CHAPTER IX. SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: SCHOLARS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND MEN OF SCIENCE. 1. Thomas Hobbes.-2. James Harrington.-3. Eager Spirit of Inquiry.-4. Group of Men of Science. - 5. Robert Boyle.-6. Robert Hooke.-7. John Ray. -8. Thomas Sprat.-9. Thomas Sydenham.-10. Sir Thomas Browne.-11. Elias Ashmole.-12. Sir Kenelm Digby.-13. Sir Isaac Newton.-14. Writers on Political Science; Thomas Mun; Sir Josiah Child; Sir William Petty. - 15. Algernon Sidney.-16. Izaak Walton.-17. Ralph Cudworth.-18. John Locke. 1. THERE was one man whose life ended in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century, but began in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, and who was himself a representative of the three classes of writers embraced in the title of this chapter. We refer to Thomas Hobbes, who was born in April, 1588, son of a clergyman, at Malmesbury, in Wiltshire. As a schoolboy at Malmesbury he translated the "Medea" of Euripides from Greek into Latin verse. In 1603 he was entered to Magdalene Hall, Oxford; and in 1608 became tutor to William, Lord Cavendish, son of Lord Hardwicke, soon afterwards created Earl of Devonshire. In 1610, Hobbes travelled with his pupil in France and Italy. When he came home, Bacon, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson, were among his friends. In 1626 his patron died, and in 1628 the son whose tutor he had been died also. In that year Hobbes published his first work, a "Translation of Thucydides," made for the purpose of showing the evils of popular government. Ben Jonson helped in the revision of it. Hobbes next went to France as tutor to the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, but was called back by the Countess Dowager of Devonshire to take charge of the young earl, then thirteen years old. In 1634 he went with his pupil to France and Italy, returned to England in 1637, and still lived at Chatsworth with the family he had now served for about thirty years. In 1636 he honored Derbyshire by publishing a Latin poem on the wonders of the Peak, "De Mirabilibus Pecci." In 1641 Hobbes withdrew to Paris, and in 1642 published in Latin the first work setting forth his philosophy of society. It treated of the citizen-"Elementa Philosophica de Cive." Hobbes upheld absolute monarchy as the true form of government, basing his argument upon the principle that the state of nature is a state of war. In 1647 Hobbes became mathematical tutor to Charles, Prince of Wales. In 1650, he published a treatise on "Human Nature; or, the Fundamental Elements of Policy;" and another, "De Corpore Politico; or, the Elements of Law, Moral and Politic." In the following year, 1651, appeared his "Leviathan; or, the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil." This book he caused to be written on vellum for presentation to Prince Charles; but the divines were in arms against Hobbes for opinions which they considered hostile to religion. Upholder as he was of the supremacy of kings, Charles naturally avoided him. No man can hurt religion by being as true as it is in his power to be; and that Hobbes was. Our judgment of a man ought never to depend upon whether or not we agree with him in opinion. Hobbes was an independent thinker, and retained his independence when he might have lapsed into the mere hanger-on of a noble house, or, by dwelling only on some part of his opinion, have looked for profit as a flatterer of royalty. At Chatsworth he gave his morning to exercise and paying respects to the family and its visitors; at noon he went to his study, ate his dinner alone without ceremony, shut himself in with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco, and gave his mind free play. Hobbes's "Leviathan," "occasioned," he says, "by the disorders of the present time," is in four parts: 1, Of Man; 2, Of Commonwealth; 3, Of a Christian Commonwealth; 4, Of the Kingdom of Darkness. Whatever can be compounded of parts Hobbes called a body; man, imitating nature, or the art by which God governs the world, creates "that great Leviathan called the Commonwealth or State, . . . which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended." In this huge body the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to all its parts. (1.) The matter and artificer of it is Man. Men are by nature equal, and their natural state is one of war, each being governed by his own reason, and with a right to every thing that he can get. But he may agree to lay down this right, and be content with so much liberty against other men as he would like them to have against himself. Retaining certain natural rights of self-preservation, man makes a covenant which is the origin of government, and injustice then consists simply in breach of that covenant. (2.) For the particular security not to be had by the law of nature a covenant is made, which forms man into the Commonwealth, and is the basis of the rights and just power or authority of a sovereign, who becomes thenceforth as soul to the body. The subjects to a monarch thus constituted cannot without his leave throw off or transfer monarchy, because they are bound by their covenant. "And whereas," says Hobbes, 66 some men have pretended, for their disobedience to their sovereign, a new covenant, made not with men, but with God; this also is unjust: for there is no covenant with God but by mediation of somebody that representeth God's person; which none doth but God's lieutenant, who hath the sovereignty under God." (3.) Reason directs public worship of God, but since a Commonwealth is but as one person, it ought also to exhibit to God but one worship. There is no universal Church, because there ́is no power on earth to which all other Commonwealths are subject; but there are Christians in many states, each subject to the Commonwealth of which he is a member. It is the function of the constituted supreme power to determine what doctrines are fit for peace and to be taught the subjects. All pastors in a church exercise their office by Civil Right; the civil sovereign alone is pastor by Divine Right. The command of the civil sovereign, having Divine warrant, may be obeyed without forfeiture of life eternal; therefore, not to obey is unjust. All that is necessary to salvation is contained in Faith in Christ, and Obedience to Laws. (4.) The "Rulers of the Darkness of this World" are the confederacy of deceivers, that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavor by dark and erroneous doctrines to extinguish in them the light both of Nature and of the Gospel, and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come. Much of the detail in "Leviathan" and other writings led to a belief that the doctrines of Hobbes were destructive to Christianity and all religion. This was expressed by Dr. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in a book called "The Catching of Leviathan," to which Hobbes wrote an answer. Hobbes published, in 1654, a treatise written in 1652; "Of Liberty and Necessity... wherein all Controversy concerning Predestination, Election, Free-will, Grace, Merits, Reprobation, etc., is fully Decided and Cleared." Dr. Bramhall undertook to show him that on these points also he was to be by no means clear of controversy. Living far into the reign of Charles II., he published, in 1675, a "Translation of the Iliad and Odyssey" into English verse, after an experiment with four books of the "Odyssey" as "The Voyage of Ulysses." He died in 1679, at the age of ninety-one. In the year of his death appeared a Latin poem by him on his own "Life," written at the age of eighty-four, and his "Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on, from the Year 1640 to the Year 1660.” This is discussed in the form of a dialogue between A and B, and sets forth Hobbes's opinions on the place of the Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and Independents, in their relation to the Civil War, upon ship-money, the action of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth, and other topics interesting to a philosophical inquirer with some strong opinions of his own. B says in the course of this dialogue that he should like "to see a system of the present morals, written by some divine of good reputation and learning and of the late king's party." “I think,” A answers, "I can recommend unto you the best that is extant, and such a one as (except a few passages that I mislike) is very well worth your reading. The title of it is, 'The Whole Duty of Man laid down in a Plain and Familiar Way." This popular book, with prayers appended, including a prayer for the church, and prayers for those who mourn in secret in these times of calamity," was first published in 1659, was translated into Welsh in 1672, into Latin in 1693, and has been attributed by different speculators to three archbishops, two bishops, several less dignified clergymen, and a lady. 2. James Harrington, born in 1612, eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington, was of a good Rutlandshire family. In 1629 he entered as a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford. His father died before he was of age. He went to Holland, Denmark, Germany, and France, and to Italy, where he became an admirer of the Venetian Republic. After his return he lived a studious life, and was generous in care for his younger brothers and sisters. At the beginning of 1647 he was appointed to wait on Charles I., after his surrender to the English Commissioners, went with him from Newcastle, and was one of his grooms of the chamber at Holmby House. The king preferred his company, talked with him of books and foreign parts, and was only a little impatient when Harrington, a philosophical republican, entertained his Majesty with a theory of an ideal Commonwealth. Harrington was with Charles in the Isle of Wight, but was afterwards separated from him because he would not take an oath against connivance at the king's escape. After the king's execution Harrington worked out his view of government in the book which he called "The Commonwealth of Oceana." Oceana was England, and he styled Scotland Marpesia, Ireland Panopæa, Henry VII. Panurgus, Henry VIII. Coraunus, Queen Elizabeth Parthenia, and so forth. Oceana being island, seems, said Harrington, like Venice, to have been designed by God for a Commonwealth but Venice, because of its limited extent and want of arms, "can be no more than a Commonwealth for preservation; whereas this, reduced to the like government, is a Commonwealth for increase." At the foundation of Harrington's theory was the doctrine that empire follows the balance of property. He began with a sketch of the principles of government among the ancients and among the moderns, arguing throughout that dominion is property, and that, except in cities whose revenue is in trade, the form of empire is determined by the balance of dominion or property in land. : If one man be, like the Grand Turk, sole landlord, or overbalance the people three parts in four, his empire is Absolute Monarchy. If the nobility be the landlords, or overbalance the people to the like proportion, that is the Gothic balance, and the empire is Mixed Monarchy, as that of Spain or Poland, and of Oceana till “the Statute of Alienations broke the pillars by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates." If the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided that no one man or small body of men overbalance them, the empire (unless force intervene) is a Commonwealth. Any possible attempt to maintain government in opposition to this principle leads, said Harrington, to disorder. Where a nobility holds half the property, and the people the other half, the one must eat out the other, as the people did the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. After illustrating this |