Part I. From the Renaissance to HumeCHAPTER I General CharacteristicsTHE period of history which is commonly called "modern" has a mental outlook which differs
from that of the medieval period in many ways. Of these, two are the most important: the
diminishing authority of the Church, and the increasing authority of science. With these two,
others are connected. The culture of modern times is more lay than clerical. States increasingly
replace the Church as the governmental authority that controls culture. The government of nations
is, at first, mainly in the hands of kings; then, as in ancient Greece, the kings are gradually
replaced by democracies or tyrants. The power of the national State, and the functions that it
performs, grow steadily throughout the whole period (apart from some minor fluctuations); but at
most times the State has less influence on the opinions of philosophers than the Church had in the
Middle Ages. The feudal aristocracy, which, north of the Alps, had been able, till the fifteenth
century, to hold its own against central governments, loses first its political and then its economic
importance. It is replaced by the king in alliance with rich merchants; these two share power in
different proportions in different countries. There is a tendency for the rich merchants to become
absorbed into the aristocracy. From the time of the American and French Revolutions onwards,
democracy, in the modern sense, becomes an important political force. Socialism, as opposed to
democracy based on private property, first acquires governmental power in 1917. This form of