This book makes an important contribution to the history of ideas in France in the century preceding the main manifestations of the Enlightenment. A number of detailed studies already exist which deal with special aspects of the thought of the period, and works abound on individual thinkers such as Descartes and Pascal. Professor Spink, however, has endeavoured to present within a single volume a full, coherent and balanced account of the radical inquiries in literature, philosophy, and the natural sciences that stemmed from the intellectual crisis of the 1620s. He analyses the content of...