Principles of western civilisation

108 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

Yet, as the mind endeavours to establish the ultimate relationship of the doctrines here in sight, a primary conviction regarding them becomes irresistible. None of them we see is accepted here as a first principle. For, underneath all the discussion of the outward utilitarian features of society that we observe proceeding, there extends the fundamental assumptions that have been already referred to. It is upon these assumptions that all the principles which are being enunciated ultimately rest. Everywhere in the theories of Hobbes and Locke we find, if the examination is carried far enough, that we stand in the presence of the same fact. Society and all its members, and all the purposes for which it is constituted, are regarded in the last resort as standing in subordinate relationship to ends and principles which transcend the limits of political consciousness.

In the theories of both Hobbes and Locke, for instance, men were conceived, before governments as yet came into being, as existing in ‘“‘a state of nature,’ —free, equal, and independent.’ The great question of the time to which the civil Revolution in England had directed attention was :—What was the nature of the restrictions men made in giving up part of their assumed rights in a state of nature to establish civil authority and obtain the benefits of government? What was, therefore, the nature of the ultimate appeal from civil authority so established ? Hobbes, supported by Spinoza, Puffendorf, and other writers on the continent of Europe, maintained that once established the authority became absolute.

1 Leviathan, c. xiii.-xxi, and c. xxxi.; Two Treatises of Government, 1. Crillys dil.