Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/55
It would be extravagant, of course, to suppose that his conclusions concerning the nature of men revealed in his psychological analysis were merely the product of his surroundings. But, on the other hand, it would be erroneous to suppose they were merely the result of self-examination, as he informs us,[1] or of speculations born of "the den." Hobbes, to a very large extent, dealt with human nature as he constantly observed it in the men of his time. He did not so much deal with human nature in the abstract as in the concrete; not so much with man as with men; and with men as they came under his observation. And what an exhibition of human nature did these men afford. As one has said, "the men by whom he was surrounded were distrustful of each other. Anarchy, as he judged, had gained the ascendency. In the civil wars men had returned to the state of nature. Hobbes saw them as children of wrath, hateful and hating each other."[2] This selfishness and unsociality, so manifest in his day, undoubtedly appealed to Hobbes as of the very essence of human nature. And with such a conception of the essential nature of men we can further understand how Hobbes was led to form what many of his critics regarded as extreme and dangerous views of the nature of sovereignty. What, human nature being the Ishmaelitish thing the age is constantly demonstrating it to be, is to help men out of this state of strife? Nothing, thought Hobbes, but the establishment of a supreme authority, possessed of sufficient power to compel men, through fear of penalty, to live like creatures of "reason" rather than like creatures of "passion." This, and this only, is the means by which men are to emerge from a state of nature which is a state of war, into a state of peace which is a state of safety and contentment. This, and this only, is the means by which men, who are already