Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the artof man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make anartificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginningwhereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that allautomata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth awatch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and thenerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, givingmotion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goesyet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man.For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth, or State(in Latin, Civitas), which is but an artificial man, though of greater statureand strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life andmotion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicatureand execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastenedto the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to performhis duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth andriches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people’ssafety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to knoware suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reasonand will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly,the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at firstmade, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man,pronounced by God in the Creation.To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will considerFirst, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both which is man.Secondly, how, and by what covenants it is made; what are the rights8/Thomas Hobbesand just power or authority of a sovereign; and what it is that preservethand dissolveth it.Thirdly, what is a Christian Commonwealth.Lastly, what is the Kingdom of Darkness.Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, that wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of beingwise, take great delight to show what they think they have read in men, byuncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to readone another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce teipsum, Readthyself: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance either thebarbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors, or to encouragemen of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their betters; but to teachus that for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to thethoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself andconsidereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc.,and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughtsand passions of all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude ofpassions, which are the same in all men,—desire, fear, hope, etc.; not thesimilitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared,hoped, etc.: for these the constitution individual, and particular education,do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that thecharacters of man’s heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to himthat searcheth hearts. And though by men’s actions we do discover theirdesign sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, anddistinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come to be altered,is to decipher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too muchtrust or by too much diffidence, as he that reads is himself a good or evilman.But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serveshim only with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern awhole nation must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; butmankind: which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any languageor science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly andperspicuously, the pains left another will be only to consider if he also findnot the same in himself. For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.