binding and presumably as mutually beneficial as in any other contract. Like a true Dutchman, Grotius magnifies the importance of commerce, and gives historical facts in support of his contention, that commerce should be permitted, even during war.

The notion of contract plays a great part in Grotius. The first founders of a State are conceived as entering into the first of all contracts, which is the condition of all others within the State. This first contract, however, is simply declaratory of the law of nature; it is not an arbitrary act.' 'It is when we come to conventions like the League of Cambrai, or the Hanseatic League, and other unions for special purposes, that we find an addition to the law of nature. When once the first contract is entered into, the law of nature no longer permits and forbids all that it permitted and forbade before, in the "primævus naturæ status" before that contract. These references of Grotius to an original contract, and a state (as well as a law) of nature were of great influence on subsequent speculation. The good faith which respects all contracts from the first downwards is to him the necessary postulate of all union and communion of men, first on the large scale over the whole human society, then between nations, and finally between citizens within a nation. It is the breach of it that makes men unsocial,

and leads to war, Not only Christianity, but "humana utilitas" itself bids us seek peace and ensue it."

66

It must be clear from the foregoing statement that the doctrine of Grotius is by no means a mere revival of the doctrine of Aristotle that man is a social animal. Το Aristotle the doctrine meant that man was born for life in a State, and that the State was the end, and a man, as an individual, was no end in himself. Great Nature spake and it was done." The plan of the world included States, and men must be made to fulfil the end of Nature and become citizens. As Stahl truly says, the emphasis is laid by Grotius not on "great Nature" but on human nature. Man has certain qualities which make him

3

1 De Jure B., I. 1., § III., II. xv. § v. Compare III. III. § 11.

2 De Jure B., III. xxv., § IV.

3 Rechtsphil., I. 174; cf. Bluntschli, Staatslehre, p. 70.

ད་ས

By

social, and hence he founds a State, while at the same time and for the same reason he belongs to other and often wider communities as well. This of course was implied, as we have seen,1 in Christianity, but it had not been stated before so clearly, in a non-religious form and by a mere political philosopher. Moreover the very notion that the State begins in a species of contract conveys to us that in the mind of Grotius the individual men, not at first jointly, but severally, are the real startingpoint. Without needing to represent original compact as a commercial bargain, we can readily understand the bearing of such a theory on economical speculation. holding commercial bargains to be as innocent as all other contracts, Grotius was enabled to clear his mind of much of the current cant about usury and the wickedness of traders; and he did his part in making a dispassionate inquiry into economical subjects possible. But his importance in the history of the relations between Economics and Philosophy is mainly due to the influence of his Political Philosophy. From his epoch, if not from himself, we must date the increased interest in two lines of inquiry, both of which are in contact with Economics. The first is that assiduous study of the effects of foreign commerce which led to the Mercantile Theory. The other

is the more abstract study of the first principles of politics and political philosophy, which we see in Hobbes, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. In our own Locke and Hume we have both studies pursued by the same individuals ; but it is not till we come to the French Physiocrats that we find the principles of political philosophy and the practical principles of economic policy brought apparently into one channel, and made parts of one and the same system.

NOTE. RICHARD HOOKER (1553-1600).

Though Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (printed 1593 seq.) is (as the title shows) not a work on general jurisprudence, the author has really gone far along the path followed by Grotius in pursuit of the idea of a law of nature. The two men wrote independently, but with a similar motive, the one trying to vindicate Protestant Ethics, the other Protestant (or at least Anglican) Church government. The Church (says

1 Above, p. 51.

Hooker) is founded on the Scriptures, but the Scriptures are not in the barest literal sense the only rule to direct us, for the Scriptures themselves take for granted men as they are, placed by their physical and intellectual constitution under certain laws of nature, these including not only moral rules but a certain order of civil society and the rules thereof. Scripture gives all that is necessary to salvation, but assumes a human subject capable of understanding its teachings, as a teacher of elocution assumes that his pupil has a voice and knows grammar. Perhaps we might express this by saying that Christianity does not address itself to an abstract man, nor attempt the impossible task of beginning with a "tabula rasa." Similarly Augustine, De Civitate Dei (quoted by Dante, De Monarchia, III. p. 368, Fraticelli): "Non sane omnia quæ gesta narrantur, etiam significare aliquid putanda sunt," etc. Solo vomere terra proscinditur, sed ut hoc fieri possit etiam cætera aratri membra sunt necessaria." For Hooker's influence on Locke, see infra.

CHAPTER III.

HOBBES (1588-1679).

THOMAS HOBBES (De Cive, 1642, Leviathan, 1651) wrote in the troubled times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, when the need of a strong central government was more felt in England than the need of domestic reform or international mediation. He is the greatest modern apostle of the doctrine that Might is Right. He speaks like Grotius of a law of nature, and a state of nature, but conceives them very differently, and his writings may be read throughout as if controversial pamphlets against Grotius. What in the Dutch philosopher was only implied,-that the individual is the starting point of political philosophy,—is by the English made explicit and emphatic. In tracing State and Society to their first beginnings, we come (if we follow Hobbes) to individual men, by nature not social, but, "ad mutuam cædem apti," selfish and anti-social, in a state of war with each other.1 In this state of nature there are no laws, not even laws of nature. Every man is, roughly speaking, his fellow's equal in the balance of physical and intellectual gifts; every one has a claim to all things; his desires are boundless, and his will is only bounded by his power. is the struggle for existence, with supremacy to the strongest, described in the 2nd book of Plato's Republic; and it is a struggle which ceases only when the combatants recognise that they are defeating their own ends by continuing it. The first law of nature

It

1 "Librum de Cive vidi. Placent quæ pro regibus dicit. Fundamenta tamen quibus suas sententias superstruit probare non possum. Putat inter homines omnes a natura esse bellum, et alia quædam habet nostris non congruentia" (namely, about Religion). Letter of Grotius to his brother, 11th April, 1643 (Grotii Epistola, Amsterd., 1687, pages

is self-preservation, and that law bids them seek peace instead of war. They discover that the paths of gain and glory lead but to the grave. The voice of reason is first heard when passion finds out its own impotence. But to get peace they must make mutual concessions; each must give up his unlimited claims, on condition that the others do the same. Obeying the law of nature, they give up the state of nature, and found a political union, where the once independent individuals have surrendered their several wills to one sovereign authority. They do this by entering into a Contract, a contract on which all other contracts depend. The Sovereign may be a single man or may be a group, but in any case, represents their common self-denying ordinance, their common submission for Peace's sake. They then become one people instead of an aggregate of separate atoms.1 To Hobbes, therefore (as to Grotius), the State is "an artificial body." By art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State, which is but an artificial man (though of greater stature and length than the natural man, for whose protection it was intended), and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul giving life and motion to the whole body."

Outside this State there can be no laws and no justice; particular States are to each other in a state of nature, which means a state of natural liberty and anarchy; of the laws themselves we can say they are good or bad, but not that they are just or unjust, for we have no other standard of justice but the laws themselves." After departing from Greek notions by beginning with individual atoms having no bent for society in them, Hobbes goes on to make men depend on the State for their rules of life in a stricter way than the Greeks themselves. The State on which they so depend is, moreover, according to him, a contrivance of enlightened selfishness;

1 De Cive, ch. xii., 199, 200 (Elzevir, 1669). Compare Dante, De Monarchia, I. § v., Pax universalis is the final goal (ultimus finis) of

man.

2 Leviathan (init.); cf. Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, II. Ix. iii.

3 For concessions, see Leviathan, ch. xxiv. p. 122, and ch. xxx., ed. 1676. Kings (he allows) may sometimes act against their own interest and against the laws of nature.