of ratiocination which never lapsed into passion, and was all the more destructive. For the Jansenists Malebranche was a danger to the faith in the ratio of his exaltation of it, inasmuch as reference of the most ordinary beliefs back to "faith" left them no ground upon which to argue up to faith. [603] This seems to have been a common feeling among his readers. For the same reason he made no appeal to men of science. He would have no recognition of secondary causes, the acceptance of which he declared to be a dangerous relapse into paganism. [604] There was thus no scientific principle in the new doctrine which could enable it to solve the problems or absorb the systems of other schools. Locke was as little moved by it as were the Jansenists. Malebranche won readers everywhere by his charm of style; [605] but he was as much of a disturber as of a reconciler. The very controversies which he set up made for disintegration; and Fénelon found it necessary to "refute" Malebranche as well as Spinoza, and did his censure with as great severity as Arnauld's. [606] The mere fact that Malebranche put aside miracles in the name of divine law was fatal from the point of view of orthodoxy. 9. Yet another philosophic figure of the reign of Louis XIV, the Jesuit Père Buffier (1661-1737), deserves a passing notice here--out of his chronological order--though the historians of philosophy have mostly ignored him. [607] He is indeed of no permanent philosophic importance, being a precursor of the Scottish school of Reid, nourished on Locke, and somewhat on Descartes; but he is significant for the element of practical rationalism which pervades his reasoning, and which recommended him to Voltaire, Reid, and Destutt de Tracy. On the question of "primary truths in theology" he declares so boldly for the authority of revelation in all dogmas which pass comprehension, and for the non-concern of theology with any process of rational proof, [608] that it is hardly possible to suppose him a believer. On those principles, Islam has exactly the same authority as Christianity. In his metaphysic "he rejects all the ontological proofs of the existence of God, and, among others, the proof of Descartes from infinitude: he maintains that the idea of God is not innate, and that it can be reached only from consideration of the order of nature." [609] He is thus as much of a force for deism as was his master, Locke; and he outgoes him in point of rationalism when he puts the primary ethic of reciprocity as a universally recognized truth, [610] where Locke had helplessly fallen back on "the will of God." On the other hand he censures Descartes for not admitting the equal validity of other tests with that of primary consciousness, thus in effect putting himself in line with Gassendi. For the rest, his Examen des préjugés vulgaires, the most popular of his works, is so full of practical rationalism, and declares among other things so strongly in favour