Page:The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (1841), Vol. 2.djvu/12



THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

wolves and depredators of their liberty, unless the forest that lodged them were grubbed up by the roots. To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God ; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves ; and the second, if we compare cities. In the one, there is some analogy of similitude with the Deity ; to wit, justice and charity, the twin sisters of peace. But in the other, good men must defend themselves by taking to them for a sanctuary the two daughters of war, deceit and violence: that is, in plain terms, a mere brutal rapacity. Which although men object to one another as a reproach, by an inbred custom which they have of beholding their own actions in the persons of other men, wherein, as in a mirror, all things on the left side appear to be on the right, and all things on the right side to be as plainly on the left; yet the natural right of preservation, which we all receive from the uncontrolable dictates of necessity, will not admit it to be a vice, though it confess it to be an unhappiness. Now that with Cato himself, a person of so great a renown for wisdom, animosity should so prevail instead of judgment, and partiality instead of reason, that the very same thing which he thought just in his popular state, he should censure as unjust in a monarchical ; other men perhaps may have leisure to admire. But I have been long since of this opinion ; that