The modern age is marked by a refusal to be satisfied with the postponement of the exercise and function of reason to another and supernatural sphere, and by a resolve to practise itself upon its present object, nature, with all the joys thereunto appertaining. The pure intelligence of Aristotle, thought thinking itself, expresses itself as free inquiry directed upon the present conditions of its own most effective exercise. The principle of the inherent relation of thought to being was preserved intact, but its practical locus was moved down from the next world to this. Spinoza’s “God or Nature” is the logical outcome; as is also his strict correlation of the attribute of matter with the attribute of thought; while his combination of thorough distrust of passion and faith with complete faith in reason and all-absorbing passion for knowledge is so classic an embodiment of the whole modern contradiction that it may awaken admiration where less thorough-paced formulations call out irritation. In the practical devotion of present intelligence to its present object, nature, science was born, and also its philosophical counterpart, the theory of knowledge. Epistemology only generalized in its loose, although narrow and technical way, the question practically urgent in Europe: How is science possible? How can intelligence actively and directly get at its object? Meantime, through Protestantism the values, the meanings formerly characterizing the next life (the opportunity for full perception of perfect being), were carried over into present-day emotions and responses.