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Updated: June 8, 2025
With this Hobbes's programme of a mechanical science of nature is fulfilled. The heavens and the earth are made subject to the same law of gravitation. Chief work, Philosophic Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687. Works, 1779 seq. On Newton cf. Newton resembles Boyle in uniting profound piety with the rigor of scientific thought.
When he was not studying, or joking, or rhyming, during those two short years of college life, he read: Cudworth's "Intellectual System," Hobbes's "Dialogues," Bacon's "Essays," Plutarch's "Morals," Cicero's "De Officiis," Montaigne's "Essays," Rousseau's "Émile," Demosthenes's "Orations," Aristotle's "Politics," Ralt's "Dictionary of Trade," and the "Lex Mercatoria."
Then he practically accepted Hobbes's audacious bidding to the man who should not be able to accept the state creed, to go courageously to martyrdom, and leave the land in peace.
This is, indeed, a property of all true propositions, and the only one true of all. But it is not the scientific definition of propositions; for though the mere collocation which makes a proposition a proposition, signifies only this, yet that form, combined with other matter, conveys much more meaning. Hobbes's principle accounts fully only for propositions where both terms are proper names.
The readings embraced a small manual of logic, by Du Trieu, recommended by Mr. Mill, and reprinted for the purpose, Whately's Logic, Hobbes's Logic, and Hartley on Man, in Priestley's edition. The manner of proceeding was thorough. Each paragraph, on being read, was commented on by every one in turn, discussed and rediscussed, to the point of total exhaustion.
Nor is it otherwise than natural that he should seek to limit, rather than to enlarge, the powers of the State, though in substance he entirely agrees with Hobbes's view of its duties:
Here Locke deduces the power that one man may have over another; community could not exist if transgressors were not punished. Every wrongdoer places himself in "a state of war." Here is the difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which men, says Locke, have confounded alluding probably to Hobbes's notion of the lawlessness of human society in the original condition.
Then follows "Struggle for Existence" a principle which we experimentally know to be true and cogent bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbes's theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more internecine bringing in thousandfold confirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine that population tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharp preventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or a thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and so sedulously provided for ever comes to anything, under ordinary circumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail, and the weaker and ill-favored must perish; and then follows, as naturally as one sheep follows another, the chapter on "Natural Selection," Darwin's cheval de bataille, which is very much the Napoleonic doctrine that Providence favors the strongest battalions that, since many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, those individuals and those variations which possess any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long-run sure to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren.
The Brain of Man is not able to invent any thing that tends to Laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only Witty in my self, but the Cause that Wit is in other Men. Sec. 13. Thomas Hobbes's 'Human Nature' was published in 1650. John Dennis was at this time a leading critic of the French school, to whom Pope afterwards attached lasting ridicule. No. 48.
This kind of necessity is happy and desirable, when one is prompted by good reasons to act as one does; but necessity blind and absolute would subvert piety and morality. There is more reason in Mr. Hobbes's discourse when he admits that our actions are in our power, so that we do that which we will when we have the power to do it, and when there is no hindrance.
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