admirably precise definition: Liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion. In this
sense, liberty is consistent with necessity; for instance, water necessarily flows down hill when
there are no impediments to its motion, and when, therefore, according to the definition, it is free.
A man is free to do what he wills, but necessitated to do what God wills. All our volitions have
causes, and are in this sense necessary. As for the liberty of subjects, they are free where the laws
do not interfere; this is no limitation of sovereignty, since the laws could interfere if the sovereign
so decided. Subjects have no right as against the sovereign, except what the sovereign voluntarily
concedes. When David caused Uriah to be killed, he did no injury to Uriah, because Uriah was his
subject; but he did an injury to God, because he was God's subject and was disobeying God's law.
The ancient authors, with their praises of liberty, have led men, according to Hobbes, to favour
tumults and seditions. He maintains that, when they are rightly interpreted, the liberty they praised
was that of sovereigns, i.e., liberty from foreign domination. Internal resistance to sovereigns he
condemns even when it might seem most justified. For example, he holds that Saint Ambrose had
no right to excommunicate the Emperor Theodosius after the massacre of Thessalonica. And he
vehemently censures Pope Zachary for having helped to depose the last of the Merovingians in
favour of Pepin.
He admits, however, one limitation on the duty of submission to sovereigns. The right of self-
preservation he regards as absolute, and subjects have the right of self-defence, even against
monarchs. This is logical, since he has made self-preservation the motive for instituting
government. On this ground he holds (though with limitations) that a man has a right to refuse to
fight when called upon by the government to do so. This is a right which no modern government
concedes. A curious result of his egoistic ethic is that resistance to the sovereign is only justified
in self-defence; resistance in defence of another is always culpable.
There is one other quite logical exception: a man has no duty to a sovereign who has not the
power to protect him. This justified Hobbes's submission to Cromwell while Charles II was in
exile.
There must of course be no such bodies as political parties or what we should now call trade
unions. All teachers are to be ministers of the sovereign, and are to teach only what the sovereign
thinks useful.