ABSTRACT
Descartes, with the growing animus against picturesque antiquity which distinguished his century, declares for straight lines and a single plan, and finds the ground occupied by an accumulated network of irregular alleys. Descartes expresses his special admiration of Beeckman's equal command, as rare, in his estimation, as it is necessary, of mathematics and physics, and it may be surmised that the 'awakening' took the form of their permanent welding in his own mind. Descartes is certain that his mission is of God: but his philosophical conception of the God of his vital experience is still in process of formation. The argument is usually based on the gratuitous assumption that a Protestant country was less likely to fetter science than a Catholic country; and the ready reception of Descartes and his ideas by many French Catholic priests, and his petty persecution by the Calvinist Universities of Holland, is enough to refute it.
