History of Western Philosophy

Before embarking upon any detail, it will be well to consider the general pattern of the liberal movements from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. This pattern is at first simple, but grows gradually more and more complex. The distinctive character of the whole movement is, in a certain wide sense, individualism;

Galileo held, as against this view, that every body, if let alone, will continue to move in a straight line with uniform velocity; any change, either in the rapidity or the direction of motion, requires to be explained as due to the action of some “force.” This principle was enunciated by Newton as the “first law of motion.” It is also called the l

CHAPTER XII The Influence of Sparta

The chief transmitter of English influence to France was Voltaire.

Leibniz has an infinite number of clocks, all arranged by the Creator to strike at the same instant, not because they affect each other, but because each is a perfectly accurate mechanism. To those who thought the pre-established harmony odd, Leibniz pointed out what admirable evidence it afforded of the existence of God.

THE attacks upon the Eastern Empire, Africa, and Spain differed from those of Northern barbarians on the West in two respects: first, the Eastern Empire survived till 1453, nearly a thousand years longer than the Western; second, the main attacks upon the Eastern Empire were made by Mohammedans, who did not become Christians after conquest, but dev

Gradually, however, subjectivism invaded men’s feelings as well as their doctrines. Science was no longer cultivated, and only virtue was thought important. Virtue, as conceived by Plato, involved all that was then possible in the way of mental achievement; but in later centuries it came to be thought of, increasingly, as involving only the virtuou

Stoicism is less Greek than any school of philosophy with which we have been hitherto concerned.

To come to a more general matter: Aristotelian physics is incompatible with Newton’s “First Law of Motion,” originally enunciated by Galileo. This law states that every body, left to itself, will, if already in motion, continue to move in a straight line with uniform velocity. Thus outside causes are required, not to account for motion, but to acco