BIBLIOGRAPHY
Almost any book on the history of political, social, meta-
physical, or religious ideas contains relevant material. This
bibliography contains only a small selection of the secondary
material, concentrating, for the most part, on recent work
which contains further bibliographies. For the theme as a
whole see John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (London,
1970; New York, 1971). On the general concept of perfec-
tion see M. Foss, The Idea of Perfection in the Western
World (Princeton, 1964).
On the Greeks: A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge
History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy
(Cambridge, 1967); F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides
(London, 1939; reprint 1950); E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and
the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951); idem, Pagan and Christian
in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965); W. K. C. Guthrie,
A History of Greek Philosophy, 3 vols. (Cambridge,
1962-70); G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philos-
ophers (Cambridge, 1957).
On Christianity and perfection, useful general works
include: R. N. Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Christian
Theology (Oxford, 1934; reprint 1968); R. Garrigou-
Lagrange, Perfection chrétienne et contemplation selon saint
Thomas d'Aquin et saint Jean de la Croix (Saint-Maximin,
1923); James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, Vol. 9 (Edinburgh, 1917): articles on “Original Sin,”
“Pelagianism,” “Perfection”; K. E. Kirk, The Vision of God,
2nd ed. (London, 1932; reprint New York, 1966); R. A. Knox,
Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950; corr. reprint 1951); B. B.
Warfield, Perfectionism, 2 vols. (London, 1931-32).
On more specialized topics, see for example: N. Cohn,
The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, 1957); Hannah
Whitall Smith, Religious Fanaticism, ed. R. Strachey
(London, 1928); N. P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and
of Original Sin (London, 1927); Robert McL. Wilson, The
Gnostic Problem (London, 1958); H. A. Wolfson, Philo:
Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity
and Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1947; 1962); R. C.
Zaehner, Mysticism, Sacred and Profane (Oxford, 1957).
On non-Christian perfectibilism see: E. Conze, ed.,
Buddhist Scriptures (Harmondsworth, 1959); M. Smith, ed.,
Readings from the Mystics of Islam (London, 1950); R. C.
Zaehner, ed., Hindu Scriptures (London, 1966).
For Enlightenment perfectibilism see: J. B. Bury, The Idea
of Progress (London, 1924; later reprints); Ernst Cassirer,
Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (Tübingen, 1932), trans. as
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1951);
R. S. Crane, The Idea of the Humanities, 2 vols. (Chicago
1967); Peter Gay,
The Enlightenment (New York, 1966);
idem,
The Party of Humanity (Princeton, 1959; London,
1964); Arthur O. Lovejoy,
The Great Chain of Being
(Cambridge, Mass., 1936); idem,
Reflections on Human
Nature (Baltimore, 1961); J. A. Passmore, “The Malleability
of Man in Eighteenth-Century Thought,”
Aspects of the
Eighteenth Century, ed. Earl R. Wasserman (Baltimore,
1965); B. R. Pollin,
Education and Enlightenment in the
Works of William Godwin (New York, 1962); Joseph
Priestley,
Priestley's Writings on Philosophy, Science and
Politics, ed. J. A. Passmore (New York, 1965).
Post-Enlightenment perfectibilism: Ernst Benz, Schöp-
fungsglaube und Endzeiterwartung (Munich, 1965), trans. as
Evolution and Christian Hope (New York, 1966); C. P.
Blacker, Eugenics: Galton and After (London, 1952); A.
Bose, A History of Anarchism (Calcutta, 1967); D. G.
Charlton, Secular Religions in France, 1815-1870 (London,
1963); Theodore Denno, The Communist Millennium (The
Hague, 1964); Élie Halévy, La Formation du radicalisme
philosophique, 3 vols. (Paris, 1901-04), trans. as The Growth
of Philosophic Radicalism, new ed. corr. (London, 1952);
Julian Huxley, Man in the Modern World (London, 1947);
James Joll, The Anarchists (London, 1964); F. E. Manuel,
The Prophets of Paris (Cambridge, Mass., 1962); idem,
Shapes of Philosophical History (Stanford, 1965); J. D.
Roslansky, ed., Genetics and the Future of Man, Nobel
Conference Discussion, 1965 (Amsterdam, 1966).
For twentieth-century antiperfectibilist writings, see:
T. S. Molnar, Utopia: The Perennial Heresy (New York, 1967);
Chad Walsh, From Utopia to Nightmare (London, 1962).
JOHN PASSMORE
[See also Anarchism; Buddhism; Death and Immortality;
Education;
Enlightenment; Evolutionism; Gnosticism; God;
Happiness; Platonism;
Progress; Sin; Stoicism;
Utopia.]
