Note 290 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

But nonetheless the unusual rationalism of Descartes’s method, avowedly aiming at the uprooting of all his own prejudices290 as a first step to truth, displeased the Jesuits, and could not escape the hostile attention of the Protestant theologians of Holland, where Descartes passed so many years of his life. Despite his constant theism, accordingly, he had at length to withdraw.291 A Jesuit, Père Bourdin, sought to have the Discours de la Méthode at once condemned by the French clergy, but the attempt failed for the time being. France was just then, in fact, the most freethinking part of Europe;292 and Descartes, though not so unsparing with his prejudices as he set out to be, was the greatest innovator in philosophy that had arisen in the Christian era. He made real scientific discoveries, too, where Bacon only inspired an approach and schemed a wandering road to them. He first effectively applied algebra to geometry; he first scientifically explained the rainbow; he at once accepted and founded on Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood, which most physiologists of the day derided; and he welcomed Aselli’s discovery of the lacteals, which was rejected by Harvey.293 And though as regards religion his timorous conformities deprive him of any heroic status, it is perhaps not too much to pronounce him “the great reformer and liberator of the European intellect.”294 One not given to warm sympathy with freethought has avowed that “the common root of modern philosophy is the doubt which is alike Baconian and Cartesian.”295