Volume 3

Introduction to the literature of Europe, in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries / by Henry Hallam.

  • Hallam, Henry, 1777-1859.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introduction to the literature of Europe, in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries / by Henry Hallam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Sect. II.—Ox Political Philosophy. Change in the Character of Political Writings — Bellenden and others — Patriarchal Theory refuted by Suarez — Althusius — Political Economy of Serra — Hobbes — and Analysis of liis Political Treatises. 40. The recluse philosopher who, like Descartes in his country-house near Utrecht, investigates the properties of quantity, or the operations of the human mind, while nations are striving for conquest and factions for ascend- ancy, hears that tumultuous uproar but as the dash of the ocean waves at a distance, and it may even serve, like music that falls upon the poet’s ear, to wake in him some new train of high thought, or at the least to confirm his love of the absolute and the eternal, by comparison with the imperfection and error that beset the world. Such is the serene temple of philosophy, which the Koman poet has contrasted with the storm and the battle, with the passions of the great and the many, the perpetual struggle of man against his fellows. But if he who might dwell on this vantage-ground descends into the plain, and lakes so near a view of the world’s strife that he sees it as a whole very imperfectly, while the parts to which he approaches are magnified beyond their proportion; if especially he mingles with the combat, and shares its hopes and its perils, though in many re- spects he may know more than those who keep%loof, he will lose something of that faculty of equal and compre- hensive vision in which the philosophical temper con- sists. Such has very frequently, or more or less perhaps in almost every instance, been the fate of the writer on general politics; if his pen has not been solely employed with a view to the questions that engage attention in his own age, it has generalty been guided in a certain degree by regard to them. 41. In the sixteenth century we have seen that no- Abandon- tions of popular rights, and of the admissibility antinionar sovereign power for misconduct, were alter- chicai nately broached by the two great religious par- thcones. ties of Europe, according to the necessity in which they stood for such weapons against their adver-