Johannes Althusius, the German legal and political philosopher, was born at Diedenshausen, a village of the county of Wittgenstein-Berleburg in the Westphalian Circle. He is thought to have been the son of a farmer, although all data of his early youth are quite unknown. By 1581 he was studying Aristotle in Cologne, and he later studied Roman law at Basel. His experience of the Swiss way of life gave him a predilection for municipal freedom and self-government and for republican constitutionalism. Although deeply influenced by Calvinist piety, he was eager to become a learned classical scholar. The forces of Christian faith, humanistic learning, and democratic feeling formed his character. He was both a man of strong will with a tendency to stubbornness and an austere moralist. It is, therefore, not surprising that he was a rigorous logical thinker and a systematic teacher as well as...