would have conquest. Man has no higher criterion of truth than his senses. To seek pleasure and avoid pain is the only clear rule of his conduct. The picture is dismal in the extreme. "In such a condition", says Hobbes, "there is no place for industry, no culture of the earth, no navigation, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worse of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Lev. XIII. This wretched state of nature, this mutual annihilation, gives rise to the social compact. Each man wishing to annihilate every other, yet afraid of being annihilated himself, consents to abide by the prescriptions of a ruler, and forfeit his pleasure in destroying others for the pleasure of not being destroyed himself. It is clear that the ruler to whom this right is surrendered, must be absolute, must be the Leviathan. This is the demand in view of the nature of man, and thus Hobbes holds that the King whose power is limited is no King. All the powers of government must rest in the Leviathan. He is at once law maker, judge, and hangman. The Leviathan is now given sword and crozier, and the advice that a ruler, to govern well, should adopt the Roman maxim, "Salus populi suprema lex". The connection of politics, religion, and ethics, is absolute in the person of the Leviathan. What he commands is right, what he prohibits, is wrong. The greatest crime is rebellion, the greatest virtue is passive obedience. None ever proclaimed with greater effect, “the powers that be are ordained of God". Hobbes simply transferred the crown from the head of Hildebrand the Pope, to the head of Leviathan the King. The State, not the Church, is the power ordained of God. Religion is only fear of power invisible, Lev. I. 6, but Leviathan may be seen and heard and felt. Thus the practical philosophy of Hobbes terminates in the Leviathan who furnishes both its standard and sanction. The existence of the Leviathan is a necessity arising from his analysis of human nature. This analysis fails to reveal a social or moral element in man. Every

virtue or moral sentiment is coldly resolved into selfishness, which, in the state of nature and out of it, is the ruling power of the soul. But this ugly skeleton, which is at once the centre and strength of the Leviathan, is clothed with a splendid paraphernalia, which, though having all the appearance of true royalty, has little in common with the wretched framework within. Hobbes formulates a natural law code of nineteen articles. These articles are suggested by the reason, and are regarded as laws of nature. The entire code is comprehended in a positive and a negative form; "whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that you do to them. And that law of all men, „quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris". Lev. XIV. But if all this is of the natural reason, what becomes of his conception of man and the Leviathan; if all this is not of the reason, how is the social contract and the wise Leviathan possible. Although we are told of these laws of nature, "what they forbid can never be lawful", De Cive III. 29, and what they order can never be unlawful, we are always led back to the fundamental position, that the laws of nature are the laws of the Leviathan, that his voice is the supreme authority, that what he commands or forbids is the sole moral imperative. Lev. XXVI. 6. This background of natural law, this prospect of shrubbery and blue sky, is wrought into the picture only for effect, only to give a pleasing perspective and prominence to the man with sword, crozier, and crown. In last analysis his natural law is natural lawlessness.

From the standpoint of the Crown and the Church, and from his abundant quotation of "Holy writ", we may agree with Priestley and Blakey, that Hobbes was a sincere and most orthodox Churchman. But the way in which Hobbes handled his subject, spread consternation among his friends as well as his enemies, and it has come to pass that he has been made the scapegoat for most of the ills of his unhappy age. Charles II. was offended because not enough was made of the divinity of kings, but, on closer inspection, finding Hobbes quite as zealous as Salmasius and

Filmer, he gave him a pension, and hung his portrait in the royal study. The whole Church Established was alarmed at seeing its political dogmas in such abominable nakedness standing on so mean a foundation. ') Liberal Churchmen and Dissenters hurled their strong anathemas and weak arguments against what they regarded as the subversion of both religion and morality. The friends of constitutional government condemned and burned the Leviathan, and the vicious multitude excused their profligacy at its threshold. The Royal Society, founded in 1662, excluded Hobbes from membership and ignored his methods, to which he replied, "If they are not wise enough to begin where I left off, their work will come to nought". The House of Commons, after the great Fire of 1666, expressed public feeling in a bill against Atheism and Profaneness, wherein the name of Hobbes appeared. He burned his papers, and again declared himself orthodox. Though timid and arrogant, Hobbes was a man of untarnished personal character, and unimpeachable motives. He was the last and most brilliant product of the old order of things. We may denominate the ethical system of Hobbes by what name we please, personal or public utility, fear or respect for a law. Apart from the state, man is the slave of his desires. Here we might find egoistic Hedonism, but Hobbes would condemn it, and demand the Leviathan, without which there is no system, no society at all. He was indeed "the terror of the age". In the words of Mackintosh, his was 'the stroke of a vigorous arm which seemed to shake ethics to its foundation'. It was the philosophy of Hobbes, its seusualism, materialism, and absolutism, that aroused the moral consciousness of England and formed the point of departure of modern ethical speculation.

1) It is noticeable that the opposition to Hobbes arose not from the party of the Crown and the Church, but from the Constitutional party, the Dissenters, and the Catholic Church which Hobbes had lampooned with great severity in that part of the Leviathan which treats 'of the Kingdom of Darkness'.

III. Nathaniel Culverwel 1615-1651.1) One year after the publication of the Leviathan, appeared a "Discourse of the Light of Nature", which placed reason on the throne, and supported it by a psychology both rational and semicritical. The work is of the greatest importance for English ethics, as it anticipates Cumberland's attempt to establish morality upon a basis independent of Revelation; Locke's origin of knowledge and place of reason in ethical theory; Cudworth's "Eternal and Immutable Morality" and Clarke's theory of "Eternal fitness of things." With not less learning than Cudworth, and even more literary brilliancy than Taylor, Culverwel seeks to show the supremacy of reason in matters of religion, and at the same time "chastise those dogmatic, arrogant, rationalists who limit and measure all reason by their own." (Preface XXIII, compare 231.) In the view of Culverwel, "The Light of Nature," "The Candle of the Lord," and "Reason," are synonymous terms. Faith cannot contradict reason: it may be above reason, but not contrary to reason. (229.) "I shall always reverence a greyheaded truth; yet prefer reason, a daughter of eternity, before antiquity, which is the offspring of time." We will notice briefly two features of his philosophy; his theory of knowledge and theory of ethics.

"There are", says Culverwel, "stamped and printed upon the being of man, some clear and indelible principles, some first and alphabetical notions, by putting together of which it can spell out the law of nature." p. 81. These first and radical principles are such as, "Bonum est appe

1) "An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature with several other Treatises" etc. By Nathaniel Culverwel, Master of Arts, and lately Fellow of Emanuel College in Cambridge. Imprimatur Edm. Calamy 4to, 1652. The work written about 1646 and passed through four Editions' viz. 1652. 1654. 1661 and 1669. The "Discourse of the Light of Nature" is ably edited by John Brown, D. D. Edinburgh, 1857, to whose edition our references are made. Culverwel has been curiously overlooked by Bibliographers and Historians of English Philosophy. We know of no history of ethics that so much as mentions his name.

tendum, malum est fugiendum." "Beatitudo est quaerenda.' "Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris." "Reason, by warming and brooding upon these first and oval principles of her own laying, being itself quickened with a heavenly vigour, does thus hatch the law of nature." (82-83). Bacon's observation, "All morality is nothing but a collecting and building up of natural principles" is quoted with approval. But on the other hand, Culverwel rejects the doctrine of innate ideas and principles with as much vigour as does Locke. "Had you such notions at the first opening of the soul's eye. Had you these connate species in the cradle, and were they rocked to sleep with you, or did you then meditate upon these principles, 'Totum est majus parte, and 'Nihil potest esse, et non esse simul'. Never tell us that you wanted organical dispositions, for you plainly have recourse to the sensitive powers, and must needs subscribe to this, that all knowledge comes flourishing in at these lattices." (125-6)1). Thus Culverwel prefers Aristotle to

1) Richard Hooker, 1553-1600, was the first English philosopher who, while assuming tabula rasa for the mind, laid great stress on the law of nature. "The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book wherein nothing is, and yet all things may be imprinted, we are to search by what steps and degrees it riseth unto perfection of knowledge" etc. "God is a law, both to Himself, and to all things besides." "Obedience of creatures to the law of nature is the stay of the whole world." "The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God Himself." "Whether the law is revealed in Scripture, or in the rational constitution of human nature, makes no difference. Its sacredness is the same, as springing out of the same Fountain of light and order. This unity of nature and life and Scripture, as all equally true, if not all equally important revelations of the Divine will, lies at the foundation of Hooker's whole argument". Tulloch, Rational Theology in England in the XVIIth Century. Vol. I. pp 51-52. The first two books, "of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" 1594, treating of the fundamental principles of theology, law, and morality, exercised a remarkable influence upon the thought of the seventeenth century. It anticipated most of the principles which for the next two centuries controlled ethico-political speculation. Locke held this work in high estimation, and frequently speaks of Hooker as "the judicious Hooker", "the learned and judicious Hooker”.