The title page of Leviathan , a political treatise arguing the need for an authoritarian,
unchallengeable ruler, written by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679), is one of the most famous images of society from the seventeenth century.
Though the head of the king is that of a single individual, his body is made up of the
tiny bodies of many men. In Leviathan , Hobbes argues that the true basis of government
is not a divine right conferred by God, but the agreement – the word he uses is
“contract” – of the residents of a state to form a society with an absolute ruler at its
head who has both civil and ecclesiastical authority. Once they have done this – and
it does not have to be in historical memory – they have no right to rebel; if they do
not do this, they will live in a pre-political state of nature driven by fear and passion,
a life that Hobbes describes as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” ( Leviathan ,
ch. 13). The title-page engraving illustrates this theory; the men, most of them dressed
as gentlemen but a few as artisans, peasants, and clergy, seem to be in the process of
fi tting themselves into the body of the ruler, literally incorporating (a word that comes
from the Latin word for body, corpus ) themselves into his form.
Using the body as a metaphor for society or the state did not originate or end with
Hobbes; many of the words we still regularly use to discuss groups that act as units,
such as corporate or corporation or Marine Corps, have their origin in this imagery
of a body. This metaphor was employed to support many different and sometimes
contradictory ideas in the early modern period, however. In Bosse’s engraving and
Hobbes’s treatise, it is individuals who incorporate themselves into the ruler, making a
contract that creates “an Artifi ciall Man.” Other writers and illustrators saw the body
politic as created by God, rather than by a human contract, and as made up of different
social groups rather than individuals. The ruler was always the head, but the eyes and
ears were the king’s advisors or the clergy, the hands knights, the thighs merchants, the
feet peasants, the toes servants, and so on. The body was a hierarchy, but one in which
each part was dependent on the others.
Political authors and playwrights illustrated this point by telling and retelling the
“fable of the belly,” a tale attributed to the Greek author Aesop, in which other parts of
the body rebel against the stomach, which seems to be useless. They refuse to nourish
it, and, of course, the entire body sickens. This story could be used to make quite different
points, however, sometimes by two characters in the same work. In Shakespeare’s
Coriolanus (1608), the Roman patrician Menenius Agrippa uses the fable in the opening
scene to denounce rebellion by plebian “mutinous members” against “the senators
of Rome [who] are this good belly” ( Coriolanus , I.i.152, 153). Later in the play, however,
citizens and offi cers criticize Coriolanus because he “loves not the common people,”
calling them “curs,” “slaves to buy and sell,” or “boils and plague,” instead of recognizing
they are the feet and hands on which he depends.
Rebellion of the members and tyranny of the head were only two of the problems
that could plague the social body. Bodies could have two heads, which made them
monstrous; the English writer John Milton (1608–74) used this analogy in 1641 to argue
against the power of bishops, which had become, in his thinking, a “swollen Tumor”
growing so “huge and monstrous” out of the neck that it challenged the proper head,
the king. 1 Writers discussing the appropriate relations between husband and wife noted
that no household should have two heads, though some did give wives the somewhat
lesser, though still important, position of “heart.” The word “head” was linked closely
enough to masculinity that Elizabeth I chose to have herself designated the supreme
“governor” of the Church of England, rather than the “head” as her father had been.
Her successor, James I, linked husbands and heads even more clearly, declaring in his
fi rst speech to Parliament in 1603: “I am the Husband, and the whole Isle is my lawful
Wife; I am the Head, and it is my Body.” 2
Like the physical body, the social body could become ill, another analogy with a long
history. Just as consumption (tuberculosis) made the body thin and weak, so war led
to weakness and a loss of population; just as palsy made the body useless, so making or
importing new fashions was a waste of money that could be put to better uses; just as
an infected and swelling spleen made the body sick, remarked James I, so the growth
of London threatened the realm. Any of these diseases could spread, as gangrene could
spread in a diseased body, and the proper remedy might be the same as for gangrene –
chop off the infected part. As one character says about Coriolanus, “he’s a disease that
must be cut away.” The analogy between the body and society was thus not simply one
of structure, but also one of function; both were healthy only when all parts functioned
as they should, and both required treatment when one part became ill and could not,
or would not, function.
In chapter 2 , we looked at the individual life cycle and at some of the social structures
in which early modern people were enmeshed. Those structures of life did not change
dramatically in the two hundred years after 1600: the seven ages of man continued to
be used to describe the life cycle, rural households continued to be larger than urban
ones, widows continued to have a rougher time than widowers, death continued to
take many children, religious and occupational groups continued to augment kin ties.
This chapter will focus more on the way the social and individual body functioned, or
were thought to function, and what happened when problems interfered with this.
World History
