 What is distinctive about Hartley’s Observations is the simultaneous presence of the two approaches. Although Hartley affirms that the whole person is a “mechanism,” subject to scientific study, he is no French atheist, no La Mettrie (author of the notorious L’Homme machine, 1748), but a person of deep religious sensibility. Similarly, Hartley affirms universal restoration—but with none of the hallucinatory mysticism of Lead or Marsay. Rather, the doctrine is supported by an application of the latest scientific thinking.