A Short History of Freethought

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Excerpt from A Short History of Freethought: Ancient and ModernAlthough the first edition of this work, consisting of copies, was exhausted within a year of its publica tion it has not been reprinted, by reason of the author's dissatisfaction with its incompleteness. Origi nally planned as a mere sketch, reproducing a course of lectures, it approached, in the process of writing, some what to the character of a detailed and precise though curt record. Its omissions, however, were still so numerous that the author, on retrospect, determined to te-write the work before re-issuing it. The new edition, accordingly, ' is greatly expanded in every section, by many hundreds of specific additions. A number ot chapters are more than doubled in length, new chapters are inserted, and the book, which now appears in two volumes, is more than twice its former Size, though, the author hopes, it still preserves the character of couden sation. At the same time it has of course been scrupulously revised with regard to accuracy.That it is still an inadequate survey of a great field, no one, perhaps, knows much better than the author. The scheme, even when limited as far as may be by a tolerably strict definition, involves some approach to an outline of the history Of human progress on the side of the intellectual life, and the immensity of that under taking may be inferred from the fact that the late Lord Acton, a prodigy of erudition, who spent many years of his life in gathering materials for a History of Liberty.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis 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.