Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World (31 page)

Shortly after graduating, Hobbes was hired as tutor and companion to the son of William Cavendish, soon to be named the Earl of Devonshire. It was a lucrative position for a bright young commoner with university training, and Hobbes likely took the post without a second thought. But the association with the Cavendish family would continue throughout his life, and did more to shape the course of his life and studies than anything he learned at Oxford. The Cavendishes were one of the great noble clans of England, and could trace their ancestry to the reign of Henry I, son of William the Conqueror. More recently, in addition to the traditional military and political services that great families were expected to provide the king, they had also distinguished themselves through their keen interest in the “new philosophy,” as science was then known. Charles Cavendish (1594–1654), for instance, was a respected mathematician; his brother William (1593–1676), the Duke of Newcastle, maintained a laboratory on the grounds of his estate; and William’s wife, Margaret (1623–73), was an acclaimed poet and essayist with a strong affinity for the natural sciences. Those Cavendishes who were not scholars or writers were patrons of the arts and sciences, and their country houses were centers of cultural and intellectual life. As a member of the Cavendish household, Hobbes gained access to the highest literary and artistic circles in the land. At Chatsworth and Welbeck Abbey, the Cavendish estates, he found the intellectual challenge and stimulation that he never experienced during his years at Oxford.

Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679. This portrait by John Michael Wright dates from 1669 or 1670, when Hobbes was eighty-two years old.
(bpk, Berlin / Art Resource, NY)

In joining the Cavendish household, Hobbes was following a well-trodden path for Renaissance intellectuals, for nothing provided the income, resources, or freedom to pursue one’s interests like the patronage of a noble family. The great Italian artists and humanists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Pico della Mirandola, to name but a few) had enjoyed the patronage of the Medicis of Florence, the Sforzas of Milan, and a long list of Renaissance popes. Even Galileo, who was already a famous man at the time, chose the life of a Medici courtier over a secure but mundane existence as university professor in Padua. In England, the polymath Thomas Harriot (1560–1621) had been a member of the households of Sir Walter Raleigh and then of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland; and Hobbes’s contemporary the mathematician William Oughtred (1575–1660) was a tutor to the son of the Earl of Arundel.

But even as Hobbes chose the traditional path of patronage, other aspiring men of letters were seeking alternative routes to economic security. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) made an excellent living performing and selling his plays on the open market, and most playwrights of his day did the same—though rarely as successfully. The mathematician Henry Briggs (1561–1630) found a home in the newly established Gresham College of London, where he became the first professor of geometry in England and gave public lectures for a fee. Even Oxford and Cambridge, the notoriously conservative universities whose chief aim was to prepare young men for the cloth with a rigid medieval curriculum, occasionally opened their doors to more modern scholars. Briggs, for one, ended his days as the first Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford. Hobbes’s choice of attaching himself to a noble household was not unusual for his day, but by the mid-1600s, when he published his most important works, it had come to seem rather old-fashioned. That, along with his advanced age and the fact that he had grown up in the glory days of Elizabeth’s reign, set him apart from most of his friends and rivals.

Old-fashioned or not, the patronage of a noble clan still held many attractions, and Hobbes enjoyed them to the fullest. Three times between 1610 and 1630, Hobbes embarked on grand tours of the European Continent with his charges, young noblemen of the Cavendish family and its circle. He put these journeys to good use. While traveling in Italy in 1630, he called on Galileo, whom he admired, and whom he praised ever after as “the one who has opened to us the gate of natural philosophy universal, which is the knowledge of
motion
.” In Paris he made the acquaintance of Marin Mersenne, the friar who was the nexus of the European “Republic of Letters,” corresponding with scholars and communicating their queries, comments, and results to one another. Through Mersenne, Hobbes came into contact with the philosopher René Descartes, the mathematicians Pierre de Fermat and Bonaventura Cavalieri, and many others, becoming in effect a full-fledged member of the European intellectual world.

Hobbes made one other illustrious acquaintance through his connection with the Cavendish clan: for several years in the 1620s he served as personal secretary to Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the philosopher and great promoter of experimental science. Unlike some of his continental contemporaries, and Descartes in particular, Bacon believed that knowledge should be acquired through induction (the systematic accumulation of observations and experiments), not through pure abstract reasoning. Bacon was one of the leading jurists in England and had served as Lord Chancellor to James I until he was accused of corruption and impeached in 1621. In retirement he turned philosopher, and spent his days writing down his thoughts on natural science and its proper method. In fact, nearly all the works for which Bacon is remembered today date from the brief period in which Hobbes knew him, the years between his forced retirement and his death in 1626. Aubrey recounts how Hobbes would accompany Bacon on his walks around his estate, Gorhambury House, and write down the old man’s thoughts. Bacon allegedly preferred Hobbes to all his other secretaries because Hobbes alone understood what he was transcribing. Hobbes’s association with Bacon demonstrates the reach of the aristocratic connections made available to him through the Cavendish family, but it is not without irony: in later years, those who saw themselves as Bacon’s true heirs and put his ideas into practice viewed his former associate Hobbes as their most dangerous enemy.

Another advantage that Hobbes enjoyed as a member of an aristocratic household was that he was under no pressure to publish anything. Shakespeare had to produce a steady stream of plays to make his living; Henry Briggs had to give public lectures; even Clavius at the Collegio Romano was expected to teach and author textbooks. But those who enjoyed the patronage of great families were rewarded mostly for being good company to their patrons, not for their productivity. This made for a comfortable life for a scholar, who could devote his time to contemplation and research, but it could also have strange consequences: Thomas Harriot, for example, was reputed to be one of the leading mathematicians in Europe, and modern-day studies of his manuscripts make clear that the reputation was well deserved. But he was a lifelong member of the Raleigh and Percy households, and as a result he never published a single page of the literally thousands of mathematical papers he left behind.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would very likely have been Hobbes’s fate: over his decades as a Cavendish retainer, despite his widely acknowledged brilliance and his connections with leading intellectuals both in England and on the Continent, he published nothing, the only exception being a translation of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides’s
Peloponnesian War
. It was Hobbes’s sole publication well into middle age, and it seemed highly likely that nothing more would be forthcoming. He would have remained an obscure and shadowy figure, known today only to the most dedicated antiquarians. But in 1640, when he was fifty-two years old, Hobbes’s comfortable world fell apart, and suddenly he started writing and publishing at a frantic pace. He did not stop until his dying day.

The crisis of 1640 struck the Cavendish household like a thunderbolt. Like most of the great noble clans of England, the Cavendishes were dedicated Royalists who remained unswervingly loyal to the House of Stuart throughout the Interregnum. The Parliamentary revolt was, to them, a simple commoners’ rebellion that must be crushed by force, and they were quick to take up arms in defense of their king. William Cavendish, the future Duke of Newcastle, and Charles Cavendish, son of the Duke of Devonshire, both held high command in Charles I’s army in the early years of the civil war, and fared as poorly as the king’s fortunes. Charles was killed in battle in 1643, and William was forced to flee to the Continent following the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor in 1644. He eventually made his way to Paris, where he joined other members of his household in Charles I’s court in exile. Among them was Thomas Hobbes.

For Hobbes, the choice of the Royalist side in the civil war was a natural one. Although himself a commoner, he was an esteemed member of a noble household and had come to share the Cavendishes’ social and political outlook. In 1640, at the first signs of trouble, he picked up and moved to Paris, where he joined a growing community of Royalist exiles. Comfortably settled, he quickly renewed his connections with Mersenne and his French correspondents. As the leading intellectual at the Stuart court, he was ultimately offered the post of tutor to the Prince of Wales, the future Charles II, but here, for the first time, he encountered the kind of opposition that would dog him for the rest of his life. Several leading courtiers objected to his appointment on the grounds that he was a materialist and an atheist, someone who would infect the future king with his heretical views. It was ultimately decided that Hobbes could become royal tutor, as long as he promised not to stray into philosophy or politics, and to stick only to the field of his expertise. That, of course, was mathematics.

If the loyal and steadfast Hobbes had come to inspire fear, and even revulsion, in the Stuart court, the reason was clear. By 1645, when the possibility of his appointment as royal tutor came up, he was no longer known simply as the humble house intellectual of the Cavendish clan, but rather as an unconventional and provocative philosopher whose views were likely to offend churchmen of all stripes as well as many dedicated Royalists. For, in 1642, shortly after arriving in France, Hobbes published his first political work, a learned tome called
Elementorum philosophiae sectio tertia de cive
(“The Third Part of the Elements of Philosophy, on the Citizen”). Written entirely in Latin, the book was aimed at professional philosophers, not royal courtiers, but enough about its contents filtered through to reach Charles I’s advisers to put Hobbes under suspicion.

Most men in Hobbes’s situation might have tried to reassure their critics, or at least refrain from giving further offense. The courtiers were, after all, his social betters as well as his allies in the struggle to restore the monarchy. But, as his critics soon discovered, Hobbes was not one to downplay his views or shy away from a fight. In 1647 he republished
De cive
(as the work was popularly known), and three years later he issued an English translation (
On the Citizen
), so that it could be better understood by his countrymen, both in England and at the court in exile. That same year, 1650, he issued two more English-language tracts,
Human Nature
and
De Corpore Politico, or the Elements of the Law
, which together explained his views on human nature and the political order that human nature made necessary. Finally, in 1651, he capped this torrent of creativity with his masterpiece, the work that made him one of the immortals of philosophy:
Leviathan
. By that time, as a consequence of this literary outpouring, Hobbes was persona non grata in the Stuart court. In 1652, having nowhere else to go, he left Paris and moved back across the Channel. And although he lived for another twenty-eight years, he never set foot outside England again.

“NASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT”

Leviathan
is the child of the English Civil War, and in more ways than one. During the long decades of silence spent in the Cavendish household, Hobbes was quietly building up an elaborate philosophical system. It was supposed to have three parts, beginning with “On Matter” (
De corpore
), continuing with “On Man” (
De homine
), and concluding with “On the Citizen” (
De cive
). Given his track record, we may legitimately doubt whether under normal circumstances any of these treatises would have seen light, but the crisis of 1640 interrupted Hobbes’s leisurely preparations. Instead of proceeding systematically through his philosophy, he now felt that it was the third part, on political life, that mattered most. With a newfound urgency, he finished up
De cive
and rushed it to print (though it is formally called “the third part”). He then quickly followed it up with the other political tracts culminating with
Leviathan
, which summarizes his overall views but focuses on politics. At a time when England was being torn apart by civil war, sedate discussions on the nature of matter had to make way for a prescription for creating a peaceful and stable state.