The materials presented in this volume show that the seventeenth century was pre-eminently an age of intellectual ferment characterized by new scientific systems,new political and social thought, the introduction of modern warefare, and a continuous quest for order and stability. Major selections are drawn from such varied sources as Descartes 'Discourse on Method' and 'Passions of the Soul', Hobbes 'Leviathan', Locke's 'Second Treatise on Government', Newton's 'Principia' and 'Opticks', Bossuet's 'Politics' and writings of Galileo, and the letters of Louis XIV. This is Volume VII in the ten paperback series - The Sources in Western Civilization.