the civil power behind the Laws of Nature, that which makes them properly 'laws,' but also it is that, and that alone, which gives them their content. It makes comparatively little difference what the Laws of Nature command or forbid, so long as it lies wholly with the civil power to define the terms used.
Some pages back it was seen that there was ambiguity in Hobbes's use of 'Right Reason.' In De corpore politico, we are told: "But this is certain, seeing Right Reason is not existent, the reason of some man or men must supply the place thereof."[1] In other words, the arbitrary use of civil power must make up for the lack of Right Reason in man. Again, in Leviathan,[2] "The unwritten Law of Nature ... is now become, of all laws, the most obscure, and has consequently the greatest need of able interpreters." But who should be the interpreter? Hobbes candidly remarks: "The interpretation of the Laws of Nature, in a commonwealth, dependeth not on the books of moral philosophy. ... That which I have written in this treatise concerning the moral virtues ... though it be evident truth, is not therefore presently a law; but because in all commonwealths in the world it is part of the civil law." No amount of valid reasoning can vindicate the Laws of Nature. Nothing but their presence in the statute-books of the commonwealths of the world can do that. And the reason why they can be said to be so universally recognized is that the same power, in each particular case, that compels obedience to them, also practically furnishes them with their content. It may also be noticed that Hobbes has proceeded deductively,—in appearance, at least,—in arriving at his Laws of Nature. If presence in the statute-book be the only test, he should have proceeded inductively. The utter confusion which we find here requires no comment. The Laws of Nature, with which our philosopher began, have vanished into thin air. We learn what is good for us as well as what is right, what is true as well as what is just, from the powers that be. There would be no place for a theorist like Hobbes himself in his own ideal state.
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