BOOK IV OF THE OPERATION OF OPINION IN SOCIETIES AND INDIVIDUALS CHAPTER V OF THE CULTIVATION OF TRUTH Source of the aristocratical system. - The opposite principle statcd. - Subject of this chapter - of the next. - Importance of science as con- ducing - to our happiness - to our virtue. Virtue the best gift of man - proved by its undecaying excellence - by its manner of adapting itself to all siuations - cannot be effectually propagated but by a cultivated mind. - Misguided virtue considered. - Importance of science to our political improvement. THAT we may adequately understand the power and operation of opinion in meliorating the institutions of society, it is requisite that we should consider the value and energy of truth. There is no topic more fundamental to the principles of political science, or to the reasonings of this work. It is from this point that we may most perspicuously tr...
Note: Godwin wrote this piece, according to a note in the manuscript, "while the Enquirer was in the press, under the impression that the favor of the public might have demanded another volume." The study of history may well be ranked among those pursuits which are most worthy to be chosen by a rational being. The study of history divides itself into two principal branches; the study of mankind in a mass, of the progress the fluctuations, the interests and the vises of society; and the study of the individual. The history of a nation might be written in the first of these senses, entirely in terms of abstraction, and without descending so much as to name one of those individuals to which the nation is composed. It is curious, and it is impo... (From : Anarchy Archives.)