Excerpt from Liberty and the Great Libertarians: An Anthology on Liberty, a Hand-Book of Freedom Libertarian: One who upholds the principle of liberty, especially individual liberty of thought and action. - Webster's New International Dictionary. It is in the sense defined above that the word Libertarian is used throughout this book. In Metaphysics, a Libertarian is one who believes in the doctrine of freedom of the will, as opposed to necessitarianism. As the Libertarians quoted are nearly all believers in determinism (the opposite of the theory of "free will"), and as the questions they discuss are all sociological, they must not be confounded with the advocates of free will in metaphysical discussions. It will be noticed that the Libertarians cited are chosen from different political parties and economic schools; there are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Single-Taxers, Anarchists, and Woman's Rights advocates; and it will be perceived, also, that these master minds are in perfect accord when treating of liberty. To point out that some of them are not always consistent in their application of the principles of liberty is no valid argument against it, but merely shows that they did not accept liberty as their guiding principle, nor perhaps believe in its universal application. The principle of equal liberty has been approached from many standpoints by these writers and applied to various fields. The only question we have here to consider is whether they have proved that liberty in particular human relations is a logical deduction from correct reasoning; and this the writer maintains they have done. It is shown by the writers quoted that liberty has been applied to various fields, and has proved successful wherever tried. Many of the earlier Libertarians, living in different countries, wrote without knowledge of the others; yet the reader will detect a note of harmony between them. 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.