reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of the progress of
knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such doctrine
must take account of the past as well as of the future.

But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though
he did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were
imbued with the Cartesian spirit.

3.

The theological world in France was at first divided on the question
whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy
or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes.
The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it
was probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism
that did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It
was preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the
Discourse of Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was
published in 1640, and in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made
Jansenism a popular power. The Jansenist movement was in France in
some measure what the Puritan movement was in England, and it caught
hold of serious minds in much the same way. The Jesuits had
undertaken the task of making Christianity easy, of finding a
compromise between worldliness and religion, and they flooded the
world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose. Ex
opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine
of Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and
morals. He maintained that there can be no compromise with the
world; that casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is
naturally corrupt; and that in his most virtuous acts some