CHAPTER I.
[Sidenote: Introduction.]
1. The true and perspicuous explication of the elements of _laws natural and politic_ (_which is my present scope_) dependeth upon the knowledge of what is _human nature_, what is _body politic_, and what it is we call a _law_; concerning which points, as the _writings_ of men from antiquity downwards have still increased, so also have the _doubts_ and _controversies_ concerning the same: and seeing that true knowledge begetteth not doubt nor controversy, but knowledge, it is manifest from the present controversies, that they, which have _heretofore_ written thereof, have not well understood their own subject.
2. _Harm_ I can do none, though I err no less than they; for I shall leave men but as they are, in doubt and dispute: but, intending not to take any principle upon _trust_, but only to put men in mind of what they _know already_, or _may know_ by their own experience, I hope to err the less; and when I do, it must proceed from too _hasty concluding_, which I will endeavour as much as I can to avoid.
3. On the other side, if _reasoning aright_ win not _consent_, which may very easily happen, from them that being confident of their own knowledge weigh not what is said, the _fault_ is not mine, but theirs; for as it is my part to _shew_ my reasons, so it is theirs to bring _attention_.
4. Man’s _nature_ is the _sum of his natural faculties and powers_, as the faculties of _nutrition_, _motion_, _generation_, _sense_, _reason_, _&c._ These powers we do unanimously call _natural_, and are contained in the definition of man, under these words, _animal_ and _rational_.
5. According to the two principal parts of man, I divide his faculties into two sorts, faculties of the _body_, and faculties of the _mind_.
6. Since the minute and distinct anatomy of the powers of the _body_ is nothing necessary to the present purpose, I will only sum them up in these three heads, power _nutritive_, power _motive_, and power _generative_.
7. Of the powers of the _mind_ there be two sorts, _cognitive_, _imaginative_, or _conceptive_ and _motive_; and first of _cognitive_.
For the understanding of what I mean by the power _cognitive_, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain _images_ or conceptions of the things without us, insomuch that if a man could be alive, and all the rest of the world annihilated, he should nevertheless retain the _image_ thereof, and all those things which he had before seen or perceived in it; every one by his own experience knowing, that the _absence_ or _destruction_ of things once imagined doth not cause the _absence_ or _destruction_ of the _imagination_ itself. This _imagery_ and _representations_ of the qualities of the thing without, is that we call our _conception_, _imagination_, _ideas_, _notice_ or _knowledge_ of them; and the _faculty_ or power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call _cognitive power_, or _conceptive_, the power of knowing or conceiving.
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