Meditiations - xxxii

Now it is on the basis of the clear and distinct ideas of our mind that Descartes has banished from the real world -- the world as it is in itself, independently of ourselves and of our reason -- all sensible quality, all 'form', and all 'force', in short everything that is not mechanical, and has declared them 'mere appearance'. He has thus destroyed the well ordered, rich and colourful Cosmos of ancient and medieval science, substituting for it a new image or conception of the Universe, mere extension and motion, an image more strange and much more incredible than all the fables ever imagined by the philosophers. Has he really the right to do so?