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[Illustration: Plato]




  THE WORLD'S
  GREATEST
  BOOKS


  JOINT EDITORS

  ARTHUR MEE
  Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge

  J. A. HAMMERTON
  Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia


  VOL. XIV

  PHILOSOPHY
  (CONTINUED)

  ECONOMICS

  WM. H. WISE & CO.




  _Table of Contents_


  PORTRAIT OF PLATO                  _Frontispiece_


  PHILOSOPHY (_continued_)

  HEGEL, G.W.F.      PAGE
  The Philosophy of History                      1

  HUME, DAVID
  Essays, Moral and Political                   13

  KANT, IMMANUEL
  The Critique of Pure Reason                   24
  The Critique of Practical Reason              34

  LEWES, GEORGE HENRY
  A History of Philosophy                       45

  LOCKE, JOHN
  Concerning the Human Understanding            56

  MONTAIGNE
  Essays                                        64

  PLATO
  The Apology, or Defence of Socrates           75
  The Republic                                  84

  SCHOPENHAUER
  The World as Will and Idea                    99

  SENECA, L. ANNAEUS
  On Benefits                                  109

  SPENCER, HERBERT
  Education      120
  Principles of Biology                        133
  Principles of Sociology                      145

  SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE
  Ethics                                       160


  ECONOMICS

  BELLAMY, EDWARD
  Looking Backward                             173

  BENTHAM, JEREMY
  Principles of Morals and Legislation         186

  BLOCH, JEAN
  The Future of War                            199

  BURKE, EDMUND
  Reflections on the Revolution in France      212

  COMTE, AUGUSTE
  A Course of Positive Philosophy              224

  GEORGE, HENRY
  Progress and Poverty                         238

  HOBBES, THOMAS
  The Leviathan                                249

  MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO
  The Prince                                   261

  MALTHUS, T.R.
  On the Principle of Population               270

  MARX, KARL
  Capital: A Critical Analysis                 282

  MILL, JOHN STUART
  Principles of Political Economy              294

  MONTESQUIEU
  The Spirit of Laws                           306

  MORE, SIR THOMAS
  Utopia Nowhere Land                          315

  PAINE, THOMAS
  The Rights of Man                            324

  ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES
  The Social Contract                          337

  SMITH, ADAM
  Wealth of Nations                            350

       *       *       *       *       *

A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
of Volume XX.




_Acknowledgment_


Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to use the following selections
are herewith tendered to Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston, for
"Looking Backward," by Edward Bellamy; to Ginn & Company, Boston, for
the International School of Peace, for "The Future of War," by Jean
Bloch; and to Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, for "Progress and
Poverty," by Henry George.




_Philosophy_

HEGEL

The Philosophy of History

     Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on August 27, 1770, at
     Stuttgart, the capital of Wuertemburg, in which state his father
     occupied a humble position in government service. He was educated
     at Tuebingen for the ministry, and while there was, in private, a
     diligent student of Kant and Rousseau. In 1805 he was Professor
     Extraordinarius at the University of Jena, and in 1807 he gave the
     world the first of his great works, the "Phenomenology." It was not
     until 1816 that Hegel's growing fame as a writer secured for him a
     professorship at Heidelberg, but, after two years, he exchanged it
     for one at Berlin, where he remained until his death on November
     14, 1831. On October 22, 1818, he began his famous lectures. "Our
     business and vocation," he remarked to his listeners, "is to
     cherish the philosophical development of the substantial foundation
     which has renewed its youth and increased its strength." Although
     the lectures on the "Philosophy of History" and on the "Philosophy
     of Religion" (Vol. XIII) were delivered during this period, they
     were not published until a year after his death, when his collected
     works were issued.


_I.--In the East Began History_

Universal or world-history travels from east to west, for Europe is
absolutely the end of history, Asia the beginning. The history of the
world has an east in an absolute sense, for, although the earth forms a
sphere, history describes no orbit round it, but has, on the contrary, a
determinate orient--_viz._, Asia. Here rises the outward visible sun,
and in the west it sinks down; here also rises the sun of
self-consciousness. The history of the world is a discipline of the
uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal
principle and conferring a subjective freedom. The East knew, and to
this day knows, freedom only for one; the Greek and Roman world knew
that some are free; the German world knows that all are free. The first
political form, therefore, that we see in history is despotism; the
second democracy and aristocracy; and the third monarchy.

The first phase--that with which we have to begin--is the East.
Unreflected consciousness--substantial, objective, spiritual
existence--forms the basis; to which the subjective will first sustains
a relation in the form of faith, confidence, obedience. In the political
life of the East we find realised national freedom, developing itself
without advancing to subjective freedom. It is the childhood of history.
In the gorgeous edifices of the Oriental empires we find all national
ordinances and arrangements, but in such a way that individuals remain
as mere accidents. These revolve round a centre, round the sovereign,
who as patriarch stands (not as despot, in the sense of the Roman
imperial constitution) at the head. For he has to enforce the moral and
substantial; he has to uphold those essential ordinances which are
already established; so that what among us belongs entirely to
subjective freedom, here proceeds from the entire and general body of
the state.

The glory of the Oriental conception is the one individual as the
substantial being to which all belongs, so that no other individual has
a separate existence, or mirrors himself in his subjective freedom. All
the riches of imagination and nature are appropriated to that dominant
existence in which subjective freedom is essentially merged; the latter
looks for its dignity not in itself but in the absolute object. All the
elements of a complete state--even subjectivity--may be found there, but
not yet harmonised with the grand substantial being. For outside the one
power--before which nothing can maintain an independent existence--there
is only revolting caprice, which, beyond the limits of the central
power, moves at will without purpose or result.

Accordingly we find the wild herds breaking out from the upland,
falling upon the countries in question and laying them waste, or
settling down in them and giving up their wild life; but in all cases
lost resultlessly in the central substance.

This phase of substantiality, since it has not taken up its antithesis
into itself and overcome it, directly divides itself into two elements.
On the one side we see duration, stability--empires belonging, as it
were, to mere Space (as distinguished from Time); unhistorical history,
as, for example, in China, the state based on the family relation. Yet
the states in question, without undergoing any change in themselves, or
in the principle of their existence, are constantly changing their
opinion towards each other. They are in ceaseless conflict, which brings
on rapid destruction. The opposing principle of individuality enters
into these conflicting relations; but it is itself as yet only
unconscious, merely natural universality--light which is not yet the
light of the personal soul. This history, too, is for the most part
really unhistorical, for it is only the repetition of the same majestic
ruin.

The new element which, in the shape of bravery, prowess, magnanimity,
occupies the place of the previous despotic pomp goes through the same
cycle of decline and subsidence. And this subsidence, therefore, is not
really such; for through all this restless change no advance has been
made. History passes at this point--and only outwardly, that is, without
connection with the previous phase--to Central Asia. To carry on the
comparison with the individual man, this would be the boyhood of
history, no longer manifesting the repose and trustfulness of the child,
but boisterous and turbulent.


_II.--Greece, Rome and Christianity_

The Greek world may, then, be compared to the season of adolescence, for
here we have individualities shaping themselves. This is the second
main principle in human history. Morality is, as in Asia, a principle,
but it is morality impressed on individuality, and consequently denoting
the free volition of individuals. Here, then, is the union of the moral
with the subjective will, or the kingdom of beautiful freedom, for the
idea is united with a plastic form. It is not yet regarded abstractly,
but intimately bound up with the real, as in a beautiful work of art;
the sensible bears the stamp and expression of the spiritual. The
kingdom is consequently true harmony; it is a world of the most charming
but perishable, or quickly passing, bloom; it is the natural,
unreflecting observance of what is becoming--not yet true morality. The
individual will of the subject adopts without reflection the conduct and
habit prescribed by justice and the laws. The individual is, therefore,
in unconscious unity with the idea--the social weal.

The third phase is the realm of abstract universality (in which the
social aim absorbs all individual aims); it is the Roman state, the
severe labours of the manhood of history. For true manhood acts neither
in accordance with the caprice of a despot nor in obedience to a
graceful caprice of its own. It works for a general aim, one in which
the individual perishes and realises his own private object only in that
general aim. The state begins to have an abstract existence and to
develop itself for a definite object, in accomplishing