Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

What I therefore propose in the remainder of the present Essay is to show that Mr. Locke was not really the founder of the modern system of philosophy as it respects the human mind; and I shall think that I have sufficiently established this point, if I can make it appear, both that the principle itself on which that system rests, and all the striking consequences which have been deduced from it, are to be found in the writings of Hobbes, more clearly, decidedly, and forcibly expressed than they are in the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ When I speak of the principle of the modern metaphysical system, I mean the assumption that the operations of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses existing in matter, or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the mind are nothing more nor less than various modifications of the original impressions of things on a being endued with sensation or simple perception. This system considers ideas merely as they are caused by external objects, acting on the organs of sense, and tries to account for them on that hypothesis solely. It is upon this principle of excluding the understanding as a distinct faculty or power from all share in its own operations, that the whole of Hobbes’s reasoning proceeds. Let us see what he makes of it.

The first part of the ‘Leviathan,’ entitled ‘Of Man,’ begins in this manner: