b. Hobbes further takes up the position that this natural condition is of such a nature that all possess the desire to rule over one another. “All in their natural condition are possessed of the will to injure others,” to tyrannize over other men; each has thus to fear the other. Hobbes looks at this condition in its true light, and we find in him no idle talk about a state of natural goodness; the natural condition is really far more like that of the animals - a condition in which there is an unsubdued individual will. All thus wish to “secure themselves against the pretensions of others, to acquire for themselves advantages and superior rights. Opinions, religions, desires, arouse strife;the stronger bears away the victory. The natural condition is consequently a condition of mistrust on the part of all toward all; it is a war of all against all (bellum omnium in omnes),” and the endeavour of one to overreach another. The expression nature has a double significance: In the first place the nature of man signifies his spiritual and rational Being; but his natural condition indicates quite another condition, wherein man conducts himself according to his natural impulses.
In this way he conducts himself in conformity with his desires and inclinations, while the rational, on the contrary, is the obtaining supremacy over the immediately natural. “In the condition of nature a certain irresistible power grants the right to rule over those who cannot resist; it is absurd to leave those whom we have in our power to become free and strong again.”
From this Hobbes draws the conclusion that “man must go forth from the natural condition.”(7)This is true; the natural condition is not what it should be, and must hence be cast off.
c. Hobbes finally passes to the laws of reason which preserve tranquillity. This condition of law is the subjection of the natural, particular will of the individual to the universal will, which, however, is not that of all individuals, but is the will of the ruler; this is consequently not responsible to individuals, but is directed against this private will, and to it all must be obedient.(8) Thus the whole matter is now placed on quite another footing. But because the universal will is made to reside in the will of one monarch, there nevertheless proceeds from this point of view, which is really correct, a condition of absolute rule, of perfect despotism. The condition of law does not, however, mean that the arbitrary will of one man constitutes absolute law, for the universal will is no despotism, being rational, inasmuch as it is consistently expressed and determined in laws.
Rixner (Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 30) says: “Law to him is nothing but the sum of the conditions of peace extorted by iron necessity from the original wickedness of mankind.” We might add that in Hobbes we at least find this, that the nature and organism of the State is established on the principle of human nature, human desire, &c. The English concerned themselves greatly with that principle of passive obedience, in accordance with which it is said that kings receive their power from God. This, in one aspect, is quite true, but in another it is falsely taken to mean that they have no responsibility, that their blind desires, their merely subjective will, is what must be obeyed.
B 4. CUDWORTH. CLARKE. WOLLASTON.
Cudworth wished to revive Plato in England, but to do this after the manner of the demonstrations which we met with in Descartes, and through a trivial metaphysic of the understanding. He wrote a celebrated work: “The true intellectual System of the Universe,” but the Platonic ideas expressed are often in a clumsy form and mingled with the Christian conceptions of God and angels - all regarded as particular existent things. What in Plato is mythical, is here taken as reality in the form of existence; this is reasoned about just as we reason respecting a matter of ordinary fact, such as whether it is probable that the French seek to effect a landing in England, and if so, whether they will successfully accomplish it. The Christian intellectual world is dragged down to the form of ordinary actuality and consequently it is ruined.
