I would like to thank Professors David Rapoport, Amos Funkenstein, and Richard Ashcraft for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the UCLA Clark Memorial Library for its support.

1. Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, ed. and introduction by Dick, Oliver Lawson (London: Theodore Brun Limited, 1949), p. 150.Google Scholar

2. Hobbes's pursuit of science is first seen in the Short Tract on First Principles (unpublished during his lifetime but written possibly as early as 1630), in which Hobbes argues for a mechanistic scientific position; it continues in his subsequent studies of optics, geometry, motion, and mechanics in such works as De Corpore of 1655, the Problemata physica of 1662, and the Decameron physilogicum of 1678. His science of politics is enunciated in three works: The Elements of Law, written in 1640 and published in 1650 as two treatises, Human Nature and De Corpore Politico; De Cive, written after the Elements, but published in 1642; and, last, Leviathan, published in 1651. See Brandt, Frithiof, Thomas Hobbes' Mechanical Conception of Nature (Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1928), p. 55Google Scholar; Watkins, J. W. N., Hobbes's System of Ideas: A Study in the Political Significance of Philosophical Theories (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1973), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

3. Strauss's conception of Hobbes's break with humanism is complex. For while Strauss states that Hobbes broke with his humanist past before he wrote any of his major works on political theory, Strauss also argues that the essence of Hobbes's political theory derives from his humanist period. The essence, according to Strauss, is Hobbes's “moral attitude,” which posits an “antithesis of fundamentally unjust vanity and fundamentally just fear of violent death” (see Strauss, , The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Sinclair, Elsa M. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952], pp. 27–29)Google Scholar.

4. Reik, Miriam, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1977), chap. 2Google Scholar; Johnston, David, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), chap. 1.Google Scholar

5. And so Strauss speaks of a humanist essence that remains throughout Hobbes's later political theory, while Reik and Johnston find new emphases and interests — though Reik deems “the path that led from … humanistic studies to political and scientific concerns … a natural one for the seventeenth-century mind, just as it was natural then for a poet like Milton to write a textbook in logic as well as his poems” (Reik, , Golden Lands, p. 51)Google Scholar.

6. See Ashcraft, Richard, “Ideology and Class in Hobbes Political Theory,” Political Theory 6 (02 1978): 27–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Ashcraft argues here that not only is the Civil War to be understood as the background to Hobbes's political views, but that it shapes the substance of his political theory.

7. Strauss finds Hobbes's humanism linked to his interest in history, which is, in turn, connected to the rhetorical tradition. For a discussion of Hobbes's understanding of the connection between history and rhetoric, see Strauss, , Political Philosophy of Hobbes, pp. 79–86.Google Scholar Hobbes's interest in history, as Strauss points out, was typical of the humanists in general (Ibid., p. 82). As for Johnston and Reik, their rejection of the “break hypothesis” is based on Hobbes's continuing interest in the rhetorical tradition, which they perceive to be characteristic of humanism.

8. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp. 11–13.Google Scholar

9. Joseph Lecler's comments on humanist toleration are typical. Although he acknowledges that the humanists were not religious pluralists, in any modern sense, he writes: “In the history of tolerance at the beginning of the modern era the humanists appear from the very start as pioneers. Already from 1526 Erasmus pointed towards the idea of civil tolerance for the Protestant sects. Thomas More conceived freedom for all religions in the pagan kingdom of Utopia” (Lecler, , Toleration and the Reformation, trans. Westow, T. L., 2 vols. [New York: Association Press, 1960]).Google Scholar

10. Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive or The Citizen, ed. Lamprecht, Sterling P. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 2. 12. 6, pp. 133–34.Google Scholar

11. Hobbes, Thomas, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (here-after referred to as EW), ed. SirMolesworth, William, vol. 6, Behemoth, p. 363.Google Scholar

12. Behemoth, pp. 193–94.

13. Hobbes, Thomas, The Elements of Law, ed. Toennies, Ferdinand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 2. 8. 14, pp. 140–41.Google Scholar

14. De Cive, 2. 10. 11, p. 123.

15. Ibid., 2. 12. 12, pp. 138–39.

16. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 151 and 164Google Scholar, where Hobbes writes: “Eloquence seemeth wisedome, both to themselves and others.” In De Cive (2. 12. 12, pp. 138–39) Hobbes argues that the rhetoricians “could not poison the people with those absurd opinions contrary to peace and civil society, unless they held them themselves, which sure is an ignorance greater than can well befall any wise man.”

17. Terrence Ball makes this comparison of Hobbes to Plato: “Hobbes' defense of linguistic austerity must be viewed against the background of an older rhetorical tradition in which the aim of political speech is to kindle the passions and direct the interests of the audience. Hobbes is as critical as Plato of appeals to passions and mere ‘opinions’ of the masses” (Ball, , “Hobbes' Linguistic Turn,” Polity 17 [Summer 1985]: 755–56)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Strauss, also compares Hobbes with Plato on rhetoric in Political Philosophy of Hobbes, pp. 148–49 n. 5.Google Scholar

18. See, for example, Johnston, , Rhetoric of Leviathan, pp. 59–60Google Scholar or Reik, , Golden Lands p. 52Google Scholar: “Even after Hobbes made politics a subject for science, there was no ‘break’ in its relation to rhetoric as he saw it in his early years. When he raged against rhetoric and said that impudence was the ‘goddess of rhetoric,’ as he did in Behemoth, he was speaking of the confusion wrought by oratory in ‘democratical assemblies’ — a position he already took in the Thucydides essay. … But side by side with passages where he is critical of those who abuse rhetoric, one finds others where he reiterates his early conviction that rhetoric, properly employed, has its place in the moral sciences.” See also Reik, , Golden Lands, pp. 149–50Google Scholar and 220 n. 39.

19. “So also Reason, and Eloquence, (though not perhaps in the Naturall Sciences, yet in the Morall) may stand very well together. For wheresoever there is place for adorning and preferring of Errour, there is much more place for adorning and preferring of Truth, if they have it to adorn” (Leviathan, p. 718).

20. Leviathan, pp. 109–110.

21. Elements of Law, 1. 5. 7, p. 16; Leviathan, pp. 102, 109, 114–15.

22. Plato Republic 601 A-C.

23. Leviathan, pp. 116–17.

24. De Cive 1. 12. 6, pp. 133–34.

25. Elements of Law, 1. 13. 2, p. 50.

26. Seigel, Jerrold E., Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 16–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kahn, Victoria, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 35–36 and 42–44Google Scholar; Steadman, John M., The Hill and the Labyrinth: Discourse and Certitude in Milton and his Near-Contemporaries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), chap. 3.Google Scholar

27. Cicero De Oratore 3. 19. 71; 3. 21. 80; 3. 27. 107; Cicero De Finibus 5. 4. 10.

28. Cicero De Oratore 3. 19. 71. Also see The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1972 ed., s.v. “Skepticism,” by Richard Popkin.

29. Aristotle Rhetoric 1357a 14–15. What Aristotle says of the dialectical syllogism, in the Topics 100b 20, is true of the rhetorical syllogism, since both take the probable as their point of departure. Rhetoric 1354a–1358a; Topics 1. 1 and 1. 12; Prior Analytics 2. 27. Also see Kahn, , Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism, p. 33.Google Scholar

30. Cicero De Oratore 1. 3. 12.

31. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 1173a, ed. Ostwald, Martin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962)Google Scholar; Topics 100b 20; Oehler, Klaus, “De Consensus omnium also Kriterium Patristik,” Antike und Abendland 10 (1961): 106Google Scholar; Kahn, , Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism, p. 32.Google Scholar

32. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3. 1. 2. Also Tusculan Disputations 1. 15. 35 where Cicero writes that “universal agreement (omunium consensus) is the voice of nature.” Oehler, Klaus argues that Cicero was the first to base the consensus omnium on god-given innate ideas (“Der Consensus omnium,” pp. 110–11).Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 106.

34. On Erasmus's conception of the consensus omnium, see Mcconica, J. K. “Erasmus and the Grammar of Consent,” Scrinium Erasmianum, ed., Coppens, J., 2. vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 2: 77–99.Google Scholar Also see Gogan, Brian, The Common Corps of Christendom: Ecclesiological Themes in the Writings of Sir Thomas More, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, vol. 26 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982, pp. 365–70.Google Scholar

35. Erasmus, Desiderius, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami (hereaft referred to as EE), ed. Allen, P. S., Allen, H. M., and Garrod, H. W., 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–1957), 7: 216. 56–60Google Scholar (Letter to Willibald Pirckheimer, 19 October 1527). Also see EE, 6: 351.52 - 352.56 (Letter to Pirckheimer, 6 June 1526) and EE, 6: 372.26 - 29 (Letter to Pirckheimer, 30 July 1526).

36. Ferguson, W. K., ed., Erasmi Opuscula (The Hague, 1933), p. 115Google Scholar, cited by Mcconica, , “Erasmus and the Grammar of Consent,” p. 85 n. 26Google Scholar.

37. Mcconica, , “Erasmus and the Grammar of Consent,” pp. 87–89.Google Scholar Also see Erasmus's colloquy “A Fish Diet (1526),” where the fishmonger tells the butcher that though a pope can err as any man does, “what proceeds from the authority of a universal council is a heavenly oracle and carries weight equal to that of the Gospels, or surely almost equal” (Thompson, Craig R., The Colloquies of Erasmus [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965], p. 327).Google Scholar

38. Erasmus, , Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera Omnia, ed. Clericus, J., 10 volumes (Leyden: 1703–1706), 5Google Scholar: 500B (De amabili Ecclesiae Concordia).

39. Erasmus-luther, , Discourse on Free Will, trans, and ed. Winter, Ernst F. (New York: Frederick K. Ungar Publishing Company, 1961), p. 19.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., pp. 9–10.

41. Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera Omnia, 9: 1222AGoogle Scholar (De libero arbitrio). Compare Erasmus's conception of man as being born with “germinal concepts of the ethical good” which are perverted with Cicero's view of man's inborn disposition to the good that is corrupted. Tusculan Disputations 3. 1. 2.Google Scholar

42. Bainton, Roland H., Concerning Heretics, Records of Civilization, no. 22 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), p. 131.Google Scholar

43. Although in his translation of Thucydides Hobbes relies on probability, qua history, as the basis of knowledge, he no longer does so in his mature political writings. The first evidence of Hobbes's ambivalence toward probability is in his A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique, the first English translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric (published in 1637). Hobbes departs here from Aristotle's original by obscuring probability's role in rhetoric. Whereas Aristotle based the rhetorical syllogism, the enthymeme, on probability, Hobbes defines it instead as a short syllogism, leaving out any mention of probability. See The Rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Lamy, ed. Harwood, John T. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), pp. 1–2, 14, 40Google Scholar; Ong, Walter J., “Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric in England,” Transactions of the Cambridge [England] Bibliography Society 1 (1951): 261–62, 267–68.Google Scholar

44. Man gains prudence, according to Hobbes, by observing the relationship between “signs” — “the Event Antecedent of the Consequent” — and what follows them. For a discussion of the differences between prudence in Elements of Law and Leviathan, see Missner, Marshall, “Skepticism and Hobbes's Political Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (07-09 1983): 418–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Leviathan, pp. 97–98.

46. Elements of Law, 1. 4. 10, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar Hobbes anticipates Hume's point that it is not valid to infer from “every observed A has been B” to “every A is B.” Watkins, , Hobbes's System of Ideas, p. 20.Google Scholar

47. “Prudence..., through the difficulty of observing all circumstances, be very fallacious” (Leviathan, p. 97). “Signes of prudence are all uncertain; because to observe by experience, and remember all circumstances that may alter the sucesse, is impossible” (Ibid., p. 117). Prudence, Hobbes writes, is “found as well in Brute Beasts, as in Man; and is but a Memory of successions of events in times past, wherein the omission of every little circumstance altering the effect, frustrateth the expectation of the most prudent...” (Ibid., p. 682).

48. Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 101–102.Google Scholar Also see Leviathan, pp. 85–86.

49. Leviathan, p. 97.

50. “For Hobbes there was no philosophical space within which dissent was safe or permissible.... The aim of philosophy was the highest degree of certainty that could be obtained.... The production of certainty would terminate disputes and secure total assent” (Shapin, and Schaffer, , Leviathan and the Air-Pump, pp. 107–108).Google Scholar

51. Leviathan, pp. 181–82.

52. Ibid., p. 179.

53. Ibid., p. 103. See Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas, chap. 8, for an excellent discussion of Hobbes's theory of language.

54. Ibid., p. 120.

55. “For though the nature of that we conceive, be the same; yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of body, and prejudices of opinion, gives everything a tincture of our different passions. . . . For one man calleth Wisedome, what another calleth feare; and one cruelty, what another justice; one prodigality, what another magnanimity; and one gravity, what another stupidity, &c.”(ibid., pp. 109–110). Likewise, in The Elements of Law (1. 7. 3, p. 22) Hobbes states: “Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth and is delightful to himself, GOOD; and that EVIL which displeaseth him: insomuch that while every man differeth from other in constitution, they differ also one from another concerning the common distinction of good and evil.” See also De Cive, 2. 14. 17, p. 166.

56. De Cive, 2. 14. 17, pp. 166–67.

57. Leviathan, p. 216. Also De Cive, 1. 3. 31, p. 57.

58. Leviathan, p. 186.

59. Ibid., p. 188.

60. Guthrie, W. K. C., The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 21–24, 55–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. Hobbes's use of the nature-convention distinction is discussed in Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 331–38.Google Scholar

62. Leviathan, p. 85.

63. EW, vol. 1, Elements of Philosophy: the first section, Concerning Body (1655), 1. 1. 8, p. 10Google Scholar; Watkins, , Hobbes's System of Ideas, p. 45.Google Scholar

64. Leviathan, p. 115.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid., p. 105.

67. EW, volume 1, Elements of Philosophy, 1. 3. 8, p. 36Google Scholar; Wolin, Sheldon S., Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), p. 246.Google Scholar

68. Leviathan, p. 105.

69. Although, as Funkenstein points out, Hobbes sometimes emphasizes the thetic-arbitrary beginnings of science (from definitions) and, at other times, its hypothetical-experimental beginnings, nevertheless, his science is arbitrary throughout. Even in experimental science, there is never a one-to-one relation between phantasms — our perceptions of external reality — and things; “the congruence is guaranteed by the strict material causation in the universe” (Funkenstein, , Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp. 333–34 n. 20Google Scholar).

70. Elements of Law, 1. 13. 3, p. 50Google Scholar; Leviathan, pp. 114, 117.

71. Leviathan, p. 233.

72. Elements of Law, 1. 13. 3, p. 51.

73. Leviathan, p. 147.

74. Leviathan, pp. 184, 188.

75. Funkenstein, , Theology and the Scientific Imagination, p. 335.Google Scholar

76. Leviathan, p. 227.

77. Elements of Law, 1. 19. 5, p. 80Google Scholar; Leviathan, p. 226.

78. Leviathan, pp. 263–64.

79. EW, vol. 7, “Epistle Dedicatory” to Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, One of Geometry, the Other of Astronomy…., p. 184.

80. Watkins, , Hobbes's System of Ideas, p. 45.Google Scholar

81. Leviathan, p. 233.

82. Ibid., pp. 333–34.

83. Leviathan, p. 188.

84. Representative of the humanists' views is Erasmus. See EE 5: 177. 217–178. 223 (Letter to John Carondelet, 5 January 1523).

85. As Erasmus writes: “the more dogma there is, the more material for heresy.” EE 5: 465. 1–468. 155 (Letter to William Warham, 1 June 1524).

86. Milton, John, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, volume 2: Areopagitica (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 565.Google Scholar

87. Erasmus does so in Inquisitio de Fide, edited by Thompson, Craig R., rev. ed. (Hamden: CT: Archon Books, 1975), pp. 39–48.Google Scholar See Thompson's introduction, pp. 1–49, for the argument that Erasmus — even in 1524 — viewed Luther as essentially orthodox on fundamentals.

88. For a discussion of the humanists' attempts to minimize the fundamentals, see the relevant sections of Lecler, Joseph, Toleration and the Reformation and Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 volumes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932–1940).Google Scholar

89. Elements of Law, 2. 6. 5, p. 116.Google Scholar

90. Leviathan, p. 615.

91. Ibid., p. 626. See also Johnston, , Rhetoric of Leviathan, p. 141Google Scholar, who writes that Hobbes's minimum theology “can be traced back to the immensely popular writings of Erasmus.”

92. Behemoth, pp. 232–33.

93. “I confess I know very few controversies amongst Christians, of points necessary to salvation” (Behemoth, p. 243).

94. The New Cambridge Modern History, ed. Cooper, J. P., volume 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Allen, J. W., English Political Thought, 1603–1660, vol. 1 (London: Methuen and Co., 1928), pp. 404–405.Google Scholar

95. Lecler, , for example, believes that secularism was the unintended result of the humanists' views. Toleration and the Reformation, vol. 1, p. 132, p. 380.Google Scholar

96. “[T]aken from places expresse, and such as receive no controversie of Interpretation … this Article beleeved, Jesus is the Christ, is sufficient … to our Reception into the Kingdome of God, and by consequence, onely Necessary” (Leviathan, pp. 617–19). For Hobbes's argument that the fundamentals must be comprehensible to all, see Elements of Law, 2. 6. 8, pp. 119–20; De Cive, 3. 18. 10, pp. 203–204; Leviathan, p. 617.

97. Elements of Law, 2. 6. 9, pp. 120–22. Hobbes also excludes the traditional belief in the Trinity when he identifies the triad with Moses, Jesus, and the Apostles. Leviathan, pp. 522–524; Mintz, Samuel I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 45.Google Scholar

98. Elements of Law, 2. 6. 11, p. 124.

99. EW, vol. 4, Concerning Heresy, and the Punishment Thereof, p. 387. Hobbes composed this work to defend himself against charges that Leviathan was heretical.

100. Ibid. p. 390.

101. Leviathan, p. 165.

102. “Nor is there any Judge of Haresie amongst Subjects, but their owne Civill Soveraign: For Haeresie is nothing else, but a private opinion, obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the Publique Person (that is to say, the Representant of the Commonwealth) hath commanded to be taught. By which it is manifest, that an opinion publiquely appointed to bee taught, cannot be Haeresie; nor the Soveraign Princes that authorize them, Haeretiques. For Haeretiques are none but private men, that stubbornly defend some Doctrine, prohibited by their lawfull Sovereigns” (Ibid., pp. 604–605). Also Behemoth, pp. 173–76.

103. Leviathan, p. 610.

104. Ibid., p. 611.

105. More, Thomas, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. S.j., Edward Surtz and Hexter, J. H.(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), lxx–lxxvi.Google Scholar

106. Ibid., p. 612.

107. De Cive, 3. 18. 13, p. 208. In De Cive, 3. 15. 13, p. 192: “Those Attributes therefore, whereby we signify ourselves to be of an opinion, that there is any man endued with sovereignty independent of God, or that he is immortal, or of infinite power, and the like, though commanded by princes, yet must they be abstained from.” Also Strauss, , Political Philosophy of Hobbes, p. 72Google Scholar; Elements of Law, 2. 6. 14, p. 125.

108. Leviathan, pp. 530–31.

109. Ibid., pp. 527–28.

110. De Cive, 3. 18. 6, pp. 200–201, especially footnote.

111. De Cive, 3. 15. 16, p. 188; 3. 15. 18, pp. 190–93.

112. Leviathan, pp. 624–25.

113. Ryan, Alan, “Hobbes, Toleration and the Inner Life,” The Nature of Political Theory, ed. Miller, David and Siedentop, Larry (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983), pp. 197–218.Google Scholar

114. Leviathan, p. 700.

115. Watkins, , Hobbes's System of Ideas, p. 70Google Scholar; Ryan, , “Hobbes, Toleration, and the Inner Life,” p. 217.Google Scholar

116. Leviathan, pp. 500–501.

117. One can only speculate whether Hobbes would have permitted inquisitions, had he been aware of the effectiveness of “brainwashing.”

118. Aquinas, ThomasSumma Theologiae 2Google Scholar, q. 11, a. 3. That Hobbes's orthodox contemporaries recognized that he was undercutting their defense of persecution is maintained by Ryan, Alan in “A More Tolerant Hobbes?” Justifying Toleration: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mendus, Susan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 37–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

119. Leviathan, pp. 228–39.

120. Leviathan, p. 405. Also De Cive, 3. 15. 15, p. 187; Ibid., 3. 15. 17, pp. 189–90.

121. De Cive, 3. 15. 12, p. 182.

122. See Strauss, , Political Philosophy of Hobbes, p. 74.Google Scholar

123. Leviathan, p. 178.

124. Behemoth, p. 198.

125. Ibid., pp. 710–11.