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54 is within our power and what is not. The highest virtues are magnanimity (generosite) and intellectual love towards God (amor intellectualis dei). The latter is capable of governing our whole life, even though in the eyes of the theologians it should perhaps be regarded as insufficient for salvation.

Cartesianism was the first form in which the thought of the new age became accessible to wider circles. Notwithstanding his hypotheses, which were frequently unfortunate, his rigid insistence on a mechanical explanation of nature marks a distinct advance, and his labors inspired a vigorous movement in the department of natural science. His spiritualism and his attempt to combine theology and science developed a sympathetic attitude towards religion, notwithstanding the fact that many theologians, to whom a criticism of scholasticism was identical with a challenge of faith, were fanatically opposed to him. The clearness with which he expressed his views admitted of easy popularization, and, after the first opposition subsided, he acquired a large following in France, Holland and Germany.

Descartes however bequeathed profound problems to his successors. How can the existence of an absolute Substance be reconciled with the independent existence of particular things (souls and bodies)? And how shall we conceive the interaction of spirit and matter if both are to be regarded as independent beings (Substance), and this moreover if the principle of the persistence of motion is likewise to be maintained!

Occasionalism, so called, which had a tendency to refer all true causality to the absolute essence, so that the states of finite beings merely furnished the “Occasions” for God to interpose, was the logical result of these problems. This principle was at first only applied to the relation of spirit