This is the second volume of Friedell’s monumental ACultural History of the Modern Age. A key figure in theflowering of Viennese culture between the two world wars,this three volume work is considered his masterpiece. Thecenturies covered in this second volume mark the victoryof the scientific mind: in nature-research, language-research,politics, economics, war, even morality, poetry, andreligion. All systems of thought produced in this century,either begin with the scientific outlook as their foundationor regard it as their highest and final goal.Friedell claims three main streams pervade the eighteenthcentury: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Classicism.In ordinary use, by "Enlightenment" we meanan extreme rationalistic tendency of which preliminarystages were noted in the seventeenth century. The term"Classicism", is well understood.Under the term "Revolution" Friedell includes allmovements directed against what has been dominant andtraditional. The aims of such movements were remodelingthe state and society, banning all esthetic canons, anddethronement of reason by sentiment, all in the name ofthe "Return to Nature." The Enlightenment tendency mightbe seen as laying the ground for an age of revolution. Thissecond volume continues Friedell’s dramatic history ofthe driving forces of the twentieth century.