than he had spoken in the passage which I quoted above. And it was
natural that he should be pessimistic about social improvement, and
that, keeping his eyes fixed on his central fact that Christianity
is the goal of history, he should take only a slight and subsidiary
interest in amelioration.

The preponderant influence of Jansenism only began to wane during
the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and till then it
seems to have been successful in counteracting the diffusion of the
Cartesian ideas. Cartesianism begins to become active and powerful
when Jansenism is beginning to decline. And it is just then that the
idea of Progress begins definitely to emerge. The atmosphere in
France was favourable for its reception.

4.

The Cartesian mechanical theory of the world and the doctrine of
invariable law, carried to a logical conclusion, excluded the
doctrine of Providence. This doctrine was already in serious danger.
Perhaps no article of faith was more insistently attacked by
sceptics in the seventeenth century, and none was more vital. The
undermining of the theory of Providence is very intimately connected
with our subject; for it was just the theory of an active Providence
that the theory of Progress was to replace; and it was not till men
felt independent of Providence that they could organise a theory of
Progress.

Bossuet was convinced that the question of Providence was the most
serious and pressing among all the questions of the day that were at
issue between orthodox and heretical thinkers. Brunetiere, his