ABSTRACT
One of the great stories-perhaps the great story-of the modern West is that of the rise of the rational self and a corresponding decline in religious belief. Some three hundred years ago, in that period from approximately the late seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, it is said that reason came to triumph. As the new philosophy and developing scientific methods began to take hold, an understanding of man as rational, autonomous and in control of the universe emerged In this world-view, revelation, the mystical, belief in miracles and the supernatural all came to be rejected in favour of an understanding of the world as operating by observable laws of nature. It is the story of the rise of rational man. Intellectual historians of the mid-twentieth century, such as Paul Hazard, wrote of this time that:
The most widely accepted notions, such as deriving proofs of God’s existence from universal consent, the historical basis of miracles, were openly called in question. The Divine was relegated to a vague and impenetrable heaven somewhere up in the skies. Man and man alone was the standard by which all things were measured. He was his own raison d’être. His interests were paramount.
