Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

* Acts, 17. 21
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From this it was that the place where any of them taught and
disputed was called schola, which in their tongue signifieth
leisure; and their disputations, diatribae, that is to say, passing of
the time. Also the philosophers themselves had the name of their
sects, some of them, from these their schools: for they that
followed Plato's doctrine were called Academics; the followers of
Aristotle, Peripatetics, from the walk he taught in; and those that
Zeno taught, Stoics, from the Stoa: as if we should denominate men
from More-fields, from Paul's Church, and from the Exchange, because
they meet there often to prate and loiter.
Nevertheless, men were so much taken with this custom, that in
time it spread itself over all Europe, and the best part of Africa; so
as there were schools, publicly erected and maintained, for lectures
and disputations, almost in every Commonwealth.
There were also schools, anciently, both before and after the time
of our Saviour, amongst the Jews: but they were schools of their
law. For though they were called synagogues, that is to say,
congregations of the people; yet, inasmuch as the law was every
Sabbath day read, expounded, and disputed in them, they differed not
in nature, but in name only, from public schools; and were not only in
Jerusalem, but in every city of the Gentiles where the Jews inhabited.
There was such a school at Damascus, whereinto Paul entered, to
persecute. There were others at Antioch, Iconium and Thessalonica,
whereinto he entered, to dispute. And such was the synagogue of the
Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and those of Asia;
that is to say, the school of Libertines, and of Jews, that were
strangers in Jerusalem: and of this school they were that disputed
with St. Stephen.*
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* Acts, 6. 9
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But what has been the utility of those schools What science is
there at this day acquired by their readings and disputings That we
have of geometry, which is the mother of all natural science, we are
not indebted for it to the schools. Plato, that was the best
philosopher of the Greeks, forbade entrance into his school to all
that were not already in some measure geometricians. There were many
that studied that science to the great advantage of mankind: but there
is no mention of their schools; nor was there any sect of
geometricians; nor did they then pass under the name of
philosophers. The natural philosophy of those schools was rather a
dream than science, and set forth in senseless and insignificant
language, which cannot be avoided by those that will teach
philosophy without having first attained great knowledge in
geometry. For nature worketh by motion; the ways and degrees whereof
cannot be known without the knowledge of the proportions and
properties of lines and figures. Their moral philosophy is but a
description of their own passions. For the rule of manners, without
civil government, is the law of nature; and in it, the law civil, that
determineth what is honest and dishonest; what is just and unjust; and
generally what is good and evil. Whereas they make the rules of good
and bad by their own liking and disliking; by which means, in so great
diversity of taste, there is nothing generally agreed on; but every
one doth, as far as he dares, whatsoever seemeth good in his own eyes,
to the subversion of Commonwealth. Their logic, which should be the