ABSTRACT
The general strategy of referring what one hears or reads to definitions, and then seeing whether contradictions or implausibilities follow, is foreshadowed in Hobbes's account of scientific method. The last thing one should do if one has scientific pretensions is to become a mouthpiece for what one hears and reads; the last thing someone should do, if he pretends to be rational, is just accept what seems plausible or allow himself to be overwhelmed by a demagogue's eloquence. Hobbes shows how the persuasiveness of a demagogue's case can evaporate when its content is critically examined, and in his chapters on sedition he tries to establish how the very practice of the demagogue - the 'habit of putting together passionate words, and applying them to the present passions of the hearer' - taints anything the demagogue conveys.
