Fluent Essays

A Question of Interpretation Should we view Hobbes’ Leviathan as: A Descriptive work? Explaining how the world is A Normative work? Explaining how the world should be How might the answer to this question impact our understanding of Hobbes? Video links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aALy_TI__IE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zDmM5zahro&feature=emb_logo Hobbes Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Ed ted1 with by Edwin CLirley http://www.cvisiontech.com Hbbes http://www.cvisiontech.com Leviathan http://www.cvisiontech.com http://www.cvisiontech.com THOMAS HOBBES Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Edited, with Introduction and Notes by Edwin Curley Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge http://www.cvisiontech.com Copyright © 1994 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in Canada 12 11 10 09 8 9 10 11 12 13 Cover design by Listenberger and Associates Text design by Dan Kirklin For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana, 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1 679. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 I Thomas Hobbes: edited, with introduction and notes, by Edwin Curle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 0-87220-178-3 (cloth) - ISBN O-87220-177-5 (pbk.) 1. Political science-Early works to 1800. 2. State, The. I. Curley, E. M. (Edwin M.), 1937 . II. Title. JC153.H65 1994 320. 1-dc20 93-49690 CIP ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-178-1 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-177-4 (pbk.) Adobe ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-486-4 http://www.cvisiontech.com Contents Introduction to Hobbes' Leviathan viii Biographical Materials xlvii I. Chronology of the Life of Hobbes xlviii II. Hobbes'VerseAutobiography liv III. Excerpts from Hobbes' Prose Autobiography lxiv IV. Excerpts from Aubrey's Life of Hobbes lxv Bibliography lxxi Purposes and Features of This Edition lxxiii Acknowledgments lxxvi LEVIATHAN Letter Dedicatory The Introduction 3 PART I: OF MAN i Of Sense 6 ii Of Imagination 7 iii Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations 12 iv Of Speech 15 y Of Reason, and Science 22 vi Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions, Commonly Called the Passions, and the Speeches by Which They Are Expressed 27 vii Of the Ends, or Resolutions of Discourse 35 viii OftheVirtues Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects 38 ix Of the Several Subjects of Knowledge 47 ix On the Classification of the Sciences (OL) 49 x Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthiness 50 xi Of the Difference of Manners 57 V http://www.cvisiontech.com Contents xii Of Religion 63 xiii Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery 74 xiv Of the First and Second Natural Laws and of Contracts 79 xv Of Other Laws of Nature 89 xvi Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated 101 PART II: OF COMMONWEALTH xvii Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Commonwealth 106 xviii Ofthe Rights of Sovereigns by Institution 110 xix Of the Several Kinds of Commonwealth by Institution and of Succession to the Sovereign Power 118 xx Of Dominion Paternal and Despotical 127 xxi Of the Liberty of Subjects 136 xxii Of Systems Subject, Political, and Private 146 xxiii Of the Public Ministers of Sovereign Power 155 xxiv Of the Nutrition and Procreation of a Commonwealth 159 xxv Of Counsel 165 xxvi Of Civil Laws 172 xxvii Of Crimes, Excuses, and Extenuations 190 xxviii Of Punishments and Rewards 203 xxix Of those things that Weaken or tend to the Dissolution of a Commonwealth 210 xxx Of the Office of the Sovereign Representative 219 xxxi Of the Kingdom of God by Nature 233 PART III: OF A CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH xxxii Of the Principles of Christian Politics 245 xxxiii Of the Number, Antiquity, Scope, Authority, and Interpreters of the Books of Holy Scripture 250 xxxiv Ofthe Signification of Spirit, Angel, and Inspiration in the Books of Holy Scripture 261 xxxv Of the Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God, of Holy, Sacred, and Sacrament 271 xxxvi Of the Word of God, and of Prophets 278 xxxvii Of Miracles, and their Use 293 xxxviii Of the Signification in Scripture of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, The World to Come, and Redemption 301 vi http://www.cvisiontech.com Contents xxxix Of the Signification in Scripture of the Word Church 314 xl Of the Rights of the Kingdom of God, in Abraham, Moses, the High-Priests, and the Kings OfJudah 317 xli Of the Office of our Blessed Saviour 326 xlii Of Power Ecclesiastical 333 xliii Of what is Necessary for a Man's Reception into the Kingdom of Heaven 397 PART IV: OF THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS xliv Of Spiritual Darkness from Misinterpretation of Scripture 411 xlv Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles 435 xlvi Of Darkness from Vain Philosophy and Fabulous Traditions 453 xlvi Of the Darkness from Vain Philosophy (OL) 468 xlvii Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness and to whom it accrueth 477 xlvii Of those who profited from this darkness (OL) 484 A Review and Conclusion 489 Latin Appendix 498 A Note Regarding Chapter xlii 549 Glossary 550 Index of Subjects 560 Index of Proper Names 573 Index of Biblical Citations 575 vi' http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction to Hobbes' Leviathan Hobbes has suffered a fate shared by many classic authors. His greatest work is more often quoted than carefully and thoroughly read. There are reasons for this. Hobbes took pains to be quotable, sometimes at the cost of obscuring his message. And Leviathan is a very long book, not all of whose parts are obviously relevant to its central purpose. My aim here is to give you some sense of how the parts fit together and to ward off misunder- standings, which make criticism and rejection seem easy. A brief summary of Hobbes' argument will suggest both why we still read him, and why few accept what they read. Hobbes contends that by nature people are sufficiently unsocial that if they had to live without an effective government to check them, they would find themselves in a "war of all against all." But people are also sufficiently dependent on one an- other that in such a war everyone's life would be, in the book's most famous phrase, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." This alternative is so horrible that life under any effective government would be preferable to it, no matter what the form of that government. The same features of human nature which would make life in the state of nature so miserable also make it impossible for any government to be effective if it does not possess abso- lute power. To try to limit the powers of government by a constitution or by dividing authority among different branches of government is to invite the anarchy and misery of the state of nature. So the subject of an absolute government should prefer that form of government to any other and give it "simple obedience." If you are a citizen in an effective dictatorship, which makes your life secure from both internal and external threats, with- out allowing you any say in how you are governed, presumably you are morally required to obey that government and give it your support. If this is Hobbes' conclusion, most of us, I suppose, would find it unacceptable. But Hobbes' argument can feel very forceful. Let's analyze its structure in finer detail. LEVIATHAN as a scientific treatise. Leviathan begins with topics appar- ently far removed from the subject of political obedience: the nature of vi" http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction thought, language, and science. Why start this way? Like Descartes, Hobbes thinks ofhimselfas providing new foundations for philosophy, in his case, as making civil philosophy, the knowledge ofthe rules oflife in society, scientific for the first time.1 To claim this he must give some ac- count ofscience. He takes as his model geometry, "the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind." (iv, 12) One thing which makes geometry scientific is that geometricians first settle on the meanings of the terms they use. Once they have done this correctly, all they have to do further is to calculate the consequences of these definitions (y, 17). This may seem an unpromising conception of science. Even if we ac- cept that civil philosophy can be made like geometry, readers who know Euclid's Elements, with its apparatus of definitions, axioms, and formal proofs of propositions, might wonder why Hobbes assumes that defini- tions are the only principles we need to treat as requiring no argument. The answer seems to be that Hobbes thinks the principles typically taken as axioms are in fact demonstrable from definitions; pupils treat them as not requiring demonstration only out of deference to their teachers, per- mitting them to get quickly to more challenging matters (EW VII, 199- 200). So when we encounter in Leviathan a sentence like "Of the voluntary actions ofevery man, the object is some good to himself" (xiv, 8), we should not be surprised to find that it seems to follow from Hobbes' definitions of "voluntary action" (vi, 53) and "good" (vi, 7). That's how it should be in a scientific treatise. This conception of science makes a lot rest on the definitions. Granted that they are supposed to be the starting points of demonstrations, it still seems fair to ask why we should accept these definitions, particularly if they seem controversial. Midway through Leviathan Hobbes will claim that his definitions of the words essential to political reasoning are "universally agreed on."2 Unfortunately, this is false advertising: it's not true, and it seems Hobbes must have known that it wasn't true. Earlier he had written that a man who aspires to true knowledge must "examine the definitions of former authors and either . . . correct them, where they are negligently set down, or . . . make them himself." (iv, 13) Frequently he offers his own definitions as explicit corrections of those commonly given. Examples in- clude his definition of "the will" (vi, 53), or his definition of "justice" (xv, 2-3). When he defines the terms "right of nature" and "law of nature," he complains that writers on this subject tend to confuse the two notions (xiv, 1. Cf. the Epistle Dedicatory to De corpore, EW, I, ix. (For information about abbreviations and works cited in shortened form, see the Bibliography, p. lxxi.) 2. L xxxii, 1; but cf. xxxiv, 1. ix http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction 1, 3). Similarly, when he discusses the true liberty of the subject and the distinction between counsels and commands, he complains that previous writers have badly misunderstood these concepts (xxi, 1-10; xxv, 1). These definitions certainly involve terms essential to his political reasoning.3 IfHobbes deliberately adopts definitions which depart from those com- monly given, there must be some stipulation in his definitions. He aims to reform usage, not merely to report it. But he does not think it entirely arbitrary what definition we choose. To construct a science we must choose our definitions "aptly" (y, 17). One test of the aptness ofa definition seems to be that it should make the right sentences true by definition. An interesting case is Hobbes' definition of "obligation" as arising when a man either abandons or grants away his right, and is then said to be obliged or bound not to hinder those to whom the right is granted or abandoned from the benefit of that right (xiv, 7). This makes it true by definition that all obligation arises from some act of the person whose obligation it is.4 Hobbes surely knew that many of his contemporaries would have thought that proposition not even true, much less true by definition. Otherwise he would not have felt it necessary to argue that the parent's dominion over his child (and conversely, the child's obligation to the parent) depends on the child's consent (xx, 4). And Hobbes himself seems not to be consistent in following his own definition (e.g. in xi, 7). But I believe he thought it would clarify our political thinking if we understood this concept in his terms.5 Another example is Hobbes' account of the distinction between reli- gion and superstition. In vi, 36, he makes this depend on what the authori- ties permit to be taught. But in the preceding century the official religion of England had changed frequently: from Roman Catholicism to 3. Sometimes the divergence between Hobbes' definitions and more conven- tional definitions is not so explicit. E.g., his definition of "felicity" (vi, 58) implic- itly rejects the scholastic-aristotelian conception of happiness, which implies that there is one ultimate end for all human beings (cf. xi, 1). Similarly, his account of conscience challenges traditional religious views of that concept (vii, 4). Even when doing geometry, Hobbes does not uncritically accept the standard Euclidean definitions. See his Six Lessons to the Savilian Professors, ch. i, EW VII. Cf. also L xxv, 1. 4. Cf. xiv, 7, with xxi, 10. Hobbes here states his position more cautiously than he had in DCv vüi, 3, where he held that all obligation is based on contract. L xxi, lo, leaves room for obligations based on transfers of right which are not mutual. 5. To accept Hobbes' definition is, in effect, to exclude the idea that one person might have an obligation to another based merely on the existence of a relation between them, independently of any voluntary act on anyone's part. Prima facie, it excludes the possibility of man's having an obligation to God except by covenant. http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction Anglicanism under Henry VIII; back to Romanism under Mary; back to Anglicanism under Elizabeth. Many of Hobbes' contemporaries feared a return to Romanism under Charles I, who had appointed, in William Laud, an Archbishop of Canterbury who made his puritan subjects very uncomfortable. To make the distinction between religion and superstition depend on the religious preferences (and political needs) of the ruler is not to use these terms the way people generally do. Surely Hobbes knows this. Presbyterians who thought Catholicism idolatrous would not concede that the political authority ofa Catholic sovereign could make their faith super- stitious. Later in Leviathan (xi, 26) Hobbes gives an even more relativistic ac- count of the distinction between religion and superstition. My fear of things invisible, and that of those who worship as I do, is religion;yours, if different from mine, is superstition. This makes the distinction depend, not on what worship the state permits, but on the individual speaker's beliefs. Hobbes seems to intend the second account as a sardonic comment on ordinary usage. He gives the first a more privileged argumentative po- sition, in a list of definitions coming right after the preliminary materials on the nature of thought, language and science. I suggest we think of the first account as a theoretical redefinition, motivated by the extreme subjec- tivity (and divisiveness) of ordinary usage, as reflected in the second ac- count. One test of a set of theoretical redefinitions will be the pragmatic effec- tiveness of the system constructed on their basis: Science is the knowledge of consequences and dependence of one fact upon another, by which, out of what we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like another time. (y, 17) In civil philosophy an effective system must achieve the ends for which we form civil society, among which peace will be prominent. So Hobbes' re- forming definition of religion is to be accepted because it is the definition most conducive to civil harmony. It is from experience that we learn what ends we form civil society for. That's one reason why Hobbes acknowl- edges that his argument depends partly on experience.6 Before he discov- ered geometry, he translated Thucydides, and what he learned about human nature from the close study of Greek history left a deep imprint on his later work. We will see many examples as we proceed with our account of the argument. 6. L xxxii, 1. Note, however, that this features only in the English version. xi http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction LEVIATHAN as a subversive work. One recurring theme in Hobbes is that much of what passes for knowledge in the schools is literally nonsense, language which expresses no genuine thought, and is without meaning (i, 5; ii, 9: iii, 12: xlvi, 14-30). On Hobbes' theory of the mental, thought consists of images, the residue in our minds of sensations produced by external objects acting on our bodies (ii, 2). To conceive something is to have an image ofit, which requires having had a prior sensation ofit. Con- sequently, what we cannot sense, we cannot imagine, or conceive, or talk meaningfully about. In particular, since God, according to both the scho- lastics and Descartes, is an infinite being, and hence, not one we can sense or imagine, whatever we say about God cannot signify any conception of God in our minds. We can make true negative claims about God (e.g., when we say that he is infinite or eternal), but if we say anything which looks like a positive statement about God, what we are really saying is something about ourselves, viz, that we intend to honor him (xxxi, 28). This is a controversial doctrine. It has precedents in philosophers who are honored as fathers of the church, such as John of Damascus.7 But the main line of scholastic thought, as represented by Aquinas, was not pre- pared to go so far, holding that, while we cannot know God's essence, we can make some true positive claims about God, which are at least analogous in meaning to similar claims we might make about man. (See Summa theologiae Ja, qu. 13) Hobbes does not consistently adopt a negative theology. Under pres- sure, he will sometimes say positive things about God. But they often turn out to be highly unorthodox. On his view the phrase "incorporeal sub- stance" is meaningless because it attempts to combine two terms whose meanings are contradictory (iv, 21). So, necessarily, all substances are cor- poreal (contrary to what Descartes and Aquinas had taught, that the hu- man soul is an incorporeal substance). This raises awkward questions about God. In an appendix added in the Latin edition of Leviathan, Hobbes acknowledges, as an implication of his teaching, that he must either deny that God exists or affirm that God is a body. Faced with this choice, he affirms that God is a body and attempts to defend the orthodoxy of this position (iii, 6; OL III, 561). There is precedent for it among the early Church fathers, as Hobbes points out. But he knew that the articles which define the doctrine of the Church of England insist on the incorporeality of God (as he had pointed out himself at i, 95; OL III, 537-538). That being 7. Whose theory Hobbes will (rather surprisingly) criticize as atheistic in the Appendix to the Latin version of Leviathan. See iii, 6 (QL III, 562), cf. xlvi, 12. xl' http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction the church whose teaching he claims to accept,8 we have a puzzle. Many ofHobbes' contemporaries accused him of atheism because they found many heresies in Leviathan. Most twentieth-century interpreters have read him as a sincere, if somewhat unorthodox, theist. Certainly, ifwe read him as an atheist, we must discount his affirmations that, however ignorant we may be of God's nature, we can at least know by natural reason that God exists.9 Whether we should discount those affirmations is a ques- tion readers of Leviathan must answer for themselves. In deciding, keep the following facts in mind. (1) The Anglican Church is not eccentric in holding that God is incor- poreal. The leading theologians of what (in Hobbes' day) were the major alternatives within Christianity-Aquinas for the Roman Church and Calvin for the Church of Geneva-agreed about this.1° There are reasons for this consensus. To claim that God is a body raises problems Hobbes never addresses. If God is a body, what is his relation to other bodies? To say he is identical with the totality of bodies risks incurring charges of atheism (xxxi, 15). But ifwe say that he is one body among others, we seem to say that he is finite, which again may lead to charges of atheism (xxxi, 18). Perhaps because Hobbes knew this was a highly sensitive issue he declined to acknowledge his commitment to God's corporeality until, late in life, he published Leviathan in Latin in a foreign country. (2) To question Hobbes' sincerity in professing theism is not necessar- ily to charge him with any moral fault. In the England of his day the pen- alties for openly denying less central doctrines than the existence of God could be severe enough to make even a bold man think twice, and the boundaries between what could and could not be published were fluid. In 1648, when the Presbyterians controlled Parliament, they passed legisla- tion making it a capital offense to deny the trinity, or the divinity ofJesus, 8. In the biographical materials, see PA [3], [5], and Aubrey [11]. 9. Hobbes affirms this more clearly in other works than in Leviathan itself. Cf. ELI, xi, l-2, or DCv ii, 21; xiv, 19; xv, 14. In Leviathan xi, 25, he will say that our curiosity and consequent inquiry into natural causes necessarily incline us to be- lieve in a first cause, whom men call God. This is not quite to claim that God's existence is demonstrable. In DCr xxvi, 1, Hobbes implies that God's existence is not demonstrable, that we must accept it on faith. He says that explicitly in TWDME, xxvi. There is no clear chronological development in Hobbes' teaching on this issue. He vacillates. 10. For Aquinas, see Summa theologiae I, qu. 3, art. 1; for Calvin, Institutes I, xi, 2. Some Biblical texts suggest God's corporeality, but the dominant tendency in Christian theology, at least since the time of Augustine, has been to interpret them figuratively (cf. De trinîtate I, i; VIII, ii). xiii http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction or the inspiration of the Bible, or the last judgment. You could receive an indeterminate prison sentence for holding that a man is bound to believe no more than he can comprehend by reason. By the time Hobbes pub- lished Leviathan the Independents were in control; they had a more mod- erate conception of blasphemy, but there were limits to their toleration. It was still possible to go to jail for denying the immorality of such offenses as murder, adultery and incest, or denying the existence of heaven or hell. In 1652 Parliament ordered the burning of the Racovian Catechism, which defined the central tenets of the Socinians, a unitarian sect.1' After the Restoration, when the Anglican bishops were again in control, Parliament set up a committee to inquire into books which might tend to atheism, naming Leviathan as one which would require their special attention. Hobbes' friend Aubrey reports that he took this threat seriously enough to burn some of his papers.12 When he subsequently published the Latin Leviathan, he took care to alter the passages in the English version which had led to charges of denying the trinity (see xvi, 12, and xlii, 3), and in the appendix he devoted considerable attention to the Council of Nicaea, which had first defined the position of the Church on the relation of God the Father to God the Son. Anyone interested in determining Hobbes' religious views should read that appendix with care. (3) In reading Leviathan we should also try to understand why many of his contemporaries reacted so strongly against it. One critic was the Earl of Clarendon, a royalist, who wrote a caustic, but acute attack on Hobbes' book. Hobbes had complained that because the schools were ig- norant of the nature of the imagination and its causes, they passed on much traditional nonsense about it. Among the teachings he criticized was their doctrine that "good thoughts are blown (inspired) into a man by God, and evil thoughts by the devil." (ii, 9) This prompted Clarendon to complain that it is some part of his art to introduce, upon the sudden, instances and remarks, which are the more grateful [agreeable], and make the more impression on his reader, by the unexpectedness of meeting them where somewhat else is talked of. . . No man would have imagined that in a philosophical discourse of dreams, and fairies, and ghosts, and goblins, exorcisms, crosses and holy water, he would have taken occasion to 11. See W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, vol. III, From the convention of the Long Parliament to the Restoration, 1640-1660, Harvard UP, 1938. 12. In the biographical materials, see Aubrey [14]. xiv http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction have reproved Job for saying that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth men understanding Gob 32:8)) Clarendon warns us here to pay particular attention to Hobbes' apparent digressions. Hobbes does not explicitly reprove Job. But by assimilating the doctrine of divine inspiration to such superstitions as the belief in witchcraft and ghosts, he does tend to bring orthodox doctrine into dis- credit. There may be other examples at vii, 7, and xii, 20. A realistic theory of human nature? Hobbes' spirit seems, in one key re- spect, to be like Machiavelli's before him: to act wisely in our dealings with others, we must not entertain any illusions about human goodness.14 This policy is sometimes called "realism." In Hobbes it often takes the form of an egoism which sounds so extreme that it is very vulnerable to counterexamples: e.g., "of the voluntary actions of every man, the object is some good to himself." (xiv, 8; cf. xiv, 29, xv, 4, 16, & 31, xxvii, 8)Is this really a realistic assumption to make? Does no one ever act for the good of others? or out of respect for justice? Hobbes does not deny the existence of benevolent or conscientious ac- tions, and he probably does not think that they always have an ulterior motive, though he is apt to see self-interest in any act of charity. 15 But he certainly thinks that disinterested benevolence and action for the sake of duty are uncommon enough that political theory should not take much account of them. In L xv, 9, he says clearly enough that people may be moved to do what is just by the thought that they will benefit from doing it or by the thought that it is just. They earn the title of a just or righteous person in the rare case when they consistently act from the latter motiva- tion. Similarly in xix, 4, Hobbes shows that he does not think people will very often prefer the public interest to a conflicting private interest; but he concedes that sometimes they will. 16 Hobbes' egoism, then, is more moderate (and more defensible) than it 13. Edward Hyde, A Brief Vie,v and Survey of the dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes's Book Entitled Leviathan, Oxford, 1676, pp. 16-17. 14. Cf. The Prince, esp. ch. xv. I discuss the similarities and differences between Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza in "Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Khan," forthcoming in Don Garrett's Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 15. In the biographical materials, see Aubrey [16]. 16. Note that in this passage Hobbes takes a "private" interest to include, not only the person's self-interest as an individual, but also the interests of family, kin and friends. Similarly, in xiii, 7, he will hold that when men go to war for the sake of xv http://www.cvisiontech.com Introduction sometimes sounds. Why does Hobbes so often make it sound so extreme? The answer seems to lie in his conception of what a scientific treatment of political affairs ought to be)7 He chooses definitions of "voluntary action" (vi, 53) and "good" (vi, 7) intended to make it true by definition that when- ever we act voluntarily we are acting for the sake of (what we take to be) our own good. When we act voluntarily we are choosing what at the moment we most desire and, whatever that may be, that will be what at that moment we take to be our own good. Hobbes' definitions deliberately make egoism a tautology. But he thinks his choice apt because he thinks the total theory in which the definitions are embedded has pragmatic advantages. We see this motivation in Hobbes' most explicit defense against the charge of holding too pessimistic a view of human nature. In De cive, he had argued that without the restraint provided by fear of government, every man would distrust and dread every other man. In the preface to the second edition he replied to an objection to this principle: it would needs follow, not only that all men are evil (which perhaps, though it is a hard saying, yet we must grant, since it seems to be so clearly declared by holy writ),18 but also evil by nature (which cannot be granted without impiety).19 Hobbes replies that it does not follow even that all men are evil, much less that they are all evil by nature: even if the evil were fewer …