You have seen my method: receive now the reason which moved me to write this. I was studying philosophy for my mind sake, and I had gathered together its first elements in all kinds; and having digested them into three sections by degrees, I thought to have written them, so as in the first I would have treated of _body_ and its general properties; in the second of _man_ and his special faculties and affections; in the third, of _civil government_ and the duties of subjects. Wherefore the first section would have contained _the first philosophy_, and certain elements of physic; in it we would have considered the reasons of _time_, _place_, _cause_, _power_, _relation_, _proportion_, _quantity_, _figure_, and _motion_. In the second, we would have been conversant about _imagination_, _memory_, _intellect_, _ratiocination_, _appetite_, _will_, _good_ and _evil_, _honest_ and _dishonest_, and the like. What this last section handles, I have now already showed you. Whilst I contrive, order, pensively and slowly compose these matters; (for I only do reason, I dispute not); it so happened in the interim, that my country, some few years before the civil wars did rage, was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an approaching war; and was the cause which, all those other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this third part. Therefore it happens, that what was last in order, is yet come forth first in time. And the rather, because I saw that, grounded on its own principles sufficiently known by experience, it would not stand in need of the former sections. Yet I have not made it out of a desire of praise: although if I had, I might have defended myself with this fair excuse, that very few do things laudably, who are not affected with commendation: but for your sakes, readers, who I persuaded myself, when you should rightly apprehend and thoroughly understand this doctrine I here present you with, would rather choose to brook with patience some inconveniences under government, (because human affairs cannot possibly be without some), than self-opiniatedly disturb the quiet of the public; that, weighing the justice of those things you are about, not by the persuasion and advice of private men, but by the laws of the realm, you will no longer suffer ambitious men through the streams of your blood to wade to their own power; that you will esteem it better to enjoy yourselves in the present state, though perhaps not the best, than by waging war endeavour to procure a reformation for other men in another age, yourselves in the meanwhile either killed or consumed with age. Furthermore, for those who will not acknowledge themselves subject to the civil magistrate, and will be exempt from all public burthens, and yet will live under his jurisdiction, and look for protection from the violence and injuries of others, that you would