In religion he was scarcely a Calvinist, indeed he laboured
under a suspicion of atheism: but his philosophy is accurately cast in
the mould of the grim theology of Geneva. We may call it the
philosophy of Calvinism. It has for its central tenet, that human
nature either was from the first, or is become, bad, "desperately
wicked," depraved, corrupt, and utterly abominable, so that whatever
is natural to man, in so far forth as it is natural, is simply evil.
The remedy for our evil nature Hobbes finds in no imputed merits of a
Redeemer, no irresistible victorious grace, but in the masterful
coercion of a despotic civil power. But, lest any one should suspect
that there was at least this good in man, a propensity to civil
society and obedience to the rulers of cities, Hobbes insists that man
is by nature wholly averse to society with his kind: that the type of
the race is an Ishmael, "a wild man, his hand against all men, and all
men's hands against him:" in fact that the state of nature is a state
of war all round. He writes (_Leviathan_, c. xiii.): "Men have no
pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping
company where there is no power able to overawe them all.
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