Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

his hands and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any
difficult point; as the Trinity, the Deity, the nature of Christ,
transubstantiation, free will, etc., into any of the modern tongues,
so as to make the same intelligible; or into any tolerable Latin, such
as they were acquainted withal that lived when the Latin tongue was
vulgar. What is the meaning of these words: "The first cause does
not necessarily inflow anything into the second, by force of the
essential subordination of the second causes, by which it may help
it to work" They are the translation of the title of the sixth
chapter of Suarez's first book, Of the Concourse, Motion, and Help
of God. When men write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not
mad, or intend to make others so And particularly, in the question of
transubstantiation; where after certain words spoken they that say,
the whiteness, roundness, magnitude, quality, corruptibility, all
which are incorporeal, etc., go out of the wafer into the body of
our blessed Saviour, do they not make those nesses, tudes, and ties to
be so many spirits possessing his body For by spirits they mean
always things that, being incorporeal, are nevertheless movable from
one place to another. So that this kind of absurdity may rightly be
numbered amongst the many sorts of madness; and all the time that,
guided by clear thoughts of their worldly lust, they forbear disputing
or writing thus, but lucid intervals. And thus much of the virtues and
defects intellectual.
CHAPTER IX
OF THE SEVERAL SUBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE
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THERE are of knowledge two kinds, whereof one is knowledge of
fact; the other, knowledge of the consequence of one affirmation to
another. The former is nothing else but sense and memory, and is
absolute knowledge; as when we see a fact doing, or remember it
done; and this is the knowledge required in a witness. The latter is
called science, and is conditional; as when we know that: if the
figure shown be a circle, then any straight line through the center
shall divide it into two equal parts. And this is the knowledge
required in a philosopher; that is to say, of him that pretends to
reasoning.
The register of knowledge of fact is called history, whereof there
be two sorts: one called natural history; which is the history of such
facts, or effects of Nature, as have no dependence on man's will; such
as are the histories of metals, plants, animals, regions, and the
like. The other is civil history, which is the history of the
voluntary actions of men in Commonwealths.
The registers of science are such books as contain the
demonstrations of consequences of one affirmation to another; and
are commonly called books of philosophy; whereof the sorts are many,
according to the diversity of the matter; and may be divided in such
manner as I have divided them in the following table.
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I. SCIENCE, that is, knowledge of consequences; which is called
also PHILOSOPHY
A. Consequences from accidents of bodies natural; which is
called NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
1. Consequences from accidents common to all bodies natural;
which are quantity, and motion.