Hobbes casually mentions the subject of "praise or dispraise," in reference to the will; those who are old enough will remember this was one of the most frequent subjects of discussion amongst the earlier Socialists. "These depend not at all in the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For what is it else to praise, but to say _a thing is good?_ Good, I say, for me, or for somebody else, or for the State and Commonwealth. And what is it to say an action is good, but to say it is as I would wish, or as another would have it, or according to the will of the State--that is to say, according to the law! Does my lord think that no action could please me, or the commonwealth, that should proceed from necessity! Things may be therefore necessary, and yet praiseworthy, as also necessary, and yet dispraised, and neither of them both in vain; because praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment, do, by example, make and conform the will to good or evil. It was a very great praise, in my opinion, that Vellerius Paterculus gives Cato, where he says that he was good by nature, '_et quia aliter esse non potuit_.''--'And because he could not do otherwise.'" This able treatise was reprinted, and extensively read about twenty years ago; but, like many other of our standard works, it is at present out of print. The "Leviathan" is still readable, a bold masculine book. It treats everything in a cool, analytic style. The knife of the Socialist is sheathed in vain; no rhapsody can overturn its impassioned teachings. Rhetoric is not needed to embellish the truths he has to portray, for the wild flowers of genius but too frequently hide the yawning chasms in the garden of Logic. It is not to be expected that this book will be read now with the interest with which it was perused two centuries ago; then every statement was impugned, every argument denied, and the very tone of the book called forth an interference from parliament to stop the progress of its heresies. Now the case is widely different, and the general tenor of the treatise is the rule in which are illustrated alike the works of the philosophers and the dreams of the sophists (priests.) We give part of the introduction. "Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is, by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also, imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels, as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves but so many strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of nature, man. For by art is created that great leviathan, called a Commonwealth, or State,