SOURCE: Baker, K. M. Review of The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Volume II: The Science of Freedom, by Peter Gay. American Historical Review 75, no. 5 (June 1970): 1410–414.

In the following review, Baker asserts that The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Volume II: The Science of Freedom offers impressive scholarship and engaging discussion of key issues, but fails to provide a convincing or original historical argument.

With this second volume of The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Peter Gay completes the ambitious re-evaluation commenced with such verve in The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966). As one would expect, he again displays the features of his scholarship so impressively revealed in the earlier volume. Professor Gay writes superbly and has an enormous range; he combines a taste for generalization with a sense for the revealing byways of intellectual history; his work is a mine of insights and suggestions for further research; he has written a seductive book. Unfortunately...