THOMAS HOBBES 
said) come to the conclusion that the principle of motion gives 
a sufficient solution of the cause of all human activity. Begin- 
ning from this principle, and employing the method of reason- 
ing he had found so cogent in mathematics, Hobbes thought 
he could reduce to a few simple formula the complicated turmoil 
of living, and build up again upon certain, simple, and infal- 
lible rules a reasonable way of life. If men but knew these 
rules they would heed them, and if they heeded them the in- 
commodities of civil war, * the seditious roaring of a troubled 
nation,” would be avoided. 
The circumstances of the civil war did not then originate 
Hobbes’ principles, but provided a wondrous confirmation 
of them. These principles are laid down, these deductions 
are made most clearly in the Leviathan. Aubrey was told 
by Hobbes how the Leviathan was written. ““ He walked 
much” (in the good hours of the day between seven and ten 
of the morning) ‘““and contemplated, and he had in the 
head of his staffe a pen and inke-horne, carried alwayes a 
note-booke in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, 
he presently entred it into his booke, or otherwise he might 
perhaps have lost it. He had drawne the designe of the booke 
into chapters, etc., so he knew whereabout it would come 
in. Thus that booke was made.” So Hobbes’ first prin- 
ciples are taken from what he took to be the reasoned con- 
clusions of positive science—science being the knowledge of 
consequences—and are justified in their application to men by 
the observation of the nature and behaviour of mankind. 
Hobbes begins by assuming that all man’s conscious life is 
built up from sensations, and that all sensation is a form of 
motion. From this he concludes that man is determined by 
God, the first cause of all motion, to respond in a certain way 
to the excitements from without. Man therefore is not free in 
the sense of being himself a first cause ; such freedom as he has 
is nothing but absence of opposition—* by opposition, I mean 
external Impediments of motion.” This freedom may be- 
long “no lesse to Irrationall and Inanimate creatures, than to 
Rationall.” It is the freedom of water to run downhill if it 
be not checked. “Liberty, and Necessity are Consistent; As 
in the water, that hath not onely liberty, but a necessity of 
descending by the Channel ; so likewise in the actions which 
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