Royal Institute of Philosophy

Analogy and Equivocation in Hobbes

Author(s): S. Morris Engel
Source: Philosophy, Vol. 37, No. 142 (Oct., 1962), pp. 326-335
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3748820
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 ANALOGY AND EQUIVOCATION IN HOBBES

S. MORRIS ENGEL

THE failures of a philosophic system (like the failures and set-backs

in the life and career of a person) are often a good deal more revealing
than its successes, for such failures (like those in real life) test its
strength and mark the limits of its endurance. Yet if these failures
disclose any uniform pattern they are not only revealing but instruc-
tive and can be turned to good account.
In what follows, I should like to show that the curious series of
logical lapses from which Hobbes's philosophic system suffers
(especially in its metaphysical and epistemological aspects) reveals
and is indicative of a certain inner struggle of mind, and that this
struggle becomes much more intelligible when viewed in the light
of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason of which, in any case, Hobbes's
De Corpore is a remarkable anticipation in miniature.
To Hobbes, the world (including mind) is a vast congeries of
body, every part of which is in motion. There are, however, different
kinds of bodies. Some bodies are made of a finer stuff and are, as a
result, capable of retaining the series of vibrations set in motion by
the impact of other bodies on them. In the human body these
vibrations or motions are experienced as sensations. These sensations,
in turn, produce phantasms in the mind, and these phantasms make
up the world as we ordinarily perceive it. Thus phantasms (being in
direct line of causation with the series of causes and effects of the
external world and persisting in precisely the same order in which
they were received from the external world) serve as the bridge
between the inner world of mind and the outer world of bodies in
motion.
Since, however, the vision of the world as disclosed by way of
phantasm is deceptive and unreal (and Hobbes knows that it is
unreal because sense or reflection tells him so) the principle of
synthesis must be found somewhere other than in sensation and
imagery. Hobbes finds it in Reason. Reason, by penetrating the
barrier which lies between the mind and the world, will uncover the
real world and produce a body of philosophical knowledge or science.
But for reason to be an effective principle of synthesis it must partake
of both worlds. Reason, that is, must be sensual and non-sensual.
Reason is both these things. It is, first of all, a modification of the
world of motion for its processes depend on names, names on
imagination, imagination on sense, and sense on internal bodily
motions. The function of reason is to attach names to the association

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 ANALOGY AND EQUIVOCATION IN HOBBES

of phantasms (or ideas) and reproduce verbally the series and order of
motions originating from the external world. Knowledge so obtained
is sensual or factual and is a product of experience. But reason is not
eternally confined to reproducing the series of original perceptions
produced by motion from external objects. By means of words,
reason liberates the mind from subjection to the Law of the Associa-
tion of Ideas and manipulates the series of impressions in any way
it so desires. This second kind of knowledge is propositional. It is
related to the first kind of knowledge for it too is the product of
experience-'the experience men have of the proper use of names in
language'.' And language, so used, is the means whereby reason
transcends or penetrates the barrier which lies between the mind and
the real world.
This simplified statement of Hobbes's position makes its weaknesses
apparent. Hobbes's argument would be convincing, and his case for
a perfectly synthesized system of thought a strong one, if one could
blind oneself to the series of hidden assumptions and 'false' analogies
upon which it rests and from which it draws its strength. These
assumptions and analogies are intimately intertwined in Hobbes's
argument and they tend to re-inforce each other. Hobbes's material-
ism and rationalism, that is to say, are founded on two basic assump-
tions: that everything is motion; and that the mind, by following its
own inner principles, unites itself with the principles at work in
nature. In order to combine these two assumptions and make the
combination appears reasonable Hobbes makes use of a number of
rather remarkable analogies. These range from the attempt to
bring together the motions of bodies and the processes of mind on the
basis of the fact that both are instances of vibration of body (the inten-
tion being that there is no break in the processes of nature), to the
attempt to relate synthetic a posteriori knowledge with analytic
a priori knowledge on the basis of the fact that both are products of
'experience' (with the intention that there is no division in our
knowledge). And between these two extreme poles of the argument
lie a series of minor equivocations (on 'sense', on 'see', on 'perceive',
etc.) which form the various stages or steps in the process of proof.
Critics of Hobbes have not been unaware of these difficulties and
have been quick to point them out. Yet it is hard to avoid the fact
that these assumptions, equivocations and analogies are structurally
isomorphic and are expressive of a quite uniform tendency of mind
-the tendency, to put it briefly, to see in the multiplicity of our

'El. of L., pp. 18-19. (The texts of Hobbes's works used in this paper are those
edited by Sir William Molesworth, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (published
in 1839). Quotations from Human Nature, however, are taken from Tdnnies edition
(The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Cambridge University Press, 1928) and
will be abbreviated to El. of L.).

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 PHILOSOPHY

experience structurally similar models or patterns. He found these

models deeply imbedded in all phases of our experience and made
it his object to isolate and identify their extensive and multifarious
applications. In this search for the fundamental designs and cate-
gories of our experience it was almost inevitable that he should
proceed by way of analogy and equivocation-tools almost appro-
priate to the job of analysis which he set himself. Analogy and
equivocation, in other words, were simply his way of stating or
displaying, again, the basic unity of mind and nature. To see this is
to see in just what direction his mind was moving and what hopes it
entertained-hopes that were nothing short of the complete and
final deduction of the categories of our experience. In this search for
categories, only Kant was to out-do him in intensity and ingenuity.
This reference to Kant is not, as I shall show in a moment, far-
fetched, for Hobbes's will to system, the problem he set himself, his
way of handling it, and the nature of his solution all show how very
close he came to the Kantian point of view.
The problem he set himself in the De Corpore (1655)-where his
previous laboured attempts at a deduction of the categories finally
began to bear fruit-was: How is knowledge possible? This was not
the first time he had tried to deal with this problem. His previous
attempts, however,-in Human Nature (1640) and in the Leviathan
(1651)-always began with an analysis of the status of sensation and
imagery. His analysis, furthermore, was always burdened with two
accounts of sensory experience: a physiological and a philosophical
account; a causal theory of sensation, conforming to his over-all
mechanistic point of view, and a representative theory of sensation
with its attendant philosophical problems. He wished to maintain
that everything is motion, including sensation, and yet that sensation
is more than motion; that in sensation, motion results in phantasms,
and yet that phantasms are more than motion; and finally, that
motion is 'real' and phantasms 'unreal', yet the latter represent the
former. Two series thus emerged: the series of causes and effects in
the 'real' world of bodies in motion, and the series of events in the
inner world of mind. And Hobbes, in the two works mentioned, is
hard put to it to supply that principle of synthesis which would
relate the world to the mind and show in which sense it is true to say
that knowledge is to be had and that it is certain and universal.
This process-type of epistemology is, of course, foreign to Kant,
who in his theory of knowledge concentrates his attention upon
knowledge itself in an effort to describe its structure and to analyse its
presuppositions-and always from within knowledge. But in De
Corpore it is foreign to Hobbes too. There is, to be sure, an account of
sensation in the work, but it is a predominantly physiological
account and is given (among other physiological phenomena) in the
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 ANALOGY AND EQUIVOCATION IN HOBBES

last section of the book. Its new place in the system represents,
I think, a change of attitude and indicates Hobbes's hesitation to
regard the physiology of sensation as a proper subject for a strictly
philosophical investigation.'
But although Hobbes fails to find a solution to the problem, How
is knowledge possible? at the level of sense and memory, beginning
with the Leviathan (Chapter IX) he tries to do so at the level of
knowledge. On his terms, if knowledge or science is to be achieved
it must transcend or penetrate the phantasmal barrier lying between
the mind and the world. The knowledge that a phantasm, for example,
is caused by 'something' that is not a phantasm is obviously itself a
result of such a 'break-through'. And the problem which he now
sets himself is to determine the status of such (and related) knowledge,
and how this 'break-through' is accomplished. And in this connection
the first statement that he makes is that there are two kinds of
knowledge: sensory knowledge and philosophical knowledge,
factual knowledge and propositional knowledge, primary know-
ledge and secondary knowledge. The first type of knowledge is the
product of original perception produced by motion from external
objects; the second, the use the mind makes of this phenomenon by
means of a process of ratiocination. The first is the source of the
second, and the second a reasoned interpretation of the first. But
Hobbes adds that whereas the second type of knowledge, being the
product of reason is 'real', the first type, being the product of sense
and memory is 'unreal'. And so again he comes to be confronted
with very much the same difficulty: How can that which is unreal
be the source or life-line of the real? This difficulty leads Hobbes to
give up his sensualistic point of view and to state that there exist
other sources of knowledge beside perception. He comes to adopt a
rationalistic point of view and to argue for a 'philosophical' kind of
knowledge whose roots lie in reason itself. The analysis and justifica-
tion of this new kind of knowledge (which he now for the first time
identifies explicitly as 'philosophical')2 he takes up in the De Corpore.
But Hobbes not only shares with Kant the same problem; he
diagnoses the ills of previous attempts to deal with it in very much
the same way as Kant does, and offers precisely the same cure.
His De Corpore, like the Critique of Pure Reason, begins by calling for a
Revolution. 'Philosophy . . . the child of the world and your own
mind', he rallies the Reader in the Epistle to him

'See his remarks about the divisions of the De Corpore in the 'Epistle Dedicatory'
to Human Nature.
2'Although Sense and Memory of things, which are common to man and all
living creatures, be knowledge', he says in this connection, 'yet because they are
given us immediately by nature, and not gotten by ratiocination, they are not
philosophy'. (E. W., I, 3.)

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 PHILOSOPHY

'is within yourself; perhaps not fashioned yet, but like the world its
father, as it was in the beginning, a thing confused. . . . Imitate
the creation: if you will be a philosopher in good earnest . .. your
method must resemble that of the creation'.'
And in the pages and chapters that follow, Hobbes proceeds to show
how the mind makes geometric figure, makes order, and creates a
universe.
In Chapter I (which corresponds, both in spirit and in content, to
Kant's Preface) he first takes up the reasons for the poor state of
philosophy as compared with that part of it 'by which magnitudes
and figures are computed'. He decides that it is a question either of
method or of trying to know that which lies beyond the scope of
human knowledge and cannot be known. Among the things which
cannot be known he lists 'God' ('as being the object of faith, and
not of knowledge'), the 'doctrine of angels', 'revelation', and such
pseudo-sciences as 'astrology'.2 In the end he is left with two things
that can be known: natural bodies (which include geometry and
physics) and civil bodies (which include ethics and politics). And these
can be known (although in the case of physics, not demonstrably
known) because, as he frequently puts it,3 we make geometric
figure and civil bodies (the commonwealth) ourselves, and thus
know the principle of their construction (or their 'causes'). 'Reason',
in other words, 'has insight only into that which it produces after a
plan of its own'.4
To imitate the act of creation and thus disclose the secrets of
nature, he now argues, we need not go to nature directly. We need
only follow our own creative reason and make use of only three
universal categories: Motion (which is the universal cause); space
(in which motion occurs) and body. Everything else can be deduced
from these three.
It is difficult to speak with confidence concerning Hobbes's
account of space. He has, so it appears, several views on the subject.
His main view, however, is that space, like sounds, colours and smells
is phantasmal or imaginary. Space is not real but subjective. He
defines it as 'the phantasm of a thing existing without the mind

"E.W., I, xii.

2E.W., I, 10-11.
3See E.W., I, 6; 70-73; 140; but especially his full statement in E.W., VII, 184
('Epistle Dedicatory' to the Six Lessons to the Professors of the Mathematics (1656).
Hobbes declares himself on p. 242 of this work to have been 'the first that hath
made the grounds of geometry firm and coherent').

4Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. London:

Macmillan and Co., 1953, p. 20 ('Preface to Second Edition'). See also p. 23 where
Kant states that 'we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into
them'.

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 ANALOGY AND EQUIVOCATION IN HOBBES

simply'.' Yet his other arguments are reminiscent of Kant's argu-

ments for the a priority of space. If the world were annihilated, he
says, and one man were to remain he would have phantasms of
things, as it were, extended and in sequence. Therefore, he argues,
space and time could only be a phantasm, seeing that everything else
had been destroyed.
For no man calls it space for being already filled, but because it
may be filled; nor does any man think bodies carry their places
away with them, but that the same space contains sometimes one,
sometimes another body; which could not be if space should
always accompany the body which is once in it.2
His statements seem to suggest, as well, that space is a kind of
intellectual ordering of experience; that it is a product not merely of
sensation but of reason. This is geometric or conceptual space. In
calculating the magnitude and motions of this kind of space we have
no need to 'ascend into heaven that we may divide it into parts, or
measure the motions thereof, but we do it sitting still in our closets
or in the dark'.3 Such measurings are 'acts of mind' and to
'divide an extended body, and the extension thereof, and the idea
of that extension, which is place, is the same with dividing any one
of them; because they are coincident, and it cannot be done but by
the mind, that is by the division of space.'4
Body and motion, however, are real and not imaginary or con-
ceptual. Geometry (that which is generated by motion 'in space',
namely figure) is therefore, in his view, the product of the imaginary
(or conceptual) and the real. Hobbes-far from distinguishing the
production of imaginary figures in (conceptual) space from the
production of movements from place to place-now, on the contrary,
proceeds to link the two together to make geometry possible, and
with geometry 'philosophy', which is
'such knowledge of effects or appearances, as we acquire by true
ratiocination from the knowledge we have first of their causes or
generations: And again, of such causes or generations as may be
from knowing first their effects'.5
He proceeds in an almost Kantian manner. His first step is to find
an example of a true science. His second step is to show that this
science is really a product of mind and reality, is, that is to say,
freely and arbitrarily constructed and is yet expressive of reality.
Should he find such a body of knowledge in which such a synthesis
takes place, he will then have a paradigm of the kind of synthesis
to be hoped for (or, perhaps not to be hoped for) in the field of
philosophic knowledge generally. (In short, he will have an example
,E.W., I, 94. 4E.W., I, 108.
2E.W., I, 93. 5E.W., I, 3.
3E.W., I, 92.

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 PHILOSOPHY

of a synthetic a priori proposition). Hobbes finds such a paradigm

in geometry-'the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to
bestow on mankind'.1
Geometry is the science of motion in space. Since, however, space
is an accident of the mind and we ourselves make the motions
productive of geometric figure, geometry is a perfectly demonstrable
science. (The same is true of 'civil philosophy', for we ourselves
'make the commonwealth').2 Body, on the other hand, is not an
accident of the mind, but it is subject to space which is such an
accident and therefore when considered as extension or quantity
it too becomes amenable to our understanding.3 Thus in the con-
struction of geometric figure (constituted by a system of 'reasons and
consequents' made by ourselves) the mind, by following its own inner
principles, unites itself with the principles at work in nature, and
secures a demonstrable and certain knowledge of the geometric
structure of the universe (the system of 'causes and effects' of real
bodies in motion).4 There is, that is to say, an exact correlation
between the free activity of mind in its generation of reasons and
consequents and the generation of causes and effects by nature, for both
are instances of motion, which is subject to space, which is 'mental'.
This is, if I am not mistaken, the climax of Hobbes's intellectual
undertaking in philosophy; it is what he has been trying to say all
along and what his rather strange way of saying it (by means of his
long but connected series of equivocations and analogies) really
amounts to. And although this final, all-embracing analogy is
probably as unsound as his other analogies, it reveals something
about the other analogies which often escapes us: that although they
are probably accidental logical slips, they nevertheless reflect a
uniform trend of mind, one anxiously in search for the unities and
identities behind the multiplicities of our experience. It can come as
no surprise, therefore, that that trend of mind should express itself
in structurally isomorphic ways: first in terms of equivocations and
analogies (all suggestive of this unity in the diversity) and finally in
terms of explicit identification or fusion of categories.5 His equivoca-
1E. W., III (Leviathan), 23-4.
2E.W., VII, 184.
3E.W., I, 108; 102.
4See E. W., I, 42; 43-4; 122-3.
5Brandt, who comments on Hobbes's identification of these two categories,
writes about Hobbes's attempt as follows:
He makes a remarkable, and as far as our reading extends, unique attempt in
De Corpore to fuse real and formal knowledge, so that the resulting knowledge, for
which the history of philosophy has not framed any special name, retains the
certainty of formal knowledge, while at the same time it obtains, as it were, a
character of reality.
(Thomas Hobbes's Mechanical Conception of Nature. London: Librairie Hachette,
1928, p. 241). It is remarkable that Brandt's reading did not extend to Kant!

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 ANALOGY AND EQUIVOCATION IN HOBBES

tion on the word 'experience' in his attempt to bring his two kinds
of knowledge together; his equivocation on the words 'sense', 'see'
and 'perceive'2 upon which his theory of perception is founded; his
equivocation on the word 'make'3 upon which his argument for the
demonstrable nature of the commonwealth rests (to take only a few
of the major examples) all exhibit the same structure and are expres-
sive of the same tendency of mind that later is to see in the series of
causes and effects in nature simply the objectification or exemplifica-
tion of reasons and consequents, and to proceed on this basis to
identify and fuse the two in order to show how knowledge of the
external world is possible.
Now, interestingly enough, when Hobbes manages to give this

'El. of L., p. 18. If Hobbes believes that he has performed a successful connection
of his two kinds of knowledge on the basis of the common use of the word 'experi-
ence' he is obviously mistaken. The two uses to which he puts the word are as
unrelated as the two types of knowledge to be related, and no advance has been
made beyond stating that both types of knowledge involve 'memory'. While
'experience' (or remembrance) may determine our actions (not going out without
a rain-coat after seeing clouds in the sky) it does not determine our understanding
of the proper use of words. One doesn't learn to make proper sentences or do a
theorem in geometry because of 'experience'. This is not an appropriate word for
such activities, and it is not appropriate because something more than the mere
remembering or experience of having heard proper sentences or seen the proper
way of doing theorems in geometry is required in order to perform such activities
oneself.
2E. W., I, 389; El. of L., p. 6. 'He that perceives that he hath perceived', he
says, 'remembers' (Nam sentire se sensisse, meminesse est) [L.W., I, 317], which is
obviously an equivocation upon 'perceive' (sentire). A distinction is here intended,
I think, between such statements as 'to perceive a man' (which is to have a
sensation) and 'to perceive that an object is a man' (which is a secondary statement
and not just a sensation). Hobbes here unconsciously admits into his system an
introspective faculty his mechanism or materialism is unable to justify. A similar
'con-fusion' is contained in the phrase 'by what sense shall we take notice of
sense?' which should be read in the context of the remark made in Human Nature:
'For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the
object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the
object'. (Ibid.) The double use of the word 'sense' in this remark is explicated by
a similar use of the word 'see'.
3Here again Hobbes is not very convincing. He would be convincing and
'civil philosophy' would be demonstrable if a 'commonwealth' could be 'made'
under the same conditions in which geometry is 'made', but since a common-
wealth is constituted by the practical and (thus) unpredictable (human beings)
and not, like geometry, by the intelligible and ideal (motions in space), his
analogy here between the two sciences is not a sound one. Furthermore, the
'motions' involved in making geometry are totally different from the motions
constituting the system of causes and effects in the mechanical universe. And the
only thing which the making of geometry, the making of a commonwealth, and the
making (production) of causes and effects in nature share in common, as someone
once remarked, is the word 'making'. To think that because they are all instances
of activity of one kind or another, therefore the activity is all of one kind, is to
resolve differences by simply ignoring them.

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 PHILOSOPHY

tendency of his thought explicit formulation (as he does in the De

Corpore) he becomes aware of its limitations and becomes critical of it.
He comes to realise, first of all, that 'motion'1 is not properly an
integral part of geometric construction and, secondly, that the
paradigm of geometry will not help him achieve unity of system.
He acknowledges (concerning the second point) that while it may be
true that in the mathematical sciences we ourselves make our own
premises ('causes') and have thus a demonstrable knowledge of the
consequences or 'effects' (without having to question nature directly),
this is not the case with the physical sciences, whose principles or
premises 'are not such as we ourselves make' but must be discovered
by way of 'effects' given to us by nature.2 While therefore geometry
is completely demonstrable (for we ourselves make the motions
which generate lines and figures) this is not necessarily true of objects
in the external world, for when we consider these we can speak only
of 'some possible production' of effects, and we have knowledge of
such production as 'has been or may be'. Our knowledge here is
limited and we have no way of telling whether the 'may be' is really
the 'has been' and whether, furthermore, the 'may be' applies to the
world as it has been generated.3 'Philosophy' (to repeat that bold
remark in the 'Epistle to the Reader' which now takes on a still
further meaning) 'is within yourself; perhaps not fashioned yet, but
like the world its father, as it was in the beginning, a thing confused.
... Imitate the creation.' To imitate the creation now, is merely to
copy (and not necessarily to 'follow the example of-') the act of
creating. Whether in copying the act of creation we are at the same
time making a replica of what is created, he is now forced to admit,
cannot be established. I think, however, that it would be true to say
that it does not seem to matter very much to him that it cannot be
established, for intelligibility is his goal, not necessarily reality.
Hobbes's model thus fails him and in his system, unlike the system
of Kant, physics comes to be completely divorced from the mathe-
matical sciences. In both kinds of science (mathematical and
physical) we desire deductive knowledge, but it is only in the
mathematical sciences that we achieve it, for the premises of the
mathematical sciences are created by us by definition and thus our
conclusions are rigidly certain; but the physical sciences are derived
from phenomena given and we seek the premises on the basis of which
the phenomena may be comprehended. When the physicist has
arrived at comprehension, it (the validity of the argument) is
demonstrably certain, but in relation to reality, Hobbes maintains, it
(the truth of the conclusion) is hypothetical. No such reservations
'E.W., I, 82-3. See also pp. 311-12.
2E. W., I, 388; De Homine (L.W., II), 93-4; E.W., VII, 184.
-3E. W., I, 53 1.

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 ANALOGY AND EQUIVOCATION IN HOBBES

are required in the mathematical sciences. And this is where Hobbes

is happy to leave the argument.
But whether Hobbes can leave the argument at this point is
another question. For if Hobbes (to return to the first point) allows,
as he does, a foreign element 'motion' (which, after all, is not
created by us but is as much of a given as the phenomena of physics),
in the definition, then, there is as much reason to call the process
which goes from causes to effects hypothetical as the process which
goes from effects to causes, or, if Hobbes prefers, to call the process
which goes from effects to causes just as certain (in its relation to the
real) as the process which goes from causes to effects. The question,
to put it briefly, is whether Hobbes's entire scheme is not, in the
end, purely hypothetical. What this amounts to saying is that
Hobbes does not succeed in successfully fusing the reason-consequent
category with the cause-effects category, and that he simply identi-
fies them without being able to say or make intelligible the reason for
his doing so.
But although Hobbes, even at this late stage of the process of his
thought, probably says more than he knows, the broad lines of the
Kantian approach to the problems of knowledge are clearly visible
in the De Corpore. These broad lines, I have been arguing, make his
curious groping progress elsewhere (distinguished by its series of
analogies and equivocations) a good deal more intelligible to us.
It is almost fair to say that this series of sweeping reductions, trying
as they are on the reader, was his preparation for the larger task
which he set himself in his De Corpore-a task which itself becomes
so much more meaningful to us when viewed in the light of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason.'
University of Southern California.

1I should perhaps add in conclusion that although I have said that the De
Corpore is a remarkable anticipation in miniature of the Critique of Pure Reason I am
fully aware of the vast differences between the standpoints of the two works on
certain fundamental issues (e.g., whether the ultimately real-bodies in motion
in Hobbes and things-in-themselves in Kant-is knowable or not, etc.). Still their
similarities in approach, considered broadly, are so great that something is gained,
I believe, in viewing the one in terms of the other. We can judge the 'miniature'
a good deal better, I have been suggesting when, as Plato would have put it,
we see it 'writ large'. I have not tried to show how Kant avoided the incon-
sistencies and failures (if, in fact, he did!) to which Hobbes's work is subject.
To have done so would have been both gratuitous (since my purpose was simply
to show that Hobbes's failures become much more intelligible when viewed against
the greater canvas of the Critique and not how he could have avoided them) and
impracticable-considering the limits I set myself.

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