Leviathan
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Hobbes, Thomas
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 1178881
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 1
subject: god
subject: man
subject: power
subject: law
subject: leviathan
subject: thomas
subject: hobbes
subject: introduction
subject: nature
subject: art
subject: whereby
subject: governs
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
local mirror: hobbes-leviathan-66.txt
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plain html: hobbes-leviathan-66.htm
sort title: Leviathan
full text: 1651 LEVIATHAN by Thomas Hobbes INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation. To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will consider First, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both which is man. Secondly, how, and by what cove…