Chapter XXXIV (3)

Thinking or reasoning is merely a process of computation, of addition and subtraction. He says, “to compute is either to collect the sum of many things that are added together, or to know what remains when one thing is taken out of another. Ratiocination, therefore, is the same with addition and subtraction; and if any man add multiplication and division, I will not be against it, seeing multiplication is nothing but addition of equals one to another, and division nothing but a subtraction of equals one from another, as often as possible. So that all ratiocination is comprehended in these two operations of the mind, addition and subtraction.” The same doctrine is stated in his “Leviathan,” and illustrated as applicable to all things that can be added together, or taken one out of another. Thus, “writers of politics add together pactions to find men’s duties; and lawyers, laws and facts, to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men. In sum, in whatever matter there is place for addition and subtraction, there also is place for reason; and where these have no place, there reason has nothing at all to do.” Finally, reason considered as a faculty of the mind, is nothing but reckoning, “that is, adding and subtracting of the consequences of general names agreed upon for marking and signifying of our thoughts: I say, marking them, when we reckon by ourselves, and signifying, when we demonstrate our reckonings to other men.”¹

¹ _Elements of Philosophy_, Part I., Chapter I., Section 2.
_Leviathan_, Chapter V., page 30.

This was Hobbes’s form of nominalistic doctrine, and he has some good remarks on names, the use of words, and the use and abuse of speech. He explained this branch of knowledge both in the “Elements of Philosophy” and in the “Leviathan” in the former at length, and in the latter briefly. “The general use of speech is to transfer our mental discourse into verbal, or the train of our thoughts into a train of words; and that for two purposes, whereof one is the registering of the consequences of our thoughts; which being apt to slip out of our memory, and put us to a new labour, may again be recalled, by such words as they were marked by. So that the first use of names is to serve for marks or notes of remembrance. Another is, when many use the same words, to signify, by their connection and order, one to another, what they conceive, or think of each matter; and also what they desire, fear, or have any other passion for. And for this use they are called signs. Special uses of speech are these: first to register what by cogitation we find to be the cause of anything, present or past, and what we find things present or past may produce or effect; which in sum, is acquiring of art. Secondly, to show to others that knowledge which we have attained, which is, to counsel and teach one another. Thirdly, to make known to others our wills and purposes, that we may have the mutual help of one another. Fourthly, to please and delight ourselves and others, by playing with our words, for pleasure or ornament, innocently.” To these uses of speech there are four corresponding abuses. When we register our thoughts wrong, by using improper words, and stating as our conception that which we never conceived, and thus deceive ourselves; when we use words in an unusual sense, and thereby deceive others; when we declare by words that to be true which we know to be false; when people use words to grieve one another: “for seeing nature has armed living creatures, some with teeth, some with horns, and some with hands, to grieve an enemy, it is but an abuse of speech to grieve him with the tongue, unless it be one whom we are obliged to govern; and then it is not to grieve, but to correct and to amend.”

He explained the use of different kinds of names, the necessity of definitions, and stated that everything which can enter into an account may be considered a subject for names. He gave four forms or scales of predicaments under the heads of body, quantity, quality, and relation, which are formed with great care. And further, he explained negative words, and then added: “All other names are but insignificant sounds, and those of two sorts; one when they are new, and yet their meaning not explained by definition, whereof there have been abundance coined by schoolmen and puzzled philosophers.”¹

¹ _Elements of Philosophy_, Part I., Chapter II.; _Leviathan_,
Part I., Chapter IV.; also his treatise _Human Nature_,