From various circumstances the attack acquired a significance and a weight in France which it had never possessed in England.

For one thing, physical science had in the interval taken immense strides.

This both dwarfed the sovereignty of theology and theological metaphysics, and indirectly disposed men's minds for non-theological theories of moral as well as of physical phenomena.

In France, again, the objects of the attack were inelastic and unyielding.

Political speculation in England followed, and did not precede, political innovation and reform.