"The true object of moral and political disquisition is pleasure or happiness. The primary, or earliest, class of human pleasure is the pleasures of external senses. In addition to these, man is susceptible of certain secondary pleasures, as the pleasures of intellectual feeling, the pleasures of sympathy, and the pleasures of self-approbation. The secondary pleasures are probably more exquisite than the primary; Or, at least, The most desirable state of man is that in which he has access to all these sources of pleasure, and is in possession of a happiness the most varied and uninterrupted. This state is a state of high civilization."
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Historians from EnglandAtheists from EnglandNovelists from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandAnarchists
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Summary of Principles 1.1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Godwin
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William Godwin
William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher, educationalist, novelist, historian and biographer. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism. He was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, father of Mary Shelley and father-in-law of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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