94 THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL PIJILOSOPHERS. 



The central idea of the grand Evolution of life is 

 frequently implied rather than clearly expressed in 

 Bacon's writings. He differed from Descartes and 

 later philosophers in proposing the method by 

 which the natural system of the Universe could be 

 ascertained, rather than in speculating upon the 

 system itself. 



Rene Descartes (i 596-1 650) threw off the yoke 

 of Scholasticism in France as Bacon had in Eng- 

 land. His thought took an entirely different turn, 

 rather the philosophical than the scientific. In his 

 Principes de la Philosophie, published in 1637, he 

 cautiously advanced his belief that the physical 

 universe is a mechanism, and that as such it is 

 explicable upon physical principles. Buffon cred- 

 its him with taking here the most daring step 

 possible in philosophy, in attempting to explain all 

 things upon principles of natural law. There is 

 no doubt that at the time Descartes took this step, 

 it required even greater moral courage than his, 

 to break away from the prevailing dogmas as to 

 Special Creation. In a passage upon Creation, 

 which Huxley aptly terms a singular exhibition of 

 force and weakness, Descartes wavers between his 

 conviction as to the true order of things, and the 

 prevailing teaching : 



He marks the difference between the natural order of gradual 

 development and the unnatural doctrine of sudden creation, which 

 at the time had become the prevailing and prescribed teaching. 

 Further, he intimates that all things are ordered by natural laws : 



