Chapter VIII   
   
Of the Virtues Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects   
   
   
VIRTUE generally, in all sorts of subjects, is somewhat that is valued for eminence, and consisteth in comparison. For, if all things were equal in all men, nothing would be prized. And by ‘virtues intellectual’ are always understood such abilities of the mind as men praise, value, and desire should be in themselves, and go commonly under the name of a ‘good wit,’ though the same word ‘wit’ be used also to distinguish one certain ability from the rest.     1   
  These ‘virtues’ are of two sorts, ‘natural’ and ‘acquired.’ By natural I mean not that which a man hath from his birth; for that is nothing else but sense, wherein men differ so little one from another and from brute beasts as it is not be reckoned amongst virtues. But I mean that ‘wit’ which is gotten by use only and experience; without method, culture, or instruction. This ‘natural wit’ consisteth principally in two things, ‘celerity of imagining,’ that is, swift succession of one thought to another, and steady direction to some approved end. On the contrary, a slow imagination maketh that defect or fault of the mind which is commonly called ‘dulness,’ ‘stupidity,’ and sometimes by other names that signify slowness of motion or difficulty to be moved.     2   
  And this difference of quickness is caused by the difference of men’s passions, that love and dislike, some one thing, some another; and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another; and are held to and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of men’s thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be ‘like one another,’ or in what they be ‘unlike,’ or ‘what they serve for,’ or ‘how they serve to such a purpose;’ those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a ‘good wit,’ by which in this occasion is meant a ‘good fancy.’ But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called ‘distinguishing’ and ‘discerning’ and ‘judging’ between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a ‘good judgment;’ and, particularly in matter of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons, are to be discerned, this virtue is called ‘discretion.’ The former, that is, fancy, without the help of judgment, is not commended as a virtue; but the latter, which is judgment and discretion, is commended for itself, without the help of fancy. Besides the discretion of times, places, and persons, necessary to a good fancy, there is required also an often application of his thoughts to their end, that is to say, to some use to be made of them. This done, he that hath this virtue will be easily fitted with similitudes that will please not only by illustrations of his discourse, and adorning it with new and apt metaphors, but also by the rarity of their invention. But without steadiness and direction to some end a great fancy is one kind of madness; such as they have that, entering into any discourse, are snatched from their purpose by everything that comes in their thought, into so many and so long digressions and parentheses that they utterly lose themselves—which kind of folly I know no particular name for, but the cause of it is sometimes want of experience, whereby that seemeth to a man new and rare which doth not so to others, sometimes pusillanimity, by which that seems great to him which other men think a trifle; and whatsoever is new or great, and therefore thought fit to be told, withdraws a man by degrees from the intended way of his discourse.     3   
  In a good poem, whether it be ‘epic’ or ‘dramatic,’ as also in ‘sonnets,’ ‘epigrams,’ and other pieces, both judgment and fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not to displease by indiscretion.     4   
  In a good history the judgment must be eminent, because the goodness consisteth in the method, in the truth, and in the choice of the actions that are most profitable to be known. Fancy has no place but only in adorning the style.     5   
  In orations of praise, and in invectives, the fancy is predominant, because the design is not truth, but to honour or dishonour, which is done by noble or by vile comparisons. The judgment does but suggest what circumstances make an action laudable or culpable.     6   
  In hortatives and pleadings, as truth or disguise serveth best to the design in hand, so is the judgment or the fancy most required.     7   
  In demonstration, in counsel, and all rigorous search of truth, judgment does all, except sometimes the understanding have need to be opened by some apt similitude, and then there is so much use of fancy. But for metaphors, they are in this case utterly excluded. For seeing they openly profess deceit: to admit them into counsel or reasoning were manifest folly.     8   
  And in any discourse whatsoever, if the defect of discretion be apparent, how extravagant soever the fancy be, the whole discourse will be taken for a sign of want of wit; and so will it never when the discretion is manifest, though the fancy be never so ordinary.     9   
  The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame; which verbal discourse cannot do farther than the judgment shall approve of the time, place, and persons. An anatomist or a physician may speak or write his judgment of unclean things, because it is not to please but profit; but for another man to write his extravagant and pleasant fancies of the same is as if a man, from being tumbled into the dirt, should come and present himself before good company. And it is the want of discretion that makes the difference. Again, in professed remissness of mind, and familiar company, a man may play with the sounds and equivocal significations of words, and that many times with encounters of extraordinary fancy; but in a sermon, or in public, or before persons unknown, or whom we ought to reverence, there is no jingling of words that will not be accounted folly; and the difference is only in the want of discretion. So that, where wit is wanting, it is not fancy that is wanting but discretion. Judgment therefore without fancy is wit, but fancy without judgment, not.     10   
  When the thoughts of a man that has a design in hand, running over a multitude of things, observes how they conduce to that design or what design they may conduce unto, if his observations be such as are not easy or usual, this wit of his is called ‘prudence,’ and depends on much experience and memory of the like things and their consequences heretofore. In which there is not much difference of men as there is in their fancies and judgments, because the experience of men equal in age is not much unequal as to the quantity, but lies in different occasions, every one having his private designs. To govern well a family and a kingdom are not different degrees of prudence, but different sorts of business; no more than to draw a picture in little, or as great or greater than the life, are different degrees of art. A plain husbandman is more prudent in affairs of his own house than a privy-councillor in the affairs of another man.     11   
  To prudence, if you add the use of unjust or dishonest means, such as usually are prompted to men by fear or want, you have that crooked wisdom which is called ‘craft,’ which is a sign of pusillanimity. For magnanimity is contempt of unjust or dishonest helps. And that which the Latins call versutia, translated into English ‘shifting,’ and is a putting off of a present danger or incommodity by engaging into a greater, as when a man robs one to pay another, is but a short-sighted craft, called versutia, from versura, which signifies taking money at usury for the present payment of interest.     12   
  As for ‘acquired wit,’ I mean acquired by method and instruction, there is none but reason, which is grounded on the right use of speech, and produceth the sciences. But of reason and science I have already spoken, in the fifth and sixth chapters.     13   
  The causes of this difference of wits are in the passions; and the difference of passions proceedeth partly from the different constitution of the body, and partly from different education. For if the difference proceeded from the temper of the brain and the organs of sense, either exterior or interior, there would be no less difference of men in their sight, hearing, or other senses, than in their fancies and discretions. It proceeds therefore from the passions, which are different not only from the difference of men’s complexions, but also from their difference of customs and education.     14   
  The passions that most of all cause the difference of wit are principally the more or less desire of power, of riches, of knowledge, and of honour. All which may be reduced to the first, that is, desire of power. For riches, knowledge, and honour, are but several sorts of power.     15   
  And, therefore, a man who has no great passion for any of these things, but is, as men term it, indifferent, though he may be so far a good man as to be free from giving offence, yet he cannot possibly have either a great fancy or much judgment. For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies, to range abroad and find the way of the things desired, all steadiness of the mind’s motion, and all quickness of the same, proceeding from thence; for as to have no desire is to be dead, so to have weak passions is dulness; and to have passions indifferently for everything, ‘giddiness’ and ‘distraction’; and to have stronger and more vehement passions for anything than is ordinarily seen in others is that which men call ‘madness.’     16   
  Whereof there be almost as many kinds as of the passions themselves. Sometimes the extraordinary and extravagant passion proceedeth from the evil constitution of the organs of the body, or harm done them; and sometimes the hurt and indisposition of the organs is caused by the vehemence or long continuance of the passion. But in both cases the madness is of one and the same nature.     17   
  The passion whose violence, or continuance, maketh madness is either great ‘vain-glory,’ which is commonly called ‘pride’ and ‘self-conceit,’ or great ‘dejection’ of mind.     18   
  Pride subjecteth a man to anger, the excess whereof is the madness called ‘rage’ and ‘fury’. And thus it comes to pass that excessive desire of revenge when it becomes habitual, hurteth the organs, and becomes rage; that excessive love, with jealousy, becomes also rage; excessive opinion of a man’s own self, for divine inspiration, for wisdom, learning, form and the like, becomes distraction and giddiness; the same, joined with envy, rage; vehement opinion of the truth of anything contradicted by others, rage.     19   
  Dejection subjects a man to causeless fears; which is a madness; commonly called ‘melancholy,’ apparent also in divers manners, as in haunting of solitudes and graves, in superstitious behaviour, and in fearing, some one some another particular thing. In sum, all passions that produce strange and unusual behaviour are called by the general name of madness. But of the several kinds of madness he that would take the pains might enrol a legion. And if the excesses be madness, there is no doubt but the passions themselves, when they tend to evil, are degrees of the same.     20   
  For example, though the effect of folly in them that are possessed of an opinion of being inspired be not visible always in one man by any very extravagant action that proceedeth from such passion, yet, when many of them conspire together, the rage of the whole multitude is visible enough. For what argument of madness can there be greater than to clamour, strike, and throw stones at out best friends? Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy, those by whom all their lifetime before they have been protected and secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man. For, as in the midst of the sea though a man perceive no sound of that part of the water next him, yet he is well assured that part contributes as much to the roaring of the sea as any other part of the same quantity, so also, though we perceive no great unquietness in one or two men, yet we may be well assured that their singular passions are parts of the seditious roaring of a troubled nation. And if there were nothing else that bewrayed their madness, yet that very arrogating such inspiration to themselves is argument enough. If some man in Bedlam should entertain you with sober discourse, and you desire in taking leave, to know what he were, that you might another time requite his civility, and he should tell you he were God the Father, I think you need expect no extravagant action or argument of his madness.     21   
  This opinion of inspiration, called commonly private spirit, begins very often from some lucky finding of an error generally held by others; and not knowing, or not remembering, by what conduct of reason they came to so singular a truth (as they think it, though it be many times an untruth they light on) they presently admire themselves, as being in the special grace of God Almighty, who hath revealed the same to them supernaturally by His Spirit.     22   
  Again, that madness is nothing else but too much appearing passion may be gathered out of the effects of wine, which are the same with those of the evil disposition of the organs. For the variety of behaviour in men that have drunk too much is the same with that of madmen: some of them raging, others loving, others laughing, all extravagantly, but according to their several domineering passions; for the effect of the wine does but remove dissimulation and take from them the sight of the deformity of their passions. For I believe the most sober men, when they walk alone without care and employment of the mind, would be unwilling the vanity and extravagance of their thoughts at that time should be publicly seen; which is a confession that passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.     23   
  The opinions of the world, both in ancient and later ages, concerning the cause of madness have been two. Some deriving them from the passions; some from demons, or spirits, either good or bad, which they thought might enter into a man, possess him, and move his organs in such strange and uncouth manner as madmen use to do. The former sort, therefore, called such men madmen; but the latter called them sometimes ‘demoniacs,’ that is, possessed with spirits; sometimes energumeni, that is, agitated or moved with spirits; and now in Italy they are called not only pazzi, madmen but, also spiritati, men possessed.     24   
  There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera, a city of the Greeks, at the acting of the tragedy of Andromeda upon an extreme hot day; whereupon a great many of the spectators falling into fevers had this accident from the heat and from the tragedy together, that they did nothing but pronounce iambics, with the names of Perseus and Andromeda; which, together with the fever, was cured by the coming on of winter; and this madness was thought to proceed from the passion imprinted by the tragedy. Likewise there reigned a fit of madness in another Grecian city, which seized only the young maidens, and caused many of them to hang themselves. This was by most then thought an act of the devil. But one that suspected that contempt of life in them might proceed from some passion of the mind, and supposing that they did not contemn also their honour, gave counsel to the magistrates to strip such as so hanged themselves, and let them hang out naked. This, the story says, cured that madness. But, on the other side, the same Grecians did often ascribe madness to the operation of Eumenides, or Furies; and sometimes of Ceres, Phœbus, and other gods; so much did men attribute to phantasms as to think them aërial living bodies, and generally to call them spirits. And as the Romans in this held the same opinion with the Greeks, so also did the Jews, for they called madmen prophets, or, according as they thought the spirits good or bad, demoniacs; and some of them called both prophets and demoniacs madmen; and some called the same man both demoniac and madman. But for the Gentiles it is no wonder, because diseases and health, vices and virtues, and many natural accidents, were with them termed and worshipped as demons. So that a man was to understand by demon as well sometimes an ague as a devil. But for the Jews to have such opinion is somewhat strange. For neither Moses nor Abraham pretended to prophesy by possession of a spirit; but from the voice of God, or by a vision or dream; nor is there anything in his law, moral or ceremonial, by which they were taught there was any such enthusiasm or any possession. When God is said (Numb. xi. 25) to take from the spirit that was in Moses, and give to the seventy elders, the Spirit of God (taking it for the substance of God) is not divided. The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man mean a man’s spirit, inclined to godliness. And where it is said (Exod. xxviii. 3) ‘whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom to make garments for Aaron’ is not meant a spirit put into them that can make garments, but the wisdom of their own spirits in that kind of work. In the like sense, the spirit of man, when it produceth unclean actions, is ordinarily called an unclean spirit, and so other spirits, though not always, yet as often as the virtue or vice so styled is extraordinary and eminent. Neither did the other prophets of the Old Testament pretend enthusiasm, or that God spake in them, but to them, by voice, vision, or dream; and the ‘burthen of the Lord’ was not possession, but command. How then could the Jews fall into this opinion of possession? I can imagine no reason but that which is common to all men, namely the want of curiosity to search natural causes, and their placing felicity in the acquisition of the gross pleasures of the senses and the things that most immediately conduce thereto. For they that see any strange and unusual ability or defect in a man’s mind, unless they see withal from what cause it may probably proceed, can hardly think it natural; and, if not natural, they must needs think it supernatural; and then what can it be but that either God or the devil is in him? And hence it came to pass, when our Saviour (Mark iii, 21) was compassed about with the multitude, those of the house doubted He was mad, and went out to hold Him; but the Scribes said He had Beelzebub, and that was it by which He cast out devils; as if the greater madman had awed the lesser; and that (John x, 20) some said ‘He hath a devil, and is mad,’ whereas others holding Him for a prophet said ‘these are not the words of one that hath a devil.’ So in the Old Testament he that came to anoint Jehu (2 Kings ix, 11) was a prophet; but some of the company asked Jehu ‘what came that madman for’? So that in sum it is manifest that whosoever behaved himself in extraordinary manner was thought by the Jews to be possessed either with a good or evil spirit, except by the Sadducees, who erred so far on the other hand as not to believe there were at all any spirits, which is very near to direct atheism; and thereby perhaps the more provoked others to term such men demoniacs rather than madmen.     25   
  But why then does our Saviour proceed in the curing of them, as if they were possessed, and not as if they were mad? To which I can give no other kind of answer but that which is given to those that urge the Scripture in like manner against the opinion of the motion of the earth. The Scripture was written to show unto men the kingdom of God, and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects, leaving the world, and the philosophy thereof to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural reason. Whether the earth’s or sun’s motion make the day and night, or whether the exorbitant action of men proceed form passion or from the devil, so we worship him not, it is all one, as to our obedience and subjection to God Almighty; which is the thing for which the Scripture was written. As for that our Saviour speaketh to the disease as to a person, it is the usual phrase of all that cure by words only, as Christ did and enchanters pretend to do, whether they speak to a devil or not. For is not Christ also said (Matt. viii, 26) to have rebuked the winds? Is not He said also (Luke iv, 39) to rebuke a fever? Yet this does not argue that a fever is a devil. And whereas many of the devils are said to confess Christ, it is not necessary to interpret those places otherwise than that those madmen confessed Him. And whereas our Saviour (Matt. xii, 43) speaketh of an unclean spirit, that having gone out of a man wandereth through dry places, seeking rest and finding none, and returning into the same man with seven other spirits worse than himself, it is manifestly a parable alluding to a man that after a little endeavour to quit his lusts is vanquished by the strength of them, and becomes seven times worse than he was. So that I see nothing at all in the Scripture that requireth a belief that demoniacs were any other thing but madmen.     26   
  There is yet another fault in the discourses of some men, which may also be numbered amongst the sorts of madness, namely that abuse of words, whereof I have spoken before in the fifth chapter, by the name of absurdity. And that is when men speak such words as, put together, have in them no signification at all, but are fallen upon by some, through misunderstanding of the words they have received and repeat by rote, by others from intention to deceive by obscurity. And this is incident to none but those that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible, as the schoolmen, or in questions of abstruse philosophy. The common sort of men seldom speak insignificantly, and are therefore by those other egregious persons counted idiots. But, to be assured their words are without anything correspondent to them in the mind, there would need some examples, which if any man require, let him take a schoolman in his hands and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any difficult point, as the Trinity, the Deity, the nature of Christ, transubstantiation, free-will, etc., into any of the modern tongues, so as to make the same intelligible, or into any tolerable Latin, such as they were acquainted withal, that lived when the Latin tongue was vulgar. What is the meaning of these words: ‘The first cause does not necessarily inflow anything into the second, by force of the essential subordination of the second causes, by which it may help it to work?’ They are the translation of the title of the sixth chapter of Suarez, first book, Of the Concourse, Motion, and Help of God. When men write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not mad, or intend to make others so? And particularly in the question of transubstantiation, where, after certain words spoken, they that say the whiteness, roundness, magnitude, quality, corruptibility, all which are incorporeal, etc., go out of the wafer into the body of our blessed Saviour, do they not make those ‘nesses,’ ‘tudes,’ and ‘ties’ to be so many spirits possessing his body? For by spirits they mean always things that, being incorporeal, are nevertheless movable from one place to another. So that this kind of absurdity may rightly be numbered amongst the many sorts of madness, and all the time that guided by clear thoughts of their worldly lust they forbear disputing or writing thus, but lucid intervals. And thus much of the virtues and defects intellectual.     27   

Chapter IX   
   
Of the Several Subjects of Knowledge   
   
   
THERE are of ‘knowledge’ two kinds, whereof one is ‘knowledge of fact,’ the other ‘knowledge of the consequence of one affirmation to another.’ The former is nothing else but sense and memory, and is ‘absolute knowledge,’ as when we see a fact doing or remember it done; and this is the knowledge required in a witness. The latter is called ‘science,’ and is ‘conditional,’ as when we know that ‘if the figure shown be a circle, then any straight line through the centre shall divide it into two equal parts.’ And this is the knowledge required in a philosopher, that is to say of him that pretends to reasoning.     1   
  The register of ‘knowledge of fact’ is called ‘history,’ whereof there be two sorts: one called ‘natural history,’ which is the history of such facts or effects of Nature as have no dependence on man’s ‘will,’ such as are the histories of ‘metals,’ ‘plants,’ ‘animals,’ ‘regions,’ and the like. The other is ‘civil history,’ which is the history of the voluntary actions of men in commonwealths.     2   
  The registers of science are such ‘books,’ as contain the ‘demonstrations’ of consequences of one affirmation to another, and are commonly called ‘books of philosophy,’ whereof the sorts are many, according to the diversity of the matter, and may be divided in such manner as I have divided them in the following table (pp. 360–361).     3   

   
Chapter X   
    
Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthiness   
    
    
THE ‘POWER of a man,’ to take it universally, is his present means, to obtain some future apparent good; and is either ‘original’ or ‘instrumental.’     1   
  ‘Natural power’ is the eminence of the faculties of body or mind, as extraordinary strength, form, prudence, arts, eloquence, liberality, nobility. ‘Instrumental’ are those powers which, acquired by these or by fortune are means and instruments to acquire more, as riches, reputation, friends, and the secret working of God, which men call good luck. For the nature of power is in this point like to fame, increasing as it proceeds; or like the motion of heavy bodies, which the further they go make still the more haste.     2   
  The greatest of human powers is that which is compounded of the powers of most men, united by consent, in one person, natural or civil, that has the use of all their powers depending on his will such as is the power of a commonwealth. Or depending on the wills of each particular, such as is the power of a faction or of divers factions leagued. Therefore to have servants is power; to have friends is power; for they are strengths united.     3   
  Also riches joined with liberality is power, because it procureth friends and servants; without liberality, not so; because in this case they defend not, but expose men to envy, as a prey.     4   
  Reputation of power is power, because it draweth with it the adherence of those that need protection.     5   
  So is reputation of love of a man’s country, called popularity, for the same reason.     6   
  Also, what quality soever maketh a man beloved or feared of many, or the reputation of such quality, is power, because it is a means to have the assistance and service of many.     7   
  Good success is power, because it maketh reputation of wisdom or good fortune, which makes men either fear him or rely on him.     8   
  Affability of men already in power is increase of power, because it gaineth love.     9   
  Reputation of prudence in the conduct of peace or war is power, because to prudent men we commit the government of ourselves more willingly than to others.     10   
  Nobility is power, not in all places but only in those commonwealths where it has privileges, for in such privileges consisteth their power.     11   
  Eloquence is power, because it is seeming prudence.     12   
  Form is power, because, being a promise of good, it recommendeth men to the favour of women and strangers.     13   
  The sciences are small power, because not eminent and therefore not acknowledged in any man; nor are at all, but in a few, and in them but of a few things. For science is of that nature as none can understand it to be but such as in a good measure have attained it.     14   
  Arts of public use, as fortification, making of engines, and other instruments of war, because they confer to defence and victory, are power; and though the true mother of them be science, namely the mathematics, yet, because they are brought into the light by the hand of the artificer, they be esteemed, the midwife passing with the vulgar for the mother, as his issue.     15   
  The ‘value,’ or ‘worth,’ of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power; and therefore is not absolute, but a thing dependent on the need and judgment of another. An able conductor of soldiers is of great price in time of war present, or imminent; but in peace not so. A learned and uncorrupt judge is much worth in time of peace, but not so much in war. And, as in other things so in men, not the seller but the buyer determines the price. For let a man, as most men do, rate themselves [himself] at the highest value they [he] can, yet their [his] true value is no more than it is esteemed by others.     16   
  The manifestation of the value we set on one another is that which is commonly called honouring and dishonouring. To value a man at a high rate is to ‘honour’ him; at a low rate, ‘to dishonour’ him. But high and low, in this case, is to be understood by comparison to the rate that each man setteth on himself.     17   
  The public worth of a man, which is the value set on him by the commonwealth, is that which men commonly call ‘dignity.’ And this value of him by the commonwealth is understood by offices of command, judicature, public employment, or by names and titles introduced for distinction of such value.     18   
  To pray to another for aid of any kind is ‘to honour,’ because a sign we have an opinion he has power to help; and the more difficult the aid is, the more is the honour.     19   
  To obey is to honour, because no man obeys them whom they think have no power to help or hurt them. And consequently to disobey is to ‘dishonour.’     20   
  To give great gifts to a man is to honour him, because it is buying of protection and acknowledging of power. To give little gifts is to dishonour, because it is but alms and signifies an opinion of the need of small helps.     21   
  To be sedulous in promoting another’s good, also to flatter is to honour, as a sign we seek his protection or aid. To neglect is to dishonour.     22   
  To give way or place to another in any commodity is to honour, being a confession of greater power. To arrogate is to dishonour.     23   
  To show any sign of love or fear of another is to honour, for both to love and to fear is to value. To contemn, or less to love or fear than he expects, is to dishonour, for it is undervaluing.     24   
  To praise, magnify, or call happy, is to honour, because nothing but goodness, power, and felicity, is value. To revile, mock, or pity, is to dishonour.     25   
  To speak to another with consideration, to appear before him with decency, and humility, is to honour him, as signs of fear to offend. To speak to him rashly, to do anything before him obscenely, slovenly, impudently, is to dishonour.     26   
  To believe, to trust, to rely on another, is to honour him, a sign of opinion of his virtue and power. To distrust, or not believe, is to dishonour.     27   
  To hearken to a man’s counsel or discourse, of what kind soever, is to honour, as a sign we think him wise, or eloquent, or witty. To sleep, or go forth, or talk the while, is to dishonour.     28   
  To do those things to another which he takes for signs of honour, or which the law or custom makes so, is to honour, because in approving the honour done by others he acknowledgeth the power which others acknowledge. To refuse to do them is to dishonour.     29   
  To agree with in opinion is to honour, as being a sign of approving his judgment and wisdom. To dissent is dishonour, and an upbraiding of error, and, if the dissent be in many things, of folly.     30   
  To imitate is to honour, for it is vehemently to approve. To imitate one’s enemy, is to dishonour.     31   
  To honour those another honours is to honour him, as a sign of approbation of his judgment. To honour his enemies is to dishonour him.     32   
  To employ in counsel or in actions of difficulty is to honour, as a sign of opinion of this wisdom or other power. To deny employment in the same cases to those seek it is to dishonour.     33   
  All these ways of honouring are natural, and as well within as without commonwealths. But in commonwealths, where he or they that have the supreme authority can make whatsoever they please to stand for of honour, there be other honours.     34   
  A sovereign doth honour a subject with whatsoever title, or office, or employment, or action, that he himself will have taken for a sign of his will to honour him.     35   
  The King of Persia honoured Mordecai when he appointed he should be conducted through the streets in the king’s garment upon one of the king’s horses, with a crown on his head and a prince before him, proclaiming ‘Thus shall it be done to him that the king will honour.’ And yet another king of Persia, or the same another time, to one that demanded for some great service to wear one of the king’s robes, gave him leave so to do; but with this addition, that he should wear it as the king’s fool; and then it was dishonour. So that of civil honour the fountain is in the person of the commonwealth, and dependeth on the will of the sovereign; and is therefore temporary, and called ‘civil honour,’ such as magistracy, offices, titles, and, in some places, coats and scutcheons painted; and men honour such as have them, as having so many signs of favour in the commonwealth: which favour is power.     36   
  ‘Honourable’ is whatsoever possession, action, or quality, is an argument and sign of power.     37   
  And therefore to be honoured, loved, or feared of many, is honourable, as arguments of power. To be honoured of few or none, ‘dishonourable.’     38   
  Dominion and victory is honourable, because acquired by power; and servitude, for need or fear, is dishonourable.     39   
  Good fortune, if lasting, honourable, as a sign of the favour of God. Ill fortune and losses dishonourable. Riches are honourable, for they are power. Poverty, dishonourable. Magnanimity, liberality, hope, courage, confidence, are honourable, for they proceed from the conscience of power. Pusillanimity, parsimony, fear, diffidence, are dishonourable.     40   
  Timely resolution, or determination of what a man is to do, is honourable, as being the contempt of small difficulties and dangers. And irresolution, dishonourable, as a sign of too much valuing of little impediments and little advantages; for when a man has weighed things as long as the time permits, and resolves not, the difference of weight is but little, and therefore, if he resolve not, he overvalues little things, which is pusillanimity.     41   
  All actions and speeches that proceed, or seem to proceed, from much experience, science, discretion, or wit, are honourable, for all these are powers. Actions or words that proceed from error, ignorance, or folly, dishonourable.     42   
  Gravity, as far forth as it seems to proceed from a mind employed on something else, is honourable, because employment is a sign of power. But, if it seem to proceed from a purpose to appear grave, it is dishonourable. For the gravity of the former is like the steadiness of a ship laden with merchandise, but of the latter like the steadiness of a ship ballasted with sand and other trash.     43   
  To be conspicuous, that is to say to be known, for wealth, office, great actions, or any eminent good, is honourable, as a sign of the power for which he is conspicuous. On the contrary, obscurity is dishonourable.     44   
  To be descended from conspicuous parents is honourable, because they the more easily attain the aids and friends of their ancestors. On the contrary, to be descended from obscure parentage is dishonourable.     45   
  Actions proceeding from equity joined with loss are honourable, as signs of magnanimity; for magnanimity is a sign of power. On the contrary, craft, shifting, neglect of equity, is dishonourable.     46   
  Covetousness of great riches, and ambition of great honours are honourable, as signs of power to obtain them. Covetousness and ambition of little gains or preferments is dishonourable.     47   
  Nor does it alter the case of honour whether an action, so it be great and difficult and consequently a sign of much power, be just or unjust; for honour consisteth only in the opinion of power. Therefore the ancient heathen did not think they dishonoured, but greatly honoured, the gods when they introduced them in their poems committing rapes, thefts, and other great but unjust or unclean acts; insomuch as nothing is so much celebrated in Jupiter as his adulteries; nor in Mercury as his frauds and thefts: of whose praises, in a hymn of Homer, the greatest is this, that, being born in the morning, he had invented music at noon, and before night stolen away the cattle of Apollo from his herdsmen.     48   
  Also amongst men, till there were constituted great commonwealths, it was thought no dishonour to be a pirate or a highway thief, but rather a lawful trade, not only amongst the Greeks but also amongst all other nations as is manifest by the histories of ancient time. And at this day, in this part of the world, private duels are and always will be honourable, though unlawful, till such time as there shall be honour ordained for them that refuse, and ignominy for them that make the challenge. For duels also are many times effects of courage, and the ground of courage is always strength or skill, which are power; though for the most part they be effects of rash speaking and of the fear of dishonour, in one of both the combatants, who, engaged by rashness, are driven into the lists to avoid disgrace.     49   
  Scutcheons and coats of arms hereditary, where they have any eminent privileges, are honourable; otherwise not: for their power consisteth either in such privileges, or in riches, or some such thing as is equally honoured in other men. This kind of honour, commonly called gentry, hath been derived from the ancient Germans. For there never was any such thing known where the German customs were unknown. Nor is it now anywhere in use where the Germans have not inhabited. The ancient Greek commanders, when they went to war, had their shields painted with such devices as they pleased; insomuch that an unpainted buckler was a sign of poverty and of a common soldier; but they transmitted not the inheritance of them. The Romans transmitted the marks of their families: but they were the images, not the devices, of their ancestors. Amongst the people of Asia, Africa, and America, there is not, nor was ever, any such thing. The Germans only had that custom; from whom it has been derived into England, France, Spain, and Italy, when in great numbers they either aided the Romans or made their own conquests in these western parts of the world.     50   
  For Germany, being anciently, as all other countries in their beginnings, divided amongst an infinite number of little lords, or masters of families, that continually had wars one with another, those matters, or lords, principally to the end they might when they were covered with arms be known by their followers, and partly for ornament, both painted their armour or their scutcheon or coat with the picture of some beast or other thing, and also put some eminent and visible mark upon the crest of their helmets. And this ornament both of the arms and crest descended by inheritance to their children; to the eldest pure, and to the rest with some note of diversity, such as the old master, that is to say in Dutch, the Here-alt, thought fit. But when many such families, joined together, made a greater monarchy, this duty of the Here-alt to distinguish scutcheons was made a private office apart. And the issue of these lords is the great and ancient gentry, which for the most part bear living creatures, noted for courage and rapine; or castles, battlements, belts, weapons, bars, palisadoes, and other notes of war; nothing being then in honour but virtue military. Afterwards not only kings but popular commonwealths gave divers manners of scutcheons to such as went forth to the war, or returned from it, for encouragement or recompense to their service. All which, by an observing reader, may be found in such ancient histories, Greek and Latin, as make mention of the German nation and manners in their times.     51   
  Titles of ‘honour,’ such as are duke, count, marquis, and baron, are honourable, as signifying the value set upon them by the sovereign power of the commonwealth; which titles were in old time titles of office and command, derived some from the Romans, some from the Germans and French: dukes, in Latin duces, being generals in war; counts, comites, such as bear the general company out of friendship and were left to govern and defend places conquered and pacified; marquises, marchiones, were counts that governed the marches or bounds of the empire. Which titles of duke, count, and marquis, came into the empire about the time of Constantine the Great, from the customs of the German militia. But baron seems to have been a title of the Gauls, and signifies a great man, such as were the king’s or prince’s men, whom they employed in war about their persons, and seems to be derived from vir, to ‘ber,’ and ‘bar,’ that signified the same in the language of the Gauls, that vir in Latin, and thence to ‘bero’ and ‘baro’ so that such men were called ‘berones,’ and after ‘barones,’ and in Spanish, ‘varones.’ But he that would know more particularly the original of titles of honour may find it, as I have done this, in Mr. Selden’s most excellent treatise of that subject. In process of time these offices of honour, by occasion of trouble and for reasons of good and peaceable government, were turned into mere titles, serving for the most part to distinguish the precedence, place, and order of subjects in the commonwealths; and men were made dukes, counts, marquises and barons, of places wherein they had neither possession nor command; and other titles also were devised to the same end.     52   
  ‘Worthiness’ is a thing different from the worth or value of a man, and also from his merit, or desert, and consisteth in a particular power or ability for that whereof he is said to be worthy: which particular ability is usually named ‘fitness,’ or ‘aptitude.’     53   
  For he is worthiest to be a commander, to be a judge, or to have any other charge, that is best fitted with the qualities required to the well discharging of it; and worthiest of riches that has the qualities most requisite for the well using of them: any of which qualities being absent, one may nevertheless be a worthy man, and valuable for something else. Again, a man may be worthy of riches, office, and employment, and nevertheless can plead no right to have it before another; and therefore cannot be said to merit or deserve it. For merit presupposeth a right and that the thing deserved is due by promise; of which I shall say more hereafter, when I shall speak of contracts.

Chapter XI   
   
Of the Difference of Manners   
   
   
BY manners I mean not here decency of behaviour, as how one man should salute another, or how a man should wash his mouth, or pick his teeth before company, and such other points of the ‘small morals’; but those qualities of mankind that concern their living together in peace and unity. To which end we are to consider that the felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim), nor summum bonum (greatest good), as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man’s desire is not to enjoy once only and for one instant of time, but to assure for ever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring, of a contented life, and differ only in the way; which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in divers men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes him produce the effect desired.     1   
  So that in the first place I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power; but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is that kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it at home by laws or abroad by wars; and, when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire, in some of fame from new conquest, in others of ease and sensual pleasure, in others of admiration or being flattered for excellence in some art or other ability of the mind.     2   
  Competition of riches, honour, command, or other power, inclineth to contention, enmity, and war; because the way of one competitor, to the attaining of his desire, is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other. Particularly, competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead, to these ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the glory of the other.     3   
  Desire of ease, and sensual delight, disposeth men to obey a common power, because by such desires a man doth abandon the protection that might be hoped for from his own industry and labour. Fear of death, and wounds, disposeth to the same, and for the same reason. On the contrary, needy men, and hardy, not contented with their present condition, as also all men that are ambitious of military command, are inclined to continue the cause of war, and to stir up trouble and sedition, for there is no honour military but by war, nor any such hope to mend an ill game as by causing a new shuffle.     4   
  Desire of knowledge, and arts of peace, inclineth men to obey a common power; for such desire, containeth a desire of leisure, and consequently protection from some other power than their own.     5   
  Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions, such as please them whose judgment they value; for, of those men whom we contemn, we contemn also the praises. Desire of fame after death does the same. And though after death there be no sense of the praise given us on earth, as being joys that are either swallowed up in the unspeakable joys of Heaven or extinguished in the extreme torments of hell, yet is not such fame vain; because men have a present delight therein, from the foresight of it, and of the benefit that may redound thereby to their posterity, which, though they now see not, yet they imagine; and anything that is pleasure in the sense, the same also is pleasure in the imagination.     6   
  To have received from one to whom we think ourselves equal greater benefits than there is hope to requite disposeth to counterfeit love, but really secret hatred; and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor that, in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitly wishes him there where he might never see him more. For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom, and unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which is to one’s equal, hateful. But to have received benefits from one whom we acknowledge for superior inclines to love; because the obligation is no new depression: and cheerful acceptation which men call ‘gratitude,’ is such an honour done to the obliger as is taken generally for retribution. Also to receive benefits, though from an equal or inferior, as long as there is hope or requital, disposeth to love; for, in the intention of the receiver, the obligation is of aid and service mutual, from whence proceedeth an emulation of who shall exceed in benefiting, the most noble and profitable contention possible, wherein the victor is pleased with his victory, and the other revenged by confessing it.     7   
  To have done more hurt to a man than he can or is willing to expiate inclineth the doer to hate the sufferer. For he must expect revenge or forgiveness, both which are hateful.     8   
  Fear of oppression disposeth a man to anticipate or to seek aid by society; for there is no other way by which a man can secure his life and liberty.     9   
  Men that distrust their own subtilty are, in tumult and sedition, better disposed for victory than they that suppose themselves wise or crafty. For these love to consult the other, fearing to be circumvented, to strike, first. And in sedition, men being always in the precincts of battle, to hold together and use all advantages of force is a better stratagem than any that can proceed from subtilty of wit.     10   
  Vain-glorious men, such as without being conscious to themselves of great sufficiency delight in supposing themselves gallant men, are inclined only to ostentation, but not to attempt; because, when danger or difficulty appears, they look for nothing but to have their insufficiency discovered.     11   
  Vain-glorious men, such as estimate their sufficiency by the flattery of other men or the fortune of some precedent action, without assured ground of hope from the true knowledge of themselves, are inclined to rash engaging, and in the approach of danger or difficulty to retire if they can; because, not seeing the way of safety, they will rather hazard their honour, which may be salved with an excuse, than their lives, for which no salve is sufficient.     12   
  Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdom in matter of government are disposed to ambition. Because without public employment in council or magistracy the honour of the wisdom is lost. And therefore eloquent speakers are inclined to ambition, for eloquence seemeth wisdom, both to themselves and others.     13   
  Pusillanimity disposeth men to irresolution, and consequently to lose the occasions and fittest opportunities of action. For after men have been in deliberation till the time of action approach, if it be not then manifest what is best to be done, it is a sign the difference of motives, the one way and the other, are not great: therefore not to resolve then is to lose the occasion by weighing of trifles, which is pusillanimity.     14   
  Frugality, though in poor men a virtue, maketh a man unapt to achieve such actions as require the strength of many men at once; for it weakeneth their endeavour, which is to be nourished and kept in vigour by reward.     15   
  Eloquence, with flattery disposeth men to confide in them that have it; because the former is seeming wisdom, the latter seeming kindness. And to them military reputation, and it disposeth men to adhere and subject themselves to those men that have them. The two former having given them caution against danger from him, the latter gives them caution against danger from others.     16   
  Want of science, that is, ignorance of causes, disposeth, or rather constraineth, a man to rely on the advice and authority of others. For all men whom the truth concerns, if they rely not on their own, must rely on the opinion of some other whom they think wiser than themselves and see not why he should deceive them     17   
  Ignorance of the signification of words, which is want of understanding, disposeth men to take on trust not only the truth they know not, but also the errors, and which is more, the nonsense of them they trust; for neither error nor nonsense can, without a perfect understanding of words, be detected.     18   
  From the same it proceedeth that men give different names to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion, but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion, but has only a greater tincture of choler.     19   
  From the same also it proceedeth that men cannot distinguish, without study and great understanding, between one action of many men and many actions of one multitude; as for example, between the one action of all the senators of Rome in killing Catiline, and the many actions of a number of senators in killing Cæsar; and therefore are disposed to take for the action of the people that which is a multitude of actions done by a multitude of men, led perhaps by the persuasion of one.     20   
  Ignorance of the causes and original constitution of right, equity, law, and justice, disposeth a man to make custom and example the rule of his actions; in such manner as to think that unjust which it hath been the custom to punish, and that just of the impunity and approbation whereof they can produce an example, or, as the lawyers which only use this false measure of justice barbarously call it, a precedent; like little children, that have no other rule of good and evil manners but the correction they receive from their parents and masters; save that children are constant to their rule, whereas men are not so; because, grown strong and stubborn, they appeal from custom to reason, and from reason to custom, as it serves their turn; receding from custom when their interest requires it, and setting themselves against reason as oft as reason is against them; which is the cause that the doctrine of right and wrong is perpetually disputed, both by the pen and the sword; whereas the, doctrine of lines and figures is not so, because men care not in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no man’s ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not but, if it had been a thing contrary to any man’s right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, ‘that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square,’ that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.     21   
  Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all events to the causes immediate and instrumental, for these are all the causes they perceive. And hence it comes to pass that in all places men that are grieved with payments to the public, discharge their anger upon the publicans, that is to say farmers, collectors, and other officers of the public revenue, and adhere to such as find fault with the public government; and thereby, when they have engaged themselves beyond hope of justification, fall also upon the supreme authority, for fear of punishment or shame of receiving pardon.     22   
  Ignorance of natural causes disposeth a man to credulity, so as to believe many times impossibilities; for such know nothing to the contrary but that they may be true, being unable to detect the impossibility. And credulity, because men like to be hearkened unto in company, disposeth them to lying, so that ignorance itself without malice is able to make a man both to believe lies and tell them, and sometimes also to invent them.     23   
  Anxiety for the future time disposeth men to inquire into the causes of things; because the knowledge of them maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage.     24   
  Curiosity, or love of the knowledge of causes, draws a man from the consideration of the effect to seek the cause, and, again, the cause of that cause; till of necessity he must come to this thought at last that there is some cause whereof there is no former cause, but is eternal; which is it men call God. So that it is impossible to make any profound inquiry into natural causes without being inclined thereby to believe there is one God eternal; though they cannot have any idea of Him in their answerable to His nature. For as a man that is born blind, hearing men talk of warming themselves by the fire and being brought to warm himself by the same, may easily conceive and assure himself, there is somewhat there, which men call ‘fire’ and is the cause of the heat he feels, but cannot imagine what it is like, nor have an idea of it in his mind such as they have that see it, so also by the visible things of this world, and their admirable order, a man may conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God, and yet not have an idea or image of Him in his mind.     25   
  And they that make little or no inquiry into the natural causes of things, yet, from the fear that proceeds from the ignorance itself of what it is that hath the power to do them much good or harm, are inclined to suppose and feign unto themselves several kinds of powers invisible, and to stand in awe of their own imaginations, and in time of distress to invoke them, as also in the, time of an expected good success to give them thanks, making the creatures of their own fancy their gods. By which means it hath come to pass that, from the innumerable variety of fancy, men have created in the world innumerable sorts of gods. And this fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion, and in them that worship or fear that power otherwise than they do, superstition.     26   
  And this seed of religion, having been observed by many, some of those that have observed it have been inclined thereby to nourish, dress, and form it into laws; and to add to it of their own invention any opinion of the causes of future events by which they thought they should be best able to govern others, and make unto themselves the greatest use of their powers.

Chapter XII   
   
Of Religion   
   
   
SEEING there are no signs nor fruit of ‘religion’ but in man only, there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of ‘religion’ is also only in man; and consisteth in some peculiar quality or at least in some eminent degree thereof not to be found in other living creatures.     1   
  And, first, it is peculiar to the nature of man to be inquisitive into the causes of the events they see, some more, some less; but all men so much as to be curious in the search of the causes of their own good and evil fortune.     2   
  Secondly, upon the sight of anything that hath a beginning, to think also it had a cause which determined the same to begin, then when it did, rather than sooner or later.     3   
  Thirdly, whereas there is no other felicity of beasts but the enjoying of their quotidian food, ease, and lusts, as having little or no foresight of the time to come, for want of observation and memory of the order, consequence, and dependence of the things they see, man observeth how one event hath been produced by another, and remembereth in them antecedence and consequence; and, when he cannot assure himself of the true causes of things (for the causes of good and evil fortune for the most part are invisible), he supposes causes of them, either such as his own fancy suggesteth, or trusteth the authority of other men, such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser than himself.     4   
  The two first make anxiety. For, being assured that there be causes of all things that have arrived hitherto or shall arrive hereafter, it is impossible for a man, who continually endeavoureth to secure himself against the evil he fears and procure the good he desireth, not to be in a perpetual solicitude of the time to come; so that every man, especially those that are over-provident, are in a state like to that of Prometheus. For as Prometheus, which interpreted is ‘the prudent man,’ was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where an eagle feeding on his liver devoured in the day as much as was repaired in the night, so that man, which looks too far before him in the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long gnawed on by fear o death, poverty, or other calamity, and has no repose nor pause of his anxiety but in sleep.     5   
  This perpetual fear, always accompanying mankind in the ignorance of causes, as it were in the dark, must needs have for object something. And therefore, when there is nothing to be seen, there is nothing to accuse, either of their good or evil fortune, but some ‘power’ or agent ‘invisible’ in which sense perhaps it was that some of the old poets said that the gods were at first created by human fear; which spoken of the gods, that is to say of the many gods of the Gentiles, is very true. But the acknowledging of one God, eternal, infinite, and omnipotent, may more easily be derived, from the desire men have to know the causes of natural bodies and their several virtues and operations, than from the fear of what was to befall them in time to come. For he that from any effect he seeth come to pass should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the cause of that cause, and plunge himself profoundly in the pursuit of causes, shall at last come to this, that there must be, as even the heathen philosophers confessed, one first mover, that is, a first and an eternal cause of all things, which is that which men mean by the name of God, and all this without thought of their fortune; the solicitude whereof both inclines to fear and hinders them from the search of the causes of other things, and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many gods as there be men that feign them.     6   
  And, for the matter or substance of the invisible agents so fancied, they could not by natural cogitation fall upon any other conceit, but that it was the same with that of the soul of man; and that the soul of man was of the same substance with that which appeareth in a dream to one that sleepeth, or in a looking-glass to one that is awake; which, men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the fancy, think to be real and external substances, and therefore call them ghosts; as the Latins called them imagines and umbræ, and thought them spirits, that is thin aërial bodies, and those invisible agents which they feared, to be like them, save that they appear and vanish when they please. But the opinion that such spirits were incorporeal, or immaterial, could never enter into the mind of any man by nature, because, though men may put together words of contradictory signification, as ‘spirit’ and ‘incorporeal,’ yet they can never have the imagination of anything answering to them; and therefore men that by their own meditation arrive to the acknowledgment of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal God chose rather to confess He is incomprehensible and above their understanding than to define His nature by ‘spirit incorporeal,’ and then confess their definition to be unintelligible; or, if they give Him such a title, it is not ‘dogmatically’ with intention to make the divine nature understood, but ‘piously,’ to honour Him with attributes of significations as remote as they can from the grossness of bodies visible.     7   
  Then for the way by which they think these invisible agents wrought their effects, that is to say, what immediate causes they used in bringing things to pass, men that know not what it is that we call ‘causing,’ that is almost all men, have no other rule to guess by but by observing and remembering what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time or times before, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent event any dependence or connection at all; and therefore from the like things past they expect the like things to come, and hope for good or evil luck, superstitiously, from things that have no part at all in the causing of it: as the Athenians did for their war at Lepanto, demand another Phormio; the Pompeian faction for their war in Africa, another Scipio; and others have done in divers other occasions since. In like manner they attribute their fortune to a stander-by, to a lucky or unlucky place, to words spoken, especially if the name God be amongst them, as charming and conjuring, the liturgy of witches; inasmuch as to believe they have power to turn a stone into bread, bread into a man, or anything into anything.     8   
  Thirdly, for the worship which naturally men exhibit to powers invisible, it can be no other but such expressions of their reverence, as they would use towards men; gifts, petitions, thanks, submission of body, considerate addresses, sober behaviour, premeditated words, swearing, that is assuring one another of their promises by invoking them. Beyond that, reason suggesteth nothing, but leaves them either to rest there, or, for further ceremonies, to rely on those they believe to be wiser than themselves.     9   
  Lastly, concerning how these invisible powers declare to men the things which shall hereafter come to pass, especially concerning their good or evil fortune in general or good or ill-success in any particular undertaking, men are naturally at a stand, save that, using to conjecture of the time to come by the time past, they are very apt not only to take casual things, after one or two encounters, for prognostics of the like encounter ever after, but also to believe the like prognostics from other men of whom they have once conceived a good opinion.     10   
  And, in these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of ‘religion,’ which, by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different that those which are used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to another.     11   
  For these seeds have received culture from two sorts of men. One sort have been they that have nourished and ordered them according to their own invention. The other have done it by God’s commandment and direction; but both sorts have done it with a purpose to make those men that relied on them the more apt to obedience, laws, peace, charity, and civil society. So that the religion of the former sort is a part of human politics, and teacheth part of the duty which earthly kings require of their subjects. And the religion of the latter sort is divine politics, and containeth precepts to those that have yielded themselves subjects in the kingdom of God. Of the former sort were all the founders of commonwealths and the lawgivers of the Gentiles; of the latter sort, were Abraham, Moses, and our blessed Saviour, by whom have been derived unto us the laws of the kingdom of God.     12   
  And, for that part of religion which consisteth in opinions concerning the nature of powers invisible, there is almost nothing that has a name that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles, in one place or another, a god or devil, or by their poets feigned to be inanimated, inhabited, or possessed, by some spirit or other.     13   
  The unformed matter of the world was a god by the name of Chaos.     14   
  The heaven, the ocean, the planets, the fire, the earth, the winds, were so many gods.     15   
  Men, women, a bird, a crocodile, a calf, a dog, a snake, an onion, a leek, were deified. Besides that, they filled almost all places with spirits called ‘demons’: the plains with Pan and Panises or Satyrs, the woods with Fauns and Nymphs, the sea with Tritons and other Nymphs, every river and fountain with a ghost of his name and with Nymphs, every house with its ‘Lares’ or familiars, every man with his ‘Genius,’ hell with ghosts and spiritual officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies, and in the night-time, all places with ‘larvæ,’ ‘lemures,’ ghosts of men deceased and a whole kingdom of fairies and bugbears. They have also ascribed divinity, and built temples to mere accidents and qualities, such as are time, night, day, peace, concord, love, contention, virtue, honour, health, rust, fever, and the like; which when they prayed for or against they prayed to, as if there were ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall or withholding that good or evil for or against which they prayed. They invoked also their own wit by the name of Muses, their own ignorance by the name of Fortune, their own lust by the name of Cupid, their own rage by the name of Furies, their own privy members by the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions to Incubi and Succubæ: insomuch as there was nothing which a poet could introduce as a person in his poem which they did not make either a ‘god’ or a ‘devil.’     16   
  The same authors of the religion of the Gentiles, observing the second ground for religion, which is men’s ignorance of causes, and thereby their aptness to attribute their fortune to causes on which there was no dependence at all apparent, took occasion to obtrude on their ignorance, instead of second causes, a kind of second and ministerial gods, ascribing the cause of fecundity to Venus, the cause of arts to Apollo, of subtlety and craft to Mercury, of tempests and storms to Æolus, and of other effects to other gods; insomuch as there was amongst the heathen almost as great variety of gods as of business.     17   
  And to the worship which naturally men conceived fit to be used towards their gods, namely, oblations, prayers, thanks, and the rest formerly named, the same legislators of the Gentiles have added their images, both in picture and sculpture, that the more ignorant sort, that is to say the most part or generality of the people, thinking the gods for whose representation they were made were really included and as it were housed within them, might so much the more stand in fear of them; and endowed them with lands, and houses, and officers, and revenues, set apart from all other human uses, that is consecrated and made holy to those their idols, as caverns, groves, woods, mountains, and whole islands; and have attributed to them not only the shapes, some of men, some of beasts, some of monsters, but also the faculties and passions of men and beasts, as sense, speech, sex, lust, generation; and this not only by mixing one with another to propagate the kind of gods, but also by mixing with men and women to beget mongrel gods, and but inmates of heaven, as Bacchus, Hercules, and others; besides anger, revenge, and other passions, of living creatures, and the actions proceeding from them, as fraud, theft, adultery, sodomy, and any vice that may be taken for an effect of power or a cause of pleasure; and all such vices as amongst men are taken to be against law rather than against honour.     18   
  Lastly, to the prognostics of time to come, which are naturally but conjectures upon experience of time past, and supernaturally, divine revelation, the same authors of the religion of the Gentiles, partly upon pretended experience partly upon pretended revelation, have added innumerable other superstitious ways of divination, and made men believe they should find their fortunes, sometimes in the ambiguous or senseless answers of the priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other famous oracles, which answers were made ambiguous by design, to own the event both ways, or absurd, by the intoxicating vapour of the place, which is very frequent in sulphurous caverns: sometimes in the leaves of the Sibyls, of whose prophecies, like those perhaps of Nostradamus (for the fragments now extant seem to be the invention of later times), there were some books in reputation in the time of the Roman Republic; sometimes in the insignificant speeches of madmen supposed to be possessed with a divine spirit, which possession they called enthusiasm, and these kinds of foretelling events were accounted theomancy, or prophecy; sometimes in the aspect of the stars at their nativity, which was called horoscopy and esteemed a part of judiciary astrology; sometimes in their own hopes and fears, called thumomancy, or presage; sometimes in the prediction of witches, that pretended conference with the dead, which is called necromancy, conjuring, and witchcraft, and is but juggling and confederate knavery; sometimes in the casual flight or feeding of birds, called augury; sometimes in the entrails of a sacrificed beast, which was ‘aruspicina’; sometimes in dreams; sometimes in croaking of ravens or chattering of birds; sometimes in the lineaments of the face, which was called metoposcopy; or by palmistry in the lines of the hand; in casual words, called ‘omina’; sometimes in monsters or unusual accidents, as eclipses, comets, rare meteors, earthquakes, inundations, uncouth births, and the like, which they called ‘portenta’ and ‘ostenta,’ because they thought them to portend or foreshow some great calamity to come; sometimes in mere lottery, as cross and pile, counting holes in a sieve, dipping of verses in Homer and Virgil; and innumerable other such vain conceits. So easy are men to be drawn to believe anything from such men as have gotten credit with them and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.     19   
  And therefore the first founders and legislators of commonwealths among the Gentiles, whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience and peace, have in all places taken care, first to imprint in their minds a belief that those precepts which they gave concerning religion might not be thought to proceed from their own device but from the dictates of some god or other spirit, or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortals, that their laws might the more easily be received: so Numa Pompilius pretended to receive the ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans from the nymph Egeria; and the first king and founder of the kingdom of Peru pretended himself and his wife to be the children of the Sun, and Mahomet, to set up his new religion, pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost in form of a dove. Secondly, they have had a care to make it believed that the same things were displeasing to the gods which were forbidden by the laws. Thirdly, to prescribe ceremonies, supplications, sacrifices, and festivals, by which they were to believe the anger of the gods might be appeased, and that ill success in war, great contagions of sickness, earthquakes, and each man’s private misery, came from the anger of gods, and their anger from the neglect of their worship or the forgetting or mistaking some point of the ceremonies required. And, though amongst the ancient Romans men were not forbidden to deny that which in the poets is written of the pains and pleasures after this life, which divers of great authority and gravity in that state have in their harangues openly derided, yet that belief was always more cherished than the contrary.     20   
  And by these and such other institutions they obtained in order to their end, which was the peace of the commonwealth, that the common people in their misfortunes, laying the fault on neglect or error in their ceremonies or on their own disobedience to the laws, were the less apt to mutiny against their governors, and, being entertained with the pomp and pastime of festivals and public games made in honour of the gods, needed nothing else but bread to keep them from discontent, murmuring, and commotion against the state. And therefore the Romans, that had conquered the greatest part of the then known world, made no scruple of tolerating any religion whatsoever in the city of Rome itself, unless it had something in it that could not consist with their civil government; nor do we read that any religion was there forbidden but that of the Jews, who, being the peculiar kingdom of God, thought it unlawful to acknowledge subjection to any mortal king or state whatsoever. And thus you see how the religion of the Gentiles was part of their policy.     21   
  But where God Himself by supernatural revelation planted religion, there He also made to Himself a peculiar kingdom, and gave laws not only of behaviour towards Himself but also towards one another; and thereby in the kingdom of God the policy and laws civil are a part of religion; and therefore the distinction of temporal and spiritual domination hath there no place. It is true that God is king of all the earth, yet may He be king of a peculiar and chosen nation. For there is no more incongruity therein than that he that the general command of the whole army should have withal a peculiar regiment or company of his own. God is king of all the earth by His power, but of His chosen people He is king by covenant. But to speak more largely of the kingdom of God, both by nature and covenant, I have in the following discourse assigned another place.     22   
  From the propagation of religion it is not hard to understand the causes of the resolution of the same into its first seeds or principles, which are only an opinion of a deity and powers invisible and supernatural that can never be so abolished out of human nature but that new religions may again be made to spring out of them, by the culture of such men as for such purpose are in reputation.     23   
  For, seeing all formed religion is founded at first upon the faith which a multitude hath in some one person whom they believe not only to be a wise man, and to labour to procure their happiness, but also to be a holy man, to whom God Himself vouchsafeth to declare His will supernaturally, it followeth necessarily, when they that have the government of religion shall come to have either the wisdom of those men, their sincerity, or their love suspected, or when they shall be unable to show any probable token of divine revelation, that the religion which they desire to uphold must be suspected likewise, and, without the fear of the civil sword, contradicted and rejected.     24   
  That which taketh away the reputation of wisdom, in him that formeth a religion or addeth to it when it is already formed, is the enjoining of a belief of contradictories, for both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true; and therefore to enjoin the belief of them is an argument of ignorance, which detects the author in that, and discredits him in all things else he shall propound as from revelation supernatural; which revelation a man may indeed have of many things above but of nothing against natural reason.     25   
  That which taketh away the reputation of sincerity is the doing or saying of such things as appear to be signs that what they require other men to believe is not believed by themselves, all which doings or sayings are therefore called scandalous, because they be stumbling-blocks that make men to fall in the way of religion, as injustice, cruelty, profaneness, avarice, and luxury. For who can believe that he that doth ordinarily such actions as proceed from any of these roots believeth there is any such invisible power to be feared, as he affrighteth other men withal for lesser faults?     26   
  That which taketh away the reputation of love is the being detected of private ends, as when the belief they require of others conduceth or seemeth to conduce to the acquiring of dominion, riches, dignity, or secure pleasure to themselves only or specially. For that which men reap benefit by to themselves they are thought to do for their own sakes and not for love of others.     27   
  Lastly, the testimony that men can render of divine calling can be no other than the operation of miracles, or true prophecy, which also is a miracle, or extraordinary felicity. And, therefore, to those points of religion which have been received from them that did such miracles, those that are added by such as approve not their calling by some miracle obtain no greater belief than what the custom and laws of the places in which they be educated have wrought into them. For, as in natural things, men of judgment require natural signs and arguments, so in supernatural things they require signs supernatural, which are miracles, before they consent inwardly and from their hearts.     28   
  All which causes of the weakening of men’s faith do manifestly appear in the examples following. First, we have the example of the children of Israel, who when Moses, that had approved his calling to them by miracles and by the happy conduct of them out of Egypt was absent but forty days, revolted from the worship of the true God, recommended to them by him, and setting up (Exod. xxxii, 1, 2) a golden calf for their god relapsed into the idolatry of the Egyptians, from whom they had been so lately delivered. And again, after Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and that generation which had seen the great works of God in Israel (Judges ii, 11) were dead, another generation arose and served Baal. So that, miracles failing, faith also failed.     29   
  Again, when the sons of Samuel (1 Sam. viii, 3) being constituted by their father judges in Bersabee, received bribes, and judged unjustly, the people of Israel refused any more to have God to be their king in other manner than He was king of other people, and therefore cried out to Samuel to choose them a king after the manner of the nations. So that, justice failing, faith also failed; insomuch as they deposed their God from reigning over them.     30   
  And whereas in the planting of Christian religion the oracles ceased in all parts of the Roman Empire, and the number of Christians, increased wonderfully every day and in every place by the preaching of the Apostles and Evangelists, a great part of that success may reasonably be attributed to the contempt into which the priests of the Gentiles of that time had brought themselves by their uncleanness, avarice, and juggling between princes. Also the religion of the Church of Rome was partly for the same cause abolished in England and many other parts of Christendom, insomuch as the failing of virtue in the pastors maketh faith fail in the people, and partly from bringing of the philosophy and doctrine of Aristotle into religion by the schoolmen, from whence there arose so many contradictions and absurdities as brought the clergy into a reputation both of ignorance and of fraudulent intention, and inclined people to revolt from them, either against the will of their own princes, as in France and Holland, or with their will, as in England.     31   
  Lastly, amongst the points by the Church of Rome declared necessary for salvation, there be so many manifestly to the advantage of the Pope and of his spiritual subjects residing in the territories of other Christian princes that, were it not for the mutual emulation of those princes, they might without war or trouble exclude all foreign authority as easily as it had been excluded in England. For who is there that does not see to whose benefit it conduceth to have it believed that a king hath not his authority from Christ unless a bishop crown him? That a king, if he be a priest, cannot marry? That whether a prince be born in lawful marriage or not must be judged by authority from Rome? That subjects may be freed from their allegiance, if by the Court of Rome the king be judged an heretic? That a king, as Chilperic of France, may be deposed by a pope, as Pope Zachary, for no cause, and his kingdom given to one of his subjects? That the clergy and regulars, in what country soever, shall be exempt from the jurisdiction of their king in cases criminal? Or who does not see to whose profit redound the fees of private masses and vales of purgatory, with other signs of private interest enough to mortify the most lively faith, if, as I said, the civil magistrate and custom did not more sustain it than any opinion they have of the sanctity, wisdom, or probity of their teachers? So that I may attribute all the changes of religion in the world to one and the same cause, and that is, unpleasing priests; and those not only amongst Catholics but even in that Church that hath presumed most of reformation.     32   

Chapter XIII   
   
Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery   
   
   
NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of the body and mind, as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. For, as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.     1   
  And, as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words and especially that skill of proceeding upon general and infallible rules called science, which very few have and but in few things, as being not a native faculty born with us, nor attained, as prudence, while we look after somewhat else, I find yet a greater equality amongst men than that of strength. For prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such equality incredible is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree than the vulgar, that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others whom by fame or for concurring with themselves they approve. For such is the nature of men that, howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves, for they see their own wit at hand and other men’s at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share.     2   
  From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore, if any two men desire the same thing which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and, in the way to their end, which is principally their own conservation and sometimes their delectation only, endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. And from hence it comes to pass that, where an invader hath no more to fear than another man’s single power, if one plant, sow, build, or possess, a convenient seat others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united to dispossess and deprive him not only of the fruit of his labor but also of his life or liberty. And the invader again is in the like danger of another.     3   
  And from this diffidence of one another there is no way for any man to secure himself so reasonable as anticipation, that is, by force or wiles to master the persons of all men he can so long till he see no other power great enough to endanger him; and this is no more than his own conservation requireth and is generally allowed. Also, because there be some that, taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue farther than their security requires, if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within the modest bounds, should not be invasion increase their power, they would not be able long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men being necessary to a man’s conservation, it ought to be allowed him.     4   
  Again, men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets upon himself, and, upon all signs of contempt or undervaluing, naturally endeavours as far as he dares (which amongst them that have no common power to keep them in quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other) to extort a greater value from his contemners by damage, and from others by the example.     5   
  So that in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.     6   
  The first maketh man invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.     7   
  Hereby it is manifest that, during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man. For ‘war’ consisteth not in battle only or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known, and therefore the notion of ‘time’ is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain but in an inclination thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is ‘peace.’     8   
  Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time or war where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.     9   
  It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that Nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself, when taking a journey, he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house, he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws and public officers armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of his fellow-subjects when he rides armed; of his fellow-citizens, when he locks his doors; and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse man’s nature in it. 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.     10   
  It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so over all the world, but there are many places where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all, and live at this day in that brutish manner as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government use to degenerate into, in a civil war.     11   
  But, though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another, that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns, upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours: which is a posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men.     12   
  To this war of every man against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. 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 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. And thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature is actually placed in, though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason.     13   
  The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles are they which otherwise are called the Laws of Nature, whereof I shall speak more particularly in the two following chapters.

Chapter XIV   
   
Of the First and Second Natural Laws, and of Contracts   
   
   
‘THE RIGHT of Nature,’ which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of his own life; and consequently of doing anything which in his own judgment and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.     1   
  By ‘liberty’ is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments; which impediments may oft take away part of a man’s power to do what he would, but cannot hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgment and reason shall dictate to him.     2   
  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 thinketh it may be best preserved. For, though they that speak of this subject use to confound jus and lex, ‘right’ and ‘law,’ yet they ought to be distinguished; because ‘right’ consisteth in liberty to do or to forbear, whereas ‘law’ determineth and bindeth to one of them; so that law and right differ as much as obligation and liberty; which in one and the same matter are inconsistent.     3   
  And because the condition of man, as hath been declared in the precedent chapter, is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies, it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to everything, even to one another’s body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to everything endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which Nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept or general rule of reason ‘that every man ought to endeavour peace as far as he has hope of obtaining it, and, when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.’ The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, ‘to seek peace, and follow it.’ The second, the sum of the right of Nature, which is, ‘by all means we can, to defend ourselves.’     4   
  From this fundamental law of Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law, ‘that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself.’ For as long as every man holdeth this right of doing anything he liketh, so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right as well as he, then there is no reason for any one to divest himself of his; for that were to expose himself to prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. This is that law of the Gospel: ‘whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them.’ And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.     5   
  To ‘lay down’ a man’s ‘right’ to anything is to ‘divest’ himself of the ‘liberty’, of hindering another of the benefit of his own right to the same. For he that renounceth or passeth away his right giveth not to any other man a right which he had not before, because there is nothing to which every man had not right by Nature; but only standeth out of his way that he may enjoy his own original right without hindrance from him, not without hindrance from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one man, by another man’s defect of right, is but so much diminution of impediments to the use of his own right original.     6   
  Right is laid aside either by simply renouncing it, or by transferring it to another. By ‘simply renouncing’ when he cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By ‘transferring,’ when he intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person or persons. And, when a man hath in either manner abandoned or granted away his right, then is he said to be ‘obliged’ or ‘bound’ not to hinder those to whom such right is granted or abandoned from the benefit of it; and that he ‘ought,’ and it is his ‘duty,’ not to make void that voluntary act of his own; and that such hindrance is ‘injustice’ and ‘injury’ as being sine jure, the right being before renounced or transferred. So that ‘injury’ or ‘injustice,’ in the controversies of the world, is somewhat like to that which in the disputations of scholars is called ‘absurdity.’ For, as it is there called an absurdity to contradict what one maintained in the beginning, so in the world it is called injustice and injury voluntarily to undo that from the beginning he had voluntarily done. The way by which a man either simply renounceth or transferreth his right is a declaration or signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign or signs, that he doth so renounce or transfer, or hath so renounced or transferred, the same, to him that accepteth it. And these signs are either words only or actions only, or, as it happeneth most often, both words and actions. And the same are the ‘bonds’ by which men are bound and obliged: bonds that have their strength not from their own nature, for nothing is more easily broken than a man’s word, but from fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture.     7   
  Whensoever a man transferreth his right or renounceth it, it is either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to himself, or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act; and of the voluntary acts of every man the object is some good ‘to himself.’ And therefore there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words or other signs to have abandoned or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force to take away his life, because he cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good to himself. The same may be said of wounds, and chains, and imprisonment, both because there is no benefit consequent to such patience, as there is to the patience of suffering another to be wounded or imprisoned, as also because a man cannot tell when he seeth men proceed against him by violence whether they intend his death or not. And lastly the motive and end for which this renouncing and transferring of right is introduced is nothing else but the security of a man’s person in his life and in the means of so preserving life as not to be weary of it. And therefore, if a man by words or other signs seem to despoil himself of the end for which those signs were intended, he is not to be understood as if he meant it or that it was his will, but that he was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted.     8   
  The mutual transferring of right is that which men call ‘contract.’     9   
  There is difference between transferring of right to the thing and transferring or tradition, that is delivery of the thing itself. For the thing may be delivered together with the translation of the right, as in buying and selling with ready money, or exchange of goods or lands, and it may be delivered some time after.     10   
  Again, one of the contractors may deliver the thing contracted for on his part, and leave the other to perform his part at some determinate time after, and in the meantime be trusted; and then the contract on his part is called ‘pact,’ or ‘covenant’; or both parts may contract now to perform hereafter; in which cases he that is to perform in time to come, being trusted, his performance is called ‘keeping of promises,’ or faith, and the failing of performance, if it be voluntary, ‘violation of faith.’     11   
   
  When the transferring of right is not mutual, but one of the parties transferreth in hope to gain thereby the friendship or service from another or from his friends, or in hope to gain the reputation of charity or magnanimity, or to deliver his mind from the pain of compassion, or in hope of reward in heaven, this is not contract but ‘gift,’ ‘free gift,’ ‘grace,’ which words signify one and the same thing.     12   
  Signs of contract are either ‘express’ or ‘by inference.’ ‘Express’ are words spoken with understanding of what they signify, and such words are either of the time ‘present’ or ‘past,’ as ‘I give,’ ‘I grant,’ ‘I have given,’ ‘I have granted,’ ‘I will that this be yours’; or of the future, as ‘I will give,’ ‘I will grant,’ which words of the future are called ‘promise.’     13   
  Signs by inference are sometimes the consequence of words, sometimes the consequence of silence, sometimes the consequence of actions, sometimes the consequence of forbearing an action; and generally a sign by inference of any contract is whatsoever sufficiently argues the will of the contractor.     14   
  Words alone, if they be of the time to come and contain a bare promise, are an insufficient sign of a free gift, and therefore not obligatory. For if they be of the time to come, as ‘to-morrow I will give,’ they are a sign I have not given yet, and consequently that my right is not transferred, but remaineth till I transfer it by some other act. But if the words be of the time present or past, as ‘I have given,’ or ‘do give to be delivered to-morrow,’ then is my to-morrow’s right given away to-day, and that by the virtue of the words, though there were no other argument of my will. And there is a great difference in the signification of these words volo hoc tuum esse cras and cras dabo, that is, between ‘I will that this be thine to-morrow,’ and ‘I will give it thee to-morrow,’ for the word ‘I will,’ in the former manner of speech, signifies an act of the will present, but in the latter it signifies a promise of an act of the will to come; and therefore the former words, being of the present, transfer a future right; the latter, that be of the future, transfer nothing. But if there be other signs of the will to transfer a right besides words, then, though the gift be free, yet may the right be understood to pass by words of the future; as, if a man propound a prize to him that comes first to the end of a race, the gift is free; and, though the words be of the future, yet the right passeth; for if he would not have his words so be understood, he should not have let them run.     15   
  In contracts the right passeth not only where the words are of the time present or past, but also where they are of the future; because all contract is mutual translation or change of right, and therefore he that promiseth only because he hath already received the benefit for which he promiseth is to be understood as if he intended the right should pass, for, unless he had been content to have his words so understood, the other would not have performed his part first. And for that cause, in buying and selling and other acts of contracts, a promise is equivalent to a covenant, and therefore obligatory.     16   
  He that performeth first in the case of a contract is said to ‘merit’ that which he is to receive by the performance of the other, and he hath it as ‘due.’ Also when a prize is propounded to many which is to be given to him only that winneth, or money is thrown amongst many to be enjoyed by them that catch it, though this be a free gift, yet so to win or so to catch is to ‘merit,’ and to have it as ‘due.’ For the right is transferred in the propounding of the prize and in throwing down the money, though it be not determined to whom but by the event of the contention. But there is between these two sorts of merit this difference, that in contract I merit by virtue of my own power and the contractor’s need, but in this case of free gift I am enabled to merit only by the benignity of the giver: in contract I merit at the contractor’s hand that he should depart with his right; in this case of gift I merit not that the giver should part with his right, but that, when he has parted with it, it should be mine rather than another’s. And this I think to be the meaning of that distinction of the schools between meritum congrui and meritum condigni. For God Almighty, having promised Paradise to those men hoodwinked with carnal desires that can walk through this world according to the precepts and limits prescribed by Him, they say he that shall so walk shall merit Paradise ex congruo. But because no man can demand a right to it by his own righteousness or any other power in himself, but by the free grace of God only, they say, no man can merit Paradise ex condigno. This, I say, I think is the meaning of that distinction; but, because disputers do not agree upon the signification of their own terms of art longer than it serves their turn, I will not affirm anything of their meaning: only this I say—when a gift is given indefinitely as a prize to be contended for, he that winneth meriteth, and may claim the prize as due.     17   
  If a covenant be made wherein neither of the parties perform presently but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature, which is a condition of war of every man against every man, upon any reasonable suspicion, it is void; but, if there be a common power set over them both with right and force sufficient to compel performance, it is not void. For he that performeth first has no assurance the other will perform after, because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power, which in the condition of mere nature, where all men are equal and judges of the justness of their own fears, cannot possibly be supposed. And, therefore, he which performeth first does but betray himself to his enemy, contrary to the right, he can never abandon, of defending his life and means of living.     18   
  But in a civil estate, where there is a power set up to constrain those that would otherwise violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable, and for that cause he which by the covenant is to perform first is obliged so to do.     19   
  The cause of fear, which maketh such a covenant invalid, must be always something arising after the covenant made, as some new fact or other sign of the will not to perform; else it cannot make the covenant void. For that which could not hinder a man from promising ought not to be admitted as a hindrance of performing.     20   
  He that transferreth any right transferreth the means of enjoying it as far as lieth in his power. As he that selleth land is understood to transfer the herbage and whatsoever grows upon it; nor can he that sells a mill turn away the stream that drives it. And they that give to a man the right of government in sovereignty are understood to give him the right of levying money to maintain soldiers, and of appointing magistrates for the administration of justice.     21   
  To make covenants with brute beasts is impossible, because, not understanding our speech, they understand not nor accept of any translation of right; nor can translate any right to another; and without mutual acceptation, there is no covenant.     22   
  To make covenant with God is impossible, but by mediation of such as God speaketh to, either by revelation supernatural or by His lieutenants that govern under Him and in His name; for otherwise we know not whether our covenants be accepted or not. And therefore they that vow anything contrary to any law of Nature vow in vain, as being a thing unjust to pay such a vow. And, if it be a thing commanded by the law of Nature, it is not the vow but the law that binds them.     23   
  The matter or subject of a covenant is always something that falleth under deliberation, for to covenant is an act of the will, that is to say an act, and the last act of deliberation, and is therefore always understood to be something to come, and which is judged possible for him that covenanteth to perform.     24   
  And therefore to promise that which is known to be impossible is no covenant. But, if that prove impossible afterwards which before was thought possible, the covenant is valid and bindeth, though not to the thing itself, yet to the value, or, if that also be impossible, to the unfeigned endeavour of performing as much as is possible, for to more no man can be obliged.     25   
  Men are freed of their covenants two ways: by performing or being forgiven. For performance is the natural end of obligation, and forgiveness the restitution of liberty, as being a retransferring of that right in which the obligation consisted.     26   
  Covenants entered into by fear, in the condition of mere nature, are obligatory. For example, if I covenant to pay a ransom or service for my life to an enemy, I am bound by it, for it is a contract wherein one receiveth the benefit of life; and the other is to receive money or service for it; and consequently where no other law, as in the condition of mere nature, forbiddeth the performance, the covenant is valid. Therefore prisoners of war, if trusted with the payment of their ransom, are obliged to pay it; and, if a weaker prince make a disadvantageous peace with a stronger for fear, he is bound to keep it, unless, as hath been said before, there ariseth some new and just cause of fear to renew the war. And even in commonwealths, if I be forced to redeem myself from a thief by promising him money, I am bound to pay it, till the civil law discharge me. For whatsoever I may lawfully do without obligation, the same I may lawfully covenant to do through fear, and what I lawfully covenant I cannot lawfully break.     27   
  A former covenant makes void a later. For a man that hath passed away his right to one man to-day hath it not to pass tomorrow to another, and therefore the later promise passeth no right, but is null.     28   
  A covenant not to defend myself from force by force is always void. For, as I have shown before, no man can transfer or lay down his right to save himself from death, wounds, and imprisonment, the avoiding whereof is the only end of laying down any right; and therefore the promise of not resisting force, in no covenant transferreth any right, nor is obliging. For, though a man may covenant thus, ‘unless I do so or so, kill me,’ he cannot covenant thus, ‘unless I do so or so, I will not resist you when you come to kill me.’ For man by nature chooseth the lesser evil, which is danger of death in resisting, rather than the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all men, in that they lead criminals to execution and prison with armed men, notwithstanding that such criminals have consented to the law by which they are condemned.     29   
  A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of pardon, is likewise invalid. For in the condition of nature, where every man is judge, there is no place for accusation; and in the civil state the accusation is followed with punishment, which, being force, a man is not obliged not to resist. The same is also true of the accusation of those by whose condemnation a man falls into misery, as of a father, wife, or benefactor. For the testimony of such an accuser, if it be not willingly given, is presumed to be corrupted by nature, and therefore not to be received; and where a man’s testimony is not to be credited he is not bound to give it. Also accusations upon torture are not to be reputed as testimonies. For torture is to be used but as a means of conjecture and light, in the further examination and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed tendeth to the ease of him that is tortured, not to the informing of the torturers, and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient testimony, for, whether he deliver himself by true or false accusation, he does it by the right of preserving his own life.     30   
  The force of words being, as I have formerly noted, too weak to hold men to the performance of their covenants, there are in man’s nature but two imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are either a fear of the consequence of breaking their word, or a glory or pride in appearing not to need to break it. This latter is a generosity too rarely found to be presumed on, especially in the pursuers of wealth, command, or sensual pleasure, which are the greatest part of mankind. The passion to be reckoned upon is fear, whereof there be two very general objects: one, the power of spirits invisible, the other, the power of those men they shall therein offend. Of these two, though the former be the greater power, yet the fear of the latter is commonly the greater fear. The fear of the former is in every man his own religion, which hath place in the nature of man before civil society. The latter hath not so, at least not place enough to keep men to their promises; because in the condition of mere nature the inequality of power is not discerned but by the event of battle. So that before the time of civil society, or in the interruption thereof by war, there is nothing can strengthen a covenant of peace agreed on against the temptations of avarice, ambition, lust, or other strong desire, but the fear of that invisible power which they every one worship as God and fear as a revenger of their perfidy. All therefore that can be done between two men not subject to civil power is to put one another to swear by the God he feareth, which ‘swearing,’ or ‘oath,’ is ‘a form of speech, added to a promise; by which he that promiseth signifieth that, unless he perform he renounceth the mercy of his God or calleth to Him for vengeance on himself.’ Such was the heathen form, ‘Let Jupiter kill me else, as I kill this beast.’ So is our form, ‘I shall do thus, and thus, so help me God.’ And this, with the rites and ceremonies which every one useth in his own religion, that the fear of breaking faith might be the greater.     31   
  By this it appears that an oath taken according to any other form or rite than his that sweareth is in vain, and no oath; and that there is no swearing by anything which the swearer thinks not God. For though men have sometimes used to swear by their kings, for fear or flattery, yet they would have it thereby understood they attributed to them divine honour. And that swearing unnecessarily by God is but profaning of His name; and swearing by other things, as men do in common discourse, is not swearing but an impious custom, gotten by too much vehemence of talking.     32   
  It appears also that the oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God without the oath as much as with it: if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.

Chapter XV   
    
Of Other Laws of Nature   
    
    
FROM that law of Nature by which we are obliged to transfer to another such rights as, being retained, hinder the peace of mankind, there followeth a third, which is this, ‘that men perform their covenants made’; without which covenants are in vain, and but empty words: and the right of all men to all things remaining, we are still in the condition of war.     1   
  And in this law of Nature consisteth the fountain and original of ‘justice.’ For, where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to everything; and consequently, no action can be unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is ‘unjust’; and the definition of ‘injustice’ is no other than ‘the not performance of covenant.’ And whatsoever is not unjust is ‘just.’     2   
  But because covenants of mutual trust, where there is a fear of not performance on either part, as hath been said in the former chapter, are invalid, though the original of justice be the making of covenants, yet injustice actually there can be none, till the cause of such fear be taken away, which, while men are in the natural condition of war, cannot be done. Therefore, before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant; and to make good that propriety which by mutual contract men acquire in recompense of the universal right they abandon; and such power there is none before the erection of a commonwealth. And this is also to be gathered out of the ordinary definition of justice in the schools; for they say that ‘justice is the constant will of giving to every man his own.’ And therefore where there is no ‘own’ there is no propriety, there is no injustice; and where there is no coercive power erected, that is, where there is no commonwealth, there is no propriety, all men having right to all things: therefore, where there is no commonwealth, there nothing is unjust. So that the nature of justice consisteth in keeping of valid covenants; but the validity of covenants begins not but with the constitution of a civil power sufficient to compel men to keep them; and then it is also that propriety begins.     3   
  The fool hath said in his heart there is no such thing as justice, and sometimes also with his tongue, seriously alleging that every man’s conservation and contentment, being committed to his own care, there could be no reason why every man might not to do what he thought conduced thereunto; and therefore also to make or not make, keep or not keep, covenants was not against reason when it conduced to one’s benefit. He does not therein deny that there be covenants, and that they are sometimes broken, sometimes kept, and that such breach of them may be called injustice, and the observance of them justice; but he questioneth whether injustice, taking away the fear of God, for the same fool hath said in his heart there is no God, may not sometimes stand with that reason which dictateth to every man his own good; and particularly then when it conduceth to such a benefit as shall put a man in a condition to neglect not only the dispraise and revilings, but also the power, of other men. The kingdom of God is gotten by violence; but what if it could be gotten by unjust violence? Were it against reason so to get it, when it is impossible to receive hurt by it? And, if it be not against reason, it is not against justice, or else justice is not to be approved for good. From such reasoning as this, successful wickedness hath obtained the name of virtue, and some that in all other things have disallowed the violation of faith, yet have allowed it when it is for the getting of a kingdom. And the heathen that believed that Saturn was deposed by his son Jupiter believed nevertheless the same Jupiter to be the avenger of injustice, somewhat like to a piece of law in Coke’s Commentaries on Littleton, where he says, if the right heir of the crown be attained of treason, yet the crown shall descend to him, and eo instante the attainder be void; from which instances a man will be very prone to infer that, when the heir apparent of a kingdom shall kill him that is in possession, though his father, you may call it injustice or by what other name you will, yet it can never be against reason, seeing all the voluntary actions of men tend to the benefit of themselves; and those actions are most reasonable that conduce most to their ends. This specious reasoning is nevertheless false.     4   
  For the question is not of promises mutual, where there is no security of performance on either side, as when there is no civil power erected over the parties promising, for such promises are no covenants, but either where one of the parties had performed already, or where there is a power to make him perform, there is the question whether it be against reason, that is against the benefit of the other to perform or not. And I say it is not against reason. For the manifestation whereof we are to consider, first, that when a man doth a thing which notwithstanding anything can be forseen and reckoned on tendeth to his own destruction, howsoever some accident which he could not expect, arriving may turn it to his benefit, yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done. Secondly, that, in a condition of war, wherein every man to every man, for want of a common power to keep them all in awe, is an enemy, there is no man who can hope by his own strength or wit to defend himself from destruction without the help of confederates; where every one expects the same defence by the confederation that any one else does; and therefore he which declares he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him can in reason expect no other means of safety than what can be had from his own single power. He therefore that breaketh his covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any society that unite themselves for peace and defence but by the error of them that receive him; nor when he is received, be retained in it without seeing the danger of their error; which errors a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security; and therefore, if he be left or cast out of society, he perisheth; and if he live in society, it is by the errors of other men which he could not foresee nor reckon upon, and consequently against the reason of his preservation; and so, as all men that contribute not to his destruction, forbear him only out of ignorance of what is good for themselves.     5   
  As for the instance of gaining the secure and perpetual felicity of heaven by any way, it is frivolous; there being but one way imaginable; and that is not breaking, but keeping of covenant.     6   
  And, for the other instance of attaining sovereignty by rebellion, it is manifest that, though the event follow, yet, because it cannot reasonably be expected, but rather the contrary, and because by gaining it so, others are taught to gain the same in like manner, the attempt thereof is against reason. Justice therefore, that is to say keeping of covenant, is a rule of reason by which we are forbidden to do anything destructive to our life; and consequently a law of Nature.     7   
  There be some that proceed further, and will not have the law of Nature to be those rules which conduce to the preservation of man’s life on earth, but to the attaining of an eternal felicity after death; to which they think the breach of covenant may conduce; and consequently be just and reasonable; such are they that think it a work of merit to kill or depose or rebel against the sovereign power constituted over them by their own consent. But, because there is no natural knowledge of man’s estate after death, much less of the reward that is then to be given to breach of faith, but only a belief grounded upon other men’s saying that they know it supernaturally, or that they know those that knew them, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally; breach of faith cannot be called a precept of reason or nature.     8   
  Others that allow for a law of Nature the keeping of faith do nevertheless make exception of certain persons as heretics and such as use not to perform their covenant to others; and this also is against reason. For if any fault of a man be sufficient to discharge our covenant made, the same ought in reason to have been sufficient to have hindered the making of it.     9   
  The names of just, and unjust, when they are attributed to men, signify one thing; and when they are attributed to actions, another. When they are attributed to men, they signify conformity or inconformity of manners to reason. But, when they are attributed to actions, they signify the conformity or inconformity to reason, not of manners or manner of life but of particular actions. A just man, therefore, is he that taketh all the care he can that his actions may be all just, and an unjust man is he that neglecteth it. And such men are more often in our language styled by the names of righteous and unrighteous than just and unjust, though the meaning be the same. Therefore a righteous man does not lose that title by one or a few unjust actions that proceed from sudden passion or mistake of things or persons; nor does an unrighteous man lose his character for such actions as he does, or forbears to do, for fear, because his will is not framed by the justice but by the apparent benefit of what he is to do. That which gives to human actions the relish of justice is a certain nobleness of gallantness of courage, rarely found, by which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment of his life to fraud or breach of promise. This justice of the manners is that which is meant where justice is called a virtue, and injustice a vice.     10   
  But the justice of actions denominates men not just, ‘guiltless’; and the injustice of the same, which is also called injury, gives them but the name of ‘guilty.’     11   
  Again, the injustice of manners is the disposition or aptitude to do injury, and is injustice before it proceeds to act, and without supposing any individual person injured. But the injustice of an action, that is to say injury, supposeth an individual person injured, namely him to whom the covenant was made; and therefore many times the injury is received by one man when the damage redoundeth to another. As when the master commandeth his servant to give money to a stranger: if it be not done, the injury is done to the master, whom he had before covenanted to obey; but the damage redoundeth to the stranger, to whom he had no obligation, and therefore could not injure him. And so also in commonwealths. Private men may remit to one another their debts, but not robberies or other violences whereby they are endamaged, because the detaining of debt is an injury to themselves, but robbery and violence are injuries to the person of the commonwealth.     12   
  Whatsoever is done to a man conformable to his own will signified to the doer is no injury to him. For, if he that doeth it hath not passed away his original right to do what he please by some antecedent covenant, there is no breach of covenant, and therefore no injury done him. And if he have, then his will to have it done being signified is a release of the covenant, and so again there is no injury done him.     13   
  Justice of action is by writers divided into ‘commutative’ and ‘distributive’; and the former they say consisteth in proportion arithmetical, the latter in proportion geometrical. Commutative, therefore, they place in the equality of value of the things contracted for; and distributive, in the distribution of equal benefit to men of equal merit. As if it were injustice to sell dearer than we buy, or to give more to a man than he merits. The value of all things contracted for is measured by the appetite of the contractors; and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give. And merit, besides that which is by covenant, where the performance on one part meriteth the performance of the other part, and falls under justice commutative not distributive, is not due by justice, but is rewarded of grace only. And therefore this distinction, in the sense wherein it useth to be expounded, is not right. To speak properly, commutative justice is the justice of a contractor; that is, a performance of covenant in buying and selling, hiring and letting to hire, lending and borrowing, exchanging, bartering, and other acts of contract.     14   
  And distributive justice, the justice of an arbitrator; that is to say, the act of defining what is just. Wherein, being trusted by them that make him arbitrator, if he perform his trust he is said to distribute to every man his own; and this is indeed just distribution, and may be called, though improperly, distributive justice, but more properly equity, which also is a law of Nature, as shall be shown in due place.     15   
  As justice dependeth on antecedent covenant, so does ‘gratitude’ depend on antecedent grace, that is to say, antecedent free gift; and is the fourth law of Nature; which may be conceived in this form, ‘that a man, which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace, endeavour that he which giveth it have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will.’ For no man giveth but with intention of good to himself; because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts the object is to every man his own good, of which, if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence, or trust, nor consequently of mutual help, nor of reconciliation of one man to another; and therefore they are to remain still in the condition of ‘war,’ which is contrary to the first and fundamental law of Nature, which commandeth men to ‘seek peace.’ The breach of this law is called ‘ingratitude,’ and hath the same relation to grace that injustice hath to obligation by covenant.     16   
  A fifth law of Nature, is ‘complaisance,’ that is to say, ‘that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest.’ For the understanding whereof, we may consider that there is in men’s aptness to society, a diversity of nature, rising from their diversity of affections, not unlike to that we see in stones brought together for building of an edifice. For as that stone which by the asperity and irregularity of figure takes more room from others than itself fills, and for the hardness cannot be easily made plain, and thereby hindereth the building, is by the builders cast away as unprofitable and troublesome, so also a man that by asperity of nature will strive to retain those things which to himself are superfluous and to others necessary, and for the stubborness of his passions cannot be corrected, is to be left or cast out of society as cumbersome thereunto. For seeing every man, not only by right but also by necessity of nature, is supposed to endeavour all he can to obtain that which is necessary for his conversation, he that shall oppose himself against it for things superfluous is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow; and therefore doth that which is contrary to the fundamental law of Nature, which commandeth ‘to seek peace’. The observers of this law may be called ‘sociable’—the Latins call them commodi; the contrary, ‘stubborn,’ ‘insociable,’ ‘froward,’ ‘intractable.’     17   
  A sixth law of Nature is this, ‘that, upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that, repenting, desire it.’ For ‘pardon’ is nothing but granting of peace, which, though granted to them that persevere in their hostility, be not peace but fear; yet not granted to them that give caution of the future time is sign of an aversion to peace, and therefore contrary to the law of Nature.     18   
  A seventh is, ‘that in revenges,’ that is, retribution of evil for evil, ‘men look not at the greatness of the evil past but the greatness of the good to follow.’ Whereby we are forbidden to inflict punishment with any other design than for correction of the offender or direction of others. For this law is consequent to the next before it, that commandeth pardon, upon security of the future time. Besides, revenge, without respect to the example and profit to come, is a triumph or glorying in the hurt of another tending to no end; for the end is always somewhat to come; and glorying to no end is vain-glory and contrary to reason, and to hurt without reason tendeth to the introduction of war, which is against the law of Nature, and is commonly styled by the name of ‘cruelty.’     19   
  And because all signs of hatred or contempt provoke to fight, insomuch as most men choose rather to hazard their life than not to be revenged, we may in the eighth place, for a law of Nature, set down this precept, ‘that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another.’ The breach of which law is commonly called ‘contumely.’     20   
  The question who is the better man has no place in the condition of mere nature; where, as been shown before, all men are equal. The inequality that now is has been introduced by the laws civil. I know that Aristotle, in the first book of his Politics, for a foundation of his doctrine, maketh men by nature some more worthy to command, meaning the wiser sort, such as he thought himself to be for his philosophy, others to serve, meaning those that had strong bodies but were not philosophers as he; as if master and servant were not introduced by consent of men but by difference of wit, which is not only against reason but also against experience. For there are very few so foolish that had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others; nor, when the wise in their own conceit contend by force with them who distrust their own wisdom, do they always, or often, or almost at any time, get the victory. If Nature therefore have made men equal, that equality is to be acknowledged; or; if Nature have made men unequal, yet because men that think themselves equal will not enter into conditions of peace but upon equal terms, such equality must be admitted. And therefore for the ninth law of Nature I put this, ‘that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature.’ The breach of this precept is ‘pride’.     21   
  On this law dependeth another, ‘that at the entrance into conditions of peace no man require to reserve to himself any right which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest.’ As it is necessary for all men that seek peace to lay down certain rights of nature, that is to say, not to have liberty to do all they list, so is it necessary for man’s life to retain some, as right to govern their own bodies, enjoy air, water, motion, ways to go from place to place, and all things else without which a man cannot live or not live well. If in this case, at the making of peace, men require for themselves that which they would not have to be granted to others, they do contrary to the precedent law, that commandeth the acknowledgement of natural equality, and therefore also against the law of Nature. The observers of this law are those we call ‘modest,’ and the breakers ‘arrogant’ men. The Greeks call the violation of this law [Greek], that is, a desire of more than their share.     22   
  Also if ‘a man be trusted to judge between man and man,’ it is a precept of the law of Nature ‘that he deal equally between them.’ For without that the controversies of men cannot be determined but by war. He therefore that is partial in judgment doth what in him lies to deter men from the use of judges and arbitrators, and consequently against the fundamental law of Nature, is the cause of war.     23   
  The observance of this law, from the equal distribution to each man of that which in reason belongeth to him, is called ‘equity,’ and, as I have said before, distributive justice; the violation, ‘acception of persons,’ [Greek].     24   
  And from this followeth another law, that such things as cannot be divided be enjoyed in common, if it can be; and, if the quantity of the thing permit, without stint; otherwise proportionably to the number of them that have ‘right.’ For otherwise the distribution is unequal and contrary to equity.     25   
  But some things there be that can neither be divided nor enjoyed in common. Then the law of Nature, which prescribeth equity, requireth ‘that the entire right, or else making the use alternate, the first possession, be determined by lot.’ For equal distribution is of the law of Nature, and other means of equal distribution cannot be imagined.     26   
  Of ‘lots’ there be two sorts, ‘arbitrary,’ and ‘natural.’ Arbitrary is that which is agreed on by the competitors; natural is either ‘primogeniture,’ which the Greeks call [Greek], which signifies ‘given by lot’ or ‘first seizure.’     27   
  And therefore those things which cannot be enjoyed in common nor divided ought to be adjudged to the first possessor; and in some cases to the first born, as acquired by lot.     28   
  It is also a law of Nature ‘that all men that mediate peace, be allowed safe conduct.’ For the law that commandeth peace as the end, commandeth intercession as the ‘means’ and to intercession the means is safe conduct.     29   
  And because, though men be never so willing to observe these laws, there may nevertheless arise questions concerning a man’s action; first, whether it were done or not done; secondly, if done, whether against the law or not against the law; the former whereof is called a question ‘of fact,’ the latter a question ‘of right,’ therefore, unless the parties to the question covenant mutually to stand to the sentence of another, they are as far from peace as ever. This other to whose sentence they submit is called an ‘arbitrator.’ And therefore it is of the law of Nature ‘that they that are at controversy submit their right to the judgment of an arbitrator.’     30   
  And, seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit arbitrator in his own cause, and if he were never so fit, yet, equity allowing to each party equal benefit, if one be admitted to be judge, the other is to be admitted also; and so the controversy, that is, the cause of war, remains against the law of Nature.     31   
  For the same reason no man in any cause ought to be received for arbitrator to whom greater profit, or honour, or pleasure, apparently ariseth out of the victory of one party than of the other; for he hath taken, though an unavoidable bribe, yet a bribe, and no man can be obliged to trust him. And thus also the controversy and the condition of war remaineth, contrary to the law of Nature.     32   
  And in a controversy of ‘fact,’ the judge, being to give no more credit to one than to the other if there be no other arguments, must give credit to a third, or to a third and fourth, or more; for else the question is undecided and left to force, contrary to the law of Nature.     33   
  These are the laws of Nature, dictating peace, for a means of the conservation of men in multitudes, and which only concern the doctrine of civil society. 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.     34   
  And though this may seem too subtle a deduction of the laws of Nature to be taken notice of by all men, whereof the most part are too busy in getting food and the rest too negligent to understand, yet, to leave all men inexcusable, they have been contracted into one easy sum, intelligible even to the meanest capacity; and that is, ‘Do not that to another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself’; which showeth him that he has no more to do in learning the laws of Nature but when weighing the actions of other men with his own, they seem too heavy, to put them into the other part of the balance and his own into their place, that his own passions and self-love may add nothing to the weight; and then there is none of these laws of Nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable.     35   
  The laws of Nature oblige in foro interno, that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place; but in foro externo, that is, to the putting them in act, not always. For he that should be modest and tractable and perform all he promises, in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others and procure his own certain ruin, contrary to the ground of all laws of Nature, which tend to Nature’s preservation. And, again, he that, having sufficient security that others shall observe the same laws towards him, observes them not himself, seeketh not peace but war, and consequently the destruction of his nature by violence.     36   
  And whatsoever laws bind in foro interno may be broken, not only by a fact contrary to the law but also by a fact according to it, in case a man think it contrary. For, though his action in this case be according to the law, yet his purpose was against the law; which, where the obligation is in foro interno, is a breach.     37   
  The laws of Nature are immutable and eternal; for injustice, ingratitude, arrogance, pride, iniquity, acception of persons, and the rest, can never be made lawful. For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.     38   
  The same laws, because they oblige only to a desire and endeavour—I mean an unfeigned and constant endeavour—are easy to be observed. For, in that they require nothing but endeavour, he that endeavoureth their performance fulfilleth them, and he that fulfilleth the law is just.     39   
  And the science of them is the true and only moral philosophy. For moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in the conversation and society of mankind. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which, in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different; and divers men differ not only in their judgment on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable or disagreeable to reason in the actions of common life. Nay, the same man in divers times differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is calleth good, what another time he dispraiseth and calleth evil; from whence arise disputes, controversies, and at last war. And therefore, so long as a man is in the condition of mere nature, which is a condition of war, as private appetite is the measure of good and evil, and consequently all men agree on this, that peace is good, and therefore also the way or means of peace, which, as I have showed before, are ‘justice,’ ‘gratitude,’ ‘modesty,’ ‘equity,’ ‘mercy,’ and the rest of the laws of Nature, are good; that is to say, ‘moral virtues’; and their contrary ‘vices,’ evil. Now the science of virtue and vice is moral philosophy, and therefore the true doctrine of the laws of Nature is the true moral philosophy. But the writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices, yet, not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living, place them in a mediocrity of passions; as if not the cause, but the degree of daring made fortitude; or not the cause, but the quantity, of a gift, made liberality.     40   
  These dictates of reason men used to call by the name of laws, but improperly; for they are but conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves; whereas law, properly, is the word of him that by right hath command over others. But yet if we consider the same theorems, as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things, then are they properly called laws.

Chapter XVI   
    
Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated   
    
    
A PERSON is he ‘whose words or actions are considered, either as his own or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing, to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction.’     1   
  When they are considered as his own, then is he called a ‘natural person’; and, when they are considered as representing the words and actions of another, then is he a ‘feigned’ or ‘artificial person.’     2   
  The word person is Latin; instead whereof the Greeks have [Greek], which signifies the ‘face,’ as persona in Latin signifies the ‘disguise’ or ‘outward appearance’ of a man, counterfeited on the stage, and sometimes more particularly that part of it which disguiseth the face, as a mask or vizard, and from the stage hath been translated to any representer of speech and action, as well in tribunals as theatres. So that a ‘person’ is the same that an ‘actor’ is, both on the stage and in common conversation; and to ‘personate’ is to ‘act,’ or ‘represent,’ himself or another; and he that acteth another is said to bear his person, or act in his name, in which sense Cicero useth it where he says: Unus sustineo tres personas; mei, adversarii, et judicis: I bear three persons: my own, my adversary’s, and the judge’s; and is called in diverse occasions, diversely: as a ‘representer’ or ‘representative,’ a ‘lieutenant,’ a ‘vicar,’ and ‘attorney,’ a ‘deputy,’ a ‘procurator,’ an ‘actor,’ and the like.     3   
  Of persons artificial some have their words and actions ‘owned’ by those whom they represent. And then the person is the ‘actor,’ and he that owneth his words and actions is the ‘author,’ in which case the actor acteth by authority. For that which in speaking of goods and possessions is called an ‘owner’ and in Latin dominus, in Greek [Greek]; speaking of actions is called author. And as the right of possession is called dominion, so the right of doing any action is called ‘authority.’ So that by authority is always understood a right of doing any act, and ‘done by authority,’ done by commission or license from him whose right it is.     4   
  From hence it followeth that, when the actor maketh a covenant by authority, he bindeth thereby the author no less than if he had made it himself, and no less subjecteth him to all the consequences of the same. And therefore all that hath been said formerly (chap. xiv) of the nature of covenants between man and man in their natural capacity is true also when they are made by their actors, representers, or procurators, that have authority from them, so far forth as is in their commission, but no further.     5   
  And therefore he that maketh a covenant with the actor or representer, not knowing the authority he hath, doth it at his own peril. For no man is obliged by a covenant whereof he is not author, nor consequently by a covenant made against or beside the authority he gave.     6   
  When the actor doth anything against the law of Nature by command of the author, if he be obliged by former covenant to obey him, not he but the author breaketh the law of Nature; for, though the action be against the law of Nature, yet it is not his; but, contrarily, to refuse to do it, is against the law of Nature, that forbiddeth breach of covenant.     7   
  And he that maketh a covenant with the author by mediation of the actor, not knowing what authority he hath, but only takes his word, in case such authority be not made manifest unto him upon demand, is no longer obliged, for the covenant made with the author is not valid without his counter-assurance. But if he that so covenanteth knew beforehand he was to expect no other assurance than the actor’s word, then is the covenant valid, because the actor in this case maketh himself the author. And therefore, as when the authority is evident, the covenant obligeth the author, not the actor, so, when the authority is feigned, it obligeth the actor only, there being no author but himself.     8   
  There are few things that are incapable of being represented by fiction. Inanimate things, as a church, an hospital, a bridge, may be personated by a rector, master, or overseer. But things inanimate cannot be authors, nor therefore give authority to their actors; yet the actors may have authority to procure their maintenance, given them by those that are owners or governors of those things. And therefore such things cannot be personated before there be some state of civil government.     9   
  Likewise children, fools, and madmen, that have no use of reason, may be personated by guardians or curators, but can be no authors, during that time, of any action done by them longer than, when they shall recover the use of reason, they shall judge the same reasonable. Yet during the folly he that hath right of governing them may give authority to the guardian. But this again has no place but in a state civil, because before such estate there is no dominion of persons.     10   
  An idol, or mere figment of the brain, may be personated, as were the gods of the heathen, which, by such officers as the state appointed, were personated, and held possessions and other goods and rights, which men from time to time dedicated and consecrated unto them. But idols cannot be authors, for an idol is nothing. The authority proceeded from the state; and therefore before introduction of civil government the gods of the heathen could not be personated.     11   
  The true God may be personated. As He was, first, by Moses, who governed the Israelites, that were not his, but God’s people, not in his own name, with hoc dicit Moses, but in God’s name, with hoc dicit Dominus. Secondly, by the Son of man, His own Son, our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, that came to reduce the Jews, and induce all nations into the kingdom of His Father, not as of Himself but as sent from His Father. And thirdly, by the Holy Ghost or Comforter, speaking and working in the Apostles, which Holy Ghost was a Comforter that came not of Himself, but was sent and proceeded from them both.     12   
  A multitude of men are made ‘one’ person when they are by one man or one person represented, so that it be done with the consent of every one of that multitude in particular. For it is the ‘unity’ of the representer, not the ‘unity’ of the represented, that maketh the person ‘one.’ And it is the representer that beareth the person, and but one person; and ‘unity’ cannot otherwise be understood in multitude.     13   
  And because the multitude naturally is not ‘one’ but ‘many,’ they cannot be understood for one, but many authors, of everything their representative saith or doth in their name, every man giving their common representer authority from himself in particular, and owning all the actions the representer doth, in case they give him authority without stint; otherwise, when they limit him in what and how far he shall represent them, none of them owneth more than they gave him commission to act.     14   
  And, if the representative consist of many men, the voice of the greater number must be considered as the voice of them all. For if the lesser number pronounce, for example in the affirmative, and the greater in the negative, there will be negatives more than enough to destroy the affirmatives; and thereby the excess of negatives, standing uncontradicted, are the only voice the representative hath.     15   
  And a representative of even number, especially when the number is not great, whereby the contradictory voices are oftentimes equal, is therefore oftentimes mute and incapable of action. Yet in some cases contradictory voices equal in number may determine a question, as in condemning or absolving, equality of votes, even in that they condemn not, do absolve, but not on the contrary condemn in that they absolve not. For when a cause is heard, not to condemn is to absolve; but, on the contrary, to say that not absolving is condemning is not true. The like it is in a deliberation of executing presently or deferring till another time; for when the voices are equal, the not decreeing execution is a decree of dilation.     16   
  Or if the number be odd, as three or more, men or assemblies, whereof every one has by a negative voice authority to take away the effect of all the affirmative voices of the rest, this number is no representative; because, by the diversity of opinions and interests of men, it becomes oftentimes, and in cases of the greatest consequence, a mute person and unapt, as for many things else; so for the government of a multitude, especially in time of war.     17   
  Of authors there be two sorts. The first simply so called; which I have before defined to be him that owneth the action of another simply. The second is he that owneth an action or covenant of another conditionally, that is to say, he undertaketh to do it if the other doth it not at or before a certain time. And these authors conditional are generally called ‘sureties,’ in Latin, fidejussores, and sponsores, and particularly for debt, praedes; and for appearance before a judge or magistrate, vades.