The seeds of inquiry sown in the sixteenth century resulted in a fruitful display of advanced opinions during the next age. In the page of seventeenth century history, more names of men, either avowedly heretics, or charged by the orthodox with heresy, or whose labours can be shown to have tended to the growth of heresy, may probably be recorded than can be found during the whole of the previously long period during which the Christian Church assumed to dominate and control European thought. The seventeenth century muster-roll of heresy is indeed a grand one, and gloriously filled. One of its early martyrs was Julius Caesar Vanini, who was burned at Toulouse, in the year 1619, aged 34, as "an impious and obstinate Atheist." Was he Atheist, or was he not? This is a question, in answering which the few remains of his works give little ground for sharing the opinion of his persecutors. Yet many writers agree in writing as if his Atheism were of indisputable notoriety. He was a poor Neapolitan priest, he preached a sort of Pantheism; unfortunately for himself, he believed in the utility of public discussion on theological questions, and thus brought upon his head the charge of seeking to convert the world to Atheism.

In 1611, two men, named Legat and Whitman, were burned in England for heresy. "But," says Buckle, "this was the last gasp of expiring bigotry; and since that memorable day, the soil of England has never been stained by the blood of a man who has suffered for his religious creed."

Peter Charron, of Paris, ought perhaps to have been included in the sixteenth century list, for he died in 1603, but his only known work, "La Sagesse," belongs to the seventeenth century, in which it circulated and obtained reputation.

He urged that religion is the accidental result of birth and education, and that therefore variety of creed should not be cause of quarrel between men, as such variety is the result of circumstances over which the men themselves have had no control; and he urges that as each sect claims to be the only true one, we ought to rise superior to all sects, and without being terrified by the fear of future punishment, or allured by the hope of future happiness, "be content with such practical religion as consists in performing the duties of life." Buckle, who speaks in high terms of Charron, says, "The Sorbonne went so far as to condemn Charron's great work, but could not succeed in having it prohibited."

René Descartes Duperron, a few years later than Bacon (he was born in 1596, at La Haye, in Touraine, died 1650, at Stockholm) established the foundations of the deductive method of reasoning, and applied it in a manner which Bacon had apparently carefully avoided. Both Descartes and Bacon addressed themselves to the task of substituting for the old systems, a more comprehensive and useful spirit of philosophy; but while Bacon sought to accomplish this by persuading men to experiment and observation, Descartes commenced with the search for a first and self-evident ground of all knowledge. This, to him, is found in consciousness. The existence of Deity was a point which Bacon left untouched by reason, yet with Descartes it was the first proposition he sought to prove. He says, "I have always thought that the two questions of the existence of God and the nature of the soul, were the chief of those which ought to be demonstrated rather by philosophy than by theology, for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to believe in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it does not seem possible ever to persuade the infidels to any religion unless we first prove to them these two things by natural reason." To prove this existence of God and the immortality of the soul, Descartes needed a firm starting point, one which no doubt could touch, one which no argument could shake. He found this point in the fact of his own existence. He could doubt everything else, but he could not doubt that he, the thinking doubter, existed. His own existence was the primal fact, the indubitable certainty, which served as the base for all other reasonings, hence his famous "Cogito ergo sum: " I think, therefore I am. And although it has been fairly objected that Descartes did not exist because he thought, but existed and thought; it is nevertheless clear that it is only in the thinking that Descartes had the consciousness of his existence. The fact of Descartes' existence was, to him, one above and beyond all logic, Evidence could not add to the certitude, no scepticism could impeach it. Whether or not we agree with the Cartesian philosophy, or the reasonings used to sustain it, we must admire the following four rules which he has given us, and which, with the view of consciousness in which we do not entirely concur, are the essential features of the basis of a considerable portion of Descartes' system; —

"1. Never to accept anything as true but what is evidently so; to admit nothing but what so clearly and distinctly presents itself as true, that there can be no reason to doubt it.

"2. To divide every question into as many separate parts as possible, that each part being more easily conceived, the whole may be more intelligible.

"3. To conduct the examination with order, beginning by that of objects the most simple, and therefore the easiest to be known, and ascending little by little up to knowledge of the most complex.

"4. To make such exact calculations, and such circumspections as to be confident that nothing essential has been omitted."

"Consciousness being the basis of all certitude, everything of which you are clearly and distinctly conscious must be true: everything which you clearly and distinctly conceive, exists, if the idea involve existence."

It should be remarked that consciousness being a state of condition of the mind, is by no means an infallible guide? Men may fancy they have clear ideas, when their consciousness, if carefully examined, would prove to have been treacherous. Descartes argued for three classes of ideas – acquired, compounded, and innate. It is in his assumption of innate ideas that you have one of the radical weaknesses of his system. Sir William Hamilton points out that the use of the word idea by Descartes, to express the object of memory, imagination, and sense, was quite a new usage, only one other writer, David Buchanan, having previously used the word idea with this signification.

Descartes did not write for the mass, and his philosophy would have been limited to a much narrower circle had its spread rested on his own efforts. But the age was one for new thought, and the contemporaries and successors of Descartes carried the Cartesian logic to extremes he had perhaps avoided, and they taught the new philosophy to the world in a fearless spirit, with a boldness for which Descartes could have given them no example. Descartes, who in early life had travelled much more than was then the custom, had probably made the personal acquaintance of most of the leading thinkers of Europe then living; it would be otherwise difficult to account for the very ready reception given by them to his first work. Fortunately for Descartes, he was born with a fair fortune, and escaped such difficulties as poorer philosophers must needs submit to. There is perhaps a

per contra

side. It is more than possible that if the needs of life had compelled him, Descartes' scientific predilections might have resulted in more immediate advantage to society. His philosophy is often pedantic to weariness, and his scientific theories are often sterile. The fear of poverty might have quickened some of his speculations into a more practical utterance. Buckle reminds us that Descartes "was the first who successfully applied algebra to geometry; that he pointed out the important law of the sines; that in an age in which optical instruments were extremely imperfect, he discovered the changes to which light is subjected in the eye by the crystalline lens; that he directed attention to the consequences resulting from the weight of the atmosphere, and that he detected the causes of the rainbow." "Descartes," says Saintes, "throwing off the swaddling clothes of scholasticism, resolved to owe to himself alone the acquisition of the truth which he so earnestly desired to possess. For what else is the methodical doubt which he established as the starting point in his philosophy, than an energetic protest of the human mind against all external authority? Having thus placed all science on a philosophical basis, no matter what, he freed philosophy herself from her long servitude, and proclaimed her queen of the intellect. Hence every one who has wished to account to himself for his existence, every one who has desired to know himself to know nature, and to rise to its author; in a word, all who have wished to make a wise use of their intellectual faculties, to apply them, not to hollow speculations which border on nonentity, but to sensible and practical inquiries, have taken and followed some direction from Descartes." It is almost amusing when philosophers criticise their predecessors. Mons. Henri Bitter denies to Descartes any originality of method or even of illustration, while Hegel describes him as the founder of modern philosophy, whose influence upon his own age and on modern times it is impossible to exaggerate. To attempt to deal fully and truly with Descartes in the few lines which can be spared here, is impossible; all that is sought is to as it were catalogue his name in the seventeenth century list. Whether originator or imitator, whether founder or disciple, it is certain that Descartes gave a sharp spur to European thought, and mightily hastened the progress of heresy. It is not the object or duty of the present writer to examine or refute any of the extraordinary views entertained by Descartes as to vortices. Descartes himself is reported to have said "my theory of vortices is a philosophical romance." Science in the last three centuries has travelled even more rapidly than philosophy; and most of the physical speculations of Descartes are relegated to the region of grandly curious blunderings. There is one point of error held by Descartes sufficiently entertained even to-day – although most often without a distinct appreciation of the position – to justify a few words upon it. Descartes denied mental faculties to all the animal kingdom except mankind. All the brute kingdom he regarded as machines without intelligence. In this he was logical, even in error, for he accorded a soul to man which he denied to the brute. Soul and mind with him are identified, and thought is the fundamental attribute of mind. To admit that a dog, horse, or elephant can think, that it can remember what happened yesterday, that it can reason ever so incompletely, would be to admit that that dog, horse, or elephant, has some kind of soul; to avoid this he reduces all animals outside the human family to the position of machines. To-day science admits in animals, more or less according to their organisation, perception, memory, judgment, and even some sort of reason. Yet orthodoxy still claims a soul for man even if he be a madman from his birth, and denies it to the sagacious elephant, the intelligent horse, the faithful dog, and the cunning monkey. His proof of the existence of Deity is thus stated by Lewes: – "Interrogating his consciousness, he found that he had the idea of God, understanding by God, a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent. This, to him, was as certain a truth as the truth of his own existence. I exist: not only do I exist, but exist as a miserably imperfect finite being, subject to change, greatly ignorant, and incapable of creating anything. In this, my consciousness, I find by my finitude that I am not the All; by my imperfection, that I am not perfect. Yet an infinite and perfect being must exist, because infinity and perfection are implied as correlatives in my ideas of imperfection and finitude. God therefore exists: his existence is clearly proclaimed in my consciousness, and can no more be a matter of doubt, when fairly considered, than my own existence. The conception of an infinite being proves his real existence; for if there is not really such a being, I must have made the conception; but if I could make it, I can also unmake it, which evidently is not true; therefore there must be, externally to myself an archetype from which the conception was derived. All that we clearly and distinctly conceive as contained in anything, is true of that thing. Now we conceive, clearly and distinctly, that the existence of God is contained in the idea we have of him —

Ergo

, God exists." It may not be out of place to note at this demonstration, that the Jesuit writer, Father Hardouin, in his "Atheists Unmasked," as a recompense for this demonstration of the existence of Deity, places Descartes and his disciples, le Grand and Regis, in the first rank of atheistical teachers. Voltaire, commenting on this, remarks, "The man who had devoted all the acuteness of his extraordinary intellect to the discovery of new proofs of the existence of a God, was most absurdly charged with denying him altogether." Speaking of the proof of the existence of Deity, "Demonstrations of this kind," says Froude, "were the characteristics of the period. Descartes had set the example of constructing them, and was followed by Cudworth, Clarke, Berkeley, and many others besides Spinoza. The inconclusiveness of the method may perhaps be observed most readily in the strangely opposite conceptions formed by all these writers of the nature of that Being whose existence they nevertheless agreed, by the same process, to gather each out of their ideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully, for it is the very keystone of the Pantheistic system. As stated by Descartes, the argument stands something as follows: – God is an all-perfect Being, perfection is the idea which we form of Him, existence is a mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. The sophism, we are told, is only apparent, existence is part of the idea – as much involved in it as the equality of all lines drawn from the centre to the circumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle. A non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable as a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answered that in this way we may prove the existence of anything, Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian gods; we have but to define them as existing, and the proof is complete. But this objection is summarily set aside; none of these beings are by hypothesis absolutely perfect, and, therefore, of their existence we can conclude nothing. With greater justice, however, we may say, that of such terms as perfection and existence we know too little to speculate. Existence may be an imperfection for all we can tell, we know nothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endless

petitiones principii

– like the self-devouring serpent, resolving themselves into nothing. We wander round and round them, in the hope of finding some tangible point at which we can seize their meaning; but we are presented everywhere with the same impracticable surface, from which our grasp glides off ineffectual."

Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, is one of those men more often freely abused than carefully read; he was born April 5th, 1588, died 1679. He was "the subtlest dialectician of his time," and one of the earliest English advocates of the materialistic limitation of mind; he denies the possibility of any knowledge other than as resulting from sensation; his doctrine is in direct negation of Descartes' theory of innate ideas, and would be fatal to the orthodox dogma of mind as spiritual. "Whatever we imagine," he says, "is finite. Therefore, there is no idea, no conception of anything we call infinite." In a brief pamphlet on his own views, published in 1680, in reply to attacks upon him, he writes, "Besides the creation of the world there is no argument to prove a Deity," and "that it cannot be decided by any argument that the world had a beginning;" but he professes to admit the authority of the Magistrate and the Scriptures to override argument. He says that he does not "believe that the safety of the state depends upon the safety of the church." Some of Hobbes' pieces were only in Latin, others were issued in English. In one of those on Heresy, he mentions that by the statute of 1 Edward VI. cap 12, there is provision for the repeal of all former acts of parliament "made to punish any manner of doctrine concerning religion."

In the following extracts the reader will find the prominent features of that sensationalism which to-day has so many adherents: – "Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly, and afterwards in a train or dependence upon one another. Singly they are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object. Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of a man's body, and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances. The original of them all is that which we call sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first totally or by parts been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original." The effect of this is to deny any possible knowledge other than as results from the activity of the sensative faculties, and is also fatal to the doctrine of a soul. "According," says Hobbes, "to the two principal parts of man, I divide his faculties into two sorts – faculties of the body, and faculties of the mind. Since the minute and distinct anatomy of the powers of the body is nothing necessary to the present purpose, I will only sum them up in these three heads – power nutritive, power generative, and power motive, Of the powers of the mind there be two sorts – cognitive, imaginative, or conceptive, and motive. For the understanding of what I mean by the power cognitive, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain images or conceptions of the things without us. This imagery and representation of the qualities of the things without, is that which we call our conception, imagination, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them; and the faculty, or power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call cognitive power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving." All the qualities called sensible are, in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth on our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. Because the image in vision, consisting of colour and shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the objects of that sense; it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion that the same colour and shape are the very qualities themselves, and for the same cause that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received that the contrary must needs appear a great paradox, and yet the introduction of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the maintenance of that opinion) passing to and fro from the object is worse than any paradox, as being a plain impossibility. I shall therefore endeavour to make plain these points. That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing seen. That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an image or colour. That the said image or colour is but an apparition unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration which the object worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some internal substance of the head. That as in visions, so also in conceptions that arise from the other senses, the subject of their inference is not the object but the sentient. Strange to say Hobbes was protected from his clerical antagonists by the favour of Charles II., who had the portrait of the philosopher of Malmesbury hung on the walls of his private room at Whitehall.

Lord Herbert, of Cherbury (one of the friends of Hobbes) born 1581, died 1648, is remarkable for having written a book "De Veritate," in favour of natural – and against any necessity for revealed – religion; and yet at the same time pleading a sort of special sign or revelation to himself in favour of its publication.

Peter Gassendi, a native of Provence, born 1592, died 1655, was one of the opponents of Descartes and of Lord Herbert, and was an admirer of Hobbes; he advocated the old philosophy of Epicurus, professing to reject "from it everything contrary to Christianity." "But," asks Cousin, "how could he succeed in this? Principles, processes, results, everything in Epicurus is sensualism, materialism, atheism." Gassendi's works were characterised by great learning and ability, but being confined to the Latin tongue, and written avowedly with the intent of avoiding any conflict with the church, they gave but little immediate impetus to the great heretical movement. Arnauld charges Gassendi with overturning the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, in his discussion with Descartes, and Leibnitz charges Gassendi with corrupting and injuring the whole system of natural religion by the wavering nature of his opinions. Buckle says, "The rapid increase of heresy in the middle of the seventeenth century is very remarkable, and it greatly aided civilisation in England by encouraging habits of independent thought." In February 1646, Boyle writes from London, "There are few days pass here, that may not justly be accused of the brewing or broaching of some new opinion. If any man have lost his religion, let him repair to London, and I'll warrant him he shall find it: I had almost said too, and if any man has a religion, let him but come hither now and he shall go near to lose it."

About 1655, one Isaac La Peyrere wrote two small treatises to prove that the world was peopled before Adam, but being arrested at Brussels, and threatened with the stake, he, to escape the fiery refutation, made a full recantation of his views, and restored to the world its dearly prized stain of natural depravity, and to Adam his position as the first man. La Peyrere's forced recantation is almost forgotten, the opinions he recanted are now amongst common truths.

Baruch D'Espinoza or Benedict Spinoza, was born Nov. 24,1632, in Amsterdam; an apt scholar, he, at the early age of fourteen, had mastered the ordinary tasks set him by his teacher, the Babbi Morteira, and at fifteen puzzled and affrighted the grave heads of the synagogue, by attempting the solution of problems which they themselves were well content to pass by. As he grew older his reason took more daring flights, and after attempts had been made to bribe him into submissive silence, when threats had failed to check or modify him, and when even the knife had no effect, then the fury of disappointed fanaticism found vent in the bitter curse of excommunication, and when about twenty-four years of age, Spinoza found himself outcast and anathematised. Having no private means or rich patrons, and differing in this from nearly every one whose name we have yet given our hero subsisted as a polisher of glasses, microscopes, &c., devoting his leisure to the study of languages and philosophy. There are few men as to whom modern writers have so widely differed in the description of their views, few who have been so thoroughly misrepresented. Bayle speaks of him as a systematic Atheist. Saintes says that he laid the foundations of a Pantheism as destructive to scholastic philosophy as to all revealed religion. Voltaire repeatedly writes of Spinoza as an Atheist and teacher of Atheism. Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks of Spinoza as an Atheist, and prefaces this opinion with the following passage, which we commend to more orthodox, and less acute writers: – "Little do these men know what Atheism is. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind, or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat it – Not one man in a thousand has either goodness of heart, or strength of mind, to be, an Atheist." "And yet," says Froude, "both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance to see Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Christian, a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist, which is still more extravagant; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have said something reasonable, could find no better name for him than a 'Gott trunkener mann,' a God intoxicated man; an expression which has been quoted by everybody who has since written on the subject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describe tolerably the transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or a Swedenborg; but with what justice can it be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about with him for twenty years, deliberately shaping them, and who gave them at last to the world in a form more severe than with such subjects had ever been so much as attempted before? With him, as with all great men, there was no effort after sublime emotions. He was a plain, practical person; his object in philosophy, was only to find a rule by which to govern his own actions and his own judgment; and his treatises contain no more than the conclusions at which he arrived in this purely personal search, with the grounds on which he rested them." Spinoza, who was wise enough to know that it was utterly useless to expect an unfettered examination of philosophical problems by men who are bound to accept as an infallible arbiter any particular book, and who knew that reasonings must be of a very limited character which took the alleged Hebrew Revelation as the centre and starting point for all inquiry, and also as the circling, limitation line for all investigation – devoted himself to the task of examining how far the ordinary orthodox doctrines as to the infallibility of the Old Testament were fairly maintainable. It was for this reason he penned his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," wherein he says – "We see that they who are most under the influence of superstitious feelings, and who covet uncertainties without stint or measure, more especially when they fall into difficulty or danger, cannot help themselves, are the persons, who, with vows and prayers and womanly tears, implore the Divine assistance; who call reason, blind, and human wisdom vain; and all, forsooth, because they cannot find an assured way to the vanities they desire." "The mainspring of superstition is fear; by fear too is superstition sustained and nourished." "Men are chiefly assailed by superstition When suffering from fear, and all they then do in the name of a vain religion is, in fact, but the vaporous product of a sorrowful spirit, the delirium of a mind overpowered by terror." He proceeds, "I have often wondered that men who boast of the great advantage they enjoy under the Christian dispensation – the peace, the joy they experience, the brotherly love they feel towards all in its exercise – should nevertheless contend with so much acrimony, and show such intolerance and unappeasable hatred towards one another. If faith had to be inferred from action rather than profession, it would indeed be impossible to say to what sect or creed the majority of mankind belong." He laid down that "No one is bound by natural law to live according to the pleasure of another, but that every one is by natural title the rightful asserter of