Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/26
charges of disloyalty and atheism. Thus deprived of the prince's protection, Hobbes, ever full of fears, at once saw himself exposed to a twofold peril. The royalist party, he well knew, counted in its ranks desperadoes who could slay ― who had newly slain two defenceless envoys of the commonwealth, Doreslaus at The Hague, and Ascham at Madrid. And there was another danger not to be slighted even by a man less prone to terror. The French clerical authorities, made aware of the contents of Leviathan, and exasperated by such an open and unsparing assault (no longer a masked attack, as in the De Cive) on the Papal system, were moving (as Clarendon again bears confirmatory witness) to arraign the foreign offender. No course seemed left to Hobbes but sudden and secret flight. After a self-imposed exile of eleven years, cast out in the end by his own party, and a fugitive from religious hate, he could turn only to his native country, which he had been so ready to desert, and seek protection from the revolutionary government which he had sacrificed everything to oppose."[1]
In 1651 Hobbes returned to England. He took up his abode in London and devoted himself mainly to literary work. In 1655 he published De Corpore, containing, for the most part, his views on First Philosophy and Physics. In 1656 an English translation of De Corpore appeared with an appendix of "Six Lessons" written in connection with a mathematical controversy with Professor John Wallis. In 1658 he published De Homine, a psychological treatise, the major portion of which is devoted to optics. He had already, as we have seen, published his works De Cive and Leviathan, so that his philosophical system was now essentially developed. It represented in this practically complete form essentially what he had in mind as indicated in the preface to the De Cive, part of which has already been quoted, viz.: the division of Philosophy
- ↑ Hobbes, pp. 71-73.