and show how unsatisfactory our author is when on metaphysical ground. It is hardly necessary to call attention to Cumberland's agreement with Descartes as to the origin of human error.
On the whole, it seems best to begin our examination of the system by considering the author's view of the nature of man and of society. We have seen that Hobbes regarded society as artificial. According to his view, it was made up of a certain number of mutually repellent atoms, each atom being the radically and unalterably egoistic individual. The 'contract' was a device by which the antagonistic wills of an indefinite number of self-seeking individuals gave place to the 'one will' of the sovereign. Cumberland pronounces emphatically against this view. When Hobbes likens men to 'wolves,' 'bears,' 'serpents,'[1] etc., he is guilty of libel against human nature. Referring to such remarks, our author says: "If they were true, it were evidently impossible to reduce such beasts of prey, always thirsting for the blood of their fellows, into a civil state."[2] The compact would avail nothing unless there were something in human nature that would make men abide by their promises. Cumberland might have added that Hobbes is not at liberty to make any ultimate appeal to reason in the matter,—even as showing what is for the individual's selfish interest,—for men learn what is 'good' for them, as well as what is 'right,' from the powers that be.
Hobbes had regarded the instinct of self-preservation, if not the conscious seeking of one's own pleasure, as the fundamental spring of human action. For Cumberland, on the other hand, sympathy is as much an attribute of human nature as a desire for one's own happiness. If this were not so, as is suggested above, society itself could not exist. To be sure, the author sometimes insists upon the pleasures of (a not too expensive) benevolence in a way to lead one to suspect that, after all, egoism may be at the basis of apparently disinterested conduct;[3] but such passages hardly need detract from the force of dis-
