Paris. He was welcomed back into the scientific coterie about
Mersenne, and forthwith had the task assigned him of criticizing
the Meditations of Descartes, which had been sent from Holland,
before publication, to Mersenne with the author’s request for
criticism from the most different points of view. Hobbes was
soon ready with the remarks that were printed as “Third”
among the six (later seven) sets of “Objections” appended,
with “Replies” from Descartes, to the Meditations, when
published shortly afterwards in 1641 (reprinted in L.W. v.
249-274). About the same time also Mersenne sent to Descartes,
as if they came from a friend in England, another set of objections
which Hobbes had to offer on various points in the scientific
treatises, especially the Dioptrics, appended by Descartes to
his Discourse on Method in 1637; to which Descartes replied
without suspecting the common authorship of the two sets.
The result was to keep the two thinkers apart rather than bring
them together. Hobbes was more eager to bring forward his
own philosophical and physical ideas than careful to enter into
the full meaning of another’s thought; and Descartes was too
jealous, and too confident in his conclusions to bear with this
kind of criticism. He was very curt in his replies to Hobbes’s
philosophical objections, and broke off all correspondence on
the physical questions, writing privately to Mersenne that he
had grave doubts of the Englishman’s good faith in drawing
him into controversy (L.W. v. 277-307).
Meanwhile Hobbes had his thoughts too full of the political theory which the events of the last years had ripened within him to settle, even in Paris, to the orderly composition of his works. Though connected in his own mind with his view of human nature and of nature generally, the political theory, as he always declared, could stand by itself. Also, while he may have hoped at this time to be able to add much (though he never did) to the sketch of his doctrine of Man contained in the unpublished “little treatise,” he might extend, but could hardly otherwise modify, the sketch he had there given of his carefully articulated theory of Body Politic. Possibly, indeed, before that sketch was written early in 1640, he may, under pressure of the political excitement, have advanced no small way in the actual composition of the treatise De Cive, the third section of his projected system. In any case, it was upon this section, before the others, that he set to work in Paris; and before the end of 1641 the book, as we know from the date of the dedication (November 1), was finished. Though it was forthwith printed in the course of the year 1642, he was content to circulate a limited number of copies privately[1]; and when he found his work received with applause (it was praised even by Descartes), he seems to have taken this recognition of his philosophical achievement as an additional reason for deferring publication till the earlier works of the system were completed. Accordingly, for the next three or four years, he remained steadily at work, and nothing appeared from him in public except a short treatise on optics (Tractatus opticus, L.W. v. 217–248) included in the collection of scientific tracts published by Mersenne under the title Cogitata physico-mathematica in 1644, and a highly compressed statement of his psychological application of the doctrine of motion (L.W. v. 309–318), incorporated with Mersenne’s Ballistica, published in the same year. Thus or otherwise he had become sufficiently known by 1645 to be chosen as a referee, with Descartes, Roberval and others, in the famous controversy between John Pell (q.v.) and the Dane Longomontanus (q.v.) over that problem of the squaring of the circle which was seen later on to have such a fatal charm for himself. But though about this time he had got ready all or most of the materials for his fundamental work on Body, not even now was he able to make way with its composition, and when he returned to it after a number of years, he returned a different man.
The Civil War had broken out in 1642, and the royalist cause began to decline from the time of the defeat at Marston Moor, in the middle of 1644. Then commenced an exodus of the king’s friends. Newcastle himself, who was a cousin of Hobbes’s late patron and to whom he dedicated the “little treatise” of 1640, found his way to Paris, and was followed by a stream of fugitives, many of whom were known to Hobbes. The sight of these exiles made the political interest once more predominant in Hobbes, and before long the revived feeling issued in the formation of a new and important design. It first showed itself in the publication of the De cive, of which the fame, but only the fame, had extended beyond the inner circle of friends and critics who had copies of the original impression. Hobbes now entrusted it, early in 1646, to his admirer, the Frenchman Samuel de Sorbière, by whom it was seen through the Elzevir press at Amsterdam in 1647—having previously inserted a number of notes in reply to objections, and also a striking preface, in the course of which he explained its relation to the other parts of the system not yet forthcoming, and the (political) occasion of its having been composed and being now published before them.[2] So hopeless, meanwhile, was he growing of being able to return home that, later on in the year, he was on the point of leaving Paris to take up his abode in the south with a French friend,[3] when he was engaged “by the month” as mathematical instructor to the young prince of Wales, who had come over from Jersey about the month of July. This Leviathan. engagement lasted nominally from 1646 to 1648 when Charles went to Holland. Thus thrown more than ever into the company of the exiled royalists, it was then, if not earlier, that he conceived his new design of bringing all his powers of thought and expression to bear upon the production of an English book that should set forth his whole theory of civil government in relation to the political crisis resulting from the war. The De cive, presently to be published, was written in Latin for the learned, and gave the political theory without its foundation in human nature. The unpublished treatise of 1640 contained all or nearly all that he had to tell concerning human nature, but was written before the terrible events of the last years had disclosed how men might still be urged by their anti-social passions back into the abyss of anarchy. There was need of an exposition at once comprehensive, incisive and popular. The State, it now seemed to Hobbes, might be regarded as a great artificial man or monster (Leviathan), composed of men, with a life that might be traced from its generation through human reason under pressure of human needs to its dissolution through civil strife proceeding from human passions. This, we may suppose, was the presiding conception from the first, but the design may have been variously modified in the three or four years of its execution. Before the end, in 1650–1651, it is plain that he wrote in direct reference to the greatly changed aspect of affairs in England. The king being dead, and the royalist cause appearing to be hopelessly lost, he did not scruple, in closing the work with a general “Review and Conclusion,” to raise the question of the subject’s right to change allegiance when a former sovereign’s power to protect was irrecoverably gone. Also he took advantage of the rule of the Commonwealth to indulge much more freely than he might have otherwise dared in rationalistic criticism of religious doctrines; while, amid the turmoil of sects, he could the more forcibly urge that the preservation of social order, when again firmly restored, must depend on the assumption by the civil power of the right
- ↑ The book, of which the copies are rare (one in Dr Williams’s library in London and one in the Bodleian), was printed in quarto size (Paris, 1642), with a pictorial title-page (not afterwards reproduced) of scenes and figures illustrating its three divisions, “Libertas,” “Imperium,” “Religio.” The title Elementorum philosophiae sectio tertia, De Cive, expresses its relation to the unwritten sections, which also comes out in one or two back-references in the text.
- ↑ L.W. ii. 133–134. In this first public edition (12mo), the title was changed to Elementa philosophica de cive, the references in the text to the previous sections being omitted. The date of the dedication to the young earl of Devonshire was altered from 1641 to 1646.
- ↑ Described as “nobilis Languedocianus” in Vit.; doubtless the same with the “Dominus Verdusius, nobilis Aquitanus,” to whom was dedicated the Exam. et emend. math. hod. (L.W. iv.) in 1660. Du Verdus was one of Hobbes’s profoundest admirers and most frequent correspondents in later years; there are many of his letters among Hobbes’s papers at Hardwick.
