Chapter XXIII: Part 23

[357] This he pictures in a strange engraving prefixed to his book,
and representing a crowned figure, whose description will be
found in the note, p. 440. It is remarkable that when Hobbes
adopted the principle that the _ecclesiastical_ should be
united with the _sovereign_ power, he was then actually
producing that portentous change which had terrified Luther
and Calvin; who, even in their day, were alarmed by a new kind
of political Antichrist; that "Caesarean Popery" which Stubbe
so much dreaded, and which I have here noticed, p. 358.
Luther predicted that as the pope had at times seized on the
political sword, so this "Caesarean Popery," under the pretence
of policy, would grasp the ecclesiastical crosier, to form a
_political church_. The curious reader is referred to Wolfius
_Lectionum Memorabilium et reconditarum_, vol. ii. cent. x. p.
987. Calvin, in his commentary on Amos, has also a remarkable
passage on this _political church_, animadverting on Amaziah,
the priest, who would have proved the Bethel worship
warrantable, because settled by the royal authority: "It is
the king's chapel." Amos, vii. 13. Thus Amaziah, adds Calvin,
assigns the king a double function, and maintains it is in his
power to transform religion into what shape he pleases, while
he charges Amos with disturbing the public repose, and
encroaching on the royal prerogative. Calvin zealously
reprobates the conduct of those inconsiderate persons, "who
give the civil magistrate a sovereignty in religion, and
dissolve the Church into the State." The supremacy in Church
and State, conferred on Henry VIII., was the real cause of
these alarms; but the passage of domination raged not less
fiercely in Calvin than in Henry VIII.; in the enemy of kings
than in kings themselves. Were the _forms_ of religion more
celestial from the sanguinary hands of that tyrannical
reformer than from those of the reforming tyrant? The system
of our philosopher was, to lay all the wild spirits which have
haunted us in the chimerical shapes of _nonconformity_. I have
often thought, after much observation on our Church history
since the Reformation, that _the devotional feelings_ have not
been so much concerned in this bitter opposition to the
National Church as the rage of dominion, the spirit of vanity,
the sullen pride of sectarism, and the delusions of madness.

[358] Hobbes himself tells us that "some bishops are content to hold
their authority from _the king's letters patents_; others will
needs have somewhat more they know not what of _divine
rights_, &c., _not acknowledging the power of the king_. It is
a relic still remaining of the venom of popish ambition,
lurking in that _seditious distinction and division_ between
the power _spiritual_ and _civil_. The safety of the State
does not depend on the safety of the clergy, but on the
_entireness of the sovereign power_."--_Considerations upon
the Reputation, &c., of Mr. Hobbes_, p. 44.

[359] This royal observation is recorded in the "Sorberiana." Sorbiere
gleaned the anecdote during his residence in England. By the
"Aubrey Papers," which have been published since I composed
this article, I find that Charles II. was greatly delighted by
the wit and repartees of Hobbes, who was at once bold and
happy in making his stand amidst the court wits. The king,
whenever he saw Hobbes, who had the privilege of being
admitted into the royal presence, would exclaim, "Here comes
the bear to be baited." This did not allude to his native
roughness, but the force of his resistance when attacked.

[360] See "Mr. Hobbes's State of Nature considered, in a Dialogue
between Philautus and Timothy." The second dialogue is not
contained in the eleventh edition of Eachard's Works, 1705,
which, however, was long after his death, so careless were the
publishers of those days of their authors' works. The literary
bookseller, Tom Davies, who ruined himself by giving good
editions of our old authors, has preserved it in his own.

[361] "A Discourse Concerning Irony," 1729, p. 13.

[362] Men of very opposite principles, but aiming at the same purpose,
are reduced to a dilemma, by the spirit of party in
controversy. Sir Robert Filmer, who wrote against "The
Anarchy of a Limited Monarchy," and "Patriarcha," to
re-establish _absolute power_, derived it from the scriptural
accounts of the patriarchal state. But Sir Robert and Hobbes,
though alike the advocates for supremacy of power, were as
opposite as possible on theological points. Filmer had the
same work to perform, but he did not like the instruments of
his fellow-labourer. His manner of proceeding with Hobbes
shows his dilemma: he refutes the doctrine of the "Leviathan,"
while he confesses that Hobbes is right in the main. The
philosopher's reasonings stand on quite another foundation
than the scriptural authorities deduced by Filmer. The result
therefore is, that Sir Robert had the trouble to confute the
very thing he afterwards had to establish!

[363] It may be curious to some of my readers to preserve that part of
Hobbes's Letter to Anthony Wood, in the rare tract of his
"Latin Life," in which, with great calmness, the philosopher
has painfully collated the odious interpolations. All that was
written in favour of the morals of Hobbes--of the esteem in
which foreigners held him--of the royal patronage, &c., were
maliciously erased. Hobbes thus notices the amendments of
Bishop Fell:--

"Nimirum ubi mihi tu ingenium attribuis _Sobrium_, ille,
deleto _Sobrio_, substituit _Acri_.

"Ubi tu scripseras _Libellum scripsit de Cive_,
interposuit ille inter _Libellum_ et _de Cive, rebus
permiscendis natum_, de _Cive_, quod ita manifeste falsum
est, &c.

"Quod, ubi tu de libro meo _Leviathan_ scripsisti, primo,
quod esset, _Vicinis gentibus notissimus_ interposuit
ille, _publico damno_. Ubi tu scripseras, _scripsit
librum_, interposuit ille _monstrosissimum_."

A noble confidence in his own genius and celebrity breaks out
in this Epistle to Wood. "In leaving out all that you have
said of my character and reputation, the dean has injured you,
but cannot injure me; for long since has my fame winged its
way to a station from which it can never descend." One is
surprised to find such a Miltonic spirit in the contracted
soul of Hobbes, who in his own system might have cynically
ridiculed the passion for fame, which, however, no man felt
more than himself. In his controversy with Bishop Bramhall
(whose book he was cautious not to answer till ten years after
it was published, and his adversary was no more, pretending he
had never heard of it till then!) he breaks out with the same
feeling:--"What my works are, he was no fit judge; but now he
has provoked me, I will say thus much of them, that neither
he, if he had lived, could--nor I, if I would, can--extinguish
the light which is set up in the world by the greatest part of
them."

It is curious to observe that an idea occurred to Hobbes,
which some authors have attempted lately to put into practice
against their critics--to prosecute them in a court of law;
but the knowledge of mankind was one of the liveliest
faculties of Hobbes's mind; he knew well to what account
common minds place the injured feelings of authorship; yet
were _a jury of literary men_ to sit in judgment, we might
have a good deal of business in the court for a long time; the
critics and the authors would finally have a very useful body
of reports and pleadings to appeal to; and the public would be
highly entertained and greatly instructed. On this attack of
Bishop Fell, Hobbes says--"I might perhaps have an action on
the case against him, if it were worth my while; but juries
seldom consider the Quarrels of Authors as of much moment."

[364] Bayle has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show
that Hobbes might fear that a certain combination of atoms
agitating his brain might so disorder his mind that it would
expose him to spectral visions; and being very timorous, and
distrusting his imagination, he was averse to be left alone.
Apparitions happen frequently in dreams, and they may happen,
even to an incredulous man, when awake, for reading and
hearing of them would revive their images--these images, adds
Bayle, might play him some unlucky trick! We are here
astonished at the ingenuity of a disciple of Pyrrho, who in
his inquiries, after having exhausted all human evidence,
seems to have demonstrated what he hesitates to believe!
Perhaps the truth was, that the sceptical Bayle had not
entirely freed himself from the traditions which were then
still floating from the fireside to the philosopher's closet:
he points his pen, as AEneas brandished his sword at the
Gorgons and Chimeras that darkened the entrance of Hell;
wanting the admonitions of the sibyl, he would have rushed
in--

_Et frustra ferro diverberet umbras._

[365] The papers of Aubrey confirm my suggestion. I shall give the
words--"There was a report, and surely true, that in
parliament, not long after the king was settled, some of the
bishops made a motion to have the good old gentleman burned
for a heretique; which he hearing, feared that his papers
might be searched by their order, and he told me he had burned
part of them."--p. 612. When Aubrey requested Waller to write
verses on Hobbes, the poet said that he was afraid of the
Churchmen. Aubrey tells us--"I have often heard him say that
he was not afraid of _Sprights_, but afraid of being knocked
on the head for five or ten pounds which rogues might think he
had in his chamber." This reason given by Hobbes for his
frequent alarms was an evasive reply for too curious and
talkative an inquirer. Hobbes has not concealed the cause of
his terror in his metrical life--

"Tunc venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham,
Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat."

Dr. Dorislaus and Ascham had fallen under the daggers of
proscription. [The former was assassinated in Holland, whither
he had fled for safety.]

[366] It is said that Hobbes completely recanted all his opinions; and
proceeded so far as to declare that the opinions he had
published in his "Leviathan," were not his real sentiments,
and that he neither maintained them in public nor in private.
Wood gives this title to a work of his--"An Apology for
Himself and his Writings," but without date. Some have
suspected that this Apology, if it ever existed, was not his
own composition. Yet why not? Hobbes, no doubt, thought that
"The Leviathan" would outlast any recantation; and, after all,
that a recantation is by no means a refutation!--recantations
usually prove the force of authority, rather than the force of
conviction. I am much pleased with a Dr. Pocklington, who hit
the etymology of the word _recantation_ with the spirit.
Accused and censured, for a penance he was to make a
recantation, which he began thus:--"If _canto_ be to sing,
_recanto_ is to sing again:" so that he _re-chanted_ his
offensive principles by his _recantation_!

I suspect that the apology Wood alludes to was only a
republication of Hobbes's Address to the King, prefixed to the
"Seven Philosophical Problems," 1662, where he openly disavows
his opinions, and makes an apology for the "Leviathan." It is
curious enough to observe how he acts in this dilemma. It was
necessary to give up his opinions to the clergy, but still to
prove they were of an innocent nature. He therefore
acknowledges that "his theological notions are not his
opinions, but propounded with submission to the power
ecclesiastical, never afterwards having maintained them in
writing or discourse." Yet, to show the king that the regal
power incurred no great risk in them, he laid down one
principle, which could not have been unpleasing to Charles II.
He asserts, truly, that he never wrote against episcopacy;
"yet he is called an Atheist, or man of no religion, because
he has made the authority of the Church depend wholly upon the
regal power, which, I hope, your majesty will think is neither
Atheism nor Heresy." Hobbes considered the _religion_ of his
country as a subject of _law_, and not _philosophy_. He was
not for _separating_ the Church from the State; but, on the
contrary, for _joining them_ more closely. The bishops ought
not to have been his enemies; and many were not.

[367] In the MS. collection of the French contemporary, who personally
knew him, we find a remarkable confession of Hobbes. He said
of himself that "he sometimes made openings to let in light,
but that he could not discover his thoughts but by half-views:
like those who throw open the window for a short time, but
soon closing it, from the dread of the storm." _"Il disoit
qu'il faisoit quelquefois des ouvertures, mais qu'il ne
pouvoit decouvrir ses pensees qu'a-demi; qu'il imitoit ceux
qui ouvrent la fenetre pendant quelques momens, mais qui la
referment promptement de peur de l'orage."_--Lantiniana MSS.,
quoted by Joly in his volume of "Remarques sur Bayle."

[368] Could one imagine that the very head and foot of the stupendous
"Leviathan" bear the marks of the little artifices practised
for self by its author? This grave work is dedicated to
Francis Godolphin, a person whom its author had never seen,
merely to remind him of a certain legacy which that person's
brother had left to our philosopher. If read with this fact
before us, we may detect the concealed claim to the legacy,
which it seems was necessary to conceal from the Parliament,
as Francis Godolphin resided in England. It must be confessed
this was a miserable motive for dedicating a system of
philosophy which was addressed to all mankind. It discovers
little dignity. This secret history we owe to Lord Clarendon,
in his "Survey of the Leviathan," who adds another. The
postscript to the "Leviathan," which is only in the English
edition, was designed as an easy summary of the principles:
and his lordship adds, as a sly address to Cromwell, that he
might be induced to be master of them at once, and "as a pawn
of his new subject's allegiance." It is possible that Hobbes
might have anticipated the sovereign power which the _general_
was on the point of assuming in the _protectorship_. It was
natural enough, that Hobbes should deny this suggestion.

[369] The story his antagonist (Dr. Wallis) relates is perfectly in
character. Hobbes, to show the Countess of Devonshire his
attachment to life, declared that "were he master of all the
world to dispose of, he would give it to live one day." "But
you have so many friends to oblige, had you the world to
dispose of!" "Shall I be the better for that when I am dead?"
"No," repeated the sublime cynic, "I would give the whole
world to live one day." He asserted that "it was lawful to
make use of ill instruments to do ourselves good," and
illustrated it thus:--"Were I cast into a deep pit, and the
devil should put down his cloven foot, I would take hold of it
to be drawn out by it." It must be allowed this is a
philosophy which has a chance of being long popular; but it is
not that of another order of human beings! Hobbes would not,
like Curtius, have leaped into a "deep pit" for his country;
or, to drop the fable, have died for it in the field or on the
scaffold, like the Falklands, the Sidneys, the Montroses--all
the heroic brotherhood of genius! One of his last expressions,
when informed of the approaches of death, was--"I shall be
glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at." Everything
was seen in a little way by this great man, who, having
reasoned himself into an abject being, "licked the dust"
through life.

[370] In our country, Mandeville, Swift, and Chesterfield have trod in
the track of Hobbes; and in France, Helvetius, Rochefoucault
in his "Maxims," and L'Esprit more openly in his "Fausette des
Vertus Humaines." They only degrade us--they are polished
cynics! But what are we to think of the tremendous cynicism of
Machiavel? That great genius eyed human nature with the
ferocity of an enraged savage. Machiavel is a vindictive
assassin, who delights even to turn his dagger within the
mortal wound he has struck; but our Hobbes, said his friend
Sorbiere, "is a gentle and skilful surgeon, who, with regret,
cuts into the living flesh, to get rid of the corrupted." It
is equally to be regretted that the same system of degrading
man has been adopted by some, under the mask of religion.

Yet Hobbes, perhaps, never suspected the arms he was placing
in the hands of wretched men, when he furnished them with
such fundamental positions as, that "Man is naturally an evil
being; that he does not love his equal; and only seeks the
aid of society for his own particular purposes." He would at
least have disowned some of his diabolical disciples. One of
them, so late as in 1774, vented his furious philosophy in "An
Essay on the Depravity and Corruption of Human Nature,
wherein the Opinions of Hobbes, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c. are
supported against Shaftesbury, Hume, Sterne, &c. by Thomas
O'Brien M'Mahon." This gentleman, once informed that he was
_born wicked_, appears to have considered that wickedness
was his paternal estate, to be turned to as profitable an
account as he could. The titles of his chapters, serving as
a string of the most extraordinary propositions, have been
preserved in the "Monthly Review," vol. lii. 77. The
demonstrations in the work itself must be still more
curious. In these axioms we find that "Man has an _enmity_ to
all beings; that had he _power_, the first victims of his
revenge would be his wife, children, &c.--a sovereign, if
he could reign with the _unbounded authority_ every man _longs
for_, free from apprehension of punishment for misrule,
would slaughter all his subjects; perhaps he would not
leave one of them alive at the end of his reign." It was
perfectly in character with this wretched being, after having
quarrelled with human nature, that he should be still more
inveterate against a small part of her family, with whom
he was suffered to live on too intimate terms; for he
afterwards published another extraordinary piece--"The
Conduct and Good-Nature of Englishmen Exemplified in their
charitable way of Characterising the Customs, Manners, &c.
of Neighbouring Nations; their Equitable and Humane Mode of
Governing States, &c.; their Elevated and Courteous
Deportment, &c. of which their own Authors are everywhere
produced as Vouchers," 1777. One is tempted to think that
this O'Brien M'Mahon, after all, is only a wag, and has
copied the horrid pictures of his masters, as Hogarth did
the School of Rembrandt by his "Paul before Felix, designed
and _scratched_ in the true Dutch taste." These works
seem, however, to have their use. To have carried the
conclusions of the Anti-social Philosophy to as great lengths
as this writer has, is to display their absurdity. But, as
every rational Englishman will appeal to his own heart, in
declaring the one work to be nothing but a libel on the
nation; so every man, not destitute of virtuous emotions,
will feel the other to be a libel on human nature itself.

[371] "Human Nature," c. ix.

[372] Hobbes did not exaggerate the truth. Aubrey says of Cooper's
portrait of Hobbes, that "he intends to borrow the picture of
his majesty, for Mr. Loggan to engrave an accurate piece by,
which will sell well at home and abroad." We have only the
rare print of Hobbes by Faithorne, prefixed to a quarto
edition of his Latin Life, 1682, remarkable for its expression
and character. Sorbiere, returning from England, brought home
a portrait of the sage, which he placed in his collection; and
strangers, far and near, came to look on the physiognomy of a
great and original thinker. One of the honours which men of
genius receive is the homage the public pay to their images:
either, like the fat monk, one of the heroes of the _Epistolae
obscurorum Virorum_, who, standing before a portrait of
Erasmus, spit on it in utter malice; or when they are looked
on in silent reverence. It is alike a tribute paid to the
masters of intellect. They have had their shrines and
pilgrimages.

None of our authors have been better known, nor more highly
considered, than our Hobbes, abroad. I find many curious
particulars of him and his conversations recorded in French
works, which are not known to the English biographers or
critics. His residence at Paris occasioned this. See
Ancillon's Melange Critique, Basle, 1698; Patin's Letters, 61;
Sorberiana; Niceron, tome iv.; Joly's Additions to Bayle.--All
these contain original notices on Hobbes.

[373] To his Life are additions, which nothing but the self-love of
the author could have imagined.

"Amicorum Elenchus."--He might be proud of the list of
foreigners and natives.

"Tractuum contra Hobbium editorum Syllabus."

"Eorum qui in Scriptis suis Hobbio contradixerunt Indiculus."

"Qui Hobbii meminerunt seu in bonam seu in sequiorem partem."

"In Hobbii Defensionem."--Hobbes died 1679, aged 91. These two
editions are, 1681, 1682.

[374] This fact has been recorded in one of the pamphlets of Richard
Baxter, who, however, was no well-wisher to our philosopher.
"Additional Notes on the life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale,"
1682, p. 40.

[375] "Athen. Oxon.," vol. ii. p. 665, ed. 1721. No one, however, knew
better than Hobbes the vanity and uselessness of _words_: in
one place he compares them to "a spider's web; for, by
contexture of words, tender and delicate wits are insnared and
stopped, but strong wits break easily through them." The
pointed sentence with which Warburton closes his preface to
Shakspeare, is Hobbes's--that "words are the counters of the
wise, and the money of fools."

[376] Aubrey has minutely preserved for us the manner in which Hobbes
composed his "Leviathan:" it is very curious for literary
students. "He walked much, and contemplated; and he had in the
head of his cane a pen and inkhorn, and carried always a
note-book in his pocket; and as soon as a thought darted, he
presently entered it into his book, or otherwise might have
lost it. He had drawn the design of the book into chapters,
&c., and he knew whereabouts it would come in. Thus that book
was made."--Vol. ii. p. 607. Aubrey, the little Boswell of his
day, has recorded another literary peculiarity, which some
authors do not assuredly sufficiently use. Hobbes said that he
sometimes would set his thoughts upon researching and
contemplating, always with this proviso: "that he very much
and deeply considered one thing at a time--for a week, or
sometimes a fortnight."

[377] A small annuity from the Devonshire family, and a small pension
from Charles II., exceeded the wants of his philosophic life.
If he chose to compute his income, Hobbes says facetiously of
himself, in French sols or Spanish maravedis, he could
persuade himself that Croesus or Crassus were by no means
richer than himself; and when he alludes to his property, he
considers wisdom to be his real wealth:--

"An quam dives, id est, quam sapiens fuerim?"

He gave up his patrimonial estate to his brother, not wanting
it himself; but he tells the tale himself, and adds, that
though small in extent, it was rich in its crops. Anthony
Wood, with unusual delight, opens the character of Hobbes:
"Though he hath an ill name from some, and good from others,
yet he was a person endowed with an excellent philosophical
soul, was a contemner of riches, money, envy, the world, &c.;
a severe lover of justice, and endowed with great morals;
cheerful, open, and free of his discourse, yet without offence
to any, which he endeavoured always to avoid." What an
enchanting picture of the old man in the green vigour of his
age has Cowley sent down to us!

"Nor can the snow which now cold age does shed
Upon thy reverend head,
Quench or allay the noble fires within;
But all which thou hast been,
And all that youth can be, thou'rt yet:
So fully still dost thou
Enjoy the manhood and the bloom of wit,
And all the natural heat, but not the fever too.
So contraries on AEtna's top conspire:
Th' embolden'd snow next to the flame does sleep.--
To things immortal time can do no wrong;
And that which never is to die, for ever must be young."

[378]

"Ipse meos nosti, Verdusi candide, mores,
Et tecum cuncti qui mea scripta legunt:
Nam mea vita meis non est incongrua scriptis;
Justitiam doceo, Justitiamque colo.
Improbus esse potest nemo qui non sit avarus,
Nec pulchrum quisquam fecit avarus opus.
Octoginta ego jam complevi et quatuor annos;
Pene acta est vitae fabula longa meae."

[379] Hobbes, in his metrical (by no means his poetical) life, says,
the more the "Leviathan" was written against, the more it was
read; and adds,

"Firmius inde stetit, spero stabitque per omne
AEvum, defensus viribus ipse suis.
Justitiae mensura, atque ambitionis elenchus,
Regum arx, pax populo, si doceatur, erit."

The term _arx_ is here peculiarly fortunate, according to the
system of the author--it means a citadel or fortified place on
an eminence, to which the people might fly for their common
safety.

His works were much read; as appears by "The Court Burlesqued,"
a satire attributed to Butler.

"So those who wear the holy robes
That rail so much at _Father Hobbs_,
Because he has exposed of late
_The nakedness of Church and State_;
Yet tho' they do his books condemn,
They love to buy and read the same."

Our author, so late as in 1750, was still so commanding a
genius, that his works were collected in a handsome folio; but
that collection is not complete. When he could not get his
works printed at home, he published them in Latin, including
his mathematical works, at Amsterdam, by Blaew, 1668, 4to. His
treatises, "De Cive," and "On Human Nature," are of perpetual
value. Gassendi recommends these admirable works, and
Puffendorff acknowledges the depth of his obligations. The
Life of Hobbes in the "Biographia Britannica," by Dr.
Campbell, is a work of curious research.

HOBBES'S QUARRELS

WITH DR. WALLIS THE MATHEMATICIAN.

HOBBES'S passion for the study of Mathematics began late in
life--attempts to be an original discoverer--attacked by
WALLIS--various replies and rejoinders--nearly maddened by the
opposition he encountered--after four years of truce, the war
again renewed--character of HOBBES by Dr. WALLIS, a specimen of
invective and irony; serving as a remarkable instance how the
greatest genius may come down to us disguised by the arts of an
adversary--HOBBES'S noble defence of himself; of his own great
reputation; of his politics; and of his religion--a literary
stratagem of his--reluctantly gives up the contest, which lasted
twenty years.

The Mathematical War between HOBBES and the celebrated Dr. WALLIS is now to be opened. A series of battles, the renewed campaigns of more than twenty years, can be described by no term less eventful. Hobbes himself considered it as a war, and it was a war of idle ambition, in which he took too much delight. His "Amata Mathemata" became his pride, his pleasure, and at length his shame. He attempted to maintain his irruption into a province he ought never to have entered in defiance, by "a new method;" but having invaded the powerful natives, he seems to have almost repented the folly, and retires, leaving "the unmanageable brutes" to themselves:

Ergo meam statuo non ultra perdere opellam
Indocile expectans discere posse pecus.

His language breathes war, while he sounds his retreat, and confesses his repulse. The Algebraists had all declared against the Invader.

Wallisius contra pugnat; victusque videbar
Algebristarum Theiologumque scholis,
Et simul eductus Castris exercitus omnis
Pugnae securus Wallisianus ovat.

And,

Pugna placet vertor--
Bella mea audisti--&c.

So that we have sufficient authority to consider this Literary Quarrel as a war, and a "Bellum Peloponnesiacum" too, for it lasted as long. Political, literary, and even personal feelings were called in to heat the temperate blood of two Mathematicians.

What means this tumult in a Vestal's veins?

Hobbes was one of the many victims who lost themselves in squaring the circle, and doubling the cube. He applied, late in life, to mathematical studies, not so much, he says, to learn the subtile demonstrations of its figures, as to acquire those habits of close reasoning, so useful in the discovery of new truths, to prove or to refute. So justly he reasoned on mathematics; but so ill he practised the science, that it made him the most unreasonable being imaginable, for he resisted mathematical demonstration, itself![380]

His great and original character could not but prevail in everything he undertook; and his egotism tempted him to raise a name in the world of Science, as he had in that of Politics and Morals. With the ardour of a young mathematician, he exclaimed, "_Eureka!_" "I have found it." The quadrature of the circle was indeed the common Dulcinea of the Quixotes of the time; but they had all been disenchanted. Hobbes alone clung to his ridiculous mistress. Repeatedly confuted, he was perpetually resisting old reasonings and producing new ones. Were only genius requisite for an able mathematician, Hobbes had been among the first; but patience and docility, not fire and fancy, are necessary. His reasonings were all paralogisms, and he had always much to say, from not understanding the subject of his inquiries.

When Hobbes published his "De Corpore Philosophico," 1655, he there exulted that he had solved the great mystery. Dr. Wallis, the Savilian professor of mathematics at Oxford,[381] with a deep aversion to Hobbes's political and religious sentiments, as he understood them, rejoiced to see this famous combatant descending into his own arena. He certainly was eager to meet him single-handed; for he instantly confuted Hobbes, by his "Elenchus Geometriae Hobbianae." Hobbes, who saw the newly-acquired province of his mathematics in danger, and which, like every new possession, seemed to involve his honour more than was necessary, called on all the world to be witnesses of this mighty conflict. He now published his work in English, with a sarcastic addition, in a magisterial tone, of "_Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in Oxford_." These were Seth Ward[382] and Wallis, both no friends to Hobbes, and who hungered after him as a relishing morsel. Wallis now replied in English, by "Due Correction for Mr. Hobbes, or School-discipline for not saying his Lessons Right," 1656. That part of controversy which is usually the last had already taken place in their choice of phrases.[383]

In the following year the campaign was opened by Hobbes with "~STIGMAI~; or, _marks_ of the absurd Geometry, _rural Language_, Scottish Church-politics, and Barbarisms, of John Wallis." Quick was the routing of these fresh forces; not one was to escape alive! for Wallis now took the field with "Hobbiani Puncti dispunctio! or, the undoing of Mr. Hobbes's Points; in answer to Mr. Hobbes's ~STIGMAI~, _id est_, Stigmata Hobbii." Hobbes seems now to have been reduced to great straits; perhaps he wondered at the obstinacy of his adversary. It seems that Hobbes, who had been used to other studies, and who confesses all the algebraists were against him, could not conceive a point to exist without quantity; or a line could be drawn without latitude; or a superficies be without depth or thickness; but mathematicians conceive them without these qualities, when they exist abstractedly in the mind; though, when for the purposes of science they are produced to the senses, they necessarily have all the qualities. It was understanding these figures, in the vulgar way, which led Hobbes into a labyrinth of confusions and absurdities.[384] They appear to have nearly maddened the clear and vigorous intellect of our philosopher; for he exclaims, in one of these writings:--

"I alone am mad, or they are all out of their senses: so that no third opinion can be taken, unless any will say that we are all mad."

Four years of truce were allowed to intervene between the next battle; when the irrefutable Hobbes, once more collecting his weak and his incoherent forces, arranged them, as well as he was able, into "Six Dialogues," 1661. The utter annihilation he intended for his antagonist fell on himself. Wallis borrowing the character of "The Self-tormentor" from Terence, produced "Hobbius Heauton-timorumenos (Hobbes the Self-tormentor); or, a Consideration of Mr. Hobbes's Dialogues; addressed to Robert Boyle," 1662.

This attack of Wallis is of a very opposite character to the arid discussion of abstract blunders in geometry. He who began with points, and doubling the cube, and squaring the circle, now assumes a loftier tone, and carrying his personal and moral feelings into a mere controversy between two idle mathematicians, he has formed a solemn invective, and edged it with irony. I hope the reader has experienced sufficient interest in the character of Hobbes to read the long, but curious extract I shall now transcribe, with that awe and reverence which the old man claims. It will show how even the greatest genius may be disguised, when viewed through the coloured medium of an adversary. One is, however, surprised to find such a passage in a mathematical work.

"He doth much improve; I mean he doth, _proficere in pejus_; more, indeed, than I could reasonably have expected he would have done;--insomuch, that I cannot but profess some relenting thoughts (though I had formerly occasion to use him somewhat coarsely), to see an old man thus fret and torment himself to no purpose. You, too, should pity your antagonist; not as if he did deserve it, but because he needs it; and as Chremes, in Terence, of his Senex, his self-tormenting Menedemus--

Cum videam miserum hunc tam excruciarier
Miseret me ejus. Quod potero adjutabo senem.

"Consider the temper of the man, to move your pity; a person _extremely passionate and peevish, and wholly impatient of contradiction_. A temper which, whether it be a greater fault or torment (to one who must so often meet with what he is so ill able to bear), is hard to say.

"And to this fretful humour you must add another as bad, which feeds it. You are therefore next to consider him as _one highly opinionative and magisterial_. _Fanciful_ in his conceptions, and deeply enamoured with those _phantasmes_, without a rival. He doth not spare to profess, upon all occasions, how incomparably he thinks himself to have _surpassed all_, ancient, modern, schools, academies, persons, societies, philosophers, divines, heathens, Christians; how despicable he thinks all their writings in comparison of his; and what hopes he hath, that, by _the sovereign command of some absolute prince, all other doctrines being exploded, his new dictates should be_ _peremptorily imposed, to be alone taught in all schools and pulpits, and universally submitted to_. To recount all which he speaks of himself _magnificently_, and _contemptuously_ of others, would fill a volume. Should some idle person read over all his books, and collecting together his arrogant and supercilious speeches, applauding himself, and despising all other men, set them forth in one _synopsis_, with this title, _Hobbius de se_--what a pretty piece of pageantry this would make!

"The admirable sweetness of your own nature has not given you the experience of such a temper: yet your contemplation must have needs discerned it, in those symptoms which you have seen it work in others, like the strange effervescence, ebullition, fumes, and fetors, which you have sometimes given yourself the content to observe, in some active _acrimonious_ chymical _spirits_ upon the injection of some contrariant _salts_ strangely vexing, fretting, and tormenting itself, while it doth but administer _sport_ to the unconcerned spectator. Which temper, being so eminent in the person we have to deal with, your generous nature, which cannot but pity affliction, how much soever deserved, must needs have some compassion for him: who, besides those exquisite _torments_ wherewith he doth afflict himself, like that

----quo Siculi non invenere Tyranni
Tormentum majus--

is unavoidably exposed to those two great _mischiefs_; an incapacity to be _taught what he doth not know_, or to be _advised when he thinks amiss_; and moreover, to this _inconvenience_, that he must never _hear his faults but from his adversaries_; for those who are willing to be reputed _friends_ must either not advertise what they see amiss, or incommode themselves.

"But, you will ask, what need he thus torment himself? What need of pity? If _he have hopes_ to be admitted the _sole dictator in philosophy_, civil and natural, in schools and pulpits, and to be owned as the only _magister sententiarum_, what would he have more?

"True, _if he have_; but what _if he have not_? That he _had_ some hopes of such an honour, he hath not been sparing to let us know, and was providing against the _envy_ that might attend it (_nec deprecabor invidiam, sed augendo, ulciscar_, was his resolution); but I doubt these hopes are at an end. He did not find (as he expected) that the _fairies and hobgoblins_ (for such he reputes all that went before him) did vanish presently, upon the first appearance of his _sunshine_: and, which is worse, while he was on the one side guarding himself against _envy_, he is, on the other side, unhappily _surprised_ by a worse enemy, called _contempt_, and with which he is less able to grapple.

"I forbear to mention (lest I might seem to reproach that age which I reverence) the _disadvantages_ which he may sustain by his old age. 'Tis possible that time and age, in a person somewhat _morose_, may have riveted faster that preconceived opinion of his own worth and excellency beyond others. 'Tis possible, also, that he may have _forgotten_ much of what once he knew. He may, perhaps, be sometimes more _secure_ than _safe_; while trusting to what he thinks a firm foundation, his footing fails him; nor always so vigilant or quicksighted as to discern the _incoherence_ or _inconsequence_ of his own discourses; unwilling, notwithstanding, to make use of the eyes of other men, lest he should seem thereby to disparage his own; but certainly (though his _will_ may be as good as ever) his _parts_ are less vegete and nimble, as to _invention_ at least, than in his younger days.

"While he had endeavoured only to _raise an expectation_, or put the world in hopes of what great things he had in hand (_to render all philosophy as clear and certain as Euclid's Elements_), if he had then _died_, it might, perhaps, have been thought by some that the world had been deprived of _a great philosopher_, and learning sustained an invaluable loss, by the abortion of _so desired a piece_. But since that _Partus Montis_ is come to light, and found to be no more than what little animals have brought forth, and that _deformed_ enough and _unamiable_, he might have sooner gone off the stage with more advantage than now he is like to do; such is the misfortune for a man to _outlive his reputation_!

"By this time, perhaps, you may see cause to _pity_ him while you see him _falling_. But if you consider him _tumbling headlong_ from so great a height, 'twill make some addition to that _compassion_ which doth already begin to work. You are therefore next to consider that when, upon the account of _geometry_, he was unsafely mounted to that height of vanity, he did unhappily fall into the hands of two mathematicians, who have used him so unmercifully as would have put a person of _greater patience_ into _passion_, and meeting with such a _temper_, have so discomposed him that he hath ever since _talked idly_: and to augment the grief, these mathematicians were both divines--he had rather have fallen by any other hand. These _mathematical divines_ (a term which he had thought incomponible) began to unravel the wrong end; and while he thought they should have first _untiled the roof_, and by degrees gone downward, they strike at the _foundation_, and make the building tumble all at once; and that in such confusion, that by dashing one part against another, they make each help to destroy the whole. They first fall upon his _last reserve_, and rout his _mathematics_ beyond a possibility of _rallying_; and by _firing his magazine_ upon the first assault, make his own weapons _fight against him_. Not contented herewith, they enter the _breach_, and pursue the _rout_ through his Logics, Physics, Metaphysics, Theology, where they find all in confusion."

This invective and irony from this celebrated mathematician, so much out of the path of his habitual studies, might have proved a tremendous blow; but the genius of Hobbes was invulnerable to mere human opposition, unless accompanied by the supernatural terrors of penal fires or perpetual dungeons. Our hero received the whole discharge of this battering train, and stood invulnerable, while he returned the fire in "Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, written by way of Letter to a learned person, Dr. Wallis," 1662.

It is an extraordinary production. His lofty indignation retorts on the feeble irony of his antagonist with keen and caustic accusations; and the green strength of youth was still seen in the old man whose head was covered with snows.

From this spirited apology for himself I shall give some passages. Hobbes thus replied to Dr. Wallis, who affected to consider the old man as a fit object for commiseration.

"You would make him contemptible, and move Mr. Boyle to pity him. This is a way of railing too much beaten to be thought witty: besides, 'tis no argument of your contempt to spend upon him so many angry lines, as would have furnished you with a dozen of sermons. If you had in good earnest despised him, you would have let him alone, as he does Dr. Ward, Mr. Baxter, Pike, and others, that have reviled him as you do. As for his reputation beyond the seas, it fades not yet; and because, perhaps, you have no means to know it, I will cite you a passage of an epistle written by a learned Frenchman to an eminent person in France, in a volume of epistles." Hobbes quotes the passage at length, in which his name appears joined with Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Gassendi.

In reply to Wallis' sarcastic suggestion that an idle person should collect together Hobbes's arrogant and supercilious speeches applauding himself, under one title, _Hobbius de se_, he says--

"Let your idle person do it; Mr. Hobbes shall acknowledge them under his hand, and be commended for it, and you scorned. A certain Roman senator having propounded something in the assembly of the people, which they, misliking, made a noise at, boldly bade them hold their peace, and told them he knew better what was good for the commonwealth than all they; and his words are transmitted to us as an argument of his virtue; _so much do truth and vanity alter the complexion of self-praise_. You can have very little skill in morality, that cannot see the justice of commending a man's self, as well as of anything else, in his own defence; and it was want of prudence in you to constrain him to a thing that would so much displease you.

"When you make his _age_ a reproach to him, and show no cause that might impair the faculties of his mind, but only age, I admire how you saw not that you reproached all old men in the world as much as him, and warranted all young men, at a certain time which they themselves shall define, to call you _fool_! Your dislike of old age you have also otherwise sufficiently signified, in venturing so fairly as you have done to escape it. But that is no great matter to one that hath so many marks upon him of much greater reproaches. By Mr. Hobbes's calculation, that derives prudence from experience, and experience from age, you are a very young man; but, by your own reckoning, you are older already than Methuselah.

"During the late trouble, who made both Oliver and the people mad but the preachers of your principles? But besides the wickedness, see the folly of it. You thought to make them mad, but just to such a degree as should serve your own turn; that is to say, mad, and yet just as wise as yourselves. Were you not very imprudent to think to govern madness?"--p. 15.

"The king was hunted as a partridge in the mountains, and though the hounds have been hanged, yet the hunters were as guilty as they, and deserved no less punishment. And the decypherers (Wallis had decyphered the royal letters),[385] and all that blew the horn, are to be reckoned among the hunters. Perhaps you would not have had the prey killed, but rather have kept it tame. And yet who can tell? I have read of few kings deprived of their power by their own subjects that have lived any long time after it, for reasons that every man is able to conjecture."

He closes with a very odd image of the most cynical contempt:--

"Mr. Hobbes has been always far from provoking any man, though, when he is provoked, you find his pen as sharp as yours. All you have said is error and railing; that is, _stinking wind_, such as a jade lets fly when he is too hard girt upon a full belly. I have done. I have considered you now, but will not again, whatsoever preferment any of your friends shall procure you."

These were the pitched battles; but many skirmishes occasionally took place. Hobbes was even driven to a _ruse de guerre_. When he found his mathematical character in the utmost peril, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled "Lux Mathematica, &c., or, Mathematical Light struck out from the clashings between Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the celebrated University of Oxford (celeberrima Academia), and Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury; augmented with many and shining rays of the Author, R. R." 1672.

Here the victories of Hobbes are trumpeted forth, but the fact is, that R. R. should have been T. H. It was Hobbes's own composition! R. R. stood for _Roseti Repertor_, that is, the Finder of the Rosary, one of the titles of Hobbes's mathematical discoveries. Wallis asserts that this R. R. may still serve, for it may answer his own book, "Roseti Refutator, or, the Refuter of the Rosary."

Poor Hobbes gave up the contest reluctantly; if, indeed, the controversy may not be said to have lasted all his life. He acknowledges he was writing to no purpose; and that the medicine was obliged to yield to the disease.

Sed nil profeci, magnis authoribus Error
Fultus erat, cessit sic Medicina malo.

He seems to have gone down to the grave, in spite of all the reasonings of the geometricians on this side of it, with a firm conviction that its superficies had both depth and thickness.[386] Such were the fruits of a great genius, entering into a province out of his own territories; and, though a most energetic reasoner, so little skilful in these new studies, that he could never know when he was confuted and refuted.[387]

FOOTNOTES:

[380] The origin of his taste for mathematics was purely accidental:
begun in love, it continued to dotage. According to Aubrey, he
was forty years old when, "being in a gentleman's library,
Euclid's Elements lay open at the 47th Propos. lib. i., which,
having read, he swore 'This is impossible!' He read the
demonstration, which referred him back to another--at length
he was convinced of that truth. This made him in love with
geometry. I have heard Mr. Hobbes say that he was wont to draw
lines on his thighs and on the sheets a-bed."

[381] The author of the excellent Latin grammar of the English
language, so useful to every student in Europe, of which work
that singular patriot, Thomas Hollis, printed an edition, to
present to all the learned Institutions of Europe. Henry
Stubbe, the celebrated physician of Warwick, to whom the
reader has been introduced, joined, for he loved a quarrel, in
the present controversy, when it involved philosophical
matters, siding with Hobbes, because he hated Wallis. In his
"Oneirocritica, or an Exact Account of the Grammatical Parts
of this Controversy," he draws a strong character of Wallis,
who was indeed a great mathematician, and one of the most
extraordinary decypherers of letters; for perhaps no new
system of character could be invented for which he could not
make a key; by which means he had rendered the most important
services to the Parliament. Stubbe quaintly describes him as
"the sub-scribe to the tribe of Adoniram" (_i.e._ Adoniram
Byfield, who, with this cant name, was scribe to the fanatical
Assembly of Divines), and "as the glory and pride of the
Presbyterian faction."

[382] Dr. Seth Ward, after the Restoration made Bishop of Salisbury,
said, some years before this event was expected, that "he had
rather be the author of one of Hobbes's books than be king of
England." But afterwards he seemed not a little inclined to
cry out _Crucifige_! He who, to one of these books, the
admirable treatise on "Human Nature," had prefixed one of the
highest panegyrics Hobbes could receive!--_Athen. Oxon._ vol.
ii. p. 647.

[383] It is mortifying to read _such language_ between two
mathematicians, in the calm inquiries of square roots, and the
finding of mean proportionals between two straight lines. I
wish the example may prove a warning. Wallis thus opens on
Hobbes:--"It seems, Mr. Hobbs, that you have a mind to _say
your lesson_, and that the mathematic professors of Oxford
should _hear_ you. You are too old to learn, though you have
as much need as those that be younger, and yet will think much
to be whipped.

"What moved you to say your lessons in English, when the
books against which you do chiefly intend them were
written in Latin? Was it chiefly for the perfecting your
natural rhetoric whenever you thought it convenient to repair
to Billingsgate?--You found that the oyster-women could not
teach you to rail in Latin. Now you can, upon all occasion,
or without occasion, give the titles of _fool_, _beast_,
_ass_, _dog_, &c., which I take to be but barking; and
they are no better than a man might have at Billingsgate for a
box o' the ear.

"You tell us, 'though the beasts that think our railing to be
roaring have for a time admired us; yet now you have showed
them our ears, they will be less affrighted.' Sir, those
persons (the professors themselves) needed not the sight of
_your ears_, but could tell by the _voice_ what kind of
creature _brayed_ in your books: you dared not have said this
to their faces."--He bitterly says of Hobbes, that "he is a
man who is always writing what was answered before he had
written."

[384] Dr. Campbell's art. on Hobbes, in "Biog. Brit." p. 2619.

[385] Found in the king's tent at Naseby, and which were written to
the queen on important political subjects, in a cypher of
which they only had the key. They were afterwards published in
a quarto pamphlet, and did much mischief to the royal
cause.--ED.

[386] The strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from
their principles concerning the _real quantity of matter_, and
the _reality of space_, have been noticed by Pope, in the
_Dunciad_:--

"Mad _Mathesis_ alone was unconfined,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind:
Now to _pure space_ lifts her ecstatic stare;
Now running round _the circle_, finds its _square_."
_Dunciad_, Book iv. ver. 31.

[387] When all animosities had ceased, after the death of Hobbes, I
find Dr. Wallis, in a very temperate letter to Tenison,
exposing the errors of Hobbes in mathematical studies; Wallis
acknowledges that philology had never entered into his
pursuits,--in this he had never designed to oppose his
superior genius: but it was Hobbes who had too often turned
his mathematical into a philological controversy. Wallis has
made a just observation on the nature of mathematical
truths:--"Hobbes's argumentations are destructive in one part
of what is said in another. This is more convincingly evident,
and more unpardonable, in mathematics than in other
discourses, which are things capable of cogent demonstration,
and so evident, that though a good mathematician may be
subject to commit an error, yet one who understands but little
of it cannot but see a fault when it is showed him."

Wallis was an eminent genius in scientific pursuits. His art
of decyphering letters was carried to amazing perfection; and
among other phenomena he discovered was that of teaching a
young man, born deaf and dumb, to speak plainly. He humorously
observes, in one of his letters:--"I am now employed upon
another work, as hard almost as to make Mr. Hobbes understand
mathematics. It is to teach a person dumb and deaf to speak,
and to understand a language."

[388] The gross convivialities of the times, from the age of
Elizabeth, were remarkable for several circumstances.
Hard-drinking was a foreign vice, imported by our military men
on their return from the Netherlands: and the practice, of
whose prevalence Camden complains, was even brought to a kind
of science. They had a dialect peculiar to their orgies. See
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 294 (last edition).