, of the eighteenth century, experienced its
victorious and opulent restoration in the German philosophy, and
particularly in the speculative German philosophy, of the nineteenth
century.

After Hegel had combined it in an ingenious manner with all subsequent
metaphysics and with German idealism, and founded a universal realm
of metaphysics, the attack on speculative metaphysics and on all
metaphysics was once again synonymous, as in the eighteenth century,
with an attack on theology. Metaphysics succumbed for good and all to
materialism, which itself was now perfected by the work of speculation
and coincided with humanism.

French and English socialism and communism represented the materialism
which coincided with humanism in the practical sphere, just as
Feuerbach represented it in the theoretical sphere.

There are two tendencies of French materialism, one of which derives
its origin from Descartes and the other from Locke. The latter is
pre-eminently an element in French culture and merges directly into
socialism. The former, viz., the mechanical materialism, is absorbed
in French natural science. The French materialism which derives
directly from Descartes does not concern us particularly, any more
than the French school of Newton and French natural science generally.

Only this much need be said. In his physics Descartes invested matter
with self-creative power, and he conceived mechanical movement to be
its vital act. He separated his physics completely from his
metaphysics. Within his physics matter is the only substance, the only
basis of being and perceiving.

Mechanical French materialism absorbed the physics of Descartes, while
rejecting his metaphysics. His pupils were anti-metaphysicians by
profession, that is to say, they were physicians.

This school commences with the doctor Leroy, and reaches its acme with
the doctor Cabanis, while the doctor Lamettrie is its centre.
Descartes was still living when Leroy transferred to the human soul
the Cartesian construction of animals, and explained the soul as a
mode of the body and ideas as mechanical movements, similarly to
Lamettrie in the eighteenth century. Leroy even believed that
Descartes had dissembled his real opinion. Descartes protested. At the
end of the eighteenth century Cabanis perfected Cartesian materialism
in a work entitled: _Rapport du physic et du moral de l'homme_.

Cartesian materialism exists in France even to this day. It had its