Throughout the ages, starting with the ancient Greek fables of Aesop, people tended to compare their world with that of animals. As a rule, the animals' domain served as a foil to the human world, and animals were used to emphasize human characteristics. As time went on, the human society changed, but some of their old literary devices remained. Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes is most definitely not a fable, let alone a fairy tale, but it uses the old people-vs.-animals literary device all the same. This essay will show how Plato, Thomas Hobbes and other political philosophers had used the literary imagery of various animals to achieve their goals of emphasizing the theoretical similarities or differences of people and animals for their political reasons and whether or not they were connected to one another.
For a start, then, Thomas Hobbes begins to mention animals relatively late in his treatise, only in his second part. He does it, most likely, under the influence of such works as Plato's The Republic, where the interlocutors discuss if a dog is a true philosopher or not:
`For have you not observed that it is characteristic of a well-bred dog to behave the utmost gentleness to those it is used to and knows, but be savage to strangers?'
`Yes, I've noticed that.'
`The kind of guardian we were looking for is therefore quite a possibility and not at all unnatural.'
`So it appears.'
`Would you agree then that our prospective guardian needs in addition to his high spirits something of the disposition of a philosopher?'
[...]
`It is a remarkable characteristic which you will find in the dog. It is annoyed when it sees a stranger, even though he has done it no harm: but it welcomes anyone it knows, even though it has never had a kindness from him. Have you even thought how remarkable that is?'
`I cannot say I even thought about it before,' [...]
[...] `for the dog distinguishes the sight of friend and foe simply by knowing one and not knowing the other. And a creature that distinguishes between the familiar and the unfamiliar on the grounds of knowledge or ignorance must be gifted with a real love of knowledge.'
`There is no denying it,' [...]
`But is not philosophy the same thing as the love of knowledge?'
(The Republic, pg 111)
The passage above is probably the first time when an animal was used as a trope and a rhetorical device (in a matter of speaking) in a serious work of political philosophy. This, in turn, is a direct referral to the fables of Aesop. There, animals were used as foils to people and their fallacies, often serving as live illustrations to demonstrate the virtues and vices of some or other quirk of human nature (shown as the moral at the end of the fable). In The Republic, Plato follows the same formula - his dog is a foil to a quirk of a human nature, namely that of a philosopher, who distinguishes what he knows and does not based on his knowledge and ignorance, just as dog distinguishes between friend and foe following the same guidelines.
Undoubtedly, this statement of Plato's is something of a stretch, and it is just as likely to have struck a chord in case of Thomas Hobbes: one of his main differences between people and social animals such as insects is that animals are not sentient, unlike people. This difference of opinions, of course, is due to the opposing intentions of the two authors: Plato wanted to bridge the similarities between animals and people, to show how they behave in the same way (even if they looked different), and perhaps even to poke fun and people. By contrast, Thomas Hobbes wanted to differentiate more between people and animals, and so, in his Leviathan he emphasized their differences instead.
Before we turn to Leviathan and the role of animals in that book though, Thomas Hobbes's "State of Nature" definitely deserves a mention. To a Christian reader, writer or author, the animals were natural - not just in the literal sense of the word, but also because the animals had never fallen by eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Hobbes, however, seems to be treating this situation more ambiguously than his predecessors: it is well known that his state of nature was `consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man [...] And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' (Hobbes 89). Put otherwise, it may not mean that Thomas Hobbes considered people to be unnatural, but it may certainly have appeared that way to his contemporaries.
At any rate, Thomas Hobbes's opinion about the state of nature is probably one of the better known points in the entire book and one of the most prominent reasons why Leviathan was so unpopular, initially: here Hobbes seems to be deviating from the original, Christian idea of natural paradise and innocent animals - but he does not. He actually begins to compare and contrast animals and people in Chapter 17, and the contrast is not wholly in the favour of people:
It is true, that certain living creatures, as Bees, and Ants, live sociably with one another [...] and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know, why Man-kind cannot do the same. To which I answer,
First, that men are continually in competition for Honour and Dignity, which these creatures are not [...]
Secondly, that amongst these creatures, the Common good differeth not from the Private; [...] But man, whose Joy consisteth in comparing himselfe with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent.
Thirdly, that these creatures, having not (as man) the use of reason, do not see, nor think that they see any fault, in the administration of their common business; whereas amongst men, there are very many, that thinke themselves wiser, and able to govern the Publique, better than the rest; [...] and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civill warre.
[...] Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is Naturall; that of men, is by Covenant only, which is Artificiall
(Leviathan, pg 119-120)
The quote above shows that Thomas Hobbes believed that people are in a sort of a rat race (mentioned already in some of the previous chapters of Leviathan), while social insects such as ants and bees are not, but in fact they live sociably without any conflict. This state of human affairs - including politics - was emphasized further in the second point: men are only happy when they are competing with each other for power, or for anything else.
The matter of social and political conflict is the third point by which Thomas Hobbes distinguishes people from social animals: the animals have no civil war, but live peacefully, each in their respective anthill or hive. In addition, since Thomas Hobbes himself was a survivor of a civil war and the destruction that accompanied it, his mentioning of them in the quotation becomes especially poignant. This is an emphasis of the differences between animals and people, a successful attempt to show how people are different from animals, they have politics, for one thing, and that brought Leviathan's reader to Thomas Hobbes's final point.
Namely, the last point in that list was the idea that `the agreement of these creatures is Natural; that of men, is by Covenant only, which is Artificiall' (Hobbes 120) brings the readers of Leviathan back to Thomas Hobbes's distinctly non-political state of nature, when people are constantly battling each other; `men have no pleasure [...] in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all' (Hobbes 88). That power, of course, is the titular Leviathan, the sovereign who will overpower all of the people and who is necessary to prevent them from slipping into `the state of nature'.
On the other hand, the social animals such as bees and ants need no covenant or Leviathan, for `the agreement of these creatures is Naturall' (Hobbes 120). Put otherwise, this statement separates the natural creatures from people... who, perhaps, are unnatural? The root of the difference between animals and people - people are political, animals are not - was certainly clear enough to see and it had raised some eyebrows during its first release already, no doubt. Thomas Hobbes may no elaboration on that line of thought, but straight after the comparison of people and animals he begins to explain directly the function of his great and titular Leviathan, so it would be no surprise to learn if he did think something along those lines after surviving the civil war. In any case, however, many of Hobbes's political critics and opponents had promptly disagreed with his Leviathan for various reasons, the lines quoted above being one of them. For a long time both before and after Leviathan, the state of nature was identified with Paradise on Earth, and not Thomas Hobbes' idea of perpetual warfare and political rat race.
Plus, to make matters more extreme, Hobbes had also talked about religion in a less than flattering tone, making certain connections between and England's politics as well. True, he supposedly talked about the pagan, or at least the Roman Catholic faith, rather than the Protestant, but between the ominous title of his political treatise and his own scientifically rational approach to the religious matters, quite a few people began to doubt Hobbes dedication to Christianity. Among those people were the American Puritans, who included Edward Taylor.
Edward Taylor was a prominent minister and a powerful poet in his own right. His poetic meditations on various quotes from the scriptures are written both well and passionately... and can be considered to be something of a religious reply to Hobbes's rational and scientific approach to religion and society. After all, Hobbes considered that the power to govern was something to be given to the people (his sovereign can stand-in for either one person or several), while religion (to him) was something much more detached. The Puritans (including Taylor) disagreed. To them, religion was much more important and personal, and God was the true sovereign, not some Leviathan (a name, incidentally, used to describe a sea-monster in the Bible instead of anything good). Therefore, "Meditations" of Edward Taylor's can be considered a rebuke or response to Thomas Hobbes. In particular, in "Meditation Eight" Edward Taylor is using certain animal metaphors himself:
When that this Bird of Paradise put in
This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise
Had peckt the Fruite forbid
[...]
Alas! alas! Poore Bird, what wilt thou doe?
(The Puritans, 656h)
As it can be seen, here the poet is comparing his soul to a bird: a rather well-known and well-used metaphor, and its context refers once more to the times when people lived in a `state of nature' as defined by the Bible, as opposed to the state of warfare as described by Thomas Hobbes. Taylor is refuting Hobbes's `state of nature' and his political program of the sovereign - rather Taylor considers Hobbes's state of sovereignty to be at best only secondary to what can only be the kingdom of Heaven, without any secular power getting involved in the process - and the other Puritans thought so and often wrote down such thoughts without using any animal allegories at all.
Yet even long after Hobbes, in the 1750s, American clergy and politicians (who often were direct descendants of the Puritans) continued to use animal metaphors in their texts. Thus, Jonathan Mayhew in his "A Discussion Concerning Unlimited Submission" promptly compares the political future of the American people (in his opinion) with that of Balaam's ass, which was powerless to prevent its master from harming it. Just as before, in Edward Taylor's "Meditation", the animal imagery here is used to emphasize the author's point, a literary goal that seems to somewhat different from those of Plato and Thomas Hobbes.
When compared to Jonathan Mayhew, Plato is using a series of arguments in order to prove that animals are like people. Mayhew, however, is speaking directly to his audience, quoting from the Bible, that unless the American people do not shape up, they will end up as animals, dominated by the British tyrant. In both cases we have direct comparisons of people to animals, only these comparisons are said with opposing intent: positive in case of Plato, derogatory in case of Jonathan Mayhew. These intentions make the primary difference, while the secondary is in the authors' backgrounds, the pagan versus the Christian, as it was mentioned before.
What about Thomas Hobbes, then? As it was shown previously, when he compared people and animals, the comparison was not in favour of people, Hobbes's animals showed many potentially good qualities, his opinions regarding the state of nature notwithstanding. Hobbes's creatures,
having not (as man) the use of reason, do not see, nor think that they see any fault, in the administration of their common business; whereas amongst men, there are very many, that think themselves wiser, and able to govern the Public, better than the rest; [...] and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civil war.
(Leviathan, pg 119)
In addition, the next statement of Thomas Hobbes says that `the agreement of these creatures is Natural; that of men is by Covenant only, which is Artificial' (Hobbes 120). This refers back to the self-same Bible, for it is there that we get such imagery as hard-working ants and laborious bees, from the Bible and medieval bestiaries, which drew for their material from the Bible once again. Thomas Hobbes was religious, after all, and seemed to actually draw his political ideas from the Bible, but he was going in a different direction than most of his contemporaries in that area as well. He based his political ideas on the initial concept that people are sinful to begin with, and he proceeded to follow these ideas through, to a greater indignation by many other people, who disagreed with Hobbes on that issue.
If Thomas Hobbes was religious, however, then Edward Taylor even more so - his Meditations too are of a religious bent, even much more so, it seems. Just like Thomas Hobbes, (and the medieval bestiaries, incidentally), he used the initial biblical sources and used them to further his political and literary goals. He was very successful at doing so as well, at least for a while, just as the authors mentioned here were.
In addition, as it was shown before, Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Edward Taylor and Jonathan Mayhew had all used animal imagery and metaphors to get their messages across their audience. In cases of Plato and Jonathan Mayhew, it was to bridge the differences between animals and people, albeit with opposite intent. In case of Thomas Hobbes, it was to the contrary, to emphasize the differences between animals and people, though perhaps with the same intent as that of Jonathan Mayhew. Moreover, in case of Edward Taylor, the animal imagery was simply used as a metaphor, that is why it is different from the other three.
The usage of animals in literature took place since the times of ancient Greece, before The Republic of Plato's was written, and as a rule the animals were used as a foil to be compared and contrasted with the society of people. Thomas Hobbes, and Edward Taylor, and Jonathan Mayhew - they all wrote in a time that was much closer to ours, than to that of ancient Greece, and it shows. In the long run, however, whenever they used animals as literary devices, their usage was not so different from that of Plato.
Bibliography
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991
Mayhew, Jonathan. "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission." The State of Nature. Compiled by Prof P. Downes. Toronto: Greater Print Solutions, 2010. 382
Plato. The Republic. England: Penguin Books Ltd. 1955
Taylor, Edward. "Meditation Eight." The State of Nature. Compiled by Prof P. Downes. Toronto: Greater Print Solutions, 2010. 656h