Thomas Hobbes ... a short summary of his life that should have been written when I was a schoolboy in Malmesbury ... we learned nothing of his ideas in our so called GRAMMAR school

 The 100 best nonfiction books: No 94 – Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)

This article is more than 6 years old

Thomas Hobbes’s essay on the social contract is both a founding text of western thought and a masterpiece of wit and imagination

Robert McCrum

Mon 20 Nov 2017 05.45 GMT

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According to the 17th-century historian and gossip John Aubrey, Thomas Hobbes “was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men.” As a great thinker, Hobbes epitomises English common sense and the amateur spirit, and is all the more appealing for deriving his philosophy from his experience as a scholar and man of letters, a contemporary and occasional associate of Galileo, Descartes and the young Charles Stuart, prince of Wales, before the Restoration.

Hobbes himself was born an Elizabethan, and liked to say that his premature birth in 1588 was caused by his mother’s anxiety at the threat of the Spanish Armada:

… it was my mother dear
Did bring forth twins at once, both me, and fear.

Throughout his long life, Hobbes was never far either from the jeopardy of the times (notably the thirty years’ war and the English civil war) or the jeopardy sponsored by the brooding realism and pragmatic clarity of his philosophy. What, asked Hobbes, was the form of politics that would provide the security that he and his contemporaries longed for, but were always denied?

The famous frontispiece to Leviathan. Photograph: Alamy

Subtitled The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Leviathan first appeared in 1651, during the Cromwell years, with perhaps the most famous title page in the English canon, an engraving of an omnipotent giant, composed of myriad tiny human figures, looming above a pastoral landscape with sword and crosier erect.

Thus “the Leviathan” (sovereign power) entered the English lexicon, and Hobbes’s vision of man as not naturally a social being, animated by a respect for community, but a purely selfish creature, motivated by personal advantage, became condensed into his celebrated summary of mankind’s existence as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”.

It was Hobbes’s argument that, to ameliorate these conditions, man should adopt certain “Laws of Nature” by which human society would be forbidden to do “that which is destructive” of life, whereby virtue would be the means of “peaceful, sociable and comfortable living.”

The first law of nature is: “every man ought to endeavour peace”. This, he argues, will be a hard goal: the general inclination of all mankind is “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”. The second law of nature is: “a man [must] be willing when others are so too … to lay down his right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.” The third law of nature is: “men performe their Covenants made.”

This, in essence, adds up to Hobbes’s social contract, enforced by an external power. Accordingly, members of civil society should enter into a contract to confer their power and strength “upon one Man, or upon an Assembly of men … This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a Common-wealth.” For Hobbes, the contracting of such power is the only guarantee of peace and prosperity: “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is every man against every man.”

Having witnessed the English revolution at first hand, it is war above all that Hobbes most fears. Social warfare empowers mankind’s darkest side: “Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.”

Hobbes is never less than ironical in his attitude to humanity’s appetite for “government”. He had seen too much debate, before and after the execution of Charles I, about the relationship between, citizen, church and state to be anything but pragmatic: “they that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy; so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.”

For Hobbes, the “political community” is paramount, and individuals must surrender themselves for their own further and better protection: “he that complaineth of injury from his sovereign complaineth that whereof he himself is the author; and therefore ought not to accuse any man but himself; no nor himself of injury; because to do injury to one’s self, is impossible.”

As numerous commentators have observed, Leviathan is the founding document of the “social contract theory” that would eventually flourish in the western intellectual tradition. It is also a majestic monument of 17th-century English prose, at once sinewy and vivid:

Riches, knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power.

Hobbes also illuminates his argument with many delicious asides:

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

This comparison of the papacy with the kingdom of fairies (“that is, to the old wives’ fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits”) is a reminder of the philosopher’s pre-eminent wit and imagination. Combined with the economy, candour and irony of Leviathan as a whole, it marks Hobbes out as one of the truly great writers in the English literary canon. But he is also a giant of western philosophy whose influence can be found in the work of Rousseau and Kant.

Not that his contemporaries understood this. “Hobbism” became a term of opprobrium, Leviathan was publicly burnt as a seditious document, and Hobbes himself spent many of his later years in fear for his life. He died in 1679, suffering from Parkinson’s disease. According to Vanbrugh, on his deathbed he said he was “91 years finding out a hole to go out of this world, and at length found it.” His apocryphal last words were: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

A signature sentence

In such condition [of Warre], there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

Three to compare

John Locke: Two Treatises of Government (1690)
David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)
Paul Auster: Leviathan (1992)

franz stuck ... is best known as an expressive painter of latently erotic images ... but he was also a mighty fine designer ... here he made some impressive heraldic designs

although i can't make much sense of the mottos

in either of them ...

 

frank thompson ( late, great ) ...

Some years back I published this picture on The MALMESBURY NOW AND THEN FACEBOOK PAGE

Some years after that, a lady named Kat Thompson contacted me, saying Frank was her father but she hardly knew him.  She asked if I could write down a recollection for her.  

That was in April 2017, and I didn't see her message until the following October, by which time I was severely exhausted by my work and we were desperately home-seeking.

At that time my hours were consumed with an exhausting driving job, and we were about to retire ( I was 68 years old ) and move from London to Tenby, so there was a delay of a whole year before I could settle down and respond.  Inexcusable !

So I only wrote it and sent it to Kat a whole year later in October 2018.  Kat had contacted me via Facebook Messenger, so I replied via that platform and attached my text as a Word File.  

There was a very long silence.  Three and a half years later, in May 2022, I encountered a Sherston man, Pete Evans, at Sheila Evans funeral, and asked if he knew Kat, explaining how I had heard from her.  He seemed to know nothing and his face showed no sympathetic expression.  I wrote to him later but got no reply.

Then, in February 2024, Kat contacted me.

She hadn't known how to open the file I'd sent until then.

I'd love to meet her sometime, to see how much of Frank is in her DNA, so to speak.

 

The photograph shows Bert Clifford, Henry Wheeler, and a pensive and unusually dishevelled Frank Thompson, scrumpy in fist, probably fortified with gin. ... at the Carpenters Arms in Sherston ... 1980ish ... and at lunchtime by the angle of the sun.

 

There follows what little I remember of Frank Thompson ... because I only knew him a little.

 

He was never hard to like but you’d have to see someone regularly and have regular conversations to say you knew and understood them. 

 

I’m trying to remember the first time I looked at him closely.  I was a stranger in the Carpenters Arms.  I was perhaps twenty-two or three, so maybe it was in 1972.  

I’d entered what I’d imagined to be a quaint old country pub on a sunny autumn afternoon, expecting to find quaint old agricultural labourers and instead being almost dazzled by three men in their maybe mid-thirties, very smart in shiny new but slightly old-fashioned suits and deep film-star suntans, who were full of laughter and song and were as comfortably relaxed as if they’d owned the place.  They were like young gods, but drank as if they had no intention of getting old.

 

To my art-schooled-eyes, Frank looked like an heroic Michelangelo figure, thinly disguised as a teddy boy.  Just now I thought of describing Frank in that moment as a kind of cross between Hercules and Apollo, when they were young and untroubled.   

The fashion trends and hair-styles of the nineteen sixties, which had taken various spectacular forms in popular culture, had somehow passed un-noticed in the Carpenters Arms.  In those days it was an isolated refuge from modernity.  These men had a nineteen-fifties look.  That afternoon I was with some friends who were all younger than these three, and so we didn’t join them but sat close-by in the very small backroom with its thick ancient walls, tiny windows, utilitarian bare floors, and puritanically scrubbed and bleached little tables.  

We’d stepped back in time, quite a long way back, it seemed.  Frank, and his companions Phil Pegler and John Evans filled the room with raucous jollity, singing tiny snatches of old Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra songs, so old it suggested an arrested development had held them lightly somehow for fifteen or twenty years. 

 

The first time Frank and I properly spoke was five or six years later, maybe 1977 when I went to live at Foxley and began to visit the Carpenters on Saturday nights and Sunday lunchtimes.  In those five years Frank had become a quieter man, no less handsome.  I came to admire the gentle courteous nature of him, and to envy his Herculean stature and open gaze.

Yes, a solitary man, happy to be at his own little table, whose distinguishing character was that unfailing courtesy and sweetness of voice, and a raw startling beauty.  Now and again we’d take a hand in a game of crib, though I think it wasn’t a game that interested him much, he was just making up the numbers for the company perhaps.  In those times I never knew him to show an interest in any thing new.  

It might have been Frank who showed me how to fortify The Carpenters’ notoriously unpalatable scrumpy with a measure of gin.  I tried it a few times, was beguiled, but then quickly realized it wasn’t part of a sustainable lifestyle.  

His one small passion was a nostalgia for the Sherston of his younger years.  Oddly, he carried a small sheath of very old cinema programmes in his jacket pocket and he once handed them to me to see if I shared his enthusiasm for the films that had captivated his boyish imagination. 

 

I was working in Malmesbury at the end of the 1970s when a friend asked me to collect a plumber from a pub in town and drive him out to a cottage in Minety to fit some new taps.  When I got to the pub to collect the plumber, there was Frank in a crisp white shirt, open-necked, and with a few tools neatly wrapped in a hessian sack that lay at his elbow on the table where he drank.  

He’d aged a little, was heavier, but was as placid and confident and courteous as I’d come to take for granted.  He had a quiet and gentle way of conversation that made you feel like old friends from the start.  As we drove out towards Minety I quietly marvelled at the huge plumber’s hands and wondered how this big man might fit himself in to the intricate corners of modern kitchens.

 

Not long after that, I saw a rare demonstration of Frank’s old-fashioned code of honour, which he’d probably learned at the cinema from Hollywood actors like Alan Ladd or John Wayne.  John Evans, unlike Frank, had become a difficult kind of drunk.  Whist John was often the life and soul of the party, he had few inhibitions and he was always likely to upset the evening with little or no regard for anyone’s feelings, or for his own safety.  

One evening John said something toxically unkind to Pat, the lady behind the bar in The Carpenters, and it was not for the first time.  Everyone there overheard it and all were deeply embarrassed.  

There was a very short and awkward silence before Frank got up and he quietly but insistently accompanied John from the premises through the back door, and sent him home via the unlit back yard with a thick lip.  He then resumed his seat just as quietly, asked no praise, made no comment, and the incident was never mentioned again. 

 

Not long after that, to the surprise of the regulars, Frank began to show up at The Carpenters with a woman who seemed to match him in fine looks and sweet temper.  She’d have made an excellent artist’s model for Rubens or Rembrandt or Renoir.  She was both picturesque and ornamental, and how I envied him.  Everyone liked her, and in no time, just as I was leaving Foxley and abandoning The Carpenters, I heard that they might marry. 

 

Years passed.  I’d left Malmesbury altogether and gone to work in Brighton, but had often drifted back to visit old friends and family, and would sometimes stay for a day or two to wander.  One morning, just before catching a bus that began the homeward journey, I discovered Frank sitting in the back room of the little shop in the Cross Hayes that sold antiques and second-hand furniture . 

He was jaundiced and bony and a very sad sight.  He made a space for me beside him and I sat there for a while, knowing from first glance that I might never see him again, and we talked a little about our changed worlds.  John Evans and Phil Pegler had not long left the planet, and Frank knew his days were few.  

He told me that he was staying in Malmesbury with Ray and Grace, whose shop it was, and that they were caring for him.  Apart from his fatigue, Frank was his old sweet self, never a trace of complaint or self-pity, nor any bitterness or regret.  All I can remember from the conversation is my surprise and delight when, in a moment of sweet pathos, Frank pulled out from his jacket pocket those same old cinema programmes and offered them for me to show an interest.  I did, and then we parted, myself with as heavy a heart then as now.

 

Tristan Forward, 24^th October 2018, in Tenby.

time before time ... from the British Museum ...

If you already had ...

An oval astronomical compendium. 

It comprises a wind-rose, a table of latitudes, an equinoctial sundial, a compartment to hold a compass (now missing), a shallow compartment the purpose of which is unknown, and a nocturnal. 

The wind-rose is marked with the names of 32 directions in a pattern used on other instruments of the same period. 

The latitude-table lists 25 major European cities in England and on the continent with latitude values as known from contemporary sources. 

The equinoctial sundial consists of an hour-ring engraved on both sides for the two halves of the year, and a gnomon, set by a quadrant with a latitude scale.

 The hour ring is engraved with the name of the maker as 'R Grinkin Fecit'. 

The nocturnal is constructed in a way first used by Humfrey Cole in 1590.

... and if you had subsequently acquired ...

 

GOLD PAIR-CASED VERGE CLOCK-WATCH
LONDON, 1693

SIGNED: 'D. Quare London 0233'

The celebrated London watchmaker Daniel Quare was a Quaker, born in Somerset, who became a Brother in the Clockmakers' Company in London in 1671, later serving as Master of the Company in 1708. 

Around 1715 he went into partnership with one of his former apprentices Stephen Horseman, and, following Quare's death in 1724, Horseman carried on the business until he was declared bankrupt in 1733. 

Quare's reputation was built on fine clocks and watches as well as a series of high-quality barometers, of which several survive. 

This does not mean that Quare made all the pieces himself. Like so many makers of the time he doubtless relied on other craftsmen to supply his materials. It is known, for instance, that he used the expertise of Joseph Williamson to produce a number of sophisticated longcase clocks with equation of time indication. 

Quare was not only involved in horological pursuits; as well as owning land, he had a half share in the trade of the East Country Company with a fellow watchmaker, Francis Stamper, and also had land interests with the Quaker community in America.

This typical example of Quare watchwork shows why London was beginning to lead the world in watchmaking towards the end of the seventeenth century.

 Clock-watches, which automatically strike the hour like a clock, had existed since the early years of the watch in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. However, in London, following the introduction of the balance spring, their popularity seems to have been in decline. 

The quality of this watch is self-evident, with a finely pierced and engraved balance cock and tulip-form movement pillars. 

To control the striking, there is a small silver count wheel, which measures out the blows struck by a hammer on the bell housed inside the back of the inner case.

The finely fashioned gold dial matches the gold pair-cases made for Quare by William Jaques, whose mark, 'WI', appears in both cases. Jaques was one of the leading casemakers in London at the end of the seventeenth century, and ran one of the more prolific workshops of the time, making cases not only for Quare but also for many other makers, including Joseph Windmills, Simon Decharmes and John Bushman. Born around 1665, in 1679 Jaques was apprenticed in the Clockmakers' Company, first to John Wright and then to Nathaniel Delander. In 1687 Jaques became a Freeman in the Clockmakers' Company and went on to serve as Master of the Company in 1716. His address was Angel Court, Snow Hill. When he died in 1719, the business was carried on by his widow, Sarah, who went into partnership with the casemaker John Lee, one of Jaques's former apprentices.

The cases of this watch show the high-quality workmanship of William Jaques and his workshop. To allow the sound of the bell to escape, the outer case bezel is pierced with a series of graded roundels which alternate with baskets of flowers. The decoration of the case band echoes this design, and carries four portrait busts, two of them possibly of King William III and Queen Mary. 

The inner case is finely pierced with foliate scrolls, strapwork and birds and, in the middle of the back, a shield of arms: 'vairé argent and sable, a fesse gules, crest: a stump of a tree proper raguly argent. 'These are the arms of the Bracebridge family, of Atherstone Hall in Warwickshire, but also with branches in Lincolnshire and Suffolk. However, the style of the shield suggests that the arms 'were probably engraved at a later date and are not those of the first owner. 

Another clue to the history of the watch is a scratched inscription under the bell, which reads 'T. Dutton, Walsall Dec. 1830'. This suggests that the watch was repaired by Thomas Dutton, a clock- and watchmaker who was married in Walsall, Staffordshire, in 1815 and worked there until 1865.

... and if you became concerned about some seasonally divergent anomalies between the old expensive sundial and your expensive new clock-watch ...

... then this might help to calm your anxiety and agitation ...

The trade card of Richard Street, clockmaker, at ye Dial and Two Crowns, over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, London; clock face with two crowns above, with large equation of time table below.

concordia parux res crescunt ... THE MERCHANT TAYLORS' motto revised ... PARODY AND / OR PASTICHE ? ... i never clearly understood the distinction between pastiche and parody ... maybe this little work of art condenses both senses into one creation ... first, the variant ... then, the original ...

 

THE MERCHANT TAYLORS GUILD is very nearly seven hundred years old and is rightly proud of its status and its achievements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Merchant_Taylors

Official Blazon

Arms : Argent, a pavilion imperial purple [i.e. crimson] garnished Or [lined ermine] between two mantles also imperial purple [lined ermine]; on a chief azure a lion passant [guardant] gold.

Crest: On a wreath argent and azure, On a mount vert a lamb argent in sunbeams Or. Mantled gules, doubled argent.

Supporters: On either side a camel Or.

Motto: Concordia parvae res crescunt

Origin/meaning

The arms were officially granted on 23 December 1586 to replace an earlier grant of 23 October 1481.

The new grant substituted a lion of England for the holy lamb on the chief, and to replace the crest of Virgin and Child with a secular version of the holy lamb: "a lambe silver in the sonne beames golde"; the camel supporters were also added at this time.

While it is possible that suppression of the religious symbols was a late effect of the Reformation, it is at least equally likely that the change was due to a desire to conform to a more austere taste in heraldry. A number of guilds had expediently secularized their arms during the period of the Reformation, and as late as 1582 the Parish Clerks had sought a new grant because their arms were " over muche charged with certayne superstition ".

The arms show an pavilion and two mantles, both indicating the trade of a tailor. Initially the guild consisted of tailors and armourers, the latter making the inner, textile, layers of armory. But already by the time of the 2nd charter, many members were more merchants as tailors. The name, however, was not changed. The pavi­lion which survives in the current arms was no doubt inspired by the similar canopy in which the Virgin sits in the 1481 crest; such canopies of dignity are familiar accompaniments to religious personages in art, and are similarly used in the arms of the Upholders.

Both the ancient crest of Virgin and Child, and the holy lamb allude to the Company's origin as a fraternity of St. John the Baptist, deriving as religious emblems from the Gospel of St. John

The lion of England on the chief refers to the royal charter granted by Henry VII, and the royal patronage is alluded to by this royal charge.

The camels first appear as supporters in 1586, but it is clear that the animal was already an established symbol of the Company. A camel was in fact an habitual feature of Merchant Taylors' pageants in the sixteenth century, and it may be that the beast was intended as a reference to the eastern trade of the Merchant Company, as was the camel crest of the Grocers, but no evidence has been found to confirm this.

It has also been speculated that the camels are a further reference to St. John Baptist, who, according to tradition, often is shown as wearing a camel fur cloak.

The exact origin thus is not clear.

The motto is a quotation from Gaius Sallustius Crispus: 

"Concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maxumae dilabuntur", with harmony small things grow, while with discord the mightiest are ruined.

SO FAR SO GOOD ...

I knew nothing of the Merchant Taylors until yesterday when i came across an unusual piece of artwork in a surprising place.

I was looking for images of unicorns and phoenixes in heraldic contexts and was  scanning through some rare books that are freely available on-line through archive.org

https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008889384/page/n261/mode/2up

After looking at hundreds of images my weary eye was caught by a design that lacked conventional balance or symmetry.

Yer tiz ...

CONCORDIA PARUX RES CRESCUNT

I don't read Latin but quickly found a translation using the Google App.

Waggish ! ... innit ?  and seems appropriate in the context of the iconoclastic imagery.

So, wondering where it came from, I subsequently arrived at the original Merchant Taylors' motto ... sideways, so-to-speak ... and learned that it had itself been derived from the Roman historian, Sallust.

Full explanation here ...

https://www.merchant-taylors.co.uk/news/the-company-motto

Well, as you can guess, I was highly amused, and remain deeply impressed by the artist's wit and subtlety.

And my pleasure was amplified by the improbability of having found it in an antique German book held in a Californian library.

So the big question was ... how do we discover the name of the artist ?

The artist's initials appear to be H. K.

British ?  or German ?  After all, Latin was a widely used language.

Elsewhere I found the same artist had signed himself  H KAUFMANN MUNCHEN, so the litho was made in Germany, for publication in Vienna.

And is this 1882 German lithograph derived from an English source ?

Perhaps from a tapestry or a carpet design ?

fortunately ... the beginning of  Volume 2 had some scrupulously catalogued detail about the lithographers' who contributed ... although the old-fashioned Gothic typography strained my mind as well as my eyes ...

Amusingly and understandably, the book's editor seems to have decided that the Merchant Taylors' arms were those of a tent-maker ( Zeltmacher ) ...

But we have a name for the lithographer ... it looks like  ... D? KAUFMANN

... although so far I have found no corroborative evidence for this ID ...

so, not only, but also ...

the book's German-speaking editor had ( possibly, maybe ) quite understandably mistaken the Merchant Taylors' emblem for that of a TENTMAKER ... zeltmacher !

But is it a mistake ?

Later on, I remembered that tents were a big purchase item for market traders, armies and generals, even diplomats and kings .... think: field of the cloth of gold, etc

SO I AM CURRENTLY STUMPED BY THREE QUESTIONS ...

The proper name and any biographical detail of the 19thC lithographer.

The original source of his image, if copied.

The age or origin of the scholarly "joke", itself.

HELP !  ... CAN ANYONE HELP ?

Addendum ...

also ...  next day ...

The University at Heidelberg have a slightly crisper scan ...

... still have no information on D Kaufmann ( one eff ! )

Germany has a state museum of graphic design in munich with a big website but it is hard to navigate if you don't understand how to label the fields in their database

https://emp.graphische-sammlung.mwn.de/eMuseumPlus

heraldry resource books freely available on the internet with archive.org ...

https://archive.org/details/cu31924029796608/mode/2up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008889319/mode/2up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008889384/mode/2up?view=theater

this volume has a good index of translated mottos ...

https://archive.org/details/fairbairnsbookof01fair/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

and this has all the samples, examples, pictures ...

https://archive.org/details/fairbairnsbookof02fair/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater

loads of detail here ...

https://archive.org/details/artofheraldryenc00foxd/mode/2up?view=theater

Robert Recorde, The Tree of Knowledge, The Sphere of Destiny, and the Wheel of Fortune

Robert Recorde was a mathematician living in the early 1500s ... born in Tenby ... who introduced some of the common symbols that we use in our arithmetic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Recorde

He had a strong mind, training as a physician but choosing to lecture in mathematics at Oxford University

THE CASTLE OF KNOWLEDGE is a poster or broadsheet printed in his lifetime setting out the rationalist viewpoint of the conflict between reason and superstitious fatalism.

 

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/x8xqpuuc/images?id=z34wr83f

His views must have been respected because they were memorialized in plasterwork at Little Moreton hall in Cheshire.  The figure is clearly copied from the print.

The transcription error ... SPEARE instead of SPHERE ... must have confused many people with weaker minds than Robert Recorde's.

The Curious Tale of Solomon and the Phoenix ... a lovely blog posting from The British Library ...

 

https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/01/the-curious-tale-of-solomon-and-the-phoenix.html