rselves on a loftier plane with less trouble
and less glory." The attitude of Descartes was very different. Aspiring
to begin ab integro and reform the foundations of knowledge, he ignored
or made little of what had been achieved in the past. He attempted
to cut the threads of continuity as with the shears of Atropos. This
illusion [Footnote: He may be reproached himself with scholasticism in
his metaphysical reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of
the progress of knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such
doctrine must take account of the past as well as of the future.

But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though he
did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were imbued with
the Cartesian spirit.

3.

The theological world in France was at first divided on the question
whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy
or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes.
The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it was
probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism that
did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It was
preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the Discourse of
Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was published in 1640, and
in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made Jansenism a popular power.
The Jansenist movement was in France in some measure what the Puritan
movement was in England, and it caught hold of serious minds in much
the same way. The Jesuits had undertaken the task of making Christianity
easy, of finding a compromise between worldliness and religion, and they
flooded the world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose.
Ex opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine of
Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and morals.
He maintained that there can be no compromise with the world; that
casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is naturally corrupt;
and that in his most virtuous acts some corruption is present.

Now the significance of these two forces--the stern ideal of the
Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers--is that they both
attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine thought and
conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of French society
from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Louis XV. [Footnote: For the
prevalence of "libe