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64 this appellation he means the body politic; insinuating, that man is an untameable beast of prey, and that government is the strong chain by which he is kept from mischief. The fundamental principles here maintained are the same as in the book De Cive; but as it inveighs more particularly against ecclesiastical tyranny, with the view of subjecting the consciences of men to the civil authority, it lost the author the favour of some powerful protectors he had hitherto enjoyed among the English divines who attended Charles II. im France; and he even found it convenient to quit that kingdom, and to return to England, where Cromwell (to whose government his political tenets were now as favourable as they were meant to be to the royal claims) suffered him to remain unmolested. The same circumstances operated to his disadvantage after the Restoration, and obliged the King, who always retained for him a very strong attachment, to confer his marks of favour on him with the utmost reserve and circumspection.

The details which I have entered into, with respect to the history of Hobbes’s political writings, will be found, by those who may peruse them, to throw much light on the author’s reasonings. Indeed, it is only by thus considering them in their connection with the circumstances of the times, and the fortunes of the writer, that a just notion can be formed of their spirit and tendency.

The ethical principles of Hobbes are so completely interwoven with his political system, that all which has been said of the one may be applied to the other. It is very remarkable, that Descartes should have thought so highly of the former, as to pronounce Hobbes to be “a much greater master of morality than of metaphysics;” a judgment which is of itself sufficient to mark the very low state of ethical science in France about the middle of the seventeenth century. Mr Addison, on the other hand, gives a decided preference (among ail the books written by Hobbes) to his Treatise on Human Nature; and to his opinion on this point I most implicitly subscribe; including, however, in the same commendation, some of his other philosophical essays on similar topics. They are the only part of his works which it is possible now to read with any interest; and they everywhere evince in their author, even when he thinks most unsoundly himself, that power of setting his reader a-thinking, which is one of the most unequivocal marks of original genius. They have plainly been studied with the utmost care both by Locke and Hume. To the former they have suggested some of his most important observations on the Association of Ideas, as well as much of the sophistry displayed in the first book of his Essay, on the Origin of our Knowledge, and on the factitious nature of our moral principles; to the latter (among a variety of hints of less consequence),