Out of the dozens of western thinkers from the eighteenth century onwards who have influenced his work, Alan Macfarlane has chosen four representatives. For the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, there is the philosopher and historian David Hume. For the nineteenth-century there is the lawyer and comparative anthropologist Sir Henry Maine. For the years between 1920 and the 1950's there is the Weberian sociologist Norman Jacobs with his comparison of Japan, China and the West. For the second half of the twentieth century there is the philosopher, sociologist and anthropologist Ernest Gellner.