SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



him to furnish the proof for Bacon's fundamental 

 principle that all human understanding arises 

 from the world of sensations. On the other hand, 

 he was the first of the modern natural philoso- 

 phers to make a clear distinction between the nat- 

 ural and social environment and to realize that 

 social activity is a part of the general activity of 

 the universe. In his " Leviathan," published in 

 1651, he says: "The register of knowledge of 

 fact is called history. Whereof there be two 

 sorts, one called natural history, which is the his- 

 tory of such facts or effects of nature as have no 

 dependence on man's will, such as the histories 

 of metals, plants, animals, regions, and the like. 

 The other is civil history, which is the history of 

 the voluntary actions of men in commonwealths." 

 The modern monist will find much to criticise in 

 these definitions, but they mark nevertheless an 

 advance in the evolution of thought as compared 

 to the ideas of his predecessors and contempora- 

 ries. 



In Leibniz and Spinoza, Descartes found allies 

 who contributed much toward the prolongation 

 of the life of metaphysics, and theistic idealism 

 had an eloquent spokesman in Berkeley. Even a 

 man of Newton's mathematical mind remained a 

 lifelong captive of dualistic ideas and his concep- 



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