that to the law which a gunner upon his platform is to his
cannon. Nevertheless, I should not dare to argue with a man of
any ingenuity after this manner. A whole army, though they can
neither write nor read, are not afraid of a platform, which they
know is but earth or stone; nor of a cannon, which, without a
hand to give fire to it, is but cold iron; therefore a whole army
is afraid of one man. But of this kind is the ratiocination of
Leviathan, as I shall show in divers places that come in my way,
throughout his whole politics, or worse; as where he says, "of
Aristotle and of Cicero, of the Greeks, and of the Romans, who
lived under popular States, that they derived those rights, not
from the principles of nature, but transcribed them into their
books out of the practice of their own commonwealths, as
grammarians describe the rules of language out of poets." Which
is as if a man should tell famous Harvey that he transcribed his
circulation of the blood, not out of the principles of nature,
but out of the anatomy of this or that body.

To go on therefore with his preliminary discourse, I shall
divide it, according to the two definitions of government
relating to Janotti's two times, in two parts: the first,
treating of the principles of government in general, and
according to the ancients; the second, treating of the late
governments of Oceana in particular, and in that of modern
prudence.

Government, according to the ancients, and their learned
disciple Machiavel, the only politician of later ages, is of
three kinds: the government of one man, or of the better sort, or
of the whole people; which, by their more learned names, are