Excerpt from Our Public Life I Have here tried to present a systematic speculative account of the nature and need for such important groups as society, state, culture, and civilization. The very attempt will provoke skepticism in some and disinterest in others. The public we together constitute and inhabit is so complex, so unstable in form, in content, and in direction as to make every systematic study of it suspect. And there is so much of the contingent, the adventitious, the purely arbitrary in our public life that it is easy to feel that one has time and interest for little more than those words of practical wisdom which can be provided only by men who have had a long and rich experience in public life. Speculations seem to be too arid, too impractical, too alien in spirit and result to what goes on every day to make it worth one's while to engage in them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.

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