I dedicate to you this edition of the Works of Hobbes; first, because I know you will be well pleased to see a complete collection of all the writings of an Author for whom you have so high an admiration. Secondly, because I am indebted to you for my first acquaintance with the speculations of one of the greatest and most original thinkers in the English language, whose works, I have often heard you regret, were so scarce, and so much less read and studied than they deserved to be. It now, therefore, gives me great satisfaction to be able to gratify a wish, you have frequently expressed, that some person, who had time and due reverence for that illustrious man, would undertake to edite his works, and bring his views again before his countrymen, who have so long and so unjustly neglected him. And likewise, I am desirous, in some way, to express the sincere regard and respect that I feel for you, and the gratitude that I owe you for the valuable instruction, that I have obtained from your society, and from the friendship with which you have honoured me, during the many years we have been companions in political life. Yours, truly, WILLIAM MOLESWORTH. February 25th, 1839. 79, Eaton Square, London. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ELEMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY. THE FIRST SECTION, CONCERNING BODY, WRITTEN IN LATIN BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMESBURY AND TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH. THE TRANSLATOR TO THE READER. If, when I had finished my translation of this first section of the Elements of Philosophy, I had presently committed the same to the press, it might have come to your hands sooner than now it doth. But as I undertook it with much diffidence of my own ability to perform it well; so I thought fit, before I published it, to pray Mr. Hobbes to view, correct, and order it according to his own mind and pleasure. Wherefore, though you find some places enlarged, others altered, and two chapters, XVIII and XX, almost wholly changed, you may nevertheless remain assured, that as now I present it to you, it doth not at all vary from the author's own sense and meaning. As for the Six Lessons to the Savilian Professors at Oxford, they are not of my translation, but were written, as here you have them in English, by Mr. Hobbes himself; and are joined to this book, because they are chiefly in defence of the same.[A] Footnote A: They will be published in a separate volume, with other works of a similar description. W. M. THE AUTHOR'S EPISTLE DEDICATORY, TO THE