Note 354 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 4)

The passage in Hobbes to which I allude is in “The Leviathan,” c. 32. He there says, sarcastically, “It is with the mysteries of religion as with wholesome pills for the sick, which, swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but, chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.” Hobbes is often a wit: he was much pleased with this thought, for he had it in his De Cive; which, in the English translation, bears the title of “Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society,” 1651. There he calls “the wholesome pills,” “bitter.” He translated the De Cive himself; a circumstance which was not known till the recent appearance of Aubrey’s papers.