Abstract
Lecture delivered in Berlin on January 3, 1846.
Full Text
On the Life of Descartes and His Method of Directing the Mind Properly and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
(A lecture by C. G. Jacobi, delivered in Berlin on Jan. 3, 1846.)
Translation by A. N. Krylov and A. B. Feringer.
Events of world importance now compel the entire order of the life and activity of a many-millioned people over an enormous territory to be reorganized on new principles. Such work in every domain demands thoughtful, cautious, and comprehensive discussion, for it is characteristic of the human mind to take the plausible for the true and, contenting itself with imaginary arguments, to arrive, instead of correct conclusions, at false ones.
That is why it seems appropriate to recall the life of a thinker who called for special caution in judgments and who even undertook to set forth a method for the proper direction of the mind. The life of this thinker and the essence of his teaching were presented with remarkable mastery and brevity by one of the greatest mathematicians of the last century, C. G. Jacobi, in a public lecture delivered in Berlin on January 3, 1846.
This lecture was printed in the seventh volume of the complete collected works of Jacobi; these works rarely fall into the hands of readers other than specialist mathematicians. Therefore the publication of a translation of this lecture in such a journal as Uspekhi Fiziki seemed to us timely and appropriate.
A. K.
In history there is a time of midnight darkness—around the year 1000 after the Nativity of Christ. By that time mankind had lost the very memory of the arts and sciences. The last ray of the dawn of the bright pagan world had gone out, and nothing yet foretold the daybreak. All that in the world still remained of enlightenment was to be found among the Saracens; and an inquisitive monk, who later became pope, had previously to go and study in their universities, and for this he was then regarded in the countries of the West as a miracle.
Finally, after Christianity had for a sufficiently long time prayed to the bones of martyrs, it set out for the tomb of the Savior Himself; and there it learned for the second time that the tomb was empty and that Christ was
resurrected. Then it too was resurrected and returned to active and vigorous life. Enterprise renewed trade and crafts; cities flourished; free citizenship arose. Cimabue rediscovered the art of painting that had almost perished; Dante—poetry. Strong and great men in spirit, such as Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, dared to introduce Aristotle’s logic into the Catholic creed,—and in this way scholastic philosophy arose. But if the Church did take science under its protection, it demanded that in the doctrines of science there be observed the same unconditional reverence before authority as in the teachings of the Church. Scholasticism not only failed to liberate the human mind, but for many long centuries shackled it and removed from it even the very thought of the possibility of free scientific investigation. At last, here too came the dawn,—mankind dared to make use of its right to obtain knowledge of the nature of things by its own reason.
In history, the advent of this period is called the epoch of rebirth. At the threshold of this epoch there rises above all René Descartes, who took the heroic decision to begin, in all questions of knowledge, from the beginning, and to subject anew to investigation everything hitherto founded on authority. Permit me to devote the present talk to this extraordinary man and to the history of his heroic decision, which became a world event.
Born in 1596 into a family of the old nobility of Touraine, educated in the Jesuit school at La Flèche, in the eighteenth year of his life he comes to the conclusion that, in the sciences which he had studied thoroughly and with ardent zeal in order to obtain a reliable and clear judgment in all the affairs of life, he had been deceived, and he resolves to reject them. For a short time he gives himself up in Paris, with other young noblemen, to the amusements accessible to his age and position, chiefly—to gaming. Still less satisfied by this, he hides from his friends and, settling in a secluded house in the Saint-Germain suburb, in the deepest solitude devotes two years to mathematical reflections. Finally, recognized, seeing the impossibility of avoiding the whirlpool of the life of Parisian society, he decides to study the world on a broader stage. A soldier’s sash serves him as a passport into that time filled with military alarms. First he goes to Holland, to Breda, to study military affairs under Prince Maurice; but since the latter, just at that time, concluded a two-year truce with Spinola, he goes to Frankfurt to be present at the magnificent ceremony of the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand II; then he enters as a volunteer the troops being recruited by the Bavarian duke
against Bohemia. He begins the campaign in winter quarters in a small town situated on the Danube in the Duchy of Neuburg. Here, in the deepest solitude, the twenty-two-year-old youth comes to the conclusion that, in order to know the truth, he must free himself from all notions received from without; must cast aside all knowledge handed down by authorities; must destroy his entire intellectual and moral world and create for himself a new, most beautiful one, by means of the power of reason implanted in the sons of the earth. This is not an undertaking of audacious self-conceit; he painfully feels this self-renunciation and, in fervent prayer, calls upon the Most Holy Virgin Mary to help him in his difficult beginning, giving a vow to make a pilgrimage to Loreto. It goes without saying that, when posing questions concerning everything accessible to the mind, he believed that the truths and traditions of religion, as incomprehensible to the mind, must be accepted without proof.
In the spring of 1620 the Duke of Bavaria advanced his troops into Swabia; here, in Ulm, Descartes took the opportunity to visit the old, famous teacher of mathematics, Johann Faulhaber, who, of course, was greatly astonished to find in a young soldier such mathematical knowledge that he jokingly solved his most difficult problems. In September Descartes went with the French envoy to Vienna; here, having learned that his commander, the Duke of Bavaria, was leading troops into Bohemia, he returns to the army, takes part in the famous battle at Prague, and enters the city with the victors. Thus, his first military affair was directed against the father of that princess who later became his first and most diligent pupil in philosophy and mathematics. He spent the winter encampment in southern Bohemia, diligently occupied in carrying out the great plan he had conceived. In the spring of 1621 he takes part in the campaign of the Austrian general Bucquoy into Hungary against the famous prince of Transylvania, Bethlen Gábor, and is present at the successful siege of Pressburg and Tyrnau; but the unfortunate catastrophe at Neuhäusel, where Bucquoy perished, turns him away from the war. On the third day after the lifting of the siege, he, together with many other Frenchmen and Walloons who had been with the army, returns to Vienna; and since war with the Huguenots had resumed in France, while the plague was raging in Paris, he decided to set off for the peaceful north of Europe. He returns to Moravia, from there travels to Silesia, crosses all of Poland, which at that time extended very far, reaches the Baltic Sea, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Holstein, from there by sea to East Frisia; at the crossing from Emden to West Frisia he is in danger of being killed by the sailors, since he had only one servant with him; returning
travels to Holland, where he remains for some time, and, finally, in March 1622 arrives in Rennes to see his father. It is probable that during this journey he also visited Königsberg and Berlin. With his family he spends a year in uncertainty as to the way of life that would correspond to his calling and to his scholarly plans. He goes again to Paris, where, after an almost three-year plague, people are beginning to breathe cleaner air; here he is taken for a Rosicrucian, although during all the time of his wanderings he had never once succeeded in finding a trace of this invisible society, about which at that time much was being printed. He became known as one of the 36 envoys, supposedly dispatched throughout Europe by their mysterious leader, with whom communication was possible only by will and thoughts, along invisible paths. Having sold the greater part of the estates he had inherited on his mother’s side in Poitou, in order with the proceeds to buy himself a suitable post, he resolves, before binding himself, to visit Italy.
Through Basel, Zurich, Graubünden, and Tyrol he goes to Venice, is present at the betrothal of the doge with the sea, fulfills the vow made at Neuburg to visit Loreto, and from there sets off for Piedmont, in order, in accordance with the promise given to his father, to obtain a post as intendant with the French army, which was setting out under the command of the master constable Lesdiguières on a campaign against Genoa and the Spaniards. After this attempt failed, he makes a pilgrimage to Rome, whither the Catholic world was drawn by the celebrations of the 25-year jubilee; here he is afforded a broad opportunity to become acquainted with the customs of the various nationalities that had gathered there, and he abandons his original intention of visiting Sicily and Spain. He returns through Florence, without, however, seeing Galileo, who along with him may be regarded as a restorer of the sciences. He is then present at the capture of Gavi by the French and at the famous exploits of the Duke of Savoy, after which, through Turin and Lyon, he returns to his native land; here Châtellerault offers him the post of lieutenant general, but Descartes can no longer tear himself away from the habit of devoting his life wholly to his investigations. He spends three years in Paris, as far as possible in seclusion, leading as simple a way of life as was possible without affectation. All the same, we must imagine our philosopher in the silk clothing then in fashion, with scarf and sword, in a hat with a feather, which for him, as a nobleman, was unavoidable.
He devotes his time now to the most abstract mathematical inquiries, now to physical experiments, while acquiring great skill in grinding glass, and now investigates the most pro-
deep questions of mechanics, in which there is revealed a principle encompassing all possible velocities. It is remarkable, however, how little he can communicate about these works: he is tossed from them to what he considers the highest pursuit—to the study of man; but it turns out that the majority know man even less than geometry, and therefore he shuts himself up more and more within himself. His fame makes the desired solitude impossible: whole crowds of writers and scholars seeking acquaintance or conversation send him from house to academy. In vain does he try to hide in remote quarters of Paris; the servant who has noticed him gives him away. In vexation, in August 1628 he leaves Paris in order to take part as a volunteer in the siege of La Rochelle, which was being conducted by the king in person; there he examines the famous dike of Cardinal Richelieu; after the king’s victorious entry into La Rochelle, he returns to Paris.
Amid his extensive activity, not interrupted even by the bustle of camp halts, he had gathered much material, but had still published nothing.
It must be said, to the honor of the Catholic clergy of that time, that it greatly promoted science and loved it; in this it formed a praiseworthy contrast to the Protestant fanatics, by whose will the sciences in Germany had been stifled, and perhaps the world is indebted to two cardinals—Bérulle and the papal nuncio Bagni—for the use of those fruits which Descartes allowed to ripen slowly. At an evening gathering at the papal nuncio’s, a certain de Chandoux1 expounded the beginning of a new philosophy and sought general approval by his witty and eloquent exposition. Descartes remained silent; he was insistently asked to express his opinion; having praised the boldness of the speaker, who had resolved to cast off the paths of scholasticism, he drew attention to the power with which the plausible takes the place of the true. If one is content, as a distinguished gathering may be, with the plausible, then it is easy to persuade it, by imaginary arguments, that the false is true, and conversely to make it acknowledge the true as false. In confirmation, he proposed that the gathering state an obviously true proposition: with twelve arguments, one more admissible than another, he proved to the gathering that this proposition was false. Then he proposed that they state an obviously false proposition, and with twelve other arguments he led his listeners to acknowledge this proposition as true. To the question whether there is any means of protecting oneself
from imaginary grounds, he points to his method, taken from the field of mathematics. In many private conversations he arouses Cardinal Bérulle’s admiration for this method and for its various applications, which likewise have as their aim the improvement of the material well-being of mankind; for even then he had in view, through the improvement of mechanics, the raising of the productivity of human labor—something which, now become a reality, has transformed the world.
The pious cardinal makes use of the influence of his spiritual rank and points out to Descartes his responsibility before God for depriving mankind if he conceals the fruits of his labors, invoking upon him, otherwise, divine assistance. Descartes then resolves to complete his work, to apply to this end his powers as well as possible, to publish it, and to withdraw, in order to devote himself wholly to this great task. He moves to Holland, whose cool climate pleases him. Here he spends twenty years; never stopping anywhere for long, he wanders, like Israel in the wilderness, settling now here, now there: in villages, at country houses, in the suburbs of large cities, always for a short time. Hiding from everyone, he nonetheless remains there in lively communication with the best minds of his age; his intermediary was the learned Father Mersenne, who lived in Paris, his old friend, likewise a pupil of the school of La Flèche, to whom alone his whereabouts were always known. The reception room of the monastery of the lesser brethren on the Place Royale served as the center of learned communications; here Mersenne reported the answers of the thinker whom they questioned through him, and received new questions or new doubts.
Upon arriving in Holland, Descartes devotes himself with renewed zeal to dioptric, chemical, and physical experiments, alternating with anatomical and medical investigations, astronomical observations, and metaphysical speculations. The appearance of false suns gave him occasion to investigate the whole field of atmospheric phenomena, especially the rainbow. During a short journey to England he observed near London the declination of the magnetic needle. Descartes wished to place everything in a single book, which he entitled The World; in it he strove to prove and explain the necessity of all that had been created. In order to shield himself from theological objections, he resorted to this device: he completely abstracted himself from the true world and investigated what the world would have to be like if God compelled the laws of nature to act upon chaotically entangled matter. First he gives a description of this matter and ascribes to it the simplest properties; then he expounds the laws of nature and proves their necessity
so that if God had created many worlds, they would all be governed by the very same laws. He showed how this desert chaos is transformed into a heaven with a sun and stars, planets and comets; he showed the necessity and nature of the light of the sun and the stars, how light in a single instant runs through immeasurable spaces and how it must be reflected by the planets. He described the substance, mutual arrangement, motion, and other properties of the heavenly bodies, so that one could acknowledge that in this world there is nothing that ought not to be such as it is. After this he descends to the earth, explains how its parts must strive toward the center, how, from the position of the earth relative to the sun and moon, the tides arise, the great ocean current in the tropics from east to west, the trade winds, how by the laws of nature mountains, seas, springs, and rivers are formed, how metals accumulate in mountain veins, how all complex bodies are formed, how plants grow. After this he passes to animals and to man, but here he realizes that, for a full penetration into the necessity of this organism, he lacks chemical and anatomical knowledge. Yet from all these forms of matter a thinking spirit cannot arise—for this a new divine creation is necessary, and he wishes to conclude his work with an exposition of the essence of spirit.
We are struck by the boldness of this undertaking. The spirit that has broken out of the dungeon of scholasticism and has newly found itself eagerly drinks in the divine breath of free inquiry, rejoicing as it strives on winged flight to traverse the immeasurable path of knowledge and, seeing in the distance the glimmering ultimate goal of all knowledge, it seems to it that it is able to reach it in easy flight.
On February 17, 1600, in Rome, in the Campo de’ Fiori, before the Theater of Pompey, Giordano Bruno was burned alive; those who condemned him trembled more than he himself. On February 19, 1619, in Toulouse, Vanini was strangled, after his tongue had been torn out with pincers; his body was then turned to ashes. Campanella was dragged through fifty underground dungeons and subjected seven times to the most cruel tortures, one of which lasted forty hours.
Apparently, however, nothing made such an impression on Descartes as the news he received in 1633, just during the final revision of The World before sending it to Father Mersenne, that the celebrated Galileo, beloved and sincerely respected by the Tuscan duke, had been seized by the Inquisition and, on his knees, was to renounce, as a heresy, the teaching that the earth moves around the motionlessly standing sun. In Descartes’ soul there occurred a painful
a division which he was never again able to overcome. He was just as convinced of the truth of Copernicus’s teaching as he was of his own existence; he was just as convinced of the infallibility of the pope. In anguish he resolves not to allow his work to proceed. The labors of two centuries had established, in unshakable inferences, what had then hovered before the creative gaze in indistinctly outlined images; free investigation had led to such knowledge as at that time had not even been dreamed of. In happier days, when the life of a genius is no longer cut short by a fiery censorship, we have the opportunity to welcome the “Cosmos” of a noble mind and a great investigator1, whom we proudly call our own—the “Cosmos” that has so richly repaid us for that former one which perished.
Finally, his friends succeeded in shaking Descartes’s adopted decision to print nothing from his writings during his lifetime, and in 1637 there appeared in Leiden his first major work, for which he received from France—then under the administration of the great cardinal, the founder of the Paris Academy of Sciences—an honorable privilege to print not only this book but also all his subsequent works. This fact forms a gratifying contrast to the persecutions to which Descartes had to submit at the hands of the Protestant theologians of the recently founded University of Utrecht. With furious bitterness they raised against his teachings the charge that they were atheistic and dangerous to the state, and he found protection only in the enlightened wisdom of Prince Maurice of Orange. In a similar way, the Protestant theologians of the University of Tübingen, several years before this, had banished our great Kepler, denied him permission to print his astronomical writings, so that the Jesuits of Innsbruck had to print them at their own expense. Kepler—who may be considered a martyr for the Protestant faith that he fearlessly professed at the imperial court—was excommunicated because, while remaining faithful to the Augsburg Confession, he would not swear to the Concordia and curse the Calvinists; he was forbidden to read the Bible, as something unbecoming to a layman, and his mother was almost burned as a witch, while he managed to save her only by a bold defense before the court and thanks to his position as imperial mathematician.
Descartes’s book contains four separate treatises: the essay “On the Method of Rightly Directing One’s Reason for the Search for Truth in
sciences,” Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry. In the last three works he wanted to give examples of the application of his method to a purely mathematical subject, to a purely physical one, and to a mixed one. His Geometry transformed the mathematical sciences, freeing geometry from the domination of particulars and figures and making it the subject of a general calculus. In his Dioptrics we find the beginning of that conception of light to which physicists have now returned, and by which alone they are able to explain the astonishing laws of simple and double refraction and the formation of colors. I mean the theory of wave-like motion, according to which it is not matter, separated from a luminous body, that is directed toward our eye, but vibrations of the luminiferous ether that reach it.
But I wish to dwell in more detail only on Descartes’s Method, as the first of the works mentioned is briefly called; in it he gives a picture of his creative work. By its simple and noble exposition, this work, together with the still unsurpassed Letters, constitutes a monument of French literature.
“Good sense”—thus he begins his Method—“is of all things in this world the most evenly distributed; for even those who, in all else, are by no means satisfied, find that the share allotted to them is sufficient.” By this he does not mean to say that they are mistaken, but that this shows that reason is at the outset implanted fully in everyone, and that the difference of opinions arises only from the difference in the course we give to our thoughts and from the difference of the objects we consider. Descartes believes that from his youth he himself had been on the path which led him to a reliable way of raising himself, in his knowledge, to the highest degree that was generally attainable for him, given the properties of his spiritual powers and the brevity of human life. But in order to learn from public opinion whether he is not mistaken, he wishes openly to present these paths of his spirit and his whole life as in a picture. His work is not to contain general rules that everyone might follow, but it must be regarded as a history or a fable, from which each may draw what seems suitable to him.
“From my very childhood,” he continues, “I was brought up in the sciences, and since I was told that through them one could obtain a sure and clear view of all things useful in life, I nourished an irresistible passion for their study. However, upon completing the usual course of the sciences, I felt myself beset by so many delusions and doubts that I seemed to myself still more ignorant than before. Meanwhile, I had studied in one of the first schools of Europe, where there were supposed to be such learned…
as anywhere in the world; I learned everything that was taught there; moreover, I studied in books all that I could gain access to concerning the most difficult and hidden matters; I was counted among the best pupils, although some of them were already being destined to become our teachers; finally, it seemed to me that our age was as rich in good minds as any other,—and therefore I considered it possible to judge others by myself and to acknowledge that no branch of knowledge had yielded what it promised.
Nevertheless, I did not cease to value that schooling: languages, as I saw, help in the knowledge of the ancients; graceful myths refresh the spirit; history, read with caution, forms judgment, and the deeds described in it elevate the soul; the reading of all good books seemed to me like conversation with the outstanding minds of the past, and moreover a refined conversation in which they reveal their best thoughts; I did not deny the power of eloquence, the beauty of poetry, the ingenuity of mathematical discoveries, which satisfy the thirst for investigation, perfect the crafts, and ease human labor; I knew that in morals are contained useful rules of virtue, that theology points the way to paradise, that philosophy teaches one to speak about all subjects in an acceptable manner and to win the admiration of the half-learned, that medicine and jurisprudence bring honor and wealth to those versed in them, and finally, that it is useful to know all the sciences, even the most superstitious, such as astrology and alchemy, so as not to be deceived by any one of them.
It seemed to me that I had spent enough time on languages and on old books. Communion with past centuries is like traveling: he who travels too much becomes, in the end, a stranger in his own land, and he who investigates too zealously the affairs of the past often does not know the present. Eloquence and poetry I considered rather a divine gift than a subject of study. Mathematics attracted me most of all by the firmness and obviousness of its fundamental propositions, but I wondered that on such a solid foundation no more magnificent edifice had been raised, comparing for this purpose the writings of the ancients on morality with proud castles built on sand. They place virtue very high and present it as the most beautiful thing in this world, but they do not sufficiently clarify its essence, and often that to which they give so lofty a name is only insensibility, or pride, or despair, or murder. As for theology, I wish, no less than anyone else, to enter paradise; but since the paths thither are equally accessible to the most learned and the most ignorant, and the truths of revelation, as I was told, are above our reason, I did not dare to include theology within the circle of my studies.
investigations. As for philosophy, I do not hope to attain the goal better than those remarkable minds which over the course of so many centuries have achieved nothing of the kind about which there would be no dispute and about which, consequently, doubt would not reign. Even more: seeing the diversity of philosophers’ opinions, whereas truth is only one, I began to doubt everything that is merely probable. Jurisprudence and medicine, which borrow their principles from philosophy, can scarcely erect anything solid upon so unstable a foundation; while cares about honors or profit could not draw me under their banners, since my position, thank God, does not compel me to make a livelihood from science, and as for fame, though I do not disdain it like a cynic, neither have I sought to acquire it undeservedly.
Therefore, as soon as I passed beyond school age, I completely ceased the study of the sciences and resolved to learn only from the great book of the world; and for this reason I used the remainder of my youth to travel, to visit courts and armies, to frequent people of every rank and character, to accumulate experience, and to test myself amid the vicissitudes of life. But I found that the habits and customs of people are as opposed to one another as the teachings in the schools; and I again came to the conclusion that nothing should be accepted as just and good merely because custom and example speak for it. In this way I gradually freed myself from many errors and prejudices.
Finally, after several years of studying the world, I once resolved to study myself as well, in order to compel my own reason to show me the path that I ought to follow. I think that I succeeded in this better than would have been the case had I not left school and home. I made this decision while in Germany, where I had been drawn by the wars that continue there even now, after my return to the army from the emperor’s coronation, during winter quarters, when neither amusements, nor cares, nor passions distracted me from my thoughts. Above all, I stopped at the thought that a work assembled from several parts and executed by many craftsmen rarely possesses such perfection as one that has come from the hands of a single master.
Our education, too, seemed to me such an assemblage; for in youth, on the one hand, we are guided by our passions, and on the other by our teachers; these two forms of guidance are often in contradiction with one another, and often neither reaches the goal. It then seemed to me that our conclusions would be much more correct and reliable if we had been given the full use of our reason from birth itself, and if we had been left under its guidance alone. It therefore seemed to me that the best thing I could do,
or unattainable for us, for example, that we do not possess China or Mexico. In such a case our desire to be healthy, when we are ill; to be free, when we are in captivity, would become no stronger than the desire to have a diamond body, or wings like birds. However, he realizes that persistent exercise and repeatedly renewed reflection are required in order to become accustomed to viewing everything from this point of view. He believes that this was the secret of the ancient philosophers, who knew how to escape the dominion of fate and, despite suffering and poverty, could be richer, freer, and more powerful than other men, and even vied with their gods in happiness.
In concluding this morality, he surveys the various human occupations and finds that he can do nothing better than remain in his own and devote his life to the development of his reason and the investigation of truth, for which he already had his own method, for nothing could compare with that great joy which he experienced from the daily increase of his knowledge, obtained thanks to his method. Since our will by nature strives toward, or turns away from, what reason recognizes as good or bad, he was convinced that by correct views and concepts one acquires all blessings and virtues; and this conviction and this hope fill him with the highest satisfaction and bliss.
Having established his principles as unshakable rules of faith, he thinks that he may free himself from all the rest of his opinions; but, in order to erect the new building itself, he decides to wait for a more mature age, and in the meantime to engage in exercise in the only science that possesses evident foundations and proofs—in mathematics; thereby to accustom his mind to deal with truths and not to be satisfied with probable arguments; by applying mathematics to physics, and by experiments and observations, to acquire a richer knowledge of nature; by constant application to perfect himself more and more in his method and to distance himself more and more from old prejudices and opinions. Having reached maturity and, as we have seen, compelled by a benevolent cardinal to expound his system and communicate his discoveries as a sacred duty, he finally passes on to the foundation of his philosophy. But the whole former world of representations had been destroyed by him: for him everything wavers, he has no ground beneath his feet; and where, in this sea of the doubtful, is he to take full certainty as the starting point, as the cornerstone of his building? Is it surprising, after this, that for him, whose entire being has wholly turned into reflection, reflection alone is unshakably certain, more—
than his own existence—or, rather, this very existence becomes certain for him because he thinks. Therefore he writes and lays down, as the fundamental principle of his philosophy, the proposition:
I think, therefore I exist; je pense, donc je suis; cogito, ergo sum.
These words became the starting point of the new philosophy; that is, the watchword with which the new science moves forward. Man knows wherein his essence lies; the fog of scholasticism has been torn apart; the sun of thought has risen over the renewed world, and in its light we still walk today. This is not a wild, unconscious onslaught set in opposition to state and religion; it is the calm confidence of a mind that has come to know itself, and that wishes to solve the task of humanity within them and together with them. Wise moderation combined with enthusiastic activity—this is what everywhere distinguishes Descartes; and even Rome accepted his writings with the quite mild note in the Index: “until they shall be corrected” (donec corrigantur 22 Nov. 1663).
It is not my intention to present to you the system of Descartes’ teaching as he set it forth later in the Method and in the Principles that followed it. I shall say only a few words about two princesses with whom Descartes was in close contact and who accompanied him to the end of his days.
In the settlement called The Hague, which could be compared with the most beautiful European cities, one could at that time see three remarkable courtly camps.
Two thousand armorial nobles, in buffalo-hide doublets, high boots, and orange scarves, with swords, surrounded the Prince of Orange. In black velvet, with broad lace collars and square beards, deputies of the States General and burgomasters appeared as representatives of the civic aristocracy. The widowed Queen of Bohemia, with her five daughters, formed a third courtly circle, in which ladies and society people gathered daily, paying due tribute to the beauty and intellect of the princesses. Two miles away, in the little village of Endegeest, situated near Leiden, toward the sea, Descartes lived from Easter of 1641, having with the years become more accessible. The eldest of the princesses, Elisabeth, was a marvel of learning. Having become sufficiently acquainted with elegant literature and having acquired solid knowledge of many languages (six were studied by all the sisters under their mother’s guidance), she turned to more serious subjects—mathematics and physics. But everything she studied seemed petty and insignificant to her after Descartes’ works fell into her hands. Narratives
The friendship with the burgrave Don aroused in her the desire to become acquainted with him personally. She invited him to her home and became his zealous pupil. He could communicate to her his most cherished thoughts, his most lofty metaphysical reflections, his most abstract geometrical investigations, and he states in his Principles, dedicated to her, that of all his pupils she alone fully understood his writings1. Out of love for Descartes’s philosophy she rejected the hand of King Władysław IV of Poland. When her younger brother, Philip, in broad daylight at the hay market in The Hague, killed out of jealousy a certain Monsieur d’Épinay, her mother, suspecting her of complicity, sent her away from The Hague, and oral instruction was replaced by a lengthy correspondence with Descartes, of which, unfortunately, we do not possess the princess’s letters. Until the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia she lived in Crossen and Berlin with her Brandenburg relatives, then in Heidelberg with her brother Charles Louis, who, as a consequence of the peace, had again entered into possession of the Palatinate. But when his wife, who was friendly with her, parted from her husband and fled, under the pretext of a hunt on relay horses, to Kassel to her brother the landgrave, Elizabeth also moved to Kassel. Finally, already at a more advanced age, although she herself was a Calvinist, she accepted the Lutheran abbey of Herford in the county of Ravensberg, which, with an income of 20,000 thalers, gave her for the first time in her life the possibility of an independent, carefree existence. From this abbey she made a philosophical academy, reputed until her very death to be one of the most famous Cartesian academies, and she granted admission to anyone—whether Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, Socinian, or deist—so long as he occupied himself with philosophy. She died in 1680, in the 61st year of her life.
Another remarkable phenomenon of that time was the young Swedish queen Christina. At that time she was a nineteen-year-old girl who studied Tacitus daily, was learning Greek, and seriously occupied herself with the sciences; at the same time she was adept at all bodily exercises: not one of her courtiers could shoot a running hare as she could; she rode masterfully and once, during a hunting festival, spent 10 hours on horseback; she was hardened against cold and heat, never wore a cap or veil, and only a simple hat with a feather protected her from bad weather; her toilet was completed in a quarter of an hour—a comb with a ribbon made up her entire head-dress; her table was plain and without condiments; she devoted only five hours to sleep.
At the same time Christina bore with dignity one of the mightiest crowns; her lack of experience was made up for by her acute mind, with which she penetrated tangled affairs and made decisions. Her thoughtful mind gained such mastery over the council of state that the councillors who sat with her in council often later themselves marveled at the pliancy they had shown her. Foreign envoys conducted business not with ministers, as before, but directly with the queen. As soon as Christina became acquainted with the writings of Descartes, she was seized by the desire to hear lessons in his philosophy from him personally. When Descartes, despite her insistent invitation, did not venture to come, in the spring of 1649 she sent her admiral Flemming with a ship to Holland to be at his disposal; then he no longer resisted and in October 1649 arrived in Stockholm.
Despite the winter season, the queen took lessons from him daily at five o’clock in the morning in her study; she was already intending to grant him hereditary possession in her domains of Pomerania or Bremen, in order to attach him still more closely to herself, when, as a result of the climate’s unaccustomed severity, at the beginning of February he died after a brief illness.
Seventeen years after his death, after Christina had long since laid aside the crown, his remains were transported to Paris and buried in the church of Sainte-Geneviève, the present Panthéon. It is often far more convenient to possess such remains than such living men.