Principles of western civilisation

110 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

When men were regarded as having left the state of nature, and as organised into societies under government, the tacit assumption underlying and

pervading the entire argument is found to be still -

the same. Hobbes, from his point of view, undertook to prove that men owed absolute obedience to the civil authority once constituted. But it is only necessary to examine the stages of the argument to see how it is all in the end bound up with the same assumption of a sense of responsibility in men to principles, the claims of which, on the individual, transcended the utilitarian interests of existing society. Locke from a different stand-point insisted that the supreme authority in civil society could not assume to itself any power which was not in accordance with certain fundamental laws. But here again, when the examination is carried far enough, it becomes evident that the argument still rests, in the last resort, on the assumption of principles operative in society, the content of which tran-

an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions ; for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker ; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business; they are His property, whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another’s pleasure” (Zwo Treatises of Government, by John Locke, ii. ch. ii.).

1 Obedience to constituted authority ‘‘ where it is not repugnant to the laws of God,” was what Hobbes considered he had proved in the first thirty chapters of the Zevzathan. ‘‘ There wants only,” he continued, ‘‘for the entire knowledge of civil duty to know what are those laws of God”; and he proceeds to give an exposition in which the assumed sense of continued and personal responsibility to an authority outside of society presents itself as the central and dominant feature. See Levzathan, by Thomas Hobbes, ch. xxxi. and following.