Pascal and other members of Port Royal openly expressed their doubts about the place allowed to God in the system; the adherents of Gassendi met it by resuscitating atoms; and the Aristotelians maintained their substantial forms as of old; the Jesuits argued against the arguments for the being of God, and against the theory of innate ideas; whilst Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), bishop of Avranches, once a Cartesian himself, made a vigorous onslaught on the contempt in which his former comrades held literature and history, and enlarged on the vanity of all human aspirations after rational truth.
The plates, which show no improvement in execution on those of Martinet, are after drawings by Huet and Pretre, the former being perhaps the less bad draughtsman of the two, for he seems to have had an idea of what a bird when alive looks like, though he was not able to give his figures any vitality, while the latter simply delineated the stiff and dishevelled specimens from museum shelves.
This is still more the case with the bitter polemic of Daniel Huet (1630-1721), Censura philosophiae Cartesianae, and his later work, Traite philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain.
In 1797, however, the attention of Talleyrand, then minister of foreign affairs, was called to his exceptional abilities by General Huet, and he was attached to the diplomatic service.
He was accompanied by Pierre Daniel Huet, afterwards bishop of Avranches.