The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics
Philosophy
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics
Economics; Philosophy
Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world, is by the
art of man so imitated that he can make an artificial animal. For by art
is created that great leviathan called a commonwealth or state, which is
but an artificial man; in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul,
as giving life and motion; the magistrates and other officers the
joints; reward and punishment the nerves; concord, health; discord,
sickness; lastly, the pacts or covenants by which the parts were first
set together resemble the "fiat" of God at the Creation.
To describe this artificial man, I will consider: First, the matter and
the artificer, both which is man; secondly, how it is made; thirdly,
what is a Christian commonwealth; lastly, what is the kingdom of
darkness.
And first, of man. The thoughts of man are, singly, every one a
representation of some quality or accident of a body without us, called
an object. There is no conception in the mind which has not first been
begotten upon the organs of sense. The cause of sense is the eternal
object which presseth upon the proper organ; not that, as hath been
taught in the schools, the thing, "sendeth forth a visible or audible
species."
Imagination is the continuity of an image after the object is removed.
When we would express that the image is decaying, we call it memory; in
sleep, we call it dreams. A train of thought is the succession in the
mind of images which have succeeded each other in experience.
Of all inventions the most notable is that of speech, names, the
register of thoughts; which are notes for remembrance, or signs, for
transference. Truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our
affirmations. Words are wise men's counters, but the money of fools.
Reasoning is the reckoning, the addition and subtraction of the
sequences of words, the sum being the conclusion. Which conclusions may
be absurd, because men do not start--except in geometry--from the
definitions of the words. Reason, therefore, implies speech.
In animals there are two sorts of motions--vital and voluntary. The
beginnings of motion within man are called "endeavour." Appetite is a
motion towards; aversion a motion fromwards. Some are born in us, some
are products of experience. The object of a man's appetite he calls
"good"; of his aversion, "evil"; whether in promise (beautiful and
ugly), in effect (pleasant, painful), or as means (useful, hurtful).
Pleasures and pains arise from an object present, of the senses; or in
expectation, of the mind. Thus "pity" is the imagining of a like
calamity befalling oneself.
"Deliberation" is the sum of the successive appetites or aversions
which are concluded by the doing or not doing of the particular thing.
"Will" is the last appetite in deliberating. So, in the inquiry of the
truth, opinions correspond to appetites, and the final judgment, the
last opinion, to the will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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