the result of the sternest and most resolute compression, and the consequence is that reading it is like reading mathematics. Unless you stop to think at almost every sentence, the impression derived from it is nearly worthless. Indeed, a person must be very familiar both with the subject and the author who gets much benefit from a single reading.

The difficulty arises not only from the mathematical closeness of the thought, but from the character of the thought itself. It belongs to a past age, and proceeds upon assumptions which few understand, and with which fewer still can be expected to sympathise. Hobbes's writings are an admirable illustration of the fact that there is a slow but real progress in moral philosophy. He is half ancient and half modern. He has, as it were, cracked the shell of the old methods of inquiry, but he has not completely freed himself from the old terminology. He speaks, for instance, in the terms of Roman law, but he obviously saw and felt the fundamental problems which the Roman lawyers never even tried to solve, and of which the solution is still by no means completely ascertained.

'Suum cuique tribuere' was the end which the Roman lawyers proposed to themselves, assuming that there were some independent means of finding out what'suum' meant. In a certain sense, they succeeded in this undertaking. They found a practical solution of the question, which was no doubt one of the greatest monuments of practical sagacity

ever erected, but they did not solve the speculative difficulty. They hardly seem to have felt it.

This was Hobbes's starting-point: 'When I applied my thoughts to the investigation of natural justice I was presently advertised, from the very word justice (which signifies a steady will of giving every one his own),' [this is a translation of the first words of the Institutes], 'that my first inquiry was to be whence it proceeded that any one should call anything rather his own than another man's.' The whole of his book is meant as an answer to this and analogous questions. It naturally, and indeed inevitably, assumes the way of thinking of his own generation, and this makes it very difficult at times to follow the argument in an entirely satisfactory manner. It is indeed necessary, in order to do so, to neglect a good many forms of expression, and to try to recast the book in a modern form. When this operation has been performed, the general result is to the following effect.

The general problem, as Hobbes seems to have conceived it, was to analyse society as he saw it, by showing the relation and dependence of its various parts, and thence inferring the conditions on which its permanence depends.

One observation arises on this point which shows the difference between the old and new schools of political and moral speculation. Such an inquiry as Hobbes undertook would in these days be considered as essentially historical. The inquiry would be as to the means by which, in point of fact and history,

society grew up. The book would open with speculations on cave men and kitchen middens, and would go on to the investigation of the different written records of the human race.

The advantages of this way of treating such questions have been so often pointed out that we need not discuss them; but some injustice is often done to the older method, and its value is so much underrated, and so frequently altogether denied, that it is worth while to observe, not only that in Hobbes's days the necessary materials for the historical mode of treatment did not exist, but also that the breadth and generality of the views which were derived from the other method were of the greatest value as a step in speculation.

Philosophical history would hardly have been possible without the impulse given to historical inquiry by such theories as those of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Moreover, as analogies and hypotheses, these theories have a great independent value. Society was certainly not founded on an original compact, but the theory that it was, and the effort to view it in that light, taught us a variety of things which we should not otherwise have discovered.

The main results of this analysis are embodied in the following definitions of the terms most commonly employed in political speculation. Liberty is an absence of the 'restraints and hindrances of motion.' Dominion is coercive power exercised by and through laws. A law is 'the speech of him who by right

commands something to others to be done or omitted.' Right is defined somewhat obscurely, and Hobbes is not quite consistent in his use of the word. His definition is, 'that liberty which every man hath to make use of his natural faculties according to right reason.' 'Right reason in the state of nature' is every man's own reason; in a state of society, the reason of the sovereign. Good and Evil ' are names given to things to signify the inclination or aversion of them by whom they were given.'

These are the fundamental definitions of the book, but they are scattered about in various parts of it, and until they are extracted and brought into one view the want of them causes a good deal of obscurity. By their help it becomes easy, with a little rearrangement and alteration of language, to translate Hobbes's theories into a form in which they become intelligible to modern readers, and capable of being estimated at their true value.

The statement would be as follows: If no one or more men had the power of issuing to others such commands as appeared reasonable to themselves, there would be no such thing as society amongst men. Every one would be able to make whatever use he pleased of whatever faculties he possessed, and the only guide which he would have for the regulation of his conduct would be his own notions of what it was desirable for him to do. The existence of that kind of commands which we call laws is what stands between us and this state of things, which would be

a state of general confusion. This appears to be the true interpretation of the well-known paradox that the state of nature is a state of war-a most inoffensive and perfectly true proposition which became offensive only by the way in which it was put.

The next question is, How is one man or body of men enabled to give commands to other men, when the mere natural strength of individuals differs so little that, for practical purposes, the degree of strength possessed by each may be considered as being equal? This power can be given only by the combination of numerous persons for the purpose of creating a fund of power, and investing a single person or set of persons with the possession of it. Inasmuch as no agreement on the part of others can increase the strength of any muscles or the activity of any brain, the power of the ruler will ultimately be found to be constituted by the common resolution of the bulk of the subjects to maintain it.

When the grounds of this resolution are searched into, it will be found to rest on the ground of consistency. If the power transferred were resumed, its resumption would, of course, be resisted, and that resistance would produce a return to the state of confusion for the purpose of avoiding which the power itself was originally set up. A person so acting,' says Hobbes, 'falls into no less contradiction than he who in the schools is reduced to an absurdity.' The powers of the ruler are thus supreme and irrevocable, and their possession and exercise constitute dominion.