SOURCE: "The Types of Political Thinking," in Democracy and Leadership, 1924. Reprint by Liberty Classics, 1979, pp. 49-92.

In the following excerpt, Babbitt contends that "naturalism" has defined the rise of modern political philosophy. He studies the leading philosophers of the period, including Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu, in relation to how they understood the function of natural law.

Wilson Carey McWilliams on political societies:

All political societies are "many," complex unions of individuals and families, skills and interests, so that Aristotle regarded it as a decisive criticism of Plato's Republic that it seemed to reduce citizenship to a mere unison rather than a harmony. Yet, just as harmony requires some ordering or ruling principle, every political society is also "one," identifiably different from all others, unique. The unity of a political society is thus tied to its identity, an understanding shared by its members of what collectively they are...