in his own words, would meet a genuine need. The non-political parts of Hobbes's system have not hitherto been very easily accessible to college students or to the general reader; yet no philosopher is better qualified to speak for himself, instead of reaching his readers through the medium of second-hand expositions. The present volume brings together, from the Molesworth edition, the first six chapters of the English version of the De corpore; the important second chapter of the Human Nature; Chapters I-III of the De cive (Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government); a fragment of the little treatise on Liberty and Necessity; and the greater part of Chapters I-XVIII, XXXI, and XLIII from the Leviathan. In footnotes, brief citations of parallel passages from other writings are given. The volume contains a portrait of Hobbes and a (rather bad) reproduction of the frontispiece to the first edition of the Leviathan. Aubrey's delightful little life of Hobbes is prefixed to the selections. There are no notes and no introduction, the editor desiring to leave the reader "an immediate and uncolored impression of the author." Certainly Hobbes has small need of explanatory aids.
The execution of the compiler's task gives some occasion for criticism. The selection of passages for inclusion is far from felicitous. Hobbes's "First Philosophy," with his fundamental conception of motion as the principle of all things and his typical attempt at a mechanistic cosmology,—one of the more important and less accessible parts of the system,—is wholly unrepresented; while nearly two-thirds of the volume are given up to the Leviathan, of which several cheap and convenient editions already exist. Yet, if the Leviathan was to be included, it is not clear why so important a part of that book as Chapter XXI ("On the Liberty of Subjects") was (except for a few unessential sentences in a footnote) left out. There are few things in Hobbes more curious than the limitations which, in that chapter, he puts upon the obligation of the subject to obey the sovereign. Similarly Chapters XXVI and XXIX ought to have been included. The reader should have been warned that the English version of the De corpore is not from Hobbes's own hand, and that it is marred by occasional omissions and mistranslations. The editor might at least have been expected to correct the radical inversion of the sense at the beginning of § 13 of Chapter VI (pp. 65 f.), since the error has already been pointed out by Robertson. At p. 161 n. Molesworth's mangled and meaningless printing of Hobbes's classification of voluntary and involuntary actions is reproduced, in spite of the fact that Robertson has established the correct text (Hobbes, p. 234 n.). In fine, what we did not greatly need,—an incomplete reprint of the Leviathan,—has been given us; what we did need,—a selection of representative passages covering the whole range of Hobbes's theoretical philosophy, carefully edited, with corrections of the errors of earlier editions,—has been given us only in very small part. For that part, however, we may be grateful.
Washington University.
St. Louis, Mo.
