 Newton’s idea of space, then, fulfilled at least two roles. First, it enabled him to avoid the tension between the concept of true motion and the laws of motion of the kind found in Descartes. Second, it also enabled him to articulate what he took to be God’s relation to the natural world. Many regarded his achievements as an important advance over the Cartesian system. However, it would be a mistake to think that Newton vanquished Cartesian ideas within his lifetime: even in England, and certainly on the Continent, Cartesianism remained a powerful philosophical force for several decades after Newton published his primary  works.[16]  Typically, however, Descartes’s followers emphasized the importance of his ideas about the mechanisms that pervade nature rather than his views of space and time. In that arena, Newton’s views were especially prominent, and came in for significant criticism from Leibniz.