ABSTRACT
The cultural history of Western civilization for the period illuminated by written records can be considered from many aspects. It can be conceived under the guise of a steady economic progression, diversified by catastrophic collapses to lower levels. Such a point of view emphasizes technology and economic organization. Distribution of emphasis between absoluteness and relativity is seemingly arbitrary. Of course there is always a historical reason for the pattern. Governments are best classified by considering who are the “somebodies” they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy. Thus the English government of the first sixty years of the eighteenth century was, as to its form and its persons, aristocratic. Wisdom is proportional to the width of the evidence made effective in the final self-determination. The intellectual operations consist in the co-ordination of notions derived from the primary facts of instinctive experience into a logically coherent system.
