branches of knowledge which surpass our means of knowing, which are in fact
outside knowledge. So that this man who conceived more than any man, this
man who so often constructed without a sure foundation, and this man, yet
again, as has been aptly said, who always thought by innate ideas, by his
formula has become the master and above all the guarantor of those who are
the most reserved and most distrustful as to philosophic construction,
innate ideas, and imagination. This does not in the least diminish his
brilliant merit; it is only one of those changes of direction in which the
history of ideas abounds.



CHAPTER II

CARTESIANS


All the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes.
Port-Royal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.


CARTESIAN INFLUENCE.--Nearly all the seventeenth century was
Cartesian, and in the general sense of the word, not only as supporters of
the method of evidence, but as adherents of the general philosophy of
Descartes. Gassendi (a Provencal, and not an Italian), professor of
philosophy at Aix, subsequently in Paris, was not precisely a faithful
disciple of Descartes, and he opposed him several times; he had leanings
towards Epicurus and the doctrine of atoms; he drew towards Hobbes, but he
was also a fervent admirer of Bacon, and so approached Descartes, who
thought very highly of him, though impatiently galled by his criticisms.