Mechanism and theology, supporting one another or ceaselessly conﬂicting with one another, tended to keep the Classical age as close as possible to its origin on the side of Descartes and Malebranche; whereas, opposite them, irreligion and a whole confused intuition of life, conﬂicting in turn (as in Bonnet) or acting as accomplices (as with Diderot), are said to be drawing it towards its imminent future towards the nineteenth century, which is supposed to have provided the still obscure and fettered endeavours of the eighteenth with their positive and rational fulfilment in a science of life which did not need to sacrifice rationality in order to preserve in the very quick of its consciousness the specificity of living things, and that somewhat subterranean warmth which circulates between them the object of our knowledge and us, who are here to know them.