Mechanistic Biology 231 



Society, such as Thomas Willis and George Bathurst, owed much 

 to Descartes. And the work of Borelli and Sanctorius, who were 

 the first investigators to apply physical methods of measurement to 

 bodily functions, was also partly inspired by Descartes. 



But Descartes' views, however carefully he might leave room 

 for the soul, did not meet the approval of theology. They never 

 penetrated the French or English Universities, and they were suc- 

 cessively condemned by the Jesuits and the Oratory. We have 

 already given two instances of mechanistic biology being unaccept- 

 able to idealistic philosophy and religion," in the cases of Democritus 

 and Plato, and of Lucretius and Tertullian. We can now give 

 another : Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford at the Restoration, wrote 

 voluminously against Descartes and classed him with Gassendi 

 and Hobbes as one of the three most dangerous atheists of the age. 

 In the " Disputationes de Deo," he says : 



" Thus from these excerpts from Cartesius I have made it clear 

 that the Mechanical philosophy is quite unfit for solving the problems 

 of phenomena. Cartesius has tried to steer a middle course between 

 Aristotle and Epicurus and has but succeeded in borrowing from 

 both." 



But this was simply the reaction of religious opinion. In 

 science itself there was also a reaction. Francis Glisson and 

 Ralph Cudworth, Professors of Medicine at Cambridge and 

 Oxford respectively, wrote against Descartes' physiology. George 

 Ernest Stahl, to whom pure chemistry as well as physiology is much 

 indebted, also took an important step in the other direction. 

 Returning to the conception of the archaei, he rolled them all into 

 one and emerged with the conception of the anima sensitiva^ 

 itself not a new idea, explicitly distinct from mind or soul. Just 

 as the archaei had been supposed to do, it sat somewhere in the 

 animal body and regulated everything exactly in the same way as a 

 signalman does in a signal-box. When the anima sensitiva fell 

 asleep or went on a journey, the art of the physician was necessary. 



But this vitalistic reaction did not last long. The influence of 

 Descartes was too deep to be shaken off quickly, and early in the 

 eighteenth century there was a widespread return to mechanical 

 explanations. As typical of that tendency we have the book called 

 *' Man a Machine," written by one of the most odd and impish 

 characters at the Court of Frederick the Great, his physician, 



