cease to bewail among the dead that which was man, or rather was immortal. His soul conversed with God so much when he was here, that it rejoices him to be now eternally freed from interruption in that blessed exercise; his virtues were recorded in heaven's annals, and can never perish; by them he yet teaches us and all those to whose knowledge they shall arrive.'

It was because Puritanism produced such men as Colonel Hutchinson that it remained a vital force long after its short-lived political triumph had given place to the reaction of the Restoration.

CHAPTER XI.

HOBBES AND THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.

THE age of Milton was an era of revolution in the world of ! science. The names of Galileo, Kepler, Descartes and Pascal abroad, of Bacon, Napier and Harvey in England, stand out conspicuous as the leaders of a new movement. Napier's little treatise on Logarithms-the beginning of a new age of mathematical development-appeared in 1614, and five years later Harvey made known to a sceptical profession his discovery of the circulation of the blood. Meanwhile, despite all prejudice and intolerance, the Copernican theory was revolutionizing astronomy, and Descartes was preparing himself to be the leader of a new philosophy. On every hand were the signs of change the passing away of the old. Paris became a great centre of scientific research; while in London, Sir Thomas Gresham's newly established College formed a meeting place for the men of the new science. Out of these latter informal gatherings sprang, at the Restoration, the Royal Society, with the foundation of which the history of modern scientific development in England takes a definite commencement.

This new spirit colours the literature of the age in various ways. It shows itself in the broad tolerance-almost sceptical in its consciousness of fallibility-of Sir Thomas Browne, the ocult philosophy of Sir Kenelm Digby, and the

physical speculations of Dr. Wilkins; while it gives a tone to the later verse of Cowley, Waller and Dryden-all members of the Royal Society.

But it is in Hobbes that speculative thought takes strongest hold of the new world of scientific discovery, and tries to mould it into a consistent philosophical system. It is perhaps somewhat too much to assert that Hobbes was 'the one English thinker of the first rank in the long period of two generations separating Bacon and Locke,' but he was certainly the one Englishman of letters of this period who attempted to make the whole range of philosophic thought his province- to order the whole domain of human knowledge.'

(1588-1679),

Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport-now a part of Malmesbury in the year of the Armada, Thomas Hobbes and was brought up by his uncle. On leaving Oxford in 1608 he was appointed tutor to the son of the Earl of Devonshire, and maintained a close connexion with the Cavendish family during the rest of his life. In London, Hobbes enjoyed the friendship of Bacon, to whom he acted as secretary, Ben Jonson, and most of the wits of the time, while foreign travels gave him the opportunity of making the acquaintance of Galileo, Mersenne, and other leaders of continental scientific thought. With the sole exception of a translation of Thucydides, undertaken in 1628 to show the evils of popular rule in view of the contest over the Petition of Right, Hobbes reached the age of fifty without having published anything. But about 1637, under the stimulus of a newly-acquired knowledge of higher mathematics, he deliberately set about the construction of a complete philosophical system, which was to be developed in three treatises De Corpore, on the fundamental physical and mathematical basis of the system; De Homine, on psycho

logy; and De Cive, on political philosophy. No other philosophic thinker set about so ambitious a task till Mr. Herbert Spenser, in our own day, endeavoured to apply the laws of evolution to the whole range of human development. An attempt that even now is often regarded as premature in relation to the basis on which it rests, was not less relatively premature at the time that Hobbes began his work. The empirical method was as yet in its infancy, and the distinction between Science and Philosophy was only dimly recognized. There was, in fact, very little material as yet for the philosopher to work on, and no systematic classification of such material as had been collected. The treatises did get themselves written, but at long intervals and by no means on the scale, or with the completeness, that Hobbes had originally intended. De Cive was privately circulated in 1642, published in Latin in 1647, and translated into English three years later; the De Homine, or Treatise on Human Nature, was issued in 1650; and De Corpore was published in 1655, and translated next year. Before the meeting of the Long Parliament, Hobbes had fled to Paris, where Cowley, Denham, and other royalist exiles afterwards joined him. Ten years later, finding that the ecclesiastical views of the Leviathan were distasteful to the cavalier court he returned to London.. Here he was allowed to remain undisturbed till the Restoration, when he succeeded in reconciling himself to the Court, and spent the last nineteen years of his life under the kindly protection of his former pupil, the Earl of Devonshire. During these years he was continually engaged in controversy over theological and mathematical questions growing out of his writings, A pamphlet war with Bishop Bramhall produced one important addition to Hobbes' works—a letter on Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, in which his views on Free-Will are most fully stated. His con

troversies with the mathematicians only produced much acrimonious language from the philosopher, whose knowledge of mathematics was a good deal less complete than his assurance and determination not to own himself mistaken. At the age of eighty-four he composed an Autobiography in Latin verse, and two years later completed a vigorous, though singularly unpoetical, translation into English verse of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Behemoth, a History of the Civil Wars in four dialogues, though written soon after the Restoration, was only published in a complete and authorized edition after his death. It has recently been re-published from a still more complete text found in the Library of St. John's College, Oxford. Though full of shrewd observations of men and things, it has no great historical value.

Hobbes died at the age of ninety-two, more suspected as an atheist than admired as a philosopher.

The Leviathan, published in 1651, is his most important work, and embodies most completely his characteristic political theories. It is divided into four books, dealing with Man, the Commonwealth, the Christian Commonwealth, and the Kingdom of Darkness—or in other words, with Psychology, Political Philosophy, the relations of Church and State, and theological fallacies. The treatise is undoubtedly coloured by the circumstances of the time, but its basis is Hobbes' theory of right, and of human nature. Assume man entirely selfish (as Hobbes does), actuated by no altruistic instinct, and the remedy for Anarchy is in mutual agreement to obey a common head-a 'Mortal God' -a Leviathan. This sovereign power must be indivisible, and supreme both over civil and ecclesiastical matters. Outward conformity it may require; but opinion it neither can, or should, coerce. Though used to defend absolute monarchy, Hobbes' political theory has a liberal element in