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English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine (1899)
English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine - 1899 Author:William Graham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of society itself. Once tho spirit of doubt or dissent appeared, it W;ih Imril In stop it. The Anabaptista were a political as well ?s a religious seet, and in t... more »beir rising in Germany attacked property, and declared for communism, as in the primitive Clnnvh. In the chaos of opinion it became a most important matter to inquire if a natural scientific foundation could be found for religion, morals, and politics ; a foundation on which a sound structure could be reared, that would remain, firm no matter what people thought aliut supernatural religion. Could the great truths of natural religion bo discovered by reason1 Could morality be placed on a base independent of the teaching of all or any of the Churches 1 Could tho origin of government and law, and tho relations between governors and governed, be ascertained by reason apart from revelation, so that even doubters or deniers of revelation would bo obliged by their reason to accept the conclusions ns sound, and generally beneficial t It was from the urgent need of answers to these questions that modern philosophy in all its branches, metaphysical, moral, and political, was Iirn ; and Descartes and Spinoza attempted to supply the answer to tho first of these, the metaphysical, which included the question of natural religion ; Hobl the answer to all three of them, but especially the moral and political questions which with him arc inseparably connected. It is also to be noted that in addition to the need of knowledge there was a spirit of disinterested curiosity in the air, a desire for knowledge for its own sake, ns well as for the advantages, " tho fruit," ns Bacon called it, which it might bring to men. From tho Renaissance onward, there was this strong desire not merely to acquire the best classical learning, but to make conq...« less