Note FX — THE 'LIVES' (continued 6)
Reading edition
(P. 375.) The substance is:—
'Hobbes brought to the investigation of facts an acute intellect and long experience, and carried on, into the next generation, the Baconian spirit.
'He had been Bacon's secretary, and owed much to his master, from whom, in particular, he borrowed his comparative, i.e. inductive, methods. But he had also fine natural gifts.
'He excited the fears, and therefore the hostility, of the clerical party in England, and of the Oxford mathematicians and their supporters. For this reason, Charles II compared him to a bear, worried by mastiffs.
'In his political system, he insisted on the necessity of wisdom in sovereigns. In not meddling with the Creeds of the Churches and in assailing the Presbyterians and the Bishops of England, he is not to be blamed.'