Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Leviathan

London

Printed for Andrew Crooke

1651, 1668

"Afterwards, men made use of the same word [conscience] metaphorically for the knowledge of their own secret facts and secret thoughts; and therefore it is rhetorically said that the conscience is a thousand witnesses."

And therefore, when the discourse is put into speech, and begins with the definitions of words, and proceeds by connexion of the same into general affirmations, and of these again into syllogisms, the end or last sum is called the conclusion; and the thought of the mind by it signified is that conditional knowledge, or knowledge of the consequence of words, which is commonly called SCIENCE. But if the first ground of such discourse be not definitions, or if the definitions be not rightly joined together into syllogisms, then the end or conclusion is again OPINION, namely of the truth of somewhat said, though sometimes in absurd and senseless words, without possibility of being understood. When two or more men know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together. And because such are fittest witnesses of the facts of one another, or of a third, it was and ever will be reputed a very evil act for any man to speak against his conscience; or to corrupt or force another so to do: insomuch that the plea of conscience has been always hearkened unto very diligently in all times. Afterwards, men made use of the same word metaphorically for the knowledge of their own secret facts and secret thoughts; and therefore it is rhetorically said that the conscience is a thousand witnesses. And last of all, men, vehemently in love with their own new opinions, though never so absurd, and obstinately bent to maintain them, gave those their opinions also that reverenced name of conscience, as if they would have it seem unlawful to change or speak against them; and so pretend to know they are true, when they know at most but that they think so.
(I.vii, p. 36)

Government::Court::Witness

Reading

At least 6 entries in ESTC (1651, 1652, 1668, 1676, 1678, 1681). Dutch translation in 1667. Proscribed in 1683 at Oxford. Important later editions of 1750 and 1839.

Text from Past Masters, drawn from the 1843 Molesworth edition.

See also Leviathan, or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil by Thomas Hobbes (London: Printed for Andrew Crooke, 1651). <Link to EEBO-TCP>

Reading Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1994).

01/28/2010