‘He affirms of course that God is a body’.1 Around the same time, Hobbesre-asserts corporeal theism directly, and in some detail (though privatelywhile alive), in his exhaustive response to John Bramhall’s broadsideCatching the Leviathan (1658). Bramhall saw essentially the same dilemmaarising from materialism:

They who deny all incorporeal substances can understand nothing by God buteither nature (not naturam naturantem, that is, a real author of nature, but

naturam naturatam, that is, the orderly concourse of natural causes) as T.H.seems to intimate, or a fiction of the brain without real being.2

Hobbes’s Answer to Bramhall, published posthumously in 1682 butprobably composed in 1668, fully confirms Bramhall’s suspicions. God isindeed a special part of the physical world: ‘To his lordship’s question here:what I leave God to be? I answer: I leave him to be a most pure, simple,invisible spirit corporeal’.3

Despite Hobbes’s open embrace of corporeal God, scholars concernedwith his theology have generally downplayed or dismissed the doctrine.Participants on both sides of the perennial dispute about the sincerity ofHobbes’s religious views have alleged that corporeal theism is irreconcilablewith his more orthodox theological pronouncements or with his funda-mental metaphysical principles.4 In a recent, particularly trenchant

1Leviathan, Appendix, chapter iii, 360, 540. In support of a dissimulationist Hobbes, Curley

notes that the Latin Leviathan is published ‘in a foreign language and in a foreign country’.

Curley 1995, 109. However, as Dominique Weber has recently noted, in the mid-seventeenth

century, Latin is still ‘la langue commune a tous les savants’. Weber 2009, 20. So with the 1668

Appendix to Leviathan, Hobbes is venturing to expose his doctrine to a more theologically

discerning, if not a wider, audience.2Bramhall 1844, vol. 4, 526.3EW iv, 313. Hobbes endorses corporeal God in at least two other places: An Historical

Narration Concerning Heresy, EW iv, 398; Considerations Upon the Reputation, Loyalty,

Manners and Religion of Thomas Hobbes, EW iv, 427. As Leijenhorst notes, following Curley,

the corporeal God doctrine might have been expounded privately much earlier. Descartes’ 1641

letter to Mersenne references briefly and dismissively Hobbes’s own mention, in a lost letter to

Descartes, of ‘the corporeal nature of the soul and God’ (anima & Deo corporeis). AT 3, 287. See

Leijenhorst 2004, 87–8; Curley 1995, 107.4Those scholars who classify Hobbes as a genuine, more-or-less orthodox, Protestant theist

include Glover 1965, Martinich 1992, Geach 1993, Paachi 1998, Lessay 2004. Champions of

Hobbes as closet atheist tend to dismiss his corporeal God as incoherent or an exercise in

dissimulation and irony. See Stephen 1904, 144–57, Curley 1992, Jesseph 2002. A surprising

number of commentators who broach the questions of Hobbes’s religion ignore altogether his

corporeal God. On the theist side: Oakeshott 1965, Hepburn 1972, Foisneau 2000, 2004.

(Hepburn, to be sure, finds a serious ‘tension’ between the immanent and transcendent sides of

Hobbes’s theology, 101–3.) On the atheist side: Wiley 1976, Berman 1986, Tuck 1992.

Springborg also ignores the corporeal God and concludes that Hobbes’s religious beliefs

‘ultimately remain a mystery’. 1996, 369. Also ambivalent about Hobbes’s theism are Mintz

1962, 44, Rogow 1986, 239 and Zagorin 2009, 118. Zarka stresses the theological foundation of

Hobbes’s thought but concedes that this foundation remains ‘open and uncertain’, specifically

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 241

presentation of the case for an ironical and atheist Hobbes, Douglas Jessephargues that the corporeal God suffers both defects.5 Below, I defendHobbes’s infinite ‘spirit corporeal’. My aim is not to pronounce in favour ofHobbes’ religious sincerity, much less to settle his deity safely within theboundaries of seventeenth century Protestant theology, as defenders ofHobbesian theism have generally wanted to do. Hobbes’s God, whilecoherent, is nearly as remote from mainstream Christian conceptions asSpinoza’s deus-sive-natura. Hobbes is sincere but highly unorthodox.Rather, I will propose a role for the corporeal God at the foundations ofHobbes’s natural philosophy. I will argue that despite Hobbes’s well-knownreticence about theological speculation, he ultimately relied on God toaccount for otherwise inexplicable aspects of the physical world (as heconceived it). Most importantly, his God provides a continuous, resistance-free supply of motion or conatus to a material plenum whose parts wouldotherwise quickly slow to an infinitesimal crawl. From this perspective, I willsuggest Hobbes’s late theology, while certainly heterodox in content, is notso different in function from that of contemporaries like Rene Descartes andHenry More, whose religious sincerity is rarely questioned.

THE COHERENCE OF CORPOREAL GOD

In certain early works, Hobbes avoided asserting the corporeality of God.Thus, in the 1641 objections to Descartes’ Meditations, he suggests we canhave ‘no idea or image corresponding to the sacred name of God’ for thesame reason we have no ideas of the ‘immaterial and invisible creatures whoserve God’.6 Perhaps Hobbes is merely attempting a reductio of Descartes’allegedly ‘clear and distinct’ idea rather than admitting an incorporeal Godhimself.7 For in numerous other works, early and late, incorporealsubstance is ruled out a priori. Thus in the Elements of Law (1640), Hobbesasserts ‘spirit supernatural commonly signify some substance withoutdimensions; which two words do flatly contradict one another’.8 And inthe later Leviathan (1651), incorporeal substance is dismissed as ‘contra-dictory and inconsistent’.9 From this analysis, he draws the general

citing the corporeal God doctrine. 1996, 80. Duncan considers the corporeal God doctrine

sincere but does not analyse this ‘provocative view’. 2005, 44. L. Strauss 1959 believes Hobbes’s

corporeal God serves his natural philosophical program, which is the view I will defend, but

does not explain this view in detail. Three recent, much more detailed studies of the corporeal

God’s relation to Hobbes’s metaphysics and natural philosophy will be mentioned frequently

below: Lupoli 1999, 2006, Leijenhorst 2004, Weber 2009.5Jesseph 2002.6AT 7, 180; see also De Motu IV.3, 54.7On this question, see Curley 1992 and Duncan 2005.8Elements of Law I.XI, 42; EW iv, 61.9Leviathan I.iv, 16, 21. Leijenhorst suggests that in Leviathan Hobbes licenses use of the phrase

‘incorporeal substance’ to denote God, even though it is strictly contradictory, so long as

GEOFFREY GORHAM242

consequence that ‘every part of the universe is body, and that which is notbody, is no part of the universe: and because the universe is all, that which isno part of it, is nothing’.10 In the Latin Leviathan, God is specificallyincluded under this wholesale materialism and to Bramhall he declares thatthe three persons of the trinity are in fact ‘one pure, simple and eternalcorporeal spirit’.11 We will see that this highly considered and technicaldefinition of God is tailored to avoid standard objections to divinecorporeality while enabling a theological grounding for materialist science.But first we need to address the charge that such a God cannot be reconciledwith itself or with Hobbes’s own principles.

Like Bramhall in 1658, Jesseph in 2002 finds that ‘the principal reason forreading Hobbes as an atheist comes from a consideration of his materialistmetaphysics’.12 Jesseph recognizes (better than Bramhall) that materialismdoes not amount to atheism ‘all by itself’.13 Nevertheless, he argues thatHobbes’s corporeal God ‘cannot be consistently combined with other thingsHobbes claimed about the Deity’.14 I find in Jesseph’s critique three maindifficulties for Hobbes, and I will add a fourth. They each involve apparentinconsistencies between the corporeal God of the Answer to Bramhall andthe more systematic metaphysics and theology of works like Leviathan andDe Corpore (1655). I hope to resolve these inconsistencies on Hobbes’sbehalf, who was particularly indignant over Bramhall’s charge that he was‘irreconcilable with myself’, i.e. ‘a forgetful blockhead’.15

God’s Infinite Body

In the Answer to Bramhall, Hobbes firmly insists that God is an ‘infinitesubstance’.16 In other works, he stresses that infinity is one of the attributesthat renders God ‘incomprehensible’ to finite beings like us: ‘there is no ideaor conception of anything we call infinite . . . And therefore the name God is

intended ‘piously’ as a mark of reverence rather than ‘philosophically’ as a mark of

understanding. Leviathan I.xii, 53, 65. Leijenhorst 2004, 82–3. It is unclear, however, whether

Hobbes means to endorse such usage, either for philosophical or religious purposes, rather than

simply describe or explain it. Indeed, in the same chapter of Leviathan (‘Of Religion’), he later

observes, ‘that which taketh away the reputation of wisdom, in him that formeth a religion, or

addeth to it when it is already formed, is the enjoining of a belief of contradictories’. Leviathan

I.xii, 58, 71. In any case, as Leijenhorst notes, in later works like Answer to Bramhall Hobbes

rejects ‘incorporeal substance’ as a term altogether lacking Biblical, and hence religious,

legitimacy. 2004, 85.10Leviathan IV.xlvi, 371, 459.11EW iv, 310.122002, 142.13Ibid.142002, 143.15EW iv, 286–7.16EW iv, 302.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 243

used not to make us conceive him (for he is incomprehensible and hisgreatness and power is inconceivable) but that we may honor him’.17 AsJesseph acknowledges, our inability to ‘comprehend’ God was a common-place of seventeenth century theology.18 But he identifies a specialconceptual difficulty with the notion of an infinite body according toHobbesian principles. In Leviathan, Hobbes defines body as ‘that whichfilleth, or occupieth some certain room, or imagined place’.19 On thisdefinition, being imaginable and hence finite seems to form part of theconcept of a body. So ‘infinite body’ is self-contradictory. Jesseph concludes,‘Hobbes’s ontology admits only bodies, each of which is coincident withsome bounded, determinate part of space; God however is infinite andincomprehensible and this rules out the possibility that God could be a bodyin the sense defined by Hobbes’.20

But Hobbes addresses squarely, and solves, this very problem in theAnswer to Bramhall. In order to explain adequately how God is infinitecorporeal spirit, Hobbes allows himself a technical digression, ‘leaving for alittle while this theological dispute to examine the signification of thosewords which have occasioned so much diversity of opinion in this kind ofdoctrine’.21 In the course of this digression, he draws an importantdistinction: ‘Body (Latin: corpus; Greek: s�oma) is that substance which hathmagnitude indeterminate and is the same with corporeal substance; A bodyis that which hath magnitude determinate and so is understood to be a totumor integrum aliquid’.22 Unlike ‘a body’, which is a ‘complete’ or ‘entire’something, and which satisfies the Leviathan definition, mere ‘body’ has nodeterminate size and so need not be finite or imaginable.23 Hobbes clearlyintends God to be body rather than a body since he immediately explainswhat it means for indeterminate body to be ‘pure and simple’, termscontained in the definition of corporeal God: ‘pure and simple body is ofone and the same kind in every part throughout’.24 In the English Answer toBramhall, God is never characterized as ‘a body’ but only as ‘spiritcorporeal’ (sometimes with and sometimes without the indefinite article).Curley renders Hobbes’s affirmation of corporeal God in the LatinLeviathan as ‘God is a body’; but the original ‘Affirmat quidem Deus esse

17Leviathan I.iii, 11, 15.182002, 143. For a good recent discussion, see Martinich 1992, chapter 7.19Leviathan III.xxiv, 207, 261.202002, 144. See also Weber 2009, 95, Leijenhorst 2004, 82–5, Curley 1992, 587. For additional

objections to Curley’s specific arguments that Hobbes’s God is incoherent, see Leijenhorst 2004,

81–8.21EW iv, 308.22EW iv, 309.23‘what has magnitude, whether visible or invisible, finite or infinite, is called by all the learned a

body’. EW iv, 393.24Ibid.

GEOFFREY GORHAM244

Corpus’25 could just as well be ‘God is body’. So Hobbes is not inconsistentin holding God to be infinite body.26

God’s Place

Hobbes’s empiricist conceptions of space and place present additionalproblems for his corporeal God, according to Jesseph. Our notion of spaceis in a sense imaginary or subjective for Hobbes because it involves the after-image or ‘phantasm’ of a body that has been removed, eliminated orreplaced. And we can conceive of space generally if we imagine theannihilation of the whole world: ‘an imaginary space indeed, because a merephantasm, yet nevertheless the thing generally called so’.27 Space is thus ageneralized mental projection of the visible extension of bodies: ‘thephantasm of a thing existing merely insofar as it exists (phantasma reiexistentis quatenus existentis)’.28 Place, or the location of things, is the imageof that part of imaginary space coincident with the magnitude of aparticular body. He notes that place is distinct from the actual magnitude ofa body since it does not move if the body does. It is rather ‘a phantasm ofany body with quantity and so figure’.29 So a place involves a specific shapewhether coincident with an actual body or not.

We have seen that Hobbes’s corporeal God is infinite, indeterminate bodyrather than a determinate body and therefore lacks boundaries and solikewise shape. So strictly speaking, it does not occupy a place.30 Jessephfinds this problematic: ‘Hobbes’ basic ontological principles commit him tothe position that if God existed he would have a body that lacked spatiallocation, which is equivalent to God’s being a body that is not in space. Allthis is a very obvious contradiction’.31 But there is a contradiction only if weconflate Hobbes’s notions of space and place. God does not have a place inthe sense of a determinate ‘spatial location’, but there is no reason he cannotoccupy infinite space. Nor is the notion of a body lacking place absurd initself or even uncommon historically speaking: Aristotle’s cosmos,Descartes’ plenum and Locke’s universe are all bodies that, for somewhat

25OL iii, 561.26The indeterminate nature of God’s magnitude is underappreciated in Leijenhorst’s admirably

clear discussion of corporeal God ‘our finite minds can only conceive of finite bodies with

determinate dimensions and places. Hence God may be a body, but his nature remains

cognitively impenetrable’. 2004, 94.27De Corpore 2.7.2; OL i, 83; EW i, 93.28De Corpore 2.7.2; OL i, 83; EW i, 94. See also De Motu III.2, 40.29De Corpore 2.8.5; OL i, 94; EW i, 105.30Hobbes frequently says that God is not in a place because he is infinite. Leviathan II.XXXI,

190, 240; Answer to Bramhall EW iv, 297, 299.312002, 146. See also Leijenhorst 2004, 85, 94.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 245

different reasons, lack place.32 It may seem strange that God, or any body, isin a space that is merely imaginary. This does not imply God is mind-dependent, however. Hobbes consistently distinguishes between imaginaryand ‘real’ space: ‘The extension of a body is the same as the magnitude of it,or that which some call real space. But this magnitude does not depend onour cogitation as imaginary space does’.33 So finite bodies occupy ‘realplaces’ outside the mind, which coincide with their determinate magnitudes,while corporeal God occupies real space, which coincides with its ownindeterminate magnitude.

God’s Parts

A third allegedly problematic implication of corporeal theism, which is thatit attributes parts and divisibility to God, is perhaps the most difficult toaccommodate. Hobbes says in Leviathan that we ought not ‘attribute to himparts or totality, which are the attributes of things finite’.34 We have alreadyseen that corporeal God is not a totality (totum or integrum aliquid) since hismagnitude is indeterminate. But does not such a magnitude, since it iscorporeal, nevertheless comprise divisible parts? Both Jesseph and Bramhallcall Hobbes on this.35

In his answer to the latter, Hobbes first repudiates Bramhall’s traditional‘partless’ conception of God’s ubiquity, whereby God is ‘wholly here andwholly there and wholly everywhere’.36 Hobbes finds such a conceptionimpious (as if God were ‘no greater than to be wholly contained within theleast atom of earth’37), incoherent (‘nor can I conceive how any thing wholecan be called whole which has no parts’38) and lacking Scriptural support(‘nor can I find anything of this in the Scripture’39). For his part, Hobbesconcedes explicitly that with respect to his eternity, ‘the Divine substancehas parts’.40 As for God’s spatial presence, he agrees with the Nicenecondemnation (as he reads it) that God is not divisible into numericallydistinct individuals in the way ‘the name of man is divisible into ‘‘Peter’’ and

32Aristotle, Physics Bk. IV. 5; Locke, Essay II.13.10; 1975, 171. Descartes’ notions of ‘internal’

and ‘external’ place (AT 8A, 45–9) are both inapplicable to his indefinitely extended plenum.

Hobbes himself implies that a world need not be in place, at least not in the Aristotelian sense.

De Motu III.7, 44.33De Corpore 2.8.4; OL i, 93; EW iv, 105. De Motu III.2, 41. On Hobbes’s notion of space, see

Leijenhorst 2002, chapter 3 and Sylla 2002, 271–84.34Leviathan II.xxxi; 190, 240. See also De Motu: ‘no part of any whole can be infinite’. II.2, 31.35Jesseph 2002, 146; Bramhall 1844, vol. 4, 424. See also Weber 2009, 96.36EW iv, 295.37EW iv, 300.38EW iv, 296. See also Leviathan IV.xlvi, 373, 461.39Ibid. See also EW iv, 302–3. This point is also emphasized by Martinich 1992, 249.40EW iv, 300.

GEOFFREY GORHAM246

‘‘John’’’.41 Nevertheless, God’s infinite corporeal magnitude has real parts,although these parts cannot be really separated from one another:

But that in a substance that is infinitely great it should be impossible toconsider anything that is not infinite I do not find there condemned. For

certainly he that thinks God is in every part of the church does not exclude himout of the churchyard. And is this not considering him by parts? For dividing athing which we cannot reach nor separate one part thereof from another is

nothing but considering of the same by parts.42

Hobbes’s point seems to be that God’s infinite expanse means that we canconsider God’s parts but not separate them, as we can consider parts in aline infinite in both directions but not really separate them withoutundermining the line’s bi-directional infinity. Although Hobbes’s ownexample involves a finite thing, it is nonetheless well chosen because achurchyard cannot be really separated from a church. In this way, Hobbesaccepts the implication that God has conceptually distinct parts whileblunting the worry that this renders him really divisible and corruptible.This conforms to natural reason and to scripture: ‘God is nowhere said inthe Scriptures to be indivisible, unless his Lordship [Bramhall] meantdivision to consist only in separation of parts’.43 It also clarifies theLeviathan prohibition against divine parts: having separable parts is whatcharacterizes finite things.44

41EW iv, 302; See also EW iv, 398. This of course raises the issue of the Trinity, about which

Hobbes had a good deal to say. For a concise overview, see Springborg 1996.42EW iv, 302.43Ibid. Jesseph and others find Hobbes’s corporeal theism hard to square with his rejection of

pantheism: ‘God is understood the cause of the world; and to say the world is God is to say

there is no cause of it, that is, no God’. Leviathan II.xxxi, 190, 239. Jesseph 2002, 147. Cf.

Glover 1965, 166. But corporeal God is not the world, or its soul, but rather one very special

body among others. Hobbes is remarkably explicit on this point in the reply to Bramhall: ‘I

mean by the universe the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves and so do all men

else. And since God has a being it follows that he is either the whole universe or part of it’. EW

iv, 349 Being merely a special body among others in the universe does not in itself prevent God

from being the efficient cause of the universe as full-blown pantheism does. See also Leijenhorst

2004, 86.44On the inseparability of the parts of corporeal God, see further Weber 2009, 101–2.

Leijenhorst underestimates the extent to which the late Hobbes is prepared to ascribe parts to

God. And so he implies that Hobbes inconsistently held that God is ‘a part of the universe that

does not have the normal characteristics of parts, namely finitude’. 2004, 87. Similarly, Weber

says if God is part of the universe he must be an infinite part; yet for Hobbes, ‘toute partie est

finie, la notion de partie infinie etant parfaitement contradictoire’. 2009, 96. But in the Answer to

Bramhall Hobbes explicitly repudiates the view that we cannot consider an infinite being as

having infinite spatial parts.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 247

God’s Dimensions

The final difficulty I will consider also requires Hobbes to clarify hismetaphysics of God. His corporeal God clearly has magnitude anddimensionality, even if these are indeterminate. But in early works like deMotu, Hobbes seems to hold that God lacks even dimension: ‘neither he norany angel can have dimensions, or can be circumscribed, either in whole orin part, by space, not even in the mind’.45 It may be that Hobbes earlierentertained an incorporeal God or a dimensionless body. However, by the1660s, it is clear to him that any body, including God’s infinite body, hasdimensions and magnitude. In the Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, henotes the evolution in his concept of body. He once thought body was ‘whatobstructs my touch or vision’.46 But since this wrongly includes mind-dependent images of dreams and mirrors, he settled instead on thedefinition, ‘really exists in itself and also has some magnitude’.47 By thisdefinition, corporeal God counts as real body, albeit an ‘invisible spiritcorporeal’,48 because it has magnitude. Thus, in the Historical NarrationConcerning Heresy (1668), which is contemporaneous with the Answer toBramhall, Hobbes seems to equate dimensionality and magnitude and makeboth essential to any being whatever including God:

The first principle concerning all religion is that God is, that is to say God issomething and not a mere fancy; but that which is really something is con-

siderable alone by itself as being somewhere. . . And because whatever is realhere, or there, or any place, has dimensions, that is to say magnitude; and whathas magnitude, whether visible or invisible, finite or infinite, is called by all the

learned a body. It follows that all real things in that they are somewhere arecorporeal.49

Once again, Hobbes’s metaphysical principles are subtly adjusted to makeroom for his corporeal God, suggesting it plays an important role in hissystem, as I will now explain.

III. CORPOREAL GOD AS THE SOURCE OF MOTION

In the English Leviathan, Hobbes explains that curiosity about naturalcauses inevitably leads men to posit ‘some cause whereof there is no former

45De Motu XVII.I. 310–11; see also Leviathan IV.xlv, 358, 444.46Leviathan Appendix, chapter i. 534, 519.47Ibid. See also EW iv, 313.48EW iv, 313.49EW iv, 393. See also Elements of Law 1.11.4, 42; Leviathan IV.xlvi, 371, 459. On Hobbes’s

vigorous contention that corporeal theism is not heretical, see Leijenhorst 2004, Martinich 1992,

Weber 2009, chapter II.

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cause, but is eternal, which is it men call God’.50 But since we have no ideaof God, we are like blind men warmed by a fire we do not see. So he isskeptical about theology derived from ‘natural reason’, i.e. ‘from theprinciples of natural science, which are so far from teaching us anythingabout God’s nature as they cannot teach us our own nature, nor the natureof the smallest creature living’.51 Similarly, in the first chapter of De Corpore(‘Of Philosophy’), he tells us that philosophy excludes ‘Theology’, thedoctrine of the nature and attributes of God eternal, ingenerable,incomprehensible and in which no composition or division can be imposed,nor any generation conceived.52 But later in Part IV (‘Physics’), where themethod is not demonstrative, from a priori definitions ‘such as we ourselvesmake’53 but rather ‘from effects or appearances to the possible generationsof the same’,54 Hobbes tells us quite a bit about how living creaturesperceive and interact with the world and about heat, light, gravity and muchelse. And although certain ‘knowledge of what is infinite is inaccessible to afinite inquirer’,55 Hobbes does employ theological premises in theseexplanations. For example, his hypotheses about light and heat are guidedby the assumption that ‘there is no impossible smallness of bodies’ becausethe ‘Omnipotent author of the universe can actually take apart anything’.56

So although we do not comprehend God, we can know from his infinitepower which physical explanations are plausible. Our appreciation forGod’s power is enhanced with the progress of inquiry, and ‘we transfer ouradmiration from the creation to the Creator’.57

This tentative physico-theology is elaborated further in the Answer toBramhall, where Hobbes explains that ‘God is properly the hypostasis, baseand substance that upholdeth all the world, having subsistence not only ofhimself but from himself’.58 This sounds like routine natural theology exceptthat for Hobbes God’s support for the world is the means by which onespecial kind of body produces and sustains all others. As we shall see, herelies on corporeal God to account for the ultimate origin of motion, andhence diversity, in the physical world. But in order to see why corporeal Godis needed for this purpose, we must first review briefly Hobbes’s account ofthe nature of physical change itself.

50Leviathan I.xi, 50, 62.51Levithan II.xxxi, 191, 241.52De Corpore 1.1.8; OL i, 9; EW i, 10.53De Corpore 4.25.1; OL i, 316; EW i, 388.54De Corpore, Ibid.55De Corpore 4.26.1; OL i, 335–6; EW i, 411–12.56De Corpore 4.27.1; OL i, 363; EW i, 446.57De Corpore 4.27.1; OL i, 364; EW i, 447. See also Leviathan I.xi, 51, 62. On such ‘teleological’

reasoning in Hobbes, see Brown 1962, 341–2.58EW iv, 308.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 249

For Hobbes, a body is simply ‘that which having no dependence on ourthought is coincidental or coextended with some part of space’.59 The realmagnitude of a body, he maintains, ‘is neither generated nor destroyed’.60

Rather generation and destruction, and change generally, involve the gainand loss of various other accidents: ‘when a white thing is made black, thewhite that was is no longer, and the blackness that was not emerges’.61 Thisis why Hobbes finds the Aristotelian notion of materia prima ‘not of vainuse’ undergirding substantial change in bodies, e.g. from water to ice. Hecautions however that materia prima, which involves ‘the consideration of abody without the consideration of any forms or accidents except onlymagnitude or extension’, is a mental abstraction or ‘mere name’ since allsingular things ‘are endowed with their own particular forms andaccidents’.62

For Aristotle and his scholastic followers, diversity and change resultedfrom matter taking on various forms. While Hobbes sometimes uses theAristotelian language of forms and accidents, he does not conceive of theseas in any way distinct from the bodies themselves: ‘When an accident is saidto be in a body, it is not to be understood as something contained in thatbody; as if for example, redness were in cloth in the same manner as blood isin blood-stained clothing’.63 Rather, he defines an accident as the ‘faculty ofbody by which it imprints in us a conception of itself.64 ‘Hardness’ and‘redness’, for example, are the means by which bodies produce certainsensations. But as a mechanist and a materialist, Hobbes holds that allcausal interaction is through the collisions of bodies. It follows that thechange we perceive in things ‘is nothing else but motion of the parts of thebody which is changed’.65 Moreover, perceptions themselves are ‘someinternal motion in the sentient’ propagated from external objects into thesense organs.66

So motion is the source of all the diversity and change we perceive in theworld: ‘nor has the variety of those things we perceive by sense, as of colors,sounds, savors, etc., any other cause than motion, residing partly in theobjects that act on our senses and partly in ourselves’.67 But here Hobbesfaces a problem, which I believe his corporeal God is intended to solve: whatis the source of motion itself? Hobbes accepts the inertial principles that

59De Corpore 2.8.1; OL i, 91; EW i, 102.60De Corpore 2.8.20; OL i, 103; EW i, 116.61De Corpore 2.8.20; OL i, 103–4; EW i, 116–7.62De Corpore 2.8.4; OL i, 105; EW i, 118. On Hobbes’s use of prime matter, see Leijenhorst

2002, chapter 4.63De Corpore 2.8.3; OL i, 92; EW i, 104.64De Corpore 2.8.2; OL i, 91; EW i, 103.65De Corpore 2.9.9; OL i, 111; EW i, 126.66De Corpore 4.25.2; OL i, 318; EW i, 391. See Brandt 1917, chapters vii–x, for a classic account

of the centrality of motion in Hobbes’s system. See also Leijenhorst 2002, chapter 4.67De Corpore 1.6.5; OL i, 62; EW i, 70. On Hobbes’s notion of conatus, see Brandt 1917, chapter

ix, Bernstein 1980, Bertman 2001.

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without interference from other bodies ‘whatever is at rest will always be atrest’ and ‘whatever is moved will always be moved’.68 So nothing eitherproduces or reduces its own motion: ‘as it is true that nothing is moved byitself; so it is also true that nothing is moved but by that which is alreadymoved’.69 Furthermore, there is no ‘action at a distance’: motion can beproduced or reduced only by a contiguous and moving body i.e. bycollision.70 Since ‘all mutation is motion’,71 there is obviously an abundanceof collision in Hobbes’s universe.

Hobbes employs the term ‘endeavour’ or conatus for the near-instantaneous motion of a body,72 ‘resistance’ for the mutually opposedendeavours of bodies that collide73 and ‘propagation of motion’ for thetransitive effect of colliding bodies.74 Owing to the second inertial principle,a body moving in a vacuum will persist with its endeavour unchanged sinceempty space offers no resistance. But in a ‘full space’ or plenum, the motionpropagated will constantly diminish: ‘endeavour, by proceeding, growsweaker and weaker, till at last it can no longer be perceived by sense’.75

Furthermore, in such a plenum, motion will be propagated instantaneouslyeven across an infinite distance: ‘for in the same instant in which the firstpart of the full medium moves that which is next to it, the second removesthat part which is next to it’.76 But the actual world is a plenum, accordingto Hobbes.77 So it seems to follow that any motion in the world mustdissipate in no time, like shock waves. Motion immediately vanishes at theboundaries of a finite world, or, if its propagation is spatially endless,immediately becomes infinitesimal and invisible.78

In his recent, authoritative account of the background to Hobbes’snatural philosophy, Cees Leijenhorst asserts concerning the origin ofmotion, and why ‘motion persists through all causal interactions with other

68De Corpore 2.8.19; OL i, 102; EW i, 115.69De Corpore 4.26.1; OL i, 336; EW i, 412. See also De Motu XXVII.5, 317–18.70De Corpore 2.9.7; OL i, 110; EW i, 124. On the origin and significance of Hobbes’s inertial

principles, see Brandt 1917, Leijenhorst 2002, chapter 5 and Jesseph 2006.71De Corpore 2.9.9; OL i 111; EW i, 126.72De Corpore 3.15.2; OL i, 177; EW i, 206.73De Corpore 3.15.2; OL i, 178; EW i, 211.74De Corpore 3.22.3; OL i, 272; EW i, 334.75De Corpore 3.15.7; OL i, 183; EW i, 217.76De Corpore 3.15.7; OL i, 183; EW i, 216–17.77De Corpore 4.26.2; OL i, 338; EW i, 414–15.78Boyle spotted the problem already in 1675 (1999–2000, vol. 8, 258–62). For discussion, see

Foisneau 2004, 45–6 and Lupoli 2006, 554–8. Hobbes worries about an analogous problem

affecting his early account of sensation in the Short Tract, which posited the continual

emanation of material ‘species’ from perceptible things: ‘if bodies continually send out so many

substantial species, how can they subsist without supply?’ He concludes they must somehow

derive ‘fuell’ from adjacent bodies (Short Tract 2. conc. 8, 159). There is some dispute about the

authorship of the ‘Short Tract’. See P. Zagorin 1993 and K. Schuhmann 1995 in favour of

Hobbes’s authorship and R. Tuck 1988 and N. Malcolm 2002, chapter 4 against.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 251

bodies’, that ‘Hobbes never even attempts to answer these questions’.79 Iwould like to suggest, on the contrary, that Hobbes’s God, like Descartes’, isthe perpetual source of motion, and hence diversity, in a material worldgoverned by mechanical principles. That God is the original cause of bodiesand motion is asserted in numerous texts.80 And that this cause must itselfmove is strongly suggested in De Corpore. From the fact that nothing canmove itself we rightly infer an eternal first mover, which is not unmoved ‘buton the contrary eternally moving’.81 God’s activity is spelled out in moredetail in the Answer to Bramhall. Shortly after revealing that he considersGod to be ‘a most pure and simple corporeal spirit’, Hobbes presents aremarkable analogy:

I have seen, and so have many others, two waters, one of the river and the

other mineral water, so that no man could discern one from the other from hissight; yet when they are both put together the whole substance could not bedistinguished from milk. Yet we know the one was not mixed with the other,

so as every part of the one to be in every part of the other, for that isimpossible, unless two bodies can be in the same place. How then could thechange be made in every part, but only by the activity of the mineral water,changing it everywhere to the sense and yet not being everywhere and in every

part of the water?82

Hobbes makes clear the theological relevance of this elaborate example inthe next few lines of the Answer. It is supposed to illustrate how hiscorporeal God operates in the world:

If such gross bodies have such great activity what then can we think of spirits,whose kinds be as many as there are kinds of liquor, and activity greater? Canit then be doubted that God, who is infinitely fine spirit, and withal

intelligence, can make and change all species and kinds of bodies as he?83

Although Hobbes includes the usual caveat that the matter of God’soperation is ultimately ‘past my apprehension’, he nevertheless claims thismodel to be ‘better’ than the standard incorporeal models of the divinesubstance ‘which reduce it to a spright or phantasm, which is nothing’.84

792002, 166. See also 210.80Leviathan I.xii, 33, 64; Leviathan Appendix i; 338, 512; De Motu XXVII.15, 325; XXXVI.7,

439; Of Liberty and Necessity, EW iv, 246; De Corpore 4.26.1; OL i, 336; EW i, 412; Elements of

Law 1.11, 41. Decameron Physiologicum, EW vii, 176. On God as the ‘entire cause’ of things, see

Foisneau 2000.81De Corpore; 4.26.1; OL i, 336; EW i, 412. See also De Motu XXVII.8, 321: ‘I do not hold,

however, that rest is customarily attributed to God’. For discussion, see Pacchi 1998, 176–7,

Jesseph 2002, 151–2, Leijenhorst 2004, 78.82EW iv, 310.83Ibid.84Ibid. Hobbes’s family friend, Margaret Cavendish, presents a similar account of fundamental

matter. 2001, 34–5, 158–9. For commentary see O’Neill, ‘Introduction’ to Cavendish 2001, and

GEOFFREY GORHAM252

Several aspects of the analogy support my contention that corporeal Godis designed to solve the problem of accounting for physical motion anddiversity. First, Hobbes says explicitly that the liquor or mineral water isresponsible for giving the river water a distinct feature it otherwise lackedand which the mineral water itself lacks: a milky whiteness. Likewise we areasked to suppose that corporeal God ‘can make and change all species andkinds of bodies’. This fits nicely with the notion that God produces allchange and diversity by moving the parts of the plenum to produce theaccidents of matter we perceive (but God lacks). Second, Hobbes insists(somewhat implausibly) that the mineral and river waters do not actuallymix. This is explained by his desire to provide for God’s direct contact withordinary bodies, which is required for material causality, while avoidingboth the pantheistic identification of God with creation and the absurdscholastic doctrine that God is somehow ‘co-located’ with bodies.85

Third, Hobbes emphasizes the analogy between liquors, such as themineral water, and spirits like God. He has just explained that by ‘spirit’ hemeans ‘thin, fluid, transparent, invisible body’.86 Unlike ordinary fluids, likeliquors, corporeal God is an ‘infinitely fine’ spirit. By this Hobbes seems tomean God offers no resistance to other bodies.87 Thus, a few pages later he

Sarasohn 2010, chapter 3. On the very similar discussions among the ancient Stoics of how a

corporeal God might act upon the physical world, without violating the prohibition against the

co-location of bodies, see Sorabji 1988, chapter 6. The Stoic (‘la philosophie du Portique’) style

of Hobbes’s cosmology is also noted by Weber 2009, 86–7.85This resolves a worry about the ‘two waters’ analogy raised by Weber: ‘Cela implique-t-il que

le fluide corporel divin viol le principe en vertu duquel les corps ne peuvent pas etre dans un

meme moment dans un seul et meme lieu?’ 2009, 88. Hobbes’s insistence that the mineral and

river waters do not ‘mix’ is also emphasized in Leijenhorst’s critique of Lupoli. 2004, 93. But

Leijenhorst, Lupoli, and Weber each invoke against the coherence of Hobbes’s ‘divine fluid’ a

passage from the dialogue Decameron Phsyiologicum. Near the opening of a discussion of the

vacuum, Hobbes’s mouthpiece B asserts that since God is infinite ‘there can be no place empty

where he is nor full where he is not’. EW vii, 89. Leijenhorst asks: ‘does this not mean that the

divine, corporeal fluid violates the fundamental principle of natural philosophy that bodies

cannot coincide?’ 2004, 93. See also Lupoli, 1999, 605 and Weber 2009, 88. However, it is

unlikely that Hobbes here intends to endorse the view that God’s body literally fills all places

since given the principle asserted only a few pages earlier that ‘two bodies, at the same time,

cannot be in one place’ (EW vii, 85) this would mean God is the only body. But God is clearly

distinguished from creation later in the dialogue. EW vii, 171, 176. More charitably, B is

alluding to the more traditional conception of God’s ubiquity, which allows the co-presence of

body, only to illustrate the typical Hobbesian lesson that the vacuum is a question for

philosophy or physics rather than school theology. This explains why A finds himself without a

technical theological response to the idea that nowhere is empty of God – ‘It is hard to answer

this argument because I do not remember that there is any argument for the maintenance of

vacuum in the writings of divines’ – and the two agree to ‘quit the argument’ and turn directly to

more fruitful physical considerations. EW vii, 89.86EW iv, 309.87Appeal to fluid-like subtle matter within and between bodies was common in seventeenth

century philosophy, especially optics. See Brandt 1917, chapter v and Lupoli 1999, 2006,

chapter iv.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 253

says that God is an ‘infinitely subtle’ spirit and suggests that such a notionmight be what some ‘subtile distinguisher’ really has in mind when he claimsto conceive an incorporeal substance.88 Hobbes insists on the infinitesimalresistance of the divine substance in order to exempt it from the difficultyraised above about the propagation of endeavour. Even if motion ispropagated infinitely through God’s spirit, it will not diminish beforereaching ordinary body. Thus, in his detailed response to Epicureanvacuism, Hobbes suggests motion is propagated as easily through a purefluid as a vacuum: ‘Neither does there appear to be any cause why thematter of the world should, for the admission of motion, be intermingledwith empty spaces rather than full; I say full, but withal fluid’.89 God’s actionis propagated as if through a vacuum: sans resistance and with immediateeffect.

Fourth, Hobbes emphasises in the discussion surrounding the mineralwater analogy that his corporeal God is ‘most pure, most simple corporealspirit’.90 As noted, a body is pure and simple when it is ‘one and the samekind in every part throughout’.91 Such a body, he says, can be mixed with

88EW iv, 313. Leijenhorst also notes the lack of resistance in Hobbesian fluids, though he is

concerned with the ease of the motions of bodies within fluids rather than the propagation of

motion itself. 2004, 91. Leijenhorst finds this problematic, however. Since Hobbes regards the

world as a plenum, ‘there is no room left for the most subtle fluid of all, namely God himself’.

2004, 93. But Hobbes’s defence of the plenum is based on the impossibility of a vacuum not the

identity of extension and ordinary body. So the universe is a plenum and God is part of the

universe, as Hobbes implies. EW iv, 349. Again, Robert Boyle himself raised a similar objection

in his (1674) Animadversions upon ‘Mr. Hobbes’s Problemata de Vacuo’: ‘it seems difficult to

conceive, how in a world that is already perfectly full of body, a Corporeal deity, such as he

maintains in his Appendix ad Leviathan chapter 3, can have that access even to the minutes part

of the mundane matter’. Boyle 1999–2000, vol. 8, 162. See further Lupoli 2006, 554–7.89De Corprore 4.26.3; OL i, 340; EW i, 417. He goes on to chastise those who conceive of fluids

as ‘small grains of hard matter’ rather than as homogeneous ‘as vacuum itself’. Ibid. See also the

letter to Sorbiere, 6 February, 1657; 1994, vol. 1, 443. Hobbes’s theory of fluids is quite

complex. Besides God’s spiritual body, he seems to identify also a ‘primum fluidum’, or ‘prime

matter’, as well as a ‘subtle ether’ that pervades all things. Hobbes implies that ordinary solid

bodies are formed by the introduction of local motion into the primary fluid. OL iv, 284–5. But

elsewhere Hobbes seems to identify this primary matter with the ether: ‘I suppose that the parts

of the aether, as if it were the prime matter (tanquam in materia prima), have no motion at all

but what they receive from bodies’. De Corpore 4.27.1; OL i, 364; EW i, 448. This is problematic

according to Lupoli since the ether and prime matter have different characteristics: only the

former moves, for example. 1999, 597. But as Leijenhorst has noted, Hobbes is merely drawing

an analogy between the ether and prime matter. The latter is, after all, not a real thing for

Hobbes but a mere conceptual abstraction. 2004, 91. Lupoli 1999, 605, Leijenhorst 2004, 92 and

Weber 2009, 87, each provide convincing reasons why Hobbes cannot ultimately identify God

himself with the ether. On my reconstruction of Hobbes’s system, God is a pure fluid that moves

without suffering resistance among its parts while generating solid bodies and the ether by

introducing motion into various parts of real space or magnitude. So, I am sympathetic with

Lupoli’s own view that Hobbesian creation is ‘a demiurge-like activity of the divine fluid on the

primary fluid’. 1999, 607.90EW iv, 306. See also 313.91EW iv, 309.

GEOFFREY GORHAM254

other bodies while retaining its simplicity, like wine in water. Thus, thetraditional attribute of simplicity becomes homogeneity for Hobbes’scorporeal God. This homogeneity is not surprising considering God’s roleas the continuous source of motion and diversity in all other things. Varietyarises from opposing motions and so entails resistance and the loss ofendeavour. If God were heterogeneous, his own motion would need to bereplenished. But for Hobbes, God is ‘the cause whereof there is no formercause’.92

For this same reason, my account requires that the fluid body of God isself-moving in the sense of being unmoved by any other. This might seemproblematic since as was mentioned it is axiomatic for Hobbes that ‘nothingis moved by itself’.93 Hobbes’s axiom, however, is not that the motion of anything is derived from another but that anything which begins to move ismoved by another. Indeed, he insists, ‘whatever is moved will always bemoved’.94 So God can be self-moving so long as he always was. Hobbeshimself emphasizes that his prime mover, unlike Aristotle’s, need not beunmoved: ‘it cannot be inferred, though some have made this inference, thatthat mover was eternally immovable but rather, on the contrary, eternallymoved’.95 Moreover, as mentioned, God’s special kind of body is not slowedby internal resistance. It should be noted that Hobbes’s primary argumentagainst the self-motion of body is that ‘the reason for its motion one waywould be the same as the reason for its motion every other way; and so itwould be moved all ways at once, which is impossible’.96 This objection doesnot seem to apply to corporeal God, which is infinite and indeterminatemagnitude, not a body with a determinate place and direction. The onlyother Hobbesian argument (I know of) against self-motion applies explicitlyonly to created things: ‘to attribute to created bodies the power to movethemselves, what else is this than to say there are creatures which have nodependence on the Creator?’97 Eternal self-motion is the prerogative of theHobbesian prime mover.98

92Leviathan I.xi, 50, 62. In the mineral water analogy, Hobbes ascribes ‘withal intelligence’ to

the corporeal God. This intelligence will clearly not be like ours, which arises from the action of

external things on our sense organs whereas God is unaffected by created things. Cf. Leviathan

II.xxxi, 190, 240.93De Corpore 4.26.1; OL i, 336; EW i, 412. See also De Motu: ‘the reason given (according to

our author) by the ancients for the mover being some incorporeal creature, they could equally

have inferred that the mover was the movable’. De Motu XVII, 310.94De Corpore 2.8.19; OL i, 102; EW i, 115. Lupoli finds divine self-motion objectionable for a

different reason: Hobbes takes the primary fluid to be unmoved in its parts. 1999, 605, 609. I

address this point, following Leijenhorst, in note 89 above.95De Corpore 4.26.1; OL i, 336; EW i, 412.96De Corpore 2.8.19; OL i, 102; EW i, 115. See also Short Tract 1. conc. 10, 154–5.97De Corpore 4.30.2; OL i, 415; EW i, 510.98Hobbes vigorously maintains the Biblical authenticity of corporeal God. In the Answer to

Bramhall, for example, he invokes the passage ‘In him dwelleth all the scripture of the Godhead

bodily’ (Col. 2,9) to indicate that ‘God was in Christ in such a manner as body is in body’ (EW

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 255

CONCLUSION

Henry More tried to find a via media between the wholesale materialism ofHobbes and the radical dualism of Descartes by rejecting their sharedassumption that anything really extended is body. He allowed God andfinite minds to be spatial without being corporeal and ultimately joined theranks of ‘those modern Englishmen’ who according to Leibniz consideredabsolute space to ‘be God himself or one of his attributes’.99 But despitetheir diverse ‘onto-theologies’, More and his two opponents put God intoremarkably similar service for his mechanical philosophy. In the earlyWorld (1633), Descartes supposes that God first creates in ‘imaginaryspace’ infinite undifferentiated matter: ‘a real, perfectly solid body whichuniformly fills the length, breadth and depth of this huge space’.100 LikeHobbes, he notes the similarity between this ‘formless’ extension and theprime matter of the Aristotelians. Next, by introducing diverse motions,God ‘really divides it into many such parts, some larger and some smaller,some of one shape and some of another, however we care to imaginethem’.101 The creation story of the later Principles of Philosophy isessentially the same except that God creates the matter ‘along with itsmotion and rest’, i.e. simultaneously.102 So Cartesian generic extension andHobbesian matter are conceived similarly, as unbounded and undividedmaterial plenums lacking any qualities besides Euclidean dimensions. Godoperates on this plenum, consistent with a priori physical laws, to producethe observable properties and interactions of ordinary, gross bodies.103

The only difference is that whereas Descartes radically separates God fromthe plenum, as mind from body, Hobbes’s God is an immanent cause ofchange and diversity.104

The similarity between Hobbes’s physico-theology and More’s is evenmore striking considering the Platonist’s vociferous criticism of Hobbes’smaterialism.105 Like Hobbes, More rejects both the ‘nullibist’ view of

iv, 307). And in the Latin Leviathan, he invokes as well the well-known lines from Acts (17, 28):

‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (Appendix, chapter iii; 561; 541).99Letter to Caroline, November, 1715; Leibniz and Clarke 2000, 4. On More’s assimilation of

God and space, see for example More 1995, 57.100AT 11, 33.101AT 11, 34.102AT 8A, 61.103Hobbes apparently compared his ‘spirit’ to Descartes’ ‘subtle matter’. See AT 3, 287–88;

CSMK 170. Strauss compares Hobbes’s God to ‘ether’, but it is not clear what he means by this.

Strauss 1959, 184.104There is a methodological difference as well. Descartes derives his laws of nature from God

being immutable in himself and in his operations (AT 8A61). Hobbes merely hypothesizes that

an ‘infinitely fine Spirit’ can ‘make and change all species and kinds of bodies as he pleases’ (EW

i, 310). In this respect, Hobbes’s God is at the foundations of his physics but not his ‘first

philosophy’. Cf. Zarka 1996.1051987 Bk. i, chapter 9–10, 49–59.

GEOFFREY GORHAM256

Descartes that God is strictly nowhere and the ‘holenmerist’ view of thescholastics that God is wholly in every place.106 Furthermore, he insists thatGod, through his lieutenant, the ‘Spirit of Nature’, works upon matter toproduce all the changes we perceive:

The Spirit of Nature therefore, according to that notion I have of it, is asubstance without sense and animadversion, pervading the whole matter of the

universe, and exercising a plastical power therein according to the sundrydispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising such phenomenain the world, by directing the parts of the matter and their motion.107

On all three models – Descartes, Hobbes and More – God produces by aubiquitous operation all the diversity and motions in material things.Descartes’ God acts directly but not mechanically; More’s indirectly andmechanically; Hobbes’s directly and mechanically. But each achieves thesame result: a material world with unexhausted motion and variety. SoHobbes’s corporeal God, however shocking to his contemporary opponents,deserves a place in the seventeenth century pantheon. His late reflections onthe role of God in a thoroughly materialist framework offered a radicaltouchstone for the variety of ‘physico-theologies’ that flowered in the lateseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.108, 109

Macalester College

106On More’s attitude to holenmerism, see Reid 2007. For a useful discussion of Hobbes in

relation to ‘Cartesian’ nullibism or ‘nowhereism’, see Weber 2009, chapter IV.21071987 Bk. iii, chapter 12, 245. Weber suggests the analogy between the gods of More and

Hobbes cannot be so strong because whereas Hobbes says in de Motu that God produces

natural actions through ‘secondary causes’ (De Motu XXXVI.7, 439), for More ‘Dieu est

present en toutes chose comme l’agent dans sa cause’. Weber 2009, 119. But More’s God does

rely on a second cause of sorts, the Spirit of Nature, and Hobbes’s corporeal God, at least as

depicted in the two-waters analogy, acts directly in the way one body acts on another.108It is worth emphasizing the extent to which Hobbes, while explicitly hewing to a strict

Calvinist line about the incomprehensibility of God, conceived science and religion as deriving

from a common source. In Leviathan, he maintains that religion arises from fear of ‘power

invisible’, and is true ‘when the power we allege is truly such as we imagine’ (Leviathan I.vi; 44,

31). The Answer to Bramhall provides a similar explanation for religion: ‘ignorance of second

causes made men to fly to some first cause, the fear of which bred devotion and worship’ (EW

iv, 292). From this point of view, a true religion might correctly explain how the transient

second causes follow from the eternal, first cause, so it would be ‘impossible to make any

profound enquiry into natural causes, without being inclined thereby to believe there is one God

eternal’ (Leviathan I.xi, 62, 50). Alternatively, since the first cause turns out to be simply a very

special part of the material world, a completed science would obviate the fear and superstition

that fuels traditional religion. See Springborg 2004. For different accounts of what Hobbesian

‘true religion’ amounts to, see Berman 1986, Curley 1992, Martinich 1992, Foisneau 2000.109My sincere thanks for comments from audience members at Princeton, College Station, and

Nijmegen, and from the two referees for this Journal.

HOBBES’S CORPOREAL GOD 257

ABBREVIATIONS

OL: Thomas Hobbes. Opera philosophica quae latine scripsitomnia, 5 vols., edited by W. Molesworth (London, 1845).Citation by volume and page number.

EW: Thomas Hobbes. English Works, 11 vols., edited by W.Molesworth (London, 1839–1845). Citation by volume andpage number.

De Motu: Thomas Hobbes. Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White,edited by J. Jaquot and H. Jones (Paris: Vrin, 1973). Citationby Chapter, section, and page number of Thomas White’s DeMundo Examined, edited by. H. Jones (London: BradfordUniversity Press, 1976).

De Corpore: Thomas Hobbes. Elementorum Philosophiae, Sectio Prima: DeCorpore, edited by Karl Schuhmann (Paris: Vrin, 1999). Citedby part, chapter, section; OL volume and page number; EWvolume and page number.

Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan with Selected Variants from theLatin Edition of 1668, edited by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis:Hackett Publishing Co., 1994). Citation by part, chapter, 1651edition page number, and Curley’s edition page number.

Elements

of Law:

Thomas Hobbes. Elements of Law, edited by F. Tonnies(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928). Citation bypart, chapter, paragraph and page number.

Short

Tract:

Thomas Hobbes. ‘Short Tract on First Principles’, inElements of Law, edited by F. Tonnies (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1928). Citation by section, principleor conclusion, and page number.

Answer to

Bramhall:Thomas Hobbes. An Answer to a Book Published by Dr.Bramhall. (London, 1682). Cited by EW volume and pagenumber.

AT: Descartes, Rene. Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 Vols, edited by C.Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1976). Citation byvolume and page number.

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