Proposing no technically new metaphysic, Santayana instead applies old philosophies to the modern day. He admires the atomism of Democritus and emphasis upon technically reason of Aristotle. Santayana is a materialist and a naturalist, and strongly dislikes the more mystical metaphysics of many of his contemporaries; he rejects even the pantheism of Spinoza, saying that "the word nature is poetical enough; it suggest sufficiently the generative and controlling function, the endless vitality and changeful order of the world in which I live."