Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Leviathan

London

Printed for Andrew Crooke

1651, 1668

"The Latins called accounts of money rationes, and accounting ratiocinatio; and that which we in bills or books of account call items, they call nomina, that is names; and thence it seems to proceed, that they extended the word ratio to the faculty of reckoning in all other things."

Subject to names is whatsoever can enter into or be considered in an account, and be added one to another to make a sum, or subtracted one from another and leave a remainder. The Latins called accounts of money rationes, and accounting ratiocinatio; and that which we in bills or books of account call items, they call nomina, that is names; and thence it seems to proceed, that they extended the word ratio to the faculty of reckoning in all other things. The Greeks have but one word, logos, for both speech and reason; not that they thought there was no speech without reason, but no reasoning without speech; and the act of reasoning they called syllogism, which signifieth summing up of the consequences of one saying to another. And because the same things may enter into account for divers accidents, their names are (to show that diversity) diversly wrested and diversified. This diversity of names may be reduced to four general heads.
(I.iv, p. 20; compare pp. 15-16 in ECCO-TCP ed.)

Money::Accounting

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).

07/25/2011