Hitherto I have set forth the nature of Man, (whose Pride and other
Passions have compelled him to submit himselfe to Government;) together
with the great power of his Governour, whom I compared to Leviathan,
taking that comparison out of the two last verses of the one and
fortieth of Job; where God having set forth the great power of
Leviathan, called him King of the Proud. "There is nothing," saith he,
"on earth, to be compared with him. He is made so as not be afraid. Hee
seeth every high thing below him; and is King of all the children of
pride." But because he is mortall, and subject to decay, as all other
Earthly creatures are; and because there is that in heaven, (though not
on earth) that he should stand in fear of, and whose Lawes he ought to
obey; I shall in the next following Chapters speak of his Diseases, and
the causes of his Mortality; and of what Lawes of Nature he is bound to
obey.
CHAPTER XXIX. OF THOSE THINGS THAT WEAKEN, OR TEND TO THE DISSOLUTION OF
A COMMON-WEALTH
Dissolution Of Common-wealths Proceedeth From Imperfect Institution
Though nothing can be immortall, which mortals make; yet, if men had the
use of reason they pretend to, their Common-wealths might be secured, at
least, from perishing by internall diseases. For by the nature of their
Institution, they are designed to live, as long as Man-kind, or as
the Lawes of Nature, or as Justice it selfe, which gives them life.
Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by externall violence, but
intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the Matter; but
as they are the Makers, and orderers of them. For men, as they become
at last weary of irregular justling, and hewing one another, and desire
with all their hearts, to conforme themselves into one firme and lasting
edifice; so for want, both of the art of making fit Laws, to square
their actions by, and also of humility, and patience, to suffer the rude
and combersome points of their present greatnesse to be taken off, they
cannot without the help of a very able Architect, be compiled, into any
other than a crasie building, such as hardly lasting out their own time,
must assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity.
Amongst the Infirmities therefore of a Common-wealth, I will reckon in
the first place, those that arise from an Imperfect Institution,
and resemble the diseases of a naturall body, which proceed from a
Defectuous Procreation.
Want Of Absolute Power