206 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



other of the system of vortices. In France, the 

 Cartesian system had obtained a wide and popular 

 reception, having been recommended by Fontenelle 

 with the graces of his style ; and its empire was so 

 firm and well established in that country, that it 

 resisted for a long time the pressure of Newtonian 

 arguments. Indeed, the Newtonian opinions had 

 scarcely any disciples in France, till Voltaire as- 

 serted their claims, on his return from England 

 in 1728 : until then, as he himself says, there were 

 not twenty Newtonians out of England. 



The hold which the philosophy of Descartes 

 had upon the minds of his countrymen is, perhaps, 

 not surprizing. He really had the merit, a great 

 one in the history of science, of having completely 

 overturned the Aristotelian system, and introduced 

 the philosophy of matter and motion. In all 

 branches of mixed mathematics, as we have already 

 said, his followers were the best guides who had 

 yet appeared. His hypothesis of vortices, as an 

 explanation of the celestial motions, had an ap- 

 parent advantage over the Newtonian doctrine, in 

 this respect; that it referred effects to the most 

 intelligible, or at least most familiar kinds of me- 

 chanical causation, namely, pressure and impulse. 

 And above all, the system was acceptable to most 

 minds, in consequence of being, as was pretended, 

 deduced from a few simple principles by necessary 

 consequence ; and of being also directly connected 

 with metaphysical and theological speculations. We 



