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INTRODUCTION.

part of this comprehensive system was developed before and, to a certain extent, independently of the first part, which contains Hobbes's views on "First Philosophy and Physics," owing to conditions mentioned below, still, a study of the mental history of Hobbes, already briefly alluded to, and the following confession on the part of Hobbes himself are sufficient grounds for believing that he regarded his ethico-political philosophy as a part of a complete philosophical system such as has been described above. On this point Hobbes says: "I was studying Philosophy for my mind sake, and I had gathered together its first elements in all kinds; and having digested them into three sections by degrees, I thought to have written them, so as in the first I would have treated of body and its general properties; in the second, of man and his special faculties and affections; in the third, of civil government and the duties of subjects. Wherefore, the first section would have contained the first philosophy, and certain elements of physic; in it we would have considered the reasons of time, place, cause, power, relation, proportion, quantity, figure, and motion. In the second, we would have been conversant about imagination, memory, intellect, ratiocination, appetite, will, good and evil, honest and dishonest, and the like. ... Whilst I contrive, order, pensively and slowly compose these matters (for I do only reason, I dispute not); it so happens in the interim, that my country, some few years before the Civil Wars did rage, was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion, and the obedience due from subjects; the true forerunners of an approaching war; and was the cause which, all those other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this third part. Therefore, it happens that what was last in order, is yet come forth first in time."[1] Of course, in a

  1. ↑ Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society, Preface to the Reader; also De Cive, Praefatio ad Lectores.
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