A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of The Common Laws of England [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONThe TextThomas Hobbes (15 88-1679) ls>to t'ie best of our knowledge, the author of A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common Laws of England, which was published for the first time in 1681, two years after the author's death.1 The Dialogue was published in two different volumes by the same publisher in 1681 : as the second piece in a volume containing The Art of Rhetoric and as one of a number of Hobbes's writings collected in Tracts of Thomas Hobb's Containing I. His Life in Latine, etc.2 The Dialogue has been reprinted with editorial attention to the text twice: first in 1750 in The Moral and Political Works of Thomas1.In the "Life" prefixed to The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (London, 1750), the following is said: "In 1678, appeared his Decameron Physiologicum, or ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy, to which he added a Book composed some Years before, at the Request of a Person of great Distinction, entituled, A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Law of England. . . This "Life" is attributed to John Campbell (see Leslie Stephen's article "Hobbes" in The Dictionary of National biography) and is said to be simply Campbell's biography of Hobbes in Biographia Britannica. The sentence in the Biographia corresponding to the one quoted reads: "In 1678, appeared his Decameron Physiologicum'. or, Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy; about the same time he revised and put the last hand to a work formerly published, though without his name, the Art of Rhetoric, collected from Aristotle and Ramus; to which he added a book, composed some years before at the request of a person of great distinction, entituled, A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common-Law of England. . ." (4:2613). To this sentence there is a note: "These two pieces of our author, which did not appear together 'till after his death, are in effect but detached branches of his general philosophy." The statement in Biographia Britannica (whether it be an earlier or a later version of the sentence than the one in the 1750 Works we cannot now take up) is not entirely unambiguous; but it comes much closer to conveying that the Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student was not published during Hobbes's lifetime. Being unable to find any other indication that this Dialogue was published in 1678, that is, during Hobbes's lifetime, I shall concur in the general understanding that the 1681 edition is the first and that the author never saw the disfigurement that his text suffered at the hands of the compositor.2.Tracts of Thomas Hobb's is the first of two volumes of Hobbes's "Tracts" published by Crooke in 1681 and 1682 respectively. These two volumes comprise, apparently, the publication entitled Tracts Written by Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; in Two Volumes in Octavo referred to by Edward Arber, The Term Catalogues (London, 1903, privately printed), 1 !46 3.i