ition of society has become more equal, and men have grown more like
each other. Let us consider for a moment the connection of the periods
in which this change may be traced. In the sixteenth century the
Reformers subjected some of the dogmas of the ancient faith to the
scrutiny of private judgment; but they still withheld from it the
judgment of all the rest. In the seventeenth century, Bacon in the
natural sciences, and Descartes in the study of philosophy in the strict
sense of the term, abolished recognized formulas, destroyed the
empire of tradition, and overthrew the authority of the schools. The
philosophers of the eighteenth century, generalizing at length the same
principle, undertook to submit to the private judgment of each man all
the objects of his belief.

Who does not perceive that Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire employed
the same method, and that they differed only in the greater or less use
which they professed should be made of it? Why did the Reformers confine
themselves so closely within the circle of religious ideas? Why did
Descartes, choosing only to apply his method to certain matters, though
he had made it fit to be applied to all, declare that men might judge
for themselves in matters philosophical but not in matters political?
How happened it that in the eighteenth century those general
applications were all at once drawn from this same method, which
Descartes and his predecessors had either not perceived or had rejected?
To what, lastly, is the fact to be attributed, that at this period
the method we are speaking of suddenly emerged from the schools, to
penetrate into society and become the common standard of intelligence;
and that, after it had become popular among the French, it has been
ostensibly adopted or secretly followed by all the nations of Europe?

The philosophical method here designated may have been engendered in
the sixteenth century--it may have been more accurately defined and more
extensively applied in the seventeenth; but neither in the one nor in
the other could it be commonly adopted. Political laws, the condition
of society, and the habits of mind which are derived from these causes,
were as yet opposed to it. It was discovered at a time when men were
beginning to equalize and assimilate their conditions. It could only be
generally followed in ages when those conditions had at length become
nearly equal, and men nearly alike.

The philosophical method of the eighteen