DESCARTES, RENE (1596-165o), French philosopher and man of science. The name is sometimes given as Des Cartes, and sometimes in the Latinized form, Renatus Cartesius (whence the term Cartesian).
Descartes was born at La Haye, in Touraine, on March 31, 1596. His grandfather, Pierre Descartes, was a doctor in Chatel leraut, in Poitou, who married the daughter of a medical colleague there, named Ferrand, who eventually became rector of the Uni versity of Poitiers. Pierre's son, Joachim, was councillor of the parliament of Rennes, and so a member of the lesser nobility. He married Jeanne Brochard, the daughter of a high law-officer of Poitiers. Rene was their third child. The house in which he was born at La Haye was his mother's property which she had in herited from her mother. She died in May 1597, when Rene was little more than a year old. About ten years later Joachim Des cartes moved to Brittany, where he married a second time. Vari ous members of the Descartes and Brochard families were men of learning, so that the scientific attainments of Rene Descartes were not really as exceptional as used to be supposed when it was thought that his ancestry was essentially military. The story of his military ancestry must be dismissed as a legend based on a confusion between his medical grandfather and an army officer of the same name.
Physically Rene Descartes was never robust. But already at an early age he displayed remarkable mental vigour, so that his father was wont to refer to him as his "little philosopher." In 1604, at the age of eight, he was sent to the Jesuit school at La Fleche, in Anjou. The school had only recently been founded and endowed by Henry IV. in the hope of ingratiating himself with the Jesuits, one of whom had tried to assassinate him in 1594. The rector of the school, during the latter part of Descartes' stay there, was Father Charlet, a kinsman of his, who naturally took a special in terest in him. The teacher to whose special care he was entrusted was Father Dinet, who subsequently became confessor to Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. When Henry IV. was assassinated in 1610 Descartes was one of the pupils selected to receive the heart of the dead monarch for burial in the church of La Fleche.
The first five years of Descartes' school life-were devoted to the then usual school subjects, especially to the classical languages. The last three years were devoted to the study of logic and ethics, mathematics and physics and metaphysics respectively. His health called for some special indulgence, and he was allowed to stay in bed as long as he liked. Then, as afterwards, a considerable part of his work appears to have been done in bed. But he had no diffi culties with his studies. He mastered them with ease, distin guishing himself especially in mathematics. Many years afterwards he criticized rather severely the studies he had pursued at school.
But it is difficult to say to what extent, if any, those criticisms express his actual feelings while he was still at school. They were probably after-thoughts. In any case, they were not especially directed against his school, but rather (like Bacon's criticisms in the Advancement of Learning) against the general state of con temporary studies. Towards his school he always retained a f eel ing of warm attachment. Later, during his controversies with Bourdin and Voetius, he turned to his former school teacher, Father Dinet, for advice. And throughout his life Descartes showed a special regard for Jesuits. It seems to have been his greatest ambition in after years to get his own philosophy intro duced at La Fleche and in other Jesuit colleges. But no details are available about his school life and friends. In later life he had among his intimate friends some former pupils of La Fleche, notably Marin Mersenne, who was about seven years his senior. But there is no evidence of their acquaintance prior to 1622.
Descartes left school in 1612, and appears to have studied from 1613-16 at the university of Poitiers, where he graduated in law in Nov. 1616. His older brother was already a lawyer, but he him self was not attracted by the legal profession, and seems to have been contemplating a military career. So he devoted himself to riding and fencing, and actually wrote an essay on the art of fencing. But next to nothing is known of his doings during 1613 ' 7. In 1618 he left France apparently in search of military experi ence in Holland. He served as a gentleman volunteer in the army of the stadtholder, Prince Maurice of Nassau, at Breda. Of any real soldiering there is no evidence. His stay at Breda was only remarkable for his chance meeting with a brother mathematician, Isaac Beeckman, rector of the college at Dort. Mathematics was useful for military engineering, so there were a number of mathe maticians in the stadtholder's entourage at Breda. In the absence of more urgent business some of them passed the time in pro pounding problems which they posted on the city walls with a challenge to others to solve them. One day Descartes was trying to get at the gist of such a challenge, which was written in Dutch. He turned to a bystander with the request to translate it for him into French or Latin. It happened to be Beeckman, who did as requested, and jestingly asked the French cadet to solve the prob lem. Descartes brought him the solution in a couple of days, and the chance acquaintances became friendly. Descartes gave Beeckman a manuscript Essay on Algebra, also a Compendium of Music (dated Breda, Dec. 31, 1618) which he dedicated to Beeck man. Some of the scant information about Descartes relating to this period consists of entries in the diary of Beeckman, which has fortunately been discovered in recent years.
In April 1619 Descartes left Holland. He had planned an ex tensive journey from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, and thence via Poland, Hungary and Bohemia to Bavaria. This very roundabout route to Bavaria seemed necessary because of the insecurity of the direct route from Holland to Bavaria owing to military condi tions in the intervening area. But there is no evidence that Des cartes carried out his plan. What is known is that he was in Frankfurt a.M. that summer, and there witnessed the festivities in connection with the coronation of the emperor Ferdinand. The following autumn and winter he seems to have passed in a village near Ulm on the Danube. Ostensibly he was taking part in the military campaigns which marked the opening of the Thirty Years' War. In reality he seems to have been occupied with problems of mathematics. Ulm was noted for its mathematicians, including Faulhaber (a reputed Rosicrucian) whom Descartes most prob ably met there. His stay near Ulm was chiefly remarkable for a certain illumination and certain dreams which he experienced there. He appears to have spent much of his time in solitary brooding over the problem of human knowledge. Moods of doubt and dark ness assailed him, and he prayed for light. Of all his studies up to that point only one had really satisfied him, namely, mathe matics. And he attributed the certainty of mathematics to the character of its method. On Nov. 10, 1619, the thought appears to have flashed upon him suddenly that the mathematical method, or, more precisely, the method of analytical geometry, might be extended to other studies. The thought dominated his mind like a divine revelation. Three dreams followed. In the first he ap peared to be lame, and forced by a tempest to seek shelter in a church. In the second dream he heard the sound of thunder, and saw sparks of fire round about him. In the third he opened at random the poem of Ausonius, and his eyes fell on the words Quid vitae sectabor iter? (What way of life shall I follow?) The whole experience made such a deep impression on him that he vowed a pilgrimage to our Lady of Loretto. Whatever psycho analytic interpretation one may put on the whole episode, there is no doubt of its profound effect on Descartes. He saw light. And it was probably at this period of his life that he arrived at his fundamental ideas relating to algebra, geometry and methodology. The years 162o-28 were no doubt devoted mainly to the elabora tion and application of these ideas.
In 162o Descartes visited Austria and Bohemia. He is reported to have served as a volunteer in the army of the duke of Bavaria against the protestant princes, and to have taken part in various battles, including that of the White Mountain, near Prague, which ended in the defeat of the Protestant princes and the downfall of Frederick V., father of the Princess Elizabeth of whom more will be said presently. But there is no reliable evidence for these dubious attempts to surround Descartes' head with a halo of mili tary glory. Most probably he never smelled gunpowder. In April 1622 he was in France again, and stayed partly at Rennes and partly in Paris, until March 1623. He then went to Italy on cer tain family business. On May 16 (Ascension Day), 1624, he was in Venice and witnessed the symbolic ceremony of "the wedding of the sea" (the Adriatic). From Venice he went on his pilgrim age to our Lady of Loretto. Christmas 1624 saw him in Rome, where, in 1625, he witnessed the celebration of the Roman Catholic "Jubilee" (the Papal remission of the sins of the pilgrims). On his return he passed through Florence, but did not trouble to visit Galileo there. Indeed, in a subsequent letter, Descartes declared with emphasis that he had never learned anything from the writ ings of Galileo. The Loretto pilgrim could hardly have been ex pected to show sympathy for a semi-heretic like Galileo.
It appears that about this time Descartes was seriously think ing of settling in Italy, but the heat was too much for him. So he returned to France, passing the next three years partly in the country and partly in Paris. His contact with learned men in Paris stimulated his philosophic and scientific ambitions. Cardinal Berulle, Mersenne and Mydorge were particularly encouraging to him. For a time he carried on research in optics with the help of Ferrier, a skilled maker of lenses. But the distractions of Paris were not conducive to fruitful work. Descartes consequently de cided to move to some quiet place in Holland where he might devote his undivided attention to the problems of philosophy and science. He had seen enough of the bustle of the great world, and he longed for some quiet retreat where he might collect his thoughts and pursue his researches undisturbed by the claims of friends and acquaintances, or by other distractions. He had sold his estate and invested the proceeds to yield a comfortable in come. His friends, Picot and Mersenne, undertook to look after his interests in France. So he felt free to settle where he liked.
In the autumn of 1628 Descartes went to Holland. He was in Dordrecht on Oct. 8. Nearly all the remaining years of his life were spent in Holland. He changed his place of residence many times for various reasons. But we know in what places he lived, and when, more or less accurately. It appears that in his choice of a locality he always considered the opportunities they afforded of practising catholicism. His first home in Holland was at Franeker (near Groningen), where he stayed from 1628-3o, and it was here that he wrote his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in 1628 or 1629, though it was not published till 1701. It may be recalled that his earliest known compositions, namely, the Essay on Algebra and the Compendium of Music, were written in Breda in 1618. In fact nearly all the works of Descartes were written in Holland. From 163o-32, and again from 1633-34, he lived in Amsterdam. Amsterdam was the London of that time in many ways. Another Frenchman who lived there in the 17th century described Amsterdam as "the most beautiful city of Europe." And Descartes evidently enjoyed his life there. In one of his letters to Balzac, dated Amsterdam, May 15, 1631, Descartes expressed his deep satisfaction with his life there, and some of his reasons for it.
"In this great city where I now am," he wrote, "everybody but myself is in business and so engrossed with his profits that I could live here all my life without being noticed by anyone. I take my walk every day amid the Babel of a great thoroughfare with as much freedom and repose as you could find in your garden walks; and I observe the people whom I see just as I should the trees that you find in your forests or the animals that graze there; even the noise of their bustle does not disturb my reveries more than would the murmuring of a stream. When I consider their activities I derive the same pleasure which you have in watching the peasants till your fields, for I see that all their toil helps to adorn the place of my abode, and supplies all my wants. If there be pleasure in seeing the fruit grow in your orchard . . . think you there is not as much in seeing the vessels arrive which bring an abundance of 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 com forts of life and all the curiosities that can be desired are so easy to find as here? What other country where you can enjoy such perfect liberty, where you can sleep with more security, where there are always armies afoot for our protection, where poisoning, treacheries, calumnies are less known, and where there has survived more of the innocence of our f orefathers?" In 1632 Descartes moved to Deventer. Here apparently he met a certain Helene who, in 1635, bore him a child, which was chris tened Francine Descartes, and died at the age of five. It was during his stay in Deventer that Descartes heard of the Inquisi tion's condemnation of Galilei, in 1633, for supporting the Coper nican hypothesis that the earth moves round the sun. Descartes had already written the greater part of a treatise, called The World, in which the Copernican hypothesis had been adopted. He at once abandoned the idea of completing and publishing the book, in the hope of discovering some more orthodox form of Copernicanism. This he eventually discovered in his vortex theory. Part of 1633 and 1634 was spent in Amsterdam. Des cartes then moved to Utrecht in order to be near his first disciple, Reneri, who was professor at the university there.
From Utrecht Descartes went to Leyden, where he lived during 1636 and 1637, and again in 164o and 1641. It was during his first stay here that he published, in 1636, the volume of essays containing the Discourse on Method, the Dioptric, Meteors and Geometry; and during his second stay here he published, in 1641, his Meditations on First Philosophy, together with Objections by Arnauld, Gassendi, Hobbes and others, and his Replies to them. From 1637-4o Descartes lived at Santpoort. After his second residence at Leyden he moved, in 1641, to Endgeest, near Leyden, where he remained till 1643. Here, in 1642, he was visited by Sorbiere, the French courtier, traveller and gossip, whose Voyage to England subsequently caused so much annoyance to the Royal Society of London. And we are indebted to Sorbiere for an in teresting sketch of Descartes' life and surroundings at Endgeest. This is what he has written. "I was delighted with the civility of this gentilhomme, his retreat, and his household. He lived in a small chateau, beautifully situated, near a great and fine univer sity (Leyden), three leagues from the court, and hardly two hours from the sea. He had a sufficient staff of servants, all well chosen and comely people; a nice garden with an orchard beyond it ; and all around there were pastures from which stood out many steeples of various heights, until in the far horizon they appeared as mere points. He could go in a day by canal to Utrecht, Delft, Rotter dam, Dordrecht, Haarlem or Amsterdam. He could spend half his day at The Hague, and return in the evening, making this excur sion by the most beautiful road in the world, through meadows and houses of pleasance, 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 military. . . . That of the States General was composed of deputies from the united provinces and of burgomasters . . . the court of the queen of Bohemia, widow of King Frederick V., the elector-palatine, might be compared to that of the Graces, where 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. Descartes." In the meantime Descartes was having his share of trouble too. His leading ideas were known to various scholars several years before they were published in book-form. Already in 1634 some of his doctrines were taught in the university of Utrecht by Reneri. It was in order to help Reneri in this work that Descartes had removed to Utrecht in 1635. The publication of the Discourse, etc., in 1636 soon involved Descartes in numerous controversies with mathematicians in Belgium, Holland and France, notably with Fermat. And for the rest of his life Descartes was frequently involved in controversies which sometimes embittered him, and which probably had something to do with his decision to go to Stockholm in 1649. Perhaps the most unpleasant of these con troversies was that with G. Voetius, a Protestant divine and zealot, and rector of the university of Utrecht. When Reneri died in 1639, the funeral oration delivered by Emilius, lauded the dead scholar's friendship with Descartes, and incidentally Descartes himself. Voetius, a protagonist of ancient philosophy as allied with his theology, became alarmed and took an early opportunity to hint at the atheism of the new philosophy. In 1641 Regius, another Utrecht professor who for a time was an enthusiastic follower of Descartes, openly advocated certain Cartesian theses which so alarmed Voetius that he persuaded the magistrates of Utrecht, as well as the university, to pass judgment in favour of the old philosophy against the new. In 1642 Descartes brought out the second edition of his Meditations, with an introductory Lettre au P. Dinet, containing an attack on Voetius, who was so furious that he not only complained again to the magistrates, but also in stigated the publication of a violent attack on Descartes in a pamphlet entitled Admiranda Methodus sive Philosophia Car tesiana, ostensibly written by M. Schooek, who subsequently dis owned it. Descartes replied in Epistola ad Celeberrimum Virum Gisbertum Voetium (May 1643). Thereupon the magistrates of Utrecht summoned Descartes to appear before them. Descartes did not appear, but sent them a letter. He was summoned a sec ond time, and judgment was passed against him by default. Thanks to the intervention of influential friends at The Hague, the matter went no farther. The Utrecht magistrates simply de creed, in 1645, that nothing should be published either for or against the new philosophy. Descartes was also attacked by some of the professors at Leyden. And to crown it all he was soon in volved also in a quarrel with Regius, whose aggressive advocacy of Cartesianism (as he understood or misunderstood it) had been the chief cause of the trouble with Voetius. The results of this quarrel were a Programma by Regius, and a reply by Descartes, Notae in Programma, in 1647.
However, if Descartes had some enemies in Holland among people like Gisbert Voetius, he also had many friends and ad mirers, and among these was the Princess Elizabeth to whom Sorbiere referred in the passage cited above. As has already been mentioned above, Frederick V., the father of Elizabeth, had met with disaster at the battle of Prague (Nov. 162o). He lost the crowns of Bohemia and of the Palatinate, and was also deprived of his estates in Germany. He sought refuge in Holland, residing with his large family at The Hague, where he maintained a kind of court. His wife was Elizabeth Stuart, the sister of another un fortunate monarch, Charles I. Prince Rupert, who won and lost a great reputation as cavalry officer in the Civil War in England, was their third son. Another son, Charles Louis, was eventually reinstated in the palatinate, and showed his liberality of mind by inviting Spinoza, in 1673, to the chair of philosophy in the uni versity of Heidelberg. Princess Elizabeth seems to have been the most bookish member of the family. She was about 19 when Descartes published his Discourse on Method (1637). She read it with great interest, as also subsequently his Meditations (1641), and made his personal acquaintance about 164o. Descartes dedi cated to her his Principles of Philosophy, in 1644 ; and the dedica tory letter which he addressed to her shows what a deep im pression she had made on him.
"The greatest advantage (Descartes wrote) I have derived from my writings is the honour of becoming acquainted with your highness, and of being permitted at times to converse with you, and thus becoming a witness of your rare and estimable qualities; and I am sure that I shall render a service to posterity by holding them up as an example. It would be foolish of me to flatter, or to state what I am not convinced of, on the first page of a book in which I seek to expound the fundamental principles of knowledge. . . . I have met no one who has such a thorough and comprehensive understanding of my writings as you have. Even among the best and most cultivated minds, there are many who find them very obscure ; and nearly always those who are familiar with mathematics cannot comprehend metaphysics, while those conversant with metaphysics cannot understand mathe matics.-. The only mind, as far as my experience goes, to which both alike are easy, is yours; and so I am compelled to regard it as incomparable. And what increases my admiration is that it is not an aged man, who has given many years to study, in whom such wide and scientific knowledge is found, but a young princess whose charms resemble the Graces, as the poets describe them, rather than the Muses or the wise Minerva. I see in your high ness all those excellences that are requisite to pure and sublime wisdom on the part, not only of the mind, but of the will and character; magnanimity and gentleness are united with a disposi tion which an unjust fortune with its persistent persecutions has not been able to embitter or discourage. It is this high-minded wisdom that I reverence in you; and I dedicate to it not only this work, because it treats of philosophy or the study of wisdom, but myself and my services." Apparently Descartes met the Princess Elizabeth fairly frequently during the years 1641 till 1643 when they lived near one another ; but they do not seem to have met again after Elizabeth left The Hague in that year, though various letters passed between them almost to the time of his death, including one letter in which he condoled with her on the execution of her uncle, Charles I. Elizabeth lived for a time in Berlin, then in Heidelberg with her brother, and eventually she became abbess of the abbey of Herford (in Westphalia), where she died on the 3oth anniversary of the death of Descartes (Feb. II, 168o).
Descartes left Endgeest in 1643, and lived at Egmond-op-den Hoef till 1644. His next, and last, place of residence in Holland was at Egmond-Binnen, near Alkmaar. Here he wrote his Treatise on the Passions of the Soul in During the a 1 years that Descartes lived in Holland (1628-49) he visited France on only three occasions, namely, in and 1648. The last of these visits was in connection with a royal pension, and in the hope of securing a congenial and important post in Paris. But he arrived in Paris at an unpropitious moment. It was on the eve of the civil war (the Fronde). So he hurried back to Holland empty handed.
In the meantime Chanut, the French resident at Stockholm, was trying to interest Christina, the queen of Sweden, in the philosophy of Descartes. Some correspondence followed, and in Feb. 1649, Descartes was invited to Stockholm. After his experi ence of royal patronage in Paris the year before, Descartes held back. A Swedish admiral was then sent to fetch him. But he hesitated still. Finally, however, he left Holland in Sept. 1649 for the Swedish court. Queen Christina received him in two audiences. He figured in various court functions, which did not appeal to him, and he regretted he had left Holland. Eventually it was arranged that Descartes should visit the queen three times a week at five in the morning in order to instruct her in his phil osophy. But the severity of the northern winter and these un usually early hours were too much for Descartes. He became ill on Feb. 1,165o, and died ten days afterwards.