literature, the sermons of the Elizabethan and Jacobean divines. Also H. O. Taylor’s Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century presents the currents and cross-currents of thought in those times. The twentieth century, so far as it has yet advanced, bears some analogy to that predecessor in European history, both in clash of thought and in clash of political interest.
In Part ii, dealing with Cosmology, I have made constant use of two books published by the Oxford University Press in 1928, namely, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, by Professor A. E. Taylor of the University of Edinburgh, and The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, by Dr Cyril Bailey, Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford.
Use has already been made of some parts of the book in response to invitations which I had the honour to receive. The main substance of Chapters i, ii, iii, vii, viii was delivered as the four Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College, during the session 1929-30: they have not been hitherto published. Also Chapter ix, ‘Science and Philosophy’ — not previously published — was delivered as the Davies Lecture in Philosophy, at the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, March, 1932. Chapter vi, ‘Foresight’, was delivered as a lecture at the Harvard Business School, and by the request of Dean W. B. Donham was published as a preface to his book, Business Adrift, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1931. Also Chapter xi, ‘Objects and Subjects’, was delivered as the presidential address to the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association, at New Haven, December, 1931; and has since been published in The Philosophical Review, Vol. xli, 1932, Longmans, Green, and Company, New York.
Some unpublished lectures, delivered at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, in 1926, embodied a preliminary sketch of the topic of this book. They were concerned with the two
