POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY men to break it This can only be achieved ‘if each individual hands over the whole of his power to the body politic, which will then possess sovereign natural right over all things’ This power, like Hobbes’ sovereign, will be bound by no laws, and everyone will be bound to obey it in all things But the rights of the sovereign in civil society, like the rights of the individual in a state of nature, extend only so far as his power If he lacks the power to enforce his will, he lacks also the right For this reason the transfer of power from individual to state can never be complete: a sovereign cannot command the inner aVections of the subject (E I 214) Here Spinoza explicitly dissociates himself from Hobbes: no man’s mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgement or be compelled to so In a democracy, which Spinoza believed to be the most natural form of government, ‘no one transfers his natural right so absolutely that he has no further choice in aVairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit Thus all men remain, as they were in the state of nature, equals’ (E II 368) Moreover, Spinoza oVers a more positive reason than Hobbes does for subjecting oneself to the sovereignty of the state It is not simply for security from attack by others; it is also to provide the context for a life of full self-realization From his abstract theory of the state, combined with reXections upon history, especially that of the Hebrews, Spinoza derives a number of quite speciWc political conclusions One is that it always leads to trouble if the clergy are given political power Another is that good governments will allow freedom of religious belief and philosophical speculation Everyone should be free to choose for himself his basic creed, because laws directed against mere opinion only irritate the upright without constraining any criminal Finally, Spinoza warns that once you set up a monarchy, it is very diYcult to get rid of it In proof of this he points to the recent history of England, where the dethronement of a lawful king was followed by the rule of a much greater tyrant Locke on Civil Government Spinoza was writing after the restoration of King Charles II, and it was in his reign that the theory of divine right of kings became a major issue for 290