SM fc S3 & -J& Digitized bylFT5"tnT§rnet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.0rg/details/descartesOOn3aharich DESCARTES FROM THE. PICTURE BY FRANZ HALS IN T HE LOUVRE. DESCAKTES BY J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A. h KNIGHT OP THE ORDRR OP THE SAVIOUR ; PELLOW OP TRINITY COLLEGE AND PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN AITHOR OF 'THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY FOR ENGLISH READERS,' ETC. (UNI7ERSITY] WILtlAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXX 3 1973 M3 3&£^( . M CONTENTS. CHAP. PAOR 1. INTRODUCTION, ..... 1 v II. EARLY YOUTH AND EDUCATION, . . 7 III. LATER YOUTH AND CAMPAIGNS — THE CRISIS OF HIS LIFE, . * 1 . . . 18 IV. SEQUEL OF THE CRISIS — FURTHER TRAVELS, AND RESIDENCE IN PARIS, ... 30 V. RETIREMENT INTO HOLLAND — EARLY CORRE- SPONDENCE AND SCIENTIFIC WORK, . 40 VI. DESCARTES' FIRST PUBLICATION — THE ESSAYS. 64 VII. CORRESPONDENCE AND CONTROVERSIES ON THE ESSAYS, ..... 73 VIII. THE MEDITATIONS, AND THE OBJECTIONS OF THE LEARNED, . . . ^T 87 IX. THE UTRECHT CONTROVERSIES, AND OTHER CORRESPONDENCE, . . . .100 X. THE PRINCIPLES — THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH AND DESCARTES — LETTERS TO MESLAND ON THE EUCHARIST, . . -110 / VI Contents. XI. THE CLQSING YEARS OF HIS LIFE IN HOLLAND — Hl£ ETHICAL WRITINGS — HIS VISIT TO m THE QUEEN OF SWEDEN, AND DEATH — RE- FLECTIONS ON HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER, XII. DESCARTES' PHILOSOPHY — HIS METHOD — THE EXISTENCE OF THE DEITY, . XIII. HIS SYSTEM OF PHYSICS, XIV. DESCARTES' PSYCHOLOGY — INNATE IDEAS — THE NATURE OF ERROR, . XV. ANTHROPOLOGY — THE AUTOMATISM OF ' BRUTES, XVI. THE PASSIONS — ETHICAL THEORY, XVII. THE INFLUENCE OF DESCARTES UPON HIS AGE APPENDIX, JNI7BRSITY] D E S C A E T*E S. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. § 1. One of the most interesting epochs in the world's \ is that of the transition from medieval to modern Europe, The breaking up of the old; the violent birth of the new ; the sturdy defence of the established order; the confident invasion of strange ideas and novel methods, all ibis, shown in great political, religious, scientific, and moral question f his biography, and will be treated severally at the epoch when they occupied his life. After his death his literary executors, especially Clerselier, published not only posthumous works but the collection of letters, which he had made throughout many years, with the intention of printing them, To these we are mainly in- dehted for the many details of his life which are still i vt.l. But it is deeply to be regretted that his in- tention of publishing them was early and deliberately formed, so that he carefully excluded all those secrets of his inner self which we should gladly have detected in his private correspondence. Thus the man is ever in public throughout these voluminous records of many years ; and there are many suspicions, many conjectures, many anticipations suggested 'by his writings, to which we find no clue, where we might fairly expect it. ^Moreover, Clerselier did not think it desirable to give to the public the earliest and most imperfect productions of Descartes' immature age, nor the poetical masque 1 Ed. Gamier, 4 vols.— 1835 ; ed. Aime-Martin, 1 vol.— 1844 ; ed. Napoleon Chaix, 2 vols.— 1864, &c. Our references are to Cousin's. G Descartes. with which he amused the Court of Sweden just before his fatal illness. Most of these things had perished — the poem irrevocably — in the revolution times ; but im- portant fragments were printed in Holland in 1701, and of late years Count Foucher de Careil has rescued others from Leibnitz's transcriptions among his forgotten MSS. at Hanover. § 4. But these add little to our knowledge. For, most fortunately, Descartes found a patient and faithful biographer while his memory was yet fresh, and before his papers had been scattered or lost. Many followers and admirers of the philosopher had indeed given brief sketches of his life by way of preface to their essays on his philosophy ; l but in 1691, Adrien Baillet, a feeble Bad shallow, but earnest and diligent admirer, furnished with all the information of personal friends, and every access to existing editions and unpublished MSS., com- posed an elaborate Vie de M. Descartes ('2 vols, quarto), which contains a perfect mine of information on the philosopher, on his personal friends and adversaries, and on the events of contemporary interest. He had before him in MS. all the documents now unearthed by Count de Careil, and many more besides, and he has every- where indicated in the margin his authority. Later biographers, when they have done best, have merely copied from his exhaustive work, while many of them have only used it in an abridgment, the original edition being now scarce. The reader may therefore assume that the materials of the following sketch are drawn directly from Descartes' works, which Baillet does not analyse with any acuteness, though he gives an ample collection of biographical materials. 1 Cf. the enumeration in BailJet's preface. [UNIVERSITY] CHAPTEE II. EARLY YOUTH AND EDUCATION. § 5. Eene Descartes was sprung from a noble family, settled since the fourteenth century in southern Touraine, and connected by marriages and property with Poitou and Bretagna His father, indeed, and elder brother, were councillors of the parliament of Bretagne, and accordingly settled at Rennea But neither his father's house, nor that of his mother, who came from Poitiers, can fairly be called Breton, so that our philosopher cannot be added to the long list of eminent men which that peculiarly ( Jeltic province lias given to France. The old name had been De Quartis, a form still to be paralleled in Italy by such names as De Sanctis, and it had passed through the form Dea Quartes to Descartes. Accordingly, when it came again to be Latinised for literary purposes, the philosopher objected strongly to the form Cartesius, as being a mongrel formation, and his disciples Eohault and Clerselier even attempted to introduce Descartist, instead of Cartesian, as a designation for his school, but in vain. The family was not renowned for military prowess, but had adopted the other and inferior course open to 8 Descartes. those who could not descend to trade — that of holding administrative offices in the local governments, and thus belonged to the noblesse de la robe. His father, Joachim Descartes, seems to have been a quiet and amiable man, of whom Rene always spoke with affection and respect. Of his mother we know nothing, but that she was of a delicate constitution, which she transmitted to her third and last child, Rene, born (very shortly before her death), on the last day of March 1596, at La Haye, half-way between Tours and Poitiers. Her elder children ay boy and girl, who had no influence on Rene's life, and who may therefore be dismissed with a word. His sister was married, and he never mentions her in his letters. His elder brother, Pierre, called after his pro- perty M. de la Bretailliere, turned out a narrow-minded country Squire, who thought that Rene was rather dis- gracing his origin by adopting the profession of letters, and squandering his patrimony in eccentric scientific experiments. Hence he endeavoured to secure as much of the family property as he could in the settlement after their father's death. Our Descartes speaks with great annoyance of his conduct, and when settled abroad, ap- pointed the Abbe Pieot and other friends as his repre- sentatives in money matters, to the exclusion of M. de la Bretailliere, who in his turn felt offended. Put so estranged were the brothers, that Rene was not even informed of the deatli of his father, until it was found necessary to answer a letter he had written from 1 i< »1- land to ask the old man about his health. The latter had married again in Brittany, and there was a second family of two children; but these were of no greater importance to the philosopher's life. In the next gen- His Family. 9 nation, when his fame had long been European, his nephews and nieces became reconciled to his violation of the traditions of the family, and at last recognised that he was an honour to the name. These details are i >f interest as affording one more instance of that myste- rious law in the production of genius which selects one fr< »m a series of ordinary children, born of average parents, and makes us wonder what subtle combination, what momentary variation in physical conditions, can produce bo marvellous a result. There seems no preference as Idest or youngest, or neither — as to the physical strength 01 weakness of the infant, as to the intellect or pursuits of the parents. The intellectual kings of the world are like Melchizedeck, ' without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor cud of life/ appearing suddenly, mysteriously, to Mess the human race. The discovery of this secret might indeed change the future history of mankind. For n<>w we have merely to wait till what is to us a blind accident generates a genius like Descartes, or Newton, oc Kant § 6. The family determined that as his elder brother was called after the chief of the family estates, so he should hear the title of another; and he was entitled ///• du P< /•/•<f his other Ufa It is only when we remember how dazzling was the splen- dour of royalty in those days, how firmly established the divine right and absolute authority of kings, at least among the nobility, that we can find a proper excuse for these marks of what would now be a servile and cringing flattery. The pale complexion and constant dry cough of the child made the doctors shake their heads ami promise him no long lease of life, so that his worthy father be- stowed every attention on the improvement of his health. In this he succeeded fairly enough, with the assistance of a careful and affectionate nurse, whose kindly offices Descartes ever after remembered and requited with grati- tude. We know nothing more of the first eight years of his life, except that he was nurtured in the gardens of southern Touraine, where he had as a playmate a little girl with a squint, whose early friendship made him regard this defect, whenever he met it, with favour — as . .e association of ideas. His reflective turn, and his constattiriiiqiaH^^ into the causes of what he saw around him, earned him from his father the sobriquet of 'his little philosopher.' It was, indeed, well for him that he was born in the sixteenth and not in the nineteenth century. "With such early promise he could hardly have been allowed to escape some of those boy competitions in schools, which sap all the vigour and originality of our children, and waste them on the most vain and useless imitations of learning. Descartes, on the contrary, up to the end of his eighth year, was not pressed to do any work, and was thus handed over, fresh and eager, to his preceptors. § 7. These were the Jesuits, who had just been re- established (in 1604) with great pomp and circumstance by Henry IV., in one of his ancestral palaces at La Fleche, in Anjou. The suggestion of this foundation came from M. de la Yarennes, a native of the place; and the college was started with a large professoriate, a handsome endowment, and extensive buildings in addi- tion to the old palace. It was intended not only as an ordinary Jesuit college, but as a university for the sons of the nobility and gentry — a part of the scheme which never prospered, and was abandoned during the troubles which followed the king's death. Had he lived longer, his influence might have produced a better effect. But at the time of his death, when his heart was brought to be buried at La Fleche, there were only twenty-four sons of gentitehammes in the procession, while there were 1200 ordinary students. These twenty-four young men must have been a sort of gentlemen-commoners, not subject to the stricter dis- 1 2 Descartes. cipline of the rest ; for we hear particularly that Des- cartes was allowed by the rector, Father Charlet, to lie in bed in the morning — a habit which he maintained all his life, and which he regarded as above all condu- cive to intellectual profit and comfort. All his best meditation was done in the morning hours while lying in bed. We may infer his greater freedom at La Electa from another fact, that he came to know Mersenne, < v< r after his closest friend, though the latter was eight ; his senior, and came to the college with considerable previous training, In the Jesuit colleges then, as now, there is a strict separation betw *en the senior and junior pupils, which should have prevented any such intimacy — if, indeed, it sprang up so early between the two men. Descartes always spoke with respect of the Jesuits' education. He retained the friendship of Charlet, and of Dinet, his special ] .receptor, all his life. He ever strove to keep on good terms with the Orderj and many years later, when his philosophy was fully matured, he still recommended the college (in an extant letter) to a friend who consulted him about his son's education, as superior to the training in the Dutch universities. Descartes remained at La Fleche from 1604 to 1612, during which time he passed through the full course of studies prescribed by the Order. The most remarkable : which occurred at the college was the reception of the heart of Henry IV. in its solemn resting-place — a ceremony which took place (4th June 1610) a fortnight after liis assassination. It is described at great length by Baillet ; and we may observe that this was but one of many great ceremonies which Descartes attended, and Early Education. 13 which he sought out in after-life, whenever an occasion offered, as being a suitable theatre for the observation of human .character. § 8. The first five and a half years of his education were devoted to the humanities, a study which he did not afterwards regret, and of which he speaks as follows in the famous autobiographical passage at the opening of his Discourse <>n Method : 'I knew that the languages I then learned were necessary for the understanding of ancient authors; that the grace of mytJis stinrulate the mind; that the memorable deeds in histories exalt it, and being read with discretion, aid in forming the judg- ment ; that the reading of all good books is like a con- tit >n with the best people of past centuries who have written them — nay, even a studied conversation, in which they disclose to us only their best thoughts; that has incomparable strength and beauty; that pa try has enchanting delicacy and sweetness. . . . But I came to think that I had spent enough time at languages, and even in the reading of ancient books and their histories and fables; for it is almost the same tiling to . converse with men of other ages as it is to travel/ This is all very well, but 'if one travel too long, one becomes a stranger to one's home. ... I highly esteemed eloquence and loved poetry; but I thought that both one and the other were mental endow- ments rather than the fruits of study. Those who have the strongest reasoning faculty, and digest their ideas most thoroughly, so as to make them clear and intelli- gible, are always best able to persuade men of what they propose, even though they only talk has Breton and have never learned rhetoric; and those who have the 1 4 Descartes. most pleasing fancies, and can express them with best adornment and most sweetness, will still be the best poets, even should the art of poetry be unknown to them.' We cannot tell how soon he adopted these revolution- ary views about the humanities. It is just possible that here first he set his mind in opposition to the constant study of Aristotle, whose Historic and I'm tic were then considered the almost inspired utterances of the great- est of men. He was also one of the first to lav down the modern and naturalistic theory of eloquence, which conflicts so directly with the views of the Greeks and Romans, to whom nothing was eloquence which waffnol studied in form and calculated in effect § 9. The eeremony of the king's heart interrupted ates as In- was just beginning his course of moral philosophy and logic He always recognised the useful- of the latter in setting our thoughts into explicit order, especially for teaching purposes, though he soon found that it was useless for new discoveries. Thus ho borrowed from it rules for the form of his reasoning. Similarly he derived from the scholastic ethics the prac- tical rules which he observed and recommended through his life, rejecting the subtleties and cavillations which have bo damaged the reputation of the Jesuit order. Beine; a lay pupil, lie did not officially study theo- logy, and he was taught to regard it as a science apart, connected with inspiration, with miracles, and with the authoritative teaching of the Church, which no layman could handle without grave danger. It is, indeed, on this special theory that the Jesuits must have always justified their large and various course of lay instruction. Mathematical Training. 15 They were not afraid to let their pupils think deeply and reason out their conclusions in secular science, pro- vided it was strictly severed from theology. Those dis- agreeable border sciences, geology, anthropology, and his-s torical criticism, which insist on encroaching into the! sacred precincts of theology, did not then exist. Des-j cartes could all his life profess orthodoxy in faith andi profound scepticism in science. But even in his dayj lli is separation was not absolute, and there were theo- logians who foresaw and cried out against the coming danger. § 10. The succeeding year, devoted to physic and metaphysic, though more fruitless in positive results, was doubtless the epoch of his serious scepticism as to the value of the existing methods of inquiry. He found that the world's brightest and deepest wits had been long exercised on these topics, and had discovered no- thing certain — nay, had so flatly contradicted each other, that nothing could be declared scientifically established. And we find a striking analogy to the preface of Kant's ( hriticky when Descartes tells us that the certainty of the conclusions in geometry and arithmetic were what brought out in his mind the contrast between false and true methods of seeking the truth. For he was introduced to the study of mathematics in the last year of his course, and he turned with eagerness to a science so promising in its clearness and conclusiveness, and so well adapted to his genius. Various fables have been told about his mathematical performances at La Fleche, and these fables now pass current in all his biographies. They seem to have owed their origin to the imagination or imperfect infor- 1 6 Descartes. mation of Daniel Lipstorpius, a Lubeck professor, who prefaced his Specimma Pliilosopldae, Cartesiance by a short life, for which he drew materials surreptitiously from some of Descartes' Dutch friends, who neither vouched for their accuracy nor corrected their enom But though Baillet gives us ample materials to disprove it, yet it is to tin's day believed, on Lipstorpius's authority, that Descartes made the greatest discovery of his life — Ins application of algebra to geometry — when a student of sixteen years old, who had not spent one year in the study of mathemal There are many other conclusive arguments against such a story beside tho ted by Baillet, who, in- deed, is disposed to believe the wonder, though not the details given by Lipstorpina For though geometry was certainly taughl al he, and though men were ev«T eteeking what they called the analysis of the an- cients a Lost art which had discovered the solution of such difficult geometrical truths as to astonish modern students — yet it is not likely that algebra bad yet made its appearance at all in the course of the Jesuits. If it had, it must have been whatever algebra was known before Vieta's book; for although this man bad written at the end of the sixteenth century, and bad died in 1604, Descartes expressly tells us in a letter, that he had never seen the book while he was in France, either at school or in Paria Thus the discovery was hardly possible to him at this time. But what need of further arguments, when we have from his own pen a consistent account of the date of the discovery, and have it even noted, as the greatest moment of his life ? We may therefore affirm that he only learned at La Later Education. 17 Fleche to solve geometrical and arithmetical problems, and to do so with ease and ingenuity. By the light of his new method, these exercises were one of the fav- ourite amusements of his leisure all through after-life. When engaged in far more important researches, he often determined t<> give up the solving of abstract problems as mere waste of time ; but his great power, and his inborn for this kind of speculation, were too strong for his e, and he was unable to resist the temptation of working at any problem which was proposed to him for solution. But at school he used to wonder that sciences J with such clear and certain demonstrations had not led . practical results. So he left La Fleche with the praise and blessings of his priestly teachers, yet in his own mind not learned, but ignorant, and hardly hoping to attain any solid science. Thus he readily abandoned study, and devoted himself to the practice of riding and fencing, which his father desired him to learn as part of the accomplish- ments of every gentilhomme. He spent part of the years 1612-13 in this way, showing by his little treatise Chi the Art of Fencing (now lost) that even in these ex- ercises he studied the theory, and sought to attain a methodical and rational knowledge of the art. 1 He used afterwards to say that if he had been put to a trade in humbler life he would have learned it and worked it per- fectly. And this is no doubt true. Whatever amuse- ment he pursued — fencing, music, cards — he at once set himself to think out its theory. *J 1 We gather this from Baillet's too brief notice of the work, vol. ii. p. 407. P. — I. B 18 CHAPTER III. LATER YOUTH AND CAMPAIGNS — THE CRISIS OF HIS LIFE. § 11. In the course of 1613 his father determined to send Descartes to see the world in Paria He must have had no small confidence in the steadiness of the hoy of seventeen ; foi he sent no tutor or guardian with him, hut intrusted him to the risks and dang* shion- able life with no greater protection than that of a valet. The young D< ppears to have taken readily to the amusements of the gayer youth \ and from the vague statements of his solemn biographers, we may infer that he lived no very strict life. He was par- ticularly fond of playing cards, says Baillet with charm- ing naivety because he found himself very successful wherever skill was of value. With anyone hut Des- cartes such an admission might sound very awkward. But he soon became tired of these distractions, .and found out more serious friends, who again awakened in him his taste for science. These were particularly Mer- senne and Mydorge, — the latter Vieta's successor in the highest reputation for mathematics in France, and a man of fortune and leisure ; the former no great thinker, hut a sympathetic and stirring friend. During all his life He goes into the World. 19 Descartes found no more congenial spirits. The con- " venation of these men tempted him to fly society, and shut himself up in a remote lodging in the Faubourg St Germain, where for nearly two years he hardly left the house, and studied deeply, no doubt with Mydorge, the highest mathematics then known. Though he may not have read Vieta's book, it is impossible that Mydorge should not have made him acquainted with its results. Meanwhile his gay associates first wondered at his sudden disappearance, and presently forgot him, till he was at last surprised by one of them in the street, and pursued to his retreat. This cost him his liberty, for he was drawn back again into the world. But his tastes had undergone a solid change, and none of the distrac- tions offered to him had any charm, save music, which budied attentively. Finding himself weary of Paris life, he determined at the age of twenty-one (spring of 1G17) to see more of the world, and to do so in the of a volunteer — a usual fashion in those days with the French nobility. In fact, as the profession of pilgrim was chosen by tourists in the middle ages, so after the Renaissance the profession of soldier was often adopted when other travelling was difficult and dangerous; and as rich pilgrims made it a point of honour to ask alms at least once for form's sake, so Descartes, who generally went as a volunteer at his own cost, once took pay, and kept the coin for the rest of his life in token of his soldiering. § 12. In selecting his service, he preferred to the various French factions and their camps that of Prince Maurice of Xassau, an able general who was then famed for his knowledge of military engineering, and for the 20 Descartes. many scientific men he had gathered about him. Des- cartes says that in his early youth he really had a love of war, but he attributes this to a certain animal heat in his liver, which cooled down in the course of time. His more serious object, as he often repeats, was to study the manners and customs of various nations. Indeed he afterwards came to regard soldiering as a mere excuse for idleness and debauchery. He joined the garrison in Breda, which then belonged to Prince Maurice. He lefl it several years before it was attacked (1625) by the Marquis Spinola and his Spaniards, and thus esc the chance of meeting in th< Ideron, perhaps the terary figure of the age. 1 > of Boldiering at Breda v. ire, in which he had time to pursue his Btudiea Many scientific men came to Bee Prince Maurice's engi tnd among othei .1 m, Principal of the College at Dort, a philosopher and mathematician of eminence. The amount of scientific activity at Breda must have been considerable, Beeing that some one had announced on placards a mathematical problem, with a challeng find the solution. Descartes stopped in theatre the placard, and being unable to understand the Flemish language, asked one of the bystanders in hat in t him its meaning. This was done by the person addressed, with the sarcastic invitation that the young soldier should in turn find him the solution; but the offer w calmly accepted, that the stranger, who chanced to be Beeckman himself, gave Descartes his name and ad Xext day Descartes brought him the solution, and sur- prised him with the depth and variety of his learning. So they became friends, and corresponded till Beeck- The Tract on Music. 21 man's death. It was through him that Descartes was now introduced to several Flemish mathematicians, who proposed to him problems. The proposer of the particu- lar problem in question, and the problem itself, are now unknown, nor does Descartes ever refer to them, so that it is a random conjecture of his biographers to say that he solved it by applying his algebra to a geometrical question, §13. As the quarrels of the Arminians and the Go- mariste — which ended with the triumph of the latter under Prince Maurice, and the execution of Barneveld — did not interest Descartes, he remained at Ereda enjoying iintific society; and it was for Beeckman that he wrote the earliest treatise (that On Music) now extant from his hand. There are indeed a few short notes from this period, recovered by M. de Careil from Leibnitz's copies, but nothing which we can prove to be earlier. The tracl was not meant for publication, being written, aa he says, 'inter ignorantiam militarem ab homine desidioso et libero penitusque diversa cogitante et agente tumultuose,' and Descartes would never permit it to be printed He even withdrew his MS. from Beeckman, when this man had the impudence in after-years to parade a copy he had taken as his own work. After Descartes' death it was printed ; then within three years in an English version, and then in a French abridgment by Poisson. The work is the least important of those we possess, although it is doubtless deeper than his boyish work on fencing, and his masque written for the Swedish Court. Yet even here he maintains his originality. He was the first to assert that major thirds were not, as the 22 Descartes. Greeks held, discards, but concords. As the Greeks were perfectly right, if we assume strict tuning by full tones, which make the third so sharp as to be unbearable, the modern temperament, which flattens the third, must have already come into use. Indeed church music, like all other arts, had undergone its transformation from the old into the new at the hands of Palestrina, Probably the secular music which Descartes heard in Paris, and which so strongly attracted him, had already felt the influence of the great comp In 1619 he left the service of Prince Maurice, and determined to Beek a new Bphere of observation in many, from which many rumours of wars and of mentous chanj then reaching through Europe. But on his way he contrived to smuggle himself into Frankfort to witness the coronation of the Emperor Ferdinand II., -a splendid ceremony, which took place on the 9th September L619. All Btrangers were indeed supposed to be Carefully excluded, hut his curiosity con- trived means to evade the regulation. § 14. There w.'iv found among his papers in Sweden HO inventory of early tracts or of which belong to this period, but they have never seen the Light These were — ( 1 ) a mathematical tract called 'Parnate (2) On Algebra; (8) thoughts entitled ' Democritica ; ' (t) a collection of experin* ' Pnaambula: ini- tium Bapientiae timor Domini;' and (6) a few | called 'Olympica,' to which we will revert. It is pro- bable that these tracts, if not destroyed hy their author, who distinctly mentions the burning of papers, were in the chest left in Holland with Hooghelande, and of which Baillet could obtain no account. The principal The Crisis at Neuburg. . 23 fact insisted upon by Bailie t as regards these tracts is, that in one of them was contained his theory that the lower animals had no soul or thinking power, but were only highly organised and animated machines. This early date appears to be true; and from one of the notes printed by M. de Careil, it seems as if the regularity of their actions had first suggested this theory, as showing that they had no free will, and that they were therefore wanting in the essential feature of intellect. It is at certain, from letters of 1625, and other MSS. of a tract called Thnnmantis Eegia, known to Baillet, that he announced the doctrine to his friends in the early part of his life. 1 Deo is not at this time a very keen soldier, and he was probably glad of the excuse of pending negotiations to be sent to winter-quarters at Neuburg on the Danube. In a memorable passage, the 2d section of his Discourse on Method, he has given us his own account of what happened to him at Neuburg, and what was the nature of this great mental crisis. But he has omitted certain interesting details, preserved by Baillet from his then extant MSS., and now remarkably verified by the scraps recovered from the MSS. of Leibnitz. § 15. Let us first take up Descartes' own account— a sage as celebrated as any in French literature. It is here given in abridgment, so that the reader may get an conspectus of the principal points. ' After I had spent some years in studying the book of the world (in contrast to the books of the learned), and thus striving to gain some experience, I determined one day to study also within myself, and to employ all my mental force in i The marginal reference of Baillet here (vol. i. p. 52) is obscure. 24 Descartes, choosing the paths which I ought to follow — in which I succeeded, I think, far better than if I had never left my country or my books. I was then in Germany on account of the wars, and as I was returning from the coronation of the emperor to the army, the comu, ment of the winter stopped me in a quarter where, find- ing no conversation to entertain me, and fortunately having neither cares nor passions to trouble me, I mained all day alone shut up in a warm room where I was at perfect leisure to occupy myself with my own thoughts. 1 1 1 is first conclusion was thai IS of human thought, whether as laws of society or i : and more systematically framed by one thinker than by many, and that therefore the framing <»f a science bom the books oi ;hod. lather we in id of all the prejudice quired from them, and begin afresh from a new founda- tion. But this was merely a pri solution, which he do :i, and which he i.-^ ful to restrict to science, and will by no means apply to theology, p tlitics, or morals, Tims, like a true pupil of the Jesuits, he proposes to entirely the theo- d sciences from those which affect our faith In the he is a sweeping reformer ; in i 1 a strict Conservative. But as he explains to us in B added to the treatise in its Latin version: 'As those that inhabit an old house do not destroy it till they have formed a plan of the new one to be built in its place, so I first considered how I could find something certain, and spent a considerable time in seeking the true method of attaining to the knowle'dge of all things His Logical Rules. 25 of which my mind was capable. I had studied a little, when younger, in philosophy logic, and in mathematics the analysis of the geometers, and algebra — three arts and sciences which seemed likely to contribute some- thing to my design.' But he found that logic at best was only of use in the communication, not in the dis- covery of truth, and was so made up of real and useful truths, mixed with false and doubtful principles, that they were as hard to separate as to extract a statue of Minerva or Diana from a block of marble not yet rough- hewn. 'Then as regards the analysis of the ancients and the algebra of the moderns, not to say that they only apply to very abstract matters which seem of no ible profit, the former is so confined to the considera- tion of figures, that it cannot occupy the understanding without greatly fatiguing the imagination; and in the latter we are so enslaved by certain rules and figures, that it has become a confused and obscure art, which perplexes the mind, instead of a science which cultivates it. This is why I thought we must seek out some other method which comprised the good of all three, and was free from their defects.' § 1G. He then selects four logical rules : first, only to admit as true what was so perfectly clear and distinct as to admit of no doubt ; secondly, to divide all difficulties into their several elements; thirdly, to pass (syntheti- cally) from the easier to the more difficult ; fourthly, to make such accurate enumerations, both in seeking middle terms and in considering the elements of difficult ques- tions, as to omit nothing. These simple logical laws are of little moment, save in showing that t he meth od pro- posed by Descartes was from the beginning deductive, 2G Descartes. and not experimental He proceeds: 'The long chains of simple ancTeasy reasons which geometers employ in arriving at their most difficult demonstrations, made me fancy that all things which are the objects of human knowledge are similarly interdependent, and that, pro- vided we abstain from assuming anything take, and observe the correct order in deducing things one from another, there are none so remote that we cannot reach, and BO hidden that we cannot discover them. 1 v. no trouble in finding out where to begin ; for considering that the mathematicians only had attained bo Borne taint v, and this because they occupied themselves about lie* i bject of all, I thought I should examine this (fast 1 But he did so merely to ascertain the true method, and only so far as all mathematical Bci 1, and thus might he applicable to in., iv useful subjecta ' And then considering that to know the mathematical sciences I should Bometimes requi] ler them each in detail, and sometimes only I tain or understand several of them conjointly, I thought that to consider them better in particular 1 must con- sider them in lines, because I could find nothing simpler, or more distinctly repreeentable to my imagination and s; but to retain them, or consid< 1 of them together, it was necessary to explain them by the briefest possible symbols, and thus I should borrow all thai best from geometrical analysis and from algebra, and correct the defects of each by the other.' He found this method so easy and so fertile, 'that in the two or three months he employed to examine all the questions to which these sciences extend/ he found he could not only solve great difficulties, but establish rules for other c His Capital Discovery. 27 and determine means of procedure in new ones. But what most of all pleased him was his hope of applying tli is method to other branches of knowledge. ' Not that I ventured to examine forthwith all manner of problems, which would have been a violation of my rules j but knowing that their principles must all be derived from [first] philosophy, in which I could as yet find none that were certain, I thought that here, above all, I ought to establish them.' Eut this was too important and difficult a task to undertake at the age of twenty-three, and one not to be attempted without long preparation, and the rooting out of all the false opinions which he had imbibed, and by collecting experience both from observation and from the practice of the method already prescribed § 17. Such is the account the great philosopher gives of his mental crisis. Nothing can be clearer and more consistent. In the words of his epitaph, written by his intimate friend Chanut, with whom he had often talked over his mental history — * In his winter furlough com- paring the mysteries of nature with the laws of mathe- , mattes, he dared to hope that the secrets of both could be unlocked with the same key,' 1 — a most weighty and pregnant account of his whole life, and one which shows how deep an impression this capital moment made upon his memory, and how long after it was fresh in the minds of those who conversed with him. But he has suppressed, as of no philosophical interest for his system, a closer account of the mental throes he under- 1 * In otiis Mbernis Naturae mysteria componens cum legibus Matheseos, utriusque arcana eadem clave reserari posse ausus est sperare.' 28 Deseari went in giving birth to this mighty idea The ordinary public, who associate mathematical discovery with dry deductions and weary computations, little know tin rible excitement of seeing a great vista open before the imagination, the wild hopes it inspires, and the fears, the dread that it may all vanish again into confusii remain locked in mystery because a Bingle ward i the newly-forged key, Descartes did not escape these great agitations of spirit. In the lost tract called OlympicOj which Baillet had consulted in MS., and which he describes as an informal collection of observa- tions, Descartes had told of his gradual la] of enthusiasm, in which he saw in one night three dreams, which he interpreted at the time, even before waking to be revelations from the Spirit of Truth to ' his future course, as well as to warn him of the he had already committed. This was at the dose of a day celebrated in his mem- ory as that on which he had reached the foun . the 10th November 1G19. The note is still extant in Leibnitz's transcri] thoughts, and thus Baillet's account is verified. The no1 that in 1620 he b aderstand the invent bile. Then he adds on the margin the 10th November, and he must mean the 10th November previous. 1 In another note (Op. oL i. p. 13) he : ' Before the end of November I will go to Loi and thence on foot from Venice, if it be convenient and the usual custom; if not, at least as devoutly as is any 1 As the 10th of this month in 1620 was the second day after the kittle of Prague, when he was in full campaign, it is strange that the biographers have not perceived their mistake. His Visions. 29 one's wont. At all events I will finish my treatise be- fore Easter; and if I have sufficient supply of books, and it seems to me worthy, I will publish it as I pro- mised to-day, 1620, the 23d of September.' 1 The details of the dreams are quoted in full by Baillet from the Olympica (vol. i. p. 81 et seq.\ but they are so tedious and confused that they are not worth repro- ducing. Hia theological reading of the visions is, how- ever, very remarkable; more particularly that a violent storm which he felt driving him towards a church was an evil genius forcing him towards a place whither he was already inclined to go. Baillet has, I fancy, suppressed >thing here, which points to the scientific avoidance of theology, and to the danger he ran in his youth of becoming a theologian. But the orthodox biographer has evidently only given us the orthodox side of these visions, in consequence of which Descartes vowed he would go forthwith on a pilgrimage to our Lady of tto, that she might help him in his enterprise. When he recovered from his enthusiasm, he postponed this pilgrimage, but performed it, as he had promised, four years after. 1 What this last date means is hard to tell. It cannot be the date of his promise, and why should he fix the date of the publication of his book in such an absurdly definite way ? >* OP THB (UNIVERSITY) 30 CHAPTEE IV. SEQUEL OF Till- CRD3IS — PURTHKU TRAVELS, AND M PABI& 1620-28. §18. As soon ition had cooled, lie ained si onoe to produce his invention, and i thai on the 23d February (1620) he was thinking of finding a publisher; but presently he changed his in- rod tins ; which was certainly not the n Faulhaber and other mathematicians of distinction. The story of Is man is repeated, w >//<//>■ :i mathematics went Bu1 he presently pended further study, and departed t<» see the Court of Vienna ; after which he again, in the autumn of 1G20, joined the Duke nf Bavaria's army in Bohemia, and entered Prague after the battle. But Tychp Brah dead, and his celebrated collection of astronomical instru- ments had been plundered and I in 101.' that the opportunity of inspecting them had unfortun- ately passed away. s' 20. We know nothing <>f his life in winter quarters somewhere in southern Bohemia during the opening <>f 1621. lie then joined the Comte de Bucquoy's troops in their campaign against Betlen Gabor, who had assumed Travels in Northern Europe. 33 the princedom of Hungary in the Protestant interest. In besieging Neuhausel, the Count was killed by some Hun- garian cavalry ; and as his army was raising the siege, irtea abandoned military service, and left the camp. But he did not return to France, — among other reasons, on account of the civil war with the Hugue- nots, and of the pestilence which ravaged Paris up to 1623. He seems still to have felt that he had not sufficiently studied 'the great book of the world,' and so he passed through Moravia to Silesia. Then he saw the Assembly of the States at Breslau in November (1621), and visited various parts of northern Germany, including Brandenburg and Schleswig - Holstein. He <'d from Hamburg westward, and wishing to pass from East to West Frisia, hired a boat to take himself and his valet. The boatmen began openly deliberating jn his presence about throwing him overboard and seiz- ing his baggage, fancying that neither he nor his valet understood their language. Perceiving, however, their intentions, he drew his sword, and threatened to run them through on the spot, whereat they were so aston- ished that they conveyed him in safety. This story is cited from his own MS. fragment called Experimenta (now lost), and we wonder how he had acquired Frisian, Beeing that he was not likely to have learned it at Breda, where Flemish was spoken. But perhaps he may have met Frisian soldiers in Breda. He spent the most of the winter of 1621-22 at the Hague, where the family of the unfortunate King of Bohemia, and Elector Palatine were settled under the protection of Prince Maurice, and were living in some state in their exile. Here then Descartes made his first P. — L C 34 Dcscart acquaintance with the country which he afterwards as his abode, and with the royal family which produced his most illustrious pupil. The Princess Elizabeth was then a mere child. In February 1622 he left the 1 I and passed through the Spanish Court at Brussels into Fiance; but, finding the plague still raging in Paris, be went to Rennes to see his father, who then put him in ssion of his share of his mother's inheritance. This consisted of Le Perron and other lands in Poitou, which tries forthwith made preparations to sell, in order to provide himself with a more convenient income, § 21. We may fancy him weary of the company of his respectable old father and unsympathetic brethren when he came up to I February kith and | being then restore' pecially Mersenne, received him with great joy, and he came just in ti: refute the growing rumour that he had turned Roeicru- eian in Germany. A controversy between Fludd and the Frenchmen Gassendi and Mersenne was then exciting attention, and various squibs in the form of public placards were then appeari ruing the mys- terious confraternity. After a . LOntfas in Paris he returned to . and then 1 to com- plete the sale i^' his Lands in Poitou, formally, however, retaining the title of Seigneur du Perron. He nexl out for Italy, under the excuse of seeking the p Intendant tOsthe army at the Alps, which a relative of his had held. But really he had scientific interests in view. He made various observations in the Alps, both on his outward and homeward journey. He considered that the avalanches indicated the cause of thunder, which consisted of the rolling down of higher and more con- Travels in Southern Europe. 35 densed clouds on lower strata. He made measurements from Modane of the height of Mt. Cenis. He passed to the Court of Innspruck, then witnessed the marriage of a new Doge with the Adriatic at Venice, and proceeded to fulfil his vow of a pilgrimage to Loretto. 'We know ]i< it/ says the naive Baillet, 'what were the circum- { this pilgrimage, but we need not doubt that they were very edifying, if we remember that at the time of the conception of his vow he was resolved to omit nothing <>n his part to bring upon him the favour of . and to obtain the peculiar protection of the Blessed Virgin.' He next attended the Jubilee of 1625 at Rome, where he found a vast concourse of all civilised Dationa He returned through Florence, where Galileo then at the summit of his reputation, but tells us expressly in a letter that he never saw him, and even si lows a v.rv inaccurate knowledge of his works and a supercilious contempt of them. He thinks Galileo the author of a work on music really written by his father, and p» tfessed to have read through his Dialogues between Saturday and Monday. He says he found no peculiar merit in them. After witnessing the siege of Gavi (in the war between the Spaniards and Genoese), he returned by the valley of Susa and Piedmont to France, and was disposed to pur- chase for himself a public office in Poitou; but presently changed his mind, and determined to settle without a profession in Paris, in the scientific society which that city afforded This residence extended from the end of 1625 to the year 1628, with the exception of an occasional visit to his relations, and an excursion in the guise of a volunteer to see the famous siege of Kochelle, 36 Descartes. which was very remarkable for its display of military engineering and hence attracted most of the scientific men of France. When the truce came, he, with many oilier French noblemen, visited the English l! •_'. It was during this residence in Paris that Dea cartes - now a mature and travelled man, and an acknow- ledged master in mathematics — made the acquaintance of of the men with whom he steadily corresponded in after-years. D was here, also, thai we may consider him to have formulised his views on Nature, and to have laid the foundations of the Philosophy which did not appear until years had elapsed. Bis Wandt rfahre, however, were over on his return from Italv. Eis Meuterfahre b not with his retreat into Holland, hut with I men! in Paris, an. I influence upon the leading scientific men of the d § 23. Among his most notable friends were MM. Hard; . 1 ' inde Picot (ahbe), Morin, Father Gibieuf, and M. de Balzac, to whom he afterwards wrote his m< ful and brilliant let All these, Bave fch re men of philosophical or mathematical attainments, so that I Taris at this time may he compared to wh university life ought t<> 1m- the constant intercom conversation and friendly controversy of a number of learned men, with leisure to pursue their special branches of inquiry in a separate and undisturbed But as London provides that sort of life at present for better than the old universities, which are abandoned to lec- tures and examinations, so Paris was a far better univer- sity in its social Bide than any of the professed h< of learning. Descartes' only drawback was his good Descartes and Chandoitx. 37 social position, which exposed him to the trouble of fashionable visits and the distractions of Court life. To avoid these interruptions he again hid himself, but was discovered through his valet by M. le Yasseur, from whose house lie had fled without notice, as he had been obliged to dwell in a sort of scientific academy among the curi- ous as well as the learned. Le Yasseur, following the valet into the philosopher's retreat at 11 in the morning, observed him through the half-open door lying in bed, raising himself at intervals to write, and then lying back to meditate. The vexation at being thus disturbed was the immediate cause of his short expedition to La Eochelle. - just after his return that he was invited to meet a distinguished company by the Nuntio, after- wards Cardinal, De Bagne, who wished to have a new mi of philosophy discussed at his house. This m was announced by a certain Chandoux, a physi- cian, afterwards executed for uttering base coin, which sh< >ws him to have been a practical alchemist. We do not know in what this charlatan's system consisted, beyond that it proposed to abolish the Aristotelian philosophy of the schools. In addition to this, he evidently had nothing sound to tell. Still the company were delight- ed at his eloquence, until Cardinal Berulle, who was present, and narrowly observing Descartes, asked his opinion, and received a polite but evasive answer. We are told (by Borel) that the company then urged Des- cartes so persistently, that he was obliged, most unwill- ingly, to declare himself. After praising the negative side of Chandoux's discourse, he proceeded to show that lie had supplied no criterion to separate truth from 38 Descartes. probability, and offered to prove any palpable falsi OT disprove any palpable truth to the satisfaction of the company, by using the current arguments of the day. The account proceeds to tell us how all were so dazzled, that with one accord they adjured Descartes to give t<> the world the results of his brilliant acutenesfl and pro- found learning. For he had added at the time a sketch of his Natural Method^ based on the analogy of mathe- matics. This he himself alludes to in a letter to Ville ieiix years afterwards. § 25. It was, no doubt, this and similar other triumphs in the literary circles of the day, which ultimately Led urtes to devote himself to the perfecting of a new system of philosophy according to his method, — in to const n: itive ediiiee on the ground 1 by the crumbling away of the scholastic metapl For we must remember that in crediti with complete initial scepticism, with the abolition of all pre- existing beliefs, most historians have for take account of the prevalent fashion of the day. 1'. where the Aiisfc •telian philosophy was b eked Quite apart from solitary precursors of the reformation in philosophy, of which lv -he Martin Luther, the fashionable talk of the day ran in the same direction The great name of Bacon had spread i\u*. same ideas through the literary world. All were agreed about the soundness of his negative reasonings, whereby he had enforced the public belief that the old was worn oui useless, ami that some new system must be discovered. The real problem among deeper minds was the dis- covery of this new system. Bacon had attempted it, but had failed. We find the society of Paris at this Bacon's Insufficiency. 39 very period regretting the news of his death, because he had not time to build up a positive side to his com- pleted attack upon the schools. No doubt Descartes turned his attention to Bacon's work, but perceived in a moment that his positive experiments were carried on in so loose and vague a way, — in fact, in so thoroughly unmathematical a method, — that he would have exposed them just as he exposed Chandoux's guesses. Hence lie seldom mentions Eacon in his letters; though he d<»es so with respect as a stimulator of truer and sounder 1 1 1 i i iking. He estimated the great Chancellor at his proper value, and quite differently from the exaggerated notions since current on the subject. JNIVSRSITT] 40 CHAPTER V. l;i;iIKi;.MJ:.\T INTo HOLLAND— EARLY CORRESn • AND sc II'MII h: WORK, '-37. made up bis mind to retire bom the dis- tractions of Booietyj and devote himself earnestly to the cting df his system, Deecartes wrote letten of fare- well to his relations and most of his friends, arranged that his correspondence should pass through Mersenne, that liis money affairs should be controlled by Picot (both ecclesiastics who were his intimates), and left Paris in Advent L628, u<>t directly for Holland, but for some unknown retreat, probably in the north of France, where he might learn to endure cold and solitude, and per- haps make experiment of the advantages of a philoso- phic hermitage, It was not till the spring of L629 that he reached Amsterdam, where lie found awaiting him a crowd of letters complaining of his Btrange resolu- tion in abandoning his country and his friends. He justifies himself by various reasons, but nev< perhaps very incidentally, by the true one. He that the air of Paris engendered in him vain fan Preference for Holland. 41 and that, having attempted in 1628 to write something concerning the existence of God, he had completely failed He says that the climate of Italy, which he would have gladly chosen for other reasons, was too hot, and in other respects unhealthy, and that he was better able to work in a cold temperature. Above all, he could not hear the distractions of society, or the visits of curious and importunate busybodies. But there is little doubt that he kept back designedly the most important and dominating reason. Descartes was a timid man, and though most anxious to keep on terms with Catholic orthodoxy, he knew that many thinkers had been equally anxious, and had nevertheless incurred perse- cution and death at the hands of the Church. He knew from his experience at Breda that religious liberty was now assured in Holland, and that though the country was full of controversies, a foreigner and a ( Satholic would have a better chance of living and writ- ing freely there than within reach of the 'most Christian ' king. He was wont to call it the refuge of Catholics ; and he hints the same thing in some of his letters to Bal- : but, of course, from a professedly orthodox Catholic, who professed submission and adherence to the Church, such a plea, if public, must have been ruinous. The point did not escape his Protestant assailants at the University of Utrecht in after-years. § 27. It was noted above that the Mei.sterjalire of Descartes date, not from his retirement, but from his settlement in Paris, and we have also quoted his remark that he had not succeeded in his speculations on natural theology. We may here add that the letters of 1629 are almost all on mathematical and physical problems, and 42 Descartes. it was evidently -with these that his friends kept him occupied, — so much so, that now, as often in after-life, be determined he would no longer be troubled with the solution of barren questions in speculative Bcience, which stayed his progress in the broader and more fruit- ful researches into the constitution of nature, and of man as a part of that nature. Of course he was per- kily relapsing into mathematics. II; power :id still more in « : what were the general conditions of a solution, and whether unable, was too well known to escape frequent requisition, and its exercise too pleasant to be aban- doned ; and bom this side he had certainly attained his before L8 § 28, We know al had busied himself at Paris with practi 8, and especially with the grinding of of various e ! For this purpose he had found out ad Fen ier, whom he had instructed in his theories, and who had skill and patience enough to carry them out Like nun: who excel tle-ir fellows, and are thus brought into eon- \vith higher and greater minds, this Ferriei became vain of his cleverness, and extremely dilate performing his work. Descartes wrote to him from Holland to ask him to come and share his re1 even promised to hear all his expenses, and live with him like a brother. He had engaged apartment them "both in- a chateau at Franeker, and a French cook to minister to their comforts. But it was thi of familiarity with the higher classes which tilled the 1 Many Cartesians imitated their master in this respect ; Spinoza oven made it his profession. Early Fragment on Method. 43 man with idle hopes. He refused Descartes' offer in the expectation of being employed by the king's brother, and lodged in the palace. This expectation being dis- appointed, he turned back to Descartes, and strove hard to recover the chance he had lost. But the philosopher had seen through his man; he saw that Ferrier was an unpractical and troublesome person ; and while express- ing all civility and interest in promoting his welfare in Paris, he evaded renewing his offer, and advised him to stave off threatening poverty by going back to the manu- facture of ordinary instruments, while he wrote him out all manner of full directions for some more delicate articles which he wished him to attempt. Descartes afterwards found in Yille Bressieux a better assistant of this kind, although no one seems to have attained to the remarkable natural gifts of Terrier. '. But the anecdote of the disputation with Chan- doiix indicates that beyond the study of special sciences, 1 ites had already cleared his notions as to the general method to be pursued in their study, and of this we seem to have a record in the unfinished Regies pour la direction de Vetprit. 1 The Regies, if they indeed date from this period, are a very important document in our inquiry into Descarces' mental development. It is evident from Baillet's quotation of the MS. Regies pour la direction de I'esprit, that he considered it composed at this time. It was found after Descartes' 1 The Recherche de la Veriiepar les lumieres naturelles, &c, a short fragment of a dialogue, which was only preserved in a Latin trans- lation, and published together with the Recherche, dates from the end of his life, when he was thinking of recasting all his philosophy in the form of dialogue, and had even sketched out the Meditations and Principles in this Avay. 44 Descartes, death, and must have been circulated by wi copies through Holland, for Locke's Essay shows many direct traces of its influence; but it was not pub- lished till 1701 with other posthumous worka There is no manifest date to be found in the unfinished brad as we have it; but there are many signs which show that Baillet is right, and thai it is the first sketch of bis method in philosophising. There is hardly an allusion to the arguments for the i of Godj there La an open assertioi] thai the belief in the earth's fixity is a mere ancient and vulgar prejudice ; th< an exposition of the use of numerals as algebrai ponents, which all seem to point to its being an early work. Had bis Essays and Meditations been aL known, many of these things would be mere idle i titiona Ee ipeaks, moreover, at the close of the 4th rule, of his mathematical studies being now closed, in order to make way for higher and wider sciences — another tion which exactly suits the present turning-point of his lifr. 1 Unfortunately bis residence in Paris in the midst of his learned friends mad' riting unneces- sary, and thus we have no correspondence of this date wherewith to verify our coi His printed respondence, with the exception of a few fragments quoted by Baillet, begins with the year L629, when he Bettled in Holland. The Regies have been unduly praised by Cousin and ethers; and although this work contains the broad feal 1 Bouillet (i. 65) and other critics agree with this view, adding other reasons, but not stating those above ad ipecially the end of Regie iv., which they do not quote. This remark about the fixity of the earth must have been written before Galileo's trial in 1633. Intuition, Deduction, Induction. 45 of Descartes' method, and shows us very plainly the thor- oughly deductive character of all his philosophy, it is ly inferior in clearness to the famous tract with which lie formally introduced his system. He intended (ef. Rkgle xii. sul, fin.) his work to consist of thirty-six rules, — twelve of simple and general precepts to be pursued in all investigations, twelve on soluble problems as yet undiscovered, the last twelve on problems not yet fully understood. But of these only the first eighteen are written, and not without lacunas. The titles of 19-21 show that the remainder would probably have been purely mathematical But the whole of the Rules are simply an attempt to apply mathematical or strictly deductive reasoning in all Bciencea Descartes lays down distinctly the first basis in clear and simple intuition, though he extends this intui- tion to various primitive truths which are not intuitions at all, or are not conceded to be such by most thinkers, in fact, the belief that we can obtain in the hand- ling of metaphysical concepts demonstrations as clear as those in figures and numbers, which is the fundamental assumption of Descartes' system, and which he endea- voured to sustain by making' all nature mathematical, and all action in nature simply mechanical. So far the Bkgles are clear enough. But when he comes to explain the use of induction, or 'enumeration — a collection of consequences drawn from many separate things' [Regie xi.), he is so confused that there must be some blunder- ing in the MS. from which our texts are derived. 1 "We 1 One cannot make out whether he distinguishes induction from deduction in our texts — an absurd confusion. It is, however, easy to amend the text into sense. 46 Descartes. know that most of Descartes' treatises, and indeed I of his learned contemporaries, wandered about in MS. ami were frequently copied, long before coming into print There is no authority beyond general coi for the genuineness of our text. § 30. We return to Deacai rnal life. It v tedious to enumerate in their order all his change residence, during the twenty years which he passed, excepting occasional short journeys, in the land of his re- treat Baillet has tabulated them asi is possible (voL i. pp. 176-7). It appears that his main centre, which he indeed often left, hut to which o re- turned, from L629 to 1636, \ terdam. For short as he wnt to Eraneker in Frisia, to De venter, often to the Bague, and Liewarden. Be is supposed by to have made a tour to England in L631, but the silence of his letters is conclusive a. Be visited Hen- mark with Ville Bressieux in 1634 In 1636 he went to Ley den on account of the printing of his book, and, strangely enough, from this time onward seldom revisited Amsterdam, and only to see some Bpecial friend at this port Be spent most of his tin. Leydenand lit, or at \i;. eest and Amersfort) in 1 Tin which lif thinks decisive in favour of tl. .1. and j. roves nothing; We know that he was meditating this journey in March 1630, and intended to set sail the following month, but we find him still think- ing of it in the next December. The remark on the magnet,. served mar London, which Baillet from a letter nine later, and he does not state that hie I vation was made there. England and Spain were the only important European countries he did not visit. England he wished to see ; on Spain he is absolutely silent, nor had he even a single correspondent there. No doubt he thought the country too ignorant and dangerous for a philosopher to visit. His Letters. 47 their neighbourhood But in 1637 he had come to know the village of Egmond de Einnen 1 in North Holland, to which he took a fancy, and on returning from France in 1644 made it his headquarters, as Am- sterdam had been at an earlier period. He paid two more visits to France in 1647 and 1648, but returned to Egmond, which he only abandoned for his journey to Sweden. These details may suffice as to his resi- dences. His habit was to conceal them from his cor- respondents, and to have his letters sent to some neighbouring town from which he dated his replies. 31. We naturally look to his letters to inform us of details during this life of seclusion from the public, but of unwearied activity in the pursuit of all kinds of scien- tiiie knowledge. Unfortunately these letters, as he him- self tells one of his correspondents, were originally meant for publication, and thus almost all the minuter details can only be gathered from accidental notes by other people. Luckily he has given us, in the two most brilliant of the whole collection, his reasons for choosing a retreat in Holland, and afterwards his reasons for choosing Amsterdam as a residence. Eoth these letters were written to Balzac; and it is remarkable how Des- cartes, when writing to this famous master of style, aban- dons his usual simple and unadorned language, and writes letters as elaborate and picturesque as any to be found in that period. It is indeed these few letters to Balzac which have gained him a reputation for style; for though many high authorities in the 17th century, and 1 There were two other Egmonds close by. At one, Egmond de Hoef, he once stayed a year (May 1643-44). 48 Descartes. even some down to M. Cousin, have praised his mas- tery of the French language, and have exalted him writer, this is really in consequence of his clearnee a thinker. He is seldom more than clear and coi Bis French goes into Latin, and his Latin into French, clause for clause, nor does either lose by the translation. He is seldom grand, not often amusing. But the con? of his simplicity, precision, and perfect dea with the current philosophy of the day, made him justly remarkable as a writer of style, and from this point of view his Di&c ■ "a Method is rightly considere mark an epoch in French pi To return to Ins letters to Balzac. Both are worth quol as fair specimens of his which they are not, but as examples of what he i have d<>ne had he tamed to imaginative writing: — 1 But since yen are now in Paris, 1 must demand share <»f the time you b ed to waste in cor ing with those who are sure to visit you, and I must tell you that ever since I Left two never ciice been tempted t«» return, until they told me yoti were th.-re; hut this news has betrayed to nie that I might now be somewhere else happier than I am here; and if the occupation which keeps me 1 n,,t, in my poor judgment* the most important in which 1 could he employed, the mere hope of having the honour of your conversation, and of witnessing the natural growth <>f those bright thoughts which we admire in your works, would be enough to make me leave it. J>o isk me, I pray you, what this occupation can he which I deem so important, for I should he ashamed t<> Letters to Balzac. 49 tell you : I am become so philosophic that I despise most of the things usually esteemed, and esteem certain others which people are not hitherto accustomed to make much of. Nevertheless, since your thoughts are far removed from those of the vulgar, and you often showed me that you judged me more favourably than I deserved, I will not omit to tell you about it more plainly some day, if you do not think it troublesome. At present, I will content myself with telling you that I am no longer in the humour of putting anything down in writing, as you saw me some time disposed. Not that I think little of fame, if a man can be certain of gaining a good and great is you have done; but as regards a moderate and uncertain one, such as I could hope to attain, I esteem it at far Less than the repose and tranquillity of mind which I now enjoy. I sleep here ten hours every night, with- out ever being wakened by any care. After that in sleep my mind has taken long excursions in forests, gardens, and enchanted palaces, where I feel all the pleasures imagined in fable, I insensibly mingle my day-dreams with those of night, and when I find myself awake, it is only that my contentment may be more complete, and that my senses may have their share in it, for I am not so severe as to refuse them anything which a philosopher can allow without offending his conscience. In fact, there is nothing wanting here but the sweetness of your conversation ; but I find this so necessary for my happi- ness that I would fain break up all my plans to go and tell you face to face that I am yours,' &c. — (March 29, 1631.) The second was written on the following 15th May, 50 Descartes. when he had heard from Balzac that he was meditating a journey to Holland : — 1 1 rubbed my hand across my eyes to make sure that I was awake, when I read in your letter that you thought of coming here, and even still I dare not enjoy this news as if it were anything more than a dream. At the time, I do not find it very strange that a just and gen- erous mind like yours cannot suit itself to the servile restrictions imposed on people at the Court; and since you assure me downright that God lias inspired you to quit secular life, I should hold it a sin against the Holy Ghost to dissuade you from this holy resolution,— nay, you may pardon my zeal if I advise you to choose Amsterdam for your retreat, and to prefer it, I do nut merely say to all the convents of Capucins and ( tfstercians, t<» which crowds of good people retire, but also t<> the 1 dwellings of France and Italy, ;iik1 cvri! to that celebrated h< ti ii i t age when you were last year. How- well appointed a country house may be, it always wants innumerable conveniences only to be found in towns, and the wry solitude which one expects La never to and there in its real perfection. I will grant that you have there a river which can make talker dreamy, a valley so lonely that it can inspire you with transports of delight; but it can hardly happen thai will not also have a number of insignificant neighbours who come sometimes to intrude upon you, and whose visits are even more disagreeable than those you iv in Paris. Whereas in this great town where I now am, there being not a soul but myself who is not in busi] every one is so engrossed with his profits that I could Description of Amsterdam. 51 live in it all my life without ever being seen by any one. I go to walk every day amid the Babel of a great thoroughfare with as much liberty and repose as you could find in your garden-alleys ; and I consider the men whom I see just as I should the trees which you meet in your forests or the animals which pasture there ; the very sound of their bustle does not interrupt my reveries more than the murmuring of a stream. If I reflect upon their actions, I receive from it the same pleasure which you have in watching the peasants who till your fields, for I see that all their travail helps to adorn the place of my dwelling, and makes me to want nothing there. If there be pleasure in seeing the fruit growing in your orchards, and its abundance before your eyes, think you there La not as much in seeing the vessels arrive which bring us in abundance all the produce of the Indies and all that is rare in Europe? What other place could you choose in all the world where all the comforts of life and all the curiosities which can be desired are so easy to find as here 1 What other country where you can enjoy such perfect liberty, where you can sleep with more security, where there are always armies on foot for the purpose of protecting us, where poisoning, treacheries, calumnies are less known, and where there has survived more of the innocence of our ancestors ? I do not know how you can be so fond of the air of Italy, with which you so often inhale pestilence, and where at all times the heat of the day is insupportable, the cool of the evening unwholesome, and where the darkness of the night covers thefts and murders. But if you fear the winters of the north, tell me what shades, what fan, what fountains can so well protect you at Kome from 52 Descartes, the discomforts of heat, as a stove and a good fire can here keep you from feeling cold/ For the study of anatomy, — which he practised by dissecting animals or seeing them immediately after death in slaughter-houses, — the town of Amsterdam was most convenient ; while for various botanical experi- ments, which he carried on in his garden, Egmond offered him peculiar advantages. § 32. It is indeed necessary to look closely into his life during the years 1629 37, in order to understand how it was tli.it, having left Paris iii maturity and in full expectation of bringing his system before the world, eighl yean elapsed before its publication The t that, being in correspondence with the greatest men in cientific world, he was constantly being turned into a new direction by Bome new observation sent to him, or by some new solicitation oi ion 1 It* you think it he writes to Mfersenne in April 1630, 'that 1 have not continued some of the treatises which 1 had begun in Paris, I will tell you the reason. Ii is, that while working at them I gained a little more knowledge than I had in commencing, wishing to accommodate myself to the growth of know. . I was compelled to make a new project larger than the first, — as if a man had commenced a building to dwell in, and acquired meanwhile unexpected riches, so that tin 1 building he had commenced was too small for his altered condition. Such an one would not be blamed if he began again a new building suitable to his fortune.' § 33. Thus for the first few months after his arrival he still occupied himself with metaphysic, especially with the Multifarious Studies. 53 question of the existence of God. This had been thrust upon him by a very forcible sceptical objection brought against his fixed principle, that whatever we knew dare et distinct^ — as we should now say by intuition, must be true. The old Pyrrhonists had denied this, even as applicable to mathematical truths j for why may we not be the dupes of a systematic deception by our Creator, or by some unknown cause'? Why may not mankind be deceived in this, as we know it to have been deceived in countless other convictions'? This ancient scepticism, which rejected even the deductions of the reason, was no doubt fashionable in the learned circles frequented by Descartes. Montaigne and Charron are the spokesmen of this fashionable suspense, this flippant despair of knowing anything. It was against these objections, quoted from the ancient Pyrrhonists, that Descartes found it necessary to fortify his natural method, which in his Recherche does not confess the need of any such support. Next he turned aside to optics, and forthwith sought the aid of Ferrier, as has been above narrated. When this person came to his senses afterwards, and begged to be allowed to join Descartes, the time was gone by. Descartes had gone to Amsterdam, and devoted him- self to researches in anatomy and chemistry. However, after a short time, his attention was arrested by the re- markable parhelia seen at Eome on the 20th March 1629, which were discussed by various savants, and not the least by Gassendi, who made a voyage about this time to Holland, and though he did not meet Descartes, gave his MS. on the subject to Reneri, 1 Descartes' 1 Elected Professor of Philosophy at Deventer, 1631. 54 Descartes. earliest Dutch convert, and, indeed (as might have been expected), a convert to Protestantism also. This phenomenon led Descartes, as usual, to seek and to enlarge on the a priori causes from which it could he deduced ; and hence to study astronomy, as well as the particular nature of comets, and also of the light which we receive from all these bodies. These resean lies wen first utilised in his Monde (of which more presently), but became known to the world in hi . a treatise appended to his 7 1 cimen of the result of hit Method. So, again, in 1633-34 he m studies in physiology, and sketched out a treat: Homine />ri<>ri. He dilated specially on the nature of Light, and its propagation tli rough space. 1 need not go in greater detail through this the matter of which was worked np in tli«- B8BCtyi and /'/•/// 1-; /,!,.<. There are no douht happy conjectures in it, and many really large and splendid views. But its principal interest in Descartes' intellectual history is, that < rted both the movement Of the earth and the cir- culation of the hlood. The theory of the circulation <»f the hlood, though it lost Harvey, . —his practice, did not materially affect Descartes; and he again announced it in his / Method. But the earth's motion was another matter. He had indeed proposed to publish his Monde anonymously, in order, he writes to Mersenne (Baillet, i. 198), that he might he free to disclaim it — a curious confession. But disguises of such a kind were then easily seen through. As he was just about to prepare for the printing of the tre Galileos Prosecution. 57 and had made inquiries for Galileo's book on the same subject, to compare it with his own, he heard to his astonishment that the doctrine of the earth's motion round a fixed sun had been condemned by the Inqui- sition, and Galileo sentenced to heavy penalties. § 36. The circumstances of Galileo's case were briefly as follows. So far back as 1613, Galileo, having publicly taught (under the protection of the Grand Duke of Tus- cany), both in lectures and in conversation, the motion of the earth, published a work concerning Spots on the Sun (Roma: 1613 — 4to), in which this doctrine was asserted. Hw cardinals of the Congregation of the Inquisition, 1 laving deputed a committee to examine the book, de- 1 -larcd it both absurd and false in philosophy, and er- roneous in faith. But nothing further was then done, owing to the favour in which Galileo stood with Pope Urban VI 1 1. But as Galileo continued to teach his views, it was ordered by the Congregation on the 29th of February 1616 that Cardinal Bellarmine should send for Galileo, and persuade him in a friendly way to renounce his heresy. This was done before witnesses, and, on being admonished, Galileo promised to obey, and was not required to give any other security. Nevertheless, in the following March a formal decree was passed by the Inquisition against this doctrine, which they attributed to Pythagoras; and in it Copernicus, Diego de Zuniga, and Foscarini, who had supported it, were censured by name, without adding that of Galileo. This decree was received with much ridi- cule through the foreign learned world, which did not recognise the infallibility of this particular Con- gregation, and thought them but poor astronomers. 58 Descartes. It seems that Galileo, when he found this independent attitude assumed throughout educated circles, was ashamed of his own compliance, and sought grounds for withdrawing it. "When the Congregation, in 1620, was moved by scientific opinion to modify its censure of Copernicus, so far as to permit his theory to be argued as an hypothesis, Galileo wished to assert the equal freedom of opinion about the theory in Italy. He published, in 1632, his Dialogues on the System of the World, according to Ptolemy and Copernicus, and the book was received with public applause, rather recantation of the author's submission than a real con- forming to the Church. Probably some new and str hand presided at the Councils of the Inquisition, for Galileo was forthwith seized, tried, and condemned <»f heresy, in spite of the permissory decree of 1620. He was told that he 'had consequently incurred all the pains and censures of the sacred office, from which, nevertheless he was promised absolution, provided ln>, with a true heart and unfeigned faith, abjured and re- nounced before his judges the said errors and heresies ' (22d June 1633). But when he had formally submitted to this decree, and had, with his hand on the Gospels, and on his knees, promised never to say or do anything against this ordinance, he was brought back, with the usual good faith of the Inquisition, to prison; and though released presently on account of his great age and the interest of the Grand Duke, he was condemned to be again shut up in the prison of the Holy Office, and to recite once every week for three years the seven peni- tential Psalms. He was ordered afterwards to retire to a country house in the territory of Florence, and remain His Panic about Galileo. 59 there for the rest of his days. This last decree was dated 23d August 1634. § 37. News of these proceedings, which excited a great stir through Europe, — real concern and fear among orthodox philosophers, ridicule and triumph among Protestants, — reached Descartes before the printing of his treatise. He seems to have been quite thunder- struck by the tidings. He had started on his scientific journeys with the firm determination to enter into no conflict with the Church, and to carry out his system of pure mathematics and physics without ever meddling With matters of faith. He was rudely disillusioned as to the possibility of this severance. He wrote at once (ap- parently 20th Nov. 1633) to Mersenne to say that he would on no account publish his work, — nay, that he had at first resolved to hum all his papers, for that he would never prosecute philosophy at the risk of being censured by his Church. * I could hardly have believed/ ivs, 'that an Italian, and in favour with the Pope, as I hear, could be considered criminal for nothing else than for seeking to establish the earth's motion, though I know it has formerly been censured by some cardinals. r>ut I thought I had heard that since then it was con- stantly being taught, even at Pome ; and I confess that if the opinion of the earth's movement is false, all the foundations of my philosophy are so also, because it is demonstrated clearly by them. It is so bound up with every part of my treatise, that I could not sever it with- out making the remainder faulty ; and although I con- sider all my conclusions based on very certain and clear demonstrations, I would not for all the world sustain them against the authority of the Church. ' JNor would 60 Descartes. he even have recourse to the plea that the authority of the Church could only be formally pronounced by a council. But at the end of this long letter creeps in a little sentence which shows the real bent of his mind. After many professions that he would never publish any- thing, he adds to Mersenne : 'Nevertheless, as it would be an act of bad grace if, after many and large pron I only repaid you in failures, I shall all the same let you see what I have composed as soon as I can ; but I still ask you a year's delay to revise and polish it. You have reminded me of Horace's nonum prematur in ami urn, and it is only three since I began this treatise.' But when the year had elapsed his fears overcame him, and lit* wrote to Mersenne saying that he could not induce him- self to publish. He had, nevertheless, offered to help a certain ecclesiastic in Paris who was preparing a treatise to maintain the obnoxious doctrine, and only retracted his help from the same feeling of cowardice. It was not till some time after, that he was able to see Galileo's book, which Beeckman lent him from Saturday to Monday, and which he looked through in that time He found in it so many things identical with his own conclusions, that had it been possible he would have suspected Galileo of having obtained them from him. This pride of originality, and contempt of the books of others, were leading features in Descartes' character. But the difficulty about the earth's motion, which was necessary to his physical system, continued to trouble him. He kept long corresponding with Mersenne on the subject, and even had inquiries made at Borne, appa- rently through Cardinal Barberini, to know whether this difficulty should prevent the publication of his system. Subsequent Subterfuge. 61 At last — to conclude our review of this point in his mental history — he discovered a compromise, which, if creditable to his sagacity, is hardly so to his good faith or to his orthodoxy. In his Principles, published ten years later, he formally denies that the earth moves, but holds that it is carried along, together with its sur- rounding water and air, in one of those larger motions of the celestial ether, which produce daily and yearly revolutions of the solar system. The earth indeed did not move, but it was like a passenger in a vessel, who, though he were stationary, and properly said to be at rest, is nevertheless carried along in the motion of the larger system which surrounds him. He makes the most of this distinction, as opposing him to Galileo and to Copernicus, and thinks that he may rather be called a disciple of Tycho Brahe. ' If we are not to follow cither of these systems, we must return to that of Ptolemy, which I cannot believe the Church will ever force us to do, seeing that it is manifestly opposed to experience.' Nothing pleased him more than that many Protestant divines in Holland attacked the new doctrine. He thought it might dispose the Catholic Church to accept it. § 38. We need not have entered upon all these details but for their vital importance in estimating Descartes' real sentiments as regards religion. We know that he \ professed orthodoxy all his life, and died in the bosom J of the Church, receiving all its rites. He desired to keep matters of science severed from those of faith, and never to meddle with religion. But when a conflict took place, with which did he really side 1 And in his inmost heart, was his humble submission a regulation of convenience 62 Descartes. from fear of annoyance, a feeling of indifference, and perhaps contempt? or was it the true submission of ■ devout mind, which really thought that the truths of revelation stood totally apart from those of science % Not without long hesitation on this question, we are inclined to return an answer different from that which his bio- graphers have given. § 39. During the year 1634 he sketched out his trea- tise De Homine et de Fcetu, which he recast twelve afterwards to suit the perusal of the Princess Elizabeth. It is not a little remarkable that this was the very year when he had peculiar opportunities of makin vations' concerning the subject of the earliest develop- ment of man. There was born to him on the 19th July 1635, at Deventer, a daughter, the events of whose brief life he noted on the fly -leaf of a book. * Concept a fuit Amstelodami die Domini 15 mo Oct 1634/ — tint is to say, while he was specially engaged with his physiological researches. Though lie became ten. Icily attached to this child, called Francine— who died <>f scarlatina in 1640, and whose death, together with that of his father about the same time, he deplored as the loss of the two persons he loved best in the world — there is the most profound and absolute silence about hex mother. He told Clerselier, in Paris in 1644, that for nearly ten years he was now free from the liaison^ and had remained exempt from temptation. AVe may j from the fact that he meant to have sent the child relative in France to have her properly brought up, that the mother was not in good society. There is no hint in all his correspondence or in the letters of contempo- raries of his having had any love-affair. Is it possible Various Researches. 63 that he carried his theory of Mtes-machines a step higher than he confessed in public, and that this adventure was ly the result of a scientific curiosity] His most intimate and constant friends seem to know nothing more of the mother than we do, and this proves how thoroughly Descartes knew how to keep a secret. § 40. In 1635 we find him making observations on snow- crystals, which formed the 6th section in his treatise on nd with which he was peculiarly well satisfied; In 1636 he wrote for M. de Zuytlichem, father of the well-known Huyghens, a short treatise on Mechanics, and made speculations on the coronse which sometimes ap- peai to us round the flames of candles, and in which the colours do not agree with those of luminous circles round the sun oi moon. Meanwhile Reneri had been ap- pointed Professor of Philosophy at the rising University of Utrecht, and thus Descartes found an opportunity of minating Ins views through an official teacher from an important chair. The teaching of Reneri at Utrecht had indeed momentous consequences for his peace of mind in after-years. But for the present the prudence and caution of the new professor avoided all conflict with Lis colleagues, and with the still established peripatetic philosophy. y Of thb « [UNIVERSITY 1 ] 64 CHAPTEE VI. DESCARTES' FIRST PUBLICATION — THE ESSAYS. 1637. § 41. We are not informed of any particular re which made Descartes, some time in 1636, change hk determination of printing nothing, and announce to Mersenne that he was about to become an author. Pro- bably this had been his settled intention for many y and it was only delayed by his scare about Galileo, from which a few years' reflection began to rescue him. The Elzevirs of Amsterdam had made him offers of publishing for him, and so had many Parisian publishers in former years; but when at Amsterdam, and with his book nearly ready, he seems to have taken some offena the want of anxiety about it shown (no doubt for com- mercial reasons) by the Elzevirs. Hence he sent a specimen MS. copy to Mersenne, and consulted him about the convenience of publishing in Paris, as well as of obtaining a copyright privilege from the King of Erance. The arrangement he proposed was that he should have the choice of paper, form, &c, and should receive 200 copies as his share from the publisher, who First Title of the Essays. 65 was protected by the Privilege from piracy. I cannot find that any money transaction ever took place between Descartes and his publishers. He distributed a large number of copies, but received no other profit. They, on the other hand, annoyed him with complaints that hie books had no sale, and that they had lost by the venture. These complaints, of which we hear especially some ten years later, vexed him exceedingly, but chiefly on account of the evidence that the public did not read his books. The excellent but somewhat fussy Father Mersenne was so delighted with his friend's new commission, that lie (juite overdid his duty. He immediately showed the '»us and long-expected work to many friends, thus disclosing the author, who had meant to remain secret ; and moreover, he obtained from the king an extensive and pompous privilege, naming Descartes, and permitting him to print not only these treatises, but any he should wish in future, both within and without the kingdom. § 42. The title of the MS. sent to Mersenne was as follows: 'The project of a universal science which can our nature to its highest degree of perfection. Then the Dioptric, Meteors, and Geometry, in which the most curious matters which the author could select to show evidence for his proposed universal science are explained in such manner that even those who have not studied can understand them.' Descartes was annoyed at Mer- senne's ofhciousness ; and finally — perhaps on account of the difficulty of correcting his proofs, and still more his plates, at a distance — came to Leyden, and put his MS. into the hands of John Maire (or le Maire), who pro- ceeded to print it. The Privilege from the King of r. — i. e 66 Descartes. France delayed the last sheet in waiting for its insertion ; and when it came, Descartes thought it so pretentious, especially in promising other books, that he only printed an extract, omitting mention of his own name. The book was announced as in the press early in 1636, and its delay caused much impatience at Paris, the Dioptric being nearly a year in printing; but I Suspect Descartes was chiefly to blame. A set of sheets as they were struck off were procured from the publisher by M. Beaugrand, who thus was informed of the prog of the book. So it appeared, a moderate quarto, not very well printed, and on poor paper, the 8th June lr which medicine owes him much. He promised some other tr<-. I don't know whether he has printed them. It is such works which deserve being read, and not a quantity of big volumes which an waste of paper.' Value of the Later Essays. 69 knowledged as an epoch in pure science, and still rever- enced by all the mathematicians who never have seen it, has been absorbed in later works. The Diojrtrie has been forgotten in the light of JSTewton's optics, and the Meteors have been laid aside in favour of the purely experi- mental method of later and less celebrated investigators. Bat it must never be forgotten that Descartes' treatises, though full of assumptions and defaced with curious a i al (surdities, nevertheless insisted upon the only true and solid path ever followed by physical science — luction to the mathematical laws of figure and of motion. Having first shown, by the earliest of all his vcries, that all problems in figure could be reduced to arithmetical formula-, and that these could be general- ly *d by the use of algebraic symbols, he insisted that nothing should be assumed in explaining the laws of nature but the laws of figure and motion. He cast to the winds the whole apparatus of occult qualities, inten- tional species, and other assumed secrets by which the scholastic Peripatetics endeavoured to explain, and by which they succeeded in obscuring and confusing, nature. We, to whom these scholastic theories are things long cannot now feel the novelty and the boldness of Descartes' conception, that all nature can be repre- sented in algebraic formulae, and its laws expressed in definite equations. Nor was he bound to show more against the schools than this, that his method was sim- pler and more satisfactory than theirs in explaining nature. Tor as theirs was purely hypothetical, his need only be a simpler hypothesis. He banished all hidden mysteries, all occult forces from the world. The only diffi- culties to be encountered were the difficulty of choosing 70 Descartes. between various a priori explanations, which were equally satisfactory, and that of the complication of the various forces or elements which entered into the solution of the problem. The former was met by the making of ex- periments which must be so constructed as to exclude the plurality of causes, and verify the true a priori deduc- tion. Thus Descartes recognises both the method of agreement and the method of difference in our modern inductive logic. The complication might often be such that any solution became impossible, and in his mathe- matics he particularly prided himself on discovering the conditions of problems incapable of solution. Be hit, like all the 16th and 17th century reformers, waste of time on sterile speculations to be one of the greatest of human ills, and desired above all thin.;- to render science sul vient to the arj:s and to the comfort of mankind. §44. But if tin- advance of human knowledge has consigned to oblivion these Bplendid essays in mathe- matics and in physics, the 1> Method was too remarkable a manifesto, too clearly the trumpet-not.- for the resurrection of the human mind from the death of formalism, ever to be forgotten or to grow old. Written in the popular tongue of Europe, and with a deal and simplicity rarely equalled even in French p — the best prose in modern Europe, — it produced an electric shock throughout the learned world, which no other work of the kind ever did in the history of philo- sophy. The other forerunners and anticipators of m< riern thought are mentioned in histories, but who ever reads Bruno, or Campanella, or Vanini? Bacon indeed alone still survives, but is read only for his style, not as a red constructor of a new system of knowledge. But even Their Effect on the World. 71 impostors like Ghandoux traded on the recognised neces- sity of abolishing the Aristotle of the schools; the real problem was to substitute the something new, for the old which was laid aside. Now in all his positive attempts Bacon had signally failed. He had so little instinct for discoveries that he could not recognise them even when they were made, and he ridiculed as incon- ceivable the theory of the earth's motion. Still worse, he wanted the training which is absolutely necessary to the discoverer in physical science; he was ignorant of mathematics, both pure and applied. He was not ded by his immediate successors as of any real im- portance. Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke hardly mention him. It was probably through Gasseridi's in- fluence that he afterwards became fashionable. But Des- - did not publish advices how to make discoveries till he could show the actual discoveries he had made, and this again distinguishes his Discourse on Method from the Instauratio Magna of his eminent contempo- rary. The closer analysis of the Method will occupy us when we proceed to give a summary of his whole philo- sophic system. § 45. The book being published, its author began to await with curiosity the criticisms of the learned, which he expected in MS., as the habit of reviewing by means of a periodical press had not yet arisen. He did not feel the smallest fear that he might be refuted ; for though he writes to his old Jesuit tutors with affected humility, 'If you will take the pains of reading the book, or making those of the company who have leisure read it — and if after having noted the faults, which will doubtless be found in it in great numbers, you will do me the favour 7:2 Descartes. of informing me of them, and so continue to teach mo — I will owe you a great obligation, and do my best to correct them according to your good instruction' — In- to more intimate friends 'that he does not believe there are three lines in the book which can be rejected oi changed; and that if there be the least falsehood in any the least part of what he had published, his whole philosophy was not worth a straw.' CHAPTER VII. CORRESPONDENCE AND CONTROVERSIES ON THE ESSAYS. 1637-41. § 4G. The three years following the publication of the ys were occupied in controversies almost completely mathematical concerning the principles of the Geometry and Dioptric; nor do we hear much of attacks on the or on the Meteors. A few obscure persons said something about the demonstration of the existence of the Deity; but Descartes held them in too much con- tempt to reply to them. 'I may tell you that I should not be less ashamed to write against a man of that sort (M. le Sienr X., backed by the Capuchins), than to stop and pursue any little cur that comes barking after me in the street ' (vii. 1*20). Also on Petit he says : * I think no more of him than I do of the abuse given me by a parrot hanging in a window as I pass in the street' (vii. 149-151). He solicited everywhere objections, provided always the objectors consented to have their letters printed together with his replies, intending to make a volume of these letters. This intention he never completed; 74 Descartes. but in his collected letters we find all the mat* preserved. His first objectors, or critics, were Dutch and Belgian savants ; and with some of these he was even offended that they ventured to offer an opinion so hastily on a work which he considered should require long and care- ful study to appreciate it. Ciennans, however, — a Jesuit of Lou vain, — made acute objections to tin* ti. of light contained in both Optica and Meteor*; and Morin of Paris followed up the question with an elabo- rate discussion on the theory of light ( \ i. 1 >« » •' § 47. The most serious criticism of his and Geometry came from Fermat, who not only wrote ol tions to the former, but sent Descartes his own De Maximis et Minimis — to show tli were im- portant omissions in the Geometry. Desca oded himself, and even attacked Format's treatise, Beeki] prove that his demonstration of the finding the maxi- mum tangent to a parabola was only an accidental proofs and that Descartes himself had stated the true special conditions of the problem. This controversy, in which Koberval of Paris supported Fermat, and others by Descartes, lasted a long time, and was only stopped by the fatigue of both principals. It ended, however, with letters of mutual respect and friendship, of which Descartes' to Fermat (vii. 83) are very graceful ' 1 had no less pleasure/ he says, * in receiving the letter which does me the favour of promising your friendship, than if it came from a mistress whose good graces I had passionately desired ; and your other writings preceding it remind me of the Bradamante of our poets, who would receive none as her servitor who had not Tract on Gravity. 75 proved himself against her in combat. Not that I pretend to compare myself to that Eoger who alone in tlit* world was able to resist her; but such as I am, I assure you I highly esteem your merits/ The histo- rians of mathematics are, however, of opinion that Des- waa wrong ; and if so, he showed very censurable obstinacy, and even unfairness, in his conduct through tin* oontrovej He also busied himself for a time on the problem of the Cycloid, which Roberval had proposed, and on which d composed a famous tract under the title of the if 'Et tun rll 1 1', giving a history of the discussions upon it. Very honourable mention is made here of rtopher Wren, then a student at Wadham College, 1. But Descartes was getting tired of mathe- il problems, and after contributing to the question turned from it. § 48. We hear of no writings (beyond letters) in this i, except the tract on Mechanics, which he only sent hem in 1G38, but had composed earlier; and a on the Oeostatic Question^ in criticism of a worth- rand, which his friends entreated him to print; but he refused. lie had, in fact, written hurriedly, that he had fallen asleep as he reached . and had it copied and sent off to Paris next day without reading it over — a curious insight into his habits in writing scientific letters. It is believed that this tract survives in the long letter (vii. 303-327) on the question whether l a body weighs heavier near or far from the earth's centre/ We have from the same time (1637) a letter of con- solation to Zuytlichem on the loss of his wife (the 76 Descartes. mother of the celebrated Huyghens), in which he not only gives philosophic comfort, but apologises for his friend Balzac having omitted to offer the same, — a man ' qui pas- Bait alors,' as Baillet says, 'pour un grand discpuieur, el pour un grand maitre dans l'art de consoler les alt! This letter (Cousin, vi. 302) is remarkable in avoiding all allusion to the comforts of religion, and discourses after the manner of Cicero or of Plato on the necessity of the laws of nature, which only foolish persons hope to have reversed as a special favour to themselves, of the plain duty of sacrifice for others in sickness, and <»f concern for the loss of others, in contrast to the selfish rej for one's own comfort. He proposes all manner of mental distraction as the best anodyne for his friend's sorrow. § 49. His correspondents in Paris were much concerned when they heard that lie was about to abandon the study of mathematics; but his reply to the protest of 1 > is important in understanding his philosophy. 'I have only resolved,' he says, '(now that my hair is turn- ing grey) to give up abstract geometry — viz., questions which test mere ingenuity — and will confine myself to the pursuit of another geometry, which pi'"] to explain the phenomena of Nature. In fact, Des Argues would find that all my j>h>i*!f* toere nothing i"it geometry if he took pains to read the Meteors* (vii. 121). 1 Among the various commentaries offered by 1 It is but fair to add the following important qualification (vii. 14fi) : ' You ask me whether what I have written about refraction be a demon- stration. I answer that it is — at least, so far as it is possible t one in this matter, without having first demonstrated the principles of physic by metaphysic (which I hope to do some day, but which has never yet been done), or as much as any other question of mechanics, The Valet Gillot. 77 friends to facilitate the geometry, that of M, de Beaune Appeared to Descartes the most thoroughly satisfactory. He had, moreover, brained a French Huguenot valet named n such terms with his master that Descartes tells us he treated him en camarade ; and when mathemati- cal problems of lesser import were sent him, he used v, give that to Gillot He took pains to have this young man, who turned private teacher of mathe- matics, established as secretary to Sainte Croix, remind- ing him that he had been treated with such confidence and familiarity, and had associated so much of late with people above him in quality, that he could not be expected to perform the menial services of a optics, or astronomy, or of other matter not purely geometrical, has evil been demonstrated. But to demand from me geometrical de- monstrations, in a matter which depends on physics, is to ask me for an impossibility ; and if you call nothing demonstration but the proofs of geometry, then neither Archimedes has ever demon- strated anything in mechanics, or Vitellio in optics, or Ptolemy in astronomy, which is against the usage of the word. For we are content in such matters that the authors, having assumed certain things not manifestly contrary to experience, have argued in strict form without paralogisms, even if their suppositions be not exactly true. . . . Thus, what I claim to have demonstrated about refrac- tion does not depend on the truth (verite) of the nature of light, or on what it does or does not do in an instant, but merely from a suppo- sition that it is an action or virtue which follows the same laws as motion in space, so far as regards its transmission from place to place,' &c. 78 Descartes. Parisian valet. He praises his fidelity, and says hit parents had brought him back from England, fe for his moral principles when out of control. H< able to earn four or five hundred Scus per annum, by teaching mathematics at La Haye or Leyden. § 50. The main events in the outward life of our philosopher during the years 1638-41, in the latter ol which his second great work — the Meditations- ap- peared, are to be found in connection with the Univer- sity of Utrecht, where his disciple Reneri had been preaching his doctrines. But Reneri was in bad health, and died tragically enough at the age of 45, on the very day of his wedding. His friends had persuaded him to many, in the hope that better care of his home and comforts might improve a constitution worn out with hard work and much meditation. But taken ill at the wedding-feast, and died in a few h This man was the specimen of the enthnsi. tesian pupils who presently thronged the univ< Holland. He writes to Mersenne, ■ N eel mea lux, meufl sol; ille mihi semper Deus;' and when he died, and another professor, oEmilius, was ordered by the chief magistrate of Utrecht to pronounce an Sloge on the deceased and on the new philosophy, we heal of similar extravagances, also expressed in Latin : Dv* called * the only Archimedes of the age, the tme Atlas of the universe, the Hercules, the Ulysses, the 1 todalus, &c, of science/ It is true that Latin always admitted these follies, and that many men to the present day would write compliments in Latin of which they won Id be ashamed when expressed in their own tongue. But these phrases are not in any degree stronger than the English Enthusiastic Disciples. 79 of William Molynexrx in the preface to the Meditation*, which he translated in Dublin and published in 1680. '1-11 fine, such is the Excellence of these six Medita- s, that I cannot resemble his Performance herein t than to the Six Days Work of the Supream Archi- : and certainly next to the Creation of All things out of Nothing, the Restoration of Truth out of Errors is the most Divine Work; so that (with Reverence be <>ken) the Incomparable Descartes does hereby de- it were the name of a Creator. In the first Meditation we are presented with a Rude and Indigested ( liaos of Errors and Doubts, till the Divine spirit of the Noble Descartes (pardon the Boldness of the Expression) m tlte confused face of these Waters, and there- out produces some clear and distinct Light; by which tun-shine he proceeds to bring forth and cherish other of Truth; Till at last by a six Days Labour he Establishes the Fair Fabrick (as I may call it) of the Intellectual World on foundations that shall never be shaken. Then sitting down with rest and satisfaction he looks upon this his Off-spring, and Pronounces it Good. 3 § 51. But though Reneri died so inopportunely, he -own dragon's teeth in converting a young physician named Regius (Le Roy), who took up the tenets of Des- a with ardour, and was appointed assistant professor of botany and medicine shortly after Reneri's death. He had sought anxiously for an introduction from Reneri to the great philosopher, and addressed him in terms of flattery as the true cause of his promotion to the chair. Descartes replied with courtesy, and with apparent modesty, to this and the other demonstrations of enthu- siasm on the part of his Utrecht adorers, and affected to 80 Descartes. think little of the important consequences of his teach- ing. But what proves to the more careful inquirer that he was really overcome hy their attentions, and even to some extent puffed up by them to undue vanity, is that he consented to abandon his retreat at Egmond, and come to live near Utrecht, helping them with his advice, and even correcting the form of the theses with which .they attacked the old philosophy. Still stronger evid< nee I is afforded by the fact that at the moment when 1: began to flatter him about the physiological side of his physics, and its importance to medicine, he begins his only foolish and unscientific project of indefinitely in- creasing by his philosophy the length of human life. ' 1 have never been so careful to preserve myself as now ; and whereas I formerly thought that death could not deprive me of more than thirty or forty years, it cannot now surprise me without robbing me <>f the hope of at least a century. For I think I can see very evidently, that if we merely avoid certain faults which we ordina- rily commit in the regimen of our life, we might with- out any other invention arrive at a far longer and happier old age than we do at present. But as I require much time and many experiences to examine all that belongs to the subject, I am now working at an Abridgmeni of Medicine, which I take partly from books, partly from my reasoning. I hope by this means to obtain some delay from Nature, and so pursue my designs better in the course of years.' 1 So, also, we are told that Sir Kenelm Digby (whom Baillet calls Lord Kenelm, Count d'Igby, Knight of the Garter, &c.) went to see Descartes 1 This letter (vii. 412) is addressed to Zuytlichem, and dated 18th February 1638. Descartes and the Protestants. 81 in Holland, and besought him to use his great knowledge of the human body above all things to prolong human life. Descartes told him he had already thought much about it, and dared not promise to make man immortal, but that he felt sure he could prolong his life beyond that of the patriarchs. This was communicated by St Eyiemont to his biographer Desmaiseaux, with the re- mark that the matter was well known in Holland (Bouil- ltt, i. 57). These notions so impressed his followers that some of them thought him almost immortal ; and aid that his friend the Abbe Picot for a long time refused to believe the news of his death. He himself soon recovered from these vagaries, and told his friends that if he had found no means of prolonging life, he had ast succeeded in overcoming all fear of death. § 52. It is to be noticed that even among the Protes- tant divines there were some who affected the new philo- Bophy, in particular Heide (Heidanus), an eminent orator, who preached & la cartesienne, and attracted great atten- tion. But of all the rest, though many pretended him friendship, Descartes writes that not one of them was his friend. In fact, the spirit of free inquiry, and the rejec- tion of all received dogmas, though somewhat more con- sistent with the theory of Protestantism than with that of the Church of Pome, was not in the least more pleasing to Evangelical divines. For to these persons the authority of their synods or their Bible is just as absolute as that of the Church to the Pomanist, nor are there any men more intolerant of opposition. Thus a party of theo- logical opponents to Descartes' philosophy soon was formed, and the man who came to lead it was a cele- biated controversialist and preacher, Gisbert Yoet. AVe P. — I. F 82 Descartes. shall take up this controversy later, when it became clearly pronounced, and occupied the philosopher's full attention. At first the dispute was confined to angry discussion of theses in physiology between A I telians and Cartesians, in which the circulation of the blood formed the principal ground of contention. Descartes was rather pleased than otherwise to find opposition from Protestant theologians, for he hoped it would reconcile the opposite party to his viewa Eo he did not hold even Konian Catholic priests in esteem; for in writing to recommend two of them, who lived near him at Alcmaer, and who delighted him with their music, to the attention of Zuytlichem, and to his influence with the Prince of he apolo- gises to his friend for knowing them, and be] keeps clear of the frock wherever he goes. This anti- theological bias is carefully to be noted in < 5 the character of a man who was so profuse in his declaration of adhesion to the Church. §53. But however he may have despised tb< clerk of all denominations, it was a different thing with the learned orders, which contained most of his friends, and especially the powerful Order of the Jesuits. Be had sent them his book, praying their favour and sap] he was, above all, anxious that they should not declare themselves against him. Hence his courteous and erential reply to Ciermans of Louvain, as he hoped that the adhesion of one would imply that of the great was the inter-connection and union among all the members of the Order. Accordingly he was much surprised to learn thai ft air- din, who was Professor of Mathematics at the ColL s He reads the Scholastic Handbooks. 83 Clermont, had set theses to be discussed in which the preliminary statement by the Professor was an attack on his philosophy. He wrote at once to the Eector, complaining that Borodin's objections had not been him privately for the purpose of a reply, and besought that he would do him justice. The Eector replied by directing Bonrdin to explain the matter to Descartes, and declared it merely a private dispute with a single member of the Order. But Descartes, before receiving this answer, was much excited, and told his friends he was going to battle against the whole Order, fol lie could not believe that they would tolerate a pri- dispute. Nor did the Eector's answer undeceive him. He had evidently received a strong impression of the unity and deliberation of all Jesuit action at La Flechei He therefore began to prepare for the struggle; and as Bourclin argued on scholastic grounds, he designed a forma] refutation of the scholastic philosophy, follow- ing section by section the course of one of their best handbooks. He accordingly sent for books written by the Order or in use among them, and turned to the school which he had abandoned more than twenty years. Neither he nor Mersenne knew even the names of these books, beyond that of the Conimbricenses, or handbook written at Coimbra in Portugal; but lie picked up at Leyden the handbook of Philosophy by the Cistercian • he, called Le Peuillant, from the convent at Languedoc, which he thought most suitable to print with a running refutation at the end of each section. Bat he found that brother Eustache was still alive, which caused him difficulty, and that the Conimbri- were too long; so he postponed the work, though 84 Descartes. full of it, and eager to finish it, till after the appearance of his forthcoming Meditations. These events took place in the latter half of 1640. Meanwhile he suffered the loss of his child Franc ine in September, and that of his father in October — the only near relations who were in any sense dear to him, Indeed his remaining relatives did not think of acquaint- ing him with his father's death till a letter arrived from him addressed to the old man. They then wrote, hut Ik; had already heard it from Mersenne. Descartes had in- tended to visit his father at this time, hut on the old man's death renounced the idea, and empowered a friend to see to the proper division of the inheritance which fell to him § 54. We hear of the friendship of Descartes at this time with many notabilities of Holland, and among others, with De Baumaise (Salmasius), who was, like him, a French gentffliomme settled abroad, but a Protestant This Salmasius, though not a professed philosopher, proclaimed himself a Cartesian, and was as friendly to Descartes as the latter — being afraid of Ids exceedingly quarrelsome and jealous nature — would permit. In the very suspicion of being a friend of his rival Heinsios was enough to excite Salinases' hostility. At tie; Hague Descartes was not only intimate with Znvt- lichem and other gentlemen about the Court of the Prince of Orange, but with the Court of the ex-King of Poland. At this time his most distinguished lady-friend, the Princess Elizabeth, was still very young, and the _ female savant of Holland was Anna Maria Schurmann of Utrecht, of whom we hear the most wonderful accounts. She was now (1640) twenty-eight years old, and was Dcs< d McUle. Schurmann. 85 said to be perfectly skilled in all the tongues of Europe, not excepting Turkish, as well as Greek and Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabia Her French style was highly admired by Salmasiua She was, moreover, de- voted to the fine arts, and had produced the most ex- quisite workmanship in painting, illuminating, sculpture, and engraving on wood, marble, and precious stones. understood mathematics, dialectics, the scholastic philosophy, and, above all, theology, being versed in 8. Thomas and the Holy Scriptures. With all these accom- plishments, she was of a deeply pious and modest mind, given to prayer and study, avoiding all worldly delights, adopting a vow of virginity with the touching motto of 8. Ignatius, amor meua crucifiscus est (6 cpws i^bs IcnavpuTai). This is admitted even by the Catholic Baillet But her enthusiasm led her into the extremes attestant sectarianism; she adopted the newest and extremest h'e formations, and, as Descartes tells us, having come under the influence of Yoet, turned to con- Mai theology. Descartes knew this lady, for he proposes to attend one of the disputations on his philo- sophy, held in Utrecht, if he were concealed in the ieoute or curtained seat of Mdlle. Schurmann. But he evidently thought nothing of her deeper science, — which has no doubt been as much exaggerated as the philosophy of the Princess Elizabeth, — for he says that she spoiled a remarkable talent for the fine arts by learning Calvin- '•ontroversy from Yoet. In M. Foucher de Careil's recent book on Descartes and the princess, we have this interesting fact, that Mdlle. Schurmann came to have a horror of Descartes, which we should think natural enough in a pious pupil of Yoet ; but there is added the 86 Descartes. anecdote, that he once, on visiting her, found her occu- pied with the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, and ex- pressed his wonder that so clever a person should be occupied with such trivialities. Upon her protesting that no study could be more profitable, he told her he too had once been very curious to know exactly what Moses had said on the subject of the creation, and had even learned Hebrew to judge for himself in the original, but finding that Moses had said nothing dare et distincti , he had laid him aside as affording no light in philosophy. She afterwards used to thank God she had escaped from the influence of so profane and impious a person. It was no doubt this spirit which alarmed orth testants like Voet, and caused them to see in Desc not only a disguised Jesuit but an atheist Another important friend at this period was Lord Charles Cavendish, brother of the Marquis of K who was exceedingly struck with the new philosophy, and coming to know Mersenne, begged him to Bend anything Descartes should write, which the good 1 did, pretending to do it without the philosopher's know- ledge or consent, in order to enhance the compliment This Lord Charles Cavendish sought to influence King Charles I. to send for Descartes and for Mydorj practical optician, and give them both comfortable ; in England, in order to advance science there* They even offered to provide for Mydorge's family. I was not unwilling to go, as the Utrecht troir increasing ; but the outbreak of the civil war in En_ stopped the negotiations. There is no evidence of the assertion frequently made that the King of France made a similar offer. \ CHAPTER VIII. H 1 1: MEDITATIONS, AND THE OBJECTIONS OF THE LEARNED. 1641. § 55. We now come to the publication of the second of Descartes* works, and that for which he himself in inti- mate circles often expressed his own preference, as by far tli" most original and profound. It was composed in Latin, and printed at Paris in 8vo, by Michel Soly, where it appeared in August 1641, with the king's privilege, and the approbation of the Doctors of the Sorbonne, under the title, M Stations concerning the First Philosojrfiy, in which are demonstrated the Existence of God, and the Immortality of the Soul. 1 1 have no intention,' he writes to Mersenne, 'of ever printing my Principles or tin* rot of m\ rinjsics, or anything else except three or four sheets concerning the existence of God, to which T fed bound in conscience. As regards the rest, I know no law obliging me to give to the world things which it shows are not desired. For every twenty ap- provers who would do me any good, there would be thousands of ill-disposed people who would injure me whenever they could. This is what experience has §8 Descartes. taught me during the last three years ; and though I do not repent me of what I have printed, I have so little fancy to repeat it, that I will not even have it printed in Latin, so far as I can prevent it.' In fact, we find the philosopher in very bad humour with the public, and very angry at all their objections, though he had him- self challenged them. What seems to have most hurt his vanity, which was excessive, was that though he had sketched out in the Discourse on Method the main arguments of his World, the suppr. . and had spoken vaguely, and refused to explain i' in the hope that the public would cry oul there had been no such demand People had found ample materials for comment and criticism in the pub- lished work; the Utrecht theologians had even found grave hints of scepticism, or atheism, as they called it, in various parts of his argument, and rather depre further works of the same kind. Hence he was deter- mined to give to the public first of all the metaphj and religious side of his system, before formally attack- ing the scholastic philosophy. § 56. As he considered the subject so full of diffi- culty, and liable to so much misprision, he determim send the manuscript to Mersenne with a letter to the Doctors of the Sorbonne, or Theological Faculty of 1 praying their approval and sanction. He also reqi him either to have a dozen copies printed, or to have M 8. copies sent to the ablest theologians and philosophers he could find, in order that they might send him their criticisms, and that he might print them together with his replies at the end of his treatise. He made same request of his Dutch friend Zuytlichem. Bui Objections to the Meditations. 91 pointed out to him the risk of printing anft copies privately, especially in Holland, as the printer would be sure to let them out, and the Protestant theo- logians would attack them before the book, with its Catholic support, could be published. Hence he had MS. copies distributed by Mersenne; and though he was ded on the one hand with the promptness of Cate- a Louvain theologian, in framing his objections to found a work, yet being impatient on the other that nne should collect as many as would fill up a good volume, he soon succeeded in collecting and reducing to Older a considerable body of criticism. § 57. The objections were divided into six heads : the first byCaterus; the second a collection from various hands Mersenne; the third byHobbes; the fourth by Ar- nault! ; the fifth by Gassendi; and the sixth (and last in this edit inn) a collection similar to the second. The nth objections, by the Jesuit Bourdin, which were not written in time for the volume, appeared in the second (Latin) edition of 1642, which Descartes brought out when he heard that in any case the Dutch publishers would pirate it. He substituted in the title The Dis- fhn-iion of Soul and Body for the Immortality of the ing that this had been pointed out to him to be a misnomer, as he only discussed the Immateriality but not the Immortality of the Soul throughout the Medi- fation& He also added a letter to Father Dinet, Pro- vincial of the Jesuits, at the close of the objections. This edition is, accordingly, much more complete and valuable than the princeps of Michel Soly. The work itself is merely an expansion of the meta- physical side of the Method^ omitting all scientific appli- / 88 Descartes. tamtions, and therefore occupies similar but far narrower r ground. We will therefore give the slightest sketch (rf it here, as we must return to it in considering Des< philosophy. But we may dispose of the objections M most of them have merely a historic interest, and only served to elicit from him more explicit statements of his views. J The whole object of the six Med itations js to j>? that jjie knowledge of God an d of the mind (or soul) is the most certain of all knowledge; and this is done in two ways : first, by showing the uncertainty of airqur_know- Tedge of bodies ; and secondly, by offering demonstrations for the existence of ggjjjndof the Deity. The first Meditation est;i doubt as to all our previous knowledge, and especially that of the senses, which Ave already know from the Discourse on Method* The second repeal anient establishing, by the very fact of doubt, our own 1 ence as beings who doubt. It proceeds to show that even external objects cannot be known wit ft am tainty until they become likewise objects of our thought The third g ives usjhe demonstration of the existen ce of God L based on the d istin ction of the jiajbu ral light, w l rich reveals to us innate ideas, from the blind impulse which leads us to hold the iajs e for the tru e. Descartes in that the omni potent Deity is required, not mere ly the creati on, but f or the conServat ion, at every moi. of the universe. \ The f ourth, starting from th thai ^ what e ver ice kn ow clearly and distinctly must be try&^ proceeds to explain the existence and nature" 'of intellectual (not moral) error from the disproportion tween our unlimited will and our limited undei Plan of the Work. 91 the will being a necessary element in belief, and thus urging as to accept as true what our understanding has not grasped. The fifth repeats the demonstration of the existence of the Deity under a new form, and proceeds to show that tlip, \vuth find reality of the material world are derivedjlr om Q urJuiQwled ge of GocFs ex isTence" trad His perfection . — for not even the strictest demonstration snouTd convince us until we know that we are not the playthings of a superior Being who chose to deceive us. In the sixtli is set forth the difference between the ac- tion of the understanding and of the imagination; the fundamental difference and yet close union of the mind and body arc described, and the errors of the senses ex- 1. Then follow the evidences of the existence of a rial world, including our own bodies, with the ob- ject of showing that those things which nobody doubts are Dot known on evidence so certain and immediate as that !br the soul and the Deity. s himself added an abridgment of these Medi- tations by way of preface, which is not very satisfactory, and omits the mention of many subjects of interest in the fuller discussion. But feeling that he had only shown the immateriality and not the immortality of the soul in his text, he appends something additional to the sketch of the second Meditation. He says that the strict ■■•metrical proof of this immortality requires an ex- planation of his whole physical system, but the heads of the proof are found in the Meditations — viz. (1) The condition of such a proof is to form a perfectly clear notion of the mind as distinct from the body (6th Med.); (2) That what we thus clearly conceive must be true (4th Med.); (3) A clear conception of our corporeal 02 Descartes. nature (2d, 5th, and 6th Med.); (4) That substance* thus clearly conceived as distinct must be Med.), and that the body being thought as divisible, the mind can only be conceived as ind ivisible (6th Med.) His physics would show that any substance once created was imperishable, except God chose to annihilate it, and that this was the case even with the elements of tin human body, which were 'discerpted ' by death, and the body, as a composite only, destroyed Bui the mind being not so composed, would continue I ing to the natural and universal law of the indesl bility of substance. 1 By far the best compendium <»f the work is the fourth section of the Di a on Method, which clearly shows that the whole argument, and t!i were al ready then in his mind. Ee does not appear k have improved his statement in the fuller expansion, As he was growing older, and more worshipped by hii French and Dutch admirers, he became mere dogmatic] and having once established that wh clearly and distinctly was true, and that this cle often came only after long and ' -inm, In- to persuade himself that all manner of metaph principles were true because he was persuaded of them. In fact, he failed to notice that the impetus spont which he evidently distinguished from lumen natui as being unreflective and, as it were, instinctive— also arise from over-subtlety, and be (as ] a it) a phantom of the cave as well as phantom place, 1 The reader will notice how closely Bishop Butler has followcl this argument in the first chapter of his The First Objections^ : " 93 § 58. The_first_ objections of Cater friendliest spirit, touch all the nietaphysS of the argument, especially the relation of theTidea "of God in our minds to its causef^Descartes had argued that tin' poifecliops existing objectively 1 (as he called it) in the idea, must come from a cause in which they d formally. He also argued that whatever imper- r false notions we had were derived from non-being, though they had an ' objective • existence in our minds. In all these points Caterus shows the defects and insufficiencies of his argument, and the reply of Descartes merely proves that he had made up his mind to stick by his position, and defend it at all hazards. He shows, however, that he had. avoided the argument which runs back from ellect to cause till it reaches the first , and had supplied in its place, as clearer and more > i si ve, the argument to the cause which preserves us every moment. 2 He endeavours, not very successfully, bow til.- distinction between his demonstration of the Deity and that of Thomas Aquinas, who in part borrowed from Anselm, But we need not weary the :n reader with the many subtleties which were introduced into this controversy. It is much to be regretted that in Cousin's edition, which the more careful student will find a slovenly and badly executed work, the division into paragraphs 1 Descartes uses the term objectively of the mental object, as con- trasted with formally, of the object per se. Thus objective in his writing is what is now usually called subjective. -' This would be called by Kant the relation of accident to sub- , as contrasted with the relation of effect to cause. And in fact later Cartesians came to consider the Deity the substance of the world, in which thought and extension were but qualities. 94 Descartes. (adopted on Bene Fede's translation of 1724) has omitted, though Fede's text is adopted For, in re- ferring to the points of interest in the long contro- versies in the Meditations, it is very difficult to indi- cate them except by the pages of some edition, which may be out of print, like Cousin's, or inaccessible to the reader. § 59. The seconiL objections relate chiefly to the 1 defects in the arguments, being framed expressly for the purpose of strengthening Descartes' position by advising him of the most likely points of attack His reply is, on the whole, not successful, and he plainly shirks their challenge to say something express on the immortality of the soul, as was announced in the title of hi He often Bays, Indeed, that to prove this would require an exposition of his physics ; but as he never handles the. question directly, it is probable that he hit Borne diffi- culty in his way which he could not overcome. What was this difficulty! It may probahly have been tli sonality of the soul when separated from the body. Quite apart from the philosophical difficulties in the resurrection of the body, tl ace until that event of the separated soul with its personality must have been a great difficulty to one who taught that the soul, though infused by the Creator into the body when it was generated, made up so complete a unity with that body as to be inconceivable as the 8ai in separa- tion from it. Consequently his doctrine of the immateri- ality of the soid, on which he insists so strongly, must j have been more compatible with a pantheistic theory which held its resumption by the Creator in: But of such a doctrine Descartes has not hinted a word, Objections of Hobbcs. 95 and we may be quite certain that if he really did hold it, he was determined to keep it secret. The most interesting part of his answer to these ad objections is his attempt to give a synthetical proof by means of definitions, postulates, axioms, and demonstrations, of the existence of the Deity and distinction in kind between body and mind. He prefaces this proof with some excellent remarks on the difficulties of demonstrating in metaphysics as com- I witli mathematics. In the latter, the postulates and axioms are referable to intuition, and therefore indisputable ; whereas in starting from similar principles in metaphysical reasoning, the great difficulty is to conceive them clearly. He therefore prefers the analyt- I I id hod, which he considers the ancients to have known ami used in their mathematical discoveries, but to have concealed as too valuable a secret to be disclosed to the vulvar. The demonstration which follows has the distinct in. rit of bringing out his metaphysical assump- tions into the clearest light. § 60. The third objections, by Thomas Hobbes, have a historical interest in recording the direct contact of two of the greatest minds of their age, but were plainly forced from Hobbes by Mersenne, who would let no one read the MS. without promising criticism in return. They are accordingly curt and unsympathetic, proceed- ing, as they do, from an apostle of sensualism and materialism, as compared with the idealism and spiritual- 'f Descartes. But there is one point of great import- ance when he urges (Cousin, i. 469) that the inference of an ego from the act of thinking is not a perception, but a necessary assumption of the mind, which supplies 96 Descartes. a subject, but an unknown one, for every act or quality. This is Kant's argument in refuting the supposed intui- tion of self borrowed from Descartes in later days. But Descartes, in replying here (p. 473), formally admits that we have no direct intuition of substance, and only infer the difference of mind from body by the diffei of its qualities. There is also something very pertinent in the remark of Hobbes : 'This way great clearness in the it ml p refunding (as a test of ti is .metaphorical, and therefore not fitted for an for whenever a man feels no doubt at all, he will p* to this clearness, and he will be as n Binn that of which he feels no doubt as the man who possesses per- fect knowledge. This clearness may then very well be the reason why a man holds and defends with obstinacy some opinion, but it cannot tell him with certainty the opinion is true.' There never was a better com on the famous dare et distincte. Descartes was s<» pleased with the tone of these - s that he pre- sently advised Mersenne he would have no more respondence with their author. 1 suspect the remark which hurt him most was the sarcastic sent. nee in the objection to the first Meditation : ' I wish that fehi cellent author of new speculations had al from publishing things so stale' (as the doul evidence of sense). § 61. We turn to the fourth object le by the celebrated Anthony Arnauld, then a man of fcw< shortly afterwards a doctor of the Sorbonne, and the greatest of all the Jansenists at the new founded by Cardinal Berulle in 1614. His remarks open by showing that S. Augustin had forestalls Objections of Arnauld. 97 his Fr, ergo sum. He proceeds to argue that the radical separation of mind and body attempted by Des- cartes goes too far, and would lead to absolute idealism ; QOI will liu admit that minds, though known to us as thinking substances, are therefore perfectly distinct from li< »< lies, since in the lower animals and in fools there appears to be a mind, but obscured by sense or disease. / ]!<■ Bhpjg a^ aa thoy all do t tl i a LtP attempt t o establish th e existence nf t,ho, Dm tyhy clear consciousness^ and th e ^authority of consciousne ss by the existence of t he Deity, [a in reason in a circle ; and ne then proceeds to discuss Hit great length" the propriety of calling God the cause of Himself. He adds some difficulties which he apprehends will be made by theologians, especially in explaining the doctrine of Transubstantiation on Descartes' principles. These objections Descartes treats with the greatest < t, and they are the only criticisms which ever in- duced him to alter one word of his text. We may suppose that Ainauld's reputation as a theologian made Descartes particularly anxious to satisfy him, and to praise him; for his objections are mere subtleties, which affect details, and not the main principles of the Meditations. Hence trtes appears in close sympathy with their author. The explanation of the doctrine of the Eucharist is a berpiece of subtlety on Descartes' part, and shows what a splendid scholastic theologian he would have made. He despised this philosophy and professed to ne it ; but whenever it became necessary, none could handle it better. 1 § 62. The fifth objections, by Gassendi, are a far more elaborate attack, in the spirit of Hobbes, setting forth the 1 Of. for the argument, below, chap. x. r. — I. G 98 Descarf sensualistic side of thinking, in which that philosopher may be called the father of a great modern school. cartes replied to him at great length, and with asperity, though under the forms of politeness. sendi replied with a volume of Instances, But neither philosopher ever influenced the other, except to mutual dislike. The sixth objections were su]»}»l( *] u. nt,! iv t«> the second, and intended to clear up points that remained doubtful on a survey of the first five objections and their re] The seventh objections by Father Bourdin, which ap- peared in Descartes' second edition, differ from all the rest in their jocular and dialectical tone. They based on the scholastic philosophy, and seek, quil tlic manner of a disputation in the schools, to confute Descartes on logical and rands onl] are now perfectly obsolete, and only worth 1< through as a specimen of wli.it a clever 1- old school thought it respectable to produce. To Ufl it seems the poorest kind of sophistry, metaphysical mountebank, no better than those in Plato's Euthydemus. There are in Di pondence two other objectors — the person calling himself Hyperaspistes, and Henry More, who wrote concerning certain difficulties, and received replies, hut not till 1 These have been sometimes called the eighth ami ninth objections. The former do not urge much in addition to the rest. Those of More will be mentioned in the sequel Any one who submits to the task of reading thr< this immense controversy will see that tl hardly a possible objection which has not been Descartes. Many of them are repeated i His Dogmatism. 99 tdered conclusive. But so long had Descartes thought himself into his system, so thoroughly was he oaded that he saw it all clare et distincte, that no- thing moved him, or changed him from his settled con- victions. He only desired the objections in order to refute them, and so establish in other minds the cer- tainty of his system. To one class only he was willing, fol the sake of their patronage, to concede some trifles — to the Catholic theologians; and yet it was the theolo- gians who, within twenty-two years, put his Meditations in the Index, donee corrigantur. 100 CHAPTEE IX THE UTRECHT CONTROVERSIES, AND OTII! CORl: 164: § 63. We turn from those Catholic divin opposed and yet a very kindred body, the 1 theologians of Utrecht and Leyden, towards whom cartes adopted a very different attitude. While Desoa occupied with replying to tin- objections to hia Meditation^ and with the orderL materials for the systematic course of his philosophy, which he announces in his reply to Aniauld, Voet had been elected (March 1641) Rector of the University of Utrecht, and it was manifest from his previous char and acts that some attack would he made on the tesian philosophy. Le Roy (Regius) did all he could to humour the great Protestant theologian, the ornament and bulwark of the Reformed Church in Hollami. for a time succeeded in obtaining VoeVs permissi discuss the conflict of the old and new philosophy in the disputes on theses. In these disputes the prod set forth a thesis, sometimes with explanatory preftu Excitement caused by Le Boy. 101 comment, and appointed one of his pupils, whom he can-fully instructed, to defend it. It was attacked by some other young man among the pupils of other pro- fessors, and the disputes were carried on publicly, amid the applause or hissing, as the case might be, of a large and deeply interested audience. These disputations on a must have corresponded closely to the debates in our college societies or unions, except that we gener- ally exclude politics, and avoid the professed subjects of university study; whereas in those days such theses were B strict part of university training, and always in the subjects taught by some professor. § 64. The theses of Le Eoy excited such enthusiasm among the students, and such offence and anger among the rival professors, that Yoet, though they had been sub- mitted to his approval, took alarm, and declared himself lsI the new philosophy. It was perfectly well under- stood on all sides that Descartes was the real author of Le Roy's opinions, and that he corrected and improved the arguments, though he was really anxious to dissuade hifl pupil from controversy, and often begged him to teach in peace, without sohciting the hostility of his opponents. But Le Roy was a firebrand, and could not keep the peace. When one of his pupils advanced to the position that man, as being composed of two hetero- geneous elements, thinking and extension, was not a sub- stance per $c, but a substance per accidens, the fury of the Aristotelian and orthodox party knew no bounds. Descartes advised Le Roy to retract the obnoxious state- ment, but in vain. After much controversy, Le Roy i ensured, all but deprived of his chair, and ordered 102 Descartes. to confine himself to strictly professorial teaching in his proper subject of medicine. Meanwhile Voet desired to reach the chief offender and in the first instance sought help, of all people in tin; world, from Mersenne ! He was evidently quite ignorant of his relations with Descartes. Mersenne replied by a letter sent through Descartes, temperate indeed, lmt decisive as to his views ; and thus Descari ble in this controversy to make capital out of the transaction. But a league between a Catholic monk and a Calvinist preacher, though a strange companionship, and well cal- culated to excite suspicion aj th, would have been no strange combinatio] I Descartes; as is amply proved by the persecution of his philo Jesuits and Calvinists alike, toward M of the century. Indeed Yn. : t and his Calvinists were I violent against the theory of the earth'.-, mi d any Catholic ecclesiastic. The war was carried on by theo- logical theses against Descartes, in which the printed comments were so offensive that they were struck oat by order of the magistrates of Utrecht. It was also carried on by anonymous libels, and l»y tracts pub- lished under the names of various supporters, one of these Schoock, a Groningen professor, ha made himself responsible, was summoned by I before the magistrates of his town, and and obliged to apologia'. § 65. In these pamphlets Descartes was no longer the unique Archimedes and Atlas of science, but Jettuitasti /•, atheist, a second Vanini, a Cain, a vagabond, impious, and profligate of life. The magistrates of Utrecht, < rron- ingen, and Leyden (where similar conflict The Utrecht Controversy. 103 all through to have been honestly anxious to keep things quiet, and hush these controversies by ordering Descartes' name and opinions to be passed over in silence; but neither party would acquiesce. 1 Descartes wanted re- for being libelled His adversaries wanted to have his theories formally expelled from university teaching. In the end (to conclude this disagreeable passage in life), the pertinacity and compactness of the ( Jalvinist theologians had almost carried through a formal censure of his works, and their burning by the public hangman at Utrecht, when Descartes appealed through the French ambassador to the Prince of Orange, that he might put a stop to this persecution; and by an order from s-( on. ral this was effectually done. But his letters to M. de Wilheim, a Counsellor of State at the 16, lately published by M. de Careil, show that he . had some fear- of being arrested at Egmond, and that he was advised to come to the Hague for security. it in letter to the French ambassador, M. dfi la Thuillitre, has been published in the same col- lection. He complains particularly of two acts to which the magistrates of Utrecht had been impelled at last by the intrigues and threats of the Voetians. The first was (13th June 1643) to summon Descartes publicly, with the ringing of the city bells, as a fugitive and criminal, to appear before them, and answer the charges made against him. The second (11th June 1645) forbade the booksellers to print or sell any of his works. The documents of principal importance in this long 1 ' Le trop de retemie de ceux qui ont un juste pouvoir et le trop d'oudace de ceux qui le veulent usurper est toujours ce qui trouble et mine les republiques.' — CEuvres inedites, ii. 41. 104 Descartes. controversy are Descartes' published letter to Dinet, Provincial of the Jesuits (ix. pp. 1-61), his prot- the magistrates of Utrecht (ix. pp. 250-322), and lastly his great letter addressed ad cdeberrimum pirttm, Gisberhun Voetium, treating of his attack on the fraternity of the Blessed Mary at Bois-le-duc, 1 and of the attack on the Cartesian philosophy of Martin Schoock, whom cartes concluded to be no other than Voet in disg When Schoock openly assumed the responsibility, and absolved Voet, the magistrates cited Descartes for libel- ling the latter, so that Descartes was obliged (as all mentioned) to prosecute Schoock at Groningen. § 66. But these details are tedious, and have now i but an historic interest Tin- I niversity of Utrecht has preserved no record of so discreditable a dispute among its archives, The character of Voet is drawn by all the historians from Descartes 1 letters, — a very u n tr ustworth y source. He was probably not quite the person he has been represented by his bitter enemies. That he ambitions and spiteful, and did not scruple to misrepre- sent his opponents, is likely enough. But, no doubt, it was all done with the conviction that he was fighting the cause of true religion. On more than one occasion respectable theologians have not been particular as to the weapons with which they defended what they firmly i The quarrel about the confraternity of the Blessed Virgin at Bois-le-duc is a most instructive example of a liberal accommodation among the laity of opposed religions disturbed by the frantic on- slaught of a bigoted cleric ; but in this, Voet's action was only a specimen of what we have seen the clergy doing elsewhere in edu- cational questions. The dispute, however, was not one in which Descartes was really concerned, though he shows throughout it his temper and tolerance for the Protestant faith. Character of Voet. 105 believed to be the truth. The means are justified by the end. And thus a man who in religious controversy ceedingly unfair and violent, may be a respectable man in the relations of society. The high reputation maintained by Voet throughout a long life, and not apparently injured by this controversy, at least as regards rthodox in Holland, is only to be accounted for in that way. AVe may also give him credit for having per- l that, however guarded, the absolute doubting of all authority, and the trenchant assertion of the right of private judgment asserted by Descartes in philosophy, were likely to spread further, and invade the domain of faith. Such searching inquiry would be as unwel- come to a Protestant as to a Catholic divine — the es- i of both their systems being, that instead of begin- ning with doubt, Ave should begin with faith. The language in which both he and Descartes carried on their controversy is violent and often coarse; and when Descartes calls his opponent 'the son of a sutler, brought up among harlots and camp-followers/ we are reminded of the ribaldry of Demosthenes and iEschines in their mutual recriminations. But we must urge in palliation of these indecencies that the quarrel was con- ducted in scholastic Latin, and that in this language the expressions of praise and blame have always been far more exaggerated than men would tolerate in their mother tongue. Indeed any man who knows other languages than his own will remark how easy it is to say things in them which would sound exaggerated in his own ; and doubtless the violence which we often eve in the use of our speech by foreigners arises from the same cause — the want of a full perception of 106 Descartes. all the associations which a native feels around i word of his mother tongue, and which make it bo pressive to him that he will not abuse it. § 67. Let us turn from this disagreeable interlude that of his retreat at Eyndegeest, and his intercourse with the polished Courts at the Hague. We fortunately have a full description of his house and manner of life from B£ de Sorbiere, a gossiping busybody, who went about the world visiting every famous person, and imt unfrequently making mischief by repeating their private opinio] one another. Descartes, who did not feel q from his persecutors in the remote Egmond, had ; fore come to the neighbourhood of tl 'I hur- ried,' says De Sorbiere (Baillet, ii. 16' half a league bom Leyden, as soon as I reached Holland, at the beginning of 1642. 1 there visited M. De© with much pleasure, and Bought to profit by hu ition for the better understanding of his doctrine, I was delighted with the civility of this gmtShoi his retreat, and his household He was in B little chateau of fine situation, close to a great and fair uni- versity (Leyden), three leagues from the Court, and hardly two hours from the sea. He had a sufficient stall' of servants, all well chosen and comely people ; a nice garden, with an orchard beyond it; and all ai pastures; from which stood out many steeples of various heights, till in the far horizon they seemed mere p< He could go in a day by canal to Utrecht, Del i dam, Dordrecht, Haarlem, or Amsterdam. He - spend half his day at the Hague, and return in the evening, making this excursion by the most beautiful road in the world, through meadows and 1 His Treatment of Visitors. 107 pleasanco, then through a great wood bordering this village, which is not inferior to the fairest towns of Europe, and boasted at that time the residence of three Courts. That of the Prince of Orange was quite mili- tary, and brought together 2000 gentlemen in warlike array ; the leathern collar, the orange scarf, the top-boots, and the BWOid were its principal features. That of the -< reneral was composed of deputies from the United Provinces, and of Burgomasters, who kept up the dignity of the aristocracy in their black velvet dress, their deep collars, and square cut beards. The Court of the Queen of Bohemia, widow of King Frederick V., the Elector- Palatine, might be compared to that of the Graces, win re all the fashionable world of the Hague went almost daily, to pay their homage to the talent, virtue, and beauty of her four princesses, the eldest of whom (Elizabeth) had a fancy for the discourse of M. Des- I wished to enter into some details with him concerning his opinions; but he referred me to his writings, which he said he had composed as clearly as he was able/ Of course the philosopher would not condescend to argue with this gossiping traveller, though he received him with all politeness. * he was not so easy of access to people of less im- portance. Baillet, in an appendix, tells us an interest- ing anecdote about a shoemaker named Dirck Rem- hrantsz, living at Nierop, about twenty miles north of Egmond, who, in spite of his poverty, had acquired some knowledge of mathematics, for which he had a strong natural taste. This man, hearing of Descartes' great reputation, set out from his home to consult him concerning his difficulties. But he was refused 108 Descartes. admission by Descartes' servants, who afterward ported that an impertinent peasant had come to see him. After some months Rembrantsz returned, and again asked to see Descartes with an air of incn importance. The domestics on this occasion told their master that some importunate beggar wished to sec him under pretence of scientific curiosity. D< with- out seeing him, sent him out some alms, which tin' man refused with dignity, saying that as his hour yet come he would go home, but li<- hoped that a third visit might be more successful. This in1 I 1 cartes, who gave orders to have him admitted if lie appeared again, which happened after a delay of months. His keen interest in science delighted the philosopher, who conversed with him, advised him, and instructed him. The Dutch works of Rembrantsz on arithmetic, geometry, and particularly on astronomy, show that his whole manner of thinking was modelled by Descartes' system and principles. § 68. It was in 1642 that the Due de Li \ tag made for his own amusement a translation of the Medita- tions, sent it to Descartes, who was so pleased with it that he requested the Duke to publish it. To this Cler added a translation of the ( )bjections and Replies, but neither translator would publish his work without the author's revision. This was undertaken by Descfl who changed nothing in the style, but corrected and altered the text in many places, to expres his meaning. Hence this, as is the case with all the translations revised by Descartes, ranks as a new and improved edition, and of greater value than the Latin original. But the book was not printed until the Publication of the Principles. 109 1G47 at Paris. I may add that the Elzeviers, who were already (1643) occupied with the printing of the Principles, requested from Descartes a Latin translation of his Essays, which was made by M. de Courcelles, a French refugee of the Eeformed faith, and a friend of endi This Latin version (excepting that of the Geometry) was revised and amended by Descartes in the same manner as the French versions of his Latin works, and therefore holds a place of importance in the editions of his books. We notice in his correspondence much urbanity towards Protestants, especially in his ra to a friend who had composed a book on organs, which afforded a common interest to both religions. Be was intending for some time back to go to France, and settle his affairs with his elder brother, but was delayed by the printing, and especially by the woodcuts required for his new work. At last he determined to (in the spring of 16-44) with the work still pend- ing, on the condition that his publishers would send his copies after him to France during his absence. All while he had been annoyed and disturbed by the Utrecht controversy, which dragged its weary course up to the following year. It was no doubt these contro- ls which confirmed him in placing before the world a more complete and systematic account of his philoso- phy, and more especially of those theories in physics which were still lying concealed in his suppressed treatise On the World. 110 CHAPTER X. THE PRINCIPLES — THE TRINCESS ELIZABETH AND DE80ABTBB — LETTERS T<> MIDLAND ON THH BUOHA1 164 1 §69. When Descartes reached Paris in 1644, he found there the copies of his new work The Principles of Phil- osophy — which had been printed in the space of twelve months by Louis Ekevier of Amsterdam! and published (in Latin) on the 10th of July, with the privilege of the Bang of France and of the States-General This work stood in lieu of the course of philosophy, or Summa Philosophic^ which he had been composing in pr< tions on the model of the scholastic handbooks; and it also gave to the public all the substance, and often the very form, of the treatise On th<> World, which did not see the light till Clerselier's edition in 1677. to be noted that Descartes, having once mad*' up Ins mind and formulated his opinions, varied but slightly in the expression of them ; for he tells us that there i way of saying a thing which is the best, and which will never be altered without being weakened and spoilt. Even his illustrations are carefully repeated. Thus the Plan of the Principles. Ill first part of the Principles goes over again the ground of the Discourse and the Meditations, and adds nothing save some elucidations on the relation of extension and thinking as attributes to their substances, regarded apart from these attributes, on the nature of universals, and some subtleties on real, modal, and logical distinctions (§§ 54-65). The second part enters upon the nature of material things, and, in addition to the general views already- known of the reality of extension, and the impossibility of a vacuum, proceeds to give his general physical theory, which reduces all the phenomena of nature to variations of size, figure, and motion in the minute particles of a perfectly homogeneous matter. He gives several special laws of motion (now wholly superseded), as he holds that it is always the same in quantity throughout the universe, having been originated at the beginning of things by the Creator, and is, like matter, imperishable. The third part enters on the theory of the solar sys- as well as of the nature and origin of the fixed -tars, and assuming three elements of various density in ee (by reason of the varying minuteness and round- ness of their parts), explains the whole universe by the theory of vortices, or of circular movement. The fourth part treats of the earth and its formation — of water, fire, and of the various natural minerals, and especially of the magnet. § 70. Here Descartes pauses (iv. § 188), confessing that his physics are incomplete without the treatment of plants, of animals, and, lastly, of man. This lacuna was partly filled by the treatise On Man and On the Formation of the Foetus, giving a detailed explanation en 112 Descartes. of circulation and nutrition, which was appended to the treatment of light in his World, and was afterwards re- cast, and nearly ready for publication at his death. The discussion of plants is wanting. So is the theory of medicine which he promised The account of morals, which he regarded as the last branch of the system, be gathered from his treatise On tJu P / (h* Mind, and his letters to the Princess Elizabeth and the Queen of Sweden On the Supreme G Lut Descartes concludes the present treati psychological appendix on the nature of sense, in which he shows that all the various qualities perceived th: our organs are apprehended by the mind, that then. effect could not be in any way similar t<> its ph) cause, and that therefore varieties <»f motion were suffi- cient to account for all the qualities of body, however different in kind, as pti<.n<. lb- concludes ] Berting that there La no natural phenomenon which can- not be brought under the principles of thJ that though his theory is in one sense new, in that it avoids the errors of the old atomists in supposing indi- visible real particles and a void, or the assumption <>f all the occult powers of the Peripatetics, yet it i the oldest and most universally acknowledged princi- ples, granted in every system, and proved by all ex pen- ce. For the assumption of minute and imperceptible parts as the elements of perceptible objects i iliar to Democritus, but easily demonstrable and universally admitted. So is the assumption of the minute n these parts. He only claims a moral certainty, though he hints that the Deity might be regarded as capable of deceit, if these logically deduced conclusions are false The Princess Elizabeth 113 (iii. § 4-°)), and submits all his conclusions to the approval of the Church Thus the Principle^ though certainly the least popular of Descartes' three capital works, is by far the most com- plete, and adequately represents the whole of his system. It was also the most rapidly written, for he only began it in 1642; but by his previous works and his studies for his Summa, all his materials had been prepared for him. Indeed he announced his intention of publishing early as 1640, in his reply to Arnauld on the doc- trine of the Eucharist (Cousin, ii. p. 86). Hie notes lately published by M. de Careil, which Descartes seems to have written on the margin of his copy, are of no peculiar interest. His friend the Abbe Picot at once set about a translation of the work, part of which was revised before Descartes' return to Holland, and the rest in the following spring, when he wrote the Abbe* a letter, which is very properly printed, as the best le introduction, in the forefront of the new editions. § 71. In a very elaborate dedication Descartes offers his book to his philosophic patroness and friend, the Prin- ! lizahcth, eldest daughter of Frederick V., Elector- Palatine, elected King of Bohemia, and embroiled in the opening struggles of the Thirty Years' War. Her mother Elizabeth, sister of Charles L; and of the young princess's many brothers and sisters, the second brother, Prince Eupert, was famous both in English history and in science. This princess was now only twenty-six years of age, but had so eagerly devoted herself to study, that she had mastered not merely the metaphysic but the mathe- matics of Descartes' system (he would have put it the op- posite way). She must have been a really learned person, P.— L H 114 Descartes. for the mathematical problems discussed in Desc;: letters to her would be unintelligible to any one else, and some of her letters on morals lately discovered and pub- lished by M. de Careil arc very noble and Large in fcheil ideas. The complete collection found by i ecutors among his papers were returned to her, and thui unfortunately lost. But nothing that we know of hex justifies the extravagant praise of the philosopher, who declares that while neither the mathematicians can understand his metaphysic nor the metaphysicians his mathematics, she alone has grasped both, and the: comprehends better than any one living hi He even advances to the statement that p birth have naturally more exalted capacities thai . given to their inferiors. This sort of courtly talk should have opened the eyes of the biographers to take his praises as those of a French r I »• to assert the absolute severance of philosophy and the- ology; for here was a question in which a vital prin- ciple of his system must necessarily modify- perhaps contradict — the most vital mystery in the Christian faith. Descartes' answer to Arnauld insists firmly on tie- principle, that all our senses are modifications of touch — a doctrine asserted plainly by Aristotle. If (hi so, then it must be the surface, and the only, of the elements, which produces on our minds tin- sensations of bread and wine. But of what does this ^££01 Theory of the Eucharist. \ /* / 119 surface consist] Of a portion of extension incnsions only (without any depth), including a numBer " of minute particles in a certain order, and affected with certain internal movements. The cause why bread appears to us bread is, then, merely because the minute particles which compose it are differently arranged from the particles of other substances, have different interstices filled with air, moisture, &c., and a different amount of motion in these parts ; for Descartes held that all sub- stances, not merely liquid ones, contained some constant motion of their parts. If, says he, the body and blood of Christ should be conceived as occupying exactly the game minute places as the particles of bread and wine occupy, then though a new substance were substituted for the old, it would produce in us exactly the old sen- sations. Thus the body of Christ w T ould produce in us lions exactly the same in kind as were produced by the elements, and the accidents might be said to remain, while the substance was changed. The obvious objection to this theory is, that the body of Christ, if so modified in the position of its minute j tarts as to occupy those of bread, would cease to be the body of Christ, and actually become bread — for on Descartes' principles the substance of bread consisted of nothing else. And, no doubt, this was the difficulty which made him suggest a new explanation, although Arnauld, in two letters written to him when he visited Paris in 1648, pressed him with the mere statement of the Church — that Christ was present in the Sacrament without local extension. Arnauld's letter being anony- mous, Descartes absolutely refused to commit himself on so delicate a question to a stranger. 120 Descartes. § 75. ^Nevertheless to Mesland he had already written in 1642 and 1645, suggesting a new explanation, bat with strict injunctions on no account to publish it. We have, he says, in the ordinary proce.v stion and of nutrition, an example of natural transuhstantia- tion. The particles of "bread and wine which W become part of our flesh and blood, and thus pa] our bodies, as an organised system in relation to a new unity — our minds — which makes our bodies to he the same, even though the particles are constantly changing. But we could even still recognise the \ -ar- ticles of bread and wine as such, which have 1>< transubstantiated into our flesh and blood L conceive the Spirit of Christ entering into the relation to the particles of the i by the miracle of consecration, as it would have dune had they passed into Christ's body as its natural food. Thus, while they remain bread and wine as to their pari numero, they become in a tn part of the organism of Christ's body, made one by His Spirit, and tndy His flesh and blood We need not follow him into the subtleties of his second letter, where he discusses what can have hap] in the case of the Eucharist consecrated while Chrisi in the tomb; nor need we say more than a word con- cerning the great controversy which raged beti Catholic Cartesians and anti-Cartesians on this quest inn. The Protestant divines looked on with satisfaction and fanned the flame, holding that Descartes had proved his case, and that accordingly the Council of Trent had asserted an absurdity. In the end the majority of the Catholics decided against Descartes, and condemned his lu y luss Apostasy. 121 explanation ; although only that written to Arnanld, as net pointed out, could be fairly regarded as his pronounced opinion. But it is this controversy, and this alone, which accounts for the extreme heat of the disputes about the relation of extension to matter, and the reluctance shown by many sound and candid tli inkers to accept the essential extension of matter. § 76. The same year (1645) witnessed the so-called apostasy of Descartes' most fervent disciple, and the first martyr to his doctrine, Le Roy of Utrecht. When about to publish his Fundamenta Physicce, he sent it to Des- « to read and correct. But the latter found it full of statements which he regarded as unsound, and wrote back to Le Jioy that he did not consider him, though I in physics, sufficiently learned in metaphysic and theology to discuss the relations of man and the Deity, 01 the natural immortality of the soul; and that if he did not change these things, Descartes must publicly disavow a work certain to be regarded as directly in- spired and approved by him. To this Le Roy answered (July 23, 1645) in a very decided letter, refusing to change his opinions, though expressing his respect and ,-ratitude to Descartes; but he adds certain insulting remarks on the Principles which show that the breach between them was wider than he chose to confess. It was no doubt this defection, together with the decidedly disappointing reception of his Principles, which induced the low spirits revealed by Descartes during the follow- ing three years. His publishers, Le Maire and Elzevier, were grumbling that his works had but a poor sale ; probably the Utrecht controversies helped to deter many orthodox Protestants from reading them. But no doubt 122 Descartes. the public had expected a greater and more impn system of physics from the author of the Discour* the Meditations. His style seemed to have fallen off, and the objections to his system were receiving daily newer and fuller expression, especially from tie 1 of Gassendi, then a popular philosopher and an attraetive writer. 123 CHAPTEE XI. THE CLOSING YEARS OF HIS LIFE IN HOLLAND — HIS ETHICAL WRITINGS — HIS VISIT TO THE QUEEN OF SWEDEN, AND DEATH — REFLECTIONS ON HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER. 1646-50. §77. We find him at the beginning of 1646 occupied with replying to the Instances of Gassendi; and this reply, g sent to the Abbe* Picot, was translated by him, and in part embodied in the French edition of his re- plies to the objections on his Meditations, which did appear till 1647. Gassendi had been pressed by many flatterers, and by adversaries of Descartes, to write a similar refutation of the Principles ; but he contented himself with saying that the work was too dull, that it would die before its author, and that he wondered so lent a geometer should have occupied himself work- ing out such silly theories. Meanwhile Descartes had turned to serious studies in anatomy, being anxious to add his theory of Man to his still incomplete system. To a friend who visited him at Egmond, and asked him about his library, he with- drew a curtain, and showed him various portions of animals in his dissecting-room, remarking, 'These are 124 Descartes. my books.' He composed for the Princess in fchifi his remarkable treatise On the Passion Mind (Les passions de Vdme\ which was not published till 1649. He also corresponded with the Princess Etizabeti the summum bonwn, on the philosophy of Seneca, and on the principles of Machiavelli — a remarkable respondence, of which we have now re© siderable part of the Princess's Bhaie. 1 These letters (with the preface to the Principles) form the prop I plement to the treatise on the Passion*, which expound chiefly the mechanical and physiological side of affections, in which man, like the lower animals, is moved by a mere physical correspondence of his organs to certain outward excitementa To this theory must revert in sketching his system. The tetters to the Princess, whi 1 the years of his li: markable for their old-world I F. de Careil, Descartes et la Princesse Elizabeth (Paris, 1879). The letter on Machiavelli is very curious, and though it eon many of his precepts, rather censures them because they are recom- mended in spite of their recognised immorality, whereas if such actions be expedient, they should rather be reconciled with | Ami then follows this curious sentence (ix. 389) : ■ To instruct a good prince, though newly come to power (as Machiavelli had presupposed), it seems to me that one should propose to him and assume that the means he has used to establish him- at indeed I think they almost all are, when the princes who use them consider them such ; for justice among sovereigns has other bounds than it has among private people ; and it seems that in these junctures God sition of a heathen philosopher, arguing resignation and contentment on purely ethical and prudential grounds. § 78. While these were his private studies, he was employed, as usual, in all manner of controversies. He amused himself in exposing the plans of sundry attempts at the quadrature of the circle, which then excited much scientific interest. He was also engaged in a con- flict with the Leyden theologians, Revius and Trigland- ius, who set upon him just as Yoet had done, and whom as only able to silence by an appeal to the Prince of ( taange, who ordered them to desist. This controversy, which occupied much time, and gave much trouble, has no modern points of interest. His persecution here was more than counterbalanced by the vigorous teaching of his philosophy at the newly founded university of Ereda, where he had ardent disciples among the professors. § 79. Meanwhile his friend Chanut, whom he had visited as he was passing through Amsterdam, had gone as Minister of France to Christina, Queen of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She had assumed the crown on her father's death, though but 126 Descartes. a young girl, with remarkable decision and ability. Her eloge by Chanut (in 1648) is quoted at 1 by Baillet (iL 303). It was evidently ('haunt's in- tention from the beginning to interest this life queen in Descartes, and he soon got an opportunity. A discussion haying arisen on the excesses of love and hate, Chanut sent to the philosopher for his opinion; and lie at once wrote his letter on the subject ( et 8eq.), which is one of the official documents in his ethical system. This dissertation greatly pleased the Queen, and she sent through Chanut other quesi more especially on the nature of friendship) -from what cause men form them through a sort of instinct, apart from any knowledge of each other's goodness; whether such a friendship is just to others whose good qualities are known and respected 1 This, by the is the capita] feature in human friendship which is completely ignored in Aristotle's ethics. 1 Thus Chris- tina came gradually to know and then to study his published woi He had left Holland on his second journey to Paris in the summer of 1647, nominally to settle his affai Touraine and Brittany with the help of Picot, bul haps really to superintend the production of his Medita- Mm* and Principles, in their French form, bably also to be on the spot when he was nominated hy the French king, under the advice of Mazarin, to a penr sion of 3000 livres, 'in consideration of his groat m and of the utility which his philosophy and his arduous researches procured to the human race, as well as to aid him in prosecuting his fine experiments, which required 1 Cf. my HUtory of Greek Literature, vol. ii. p. 42i. L> iter from Christina. 127 outlay.' This patent was dated 6th September 1647; the pension started in the current year, and he actually received it up to his departure (two years after) for ii. It is thus quite plain that he had important friends at Court. It was during this stay at Paris that nd conversed with Blaise Pascal, and claimed to have suggested to him his famous experiment on the weight of the atmosphere, carried out two years later at the Puy de Dome in Auvergne. 1 The question as affect- ing the theory of a vacuum occupied him much this year. ! himself rather ascribes the suggestion to Torricelli, who died this very year. But when M. de Carcavi, two years after, sent Descartes the account of it, he expressly declares that he had suggested it quite definitely to il at this time. § 80. As soon as his pension was secured he returned with his friend Picot to Holland. They hid them- selves in his retreat at Egmond, and were pursuing ex- periments to disprove the existence of a vacuum, when a came from the Queen of Sweden, asking his opin- ion on the Sovereign Good. To this he replied, enclos- ing the letters he had formerly written on the subject Princess Elizabeth, as well as his MS. treatise on the Passions, In his zeal for the interests of the Prin- Descartes conceived the idea of bringing about a friendship between his two illustrious pupils, so that the Queen might lend the weight of her position to improve the condition of the Princess's family, and even to restore to them some of the territory and powers in the Palatinate which they had lost. It was the only piece of politics i See Pascal, by Principal Tulloch, p. 33— "Foreign Classics for English Readers." 1 28 Descartes. Descartes ever attempted, and he wrote about it confi- dently to the Princess. He would send tl n her letters; he would always mention her in 1 ipond- ence, and thus this valuable alliance would be bro about. But he was completely mistaken. Though the Queen replied to his letters addressed to ( 'haunt in a persona] letter of thanks, Bhe took no notice of Elizabeth We know that she disliked the society of her sei ; pos- sibly she was jealous of Elizabeth's great influence with Descartes, and wished to supplant hi the philosopher never succeeded in obtainin ag notice for his exiled friend, § 81. At the opening of 1648 I be to him to remind him «>f a treatise On K ! which 1. once promised herj but he excused himself, becao would L^ive great offence to the learned, because he said pari <>f what he intended in tie- French pi of hi ind because he was busy in collect- ing materials and making experimentfl for hi On M bched out bo far back I : wrote at this time (in Latin) a formal refutation of the doctrines of Begins which were then published programme, and posted up in the streets, and en: fa which is shown what it is and what it cat nits' criticism was printed at Amsterdam, with a preface and some verses by Huyghens which he had or sanctioned, at the opening of 1648, under the title Noto in Proi quoddan . 1 The fragment entitled Sivdium bones mentis, found amo: papers, which Baillet briefly describes, appears to hai rough h of this work. Visit to Paris. 129 - in French among his correspondence (Cousin, x. 71 et § 82. His friends in France were still so zealous in his behalf that lie now received a second intimation from the French Court that an honourable employment and a farther pension would be provided for him if he would return and settle in France. He appears to have been somewhat tired of Holland, and not indisposed at the mo- ment to settle in the Palatinate, near the Princess; but this missive from his sovereign hurried him to France (May 1648), where he proposed to take a more elegant lodging than usual, and prepare to be received in Court society. Still he only required a sitting-room and study for himself, and one room for his valet. He would not undertake the trouble of keeping a carriage and horses. These preparations were all rendered futile by the public troubles which supervened. When he arrived he found nothing of what he expected. Everything was in ision. Nobody thought about him at Court. He had to pay the postage of the idle parchment sent to him to a i moil nee the king's intended favours. The kindest ruction he could put upon their wishes was to re- gard them 'as friends who had asked him to dine, and when he came he found their kitchen in disorder, and their saucepans upset/ * So then, abandoning his visions of Court life, he spent three months among his scientific friends, and among them made his formal reconciliation with Gassendi, through the intervention of Abbe (after- wards Cardinal) d'Estrees. He was also importuned by the attacks and challenges of EobervaL On the 27th 1 Even his first pension was not paid after his departure to Bweden. p.- r. I 130 Descent of August, finding Paris in an uproar, and barri erected, he hurried away to Egmond, where he an on the 9th of September. He had left Mersenne ill with an abscess in the side, and the news of hia oldest and best friend's death soon followed him to hi Mersenne's loss could never be replaced, though M. de Carcavi solicited the honour of earning on hia Paris correspondence, and endeavoured to keep him acquainted with scientific novelties. §83. The close of the year is marked bj the occur- rence of a new philosophic correspond i interest, which occupies a considerable portion of tin- tenth, volume of his works. It arose from the flat:- and almost obsequious request of Benry More, then at ( lnist's College, Cambridge, to receive elucidation sundry points in the /' , ■ pa : illy on Ql Part. 1 1 » replied with courtesy, and the corre- spondence only ceased with hia death. .Most of the points urged by More are either found in previous objections, or have become antiquated to tl. of our age. Two are still of importance and inte first, the insistance that the essence of matter is not extension, but impenetrability, or solidity, as Locke cailfl it; secondly, the energetic protest against the 'mur- derous and barbarous opinion' (x. 188) expressed in the Method on the mere automatism of the lower animals. On the former point Descartes stands firm, having long ago suggested that we could easily t> world where matter should retire whenever we ton 1 In after-years (1662) More became a violent opponent oi philosophy. Indeed, in this very correspondence he show turn of mind quite foreign to true Cartesianism. Queen Christina's Invitation, 131 it, and thus possess no impenetrability, whereas the negation of its extension is inconceivable. Hardness he had long since explained by the want of motion in the minute particles of a body, — the strongest cement' he thinks conceivable in matter. On the second point he also stands firm, but not so dogmatically; for though he insists that by language alone can the existence of thought be proved, he admits that its non-existence in the beasts cannot be strictly demonstrated. "We will revert to this correspondence in another place. § 84. But just as he was consoling the Princess Eliza- beth on the execution of her uncle, Charles I., and hoping to hear from Sweden that the Queen would befriend her, he received letters from Chanut, sent to Paris and to Alcmaer, in order to catch him as quickly as possible, announcing that Christina desired him to go to Stock- holm that she might learn his philosophy from his own lips. She was impatient, and despatched an admiral to wait upon him, and offer him the services of his ship for til.* journey. The hesitations of Descartes were not very earnest He dismissed indeed the Admiral Plemming civilly, not knowing his rank, with the reply that he was still expecting more precise commands from the Queen, and he wrote to Chanut that his late voyages to his own country had turned out so unsatisfactory that he had no heart for new undertakings. He added in another letter: 'It is not thought strange that Ulysses should have left the enchanted isles of Calypso and Circe, where he could enjoy every imaginable pleasure, and that he also despised the song of the Sirens, to return to a sterile and stony country, because it was his native land; but confess that a man born in the gardens 132 Descartes. of Touraine, who has retired into a country whore there is certainly less honey than in the Promised Land, hut perhaps more milk, cannot easily make up his mind to go and live in the home of hears among rocks and ice. 1 Even after his acceptance of the offer, he wrote anxious- ly to the Queen's historiographer, Freinshem, who had been ordered to study his philosophy and instruct whether it was not decried by the envious, and whether his presence at the Court would not cause unpleasant- ness. On the other hand, he was disgusted with his many Dutch controversies, and was meditating a change either to France or the Palatinate, without being able to fix his resolve. Above all, he was a courtier, to whom the interest of a royal personage in hifl system, and her expressed wish, were of paramount importance, So he determined to start in the autumn, hut made it a condition that he should return to Egmond in months should the Queen not expressly command him to stay. A presentiment of his death seems to have i him during these preparations. He ordered all his affairs carefully, and disposed of his property, though without a will, leaving certain personal effects in the charge of his friend Hooghelande. As to his lit' work, he had just seen the Latin translation of his Geometry by Schooten, with an engraving of himself, and complimentary verses — no part of which met with much of his approbation. Indeed, this version is accounted the worst and most unsatisfactory of any of his works. His friends at the Hague insisted on having his portrait taken, apparently that by Franz Hals, and this fine picture is engraved as the frontispiece of Baillet's / Arrival in Stockholm, 133 The original is preserved in the Louvre. He also sent the MS. of his treatise on the Pctssions to Elzevier's , but it was not completed till after his arrival in Sweden. § 85. Leaving in September (1649), he arrived at Stock- holm early in October, having on the way astonished the captain of the ship by his profound knowledge of the winds, tides, and the art of navigation. He was imme- diately presented to the Queen, who bade him rest him- self and become accustomed to his new home before entering on serious work. She was surrounded by all manner of pedants, who looked with evil eye on the advent of a dangerous rival. There were specially stories current about the jealousy of Isaac Vossius, who was teaching the Queen Greek, a study which Descartes held in con- tempt as schoolboy's work, in comparison with philo- sophy and science. He lived most comfortably in the home of his friend Chanut, the French ambassador, whose family afforded him all the comforts of French culture in a very rude and semi-civilised society. The Queen treated him with respect, and was evidently im- pressed with his great ability. She gave him leave to be excused all Court ceremonies, and only to visit her privately when she required his instruction. His leisure was occupied in composing a masque or pastoral allegory in prose and verse, to be performed at the festivities which celebrated the Peace of Miinster. Baillet, who had read the MS., calls it a 'Fable bocagere,' in which the love of wisdom, the search after truth, and the study of philosophy, were set forth under the disguise of his dialogue. But we may be sure that his natural- ly dry and methodical discourse, which Queen Christina 134 Dcscarf thought so superior to the paltry arguments of other men, did not produce any remarkable poetry, and his executors seem never to have thought of publishing it. § 86. Presently the Queen began serious study with him, and required him to be with her at five in the morning several days in the week, in the November of the Swed- ish climate. Nothing can have been more detestable and disturbing to a man who bad all his life, and in b weather, lain in bed till eleven in the day, meditating and writing, But he was a courtier, and obeyed She next urged him to set in order his papers, and arrange them for publication; and here again he obeyed, most fortu- nately for his literary remains. But his care was almost rendered nugatory by the accident that upset the boat which was bringing all these papers up the Paris, whore Clerselier had undertaken to edit th< i Chanut. After lying in the river for a couple the box was recovered, and the sheets of paper dri lines like clothes by servants, thus their order, and producing loss and confusion. This hap] in 1653. The Queen was anxious to retain him by all mean her capital, and there is Borne evidence that she consult- ed him on politics, though his influence fcainly never sufficient to make her take the least notice of the Princess Elizabeth. But she desired to found a learned Academy, and asked him to draw up its rules, which may still be read in Baillet's Life (ii. 412). Tic simply the laws of orderly discussion, each member in turn proposing a problem, and the rest discussing it in their order. The Queen was supposed to preside, and the 9th rule provides that 'when it shall please her The Queen's Projects. 135 Majesty to finish the meeting, she will favour those nt by giving a complete resolution of the question, praising the reasons of those who shall have approached i the truth, and changing and adding what may be necessary to make it perfectly plain.' This was in- deed a royal task ! He was also so impressed by the evils resulting from the jealousy of foreigners, that he ex- ly excludes all but natives from membership, giv- ing the Queen only the right of asking foreigners to be present, and to offer their opinion if specially invited, after the members have spoken. Ilf left the sick-bed of his friend Chanut to bring these rules to the Queen on the 1st Feb. 1650. The ambassador had been attacked with inflammation of the lungs, owing to the terrible severity of a winter excep- tional even in Sweden. Descartes was suffering visibly from this rigour of temperature, and the Queen, who saw that the climate did not suit him, and would drive hi in back to Egmond, was planning to endow him with B large estate in the Duchy of Bremen, or in Pomerania, which she had acquired by the recent peace, so that he might remain her subject, and yet enjoy a country more suited to his constitution. But, with that though tless- and selfishness so common in royal personages when the comforts of others are concerned, she forgot in her ambitious prospects that she was daily threatening to defeat them by her audiences at five o'clock in the morn- ings of an arctic winter. The rules he brought her were the last product of his pen, and his visit on the 1st February the last he ever paid his patroness. § 87. Next day he was seized with the very ailment from which his friend was but slowly recovering. He soon 136 Descartes. became delirious, and refused to submit to the treatment which had apparently succeeded with Chanut The Queen's first physician, a Frenchman and a friend <>f Descartes, M. Beyer, was most unfortunately absent, and no other Court physician could be obtained than a certain Weulles, a Dutchman, who had sided against Descartes in the Leyden controversies, and, being a stanch Peripatetic and adherent of the old theories, a declared enemy of Descartes at the Swedish Court The very sight of this man set the patient beside him- self. When they attempted to Meed him— an opera- tion which he always discouraged, and on which he had Ear more advanced views than his opponent- he out in agony, 'Messieurs, epargnez le sang franf In calmer moments he told Weulles he would die the more peaceably if he would keep out of his sight In an extant letter, this physician gives an account of these things, and says that, from his the obstinacy of the patient, and the violence of his fever, rendered the case hopeless, (hi the seventh day he became calmer, and being persuaded by Channt, who was now well enough to help in nursing him, he all himself to he bled twice, hut without diminishing the fever. From that time onward he discoursed reasonably and with great calmness on his impending death, and was so easy on the ninth day (Feb. 11, 1650) that he asked his faithful valet, Henry Schluter, to take him Op and dress him. But presently he fainted, v\ laid in bed, and died in a few hours, surrounded by the affectionate Chanut family, and fortified duly with all the rites of the Catholic Church. Thus died the great philosopher of his age, without His Interment. 137 having completed his fifty-fourth year. The sorrow of his friends and the disappointment of his admirers may well be imagined. His remains were at first buried in a Catholic cemetery at Stockholm, then removed in 1666 to Taris, when they were interred with great pomp at S. ( lenevieve du Mont, though the eloge prepared for the occasion was at the last moment suppressed by the Court A mask of his face was taken after death for th<* Queen of Sweden, and pompous epitaphs on the four sides of his tomb recorded his virtues and his renown. With these external marks of his greatness we are now little concerned. § 88. It is of more importance to note how the expecta- tions of his followers, that he would presently have aston- ished the world by new discoveries, are belied by the study of his works, and by what we know of the many un- finished MSS., most of which were printed after his death. It does not appear that for many years — in fact, from the first publication of his Essays — he had ever abandoned one jot of his theory, or reformed even the most insig- nilieant of his views. He was perfectly convinced that his a priori construction of the world was mathemati- cally demonstrated, and had he lived years longer, he would certainly have done nothing more than elaborate it after the manner of his theory on the passions, and of the formation of the foetus and the structure of man. The experiments which he was always projecting were intended to discover nothing new, but merely to confirm his published theories. In mathematics he might no doubt have solved new problems, but this study he had abandoned in order to devote himself to physics, medi- cine, and ethics. He was determined to accommodate 138 Descartes. every phenomenon to the principle that all matter extension, and all physical qualities a combination of figure and motion. As he never had once Beri fessed himself in the wrong, it may he regarded as morally impossible that with inerea-: have entered upon new paths. § 89. The personal appearance of Dee r?ed to as in tlic portrait by Franz Hala There was another brought from Holland by the Abbes Picot and De Ton- ohelaye, when they visited him in 1642 — at I another, if our extant portrait he that taken in the wish of ffooghelanda There was also a cast of his head taken after death by the order of Queen < !hri These are mentioned by no later bi 1 are probably lost or hidden in obecurit y. We hai • accurate descriptions of his appearance by Baillet and Otheia He was rather small, with a head la; portion, and his complexion was sallow. II. careful of his appearance, always Bending for his , which he thoughl of adi salth, from Paris. In earlier days he wore the green Velvet dress and sword of a French nobleman. In Holland he affected plain black doth, though always adhering to tin- use of silk hose. His diet was plain and carefully chosen, but his taste must have been » he recommends as a special delicacy an omelette mad hatched from eight to ton days ; if longer under the hen, he adds that the result is disgusting. JI< a great deal, and particularly recommends idlein nary to the production of good mental work. Hifl own discoveries, he says, were made owing to hie ploying but very few hours in the year in a' His Private Character. 139 metaphysical speculation. Even the exercise of the ima- gination may be very fatiguing; and a serious conver- sation he regarded not as recreation, but as labour. It well, in this hurried and weary age, where almost man of any mental power is worried with teaching, or professional work, or official meetings, or other learned ictions, to reflect earnestly upon this calm statement «»fa man who did more original work in a short life than any other man in his century. There can be little doubt thai two or three hours a-day will produce from a good brain more valuable work than any larger proportion of time.' A great deal of idleness is indeed the best condi- tion of the highest and most lasting diligence. ^ Descartes thought seriously in the forenoon, which he usually spent in bed. After his early dinner he talked with his friends or took exercise. After supper he wrote his letters, which were indeed no mere essays of politeness, but which were always in mere explication of something he had already printed, or was at least ready and digested in his mind. Though hating the labour of ceremonial politeness, or the intercourse with a curious and idle public, he was very social, and much attached to a large circle of friends, whom he treated with great affection. Even his servants became friends to him, and were made his companions to such an extent that his valets gener- ally rose to high employment as scientific men. A letter concerning a poor neighbour who had committed man- slaughter under the gravest provocation, and who desired pardon from the Prince of Orange after a two years' exile, shows that he even befriended his poorer neigh- bours, though he certainly despised, and disliked visits from, the local country gentry. He was often consulted 140 Descartes. on matters of conscience by troubled spirits in thai of theological confusion, and lie seems always to have recommended an adherence to tradition, and to have dis- suaded any change of religion as disturbing to mental peace, and of no value as regards the future, § 90. The stories circulated by the Cartesians, on the authority of the Queen of Sweden, that he had con- tributed to her conversion, are evidently in protect his memory against the charge of reli. indifference, or even scepticism. Yet this though repudiated angrily by himself, and in a host of pamphlets by his followers, is too thoroughly sup- ported by his system, and by the tone of his mind towards theology, ever to be abandoned. He was indeed a con ach nobleman, who was determined to philosophise apart from politics and religion, and to render both to Caesar and to God the things which theirs. Bui as he nevertheless refused to live subj< his king; BO he emancipated himself from any other than a formal reaped for religion, and a loyal support of a useful social engine. J lis language to .Mademoiselle Bchurmann shows he had no belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures; and that he only acquiesced in the Mosaic account of the creation because the Church held it. But in his inmost heart he must have held all this to be false. Of course he was no atheist. His whole theory presupposed — not a Creator, but an Arranger of the world, who set the system of the universe in motion. But when lie let slip in a letter the remark that the Deity, whose existence he w r as so studious to demon* be, might be identified with the Order of Nature, we feel that he required no larger theological basis for His Favourite Pupils. 141 his philosophy than the Darwinists of our own day. In outward respect for the ceremonies of religion he as conservative as in his loyalty and gallantry to royal persons, and in his respect for Court favours. § 91. Indeed, his expressions of gallantry to royal ladies exceeded the limits we should think it dignified to observe. But we must remember the manners of tin- day, and also that he had a peculiar delight in the society of ladies who declared themselves his pupils. Of gallantry for the sex, as such, there is little trace in his life. He was reported to have said in youth that the three rarest things in the world were a good book, a beautiful woman, and a perfect preacher ; and we hear that a lady whom his family wished him to marry, and to whom he paid some formal addresses, used to repeat in aftf maturer discretion. We, proclaimed Bacon and Des- s in common — we are the true ancients. The Greeks i The brothers Boot, Dutch physicians settled in England, were encouraged by the learned Ussher to publish their refutation of Aris- totle, which they had long conceived and worked out in mutual conversation, when Descartes' Essays were published. It was printed in Dublin, whither one of them had gone with Ussher in 1640. Pro- bably Descartes' success stopped the printing of the second or positive part of their system, which never appeared. / and Romans were in science but children that walked with slow and uncertain step. Let US then flieir stale methods, now worn threadbare, and patched the abuse of countless pedants, and begin afresh. Let us purify our intellect from all prejudice get rid of all hooks, and see what the ! will teadi those who use it with unshaded hi-: § 97. But lest men should suspect Desca pti- cism in the theological sense, which was then held the odious of crimes, and an outrage to BOCi ty, he fully guards himself by excepting religion and mm the one, an affair <>f inspiration, taught by I 1 (thority; the other, the cement of society and the bond .of social order, from the invasion of his doubt The forme!' he declines alt. --ether t<> disCUSS, submitting him- self to the Church in which lie was born. The eepts provisionally, in : upon by civilised society, and by thi ice of en men, as a temporary residence, which jsabsohil sary when a man undertakes to pull down his hoUf build another upon new foundations. This reservation as to morals was well . but the theologians saw quickly enough that the severance of philosophic from religious scepticism would not last long. The absolute right of private judgment in philosophy could not but assert itself in other and very kindred branches of inquiry. Descartes mL Catholic, a Conservative in faith, a pet pupil of the Jesuits; he was nevertheless in temp at, a sceptic, the spiritual father of Spinoza. § 98. Having therefore established as his starting-point universal doubt — of the external world, of God, of our His Unconscious Scholasticism. 149 bodies, of our very minds as things known and urider- d — is there any possibility of finding any new and dear foundation from which to build up our knowledge? Everything is gone — mind, matter, science, experience; all is, or may be, delusion; nothing remains but doubt. How then can we find a fresh starting-point] Evi- dently in the fact of doubt alone. What is doubt? A ■ or condition — in fact, a judgment; and how can there be a judgment without some one to judge % Doubt, then, is an act of thinking. Thinking is inconceivable without a person to think. Thus, doubt implies the mental existence of a doubter. If we had not started this act of thought, any other would serve us as well. Walking, eating, remembering, any conscious actflW will afford us the same conclusion. Cogito, ergo sum. It is n<> syllogism, no formal conclusion from a single premiss. It is an inevitable and immediate inference. § 99. In spite, however, of Descartes' attempt to aban- don all established principles, they reassert themselves at every step of his system. He himself, in his later and more scholastic Principles, bases this inference from thought to existence on the principle of Contradiction. In any case it must presuppose the brocard often paraded by him, 'that nothing can have no qualities,' or that a quality is a manifestation of something beyond itself, — at least, of something more general than itself. This is the principle of Causality. § 1 00. The / which thinks, and whose existence is thus established, has nothing to do with matter, or the ex- ternal world, or even the body, none of which belong to our idea of it. It is simply a thinking substance,^ whose very essence, so far as we know, consists in thinking, 150 • Descartis. and in thinking alone. The conclusions thus attained are not only valuable in themselves, but lead r farther inferences. How and why have we attained this certainty? Simply because we perceive it bo clearly and distinctly that its denial La impossible. Hence follows the first and fundamental rule of 1 1 phil- osophy, to accept as true what we / and distinctly, and nothing else. But from the very onteet aw that there was difficulty is discovering and de- termining what we really so perceived, and what <>n the other hand was thrust upon us by tradition or prejudice. He himself, though he often approach pita] di>- tinetioii between immediate intuition and though! mediate Inference, never lays it down as a principle. Be believes inferences, not only mathematical, but metaphysical, if dear and distinct to his mind, ai i in Sfl lie /v/0 sum. § 101. We can hardly doubt that in \\ I form Ins :n ought to have established extension on the same as thought, being the clear and distinct perception which we have of a quality different from thought But lltes 1 philosophy was the very opposite Of what his- torians of philosophy have described it— it v system based on the observation of the facts of con- sciousness. It_was a deduc tive system T drawn, mathematician would be sure to frame it, from the fe west possible assumption s. ±ience he reaches the ex- ternal world, not by clear and distinct perception, but by a roundabout inference. For he determines in the first place to deduce from the fact that we thinking beings the existence of GodA * § 102. This he does in his various works accdrdiE The Proofs of God's Existence. 151 three different demonstrations, which he himself (ix. 164) declares to be in reality identical, bnt which again he 3 (Reply to first objections) may be classed under two kinds — the argument from effect to cause, and the a priori argument of explicating the existence of God from the idea He has given us concerning Him. Let us follow out this latter hint, and state the arguments in order; First comes that in the Discourse on Method, vrhich immediately follows the proof that we exist as thinking beings. If we exist as such, we have thoughts, and these thoughts may be regarded either as mere mental objects, or as the consequences of causes inde- pendent of us. In the latter case the cause contains formally what is contained in the idea objectively. 1 Now comes in a curious metaphysical assumption, which again shi »ws how hopeless was Descartes' attempt to get rid of all the principles of his teachers. He holds it to be obvious that no effect can be more perfect than its cause, and that consequently the cause of any idea must contain, formally, at least as much as the idea contains objec- tively. 2 But I have within me, and every one has (another assumption), the idea of a perfect — viz., of an all-wise, infinite, omnipotent Being, contrasted with the idea of myself, in whom the very fact of doubting proves imperfection. This perfect idea, then, we cannot have produced, as we may have produced other ideas, nor can it 1 This use of objective is the old scholastic one on which Hamilton lias a good article in his Notes to Reid, and is nearly equal to the modern subjective, as already explained, p. 93. 2 If the cause contains more, it is said to contain the idea eminen- tn\ a scholastic term which appears here to mean with something to spare. Hence Descartes often talks of the cause containing the effect avtfonnaliter aid eminenter. 152 Descartes. be derived from any finite object known to its. It must accordingly have been produced by a real I stain- ing formally all these objective perfections. This, then, Lb the Deity. We know Him not intuitively, but by accessary inference. § 103. But if this proof should be considered tooahsi Ives it in another form, which he thinks more compre- hensible, and which derives the the Deity bom the very Eact of our own existence. If we are not created by ( rod, only three other hypotheses are possible, • her we are created by ourselves, or by our | >me other can* than ( rod The first is impossible, orwe should noi have created ourselves with the impel I the wants, tie itions which we possess. The second only moves the difficulty one step backward, and in any case we have in us tKe idea of all perfection, which could onlyb ad by an adequai e come back to the former proof, which disposes Of the third alternative. Thus the \m the demonstration thai there supreme Being, endowed with all perfection, among which are included unity, benevolence, veracity, omnipot there follows at once a fresh guarantee of the eertaii all our knowledge. It is indeed true that we had ah found thai ' m was tie- primary test; but what if a malign creator, a spirit of evil. chosen to dea ud give us clear perceptioi idle dreams 1 It is only on the supposition of the ver- acity of the Deity thai we can be certain of the know- ledge received through our faculties. Eence, . an atheist can have no true science. He fa to have had Montaigne and Charron in view here, but it is far more likely that he was thinking of the Greek Purrhonists, who doubted even the truths of mathem For when his adversaries accused him of reasoning in a circle,— of establishing the existence of the Deity by our clear and distinct perceptions, and the truth of these perceptions by the character of the Deity, — he always answered by saying that a clear and de- ception is always at the moment the only infallible of its own truth. But as we cannot go back upon our The Guarantees of our Knoivledge. 155 previous acquisitions, and hold in view the steps by which we attained them, we must here depend on some ml principle of the stability of knowledge, — the ' immutability of the same relations between immutable things,' as Locke puts it, — and this is derived from our conviction that there is a fixed order in the universe, which is not capriciously changed. In fact, if the Deity be regarded as the order of the universe, it will be merely a theological expression for the Permanence of Natural Laws. But as Descartes put it, he did not avoid the reason- ing in a circle. It is surprising that he did not sever subjective and objective certainty, in the modern sense, and base the former — our conviction — on its own clear- ; the latter— its guarantee— on the existence of a Divine order of nature. But granting his argument, the knowledge that we are created by such a Deity encourages us to proceed to other clear perceptions than that of our thinking selves, and to draw from them, by strict deduction, conclusions which will We the guarantee of being universal and certain knowledge. 156 CHAPTER XIII. HI8 SY8TEM OF PHY8ICS. § 107. Passing on, then, from our minds, already us as thinking things, and since they arc the subje< the attribute of thinking— as think: find our mind be t-nqdy space. § 109. Thus, then, Descartes set about the Qonstruc- tinn of a universe a priori, thron :tionof motion impressed on infinitely extended matter by the O Ihe infinity of this matter, or more strictly its non-limi- tbef in space or time, he firmly adopted. ( >f cours« i , he added, ire know by revelation thai the world made in m day-, and by direct creation of the I i but $6$ the mind to coi how these tlii i place by I gradual means. He assumes that homogeneous matter became separated according to the minuteness of its component parts, and the amount of motion consequent!;, into three large divisions: first, the most subtle and volatile kind, which makes tin' heavens and the upper ether; then the next in degree, which makes our atmos- phere, and tire ; lastly, the most solid kind, which became earth, metal, and other hard suhstances. Th- the subtlest kind are far minuter than the minutest particles of dust, and capable of constant and violent motion. When this was once established among them, the displacement of particles could only happen, in a pfotttm, by others taking the place they had left, and Descartes' Vortices. 159 thus a circular motion, such as we see in eddying water, is the universal consequence of the direct or natural motion of the universe. This reminds us of Plato's Timceus. Thus are produced an innumerable series of vortices of matter, of various volume and various regularity of form, in which are carried along the grosser bodies situated in them. Our solar system is such a vortex, and the earth, though in one sense moving along with the matter < >f its vortex, in another is at rest, as the passenger is at rest in a moving ship. The easier and quicker motion i i the subtler matter in each vortex causes the grosser to deflect towards the centre, and this is the principle by which he explains weight and gravity — an hypothesis rded with admiration by his followers. Solidity he explains as nothing but an absence of motion in the particles of a body, and he can conceive no stronger 4 cement ' which could hold them together. We need not follow into greater detail this theory of cal physics. It was elaborated by Descartes as re- gards minerals, and he gave a special explanation of the , th of the human body. But the explanation of plants and of the lower animals was still wanting when he died. The vortices of Descartes have been since Voltaire's day decried on account of the greater simplic- ity of Newton's explanation of the solar system. But when we extend our view to the universe, and to the genesis of systems like our own, we cannot but respect this great hypothesis, which reminds us of the theory of Laplace. But in its detail, and in the more special laws of motion which its author supposed, it was false, and was soon abandoned as obsolete. Still it is to Descartes that we owe the first attempt to explain mechanically 1G0 Descartes. our solar system, the formation of planets, the relation of tlif tides to the moon, and the attempt to subject the laws of motion to scientific anal;. § 110. The earliest essays on this mechanical theory of the universe were the tracts on optics 1 1 \ and on Meteor*, which he published in his first volume The perception of light appeared of all sensations that [plained by motion and by ordinary tad of panicles. His law of ordi] iction, and his application "f this mathematical principle t<» explain the rainbow, were a momentous onward step in the rational explanation <»f physical phenomena, as o] i the scholastic plan <>f assuming occult qualities and occult a<-ti<»n. Ihe general principles <>f both reflection and bion "f light he understood perfectly well; and . that the action <-f light was not by vibrations of tie- i but by tli' fcion «»f direct motion bom one minute particle of subtle I and BO <>n in right [ines, till the last of th affected the eye, This :t least better and more philosophical than to hold that the same particles which Btarted from the di object reached the eve. Secondly, he was not aware that any time elapse. 1 during the propagation <-f light, and compared it to the action by which a blind man feels with the end of a stick But it required long i rience and investigation, based on the very im] ments in optical which Descar ribed and directed in Ins Dioptric^ to expel these erron views from the minds of the most scientific students. How far he was in advance of his day may be from the 6th Discourse, in which lie explains the His Theory of Colour. 161 ception of distance, and lays down explicitly all the arguments and illustrations used long afterwards by Berkeley in his Theory of Vision. It is impossible that IWkeley can have been ignorant of Descartes' Dioptric, and yet how he could claim any originality whatever on the subject is passing strange. The convergence of the optical axes, and how this may be supplied by successive observations with a single eye, the varying colour of the objects, the greater dimness, the number and kind of intervening objects, the uncertainty of all these various indices, — all this, which Berkeley urged, is found in irtes' Discourse; nay, even the illustration of the moon looking larger near the horizon than when high in the heavens. § 111. The most interesting scientific anticipation in the Meteors is that in its 8th Discourse, when he treats of the nature of colours. He was the first to declare that difference of colours arose not from any specific quality in the objects, but merely from the varying velocity of the motions which affected the eye. * In all this reason agrees so well with experience, that I do not think it ihle, when we know both, to doubt that the thing is not just as I have explained it ; for if it be true that the sensation we have of light is caused by the motion, or inclination to motion, of some matter which touches our . as many other things show, it is certain that divers motions in this matter must produce in us divers sensa- tions, and as there can be no other diversity in these motions than that explained, so we do not find by ex- perience any other in the sensations we have of them than that of colours.' c It is nonsense to talk of some ideas being true and some only apparent or false, as the P — T. L 1G2 Descartes. philosophers say; for all their true nature being only to appear, it seems to me a contradiction to say that they are false and yet appear/ Accordingly, he . the particles acting on our eyes not only direct but rotatory motion — the latter increased or diminished by striking on surfaces at various angles. If the roi motion is very rapid in proportion to the direct* red ii produced ; if less rapid, yellow ; if the rotation be slower than the direct motion, blue and green. These grada- tions he inferred from the or ler of colonra in the rain- how. For in his Meteors he approach. <1 special \ : in. ni, like i1h» rainbow, and rare ph h af those of / and showed how all ti • the r. >nlt, not of special interferences with the laws of nature, or of any new law, but rather of rare comlin of tli<* ordinary causes of phenomena, which thus pro- dnoed exceptional results. Here, again, we have the rational and the orderly explanation of s< to the guesses of metaphysicians and the suj of the vulgar. The principle of Parcimony is « where openly proclaimed by Descartes. Si know that tin* minute composition and movement of of matter varies the sensations produced by them in us; since we find that the same sense of touch pro in us such opposite sensations as pleasure and pain, me and titillation ; since both sensations of light and of Bound can be produced in us by violent im] and since we know of no other kind of action in matter which produces sensations, — we are warranted in af ing that all the action of bodies upon us is ma kind of contact, differing according to the figure and the motion of the particles which touch our org Value of his Hypotheses. 163 § 1 1 2. But when, in pursuit of this principle, he gives a priori explanations of all manner of phenomena in heaven and earth, deduced from the motion of divers particles, he confesses that the plurality of causes which may produce the same effect is his great difficulty. He feels that endless time and outlay is required to verify his theories by crucial experiments ; and till that has been done he •fFer nothing but the satisfactoriness and simplicity of the explanation as a guarantee of its truth. Once, indeed, he advances the statement, that the veracity of the Deity would come into question if He permitted us to be deceived in following such strict and sober demon- strations. 1 But in general the distinction of purely mathematical and of physical proof is acknowledged by Descartes, and he confesses the possibility, though he never admits the fact, that he might be mistaken. Bat even if this were so, he holds that to provide a rational solution is the main thing, for it indicates a general possibility, and therefore proves that, even if mis- taken, it would be replaced by some solution similar in kind, and derived from the same principles. Hence the vital importance of showing that the phenomena of nature can be explained mathematically. This hypothesis is so much simpler, more complete and scientific than any other, that if it be proved possible, it cannot but be ac- cepted as true. Thus it is very unfair to Descartes to estimate the value of his work by the strictly accurate discoveries which he made. For surely Descartes' great- est claim to the gratitude of posterity is not to be found in his actual solutions of problems, but, as he himself insisted, in his anticipations of the conditions of the rigid i Principles, iii. § 44. 1 1; 1 Descartes. solution in problems of physical science. Even those who refuted his theories, and supplemented them by newer and simpler solutions, were led by the general light which he gave them, by the discovery he had made that nature could be interrogated mathematically, and the result set down in mathematical formula*. Tims it vraa no accident that Buyghens, educated in I principles, and under his peisonal influence, should have originated the now adopted vibration theory of the transmission of light It is this new way of looking at nature which he forced upon the world, upon his opponents than upon his followers, and which is decidedly the greatest and I fruitful of all his disco 165 CHAPTEE XIV. DESCARTES* PSYCHOLOGY — INNATE IDEAS — THE NATURE OF ERROR. § 113. The physics of Descartes were thus elaborated earlier than the other parts of his system, though the affair of Galileo delayed their publication. It is conve- nient to dispose of them in the same order, that we may turn at greater leisure to his psychology and ethics, and to the remainder of his metaphysic. His physiology is so closely connected with his ethics, that it is necessary to discuss them together, and not (as might be expected) in an appendix to his Physics. We have assumed that what we know clearly and distinctly must be true, and that what is deduced from such data must be true also. This is based ultimately on his doctrine of innate ideas, which has caused much comment and many unfair refutations. For he explains in his letters (x. 94, 106) that by innate ideas he does not mean ready-made ideas, complete images, or pictures, in the mind of the infant. He means that the mind infused by the Deity into every human body has certain natural predispositions which compel it to adopt certain beliefs, as soon as it begins to reflect, and to exercise its faculties. 16G Descartes. Such are the ideas of God, of substance, of unity, and a host of others, which he never essayed to enumi Some of these might remain unsuggested lor a long time, perhaps altogether, but whenever an occ arose they would appear and be assumed as indisputably true, it is in the case of these that the * f thje Deity is of vital importance, for a m. itor coujd have made us believe foliate falsehoods. * But is there no difficulty, is there no contr« to what we do know clearly and distinctly 1 b not possible? Do not most men m irly preju- dices and ferences for clear and certain truth? What, then, is tin- nature of error, and how is it to be distinguished aeeurat.lv fr<»m truth? This i sary, and ind- tion in the M irtes. I I. k When 1 come to examine the cause of tin- many errors whieh are manifestly made by human nature, I find/ he says (1th lied), 'thai with the idea of a Being of ion, 1 hai oppo- site a negative id. a of non-being ( of what is infinitely removed fn.ni all perfection; and that I am, so to speak, intermediate between the ereign Being and non-being, that there is nothin me whieh ean lead to error, in so far as the sovereign Being has produced me. But if I regard myself as participating to some extent in the neant or non-1 — viz., in so far as I am not myself the Being, and that I am deficient in several things, I find myself exposed to an infinity of deficiencies, And thus I know that^ error, as such, is nothing real depend- ing on God, but only a defect ; and that to err I require Theory of Error. 1 G 7 no particular faculty given me by God for that purpose, but it merely happens that I am deceived because the power given me by God to discern truth from falsehood ifl not infinite.' This is one of the numerous passages which Descartes honestly believed he had drawn fresh from his own speculation, but where the echo of his studies— of Plato, Augustine, and Campanella— uncon- sciously influenced his mind. § 1 15. If we inquire more closely how individual errors are to be explained by this general theory, we find that an analysis of our thoughts into classes becomes neces- sary. < Among our thoughts ' (3d Med.), * some are as it were the images of things, and to these only is properly applied the term idea, as when I have before uif a man, a chimaera, heaven, an angel, or even God. Other thoughts have a different form, as when I wish or fear, affirm or deny; then I conceive, indeed, some- thing as the subject of my mental action, but I also add something else by this action to the idea in my mind ; and of this kind of thoughts, some are called voli- tions or affections, and the rest judgments. The mere perception of ideas cannot possibly contain any error ; it is in our judgments concerning them that error consists. Thus I infer from these ideas that they are produced by external objects like them, because I fancy I am so taught by nature, and because they do not depend upon my will. And yet these inferences may be false. For being taught by nature means not only the evidence of that natural light which is the highest and most perfect guarantee of the truth of our simple intuitions, — it may also mean a certain spontaneous inclination, a blind and rash impulse, which certainly deceives me, for example, in 168 Descartes the choice between virtue and vice, and therefore cannot be trusted in the distinction of truth and falsehood. •Thus our ideas might be produced by no external cause, .but by some as yet undiscovered faculty within ourselves, 'and even if they were, this external cause need not resemble our ideas. Nay, in many cases we know that it does not. It is only by reflecting carefully on the truth, revealed to us by natural Light, that all i«h mental objects must be derived from causes which tain formally all the reality possessed objectively by the ideas, that I am able to deduce this conclusion: All the ideas of body which are deal t<» my mind — viz., trinal extension, figure, place, movement, substance, duration, and number — are real and true ; those of light, colour, , heat, cold, &c, are so obscure and confused, that nature teaches me nothing about their reality or their Causes, They may even | from non-hein from some want in my nature. And so of many other ordinary prejudices which have infected not only common life, but even previous philosophy. 1 § 116. It remains to analyse more closely the e nature of this blind or rash impulse, which I toscaitefl dis- tinguishes from the natural light of reason, We may repeat that he has given no real test for severing them, especially as he considers the natural light not an imme- diate intuition, but often only attained by long reflection. His adversaries might readily differ with him on its application, and what one calls natural light, the other might consider mere blind impulse. In the first place, error cannot exist in the bare repre- sentation of an idea. Each mental fact as such is a mental reality, about which there is no dispute. It is in the in- The Understanding and the Will. 1G9 ferences about our ideas that we err. 1 Inference implies judgment, and it is only our judgments which can be called true or false. But judgment implies two faculties, — first, the understanding, which grasps the two ideas, and their relation; secondly, the will, which chooses that they shall be affirmed of one another. The main difference between these faculties is, that while the Deity has given us a limited understanding, unable to comprehend a vast number of things, our will is perfectly free, and apparently confined by no bounds. We have no right to expect from the Deity an infinite, or even a very large, understanding. We have no right to expect a free or uncontrolled will. The fact that He has given us the second is a privilege, which should not make us thankless as regards the first. This free will or liberty is not the liberty of indifference— a low degree of the faculty, which implies ignorance of the better and the worse motives : it means that when the under standing ■ n^pvpWls the motive s, we feel that w ejan act upon k^ t h^nT^ith^ Jhe co^raint_ ot_an5^^ In the Deity there is no indi fference, a^ ^jH^ggt conceivable jiberty^ jt isjTIo^e ver^in ^sthe dispro-^ pn^Wj^ liberty— a ndjhe fac ulty of k nojyf™, w >">" produces all _our errors. For Jt1At the will proceeds to embrace judgments before the under- standing has properly conceived, or when it is unable to conceive, the ideas required for these judgments. In such cases both affirmation and negation may be regarded as errors, because they rest upon no foundation. Hence i It is one of the inconceivable statements to be found in .Sir Win. ll^2™Lctures, that this distinction has been ignored by almost "l Slosopners. It would be difficult to find apmlosopher who fa not explicitly asserted it. 170 Descartes. OUT errors arise partly from our fault, partly from our defect. Our understanding is finite, and therefore unable to attain to perfect truth Our will is rash, and induces us to beliefs for which we have no proper foundation, And yet it is because of this unlimited will that we may consider ourselves 'made in the image of God, 1 v faculties have no limitation. § 117. Let us inquire, further, into what department <>f tie* understanding, into what sort of ideas, the will makes im ursions, and leads us into error. The 01 ■tending can think an idea of itself by paste intellection ; and here there room for error, for such ///<". is eminently cl accompanied with a great mental effort* and is only under! ly, and by serious thinkers. Thus we can thi and form a clear idea of it ; so we can think a chiHogOn, and form a clear idea of its properties, complicated though it be, Bu1 there is another i through the Hon; and here it makes a difference whether the figure be simple or complex A triangle ia easily imagined, a chiliogon « fuse.Uy, and by an image which would answer equally well for a Bguxe of 900, or any other large numb sides. This imagination is then a particular kin mental act, not necessary to our idea of the mind, fox m conceive thought without imagination, th not imagination without thought It would . probable that were the mind joined intimately to a body, this imagination might be caused by an appli the mind to some suitable organ ly. But the apparently corporeal nature of imagination affords no proof of the existence of bodi< The Lessons of Sense. ] 71 This imagining is, however, not confined to geometri- cal figures, but extends to all manner of qualities— heat, sound, taste, &c. ; but as we perceive them more clearly by means of sense, we may pass to this third kind of mental action. This sense has been educated from childhood by our natural belief in our own bodies, in which we feel certain pleasures and pains by the application of sensations generally not under our control, and therefore assumed to come from external bodies. The importance, and hence the reality, of these sen- sations, is at first altogether determined by their being associated with pleasure and pain. Thus a hard body can hurt us by its contact, and hence is regarded as a more real substance than the air, which, because it ■ yields to us always, even comes to be regarded as an empty void; and so of other sensations. Thus our minds are easily filled with prejudices crystallised in language, sanctioned and preserved by memory, which the least reflection shows to have no solid basis. We require the consideration that we are thinking beings, that there is a perfect God who has made us, and that what we perceive clearly and distinctly in bodies must come from some adequate cause, apart from His direct action, in order to understand how there is an external world, in accordance with His veracity. Tor He has given us a natural belief in an external world apart from Himself, and there must be some corresponding facts to this natural belief when it is explicated by clear and distinct thinking. 1 1 Sixth Meditation. In the very words of Kant, ' He has not per- mitted that there should be any falsehood in my opinions without also giving me a faculty capable of correcting it.' 172 Descartes, § 118. The most difficult instance against the Divine veracity which we can find to answer on this theory, is that of men desiring things decidedly hurtful to them, as for example the thirst of a dropsical patient This is explained by the analogy of a watch, which does not (he less follow just and general mechanical laws when it goes astray than when it goes right. We must take care to understand rightly i\^ expression, 'nature teaches me this.' The sense in which Descartes takes nature here is strictly human nature, composed of mind and body, and thus excluding both purely intellectual truths and purely physical qualities. Nature in this merely teaches OS what to pursue and what to avoid for our comfort* and bo for only i king clear: beyond this we have no eight to follow its suggestions without careful reflection. Nay, even in its own sphere, it only S US the general law, and may be at fault in any par- ticular ease, as in that above stated Descartes explains that each nerve produces only one kind of sensation; that a pain in the foot OOUld he produced even after its amputation by action upon the nerves originally con- necting it with the brain at any point up to the brain itself. Hence the sensation of thirst, naturally produced by a condition of the stomach and throat, and instruct- ing us when to drink, may be produced by disease in the same nerves nearer the brain, and thus the patient is in one sense deceived. But he is deceived in conse- quence of the universality of a sound and useful law, which does its work in spite of a derangement elsewhere in the system. 173 CHAPTEE XV. ANTHROPOLOGY — THE AUTOMATISM OF BRUTES. §119. AVe have now sufficiently discussed the nature of matter (in the physics) and the nature of mind (in the psychology) to approach the most difficult and interest- ing of all problems, that of the nature of man, as com- l in a peculiar way of matter and mind, of soul and bo3y, so that these are combined, though heterogeneous, into a natural unit. And first let us see how much of the phenomenon can be explained merely from the structure of the human body. On this question Descartes was making investigations for years. He was dissecting not only animals, but, as he once hints, human subjects. He even practised vivisection; and we have, through his various treatises and letters, accounts of such operations on rabbits, dogs, fish, and eels, 1 for the purpose of watch- ing the motion of the heart, the movement of the blood in the arteries, and other cognate questions. The theory which seems to have been popular in his day was that the soul, while consciously performing voluntary motion, unconsciously controlled the organs of the body, and was the proper cause of the beating of the heart, the i Cf. vii. 345, 350, 371 ; viii. 227, 315. 174 Descartes. lion of food, the peristaltic action, and other vital functions. This is the theory which Descartes sets him- self to disprove, seeing that mind consists in thinking, and that therefore it cannot perform actions without recognising them as such. The theory of latent modi- fication^ which Leibnitz established. cartel vision, and precluded by his theory of mind. § 120. On the contrary, in his trad nf the Foetus, and On Man, as well as through Beyera] of his finished works, he develops a mechanical theory of the formation <»f the human body, lib animals, starting from a fermentation produced in ration, which causes heat and expansion, so forming the : producing a motion of the subtl there found towards the locus which becomes the of the brain, with a consequent return of the gn matter into the places thus vacated When this d tion and contraction of the heart is once established 1 which can be felt by any experiment in \ and when its dilatation is supplied by Liquors Bowing into it from the neighbouring parts, the human organism may be regarded as established Vital fun- 1 accordingly the result of heat and motion, j ieally as the going of a clock is the result of c and pulleys. The phenomena of involuntary motion, such as starting; winking the eyes, &a, show that many bodily actions are produced in the same w ly l.y the effect on our nerves of an external impression. Here is his summary at the end of his tract I Having shown that he has only assumed what ally been seen by anatomists, and the existence of in- visibly minute structure of the same kind, to account for Mechanical Structure of Man. 175 what is yet unexplained, he concludes : ■ I desire you next to consider that all the functions which I have attri- buted to this (animal) machine, such as digestion, the heating of the heart and arteries, nutrition and growth, breathing, waking and sleep, the perception of colours, sounds, tastes, heat, and other such qualities by the exter- nal senses, the impression of their ideas in the organ of the sensus communis and of imagination, the retention or impression of these ideas in memory, the internal motions of appetites and passions ; and finally, the external move- ments of all the limbs, which follow so suitably as well from the action of objects presented to sense as from the passions and impressions which are found in the memory, that they imitate as perfectly as is possible those of a real man, — I desire you to notice that these functions follow quite naturally in the machine from the arrange- ment of its organs, exactly as those of a clock, or other automaton, from that of its weights and wheels ; so that must not conceive or explain them by any. other tative or sensitive soul, or principle of motion and life, than its blood and its spirits agitated by the heat of the fire which burns continually in its heart, and which is of no other kind than all the fires which are contained in inanimate bodies/ Thus the mere animal called man, and the other animals, are only skilful automatons, constructed by the Deity according to the general laws which He has im- pressed upon matter, and they admit of none but a me- chanical explanation. Hence the lower animals, in which we have no reason to assume the infusion of a rational soul, as they use no language, and perform no actions which cannot be proved the direct result of their material 17G Descartes. : i-m, are mere animated machines, in whom the of joy and grief, of anger and fear, are merely <»f a motion in their animal spirits similar to that which imetimes induced in us by external objects, without the participation, and against the judgment, of the mind. § 121. We have yet to explain what these animal spirits are, which play so large a part in 1 physiology, and which held their place long after till the rise of microscopic anatomy. They were adopted from Qalen, whose natural gpirits in the liver, and vital spirit* in tli Descartes rejected They still survive in our ordinary language. In intmdueii of sight, 1 he tl, L tells lis that the mind sees, and not tie- body, hut this through the mediation of nerves, which concentrate in the brain, so that a brain dis- may stop the intelligence which comes from any point of tie- extremities. These nerves, he says, are i of three parts ; Brat, the enveloping .-kins, which an mere prolongations of that which surrounds tie- brain, ami may be compared to branching tubes (like the veins) through- out the body. Then there is the enclosed substance in the form of several independent filanu the brain to the extremities. Lastly, the animal q which are like a very subtle air, and which, coming from the chambers of the brain, How by the same tubes or canals into the muscles. These three BUDStanO are already admitted by physicians, hut their re- spective uses have never been explained, especially as regards the two diverse functions apparently performed by tin 4 nerves, — the one of announci: of producing motions. There cannot be separate m 1 Cf. Dioptric, 4th discourse, and the Passions, i. §§ 7-16. The Seat of the Mind. 177 for these, as is often assumed; for no motion is ever produced without sensation, though in paralysis it is possible to have the former destroyed and the latter pre- d. Descartes thinks that the nerves or filaments produce sensations, but that the animal spirits flowing into the muscles and expanding them produce motion. & animal spirits, moreover, keep the tubes of the nerves open and in proper order, and protect the en- closed filaments. On this theory the notion of images propagated to the brain is absurd : there are only nervous rxritements, and these suggest to the mind the presence of objects corresponding in some way to them. § 122. If we suppose a machine of this kind, with a thinking soul infused into it by the Deity at the first moment of its existence, then the soul, radically distinct from the body, and of an opposed nature, must be brought into contact with the body somewhere, that it may both receive impressions and direct motions. This must evi- dently be in the brain, whither all the nerves of sense converge; and in the brain, as most parts are double, ire must place it in that portion which is, so to speak, tlic single centre of the mass, the conarium, or pineal gland. At this point, in some inexplicable way, and by the special arrangement of the Deity, the mind is daily in contact with the nervous organism. This bring so, while a great number of actions and of passions are automatic, and the mere result of the organism, like nutrition, or the depression of hypochondria, others are produced by the special action of the mind on the pineal gland, and so through the vital spirits on the body. When the body decays and dies, there is no reason to think that the mind, which is immaterial, dies with it. Thus the M p. — i. 178 Descartes. immateriality of the mind leaves the way open to the theological arguments for its immortality, — a que Descartes hardly touched, doubtless because tin* Church insisted on the immortality of the body also, which he must have regarded as absolutely a miracle, and naturally impossible. § 123. Two points in this exposition seem to cequi word more in explanation — the automatism of fche lower animals, and the production of such | hate by merely mechanical causes operating in our or- ganism. What is it that feels the | it. the body, or is it the mind I If the brutes have no minds, how can they feel these passions? In th man, this problem leads us up to final point of his s\ be himself conceived it. He was pressed on all sides by object; to the intelligence of animals; he was supplied with en anecdotes about their Bagacity, and with compai of brutes with savages, in which the lat: d the inferior. Between the highest man and the loW( was urged, the different i r than between the lowest and the brute. the feeling of humanity is outraged by this 'barbarous and cruel' theory, as More rightly called it; for we know that it led I his followers to a reckless indulgence in vi merely to witness the internal structure of the anim machine, as we should take to pieces a watch. This was particularly the fashion at Port Royal. §124. The arguments by which Descartes met ; : objections were very able and logical — and in few of his theories does he show less dogmatism, although he i cedes his point. The two most important and explicit The Automatism of Brutes. 179 ages in his works are his letters to the Marquis of Newcastle (ix. 418 et seq.\ and his reply to the objec- tions of More (x. 204 et seq.). In these he argues as fol- lows : ' As to the understanding conceded by Montaigne and others to brutes, I differ, not for the reason usually alleged that man possesses an absolute dominion over the brutes, which may not always be true, either as regards strength or cunning ; but I consider that they imitate or surpass us only in those actions which are not directed by thought — such as walking, eating, and putting our hands out when we are falling. And people who walk in their sleep are said to have swum across rivers, in which they would have been drowned had they awaked. As regards the movements of the passions, although they are accompanied in us by thought, because we possess that faculty, it is yet plain that they do not depend upon it, because they occur often in spite of it, so that even their more violent occurrence in the brutes cannot prove to us that they have thoughts. In fine, there is no single external action which can convince those who examine it that our body is not merely a machine which moves of itself, but has in it a thinking mind, except the use of words, or other signs (such as those of mutes) made in relation to whatever presents itself, without any regard to the passions. This excludes the talking of parrots, and includes that of the insane, as the latter may be apropos, though it be absurd, while the former is not. It also excludes the cries of joy or pain, as well as all that can be taught to animals by acting on their hopes or fears of bodily pleasure or pain; which is the principle of all training of animals. It is remarkable that language, so defined, applies to man 180 Descartes. only; for though Montaigne and Charron say the] more difference among men than among men and brutes, there baa never yet been found a brute bo pei jome sign to inform other animal.- of things not relat- bo their passions; nor is there any man so imp who does not use such signs, even the deaf ami dumb inventing them. This latter fact seems to prove that it is not from a want of organs that brutes not speak. Nor can we argue thai they talk themselves, but we do not understand them; for dogs express I their passions so w<-ll, that they could certainly ex] to us their thoughts if they had any. I know that the beasts do many things better tl. !••, which only g that they act I 1 springs like a i which marks time better than we can determine it by our judgment The habits of bees, the return of the swallows, and the order of Dying e rones, and the sup- I hat tic Older of monkeys, is of the some kind j finally, that of dogs ond cots, whicli scratch the earth to bury their excrements, though they hardly evei really do so, which fthoWB that they do it by instinct, without thinking. We 0ftH only Bay [in limitation] that, though the beasts perform no acts which can prove to us that they think, still, because of the likeness of th< to ours, we may conjecture that there is joined to them, as we perceive in our own case, altl. theirs must he far less perfect To t thing l>t that, if they thought as we do, they must have an immortal soul, which is not lik- have no reason to extend it to Borne animals without extending it to all, such as worms, o\ He repeats the same argument- The Automatism of Brutes. 181 by the law of parcimony, we can explain all the actions of brutes without reason, and therefore need not assume it, though he admits we cannot actually disprove its stance in them. And of course he admits life and feeling in any case. This theory, he adds, is not so much cruel to animals as favourable to man, and saves us from all scruples as to the killing and eating of them. He did not add— as to vivisection! He says, too, as to the objection that all his arguments would apply to children as well as brutes, that though there is here a great difference, yet he would not have believed that infants had any soul if he did not see that they were the same in kind as adults. But no increase of in brutes discovers to us any sign of thought in them. There is yet a third trace of hesitation in his Passions (i. § 50), where he says : ' You may remark the same tiling in brutes; for though they have no reason, and perhaps also no thought (ni peut-etre aussi aucune pensee), all the motions of the spirits and of the (pineal) gland which excite in us passions, are not wanting in the in, and seem to keep up and strengthen, not as in us passions, but the movements of the nerves and muscles, which are wont [in us] to accompany them.' Descartes' followers, as is well known, allowed no such hesitation. They kicked about their dogs and dissected their cats without mercy, laughing at any compassion for them, and calling their screams the noise of breaking ma- chinery. § 125. Descartes' adversaries also met him with badly chosen objections, with rare and exceptional instances of animal intelligence; whereas they might have learned 182 Descartes. from him the important principle that any large theory must be based on the examples of ordinary experience, and not on select and curious cases, in which we are wry likely to be deceived. Such should (he Bays) only be used on principle, to confirm or refute an already framed hypothesis. According t«» this sound observation Descartes should have been pressed with the ordinary cases ity in animals, such as that of a dog liking to sit on a chair and watch the traffic out of a window, when his appetites are not in the 1 1 ; or vised in cases of dan- when an object can r (to use his Ian in muscles to move the brute's legs and carry it is it run not m, but a danger, if it can thus reach a door or gap for e& whereas in an open field it runs sta If a single case of Midi choice be proved, we must admit Borne pre nlty in the brain, which judges the impression the limits shall d<>. This objection ap] er t<» have been urged The difficulty which the opponents of Descartes felt most strongly, was the possible extension of souls I and worms. Thus the Letermined the c«»nt: i both sid 1 The following an- the principal additional references in hi> i to this question: vi. 889; viii. l99, 326, 575; The literature of the subject has be ■.. vol. i. p. 162 note) in his very interesting chapter on the M. The myriad tracts of followers and of opponents consist chielly of exaggerations in either direction. 183 CHAPTEE XVI. THE PASSIONS — ETHICAL THEORY. § 1 26. This curious argument leads us on naturally to •artes' theory of the passions in man, and from that to ] lis matured ethical theory, as contrasted with the pro- visional rules laid down at the opening of his Discourse Method, He declined, indeed, to compose any formal work on ethics, alleging that here, if anywhere, he waa liable to violent and unfair criticism from his opponents and — he did not add, but felt — from the theologians. Still, in his letters to the Princess Eliza- beth and the Queen of Sweden On the sovereign good, and in his criticism of Seneca On happiness, he has clearly indicated the lines he would have followed. This is also to be inferred from the conclusion of his Treatise on the Passions of the Soul, composed for the Princess, but published during his life, and with his consent. In this book he again professes to have been obliged to start from a completely new basis, and argue en physicien, since what the ancients had said was un- serviceable, and what the schoolmen obscure. He par- ticularly points at the Platonic division of the soul into irascible and concupiscible elements, to which he strongly 184 Descartes. objects on the ground of its unity and indivisibility. He will allow no gradation in tin- faculties of mind 01 just as he will allow no gradation in the souls of living The brutes differ in kind, not in degree, from man. The phenomena of human nature are twofold, — either purely mechanical, or conscious and the] baJ in the strictest sense. The mental phenomena are perceptions and volitions; the mechanical are certain reflex movements of the limbs in answer to Imprec or the senses, as well as the physical processes of circula- tion and digestion. § 127. But there are phenomena called pe bementfl of the Eras -need by increased cir- culation, by paleness, by tremor, which in man arc certainly mental, for we are conscious of them, and also physical, as we can plainly see, both in men and brutea They were ai I old to be the direct effects <>f the mind on the body, since death produces a cessation of heat and circulation, and death was sup- posed to be the departure of the soul from the body. artes, on the contrary, explains thai the soul d< bom the body, because that machine has gone out of order, and is useless: the departure of the soul is the juence, not the cause, of the cessation of bodily functions. The fire maintained ai the heart which pro- duces its movement, and the generation of animal spirits in the brain and through the nerves, is the real cause and principle of all the motions of our limbs. When an im- ion is propagated to the brain, the animal spirits are in consequence agitated according to some fixed law of correspondence; which in one case determines animal to run, in another to resist and fight, in another Action of Mind on Body, 185 to have his heart dilated (with blood) so as to feel joy, in another pain. All the sensations of brutes are to be explained in this way ; and all the passions of man could be accounted for likewise, but that we know the mind to be in such close connection with the conarium, and through it with the whole body, where the animal spirits a iv being agitated, that it takes notice of this function. It even acts on the conarium so as to produce from itself such motions as change the course of the animal spirits, and so modifies the mechanical effects which must have resulted on purely mechanical grounds. Descartes knows perfectly that this action is indirect, thus (§ 44) : 'It is not always the volition to excite in us some movement or other effect which enables us to excite it; but the change takes place according as nature or habit has variously joined each movement of the pineal gland to I thought. Thus when we wish to look at some very distant object, this volition makes the pupil of the eye to dilate ; and if a very near one, to contract. But however we may think of dilating the pupil, the mere wish will never do it, because nature has not joined the movemmt of the gland, which causes the spirits so to affect the optic nerves as to dilate or contract the pupil, with the volition of dilating or contracting it, but with the volition of looking at distant or near objects. And when in speaking we only think of the sense, we move our tongue and lips much quicker and better than if we thought of moving them in aU the divers manners requi- site for saying the same words; because the habit acquired in speaking has made us join the action of the mind (which, by means of the gland, can move the tongue and lips) with the meaning of the words consequent on 186 Descarf these motions, rather than with the I This principle Lb of the last importance, for the mind cannot alter the passions without altering the com the blood and the animal spirits, so that a remain unchanged, the mind is Literally their slava It excite- an op] non, an«l the physical this counteract the former. These are the supposed con- diets between the higher and Lower parts of the mind Thus in man we can Bpeak of tfa as of the mind, meaning by this (§ 27 are perceptions as d bed not only being tfl from v. ouni of their strong eflecti on the mind. 'IT rticu- to mind, to W, proceed, therefore, to dia of the mind, not the : ! ezcitena in the Lower animals. They are all intended for the : vatinu of the body, to incite us to what and deter us from what is harmful, and therefore only require proper control and direction to be the cause of our greatest pleasure and happi: The six primitive passions are of two kinds — eil Analysis of the Passions. 187 or mere curiosity. The latter he calls wander, and says it is excited merely by the novelty of an impression, without regard to its being profitable or hurtful. The animal spirits in this case act only on the brain, or on the limbs, to keep the object still before thrill, and not on the heart and liver, as in the case of the other passions. These latter are principally five, but toe all modifications of the desire of what appears good, and the hatred of what appears evil. These two are gene- rally love and hate. If the good or evil is represented future, our passion takes the form of desire, either i tive or negative ; if they are present, of joy and griqf. This rather illogical division — for the last three are species of the two former — is followed up by an account of the various particular or secondary passions, which are composed or derived from them. In all of them Descartes distinguishes the intellectual judgment of good (or evil), the contemplation o^ which is distinctly a pleasure, first from the purely animal passion, which is caused by a particular state of the body J and secondly from the emotion, which is the proper word. for the excitement of the animal spirits, and subsequent bodily changes, owing to the notice taken by the mind of the object. He also takes care to explain' not only the changes in the circulation of the blood caused by each passion, but also its external marks, which often seem at first sight inconsistent — as, for example, when the same passion produces sometimes blushing, at otl. paleness. We find constantly, in spite of Descartes' assertions of perfect originality and purely scientific interest, both a reflection of the ethics of Aristotle, and also a reflec- 188 Descartes. tion of his own peculiar temper. Thua I ks on :i mean state being the best — on the contrast, foi ample, between amazement and want of curi the right condition of proper interest in new tbinj arc plainly suggested by Aristotl the high posi- tion given to what he calls f the moral faculty he ignores, assuming with Plato that there is hut one intellect Lty which judges right and wrong as it judges truth and falsehood The problem of ! obligation he shirks altogether, resolves it in a eudaauonistic sense, as merely a proper compul in attaining the greatest happiness. As to the moral criterion, he regards it as having n \ when applii d to th' Bis will being absolul bating In the case of man, he p] high- injuring happiness in the perfect folio and this he defines (ii. S 1 W), 'living bo that our conscience cannot reproach as with having ever failed to do what we ha. 1 to be the best' Ihe would he that which W8S with the greatest clearness and distinctness. For the true use of our reason in the conduct of life consists merely in examining and considering withoul the value of all the perfections, as well of body as of mind, which can he acquired by OUT industry. Hence, being usually required to deprive ourselves of some, in order to attain the rest, we should always select the hot ; and those of the body are the more transient, ami the within our own control, we may say in general that without them there are means of being happy. Syncretism of Ancient Systems. 191 1 But I am not of opinion that they should he despised, or even that we should free ourselves from having dons : it is enough to subject them to reason, and when thus domesticated (apprivoisees), they are some- times the more useful the more they incline to excess.' § 131. But all the answers to modern ethical problems indirect answers drawn from his writings, as he does not approach morals from the modern but from the an- cient point of view. He tells both the Princess and the Queen that he can reconcile the great ancient systems, and so form a theory in which all their good points are combined. He remarks that there is a difference between beatitude, the summum bonum, and the finis bonorum, in this, that beatitude presupposes the sov- eieign good, and is the contentment arising from its session. Eut by the end of our actions one may understand either, for the one is the proper object or end of our actions, and the other the attraction which makes us pursue that end. He notes also that Epicur- us' pleasure must be taken to include mental as well as bodily pleasures. * There are, then, three theories amongst the ancients, concerning the end of our actions, — that of Epicurus, asserting it to be pleasure ; of Zeno, who held it to be virtue; and of Aristotle, who com- pounded it of all the perfections of both mind and body ; — which three opinions, it seems to me, can be received as true, and reconciled, provided they receive a fair interpretation. Eor Aristotle is perfectly right, but the end he proposes is so wide, and contains so much, that it is not practical. Zeno, on the contrary, considers each man's private and particular good, and is quite right in placing it in virtue, seeing that it alone depends 192 Descartes. wholly on our five will But he represented so severe and opposed to pleasure, that only the ascetic natures couM enjoy it as he proposed I Epicurus is not wrong in saying that pleasure in era] thai is, mental contentment—is the motive or. end of our actions, otherwise even good Lone from duty, would give us no enjoyment Bui because pleas- ure (voluptS) is used for Use pl< flowed by un- easiness, repentance, . many have thought thai he recommended vice; and indeed he does not teach virtue. But to attain real mental contentment it is to follow 3uch is the substance of ] lusionfl in criticising the ethics of Seneca for the Princess Eliza- beth He. holds that when violent passions a 1 by bodily causes, or by the ills to which our life is sub- firom. what is called I we Bhould combat them by o] i firm will, and overcoming them, not indeed directly this is seldom in our power— but by ex.it ing bom within rival emotions, which may tralise or overcome them. The cultivation of this firm will, and of acting always as our reaa what can free US from the troubles and miseries of life, make OS as happy as the conditions of human life admit. Rence his ideal character is the generous man, an ideal somewhat different from the wise man of the Stoics or the magnanimous man of Aristotle, but still undoubtedly drawn from the latter, and from Descartes' good Opinion of himself and his own theory and practice in life. This ->•////, which he prefers (he tells us) to the mag- mity of tin 4 schools, because it is partly an in quality, a r to be found arm >fhigh The Generous Man. 193 births is self-respect, an estimation of self as highly as is just, on account of the consciousness that our free will has always been used to follow what we have judged to be the best. He points out the contrasts — meanness and false humility, and the bad manners resulting from them; whereas the generous man, who knows that the weaknesses of others arise from ignorance rather than from want of good intentions, will treat them with urban- ity and indulgence. The mistake of all weaker natures is to estimate other advantages too highly in comparison with the unfettered use of oar free will in regulating our life. It is by constant meditation on the dignity and value of this free will, that we may acquire the virtue of generosity. The whole picture (iii. §§ 152-16-1) is very interesting, though curiously pagan in an author who professed faith and obedience to the Christian Church. He draws, however, this advantage from his nmi-theological attitude, that he is able to admit the use of the passions, and even that our greatest pleasures (implying our greatest pains) arise from our use of them. They are, therefore, not to be suppressed, but controlled, and thus compelled to serve the free will in the pursuit of happiness. § 133. The reader wall have observed that there is no mention of the Christian virtues as such, nor of the new ideal and new aims given to human life by the Christian Church. There is not a word of humility as such, if we omit its use as a prudential virtue, intended to keep us within bounds, and make us agreeable to our neighbours. Kor does he mention self-denial, except to increase our pleasures; or the pursuit of holiness, as enjoined by the relations of God and man. 104 Descartes. Here then we have another evidence of whal gested by various points in his writings, and wh been already noticed Descartes was not a Christian, a true son of the Church, but in his inmost soul a sceptic, who pat no trust in the truths of revelation. An atheist he was not in any sense. His doctrin the creation and conservation at every moment of the universe, still more his doctrine of the infosion human soul into a heterogeneous body, connected with it in no com* i a God as the ruler and orderer of the World In a splendid passag the close of his third M 4 the mplation of tins Deity as the highest and purest of all human delights. Bui when he suggests that there could be a science of miracles constructed which should h tin- vulgar by a new and curious appli cation of natural forces, such as the laws of Bee how his mind looked at this all-imporl ma in the Christian faith. Sis contemporaries w blind to these indications, and long after his death we find his orthodox followers see] testimonials from the Queen of Sweden, bom the priest who attended his deathbed, and from his clerical friends, to I t and over again what he had never denied, that he lived and died a true Catholic. But the evidence of ]. and <»f his habitual thinking, is too strong for them, a their uneasiness to have been too well founded § 134. The above sketch of Descartes' philosophy should be supplemented by many notes of the incident at truth to be found in his correspondent hardly a topic of scientific interest which did not i within his consideration, But these scattered not. Advocates Phonetic Writing. 195 unsuitable for a general sketch, though they form per- haps the chief point of interest for a modern reader of his numerous letters. One of these observations, how- ever, we may mention in conclusion, as it concerns a question of daily growing importance in our own day. It is that of phonetic spelling. Schemes of a universal language had been brought before him, and he had set them aside, showing the insuperable difficulties in any such scheme (vi. 61 el seq.) But he saw with perfect clearness the waste of time, and indulgence of vulgar prejudice, involved in the sustaining of an artificial orthography, and he lays down in a few words the rational way of viewing this important question. 'Afl ids my orthography/ he replies to an unknown ob- jector (vii. 404), 'it is for the printer to defend it; for in this I required of him nothing but to abide by usage; and as I have not made him omit the p of corps or the t of cs/jrif«, when he put them in, so I took no care to make him put them in when he left them out, because I have not observed that he did it anywhere so as to cause ambiguity. Besides, I have no intention to reform French orthography, and would advise no one to learn it in a book printed at Leyden; but if I must here state my opinion, I think that if we followed exactly the pro- nunciation, this would afford much more convenience to strangers in learning our tongue, than the inconvenient' to them or to us from the ambiguity of some equivocal- (like-sounding names); for it is by speaking that we compose languages rather than by writing; and if there occurred in pronunciation equivocals which caused fre- quent ambiguity, usage would forthwith make some change in them in order to avoid it.' 196 HAPTEB XVII. mi: INTUTNCE OF DESCARTE8 l/BOISI BCD | 1 35, We have aires how during I life his influence had made itself felt in the scientific world He universities of I'trecht an n, in Holland, were ton with controversies about hi> doctrine, Breda was bom its very foundai 146) profei Cartesian. We find -hortly after his deatli tliat in all the other 'high schools' of Holland, Groni Efranek- er, Haiderwiok, Herborn, &c, his doctrines were ta always with enthusiasm, and gem Tally with such violent opposition from the conservative party as t<> insure their notoriety. The whole Dutch nation tated by this subject While his admirers published theses an. I commentaries, while they reduced his argu- ments to logical demonstrations, while they even mented on them paragraph by paragraph, ami published alphabetic concordances of them ; while they even n them in the form <»f poetry,— his adversaries used i engine in their power to oppose the progress of his in- fluence They published theses, lampoons, ami li they invoked the reigning powers; they alarmed the orthodox j they appealed in the name of peace ami Theological Difficulties. 197 order against this subversive philosophy. Ardent Car- tesians were persecuted and deprived of their posts ; decrees were fulminated by the curators of universities against the teaching of Descartes' opinions, but in vain. Some of the boldest Cartesians either held no office, or abandoned it, to obtain their complete freedom. The liberty of discussion attained by the Protestants of Hol- land in their religious conflicts with Catholicism was now a two-edged weapon; and Protestant ministers, who be- gan to fear for the authority of all revelation, sought in vain to wrest it from the hands of those bolder thinkers, who were seeking to apply Descartes' philosophic scepti- cism to the sphere of theology. Thus the attempt was actually made to establish a sort of Protestant Inquisition in the universities, direct- ed not only against theological but against philosophi- <•; 1 novelties. No doubt works were written to show the harmony of Descartes both with Aristotle and with the Scriptures ; and the author of the Cartesius Mosai- s even demonstrates to his satisfaction that the vor- g of his master agree with the Biblical account of the creation. But the incompatibility of the Cartesian physics— especially of the earth's motion— with the WOlda of Scripture, was to the Dutch theologians as fatal as the incompatibility of the Cartesian doctrine of matter was to the Catholic supporters of Transubstantia- tion. Strange to say, the Catholic theologians did not regard with favour the condemnation of Galileo for asserting the earth's motion. On the other hand the Protestant divines were not displeased at the difficulty oi reconciling Cartesianism with the decrees of the Council of Trent ; nevertheless, they combined with their adver 198 Descartes. series in denouncing, as atheistical, a system which itself exclusively on human reason, and disregarded the express words of revelation. To the one it was a tin ism disguised as Protestantism, with its rejection of autli and assertion of private judgment \ to the other atheism disguised as Jesuitry, with its submission to the authority of the Church, and its avoidance of questions oi faith. Descartes fared badly among the theologians, In L656 a Bynod at Dordrecht issues warnings to the fche- mis to separate their Bcience carefully bom tl. the new philosophy. In the following year a syii I>elft declares that no professed Cartesian will bi pointed to any ecclesiastical dignity. And presently the ministers at Utrecht compose a Flemish circular to their ions, warning them, at the risk of their < silv.itiun, against sending their children to the unive of the town, in which the philosophy of I >• aed well of materialism and athei We may add to these notices the decree of the Catholic University of Louvain, where Descartes was at first received with favour, and taught with enthusiasm ; but where the papal nuncio at Jhussels, Jerome Vecchio, - a decree in 1GG2, warning the theol the heresies of the new philosophy, and its conflicts with the doctrine of the Real Presenca It is hardly necessary to add that in the free country of the Netherlands these decrees were perfectly idle. ( 'artesianism continued to be taught, even at Louvain, despite all precautions, ' adeo scilicet,' says the an of Maastricht in 1677, 'ut nulla ferine non novaturien- tis Belgii, sed Europae Christiana pars ah ejus gangrene infecta restet,' Cartesian Ladies. 199 § 136. The history of Cartesianism in France is somewhat different, owing to the circumstances of the country. The universities, which were under strict ecclesiastical control, and ruled by the decrees of the Privy Council, did nothing to introduce the new philo- sophy; but Descartes' numerous correspondents, resid- ing in religious houses, and forming private scientific academies, disseminated his views all through French society. Even Descartes' early teachers, the Jesuits, w.re for a time not averse to his teaching; and his personal relation^with them saved him, during his life, from any opposition more serious than that of Bourdin. Bat it was chiefly in the new Oratory, founded by Berulle, in Port Eoyal, and among the Benedictines, that he found ardent disciples and propagators of his philosophy. Among these, Arnauld and Malebranche stand out above the rest. Presently we find bishops, judges, and men of letters professing Cartesianism, and great princes patronising it. So much in fashion was it for a time, that Madame de Sevigne's letters speak of it as a thing which must be learned for social purposes, like card-playing. Madame de Grignan, the Duchesse de Maine, the Marquise de Sable, and other great ladies, were celebrated for their knowledge of the new philosophy. The Femmes Savantes of Moliere, the Fables of La Fontaine, the Voyage du Monde de Des~ cartes of Daniel, attest the Cartesian fashion of the day. There were a dozen academies in Paris about 1660 which met weekly to discuss questions of phy- sic and metaphysic, mainly on the basis of the new philosophy. The Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666, may be considered as the regular establishment 200 Descartes. of Cartesian principles and methods in the kingdom of France. § 137. Bat the reaction came here also bom the theologians. The Jesuits, after due consideration, ] than the other ecclesiastics the real dangei ' system for the Church ; and though Bonrdin had fastened upon the really important point — the habit of universal doubt — in his apparently trivial attack, they found it more politic to bring against the new theory its inconsistence with the doctrine of the Each* rist, which we have already discussed. They were aide de the Congregation of the End Die to condemn all Descartes' writings formally, d< v. 1 Then came the order of the French Court (June 1 ( »<>7), suddenly forbidding the fun- which had been prepared for the reception of Dea mains at S. Genevieve du Mont ; and even the rich tomb projected was supplanted by a simple stone. In 1671 i formal order from the King was promulgated to the university by the Archbishop of Paris, warning the Faculties to permit no teaching save that established by the old rules and statutes. The Parliament desired to enforce this order by the absolute interdiction of all Cartesian opinions, but were stopped by a smart tire concocted by Boileau, Bernier, and Racine, in which poor old Aristotle, long in pos^ T the 1 20th November 1663 is the exact date, which points to the con- demnation at Lonvain in the previous year as having guided the Con- >n. The ffttoyi are not specified by name, nor the but alter special mention of the other published books and : ■i que auctoris opera philosophica are added, in order to com- prise whatever had been forgotten. We cannot but suspect that the censors knew little of the works they condemned. Jesuit Persecution. 201 schools in company with his formalities, materialities, entities, identities, virtualities, ecceities, &c. &c, was protected from the invasions of Eeason, who threatened to appropriate the schools, and who was forbidden 'd'y entrer, troubler ni inquieter ledit Aristote en la posses- sion et jouissance d'icelles, a peine d'etre declaree jans£- niste et amie des nouveauteV This squib checked the Parliament ; and the able and logical protest of Arnauld against the declaration of the Index, which was not binding in France, brought some ridicule on that Con- gregation. But the Jesuits were too strong. Finding that the Oratory and Port Eoyal were particularly infected not only with Jansenism but with Cartesian principles, they set to work to ruin both by convicting them of theological and philosophical heresies. Arnauld took refuge in Belgium, Malebranche was obliged to publish his works abroad. The universities of Angers and Caen were compelled to expel their Cartesian profes- sors, and to exact strict promises from their teachers to abstain from such heresies. This persecution, which lasted till about 1690, was however, confined to official teachers and schools, and did not attempt, or at least was unable, to check pri- vate opinion. Hence Cartesianism was propagated and preached widely, by means of books and pamphlet all its enemies confess. tfay, its influences reached far beyond theology and science, and invaded even the fine arts and the domain of aesthetics. It is remarkable that the orators and poeta of the age of Louis XIV. show little taste for the pictur- esque in nature, and devote themselves wholly to the 202 Descartes. study of man. This is attributable to the strictly me- chanical view of nature taught by Descartes, and his way of regarding it as a mere piece of machinery. Tin* same cause was also very influential in leading physiolo- and physicians to adopt a purely materialistic view of the human frame, and to make little allowance for the influence of the mind in disease, or in the development of physical characteristics. The great 'conflict between the ancients and the d as it was called, which occupied the minds <>f literary men in France up to the middle <>f the i fch century, was distinctly inaugu- rated by Descartes. He was the first todecrysubmi to the ancients, even in matters of literary taste : and BO there came a da} when Racine was preferred I lus, and the Renaissance architecture to the tempi the ( Ireeka The predominance of Descartes was unshaken in pub* rimatinn throughout France, until Ifaupertuis intro- duced Newton's physics, and Voltaire brought hack from England the philosophy of Locke and Bacon, which, with its empiricism, its collection of facts, and avoid- ance <>f theories, t<»uk the fancy of the hard sceptical eighteenth century. With Voltaire, then, and the En- cyclopedists, began the rehabilitation of Gassendi, and that ridicule of Descartes' hypotheses which is rep by the ignorant up to the present day. § 138. The mention of Locke's philosophy naturally ists to us the external history of Cartesianisni in England during the same perkxl 1 The influence of Descartes on English thinkers was indeed hardly 1 The English reader can now refer to Mr William Cunningham's lent monograph on the subject. Descartes and Locke. 203 marked than in the case of their Continental rivals. We have quoted above (p. 79) Molyneux's pompous preface to his edition of the Meditations; the theological argu- ments of Clarke on the Attributes, and of Butler on the doctrine of a future life, are framed on the mode] i i Descartes ; and even Locke, the leader of an opposed «>1, is so permeated with the same influence, that though he hardly mentions Cartesian theories — except to refute them — his whole Essay teems with assump- tions taken from the system he decries. He protests against innate ideas, but nevertheless admits all that Descartes had ever maintained — viz., that the human mind must infallibly attain certain universal truths in the ordinary exercise of its powers. He takes his whole demonstration of God's existence from Descartes, He adopts the theory of animal spirits ; and, what is more important, the mechanical nature of secondary qualities — such as colour — as mere derivations from the pri- mary. We need not add the universal contempt of Aristotle and the scholastic logic. 13ut still Locke, building perhaps upon Bacon, cer- tainly upon Gassendi and Hobbes, was the originator of a distinctly anti-Cartesian current, and was one of the main causes of the decay of that system in Emope, It happened by a remarkable accident that none the leading English metaphysicians in the seventeenth century were mathematicians. Bacon, Hobbes, 1 Loek<\ Butler, Shaftesbury, all wrote and thought about psy- chology and ethics, but were unable even to understand the mathematics of Descartes. Hence, when the genius I The attempts of Hobbes to master mathematics in his old age rather corroborate than contradict this statement. 204 Descartes. of Newton arose, Locke could not follow his di or utilise them in his system ; although he was perfectly able to relate the crude metaphysics in which the great discoverer sometimes indulged. The studies »f niathe- matice and of metaphysics seemed thus specialised, and even divorced ; and this gave ignorant people and ama- teurs a chance of talking philosophy, which they could not easily attempt as long as the principli prevailed. 1 Hie metaphysic of Locke and <>f his English followers, down to the present century, was therefore :ially anti-Cartesian, and generally for that very reason unfruitful and shallow. It i< only in our own day that physiology and physical science are 6 being brought to bear upon psychology, which, in the common -sense school of our fathers, had d into more respectable twaddle Such, in the roughest outline, is the external hi of Descartes' influence throughout civilised Europe. He swayed not only his followers but his opponents for a whole eenturv ; and he gave to certain sciences, especi- ally to optics, to physiology, and to physical astronomy, an impulse which has never been exhausted § 139. To trace the internal history of Cartesianisn more difficult task, and would require an account of the great thinkers, who will be treated in subsequent volumes of this series. From his assertion of universal doubt, his demand for (dear and distinct beliefs, there aroe Holland a school of sceptics who applied this doctrine 1 This was not the opinion of the reactionists. Thus 0. Goldsmith, in his sketch of Maupertuis, says that the Cartesian system was the field for idle dreamers, who could carry on a priori speculations con- cerning nature without any minute and painstaking investigation of bets. Descartes and Spinoza. 205 not only to the superstitions of the age — such as magic and apparitions— but to revelation, which they subor- dinated to the clear dictates of reason. These men ad- vocated the naturalistic side of Descartes' philosophy ; they rejected the miraculous and the capricious in both nature and faith, and paved the way for Spinoza, the greatest and the most logical of all the descendants of Descartes. The complete severance of mind and matter, which Descartes had combined in some inconceivable way in the pineal gland of the human brain, but which were in every other relation totally and eternally separate, gave rise among theologians to the doctrine of occasional causes, according to which it was merely by the interference of the Deity that mind and matter were modified in harmony, and that either seemed to influence the other. Malebranche, who adopted the Augustinian aspect of the problem, and wrote in the interests of theology, postulated the Deity as the con- stant intermediate between our minds and the matter which surrounds them, and his system was received with great favour by those who desired to hold fast both to Descartes and to the Church. But Spinoza, with deeper insight, saw that he must postulate the Deity not as an interfering Will, but as the universal Substance, which embraces both mind and matter as its attributes, and secures their harmony by abolishing their independence as separate substai: He likewise applies the Cartesian doubt logically to the documents on which our religions are founded, and thus anticipates that historical criticism which is the pride of the nineteenth-century sceptics. Nor was there any escape from Spinozism, so long as philosophers were con- 206 Descartes. tent with the meagre description of mind, with which tries was always (strangely enough) content, lv a eubstanes which thinks, but which owes its princi- pal ideas to a passive reception from its Creator. While therefore some Cartesians boldly asserted that mind, thus described, could hardly be called a clear and distinct cognition, and that body was indeed our only knowledge, Leibnitz escaped bom this obvious approach to materialism by reconsidering the conception <>f mind, and bringing into the foreground, not thinking, hut spontaneity — the idea of power, as Locke calls it — as the leading attributa § 140. These deeper qi id in this short appendix to Descartes r life. They arc mentioned merely t<> show how he was to modern thoughl what Stt to ( irerk philosophy. Fa was he than Socrates, in the range of his influ< In every department of his thinking, — in his first philo- sophy, his theology, his physics, hi- peych< phy- siology, — he sowed the i teeth from which s] hosts of armed men, to join in an intellectual conflict, internecine, l.-t 08 trust, to their many errors and judioee, hut fraught with new life and • tic intellectual progress of Europe. appendix; In considering the contributions made by Descartes to mathematics, it is most natural to commence with that which may be termed the pure science, apart from all applications, — algebra. Here several important im- provements are due to him. (1.) He was the first to place on a clear basis the doctrine of powers, freeing it from its connection with geometry, which prevented its proper expansion At the same time, by the introduction of the index nota- tion, he conferred on the science a new and most potent organ of expression. (2.) The treatment of negative quantities was also much advanced by him. The existence of negative roots of equations was indeed known to previous alge- braists — e.g., Harriot; but they appear to have regarded them rather as anomalies, confining their attention to the positive. Descartes first brought into prominence the equal ini i I am indebted to the kindness of a mathematical colleagm Frederick Purser, for the annexed statement of Descartes' position in the history of science. 208 Descartes. portance and significance of the negative root?, and [ for determining a limit to their number, the elegant rule which still bears his name. But the leading discovery of Descartes in mathemat- ics, and that on which his fame as a mathematician mainly rests, is unquestionably the application of algebra to geometry; or rather, to use Playfair'a words, which bring out well the true import of the step thus made, 'The expression by means of algebra of continuously varying quantity. 1 In fact, Descartes, in virtue of this invention, must be considered not only as the founder of the science (since hia time bo largely extended analytic geometry, or the algebraic treatment of < ur he was also the pioneer in the path which led up to the t discovery in modern mathematdca, that of the Differential Calculus, by NY w ton and Leibnitz. Thai < 'alculus may indeed he defined as the completely devel- oped mathematical expression for the continuity which the subject of mathematics derives from its foundation in space and time. And historically, it was in the attempt to solve the general problem of drawing tan. to curved lines, represented by their Cartesian equations; that the ('alculus had its origin. A method, or rather two slightly different methods, for the solution of this problem, were indeed given by Descartes himself. They are, however, far inferior to that of Fermat, based on the doctrine of maxima and minima, which may be said almost to have anticipated the Calculus. Turning now to physics, Descartes' main achi were in the science of optics. In estimating his merits in this field, much depends on the question of his claim to the independent discovery of the law of refraction, — a The Use of Mathematics. 209 question still undecided, though the balance of evidence seems adverse to Descartes. 1 He was, however, undoubt- edly the first to state the true law in its present well- known trigonometrical form. On it, moreover, he based a series of ingenious researches on the figures of lenses adapted to cause rays to converge to a point. These indeed yielded no result of practical value, but they led to the discovery by Descartes of the remarkable class of curves now well known as the Cartesian ovals. Descartes, too, appears to have been the first originator of the undulatory theory of light, though to Huyghens is due its really scientific development. We pass now to the general method of Descartes in physics. This has met with much censure, on the ground of its a priori character, and it has been contrasted un- favourably in this respect with that of Bacon. Yet if Descartes ignored — as doubtless he did — the necessity of the establishment of the leading principles of physics by experiment and observation, he had a far juster appreciation than Bacon of the part mathematics was destined to play in deductions from those principles. Thus {Letters, viii. 205) he writes: 'Apud me omnia sunt mathematica in natura, et il n'y a point de quantite qui ne soit divisible en une infinite de parties;' and again (vii. 234) : ' Cela veut que tous les corps sont com- poses de quelques parties ; ' (viii. 87) : * Qui saurait par- i With this statement I hardly agree. Against the one positive statement, that of Huyghens, made after Descartes' death, that he had borrowed it from a MS. of Snell, which was circulated in Holland, we have the convincing argument from the complete silence of all his opponents and detractors during twenty years of controversy. >ot one of them suspects Descartes' originality on this point.— M. P.-I. ° 210 Descartes. faitement quelles sont les petites parties de tous les corps connaitrait toute la nature;' (ix. 15): 'Les math tiques sont des principaux fondements snr Lesquels j'appuie tous mes raisonnements.' But perhaps the most striking passage in this regard occurs in a Letter to Mersenne (vii. 121): *M. Desargues m'oblige eta qu'il lui plait avoir de moi en ce qu'il t&noigne marri de ce que je ne veux plus ehidier en • mais je n'ai resolu de quitter que la geom&rie abstraite — c'est a dire, la recherche des questions qui ne servent unit exercer l'esprit, et ce [tie] afin ,: in the Letters (viiL 528) where mathematics arc de- clared to rest not on imagination, but concept May we see here some anticipation of the doctrine sub* sequently developed by Kant — of the construction of the concept through the schema 1) As regards the Cartesian doctrine of space — diametri- cally opposed to the Kantian as it is — may it not yet have helped, by its. clearness, to prepare the way for it 1 Descartes, in fact, reasoned : space is real ; but if n< it material, it is a non ens ; therefore it is material. Kant Descartes and Bacon. 211 also reasoned : space is real ; but viewed as a material ' lot am, it is non ens; therefore it is not a material datum, but the pure form of intuition. Note. — An interesting parallel may, I think, be drawn between Descartes and Eacon. (1.) The methods of neither have proved to be those by which (taken separ- ately) physical science has actually progressed ; but while the Eaconian method failed in allowing too little scope to preconceived ideas, Descartes erred in trusting too en- tirely to them, untested and unverified. (2.) The repute of neither, in physics, rests mainly on results they actu- ally obtained, yet here the superiority unquestionably rests with Descartes. (3.) Eoth diminished their credit by disparagement of men actually engaged in important original work — e.g., Descartes of Galileo, Eacon both of Galileo and others. (4.) Both attempted, in a manner which seems to us now artificial, to connect principles of science with rules for production in art (compare Discours de la Methode, p. 44, and Nov. Org., iv.) (5.) Compare the passage (Letters, viii. 87) previously cited from Descartes, with Eacon's latens scliematismus and latens processus. END OF DESCARTES. D » 9/f on the date to which renewed. 5 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 5 &£ ar V ID 2 5 ' 6 5 j4j JOE jN? &»- m & ^* \% ^sr ^ ! ?F p 5 '69 -5 PM r. D UP ME* 2*67 4 s^nnr "*S IL 3 1 1967 5Q'67-5HW DEC 18 1967 8 8 received t;OAK P&PT. PW- LD 21A-60™-4.'6l (E4555sl0)476B General Libr University of California Berkeley 3r>2GJ*V7 JV*^ TSJ V SDEJU/^*^?^WMriS *tf$v \&K YA 03004 UNIVERSITY OF X CALIFORNIA LIBRARY