He would have liked the Church to adopt modern science and
philosophy ; failing that, he was content that they should be
left unmolested, and thought it no harm to secure immunity, if
necessary, by silence on some points and transparent dissimulation
on others. Certain apologetic passages in Descartes' physical
writings are as manifestly ironical as anything in Hume. Open
defiance must have appeared to him an impracticable poHcy, and
disastrous, if it had been practicable, both for society and
for science itself. These questions, however, do not touch the
physical side of Descartes' teaching, as to which there is no
suspicion of reserve. And it was on this side, as I conceive, that
Spinoza first approached him and felt his power. In Spinoza's
earliest essay the psychology shows a reader of Descartes, but
a reader very far from being a disciple -, the physics, on the other
hand, are simply and solely Cartesian.
Yet, while the influence of Descartes' philosophical conceptions
on Spinoza has over and over again been discussed, sometimes
with exaggeration, sometimes with depreciation, the not less
important and certainly more persistent influence of his physical
conceptions has passed, so far as I am aware, almost without
notice.^ The very peculiar account of motion given by Descartes
was not only repeated by Spinoza, as in duty bound, in his
Principles of Cartesian Philosophy^ but occurs in the Essay on God
and Man^ and has left its traces in the Ethics. I venture to say
that without going back to the Cartesian theory of dynamic
Spinoza's account of the material world is not intelligible.
