Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/49
might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it."[1] Here, at least, the surface interpretation of his teaching would indicate that right and wrong are merely the creatures of the sovereign's fiat. In the De Cive his words are essentially the same: "Doctrinas de justo et injusto, bono et malo, praeter leges in unaquaque civitate constitutas authenticas esse nullas." And also in the following: "Ad civitatem pertinet etiam Christianam quid sit justitia, quid injustitia, sive peccatum contra justitiam determinare." Once more he says: "pleasure therefore, or delight, is the apparence or sense of good; ... Of pleasures or delights, some arise from the sense of an object present; and those may be called pleasure of sense; the word sensual, as it is used by those only that condemn them, having no place till there be laws."[2] He speaks here again of civil laws. But while these statements and others like them, which are numerous in the writings of Hobbes, seem to furnish some ground for the interpretation of Hobbes as teaching merely an institutional morality, no careful student of his ethical philosophy can fail to recognize that Hobbes emphatically taught a morality of reason which is antecedent to and independent of a political morality. This is evident from his general teaching concerning "the laws of nature," which, according to Hobbes, are obligatory upon man as man. "A Law of nature, lex naturalis, is a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that, by which he