288 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [xn. 



and even led Sir Eobert Walpole to assent to the appro- 

 priation of public money to a scheme which was neither 

 business nor bribery. 1 



Hardly any epoch in the intellectual history of Eng- 

 land is more remarkable in itself, or possesses a greater 

 interest for us in these latter days, than that which coin- 

 cides broadly with the conclusion of the seventeenth and 

 the opening of the eighteenth century. 



The political fermentation of the preceding age was 

 gradually w r orking itself out ; domestic peace gave men 

 time to think ; and the toleration won by the party of 

 which Locke was the spokesman, permitted a freedom 

 of speech and of writing such as has rarely been exceeded 

 in later times. 



Fostered by these circumstances, the great faculty for 

 physical and metaphysical inquiry, with which the people 

 of our race are naturally endowed, developed itself vigo- 

 rously ; and at least two of its products have had a 

 profound and a permanent influence upon the subsequent 

 course of thought in 'the world. The one of these was 

 English Freethinking ; the other, the Theory of Gravi- 

 tation. 



Looking back to the origin of the intellectual im- 

 pulses of which these were the results, we are led to 

 Herbert, to Hobbes, to Bacon ; and to one who stands 

 in advance of all these, as the most typical man of his 

 time Descartes. It is the Cartesian doubt the maxim 

 that assent may properly be given to no propositions 

 but such as are perfectly clear and distinct which, 

 becoming incarnate, so to speak, in the Englishmen, 



1 In justice to Sir Robert, however, it is proper to remark that lie declared 

 afterwards, that he gave his assent to Berkeley's scheme for the Bermuda 

 University only because he thought the House of Commons was sure to throw 

 it out. 



