INTRODUCTION I endeavour also to avoid jargon and to write suYciently clearly for my history to attract those who read philosophy not for curricular purposes but for their own enlightenment and entertainment This has been the easier to since in the case of many of my historical subjects I write of necessity as an amateur rather than as a professional In an age when the academic study of past philosophers has expanded exponentially, no one person can read more than a fraction of the vast secondary literature that has proliferated in recent years around every one of the thinkers discussed in this volume I have myself contributed to the scholarly discussion of some of the great philosophers of the early modern age, in particular Descartes; and I have published monographs on some of the subjects covered by my thematic chapters, such as the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion But in compiling the bibliography for the volume I was made aware how vast was the extent of material I have not read in comparison with the amount that I am familiar with Any single author who attempts to cover the entire history of philosophy is quickly made aware that in matters of detail he is at an enormous disadvantage in comparison with the scholars who have made individual philosophers their Weld of expertise By compensation, a history written by a single hand may be able to emphasize features of the history of philosophy that are less obvious in the works of committees of specialists, just as an aerial photograph may bring out features of a landscape that are almost invisible to those close to the ground To someone approaching the early modern period of philosophy from an ancient and medieval background the most striking feature of the age is the absence of Aristotle from the philosophic scene To be sure, in the period covered by this volume the study of Aristotle continued in the academic establishment, and at Oxford University there has never been a time since its foundation when Aristotle was not taught But the other striking characteristic of our period, which marks it oV from both the Middle Ages and the twentieth century, is that it was a time when philosophy was most energetically pursued not within universities but outside them Of all the great thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, none before WolV and Kant held professorships of philosophy Both good and evil consequences resulted when philosophy turned its back on Aristotle For philosophy in the broad sense—philosophy as it was understood during most of our period, to include the physical sciences as xii