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...
CHAPTER IV1 THE CHARACTERS OF MEN ORIGINATE IN THEIR EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES. Theory of the human mind.--Subjects of the present chapter--of the next.--Erroneous opinions refuted.--I. Innate principles.--This hypothesis, 1, superflous--2, unsatisfactory--3, absurd.--II. In- stincts.--Examination of this doctrine--of the arguments by which it has been enforced: from the early actions of infants--from the desire of self-preservation--from self-love--from pity.--III. Effects of antenatal impressions and original structure.--Variableness of the characters of men.--Ease with which impressions may be counter- acted.--Form of the infant undetermined.--Habits of men and other animals compared.--Inference.--Importance of these speculations.-- IV. Reasonings of the present chapter applied.--Three sorts of edu- cation--1, accident--2, precept--3, political institution.
ESSAY III OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION In the preceding Essay I have endeavored to establish the proposition, that every human creature, idiots and extraordinary cases excepted, is endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organization especially fitted him. There is however a sort of phenomenon, by no means of rare occurrence, which tends to place the human species under a less favorable point of view. Many men, as has already appeared, are forced into situations and pursuits ill assorted to their talents, and by that means are exhibited to their contemporaries in a light both despicable and ludicrous. But this is not all. Men are not only placed, by the absurd choice of their parents, or an imperious concurrence of circumstances, in destinations and employments in which they can never appear to advantage: they frequently, without any external compulsion, se...