Thomas Hobbes saw humans as purely mechanical devices. External objects press against us in one way or another, setting off a chain reaction of interior pulleys, wheels, and ratchets that engage one another and result in some version of “Cuckoo!” escaping our lips. In some way that he saw no need to explain, the motions of our inner works are paired up with the contents of our experiences: our ideas, premonitions, appetites, urges, and fears. And so when one idle thought casually links up with another, there is at the same time some mechanical action causally linking up with another.

Hobbes offered an example of what seems like a “free” association in fact being causally determined by a host of associations and traces of memory:

For in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the 30 pence which was the price of treason; and thence easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time, for thought is quick.

Set aside the political point of the example, with the gratuitous comparison of Charles I with Our Lord and Savior. We might instead wonder who it was who raised such an “impertinent” question? Of course, it may have been just some fellow with whom Hobbes was conversing one day. Or, if you run a search on Early English Books Online, looking for any tract concerning ancient coins published during the civil war but before Hobbes’s publication of Leviathan (1651), you will find exactly one: The Scripture Calendar, Used by the Prophets and Apostles, and by our Lord Jesus Christ, paralleld with the new Stile, and Measures, Weights, Coyns, Customes, and Language, of Gods ancient people, and of Primitive Christians (London: printed by M. B. for the Company of Stationers, 1649), written by the clergyman Henry Jessey (1603-1663). For the most part, Jessey’s work is an estimation of just where notable Biblical events happened to fall on the calendar. But he also translated ancient measures and weights to more contemporary ones, and briefly calculated the contemporary values of several ancient coins, according to their weight in silver. In his estimation, the Roman penny, or drachma, was perhaps worth about seven pence. So that’s settled.

Jessey was an apt target for Hobbes’s example, as he was a somewhat radical Protestant and supported the revolution. Jessey would have been the sort of guy Hobbes would seek to skewer. More specifically, Jessey was a “Particular Baptist”, which is a baptist who restricts holy communion only to fellow Particular Baptists. A fellow member of this sect was a guy named “Praisegod Barebone” (c. 1598-1679), which you would think is one of the greatest names ever, at least until you learned that in fact his given name was “Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone”. Good ole UJCHDFTTHBD Barbone was a leather worker who also offered the occasional brimstoney sermon, and was imprisoned for some time in the Tower because of the religious ruckus he stirred up. Praisegod was rewarded later by Cromwell with a position in the Nominated Assembly (the rebels’ form of parliament), which was ridiculed by its critics as “Barebone’s Parliament”.

Praisegod Barebone (Wikipedia)

Praisegod had a son with the considerably less flashy name “Nicholas Barbon” (1640-1698). Nicholas had a greater measure of worldly sense, and was one of several entrepreneurs who hit upon the idea of selling fire insurance in the aftermath of the London Fire in 1666. He seems to have been an expert manipulator, gathering his creditors into an ornate dining room and affecting such aggressive bonhomie as to guilt them into backing off on their demands. He is known today as an early “scientific” economist, as he thought in theoretical terms about the value of the tarnished lucre he was accumulating. He realized that it really did not matter what rare metals coins are made of, so long as everyone agrees to treat them as valuable. He argued for this view against John Locke, who viewed money as itself a commodity whose value depended on relative scarcity. (For more, see this account.) In the end, there may have been some truth in both views: money is what people think it is, but people at that time did think of money as valuable precisely because of the precious metals involved. Hence it was important to keep the pound as sound as a pound, which is why someone no less than Isaac Newton was assigned the role of Keeper of the Mint.

So, in all, it would seem that Hobbes was wrong, and it was not “impertinent” at all to speculate in the midst of civil war upon the value of the Roman penny.  Anyone trying to manage a government, let alone a revolution, would do well to pay attention to such things.