The work which forms the substance of this edition was formerly known in the shape of two separate treatises, of which the former, containing the first thirteen chapters of the first part of the Elements of Law, was entitled Human Nature; or the Fundamental Elements of Policy. Being a discovery of the faculties, acts, and passions of the soul of man, from their original causes: according to such philosophical principles as are not commonly known or asserted. The second treatise contained the rest of the first, together with the second part, and was entitled De Corpore Politico; or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politic, with discourses upon moral heads, as: of the law of nature; of oaths and covenants; of several kinds of government, with the changes and revolutions of them.
This edition is a 2023 modernised version of the edition published in 1889 by the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936).
