The first of these conditions was a firm disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the premature concoction of system.

The reign of ignorance and prejudice was made inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was hindered by the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by the authors of systems.

As the whole spirit of theology is both essentially authoritative and essentially systematic, this disparagement was full of tolerably direct significance.

It told in another way.

The Sorbonne, the universities, the doctors, had identified orthodoxy with Cartesianism.
"It is hard to believe," says D'Alembert in 1750, "that it is only within the last thirty years that people have even begun to renounce Cartesianism." He might have added that one of the most powerful of his contemporaries, Montesquieu himself, remained a rigid Cartesian to the end of his days.