EDITORS' PREFACE

In these pages, appearing under the title of "Half-Hours with the Freethinkers," are collected in a readable form an abstract of the lives and doctrines of some of those who have stood foremost in the ranks of Free-thought in all countries and in all ages; and we trust that our efforts to place in the hands of the poorest of our party a knowledge of works and workers – some of which and whom would otherwise be out of their reach – will be received by all in a favorable light. We shall, in the course of our publication, have to deal with many writers whose opinions widely differ from our own, and it shall be our care to deal with them justly and in all cases to allow them to utter in their own words their essential thinkings.

We lay no claim to originality in the mode of treatment – we will endeavor to cull the choicest flowers from the garden, and if others can make a brighter or better bouquet, we shall be glad to have their assistance. We have only one object in view, and that is, the presenting of free and manly thoughts to our readers, hoping to induce like thinking in them, and trust-ing that noble work may follow noble thoughts. The Freethinkers we intend treating of have also been Free Workers, endeavoring to raise men's minds from superstition and bigotry, and place before them a knowledge of the real.

We have been the more inclined to issue the "Half-Hours with the Freethinkers" in consequence, not only of the difficulty which many have in obtaining the works of the Old Freethinkers, but also as an effective answer to some remarks which have lately appeared in certain religious publications, implying a dearth of thought and thinkers beyond the pale of the Church. We wish all men to know that great minds and good men have sought truth apart from faith for many ages, and that it is because few were prepared to receive them, and many united to crush them, their works are so difficult of access to the general mass at the present day.

THOMAS HOBBES

This distinguished Freethinker was born on the 5th of April, 1588, at Malmesbury; hence his cognomen of "the philosopher of Malmesbury." In connection with his birth, we are told that his mother, being a loyal Protestant, was so terrified at the rumored approach of the Spanish Armada, that the birth of her son was hastened in consequence. The subsequent timidity of Hobbes is therefore easily accounted for. The foundation of his education was laid in the grammar school of his native town, where most probably his father (being a clergyman) would officiate as tutor. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford. Five years of assiduous study made him proficient as a tutor; this, combined with his amiability and profound views of society, gained him the respect of the Earl of Devonshire, and he was appointed tutor to the Earl's son, Lord Cavendish. From 1610 to 1628, he was constantly in the society of this nobleman, in the capacity of secretary. In the interval of this time he travelled in France, Germany, and Italy; cultivating in each capital the society of the leading statesmen and philosophers. Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, the first great English Deist, and Ben Jonson, the dramatist, were each his boon companions. In the year 1628, Hobbes again made the tour of the Continent for three years with another pupil, and became acquainted at Pisa with Galileo. In 1631 he was entrusted with the education of another youth of the Devonshire family, and for near five years remained at Paris with his pupil.

Hobbes returned to England in 1636. The troublous politics of this age, with its strong party prejudices, made England the reverse of a pleasant retirement, for either Hobbes or his patrons; so, perceiving the outbreak of the Revolution, he emigrated to Paris. There in the enjoyment of the company of Gassendi and Descartes, with the elite of Parisian genius, he was for awhile contented and happy. Here he engaged in a series of mathematical quarrels, which were prolonged throughout the whole of his life, on the quadrature of the circle. Seven years after, he was appointed mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. In 1642, Hobbes published the first of his principal works, "De Cive, or Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society." It was written to curb the spirit of anarchy, then so rampant in England, by exposing the inevitable results which must of necessity spring from the want of a coherent government amongst a people disunited and uneducated. The principles inculcated in this work were reproduced in the year 1651, in the "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil;" this, along with a "Treatise on Human Nature," and a small work on "The Body Politic," form the groundwork of the "selfish schools" of moral philosophy. As soon as they were published, they were attacked by the clergy of every country in Europe. They were interdicted by the Pontiffs of the Roman and Greek Church, along with the Protestants scattered over Europe, and the Episcopal authorities of England. Indeed, to such an extent did this persecution rise, that even the royalist exiles received warning that there was no chance for their ostracism being removed, unless "the unclean thing (Hobbes) was put away from their midst." The young prince, intimidated by those ebullitions of vengeance against his tutor? was obliged to withdraw his protection from him, and the old man, then near seventy years of age, was compelled to escape from Paris by night, pursued by his enemies, who, according to Lord Clarendon, tracked his footsteps from France. Fortunately for Hobbes, he took refuge with his old protectors, the Devonshire family, who were too powerful to be wantonly insulted. While residing at Chatsworth, he would no doubt acutely feel the loss of Descartes, the Cardinal de Richelieu, and Gassendi; in the place of those men he entered into a warm friendship with Cowley, the poet, Selden, Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, Charles Blount, and the witty Sir Thomas Brown.

In 1654, he published a "Letter upon Liberty and Necessity;" this brief tractate is unsurpassed in Free-thought literature for its clear, concise, subtle, and demonstrative proofs of the self-determining power of the will, and the truth of philosophical necessity. All subsequent writers on this question have largely availed themselves of Hobbes's arguments, particularly the pamphleteers of Socialism. It is a fact no less true than strange, that Communism is derived from the system of Hobbes, which has always been classed along with that of Machiavelli, as an apology for despotism. The grand peculiarity of Hobbes is his method. Instead of taking speculation and reasoning upon theories, he carried out the inductive system of Bacon in its entirety, reasoning from separate generic facts, instead of analogically. By this means he narrowed the compass of knowledge, and made everything demonstrative that was capable of proof. Belief was consequently placed upon its proper basis, and a rigid analysis separated the boundaries of Knowing and Being. Hobbes looked at the great end of existence and embodied it in a double axiom. 1st. The desire for self-preservation. 2nd. To render ourselves happy. From those duplex principles which are inherent in all animals, a modern politician has perpetrated a platitude which represents in a sentence the end and aim of all legislation, "the greatest happiness for the greatest number." This is the ultimatum of Hobbes's philosophy. Its method of accomplishment was by treating society as one large family, with the educated and skilled as governors, having under their care the training of the nation. All acting from one impulse (self-preservation,) and by the conjoint experience of all, deriving the greatest amount of happiness from this activity. Hobbes opposed the Revolution, because it degenerated into a faction; and supported Charles Stuart because there were more elements of cohesion within his own party, than amongst his enemies. It was here where the cry of despotism arose; the "Round-heads" seeing they could not detach the ablest men from the King's party, denounced their literary opponents as "lovers of Belial, and of tyranny." This was their most effective answer to the "Leviathan." In after years, when the Episcopal party no longer stood in need of the services of Hobbes, they heaped upon him the stigma of heresy, until his ci-devant friends and enemies were united in the condemnation of the man they most feared. Mr. Owen, in his schema of Socialism, took his leading idea on non-responsibility from Hobbes's explanation of necessity, and the freedom of the will. The old divines had inculcated a doctrine to the effect that the "will" was a separate entity of the human mind, which swayed the whole disposition, and was of itself essentially corrupt. Ample testimony from the Bible substantiated this position. But in the method of Hobbes, he lays down the facts that we can have no knowledge without experience, and no experience without sensation. The mind therefore is composed of classified sensations, united together by the law of an association of ideas. This law was first discovered by Hobbes, who makes the human will to consist in the strongest motive which sways the balance on any side. This is the simplest explanation which can be given on a subject more mystified than any other in theology.

A long controversy betwixt Bishop Bramhall, of Londonderry, followed the publication of Hobbes's views on Liberty and Necessity. Charles II. on his restoration, bestowed an annual pension of £100 on Hobbes, but this did not prevent the parliament, in 1666, censuring the "De Cive" and "Leviathan," besides his other works. Hobbes also translated the Greek historian, Thucydides, Homer's Odyssey, and the Illiad. The last years of his life were spent in composing "Behemoth; or, a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660," which was finished in the year he died, but not published until after his death. At the close of the year 1679, he was taken seriously ill. At the urgent request of some Christians, they were permitted to intrude their opinions upon his dying bed, telling him gravely that his illness would end in death, and unless he repented, he would go straight to hell. Hobbes calmly replied, "I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep out of the world." For seventy years he had been a persecuted man, but during that time his enemies had paid him that tribute of respect which genius always extorts from society. He was a man who was hated and dreaded. He had reached the age of ninety-two when he died. His words were pregnant with meaning; and he never used an unnecessary sentence. A collection of moral apothegms might be gathered from his table-talk. When asked why he did not read every new book which appeared, he said, "If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignorant." His habits were simple; he rose early in the morning, took a long walk through the grounds of Chatsworth, and cultivated healthful recreation. The after part of the day was devoted to study and composition. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, he was a devoted admirer of the "fragrant herb." Charles II.'s constant witticism, styled Hobbes as "a bear against whom the Church played their young dogs, in order to exercise them."

If there had been a few more similar "bears," the priestly "dogs" would long since have been exterminated, for none of them escaped unhurt from their encounters with the "grizzly" of Malmesbury, except it was in the mathematical disputes with Dr. Wallis.

He was naturally of a timid disposition: this was the result of the accident which caused his premature birth, and being besides of a reserved character, he was ill-fitted to meet the physical rebuffs of the world. It is said that he was so afraid of his personal safety, that he objected to be left alone in an empty house; this charge is to some extent true, but we must look to the mitigating circumstances of the case. He was a feeble man, turned the age of three-score and ten, with all the clergy of England hounding on their dupes to murder an old philosopher because he had exposed their dogmas. It was but a few years before, that Protestants and Papists had complimented each other's religion by burning those who were the weakest, and long after Hobbes's death, Protestants murdered, ruined, disgraced, and placed in the pillory Dissenters and Catholics alike, and Thomas Hobbes had positive proof that it was the intention of the Church of England to burn him alive, on the stake, a martyr for his opinions. This, then, is a sufficient justification for Hobbes feeling afraid, and instead of it being thrown as a taunt at this illustrious Freethinker, it is a standing stigma on those who would re-enact the tragedy of persecution, if public opinion would allow it.

Sir James Mackintosh says: * "The style of Hobbes is the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little tract on human nature has scarcely an ambiguous or a needless word. He has so great a power of always choosing the most significant term, that he never is reduced to the poor expedient of using many in its stead. He had so thoroughly studied the genius of the language, and knew so well how to steer between pedantry and vulgarity, that two centuries have not superannuated probably more than a dozen of his words."

* Second Dissertation: Encyclopaedia Brit., p. 318.

Lord Clarendon describes the personal character of Hobbes as "one for whom he always had a great esteem as a man, who besides his eminent parts of learning and knowledge, hath been always looked upon as a man of probity, and a life free from scandal."

We now proceed to make a selection of quotations from the works of this writer, commencing with those on the "Necessity of the Will," in reply to Bishop Bramhall.

"The question is not whether a man be a free agent – that is to say, whether he can write, or forbear, speak, or be silent, according to his will; but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do, if I will, but to say, I can will if I will