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...
Prevailing ideas on this subject.-Its importance in the science of politics. - I. Voluntary and involuntary action distinguished. -ln- ferences. -Opinion of certain religionists on this subject -of certain philosophers. -Conclusion. -II. Self-deception considered -Custom, or habit delineated. -Actions proceeding from this source imperfectly voluntary. -Subtlety of the mind. -Tendency of our progressive im- provements. -Application. -III. Comparative powers of sense and reason. -Nature of sensual gratification. -Its evident inferiority. - Objection from the priority of sensible impressions refuted from analogy -from the progressive power of other impressions -from ex- perience. Inference. -IV. Vulgar errors. -Meanings of the word passion -1. ardor-2. delusion -3. appetite -of the word nature. - V. Corollaries. -Truth will prevail over error -capable of being ade- quately communicated -omnipotent. -Vice...
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...