Looking back to the origin of the intellectual impulses 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, Anthony Collins, Toland, Tindal, Woolston, and in the wonderful Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, reached its final term in Hume.

And, on the other hand, although the theory of Gravitation set aside the Cartesian vortices—­yet the spirit of the “Principes de Philosophie” attained its apotheosis when Newton demonstrated all the host of heaven to be but the elements of a vast mechanism, regulated by the same laws as those which govern the falling of a stone to the ground.  There is a passage in the preface to the first edition of the “Principia” which shows that Newton was penetrated, as completely as Descartes, with the belief that all the phenomena of nature are expressible in terms of matter and motion.

“Would that the rest of the phenomena of nature could be deduced by a like kind of reasoning from mechanical principles.  For many circumstances lead me to suspect that all these phenomena may depend upon certain forces, in virtue of which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, are either mutually impelled against one another and cohere into regular figures, or repel and recede from one another; which forces being unknown, philosophers have as yet explored nature in vain.  But I hope that, either by this method of philosophizing, or by some other and better, the principles here laid down may throw some light upon the matter."[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Utinam caetera naturae phaenomena ex principiis mechanicis, eodem argumentandi genere, derivare licet.  Nam multa me movent, ut nonnihil suspicer ca omnia ex viribus quibusdam pendere posse, quibus corporum particulae, per causas nondum cognitas, vel in se mutuo impelluntur et secundum figuras regulares cohaerent vel ab invicem fugantur et reced ent:  quibus viribus ignotis, Philosophi hactenus Naturam frustra tentarunt.  Spero autem quod vel huic philosophandi modo, vel veriori, alicui, principia hic posita lucem aliquam praebebunt.”—­Preface to First Edition of Principia, May 8, 1686.]

But the doctrine that all the phenomena of nature are resolvable into mechanism is what people have agreed to call “materialism;” and when Locke and Collins maintained that matter may possibly be able to think, and Newton himself could compare infinite space to the sensorium of the Deity, it was not wonderful that the English philosophers should be attacked as they were by Leibnitz in the famous letter to the Princess of Wales, which gave rise to his correspondence with Clarke.[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Collection of Papers which passed between the late learned Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke.”—­1717.]