Although the novel, V oyages el avantures de] aques Masse, caused some thing of a stir during the first half of the eighteenth century, its author, Simon Tyssot de Patot (1655-1738), remained largely unknown in his lifetime, and it is only in this century that he has been recognized as one of the countless soldiers in the vast army of philosophes that assaulted the bastions of religious, political and sodallife in Europe of the late seven 1 teenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tyssot was a Huguenot who lived most of his life in Holland where he pursued a career as professor of mathematics in the sodal and cultural 1 Tyssot and his work seem to have been first brought to the attention of modem writers by the German critics during their investigation of the type of desert island or robinsonade literature that preceded and followed Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. The earliest reference I have found occurs in A. Kippenberg, Robinson in Deutschland bis zur Insel Felsenburg (1713-43), Hanover, 1892, pp. 66-67. Tyssot's name and work appear to have been first linked with the development of socialism in A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siecle, Paris, 1895, p. 44. Tyssot's Voyages et avantures de]aques Masse was discussed for its literary merits in A. LeBreton, Le Roman au dix huitieme siecle, Paris, 1898. LeBreton did not know that Tyssot was the author.

Herbert Rowen has always insisted that historians don't need biographers. Outside "a small circle of family, friends and students," what matters most is not the individual but his or her work.' Thus the main purpose of the present volume is to highlight Professor Rowen's contributions to the political history of early modem Europe. Part I includes assessment of his work by others, while Parts ll-V contain examples of his best articles, papers, and reviews, some published here for the first time, most previously hard-to-get. These essays not only add substantively to our understanding of early modem politics, but treat both implicitly and explicitly the historian's task per se. Hence, this is not biography, much less "innocuous laudation" or hagiography, which Herb would not forgive. Yet it is only fitting that someone who lays so much stress on the human side of History should by way of introduction have something said about his person as well as his work.

Augustine's christianization of Plato and Thomas Aquinas's of Aristotle provided the two main foundations of medieval Judeo- Christian philosophy. In The Christianization of Pyrrhonism, José R. Maia Neto shows that Greek scepticism played a similar role in the development of a major strand of modern religious thought. From the Jansenist reaction of Molinism in the early 17th century to Shestov's resistance to the arrival of Kantian enlightenment in Russia in the late 19th century, Greek scepticism was reconstructed in terms of Christian doctrines and used against major secular philosophers who posed threats to religion. At the same time, the ancient sceptics' practical stance was attacked in order that it does not constitute a viable alternative to the modern secular philosophies. The resulting Christianized Pyrrhonism would be the basis for a genuine Christian or Biblical thought, for the first time emancipated from the rationalist assumptions and methods of Greek philosophy. The Christianization of Pyrrhonism is extremely valuable for those interested in the modern developments of ancient scepticism, in the relations between religious and philosophical ideas in modernity, and for scholars and the general public interested in Pascal, Kierkegaard and Shestov.

Dick Popkin and James Force have attended a number of recent conferences where it was apparent that much new and important research was being done in the fields of interpreting Newton's and Spinoza's contributions as biblical scholars and of the relationship between their biblical scholarship and other aspects of their particular philosophies. This collection represents the best current research in this area. It stands alone as the only work to bring together the best current work on these topics. Its primary audience is specialised scholars of the thought of Newton and Spinoza as well as historians of the philosophical ideas of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Gans ranks at the head of that important group of Hegelian thinkers that bridged the generations of Hegel and Marx. ! Yet there is a large gap between Gans 's historical importance and the scholarship on him. Despite a renewal of interest in Gans's work on the Continent,2 Gans remains almost completely unknown to English-Ianguage scholars, and almost none ofhis work has been 3 previously translated. His Prefaces to his posthumous editions of Hegel's writings are inaccessib1e to English speakers, despite the fact that they shed important light on the authenticity of the so-called Additions to those texts. His Preface to Hegel's Philosophy ofLaw has never been translated before, while his Preface to the Philosophy of History has been omitted from reprintings 4 for generations. Moreover, the recent scholarship on the Continent has focused on Gans 's political and philosophical rather than his legal writings. There is little dis cussion in any language ofhis system oflaw, which is the focus ofthe present study. Some of the reasons for the neglect of Gans are obvious. Gans cannot be a hero for most readers today. He accepted apostasy as a means to profes sional advancement. And though more liberal than Hegel, Gans nonetheless accommodated himself to the results of the Restoration and evaded political persecution that might have kindled the sympathy of later generations.

This book offers a social history of Newtonian natural philosophy from its inception after the 1688 revolution in England until the 1720's. Ms. Jacob shows that the Newtonian world view was adopted by the Anglican church to support its own version of liberal Protestantism and its vision of a social and economic order that would be both Christian and capitalist. It was with Newton's consent, she asserts, that Newtonianism took on an ideological significance in the early Enlightenment. Using an interdisciplinary approach to subjects traditionally reserved for the history of science, church history, and intellectual history, she formulates a convincing new explanation for the triumph of Newtonianism.

The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the moral sphere ; they held that practical j u d g e m e n t came down in the last instance to individual conscience ; and they laid the foundations of our modern conceptions of conscience and liberty. But at the same time they ma intained the existence of eternal truths , and of a Good-in-itself , identical with Truth and Being, refusing to admit that freedom of conscience i m p li e d moral relativism. They were critics of dogmatism, and of the sectarian notion of "enthusiasm" as a source of illumination , on the grounds that both were disruptive of social harmony; they pleaded the cause of reason , in the hope that it could become the foundation of all human knowledge . Yet , for all that , they ma intained that a certain sort of mystical illumination lay at the heart of all true thought , and that human reason had validity only in virtue of i t s divine origin . They debated with Des cartes and took a keen interest in his mech- ism and his dualism ; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality link ing all phenomena.