Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, Chapter 46 summary

What happens

1. The speaker separates philosophy from experience, false conclusions, revelation, and reliance on books, then connects its growth with peace and leisure.
2. He traces schools and universities, arguing that inherited authority and neglect of geometry undermine their claims to knowledge.
3. He attacks separated essences and scholastic explanations of nature as verbal confusions rather than accounts of causes.
4. He rejects private appetite as a public moral standard and criticizes teachings about marriage, tyranny, and government by laws alone.
5. He defends lawful freedom to teach, rejects forced disclosure of private beliefs, and places legal interpretation under sovereign authority.
6. He challenges ghost stories and ecclesiastical suppression of scientific arguments, reserving legitimate coercive authority to the civil state.

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