ABSTRACT
In large measure, the psychological and philosophical thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be seen as a groping toward a new image of human nature. By the end of the period— specifically, by the middle and later years of the eighteenth century—this new image had been fairly well achieved. In contrast to the ancient human arrogation, the eighteenth-century conception of human nature was roundly impressed by the fundamental similarity and even kinship between men and animals. The new image of human nature tended toward the opposite extreme of thoroughgoing environmentalism. Certainly the most resounding consequence of the new image of human nature was the effect it had upon social and political philosophy. The effect of the new image of human nature, especially of its assertion of intrinsic human equality, was naturally to throw this doctrine out of court.
