Inquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin 1793 INQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MORALS AND HAPPINESS BOOK I: OF THE POWERS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN HIS SOCIAL CAPACITY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The object proposed in the following work is an investigation concerning that form of public or political society, that system of intercourse and reciprocal action, extending beyond the bounds of a single family, which shall be found most to conduce to the general benefit. How may the peculiar and independent operation of each individual in the social state most effectually be preserved? How may the security each man ought to possess, as to his life, and the employment of his faculties according to the dictates of his own understanding, be most certainly defended from invasion? How may the indi...
BOOK V Of Legislative and Executive Power CHAPTER II Of Education, the Education of a Prince Nature of monarchy delineated. - School of adversity. - Tendency of superfluity to inspire effeminacy - to deprive us of the benefit of experience - illustrated in the case of princes. - Manner in which they are addressed. -Ineffi- cacy of the instruction bestowed upon them. FIRST then of monarchy; and we will first suppose the succession to the monarchy to be hereditary. In this case we have the additional advantage of considering this distinguished mortal who is thus set over the heads of the rest of his species from the period of his birth. The abstract idea of a king is of an extremely momentous and extraordinary nature; and, though the idea has, by the accident of education, been rendered familiar to us from our infancy, yet perhaps the majority of readers can recollect the period whe...
ESSAY X OF IMITATION AND INVENTION Of the sayings of the wise men of former times none has been oftener repeated than that of Solomon, "The thing that hath been, is that which is; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun." The books of the Old Testament are apparently a collection of the whole literary remains of an ancient and memorable people, whose wisdom may furnish instruction to us, and whose poetry abounds in lofty flights and sublime imagery. How this collection came indiscriminately to be considered as written by divine inspiration, it is difficult to pronounce. The history of the Jews, as contained in the Books of Kings and of Chronicles, certainly did not require the interposition of the Almighty for its production; and the pieces we receive as the compositions of Solomon have conspicuously the air of having emanated from a conception entirely human. In the book of Ecclesiastes, fro...