Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

eligion by them forbidden. For in whatsoever is not regulated by
the Commonwealth, it is equity (which is the law of nature, and
therefore an eternal law of God) that every man equally enjoy his
liberty.
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* Genesis, 17. 10
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There is also another distinction of laws into fundamental and not
fundamental: but I could never see in any author what a fundamental
law signifieth. Nevertheless one may very reasonably distinguish
laws in that manner.
For a fundamental law in every Commonwealth is that which, being
taken away, the Commonwealth faileth and is utterly dissolved, as a
building whose foundation is destroyed. And therefore a fundamental
law is that by which subjects are bound to uphold whatsoever power
is given to the sovereign, whether a monarch or a sovereign
assembly, without which the Commonwealth cannot stand; such as is
the power of war and peace, of judicature, of election of officers,
and of doing whatsoever he shall think necessary for the public
good. Not fundamental is that, the abrogating whereof draweth not with
it the dissolution of the Commonwealth; such as are the laws
concerning controversies between subject and subject. Thus much of the
division of laws.
I find the words lex civilis and jus civile, that is to say, and law
and right civil, promiscuously used for the same thing, even in the
most learned authors; which nevertheless ought not to be so. For right
is liberty, namely that liberty which the civil law leaves us: but
civil law is an obligation, and takes from us the liberty which the
law of nature gave us. Nature gave a right to every man to secure
himself by his own strength, and to invade a suspected neighbour by
way of prevention: but the civil law takes away that liberty, in all
cases where the protection of the law may be safely stayed for.
Insomuch as lex and jus are as different as obligation and liberty.
Likewise laws and charters are taken promiscuously for the same
thing. Yet charters are donations of the sovereign; and not laws,
but exemptions from law. The phrase of a law is jubeo, injungo; I
command and enjoin: the phrase of a charter is dedi, concessi; I
have given, I have granted: but what is given or granted to a man is
not forced upon him by a law. A law may be made to bind all the
subjects of a Commonwealth: a liberty or charter is only to one man or
some one part of the people. For to say all the people of a
Commonwealth have liberty in any case whatsoever is to say that, in
such case, there hath been no law made; or else, having been made,
is now abrogated.
CHAPTER XXVII
OF CRIMES, EXCUSES, AND EXTENUATIONS
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A sin is not only a transgression of a law, but also any contempt of
the legislator. For such contempt is a breach of all his laws at once,
and therefore may consist, not only in the commission of a fact, or in
the speaking of words by the laws forbidden, or in the omission of
what the law commandeth, but also in the intention or purpose to
transgress. For the purpose to break the law is some degree of
contempt of him to whom it belonged to see it executed. To be
delighted in the imagination only of being possessed of another
man's goods, servants, or wife, without any intention to take them