at
than in this. If by liberty they mean an exemption from that
subjection which is due to the laws, that is, the commands of the
people; neither in democracy nor in any other state of
government whatsoever is there any such kind of liberty. If they
suppose liberty to consist in this, that there be few laws, few
prohibitions, and those too such that, except they were
forbidden, there could be no peace; then I deny that there is
more liberty in democracy than in monarchy; for the one as truly
consisteth with such a liberty as the other. For although the
word liberty may in large and ample letters be written over the
gates of any city whatsoever, yet it is not meant the subjects'
but the city's liberty; neither can that word with better right
be inscribed on a city which is governed by the people than that
which is ruled by a monarch. But when private men or subjects
demand liberty under the name of liberty, they ask not for
liberty but domination: which yet for want of understanding they
little consider. For if every man would grant the same liberty to
another which he desires for himself, as is commanded by the law
of nature, that same natural state would return again in which
all men may by right do all things; which if they knew they would
abhor, as being worse than all kinds of civil subjection
whatsoever. But if any man desire to have his single freedom, the
rest being bound, what does he else demand but to have the
dominion?"

It may be observed that Hobbes's sentences are by no means very short as
far as actual length goes. He has some on a scale which in strictness is
perhaps hardly justifiable. But what may generally be asserted of them is
that the author for the most part is true to that great rule, of logic and
of style alike, which ordains that a single sentence shall be, as far as
possible, the verbal presentation of a single thought, and not the
agglomeration and sweeping together of a whole string and tissue of
thoughts. It is noticeable, too, that Hobbes is very sparing of the
adjective--the great resource and delight of flowery and discursive
writers. Sometimes, as in the famous comparison of human life to a race
(where, by the way, a slight tendency to conceit manifests itself, and
makes him rather force some of his metaphors), his conciseness assumes a
distinctly epigrammatic form; a