Adhaerence To Private Men, From Ignorance Of The Causes Of Peace
Ignorance of remote causes, disposeth men to attribute all events, to the causes immediate, and Instrumentall: For these are all the causes they perceive.
And hence it comes to passe, that in all places, men that are grieved with payments to the Publique, discharge their anger upon the Publicans, that is to say, Farmers, Collectors, and other Officers of the publique Revenue; and adhaere to such as find fault with the publike Government; and thereby, when they have engaged themselves beyond hope of justification, fall also upon the Supreme Authority, for feare of punishment, or shame of receiving pardon.
Credulity From Ignorance Of Nature
Ignorance of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity, so as to believe many times impossibilities: for such know nothing to the contrary, but that they may be true; being unable to detect the Impossibility.
And Credulity, because men love to be hearkened unto in company, disposeth them to lying: so that Ignorance it selfe without Malice, is able to make a man bothe to believe lyes, and tell them; and sometimes also to invent them.
Curiosity To Know, From Care Of Future Time
Anxiety for the future time, disposeth men to enquire into the causes of things: because the knowledge of them, maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage.
See also
- Reason, Error and Absurdity
- Madnesse
- Of the Difference of Manners
- Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning their Felicity and Misery
Books
- By Thomas Hobbes
- De Cive
- Thomas Hobbes – Behemoth (Clarendon edition)
- The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Parts I & II
- Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and the Councils and Artifices by Which They Were Carried on from the Year 1640 to the Year 1660
- Thomas Hobbes – Behemoth (Clarendon edition)
- By others:
- Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes by Timothy Raylor
- Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context by J P Sommerville
- The State of Nature in John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Thomas Huhne