The securing of the protestant succession of George I saw a newfound confidence in English society, its politics and an affirmation of its distinct culture. Traditional methods of viewing the world, based in French Cartesian philosophy and the conformity of Nature to the laws of geometry, were challenged and new ways of viewing and assessing the world forged. Aesthetic debates shifted emphasis away from the absolute rules that governed beauty and appreciation of art and objects, towards an examination of individual responses to them and the nature of judgement itself. This had an importance for landscape art in particular, whether painting, poetry or gardening, as the analysis of individual judgement took on the form of examining responses to natural objects, the relationship between Man and Nature, and set the standards for the appreciation of landscape, whether natural or artistic.