nature of men, and the psychical nature of men is dependent on the nature of physical bodies, i.e., on bodies and their motions. Thus all bodies, natural and artificial, must be explained in terms of motion, if they are explained scientifically. Physical bodies are the first term leading up through man to the last term in the series, which is the State. Hobbes's Application of the Mathematical Theory to Psychology. Hobbes snatched the science of mental phenomena from the hands of the scholastic theologian and made it for the first time an independent science. Psychology had been based upon the assumptions of the theologian; for these Hobbes substituted the assumptions of the mathematician. Consciousness became in his hands not a soul, but the motion of bodies. It is described by him as "the movement of certain parts of the organic body." The states of consciousness, such as sensations, perceptions, etc., are brain movements or the fine movements of atoms in the nervous system. Memory and imagination are "decaying sensations"; thought is the sum of several sensations; experience is the totality of sensations bound together by the rigid laws of association. Hobbes was the father of what is known as the Associational Psychology- the theory that consciousness is composed of mental atoms under fixed laws of association.1 1 There are two realms of psychological research: theoretic, which begins with perception and ends with the calculation of thought; practical, which begins with desires and includes the entire world of willing. Hobbes is in entire agreement with the psychological conception of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that theoretic life is relatively free, but that practical life is passive and dependent on the theoretic life. In all the great philosophers of this time - Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Leibnitz, and Hobbes - thought preponderates over will. Determinism is the natural consequence of all this, and Hobbes is a typical representative of determinism. Decisions of will are not inde Although Hobbes took psychology out of the hands of the theologian and made it a mechanical science, he did not identify it with physics. It is still psychology. Physics is concerned with external motions. Psychology is concerned with brain movements, which are not external movements nor the copies of external movements of bodies, but the result of external movements. Brain movements and mental states are the same. A moving body of the outer world makes an impression on the sense organ, and this motion is transmitted to the heart and brain. The reacting motion in the brain is the mental state. It is an effect in a causal series. It is an apparition" of the actual fact, which fact exists only in the external world. 66 Here we come to Hobbes's historically important theory of knowledge. The external world is no doubt real, but we have no knowledge of it. The substance of things is quite different from our knowledge of things. We have no knowledge of aught except our brain-states-the motions of bodies within ourselves. For example, our perception of light is a modification of the cerebral substance; it is not a perception of an external substance. We deceive ourselves if we think heat, light, sound, etc., are outside us. There is nothing outside us except the motions of bodies which cause these modifications. This is historically known as the doctrine of the subjectivity of the sense-perceptions. It was the point of view of all the contemporaries 1 of Hobbes and came to be that of all subsequent English philosophy. pendent activities, but are passive motions. Deliberation is the alternation of appetites; will is the final appetite before acting. We may never say that the will is free, but only that the act is free. But this means only that there is an absence of external obstacles. 1 Campanella, Galileo, Gassendi, and Descartes hold the same point of view. Hobbes's Application of the Mathematical Theory to Politics. In the same way that material bodies in motion give rise to mental states, and mental states as bodies in motion give rise to the human consciousness, so men as individuals are the source of the artificial body, the State. In every individual man the impulse to self-preservation is innate, and is, in fact, his absolute and universal characteristic. Just as the law of the mechanical association of ideas is the fundamental principle of the human mind, so the mechanical law of self-preservation is the principle of man's ethical and political life.1 All our political institutions are the result of the striving of men for self-preservation. In his natural state when, as Hobbes conceived, man lived without social organization-man had no other standard for conduct than his own self-interest; in the artificial political state, which man has constructed, self-interest is still his motive. Egoism is the sole working principle of human beings both before and after they live in societies; but the political state is the most ingenious contrivance which egoism has hit upon for its own profit. Hobbes conceived that the original state of man, which under the name of "state of nature" was a common problem in the Renaissance, was a condition in which every man was making war against every other man. (Compare Locke and Rousseau.) But such a 1 All altruism is the expression of egoism and is called out by judicious insight and by custom. Morals is the science of desires and its only principle is self-preservation, for there is no difference in the quality of desires. They are the necessary activities of egoism. Good and bad are only matters of social interest - the good being the useful and the bad the harmful to society. This is called the selfish system in ethics and Hobbes believed that it could be historically demonstrated. Hobbes, the bête noire of English ethicists, has enjoyed the compliment of being annihilated by each new writer. condition of things was obviously self-destructive. Consequently man arbitrarily and artificially formed the political State to avoid this self-destructive, internecine warfare. Under the circumstances it was the most effective way in which man could gain his personal ends, for the political State was the only possible means to peace. In the "state of nature" the right of every man to everything was the equivalent of the right of every man to nothing. So men made a compact with one another under which each relinquished a portion of his rights in order that each might have a portion of them secure. But what gives security to this compact? The sovereign to which the powers of the many have thus been delegated. What is the sovereign? It is the soul of the State, the general will, represented by a single person in a monarchy, by an assembly in a republic. This sovereign, in whom the contract is vested, is absolute; for the sovereign was not a party to the original contract, since he did not then exist. The contract was made among the individuals, at that time in a "state of nature." -- So long as the State preserves its power among the people, the people must render their obedience to the State, to the sovereign in whom the contract was vested. The might of the political State makes right. Whatever the State commands is right; whatever is forbidden is wrong. There was no right and wrong in the "state of nature," only the possible and the impossible. An act is a crime when it breaks the contract, and thus the ground of morality is political legislation. Even the religion of the people is determined by the State. Any political State is better than a revolution. Here was philosophical justification of Charles I. A reversion to war is a reversion to the "state of nature." 1 When Hobbes was in France as a refugee he wrote the Leviathan, which contained this doctrine of political society. He presented a vellum-bound copy to Charles II, hoping to gain favor with that prince. However, the Leviathan, unfortunately for Hobbes's purpose, contained two paragraphs that antagonized the Royalists and the Catholics. One was, that when a Commonwealth is unable to protect its citizens in peace, that Commonwealth is dissolved and a new sovereign Commonwealth is formed. The second was, that while the sovereign State shall decide what the religion of its people shall be, no religion is infallibleneither Anglican, Catholic, nor Puritan. The religion that the sovereign makes legal is only a temporary one; the true religion will come not until the Last Judgment. The Church is subordinate to the State, like everything else, and it does not matter much what the State religion shall be, provided there be peace. Religion is only a superstition resting on a defective knowledge of nature, and it is of little consequence what particular religion the State makes binding. It hardly need be said that the Leviathan pleased neither Charles II nor the Catholics. The sequel of its publication was that Hobbes filed back to England from fear of assassination. |