3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at a time. In other words, that there is no comprehensive power or faculty of understanding in the mind. 4. That we have no general or abstract ideas. 5. That the only principle of connexion between one thought and another is association, or their previous connexion in sense. 6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of language. 7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source of all our affections. 9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.—The manner of stating and reasoning upon this point is the only circumstance of importance in which modern writers differ from Hobbes. 10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances. All of these positions it is my intention to oppose to the utmost of my ability. Except the first, they are most or all of them either denied or doubtfully admitted by Locke. And as it is his admission of the first principle which has opened a door, directly or indirectly, to all the rest, I shall devote the Essay next but one to an examination of the account which he gives of the origin of our ideas from sensation. It may perhaps be thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s metaphysical opinions have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy excited by the misanthropy and despotical tendency of his political writings. But it seems to me that he has been almost as hardly dealt with in the one case as in the other. As to his principles of government, this may at least be said for them, that they are in form and appearance very much the same with those detailed long after in Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract,’ and evidently suggested the plan of that work, which has never been considered as a defence of tyranny. The author indeed requires an absolute submission in the subject to the laws, but then it is to be in consequence of his own consent to obey them. Every man is at least _supposed_ to be his own lawgiver. Secondly, as to the misanthropy with which he is charged, for having made fear the actual foundation and cement of civil society, he has I think made his own apology very satisfactorily in these words: