Excerpt from The Liberal State: A Speculation It was not, of course, the actual religious and social systems of Egyptian or Chaldaean or mediaeval Christian priests that thinkers like Plato or Comte desired to impose on what they regarded as the contemporary dissolution, Athenian or European. Human life, in their view, ought to be guided by rational insight arrived at after the most penetrating inquiry, not by an immemorial system of custom and tradition, however much in some moods they might admire this. Yet their object at last came to be the imposition of a new system, modifiable in detail when there was suffi cient intelligence among the rulers, but in the main to be accepted henceforth as laid down. 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.