Behaviour Adaptation in Late Life

Abstract

ever, would have us use a logical analogy. The second volume is designed to stand in synthetic relationship, as the last part of a triad, to the thesis and antithesis of Books One and Two in Volume I. This dialectical development is intended to emphasize the resolution of the tension between what Professor Gay called modern paganism in his first volume and the insecure Christianity of the enlightened century. Neither of the titles he gives to this resolutionThe Science of Freedom as applied to the volume or The Pursuit of Modernity as applied to Book Threeadequately conveys the principal theme of the third act. Indeed, it would be very difficult to do so in a few words, for it is easier to bring out the tension in the clashes of conviction during the Enlightenment than to characterize its resolution. Alfred Cobban, shortly before his death, wrote of the Enlightenment: 'If we ask what it was, the answer is bound to be that it was primarily an attitude of mind. ... It was above all, I believe, an age of rational optimism.