they need the same power to enable them
to go on existing, as to enable them to begin to exist. From which it
follows, that the power, by which natural things exist, and therefore
that by which they operate, can be no other than the eternal power of
God itself. For were it another and a created power, it could not