LEVIATHAN(I, 12) 437
by the Greeks called makarismosfor which we have no name in our tongue. And thus
much is sufficient for the present purpose, to have been said of the “passions.”
CHAPTER9. OF THESEVERALSUBJECTS OFKNOWLEDGE
There are of “knowledge” two kinds, whereof one is “knowledge of fact,” the other
“knowledge of the consequence of one affirmation to another.” The former is nothing
else but sense and memory, and is “absolute knowledge,” as when we see a fact doing or
remember it done; and this is the knowledge required in a witness. The latter is called
“science,” and is “conditional,” as when we know that “if the figure shown be a circle,
then any straight line through the center shall divide it into two equal parts.” And this is
the knowledge required in a philosopher, that is to say of him that pretends to reasoning.
The register of “knowledge of fact” is called “history,” whereof there be two
sorts: one called “natural history,” which is the history of such facts or effects of Nature
as have no dependence on man’s “will,” such as are the histories of “metals,” “plants,”
“animals,” “regions,” and the like. The other is “civil history,” which is the history of the
voluntary actions of men in commonwealths.
The registers of science are such “books,” as contain the “demonstrations” of con-
sequences of one affirmation to another, and are commonly called “books of philosophy,”
whereof the sorts are many, according to the diversity of the matter, and may be divided in
such manner as I have divided them in the...table [see following page].
CHAPTER12. OFRELIGION
Seeing there are no signs nor fruit of “religion” but in man only, there is no cause to
doubt but that the seed of “religion” is also only in man—and consists in some pecu-
liar quality or at least in some eminent degree thereof not to be found in other living
creatures.
And, first, it is peculiar to the nature of man to be inquisitive into the causes of the
events they see, some more, some less; but all men so much as to be curious in the
search of the causes of their own good and evil fortune.
Secondly, upon the sight of anything that hath a beginning to think also it had a
cause which determined the same to begin, then when it did, rather than sooner or later.
Thirdly, whereas there is no other felicity of beasts but the enjoying of their quo-
tidian food, ease, and lusts, as having little or no foresight of the time to come, for want
of observation and memory of the order, consequence, and dependence of the things
they see, man observes how one event hath been produced by another, and remembers
in them antecedence and consequence; and, when he cannot assure himself of the true
causes of things (for the causes of good and evil fortune for the most part are invisible),
he supposes causes of them, either such as his own fancy suggests, or trusts the author-
ity of other men, such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser than himself.