CHAPTER 7. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN PROSE Transitional Prose: Cowley's Essays-Hobbes's Leviathan and other Philosophical Works TRANSITIONAL PROSE ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-67).—The artificiality that made Cowley's poems insipid was not entirely absent from his prose. Yet, on the whole, the latter has a simplicity and directness, and expresses the wit, urbanity, and knowledge of a true lover of letters and observer of men and affairs, with an unaffected and engaging sincerity. The total amount of his prose writing is small. His Proposition for the Advancement of Learning (1661) sets forth views on the endowment of research. A Vision concerning Cromwell the Wicked (1661) is a half-hearted rhetorical attack, with some humorous touches, on the deceased Protector, written when it was popular to abuse his memory. Essays. It is in the eleven Discourses by way of Essays, in Verse and Prose, that Cowley displays style, and an accomplished skill in the choice of words. These belong to the last few years of his life. The titles are, " Of Liberty," "Of Solitude," " Of Greatness," "Of Obscurity," and so on. The last-named three, with "The Dangers of an Honest Man in Much Company," "The Shortness of Life and the Uncertainty of Riches," and " Of My Self," are worthy efforts in the manner of Montaigne. The last of them all, a miniature autobiography, is as favourable an example as any, both of his unaffected frankness, and of the easy vivacity, the almost colloquial unconstraint, and the perfect lucidity of his latest prose. As far as my Memory can return back into my past Life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some Plants are said to turn away from others, by an Antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to mans understanding. Even when I was a very young Boy at School, instead of running about on Holy-daies and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a Book, or with some one Companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then too, so much an Enemy to all constraint, that my Masters could never prevail on me, by any perswasions or encouragements, to learn without Book the common rules of Grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which I confess, I wonder at my self) may appear by the latter end of the Ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other Verses. The Beginning of it is Boyish, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little were corrected) I should hardly now be much ashamed.-Essays, XI., “Of My Self." (2,352) 269 ΙΟ THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679) Life and Character.-Born at Malmesbury, and educated there and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, Thomas Hobbes was for twenty years tutor, companion, and secretary to William Cavendish, afterwards second Earl of Devonshire. His connection with the Cavendish family was a useful stay throughout his long life. It gave a sense of security in troubled times to one who was constitutionally timid; it brought him into contact with leading writers, philosophers, and statesmen, both at home and on the Continent; and furnished a refuge for his old age, at the family seat, Hardwick Hall, where he died. On three occasions Hobbes travelled on the Continent in charge of a pupil, making the acquaintance of Descartes, Galileo, Gassendi, and Mersenne. At one time he had been on very intimate terms with Bacon, and acted as his amanuensis, though he never was, as is sometimes asserted, his disciple. When forty years old he came across Euclid's Elements for the first time, and was deeply impressed by its logical demonstrations. He adopted the geometrical form of argument whenever possible. "They that study natural philosophy," he says, study in vain, except they begin at geometry." In 1646 he was appointed mathematical tutor to Charles II., then Prince of Wales, in exile at Paris. But his knowledge of mathematics was defective, and at a later period he became involved in an unfortunate controversy on the quadrature of the circle with Ward and Wallis, professors of mathematics at Oxford, who were immeasurably better equipped in the subject. Hobbes's political principles were diametrically opposed to those of the Long Parliament, and from 1640 to 1652 he took refuge in France, afraid lest his opinions, mostly expressed in works as yet only in manuscript, should attract hostile attention. The plan of his philosophical work had already been formed, and it was during this period that most of his books appeared. When his unorthodox views, especially on religion, brought him into disfavour with the clergy and the exiled court, he returned to England, submitted to the Council of State, and finally retired to Hardwick, where he wrote a history of the Civil Wars entitled Behemoth, an autobiography in Latin verse, and a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey. Works.-Hobbes regarded philosophy as falling into two divisions—natural philosophy, or the study of matter or body, and civil philosophy, including ethics and politics. His plan was to treat the three subjects of matter or body, man, and the citizen, in three works, De Corpore, De Homine, and De Cive. The third part, De Cive, was published first, in 1642, at Paris, through the violence of the controversies raging, just before the Civil War, "concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience due from subjects," which, as he said, " ripened and plucked from me this third part." Humane Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy (1650), practically anticipated De Homine (1658). De Corpore Politico, or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick, appeared the same year. His most famous work was Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651). The first of the three great treatises he originally planned, De Corpore, was published in 1655, and an English translation next year. Besides these chief works, he wrote and published a great many tractates, poems, and miscellaneous works that need not detain us. The Philosopher.-Hobbes was at one with Bacon in maintaining the practical value of knowledge, and in concentrating attention on nature and man to the exclusion of the supernatural. But he differed in his view of the proper method of prosecuting inquiry. To Bacon induction was the chief instrument of investigation. Hobbes regarded the synthetic or deductive method as superior to the analytical or inductive, and always aimed at the mathematical demonstration of philosophic truths. Materialism. He was fundamentally a materialist, finding the basis of all knowledge in sensation. Thoughts are every one a representation or appearance, of some quality, or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object. . . . The original of them all, is that which we call SENSE, for there is no conception in a man's mind, which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original. Leviathan, Part I. 1. Here comes in his doctrine of motion. The only reality, including the cognitive mind, is matter in motion. Causes are entirely mechanical. Sensations are the reaction of the brain or heart to the motion of the external body upon the organs of sense, continued inwards by the "nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body." All which qualities, called sensible, are in the object, that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything else, but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. The causes of universal things (of those, at least, that have any cause) are manifest of themselves, or (as they say commonly) known to nature; so that they need no method at all; for they have all but one universal cause, which is motion.-Ibid. From this material and mechanical conception of nature and man is deduced his system of natural and civil philosophy, the latter of which, treated in his greatest English book Leviathan, is the province in which his thought has had the greatest effect. "Leviathan"; Ethical and Political Philosophy. — According to Hobbes, man in a state of nature is a being actuated entirely by appetite or desire. His one object is to attain happiness and satisfaction for himself. And since all men are engaged in the pursuit of their own objects of desire, and altruism has no place in the original nature of man, it follows that the natural state is a state of "contention, enmity, and war." To this war of every man, against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice, are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it. ... The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles, are they, which otherwise are called the Laws of Nature.-Leviathan, Part I. 13. Man's reason finds him a way out from this intolerable state of things, by agree LEVIATHAN, OR The Matter, Forme, & Power OF A COMMON WEALTH ECCLESIASTICALL CIVILL 7) TSH Malmesbury. ing with his fellows to submit to a stronger power, residing in a certain person or body of persons, who shall impose laws, exact obedience, and restrain men from injuring each other by the unruly competition of the passions. A settled order is created when the individual renounces his rights and powers, and puts them in the hands of this authority, who in return confers peace, security, and equality of legal rights upon every man. Thus a commonwealth is established on the implied basis of a mutual covenant, a notion analogous to Rousseau's contrat social, though Hobbes's view of the natural man as a selfish being is alien from Rousseau's ideal. Title-page of Hobbes's "Leviathan," 1651. Defence of Absolute Monarchy. This sovereign power is absolute, indivisible, and inalienable, inasmuch as the multitude has voluntarily and entirely renounced the individual rights and powers of its members. And though Hobbes uses the phrase "this man" or "this assembly of men," it almost inevitably follows that the most logical, consistent, and permanent form of commonwealth is one in which the absolute authority is vested in one person. Thus, from the democratic idea of mutual renunciation for the common good, Hobbes deduces the theory of despotic government or absolute monarchy. The essence of the Commonwealth . . . 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. Hobbes and his Times.-There can be little doubt that Hobbes's view, that absolutism was imperatively necessary for the maintenance of peace and the legitimate freedom and security of the subject, was forced upon him by the anarchy of his time. We have already seen that it was this which drew from him his political treatises before the publication of the works on natural and ethical philosophy which should have furnished their logical antecedents. His political theory was an extreme form of the doctrines against which the Parliamentary party was in arms. the realm of thought he was their most formidable opponent. Hobbes and the Church.-With the Church Hobbes was in disfavour, not only for his Agnosticism, but on account of his doctrine of the complete subjection of the Church to the State. This was a necessary consequence of his theory of absolute government, which could not permit the existence of a spiritual power co-ordinate with the temporal power. His antagonism was mainly directed against the Papacy, "the ghost of the deceased Roman empire." But he saw no solution of the problem but to make the Church completely subordinate and a mere instrument of the State. In 1667 a Bill condemning blasphemous literature, and expressly mentioning the Leviathan, was passed by the Commons, but did not become law. Hobbes was seriously alarmed, and a number of his works dealing with controversial topics were not published till after his death. Style.—The passages that have been quoted illustrate his clear thinking, and the lucidity, force, and originality with which he expounded his thought. He was a master of the sententious phrase, equal in pregnancy and vigour, if unequal in imaginative quality, to the great sayings of Bacon. It is not a graceful style. But it is well knit, certainly emphatic enough without the capitals and italics with which he accentuated his points, and stimulating to read in its sinewy strength, boldness, and constant suggestion of subacid humour. PEPYS AND OTHER DIARISTS, MEMOIR-WRITERS, ETC. SAMUEL PEPYS (1633-1703).—Two of the most remarkable diaries ever penned, by a strange coincidence, were in progress simultaneously at this time, written by men in close relations with each other, neither of whom was aware that his friend was keeping a record of the same events from a different point of view. Pepys was the son of a London tailor; he was educated at St. Paul's School and at Cambridge, and by the influence of his father's cousin, Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards first Earl of Sandwich, was made Clerk of the Acts, and by his own exertions and |