Introduction

Vike's doctrine may be summed up perhaps in thisas in the past, erra was made, no doubt, by anthropomorphism. This is to say, by endowing not human substances with human attributes but trees or rivers with properties which properly belong to human beings. The whole purpose of at iast, one of the purposes of the entire enterprise, scientific enterprise, is to return to a close naked way of speaking as near to mathematical plainness as one can. Vike felt himself to be in acute opposition to the whole trend of the age.