ing; and when millions more are past, it is no nearer ending. Every day is all noontide, and every month is May or harvest, and every year is there a jubilee, and every age is full manhood, and all this is one eternity. O blessed eternity! the glory of my glory, the perfection of my perfection.

THOMAS HOBBES.'

1. NECESSITY OF PRECISION IN THE USE OF LANGUAGE.

(FROM "LEVIATHAN," PUBLISHED IN 1651.)

SEEING that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names (terms) in our affirmations (propositions), a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name (term) he useth stands for, and to place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words as a bird in lime-twigs 2-the more he struggles the more belimed. And therefore in geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind,3 men begin at (by) settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning (reasoning).

(1) "Hobbes is perhaps the first of whom we can strictly say that he is a good English writer; for the excellent passages of Hooker, Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, Taylor, Chillingworth, and others of the Elizabethan or the first Stuart period, are not sufficient to establish their claim; a good writer being one whose composition is nearly uniform, and who never sinks to such inferiority or negligence as we must confess in most of them."-Hallam, Lit. of Eur.

"A permanent foundation of his (Hobbes's) fame remains in his admirable style, which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pathy, his language never has more than one meaning, which it never requires a second thought to take."-Sir James Mackintosh.

(2) Lime-twigs. Twigs or branches smeared with a viscous substance called "lime," and so intended to entangle and catch the birds which perch upon them. (3) Bestow on mankind. Perhaps an allusion to Plato's remark that, "God geometrises," or "God is a geometer."

(4) Reckoning, fr. A.S. reccan, to go over the particulars of an account, i.e. to reckon up or over the points of an argument, i.e. to reason. The application of the word above is founded on the fact that the Lat. ratio, reason, originally meant calculation, and was extended, as Hobbes says, to the faculty of "reckoning in all things."

By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them where they are negligently set down, or to make them [for] himself. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning (reasoning) proceeds, and lead men into absurdities which at last they see, but cannot avoid without reckoning (reasoning) anew from the beginning, in which [beginning] lies the foundation of their errors. From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last, finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that, entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of the glass window, for want of wit (sense) to consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of names (terms) lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of science (ie. true knowledge), and in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse, from which proceed all false and senseless tenets 1 (opinion), which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination 2 are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise, or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters (learning) for any man to become either excellently (remarkably) wise, or unless his memory be hurt by disease or ill constitution of organs, excellently (remarkably) foolish. For words are wise men's counters; -they do but reckon by them; but they are the money (minted coin) of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle,

(1) Tenet, fr. Lat. tenere, to hold. It was also written by some authors tenent fr. pres. p. of tenere, and, perhaps, originally restricted to the persons holding a certain opinion, and afterwards transferred to the opinion itself-the "holding" of the party maintaining it.

(2) Imagination. By this word Hobbes does not mean, what is now generally understood by it, the power of "bodying forth the forms of things unknown," but the power of calling up the image of that which has impressed the sense, differing very little, as he himself allows, from memory, though he does make a certain aistinction. He distinguishes it from sense, by calling it a "decaying sense."

a Cicero, or a Thomas (Thomas Aquinas), or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

2. ORIGIN AND CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH, OR "LEVIATHAN."'

(FROM THE SAME WORK.)

THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty and dominion over others), in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war, which is necessarily consequent to the natural passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants, and observation of the laws of nature. For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and in sum (short) doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us (stimulate, urge us on) to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all. Therefore, notwithstanding the laws of nature, which every one hath then kept, when he has the will to keep them, when he can do it safely, if there be no power erected, or [one] not great enough for our security; every man will, and

(1) Commonwealth, or common-weal, the common good or advantage. What that advantage consists in is luminously shown in the text. It will be seen that the commmonwealth may be represented by a monarch, by an oligarchy, or an assembly of representatives; but in all, the idea is that the governing power represents the public good. The argument is, that in a state of nature every man is against every other, the only restriction on this state of natural enmity being the institution of families. But this only limits the field of war without putting an end to the passions. To be relieved of the inconvenience and injustice of this state of things, men consent to transfer their natural right of protection against each other to one man, or body of men, to use for them, and to confine the exercise of it to the good of the whole. Thus the individual is sunk in the general interest, and the institution framed to accomplish the end is the commonwealth, or, as Hobbes quaintly calls it, the Leviathan.

(2) Without the sword. "He (the ruler) beareth not the sword in vain."

Romans xii.

may lawfully rely on his own strength and art, for caution (defence) against all other men.

The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them (men) from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort as that by their own industry, and by the fruits of the earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is, to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices (votes), unto one will, which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear (represent) their person; and every one to own and acknowledge himself to be author of (responsible for) whatsoever he that so beareth (represents) their person, shall act, or cause to be acted, in those things which concern the common peace and safety: and therein to submit their wills, every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment. This is more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity (union) of them all, in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, "I authorise and give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner." This done, the multitude so united in one person, is called a Commonwealth, in Latin Civitas. This is the generation of (mode of constituting) that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that mortal god, to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority, given him by every particular man in the Commonwealth, he hath the use of so much power and strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is enabled to perform the wills of them all, to (with a view to) peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad. And in him consisteth the essence of the Commonwealth, which (to define it) is "One person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence." And he that carrieth (represents) this person (ideal personification) is called sovereign, and [is] said to have sovereign power, and everyone besides [is] his subject.

IZAAK WALTON.

1. RURAL PLEASURES.

(FROM THE "COMPLETE ANGLER,"' PUBLISHED IN 1653.)

Fiscator.2-Turn out of the way a little, good scholar, towards yonder high hedge; there we'll sit and sing whilst this shower falls so gently upon the teeming3 earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows.

Look, under that broad beech-tree I sat down, when I was last this way a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose hill. There I sat, viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves and turned them into foam. And sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun, and others were craving comfort from the swoln udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul, that I thought, as the poet has happily expressed it,

"I was for that time lifted above earth,

And possess'd joys not promised in my birth."

As I left this place and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me. 'Twas a handsome milk-maid that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she cast away all care, and “sung like a nightingale. Her voice was good and the ditty fitted for it. 'Twas that smooth song which was made by Kit. Mar

(1) "Its (Complete Angler's ') simplicity, its sweetness, its natural grace, and happy intermixture of graver strains with the precepts of angling, have rendered this book deservedly popular."-Hallam, Lit. of Eur., iii. 560.

(2) The book is in the form of dialogues, between Piscator, an angler, and his scholar Venator the huntsman, whom he has converted to his own favourite pursuit. Other characters are occasionally introduced.

(3) Teeming (fr. A.S. tyman, to bring forth, to pour forth), bringing forth copiously. Jeremy Taylor speaks of "vice, pregnant and teeming ;" and Dryden, also, of the "teeming earth."