The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
by George Santayana

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Title: Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
Five Essays

Author: George Santayana

Release Date: September 17, 2005 [EBook #16712]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN
MODERN PHILOSOPHY

_Five Essays_

BY

GEORGE SANTAYANA

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1933

Published under the auspices of
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

CONTENTS

I. Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense page 1

Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the
occasion of the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke.
With some Supplementary Notes

II. Fifty Years of British Idealism 48

Reflections on the republication of Bradley's _Ethical Studies_

III. Revolutions in Science 71

Some Comments on the Theory of Relativity and the new Physics

IV. A Long Way Round to Nirvana 87

Development of a suggestion found in Freud's _Beyond the
Pleasure Principle_

V. The Prestige of the Infinite 102

A review of Julien Benda's _Sketch of a consistent theory of
the relations between God and the World_

The Author's acknowledgments are due to the Editors of _The New Adelphi_,
_The Dial_, and the _Journal of Philosophy_, in which one or more of these
Essays originally appeared.

I

LOCKE AND THE FRONTIERS OF COMMON SENSE[1]

A good portrait of Locke would require an elaborate background. His is not
a figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand
enough for bronze or marble. Rather he should be painted in the manner of
the Dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all
the implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the Holy Bible
open maj