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 IX OF THE MECHANISM OF THE HUMAN MIND Nature of Mechanism. - Its classes, material and intellectual. - Material system, or of vibra- tions. - The intellectual system most probable - from the consideration that thought would otherwise be a superfluity - from the established principles of reasoning from effects to causes. - Objections refuted. - Thoughts which pro- duce animal motion may be - I. involuntary - 2. unattended witk consciousness. - The mind cannot have more than one thought at any one time. - Objection to this assertion from the case of complex ideas- from various mental oper- ations - as comparison - apprehension. - Rapidity of the succession of ideas. - Appli- cation. - Duration measured by consciousness. - 3. a distinct thought to each motion may be unnecessary - apparent from the complexity of sensible impressions. - The mind always thinks. - Conclusion. - The theory applied to the phenomenon...
THOUGHTS ON MAN, HIS NATURE, PRODUCTIONS AND DISCOVERIES INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE AUTHOR by WILLIAM GODWIN Oh, the blood more stirs To rouse a lion, than to start a hare! - SHAKESPEARE LONDON: EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 1831. PREFACE In the ensuing volume I have attempted to give a defined and permanent form to a variety of thoughts, which have occurred to my mind in the course of thirty-four years, it being so long since I published a volume, entitled, the Enquirer,--thoughts, which, if they have presented themselves to other men, have, at least so far as I am aware, never been given to the public through the medium of the press. During a part of this period I had remained to a considerable degree unoccupied in my character of an author, and...