A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

the vogue of upper-class deism, the philosophy of Descartes, with its careful profession of submission to the Church, had at first an easy reception; and on the appearance of the Discours de la Méthode (1637) it speedily affected the whole thought of France; the women of the leisured class, now much given to literature, being among its students. [547] From the first the Jansenists, who were the most serious religious thinkers of the time, accepted the Cartesian system as in the main soundly Christian; and its founder's authority had some such influence in keeping up the prestige of orthodoxy as had that of Locke later in England. Boileau, who wrote a satire in defence of the system when it was persecuted after Descartes's death, is named among those whom he so influenced. [548] But a merely external influence of this kind could not counteract the fundamental rationalism of Descartes's thought, and the whole social and intellectual tendency towards a secular view of life. Soon, indeed, Descartes became suspect, partly by reason of the hostile activities of the Jesuits, who opposed him because the Jansenists generally held by him, though he had been a Jesuit pupil, and had always some adherents in that order; [549] partly by reason of the inherent naturalism of his system. That his doctrine was incompatible with the eucharist was the standing charge against it, [550] and his defence was not found satisfactory, [551] though his orthodox followers obtained from Queen Christina a declaration that he had been largely instrumental in converting her to Catholicism. [552] Pascal reproached him with having done his best to do without God in his system; [553] and this seems to have been the common clerical impression. Thirteen years after his death, in 1663, his work was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, under a modified censure, [554] and in 1671 a royal order was obtained under which his philosophy was proscribed in all the universities of France. [555] Cartesian professors and curés were persecuted and exiled, or compelled to recant; among the victims being Père Lami of the Congregation of the Oratory and Père André the Jesuit; [556] and the Oratorians were in 1678 forced to undergo the humiliation of not only renouncing Descartes and all his works, but of abjuring their former Cartesian declarations, in order to preserve their corporate existence. [557] Precisely in this period of official reaction, however, there was going on not merely an academic but a social development of a rationalistic kind, in which the persecuted philosophy played its part, even though some freethinkers disparaged it.