Surveys the intellectual background of man from medieval times through the Renaissance to modern times.

Book I: The Intellectual Outlooks of Medieval Christendom -- The Coming of Age of the Western Peoples -- History a human achievement -- The historical setting of Western civilization -- The twelfth-century renaissance -- The World as the Scene of the Drama of Salvation -- The Christian epic and its setting -- The educated classes and the average man -- The world of the common man -- The unseen world -- The ordered universe of Thomas and Dante -- The divine governance of the world -- The Chief End of Man--The Enjoyment of Eternal Life -- The richness of the Christian tradition -- Hebrew righteousness -- Gospel love -- Hellenistic love of wisdom -- Platonism -- Oriental religious asceticism -- The medieval system -- Medieval virtues and vices -- Life eternal -- The Embodiment--The City of God -- The functional ideal of society -- The organization of religious society -- The saintly ideal -- The monastic life -- Saint Bernard, the Monk -- Saint Francis, the Mendicant Friar -- The church as the City of God and the Body of Christ -- The ideal of organized spiritual power -- The Embodiment--Lay Society -- Feudal society -- The knightly ideal -- The peasant's lot -- The economic ideals of the guild system -- The vocation of the scholar -- The method of scholastic science -- The scientific ideal of the Aristotelian--Thomistic system -- The ideal of a unified Christendom -- Dante's universal monarchy -- Book II: The New World of the Renaissance -- The New Interests of the Modern Age--The Natural Man -- The gradual growth of the humanistic spirit -- Humanism in the Middle Ages -- The discovery of the humanity of the classics -- The heritage of Rome and Greece -- The revolt from the Christian ethic -- The humanistic spirit -- The diverging streams of humanism -- The modernity and the tragedy of Erasmus -- The ideal of the gentleman -- The new ethic of industry and thrift -- The Religious Reaction- The Revolt from the Medieval Church -- The compromise of the Reformation -- The spirit of reform in the Middle Ages -- The religious revolt -- The gospel of Luther -- The Calvinistic system -- The Catholic reformation -- The moral revolt -- The Puritan life -- The Puritan spirit and industrialism -- The political revolt -- The Reformation and the Renaissance -- The outcome of the Reformation -- The Revolt from Feudalism and a Unified Christendom -- The rise of national cultures and sentiment -- The emergence of centralized national states -- The birth of modern political theory -- The theory of absolute monarchy -- The emergence of middle-class constitutionalism -- The theory of mercantilism, paternalistic nationalism in economics -- Irresponsible national sovereignty -- The restraining force of international law -- The New Interests of the Modern Age--The World of Nature -- Medieval interest in nature -- The expansion of Europe -- The discovery of Arabian science -- Natural science in the high Middle Ages -- The anti-scientific bias of humanism -- The attack on the barrenness and irrelevance of scholasticism -- The revival of Alexandrian mathematical science -- The direct appeal to nature -- The new method -- The Baconian spirit -- The New Scene of Human Life -- The Copernican revolution -- The simplicity and uniformity of Nature -- The appeal to the observation of Nature -- The Cartesian revolution -- The foundation of dynamics -- The mechanical interpretation of Nature -- The infinite worlds -- The reign of law -- Book III: The Order of Nature- The Development of Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries -- The Newtonian World-Machine -- The success of mathematical interpretation of Nature -- The mathematical synthesis of Newton -- The method of Newtonian science -- The rise of the experimental method -- The problem of knowledge and the new ideal of science -- The empiricits' attack on tradition -- The scientific ideals of the age of reason -- The Religion of Reason -- The spread of the humanistic spirit -- The growth of religious rationalism -- The Religion of Reason, or Natural Religion -- The place of Revelation -- The Deistic attack on Revelation -- The critique of prophecy and miracles -- The rationalistic attack on Deism -- The arguments of natural theology -- Skepticism and atheism -- The Science of Man- The Sciences of Human Nature and of Business -- The creation of the social sciences -- The deductive, mechanical method -- The science of human nature -- The omnipotence of environment -- The science of society -- Political economy -- Social physics and laisser-faire -- Adam Smith and commerce -- The dismal science of the factory system -- The Science of Man--The Science of Government -- The decline of absolute monarchy -- The theory of absolutism founded on reason -- The theory of modern constitutionalism -- The Whig apologetic of John Locke -- The theory of the American Constitution -- Democracy on the basis of natural rights: Rousseau -- Jeffersonian democracy -- Jacksonian democracy -- The utilitarian method -- Book IV: The Growing World- Thought and Aspiration in the Last Hundred Years -- The Romantic Protest Against the Age of Reason -- The social basis of intellectual complexity and change, and the demand for its organization -- Reaction against the age of reason -- Emphasis on the less rational side of human nature -- The natural no longer equivalent to the reasonable -- Tradition found truly natural -- Emphasis on faith, as a support to religion -- Faith as a support to revolutionary tendencies -- The rational justification of faith -- Emphasis on the individual personality and its expression -- Nature interpreted in personal terms -- The Romantic science of the individual -- Interest in human history and tradition -- The Conflict of Social Ideals to 1848 -- The philosophy of conservatism -- Acceptance of the Romantic protest against rationalism -- The appeal to faith -- The worship of tradition -- The philosophy of liberalism and individualism -- Utilitarianism -- The worship of progress -- Liberal nationalism and internationalism -- The new philosophy of industrial society -- Benevolent industrialism -- Social democracy -- The World Conceived as a Process of Growth and Evolution -- The two scientific revolutions -- Eighteenth-century ideas of progress and evolution -- The idea of growth and development in human society -- The spread of naturalistic uniformitarianism -- The method of mechanistic analysis universalized and broadened -- Basic generalizations unifying the fields of physics and chemistry -- The newer concepts of physics -- Mechanistic explanations in biology -- Mechanistic analysis in psychology -- Experimental analysis applied to the origin of present forms -- The development of the solar system -- The development of the earth -- The development of the forms of life -- The effect of the notion of development on scientific ideals -- The Science of Man in the Growing World -- The search for an adequate method -- The persistence of the eighteenth-century mechanical ideal -- The historical method of the romanticists -- The evolutionary and biological methods -- The influence of psychology and experimentalism -- The development of psychology -- The problem of the elements of human behaviour -- The problem of the functioning of the integrated personality -- Psychoanalysis -- The contemporary view of human nature -- The schools of sociology -- The achievement of a critical method in anthropology -- The creation of a realistic, genetic, and experimental economics -- Investigation in jurisprudence and political science -- The need for popularizing the social sciences -- Religion in the Growing World -- Causal factors in the religious development of the present -- Opposition to the new world as conflicting with religious traditions -- Protestant fundamentalism -- Catholic opposition to modern tendencies -- The reaction of Pius IX -- Catholic modernism -- The Catholic renaissance -- Liberal Protestantism -- Definite abandonment of parts of the religious tradition -- The new faith of the liberals -- Monistic evolutionary theologies -- Aesthetic naturalism -- Ethical religion and the social gospel -- Beyond modernism and liberalism -- Naturalism with vision -- Effects of religious changes on the churches -- Philosophic Reactions to the Growing World of Mechanism and Naturalism -- The picture of the mechanistic world generalized from science -- Disillusionment -- Pessimism in the face of the alien world -- Consolidation sought in art and beauty -- Promethean defiance of the mechanistic world -- Escape from the alien world into philosophic idealism -- Glorification of the growing world -- Faith in the inevitability of progress -- Confidence in creative evolution -- A new evolutionary ethics -- Worship of the future -- The new naturalism -- New philosophies of nature and of science -- Naturalism, Greek and Baconian -- Social Ideals in the Growing World -- Contrasting types of social ideal -- Middle-class ideals -- Social ideals of an individualistic industrialism -- Liberal ideals of social legislation and social reform -- Religious and humanitiarian ideals for an industrial society -- Working-class ideals -- Social ideals of organized labor -- Industrial democracy -- Collectivistic visions and programs -- Non-democratic and authoritarian methods -- Ideals of international relations -- Patriotic nationalism -- Cosmopolitanism -- Internationalism and pacifism -- Index.