Naturally, the less sacrosanct dogmatism was the more freely assailed; and in the sixteenth century the attacks became numerous and vehement. Luther was a furious anti-Aristotelian, [279] as were also some Calvinists; but in 1570 we find Beza declaring to Ramus [280] that "the Genevese have decreed, once and for ever, that they will never, neither in logic nor in any other branch of learning, turn away from the teaching of Aristotle." At Oxford the same code held. [281] In Italy, Telesio, who notably anticipates the tone of Bacon as to natural science, and is largely followed by him, influenced Bruno in the anti-Aristotelian direction, [282] though it was in a long line from Aristotle that he got his principle of the eternity of the universe. The Spaniard Ludovicus Vives, too (1492-1540), pronounced by Lange one of the clearest heads of his age, had insisted on progress beyond Aristotle in the spirit of naturalist science. [283] But the typical anti-Aristotelian of the century was Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-1572), whose long and strenuous battle against the ruling school at Paris brought him to his death in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. [284] Ramus hardily laid it down that "there is no authority over reason, but reason ought to be queen and ruler over authority." [285] Such a message was of more value than his imperfect attempt to supersede the Aristotelian logic. Bacon, who carried on in England the warfare against the Aristotelian tradition, never ventured so to express himself as against the theological tyranny in particular, though, as we have seen, the general energy and vividness of his argumentation gave him an influence which undermined the orthodoxies to which he professed to conform. On the other hand, he did no such service to exact science as was rendered in his day by Kepler and Galileo and their English emulators; and his full didactic influence came much later into play.
Like fallacies to Bacon's may be found in Descartes, whose seventeenth-century reputation as a champion of theism proved mainly the eagerness of theists for a plausible defence. Already in his own day his arguments were logically confuted by both Gassendi and Hobbes; and his partial success with theists was a success of partisanism. It was primarily in respect of his habitual appeal to reason and argument, in disregard of the assumptions of faith, and secondarily in respect of his real scientific work, that he counts for freethought. Ultimately his method undermined his creed; and it is not too much to say of him that, next to Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, [286] he laid a good part of the foundation of modern philosophy and science, [287] Gassendi largely aiding. Though he never does justice to Galileo, from his fear of provoking the Church, it can hardly be doubted that he owes to him in large part the early determination of his mind to scientific methods; for it is difficult to believe that the account he gives of his mental development in the Discours de la Méthode (1637) is biographically true. It is rather the schemed statement, by a ripened mind, of how it might best have been developed. Nor did Descartes, any more than Bacon, live up to the intellectual idea he had framed. All through his life he anxiously sought to propitiate the Church; [288] and his scientific as well as his philosophic work was hampered in consequence. In England Henry More, who latterly recoiled from his philosophy, still thought his physics had been spoiled by fear of the Church, declaring that the imprisonment of Galileo "frighted Des Cartes into such a distorted description of motion that no man's reason could make good sense of it, nor modesty permit him to fancy anything nonsense in so excellent an author." [289]