Excerpt from The History of Utopian Thought This book embodies two related and yet distinct types of sociological endeavor. It is a study in the history of social thought, a field which has only been receiving serious and widespread attention in recent years, and attempts to give an historical cross-section of representative Utopian thought. But it is also a study in social idealism, a study in the origin, selection and potency of those social ideas and ideals that occasional and usually exceptional men conceive, with particular emphasis upon their relation to social progress. The merit that I can hope for this book lies in the fact that, to my knowledge, it is the first book that attempts to give an unprejudiced, systematic treatment of the social Utopias as a whole. Its errors and weaknesses are those which all trail blazers have; for that reason suggestion and criticism are invited. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to friends and colleagues for assistance of various kinds, to my wife for her painstaking aid in the verification of footnotes and the preparation of the manuscript, but above all to my teacher and colleague. Prof. E. A. Ross, for his constant encouragement, suggestion, and kindly criticism through the years this book has been in preparation. 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.