Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/48
right which he has by nature to protect himself when there is no one else to protect him.[1] To the liberty of the subject mentioned above must also be added the freedom to govern himself as he pleases in all of those things concerning which the sovereign has made no provision in the form of laws for the regulation of the conduct of his subjects.
We notice, then, in what precedes that there are two parts to the ethical philosophy of Hobbes. He speaks of a morality founded on reason and a morality founded on the will of the sovereign. These two aspects of his ethical teaching have not always been recognized by students of his system. A number of his critics, if conscious of this twofold division at all, have at least treated Hobbes in their criticism as though he simply taught a positive, institutional, political morality, – a morality founded on the will of the sovereign. That Hobbes by his inconsistencies and his baldness of statement has sometimes furnished grounds for such an interpretation no one familiar with his works can deny. He says, for example: "The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions, that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them which till laws be made they cannot know: nor can any law be made, till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it."[2] He speaks here, of course, of civil law, and not of law imposed upon man by his moral personality. Again, he says, speaking of men in a state of nature: "The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice are none of the faculties, neither of the body, nor mind. If they were, they