Hobbes on Civil Association

4. Leviathan: a Myth

9 4 = Leviathan: a Myth This is a conversation piece, a flight of fancy; its theme is philosophical literature. Of all the books that have been written since the world began, by far the larger number are books whose virtue is to serve some special and limited interest. These are not works of art; they do not pretend to belong to literature in the proper sense. But now and again, by some odd misunderstanding of its character, a true masterpiece of literature gets hidden away in this vast library of fugitive and functional writings . And there it remains, lost to all except a few professional readers, who themselves (as like as not) understand it only professionally . Something of this sort has happened to the book called Leviathan, written in the seventeenth century by Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan has passed for a book of philosophy and a book about politics, and consequently it has been supposed to interest only the few who concern themselves with such things. But I believe it to be a work of art in the proper sense, one of the masterpieces of the literature of our language and civilization . What does this mean? We are apt to think of a civilization as something solid and external, but at bottom it is a collective dream. “Insofar as the soul is in the body,” says Plotinus, “it lies in deep sleep.” What a people dreams in this earthly sleep is its civilization. And the substance of this dream is a myth, an imaginative interpretation 160 Leviathan: a Myth of human existence, the perception (not the solution) of the mystery of human life. The office of literature in a civilization is not to break the dream, but perpetually to recall it, to recreate it in each generation , and even to make more articulate the dream-powers of a people. We, whose participation in the dream is imperfect and largely passive, are, in a sense, its slaves. But the comparative freedom of the artist springs not from any faculty of wakefulness (not from any opposition to the dream), but from his power to dream more profoundly; his genius is to dream that he is dreaming . And it is this that distinguishes him from the scientist, whose perverse genius is to dream that he is awake. The project of science , as I understand it, is to solve the mystery, to wake us from our dream, to destroy the myth; and were this project fully achieved, not only should we find ourselves awake in a profound darkness, but a dreadful insomnia would settle upon mankind, not less intolerable for being only a nightmare. The gift of the greatest literature—of poetry—is a gift of imagination. Its effect is an expansion of our faculty of dreaming. Under its inspiration the familiar outlines of the common dream fade, new perceptions, and emotions hitherto unfelt, are excited within us, the till-now settled fact dissolves once more into infinite possibility, and we become aware that the myth (which is the substance of the dream) has acquired a new quality, without our needing to detect the precise character of the change. But from a book of philosophy, when it reaches the level of literature (as it sometimes does), a more direct, a less subtle consequence may be expected to spring. Its gift is not an access of imaginative power, but an increase of knowledge; it will prompt and it will instruct. In it we shall be reminded of the common dream that binds the generations together, and the myth will be made more intelligible to us. And consequently, we must seek the meaning of such a book in its vision of the myth. The myth which Hobbes inherited was the subtle and complex interpretation of human life which, springing from many Leviathan: a Myth 161 sources, distinguished medieval Christian civilization. It is, moreover, the myth which no subsequent experience or reflection has succeeded in displacing from the minds of European peoples. The human race, and the world it inhabits, so runs the myth, sprang from the creative act of God, and was as perfect as its creator. But, by an original sin, mankind became separated from the source of its happiness and peace. This sin was Pride, the perverse exaltation of the creature, by which man became a god to himself. Thenceforth there lay in man’s nature a hidden principle, the...