Even if it be said that Priestley has all the vices of that rationalism which, as with Bentham, oversimplifies every problem it encounters, it is yet adequate to retort that a confidence in the energies of men was better than the complacent stagnation of the previous age.
Laski argues that while rationalism may oversimplify problems, it is preferable to the stagnation of the past.
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More from Harold J. Laski
He showed that government by discussion can be made to illuminate great principles.
The more equality there is in a State, the more use, in general, we can make of our freedom.
In a time of crisis, particularly, when the things we hold most dear are threatened, we shall find the desire to throw overboard the habits of tolerance, almost irresistible.
The theory of a state of nature, with the rights therein implied, is the contribution, through Stoicism, of the Roman lawyers, and the great medieval contrast to Aristotle's experimentalism.
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