Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/143

Rh opponents put him in the list of atheists like Vanini, and the Catholics held him as dangerous as Luther or Calvin, there were zealous adherents who ventured to prove the theory of vortices in harmony with the book of Genesis. It was this rationalistic treatment of the sacred writings which helped to confound the Cartesians with the allegorical school of John Cucceius, as their liberal doctrines in theology justified the vulgar identification of them with the heresies of Socinian and Arminian. The chief names in this advanced theology connected with Cartesian doctrines are Meyer, the friend and editor of Spinoza, author of a work termed Philosophia Scriptures Interpres (1666) ; Balthasar Bekker, whose World Bewitched helped to discredit the superstitious fancies about the devil ; and Spinoza, whose Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is in some respects the classical type of rational criticism up to the present day. Against this work and the Ethics of Spinoza the orthodox Cartesians (who were in the majority), no less than scepti cal hangers-on like Bayle, raised an all but universal howl of reprobation, scarcely broken for about a century. In France Cartesianism won society and literature before it penetrated into the universities. Clerselier (the friend of Descartes and his literary executor), his son-in-law Rohault (who achieved that relationship through his Cartesianism), and others, opened their houses for readings to which the intellectual world of Paris its learned profes sors not more than the courtiers and the fair sex., flocked to hear the new doctrines explained, and possibly discuss their value. Grand seigneurs, like the prince of Conde, the Due de Nevers, and the Marquis de Vardes, were glad to vary the monotony of their feudal castles by listening to the eloquent rehearsals of Malebranche or Regis. And the salons of Madame de Sevigne, of her daughter Mine, de Grignan, and of the Duchesse de Maine for a while gave the questions of philosophy a place among the topics of polite society, and furnished to Moliere the occa sion of his Femmes Savantes. The chateau of the Due de Luynes, the translator of the Meditations, was the home of a Cartesian club, that discussed the questions of automatism and of the composition of the sun from filings and parings, and rivalled Port Royal in its vivisections. The Cardinal de Retz in his leisurely age at Commercy found amusement in presiding at disputations between the more moderate Cartesians and Don Robert Desgabets, who interpreted Descartes in an original way of his own. Though rejected by the Jesuits, who found peripatetic formulae a faithful weapon against the enemies of the church, Cartesianism was warmly adopted by the Oratory, which saw in Descar tes something of St Augustine, by Port Royal, which discovered a connection between the new system and Jansenism, and by some amongst the Benedictines and the order of Ste Genevieve. The popularity which Cartesianism thus gained in the social and literary circles of the capital was largely increased by the labours of Pierre-Sylvain Regis (1632-1707). On his visit to Toulouse in 1665, with a mission from the Cartesian chiefs, his lectures excited boundless interest ; ladies threw themselves with zeal and ability into the study of philosophy ; and Regis himself, like a public benefactor in some old Greek town, was made the guest of the civic corporation. In 1671 scarcely less enthusiasm was aroused in Montpellier ; and in 1680 he opened a course of lectures at Paris, with such acceptance that intending hearers had to secure their seats some time before the lecture began. Regis, by removing the paradoxes and adjusting the meta physics to the popular powers of apprehension, made Car tesianism popular, and reduced it to a regular system. But a check was at hand. Descartes, in his correspond ence with the Jesuits, had shown an almost cringing eagerness to have their powerful organization on his ,ude Especially he had written to Pere Mesland, one of the order, to show how the Catholic doctrine of the eucharist might be made compatible with his theories of matter. But his undue haste to arrange matters with the church only served to compromise him more deeply. Unwise admirers and malicious opponents exaggerated the theologi cal bearings of his system in this detail ; and the efforts of the Jesuits succeeded in getting the works of Descartes, in November 1663, placed upon the Index of prohibited books, donee corrigantur. Thereupon ths power of church and state enforced by positive enactments the passive resistance of old institutions to the novel theories. In 1667, the oration at the interment was forbidden by royal order. In 1669, when the chair of philosophy at the College Royal fell vacant, one of the four selected candidates had to sustain a thesis against &quot; the pretended new philo sophy of Descartes.&quot; In 1671 the archbishop of Paris, by the king s order, summoned the heads of the university to his presence, and enjoined them to take stricter measures against philosophical novelties dangerous to the faith. In 1673 a decree of the Parliament against Cartesian and other unlicensed theories was on the point of being issued, and was only checked in time by the appearance of a burlesque mandamus against the intruder Reason, com posed by Boileau and some of his brother-poets. Yet in 1675 the university of Angers was empowered to repress all Cartesian teaching within its domain, and actually appointed a commission charged to look for such heresies in the theses and the students note-books of the college of Anjou belonging to the Oratory. In 1677 the university of Caen adopted not less stringent measures against Cartesianism. And so great was the influence of the Jesuits, that the congregation of St Maur, the canons of Ste Genevieve, and the Oratory laid their official ban on the obnoxious doctrines. From the real or fancied rapproche ments between Cartesianism and Jansenism, it became for a while impolitic, if not dangerous, to avow too loudly a preference for Cartesian theories. Regis was constrained to hold back for ten years his System of Philosophy ; and when it did appear, in 1690, the name of Descartes was absent from the title-page. There were other obstacles besides the mild persecutions of the church. Pascal and other members of Port Royal openly expressed their doubts about the place allowed to God in the system; the adherents of Gassendi met it by resuscitating atoms; and the Aristotelians maintained their substantial forms as of old ; the Jesuits argued against the arguments for the being of God, and against the theory of innate ideas ; whilst Huet, bishop of Avranches, once a Cartesian himself, made a vigorous onslaught on the contempt in which his former comrades held literature and history, and enlarged on the vanity of all human aspirations after rational truth. The greatest and most original of the French Cartesians was Malebranche. His Recherche de la Verite, in 1674, was the baptism of the system into a theistic religion which borrowed its imagery from Augustine ; it brought into prominence the metaphysical base which De la Forge, Rohault, and Regis had neither cared for nor understood. But this doctrine was a criticism and a divergence, no less than a consequence, from the principles in Descartes ; and it brought upon Malebranche the opposition, not merely of the Cartesian physicists, but also of Arnauld, Fenelon, and Bossuet, who found, or hoped to find, in the Meditations, as properly understood, an ally for theology. Popular enthusiasm, however, was with Malebranche, as twenty years before it had been with Descartes ; he was the fashion of the day ; and his disciples rapidly increased both in France and abroad. In 1705 Cartesianism was still subject to prohibitions from the authorities ; but in a project of new statutes, 