right which he has by nature to protect himself when there is no one else to protect him.1 To the liberty of the subject mentioned above must also be added the freedom to govern himself as he pleases in all of those things concerning which the sovereign has made no provision in the form of laws for the regulation of the conduct of his subjects. We notice, then, in what precedes that there are two parts to the ethical philosophy of Hobbes. He speaks of a morality founded on reason and a morality founded on the will of the sovereign. These two aspects of his ethical teaching have not always been recognized by students of his system. A number of his critics, if conscious of this twofold division at all, have at least treated Hobbes in their criticism as though he simply taught a positive, institutional, political morality, a morality founded on the will of the sovereign. That Hobbes by his inconsistencies and his baldness of statement has sometimes furnished grounds for such an interpretation no one familiar with his works can deny. He says, for example: "The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions, that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them: which till laws be made they cannot know: nor can any law be made, till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it."2 He speaks here, of course, of civil law, and not of law imposed upon man by his moral personality. Again, he says, speaking of men in a state of nature: "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 1 Leviathan, Pt. II., chap. XXI. 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." Here, at least, the surface interpretation of his teaching would indicate that right and wrong are merely the creatures of the sovereign's fiat. In the De Cive his words are essentially the same: "Doctrinas de justo et injusto, bono et malo, praeter leges in unaquaque civitate constitutas authenticas esse nullas." And also in the following: "Ad civitatem pertinet etiam Christianam quid sit justitia, quid injustitia, sive peccatum contra justitiam determinare." Once more he says: "pleasure therefore, or delight, is the apparence or sense of good; . . . Of pleasures or delights, some arise from the sense of an object present; and those may be called pleasure of sense; the word sensual, as it is used by those only that condemn them, having no place till there be laws."" He speaks here again of civil laws. But while these statements and others like them, which are numerous in the writings of Hobbes, seem to furnish some ground for the interpretation of Hobbes as teaching merely an institutional morality, no careful student of his ethical philosophy can fail to recognize that Hobbes emphatically taught a morality of reason which is antecedent to and independent of a political morality. This is evident from his general teaching concerning "the laws of nature," which, according to Hobbes, are obligatory upon man as man. "A LAW OF NATURE, lex naturalis, is a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that, by which he 1 Leviathan, Pt. I., chap. XIII. 2 Ibid., chap. VI. thinketh it may be best preserved." We have already seen that these "laws of nature," according to Hobbes, are always binding in foro interno. They are not always binding in foro externo, as, for example, when others do not obey them, and we, by yielding obedience to them under such circumstances, would subject ourselves to the prey of others. We have also seen that the laws are immutable and eternal. Hobbes further tells us that "he that is subject to no civil law" sins "in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason." " Again, he says: "Every man by natural passion, calleth that good which pleaseth him for the present, or so far forth as he can foresee; and in like manner, that which displeaseth him, evil. And therefore he that foreseeth the whole way to his preservation, which is the end that every one by nature aimeth at, must also call it good, and the contrary evil. And this is that good and evil, which not every man in passion calleth so, but all men by reason. And therefore the fulfilling of all these laws is good in reason, and the breaking of them evil. And so also the habit, or disposition, or intention to fulfill them good; and the neglect of them evil." Again, he says: "And seeing that the laws of nature concern the conscience, not he only breaketh them that doth any action contrary, but also he whose action is conformable to them, in case he thinketh it contrary. For though the action chance to be right, yet in his judgment he despiseth the law." 4 Thus we see that Hobbes believed in a morality independent of and antecedent to the will of the sovereign, in an eternal and immutable morality which is binding upon the conscience of man. A morality founded upon reason. To ignore this aspect of Hobbes's teaching, in criticising his ethical philosophy, is manifestly unjust. But we have also seen that he teaches an institutional 1 Leviathan, Pt. I., chap. XIV. 2 Ibid., Pt. II., chap. XXIX. 4 Ibid. Is morality to which apparently the scruples of the individual conscience must give way the sovereign's will being the measure of virtue, good and evil, right and wrong. there any consistency in such teaching? Are not these two aspects of Hobbes's ethical philosophy positively antithetical? These questions can best be answered by examining more closely the nature of the two kinds (if we may so speak) of morality of which Hobbes treats. The morality of reason may be described as follows: Every man's chief good is self-preservation, and every man is obliged by the laws of nature (the morality of reason) to do those things which reason dictates to be the best means for the attainment of this end, and to refrain from those things which he thinks may make against this good. He is, therefore, in the first place, under moral obligation to preserve himself even against himself. The man as reason must preserve himself against the man as passion. Because the man as passion seeks his own destruction, which of course is against the man's chief good, self-preservation. On this point Hobbes says, after unfolding the laws of nature with reference to the preservation "of men in multitudes," that "there be other things tending to the destruction of particular men; as drunkenness, and all other parts of intemperance; which may therefore also be reckoned amongst those things which the law of nature hath forbidden; but are not necessary to be mentioned, nor are pertinent enough to this place." But, in the second place, man is under moral obligation, i.e., is obligated by a law of his rational nature, to seek and maintain his chief good, self-preservation, — against the assaults actual or possible of other men. And whatever is necessary for the accomplishment of this task, even though it involve the destruction of the goods and bodies of other men, his rational nature commands. And what is commanded by his rational 1 Leviathan, chap. XV. nature is morally right. This is undoubtedly what Hobbes means when he says that in a state of nature there is no right or wrong, justice or injustice. He means, not that there is no moral law for the individual with reference to himself. As a being whose chief good is self-preservation, he is under obligation to his rational nature to use the best means, so far as his knowledge goes, to realize this good. But he owes nothing to anybody else. Others have no moral claims upon him. He may use any man in any manner possible to attain his own end, — self-preservation. Indeed, reason obliges him to do so. In such an endeavor to realize the end one cannot do wrong, or be unjust to another. This is the ethics of reason which is man's sole guide in a state of nature. But the ethics of reason involves something more. Man's rational nature dictates that the good which is his chief end cannot be attained in a state of nature; for such a state is one of continual war in which man's chief good is threatened. It can best . be attained in a society organized under government, in a commonwealth where men surrender their right to all things (the exercise of which on the part of all men endangers the safety of each) to a sovereign whose office is to secure them this good. Hence, reason dictates that men should take upon themselves the government of themselves according to the dictates of political morality, the nature of which consists in submission to the sovereign's will as the measure of all things, even of right and wrong, good and evil, to the extent indicated by the covenant by which the commonwealth was founded, because in this way they can best realize the end to which they are ordained by nature. In other words, the morality of reason binds man to "put on" the institutional morality, because the morality of reason has to do with the means of man's self-preservation, and reason points out that existence in a commonwealth, with all the surrender that this implies, is a better means |