'The Wilderness of this World': John Bunyan and the State of Nature

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 12; p. 22
• Main Author: Sim, Stuart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2006
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Hobbes, for example, pictures us in deeply unflattering light as self-seeking individuals whose nature has to be ruthlessly policed by an absolute authority if we are to have any personal security at all in our lives: his state of nature being the infamous one of a 'nasty, brutish, and short' existence, where mere survival is the highest aspiration anyone realistically can have.3 Although it met with official disapproval, from the Anglican church hierarchy as much as anyone, Hobbes 's pessimism nevertheless struck a chord amongst many at the time, particularly in intellectual circles. Success in this activity can lead to both political and material gain. [...]Winstanley's 'common treasury' of the Earth's riches soon falls prey to the unscrupulous few, against the natural order of things as Winstanley understands them: but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule oyer another. There are interesting affinities to be noted between Hobbes's conception of our natural state, a 'wane of every man against every man', and the psychological landscape of Calvinist theology and the literature that emerges from that tradition.7 What those affinities are will be explored in John Bunyan's fiction, with particular attention being paid to The Pilgrim's Progress and the impact on Christian's psychology of having to cope with a pilgrimage through a state of nature, with all its attendant dangers to his person.8 Bunyan will be contextualised within the debate over the state of nature that is raging in the later seventeenth century, and what it reveals about humankind's difficulties in constructing lasting political settlements: a topic of no less interest to us now in a world of geopolitical turmoil than it was to Bunyan's contemporaries in the aftermath of civil war and various destabilising succession crises, under both monarchical and republican regimes. Here, Christian and Faithful are ganged up on by the inhabitants, bearing out Hobbes's point that no matter how strong or quick-witted the individual may be, he or she can be overcome by the superior force of other individuals acting in concert against them: 'For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.'26 The Fair is a world entirely without God's grace, set up by the forces of evil to waylay unsuspecting pilgrims: they contrived here to set up a Fair; a Fair wherein should be sold of all sorts of Vanity, and that it should last all the year long. [...]at this Fair are all such Merchandize sold, as Houses, Lands, Trades, Places, Honours, Preferments, Titles, Countreys, Kingdoms, Lusts, Pleasures, and Delights of all sorts, as Whores, Bauds, Wives, Husbands, Children, Masters, Servants, Lives, Blood, Bodies, Souls, Silver, Gold, Pearls, Precious Stones, and what not.