NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND 



tained his first patent for an automatic steam 

 engine. So far as the philosophy of the ijth 

 century was concerned, these industrial and scien- 

 tific advances made little impression on it. When 

 in 1641, Descartes (Cartesius) published his 

 " Meditationes de Prima Philosophic,," he showed 

 himself to be still completely in the thrall of meta- 

 physics. He contended that man alone had a 

 true " soul," with sensation and free will, and 

 that animals were mere automata, without will 

 or sensibility. At the same time, he suffered 

 from the traditional contradictions of men of his 

 turn of mind. While in his philosophy, he at- 

 tributed a dualist and supernatural soul to man, 

 he endowed, in his physics, matter with self-creat- 

 ing power and regarded mechanical motion as its 

 life's function. 



A valiant antagonist arose against the Car- 

 tesian metaphysics in the person of Hobbes. He 

 published, in 1642, his " Elementa Philosophica 

 de Cive," and fortified the materialist position in 

 this and other works considerably. By asserting 

 that it is impossible to separate thought from 

 matter that thinks, he did not only strike the Car- 

 tesian metaphysics heavily, but also shattered 

 the theistic survivals of Baconian materialism. 

 However, the historical conditions did not enable 



