Pioneer humanists by J. M. Robertson
Contents:
Machiavelli -- Bacon -- Hobbes -- Spinoza -- Shaftesbury -- Mandeville -- Gibbon -- Mary Wollstonecraft
Machiavelli -- Bacon -- Hobbes -- Spinoza -- Shaftesbury -- Mandeville -- Gibbon -- Mary Wollstonecraft
The following essays, those on Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Spinoza, Gibbon, and Mary Wollstonecraft were contributed originally to The Reformer, and I have to thank Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner for permission to reprint them. That on Shaftesbury was first printed as an introduction to the edition of the Characteristics published in 1900 by Mr. Grant Richards. That on Mandeville appeared first in Our Corner, and later in a volume of Essays towards a Critical Method^ published in 1889 and now out of print. All alike have been revised and expanded.
Some reputations are branded, for whole ages, by an ancestral pre-judgment, a traditionary malediction. Ascertain historic names stand signally for virtue or patriotism or human kindness, others carry a connotation of wickedness, which for the multitude is their net significance. Of such names, Italy has perhaps more than her share.
John Mackinnon Robertson PC was a prolific journalist, advocate of rationalism and secularism, and Liberal Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for Tyneside from 1906 to 1918.
Author: J. M. Robertson
Publication Date:1907
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