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 this body of free-thought and devotes particular attention to the ways in which the new ideas were disseminated in the face of the hostility of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

Part One: Gassendi and the 'Libertins'
I. The Crisis of 1619-25: The Erudite Sceptics
II. The Crisis of 1619-25: The Radical Naturalists
III. The Ideas of Cyrano De Bergerac
IV. Atheism and Political Radicalism
V. Between Aristotle and Epicurus: Emmanuel Maignan
VI. Gassendi's Account of the Nature of Things
VII. Lucretius and the Natural Philosophers
VIII. The Rehabilitation of Epicurus
Part Two: Descartes and the Rationalists
IX. Nature Without Consciousness
X. The Fortunes of Descartes
XI. Animal Automatism and its Critics
XII. Monopsychism and the Reaction to Spinoza
XIII. Le Grand Tout
XIV. Clandestine Erudition
XV. Clandestine Sociology
XVI. Voltaire Versus Pascal
Postscript
Select Bibliography
Index