conception was taken, this law of nature was not usually conceived as actually having a substantive existence independent of positive codes; it was rather something that underlay existing law, and was to be looked for through it, though it might perhaps be expected ultimately to supersede it, and in the meanwhile represented an ideal standard, by which improvements in legislation were to be guided. Still, the language of the jurists, in some passages, clearly implied that a period of human history, in which men were governed by the law of nature alone, had existed prior to the institution of civil society: it was known from Seneca (Ep. xc.) that the Stoic Poseidonius had identified this period with the mythical golden age; and the ideas thus derived from pagan sources easily coalesced, in the minds of mediæval thinkers, with ideas gathered from the narrative of Genesis. Thus there had come to be established and current a conception of a "state of nature," social in a sense, but not yet political, in which individuals or single families had lived side by side, -under none other than such "natural" laws as those prohibiting mutual injury, and mutual interference with each other's use of the goods of the earth that were common to all, giving parents authority over their children, imposing on wives a vow of fidelity to their husbands, and obliging all to the observance of compacts freely entered into. This conception Grotius took, and gave it additional force and solidity by using the principles of this Natural Law-so far as they seemed applicable -for the determination of international rights and duties;

1 The most definite statement of this kind that I know is the following (Inst. Just. II. i. 2) :—“ Palam est vetustius esse jus naturale, quod cum ipso genere humano rerum natura prodidit. Civilia enim jura tunc esse cœperunt, cum et civitates condi et magistratus creari et leges scribi cœperunt."

since it was obvious that independent nations, regarded as corporate units, were still in the state of nature relatively to each other. It was not assumed that the principles of natural right were perfectly realised in the conduct of primitive independent individuals any more than by nations now; indeed, one point with which Grotius is especially concerned is the natural right of private war, arising out of the violation of more primary rights. Still, the definition of Natural Law above quoted implied a general tendency to observe it; and we may note that it was especially necessary for Grotius to assume such a general observance in the case of contracts; since it was by an express or tacit pact" that the right of property (as distinct from the mere right to non-interference during use) was held by him to have been instituted. A similar "fundamental pact" had long been generally regarded as the normal origin of legitimate sovereignty.

The ideas above expressed were not, as I have said, in the main peculiar to Grotius. At the same time the rapid and remarkable success of his treatise would bring this view of Natural Right into prominence, and would suggest to penetrating minds such questions as-"What is man's ultimate reason for obeying these laws? Wherein does their agreement with his rational and social nature exactly consist? How far, and in what sense, is his nature really social?"

Hobbes

It was the answer which Hobbes gave to these fun-$2. damental questions that supplied the starting-point for (1588independent ethical philosophy in England. Hobbes's 1679). psychology is in the first place frankly materialistic; he holds that man's sensations, imaginations, thoughts, emotions, are all mere "appearances" of motions in the "interior parts" of his body. Accordingly he regards pleasure

as essentially motion "helping vital action," and pain as motion "hindering” it. There is no logical connection between this theory and the doctrine that appetite or desire has always pleasure (or the absence of pain) for its object; but a materialist, framing a system of psychology, is likely to give special attention to the active impulses arising out of bodily wants, whose obvious end is the preservation of the agent's organism; and this, together with a philosophic wish to simplify, may lead him to the conclusion that all human impulses are similarly self-regarding. This, at any rate, is Hobbes's cardinal doctrine in moral psychology, that each man's appetites or desires are naturally directed either to the preservation of his life, or to that heightening of it which he feels as pleasure; including the aversions that are similarly directed "fromward" pain. Hobbes does not distinguish instinctive from deliberate pleasure-seeking; and he confidently resolves the most apparently unselfish emotions. into phases of self-regard. Pity he finds to be grief for the calamity of others, arising from imagination of the like calamity befalling oneself; what we admire with seeming disinterestedness as beautiful (pulchrum) is really "pleasure

1

1 He even apparently regards the organic motion which he calls “appetite” as indistinguishable from the heightened vital action of which the appearance is "delight or pleasure";—a strange confusion, since, though it may be plausibly maintained that desire is an inseparable element of what we call pleasure, it is evident that desire is often experienced without pleasure: as Hobbes himself says, Appetite without the opinion of attaining" is "despair," and not delight. I have therefore in the text passed over this identification of desire and pleasure as a palpable inadvertence; but Hobbes's persuasion that the latter involves the former should be noted, as it appears again in his account of happiness or felicity; which he declares not to consist "in the repose of a mind satisfied," but in a "continual progress of the desire from one object to another; the attaining of the former being still but the way to

the latter."

in promise"; when men are not immediately seeking present pleasure, they desire power as a means to future pleasure, and thus have a derivative delight in the exercise of power which prompts to what we call benevolent action. The vaunted social inclinations of men, when we consider them narrowly, resolve themselves either into desire for personal benefit to be obtained from or through others, or desire for reputation; "all society is either for gain or glory.". No doubt men naturally require mutual help: "infants have need of others to help them to live, and those of riper years to help them to live well"; but so far as this need is concerned, it is "dominion" rather than society that a man would naturally seek if all fear were removed: apart from mutual fear, men would have no natural tendency to enter into political union with their fellows, and to accept the restrictions and positive obligations which such union involves. If any one doubts this natural unsociality of man, Hobbes bids him consider what opinion of his fellows his own actions imply: "when taking a journey he arms himself; 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 that shall be done him."

What, then, is the conduct that ought to be adopted, the reasonable course of conduct, for this egoistic, naturally unsocial being, living side by side with similar beings? In the first place, since all the voluntary actions of men tend to their own preservation or pleasure, it cannot be reasonable to aim at anything else; in fact, nature rather than

1 There is, however, a noticeable-though perhaps unconscious— discrepancy between Hobbes's theory of the ends that men naturally seek and his standard for determining their natural rights. This latter is never

reason fixes the end of human action, to which it is reason's function to show the means. Hence if we ask why it is reasonable for any individual to observe the rules of social behaviour that are commonly called moral, the answer is obvious that this is only indirectly reasonable, as a means to his own preservation or pleasure. It is not, however, in this, which is only the old Cyrenaic or Epicurean answer, that the distinctive point of Hobbism lies; but rather in the doctrine that even this indirect reasonableness of the most fundamental moral rules is entirely conditional on their general observance, which cannot be secured without the intervention of government. E.g. it is not reasonable for me to perform first my share of a contract, if I have "any reasonable suspicion" that the other party will not afterwards perform his; and such reasonable suspicion cannot be effectually excluded except in a state of society in which he is punished for non-performance. Thus the ordinary rules of social behaviour are only hypothetically obligatory until they are actualised by the erection of "a common power" that may use the strength and means of all" to enforce on all the observance of rules tending to the common benefit. On the other hand, Hobbes yields to no one in maintaining the paramount importance of moral regulations. The rules prescribing justice or the performance of covenants, equity in judging between man and man, requital of benefits, sociability, forgiveness of wrong so far as security allows, the rules prohibiting contumely, pride, arrogance, and Pleasure simply, but always Preservation-though on occasion he enlarges the notion of “preservation" into "preservation of life so as not to be weary of it." His view seems to be that in a state of nature most men would fight, rob, etc., "for delectation merely" or "for glory," and hence all men must be allowed an indefinite right to fight, rob, etc., "for preservation."