CHAPTER III GROWTH OF THE MECHANICAL THEORY The New Science creates a New Philosophy. Universality of Mechanics. Importance of Harvey's discovery. Descartes extends the mechanical theory to cover physiology and psychology. Hobbes and a naturalistic ethic. Newton extends the operation of law from the earth to the heavens. Religious attitude of these thinkers. Significance of their thought 18 CHAPTER IV SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REACTIONS A Law of Thought. Spinoza. A Mechanical Universe spiritually interpreted. _Natura Naturans_, what it means. The _Ethics_. Spinoza's mysticism. His personality. Leibniz and a philosophy of personality. His monads. Pascal. His significance. _The Pensees._ The eternal protest of religion. Man defies the universe. Results 28 CHAPTER V RISE OF AN ANTI-RELIGIOUS SCIENCE Anti-clericalism in eighteenth-century France. Voltaire's propaganda. Diderot and the Encyclopaedists. Holbach's _System of Nature_. Laplace's astronomy. Lavoisier and the New Chemistry. Dalton's atomic theory. Results for religion 42 CHAPTER VI RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM Importance, for the mechanical view, of Locke's theory of knowledge. Weakness of speculative philosophy. Rise of the "critical" philosophy. Kant. He seeks to solve the problem: How is knowledge possible? Kant's view of the mind's function in knowledge. Mechanism a "form of thought," subjective not objective. Kant's view of reality. Can we know reality? The two worlds 52 CHAPTER VII THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT Kant clears the ground for a new philosophy. Significance of Rousseau. His attitude to culture. The new philosophy in Germany, its goal. Fichte. Hegel a rationalistic-romanticist. His method. Hegelianism. Significance for religious thought of Schleiermacher. The autonomy of religion and religious experience 62 CHAPTER VIII MECHANISM AND LIFE Rise of bio-chemistry and bio-physics in Germany. Significance of these movements. The Origin of Species. Lamarck. The new geology. Darwin. Results of his theory 74 CHAPTER IX MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM Early decline of Romanticism in Germany. Comte and the "positive" philosophy. Materialism in Germany. Darwinism and the "argument from design." Haeckel. Spencerian evolutionism. Spencer's moral idealism. His philosophy of religion. Agnosticism. Rise of philosophic pessimism. Significance of Nietzsche 84 CHAPTER X REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY