A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age
John Herman Randall, Jr
WHAT the following pages attempt was stated in the Foreword to the first edition: “This book aims, by entering sympathetically into the spirit of the past, to make the thought of the present more intelligible. Covering so vast a field, it can of course lay little claim to originality; but it does rest, so far as possible, upon a first-hand acquaintance with the words of those who have expressed the intellectual currents -of their times. This explains the abundance of quotation, in which the men of the past themselves give voice to their beliefs; for it has seemed best to try to look at the development of thought with the eyes of those who participated in it.”
In the years since I first set down these words, I have, I trust, learned much, above all from those many students of ideas who have taken the, trouble to instruct my ignorance I wish to thank thorn here collectively for their generous help. If I have not always boon able to incorporate their suggestions, it is not that I have failed to agree. Were I to start the enterprise afresh, I am ftir from wire I should express quite the same judgments. Yet careful consideration has suggested little it seemed imperative to alter, Except for some things I have found out about the birth of modern science, I have been content to leave without major changes the earlier portion of my story. It is the history men have lived rather than the history scholars have discovered that has dictated the thoroughgoing revision of the chapters of Book IV, dealing with the past hundred years (…)
Read more, download the book (721 pages PDF)
