Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Leviathan

London

Printed for Andrew Crooke

1651, 1668

"For the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired."

And therefore, a man who has no great passion for any of these things; but is as men term it indifferent; though he may be so far a good man, as to be free from giving offence; yet he cannot possibly have either a great fancy, or much judgment. For the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired: all steadiness of the mind's motion and all quickness of the same, proceeding from thence: for as to have no desire, is to be dead: so to have weak passions, is dullness; and to have passions indifferently for every thing, GIDDINESS, and distraction; and to have stronger and more vehement passions for any thing, than is ordinarily seen in others, is that which men call MADNESS.
(I.viii, p. 41)

Population::Scouts Population::Spies

Reading Annette Baier's Death and Character: Further Reflections on Hume. (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard UP, 2008), 119.

At least 6 entries in ESTC (1651, 1652, 1668, 1676, 1678, 1681). Dutch translation in 1667. Proscribed in 1683 at Oxford. Important later editions of 1750 and 1839.

Text from Past Masters, drawn from the 1843 Molesworth edition.

See also Leviathan, or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil by Thomas Hobbes (London: Printed for Andrew Crooke, 1651). <Link to EEBO-TCP>

Reading Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1994).

07/22/2011