The unauthorized 1650 publication of The Elements of Law broke Hobbes’s treatise into two parts that were inconsistent with his own division of the work. This obscured what is arguably the most important insight into Hobbes’s method: his account of how human beings use language to instigate and appease others. I review the evidence of how the publication history of the Elements resulted in a break between I.13 and I.14 that Hobbes did not intend. I then argue that as the description of the very method that Hobbes was using to counteract dangerous dogmatists and appease his fellow citizens, the discussion in question made sense in a work intended for private circulation but not in treatises to be read by those on whom the method was to be applied. I show how reading I.13 and I.14 together, as Hobbes had intended, shows that Hobbes never changed his mind about rhetoric.

1650 年未经授权出版的《法律要素》将霍布斯的论文分成与他自己的工作分工不一致的两部分。这掩盖了可以说是对霍布斯方法最重要的洞察力：他对人类如何使用语言来煽动和安抚他人的描述。我回顾了元素出版历史的证据导致 I.13 和 I.14 之间出现霍布斯不打算的中断。然后我争辩说，作为对霍布斯用来抵制危险教条主义者和安抚同胞的方法的描述，所讨论的讨论在一部旨在供私人传播的作品中是有意义的，但在那些被那些被关注的人阅读的论文中却没有意义。方法是要应用的。我展示了如何按照霍布斯的意图将 I.13 和 I.14 一起阅读，这表明霍布斯从未改变过他对修辞的看法。