April 5:
On this day in 1588, the natural law philosopher Thomas Hobbes was born. His
famous description of man's "nasty, brutish and short" prospects
comes in Chapter XIII of Leviathan (1651).
The discussion turns upon Hobbes's belief that good government is the only
safeguard against "the natural condition of man," which brings war or
a perpetual fear of it:
In such condition there is
no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently
no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be
imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing
such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no
account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all,
continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.
Some commentators see the
seeds of Social Darwinism in Hobbes. Darwin delivered the first three chapters
of The Origin of Species to his
publisher on this day in 1859. At the end of Chapter Three, "Struggle for
Existence," Darwin observes that, except in "the extreme confines of
life, in the Arctic regions or on the borders of an utter desert," the
natural world is locked into a battle for survival and domination, and that any
human tampering with the outcome will be done in ignorance:
It is good thus to try in
imagination to give any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no
single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our
ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as
necessary, as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do is to keep
steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a
geometrical ratio; that each, at some period of its life, during some season of
the year, during each generation, or at intervals, has to struggle for life and
to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle we may console
ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no
fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the
healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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