The Equal Rights Of All Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from Idea of Equality: An Anthology The idea of equality lies embedded in the very foundation of western civilization, in the amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Hebraic-Christian ideas and institutions. In part, it is based upon conceptions of natural right and natural law, which are essential elements of a sound philosophy of man and nature and God. Thus it possesses a considerable history before it receives characteristic statement in the great legal and political documents of the eighteenth century. Since the history of the idea of equality has received much less attention than the history of liberty, this anthology seeks to bring together a wide variety of characteristic statements which reveal the historical development of the idea of equality. There is of course a certain violence done to a man's thought when specific passages from his writings are selected which may contradict what he has written elsewhere or about which he may have later changed his mind. No claim is intended here that the selections are always completely representative of a man's work. The purpose is rather to reveal something of the range and complexity of the development of the idea of equality in western thought. The basic pattern of the development and operation of the idea of equality can be discovered only by a historical study of its empirical data. The question of what equality should mean in practical terms in our contemporary urban and technological civilization characterized by cultural heterogeneity and uncertainty about the value and purpose of an individual's life is indeed a difficult and pressing problem. This anthology does not offer the systematic analysis which this question requires. Its modest hope is that it may give some historical perspective which may illumine and restrain the less flexible analyses of this question. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.