GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOCIETY. ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 481
in fact explicitly accept the identification, as do the
Totalitarian States of the twentieth century. 1 But it is
just because they are felt not to be the same thing, because,
in other words, men recognize a law to be unjust, however
strong the power behind it, that they are at any time
liable to revolt in the hope of getting rid of the sovereign
who, they conceive, is guilty of the injustice. The fact
seems obvious, and one is inclined to wonder how Hobbes
could have brought himself to overlook it. The answer is
once again to be found in a reference to historical circum-
stance. Hobbes set himself the difficult task of proving
that, while the last revolution, resulting in the restoration
of Charles II in 1660,. was justified, the next would be
unjustified; unjustified because, given his view of the
Social Contract, security is the one thing for the sake of
which men formed society, and the one thing which they
cannot be allowed to jeopardize by successful rebellion.
Successful rebellion, then, is the one thing which, in the
interests of security, must be excluded; yet it is also something
which, on Hobbes's egoistic premises, cannot be
excluded. Confronted by this difficulty, what, in effect,
Hobbes does, is to retain the dogma of the, impossibility
of revolt and to abandon his egoistic premises. Men, he
says, will not revolt because of the moral obligation which
they recognize to "keep covenants made". We may regard
this inconsistent invocation of morality as a surviving
remnant of the influence, from which Hobbes never quite
won free, of the natural law 1
theory of politics. Belief in
9
natural law is the basis of Locke's political philosophy,
but it has no logical place in that of Hobbes, who uses
arguments which are inadmissible in logic to reach a conclusion
which is repugnant to common sense.
(3) (*) TH CONCLUSION THAT THE CONTRACT
is IRREVOCABLE DOES NOT FOLLOW. I, insist at
this point upon the inconsistency of Hobbes, because
1 See Chapter XVI, pp. 693 and 646 ' See pp. 477, 478 above.
See pp. 4*4.4*5 below.