THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN FRANCE. 



145 



brilliant generalisations, expressed frequently in the most 

 perfect language, did no good to the truly scientific cause ; 

 they did not spread the genuine scientific spirit. Much 

 of the good done by Fontenelle, by Voltaire, by Buffon, 

 was spoiled or neutralised by premature and ill-founded 

 theories. How much, or how little, they contributed 

 (either directly or by a kind of reaction which set in 

 against them, of which Rousseau may be regarded as the 

 centre) to bring about the Revolution is a matter of 

 much controversy; certain it is that the Revolution 

 broke their sway, and destroyed their immediate influ- 

 To the purely literary the Revolution added 



ence. 



important, in dealing with the ex- 

 treme materialistic writings which 

 French literature produced between 

 1745 and 1770, to keep distinct the 

 different origins from which they 

 started, and the different influences 

 which combined to produce them : 

 the mathematical and mechanical 

 principles borrowed from Newton, 

 the physiological and medical eman- 

 ating from Linnams and Boerhaave, 

 and the psychological coming from 

 Locke and Shaftesbury. Lange, in 

 his ' History of Materialism ' (transl. 

 by Thomas, London, 1880, 3 vols.), 

 was the first to point out clearly the 

 correct chronology and succession 

 of these writings (see especially vol. 

 ii. pp. 49-123), and to dispel the 

 misconceptions which, since the ap- 

 pearance of Hegel's ' Geschichte der 

 Philosophic' in 1833-36, had passed 

 through nearly all historical works 

 published in Germany. From his 

 exhaustive references, it is evident 

 that the extreme views of La 

 Mettrie, Diderot, and Holbach can- 

 not be fathered on any of the great 

 scientists or philosophers, but were 

 an attempt to apply scientific prin- 

 ciples to the solution of philosophi- 

 cal, ethical, or religious questions, 



VOL. I. 



frequently for practical and politi- 

 cal purposes. 



1 It would probably be more 

 correct to say that these daring 

 attempts to deal with the general 

 problems of knowing and being, 

 with the nature of the soul and the 

 conduct of life, were discarded as 

 premature, and that the followers 

 of Condillac and Locke betook them- 

 selves to a more patient study of 

 the facts of the inner life, as the 

 followers of Buffon forsook his bril- 

 liant generalisations for the more 

 patient and fruitful study of all 

 the forms of physical nature. And 

 in this respect the Government of 

 the Revolution took a memorable 

 step when it founded on the 3rd 

 brumaire, an iv. (25th October 

 1795), on a Report of Daunou, 

 based mainly on ideas expounded 

 by Condorcet, the "Academic des 

 Sciences morales et politiques. " It 

 was the intention to abandon meta- 

 physical generalisations, and to com- 

 bine the scientific and historical 

 spirit in the study of mental, 

 moral, and social phenomena, draw- 

 ing extensively on the assistance of 

 the medical sciences, or a know- 

 ledge of human nature in its nor- 



tion of 

 science. 



