Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/51

morality to which apparently the scruples of the individual conscience must give way – the sovereign's will being the measure of virtue, good and evil, right and wrong. Is there any consistency in such teaching? Are not these two aspects of Hobbes's ethical philosophy positively antithetical? These questions can best be answered by examining more closely the nature of the two kinds (if we may so speak) of morality of which Hobbes treats. morality of reason may be described as follows: Every man's chief good is self-preservation, and every man is obliged by the laws of nature (the morality of reason) to do those things which reason dictates to be the best means for the attainment of this end, and to refrain from those things which he thinks may make against this good. He is, therefore, in the first place, under moral obligation to preserve himself even against himself. The man as reason must preserve himself against the man as passion. Because the man as passion seeks his own destruction, which of course is against the man's chief good, – self-preservation. On this point Hobbes says, after unfolding the laws of nature with reference to the preservation "of men in multitudes," that "there be other things tending to the destruction of particular men; as drunkenness, and all other parts of intemperance; which may therefore also be reckoned amongst those things which the law of nature hath forbidden; but are not necessary to be mentioned, nor are pertinent enough to this place."^[1] But, in the second place, man is under moral obligation, i.e., is obligated by a law of his rational nature, to seek and maintain his chief good, – self-preservation, – against the assaults actual or possible of other men. And whatever is necessary for the accomplishment of this task, even though it involve the destruction of the goods and bodies of other men, his rational nature commands. And what is commanded by his rational

1. ↑ Leviathan, chap. XV.