NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 



The philosophical work, which followed in 

 England immediately after Locke's " Essay," was 

 Hume's " Treatise of Human Nature," published 

 in 1739. It cannot be regarded as an advance 

 beyond Locke, nor is it superior to the work of 

 the French materialists. Hume was a better his- 

 torian than philosopher, but even as a historian 

 he fell far below Vico, who in the beginning of 

 the 1 8th century had made an attempt to substi- 

 tute for the theological conception of history a 

 method which regarded historical events as the 

 fulfillment of natural laws. Nor was Hume the 

 equal of Gibbon, who, in 1776, published his " De- 

 cline and Fall of the Roman Empire," in which 

 faint traces of an evolutionary conception of his- 

 tory appear. On the other hand, Rousseau's 

 " Contrat Social" published in 1762, was but a 

 feeble attempt to explain the origin of human so- 

 cieties, without the slightest recognition of the 

 basic factors of social evolution. 



A brighter light falls upon this historical pe- 

 riod from the department of mathematics, crim- 

 inology, and economics. In mathematics, the idea 

 of continuity led to the introduction of evolu- 

 tionary ideas into natural science. Buffon, who 

 had entered the French Academy as a geometri- 

 cian, introduced the continuity-idea into his " His- 



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