Leviathan

Hobbes’s Leviathan is organized around a central allegory: that the state or commonwealth can be understood as a gigantic, singular body, much like the Leviathan, a colossal beast described in the Bible. Hobbes outlines this allegory in the introduction of the book. 

For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE [...] which is but an Artificiall Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officers of Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment (by which fastned to the seate of the Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty) are the Nerves, that do the same in the Body Naturall [...] 

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Throughout Leviathan, Hobbes develops the allegory of the state or commonwealth as a colossal human figure. In Chapter 21, he discusses (among other topics) the various reasons why an individual might voluntarily limit their own freedoms in order to enjoy the benefits of membership in such a commonwealth. Expanding upon this allegorical “Artificiall Man,” Hobbes describes civil law as “Artificiall Chains.” 

But as men, for the atteyning of peace, and conservation of themselves thereby, have made an Artificiall Man, which we call a Common-wealth; so also have they made Artificiall Chains, called Civill Lawes, which they themselves, by mutuall covenants, have fastned at one end, to the lips of that Man, or Assembly, to whom they have given the Soveraigne Power; and at the other end to their own Ears. These Bonds in their own nature but weak, may neverthelesse be made to hold, by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them.

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Hobbes develops the allegory of the “body politic”—or commonwealth of the state—in his discussion of “assemblies,” or large groups of citizens who mean, by force, to compel the state to act in a certain way. He describes a biblical episode in which an assembly of people demand that the government bring two men, Christian preachers, to justice. The magistrate declares the assembly illegal, and, as Hobbes notes: 

[He] calleth an Assembly, whereof men can give no just account, a Sedition, and such as they could not answer for. And this is all I shall say concerning Systemes, and Assemblyes of People, which may be compared (as I said,) to the Similar parts of mans Body; such as be Lawfull, to the Muscles; such as are Unlawfull, to Wens, Biles, and Apostemes, engendred by the unnaturall conflux of evill humours.

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Further expanding upon his central allegory of the “body politic” (the collective body of the state), Hobbes considers the question of colonies, concluding that they are the “Children of a Common-wealth”: 

The Procreation, or Children of a Common-wealth, are those we call Plantations, or Colonies; which are numbers of men sent out from the Common-wealth, under a Conductor, or Governour, to inhabit a Forraign Country [...] And when a Colony is setled, they are either a Common-wealth of themselves, discharged of their subjection to their Soveraign that sent them, (as hath been done by many Common-wealths of antient time,) in which case the Common-wealth from which they went was called their Metropolis, or Mother, and requires no more of them, then Fathers require of the Children [...] or else they remain united to their Metropolis. 

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