"Leviathan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobbes Thomas)

wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men.
Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give
no other proof of being wise, take great delight to show what they
think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another
behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late
understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if
they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce teipsum, Read thyself:
which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance either the
barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors, or to
encourage men of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their
betters; but to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and
passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another,
whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he
does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he
shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of
all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of
passions, which are the same in all men,- desire, fear, hope, etc.;
not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the
things desired, feared, hoped, etc.: for these the constitution
individual, and particular education, do so vary, and they are so easy
to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart,
blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying,
counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him
that searcheth hearts. And though by men's actions we do discover
their design sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our
own, and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come
to be altered, is to decipher without a key, and be for the most
part deceived, by too much trust or by too much diffidence, as he that
reads is himself a good or evil man.

But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it
serves him only with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is
to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this, or that
particular man; but mankind: which though it be hard to do, harder
than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall have set down
my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another
will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself.
For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.

THE FIRST PART

OF MAN

CHAPTER I

OF SENSE

CONCERNING the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly,
and afterwards in train or dependence upon one another. Singly, they
are every one a representation or appearance of some quality, or other