The space which we can devote to this biography would be utterly
insufficient to give the smallest account of the varied philosophical
labours of its subject; still less to recount their consequences. We
shall therefore confine ourselves almost entirely to his personal life;
the more so, as the private history of Des Cartes is not so well known
to the world in general, as is the history of the mathematician, the
optician, the natural philosopher, the metaphysician, the anatomist, the
musician, &c., to those who study these several sciences.
René Des Cartes[8] du Perron (the latter name being derived from a
lordship inherited from his mother, by which he was distinguished from
his elder brother) was born at La Haye, in Touraine, March 31, 1596.
From his mother, who died shortly after, he inherited a feeble
constitution. His father, Joachim Des Cartes, had served in the civil
wars, and was of a noble family, of which, says Baillet, neither origin
could be traced, nor _mésalliance_ while it lasted.
Footnote 8:
The life of Des Cartes has been written with great minuteness by M.
Baillet author of the ‘Jugemens des Savans,’ &c., in two vols. 4to.,
Paris, 1690; abridged, Paris, 1693; translated into English the same
year. This appears to have been the source from which all accounts
have been derived.
His early inclination for study induced his father to send him to the
College of La Flèche when he was only eight years old. We have the
accounts of extraordinary progress which are usually related of men
after they have become distinguished; but what is not so common, we find
that he was allowed to keep his bed in the morning as long as he
pleased, partly from the weakness of his health, and partly because he
was observed to be of a meditative turn. We mention this because it
afterwards became his usual habit to study in bed; and certainly some
parts of his philosophy bear the marks of it.
He left La Flèche in eight years and a half, with great reputation, and
a disgust for all books and methods then in use. He was sent to Paris at
the age of seventeen, under the care of a servant, and fell into the
fashionable vice of gambling; but at the same time he cultivated the
acquaintance of Mydorge[9] and Mersenne. He finally became disgusted
with his favourite pursuit, hired a solitary house in the Fauxbourg St.
Germain, and resumed his studies.
Footnote 9:
To explain in the briefest terms who these and other friends of Des
Cartes were, would make us exceed the prescribed bounds. Our reader
must be content to be referred to a biographical dictionary for these
and others not known, except to mathematicians.
At the age of twenty-one, he enlisted as a volunteer under the Prince of
Orange. At Breda, the solution of a problem introduced him to Beekman.
Here he wrote his ‘Treatise on Music,’ of which the latter (to whom it
had been entrusted) gave himself out as the author. In 1619, he enlisted
as a volunteer under the Duke of Bavaria; and while thus engaged, he
tells us he laid the foundations of his philosophy (November 10); after
three wonderful dreams. Quitting the service he was engaged in, after
having been present at the siege of Prague, he travelled till the end of
1619. He then returned to Paris, where it was believed he was a
Rosicrucian, and his continual presence in public was necessary to repel
the suspicion. At this time he appears to have laid the foundation of
his mathematical methods. After travelling into Italy, he settled again
at Paris, and we now find him in habits of friendship with Beaune
(afterwards his commentator), Morin, Frenicle, and others, and occupying
himself with practical optics. In 1628, he served at the siege of
Rochelle.
To avoid society, in 1629, he migrated to Holland, where he passed
twenty years. He removed from town to town, hiding his actual residence
from all but one or two friends. He occupied himself at first with his
optics, and with the considerations which led him, in a few years, to
publish his ‘Treatise on Meteors,’ as also with chemistry and anatomy.
We now find him in communication with Reneri and Gassendi. He made a
short voyage to England, of which nothing is recorded, except some
magnetic observations made near London. About 1633, his philosophical
opinions were first taught by Reneri, at Deventer. His ‘Treatise on the
World,’ written about this time, was suppressed by him when he heard
what had happened to Galileo in Italy; and except some meteorological
observations, we find nothing to notice till 1637, when he published his
‘Principles of Philosophy,’ in which the well-known hypothesis of
vortices is propounded, together with his dioptrical and meteorological
theories. This publication was immediately combated in different parts
by Roberval, Fromondus, Plempius, Fermat, the elder Pascal, and others.
Without going into these and other now uninteresting disputes, it is
only necessary to state, that Fermat, Pascal, Roberval, and several
others, were soon after in friendly communication with Des Cartes. After
the famous problem of the Cycloid, which was propounded about this time
(1638–39), Des Cartes, as he had several times done before, renounced
geometry; and his work bearing that title (but which is, in fact, his
celebrated application of algebra to geometry) was not published by
himself, but by his friend De Beaune, who wrote a comment on it at his
desire.
In the meantime, his philosophy was fast rising into repute in Holland,
where, in 1639, a public panegyric was made upon it at Utrecht, on the
death of Reneri. We pass over the various disputes upon it, both at
Utrecht and Paris. In 1640, Des Cartes was nearly induced to take up his
residence in England, under the protection of Charles I.: but the
domestic troubles, which within two years broke out into civil war,
interfered with the completion of this arrangement. His father died at
the end of the same year; in which he also lost a child named Francina,
whom he owned as his daughter, but concerning whose parentage, whether
it were legitimate or not, nothing certain is known. Des Cartes was
attacked at this time by the Jesuits in France, and by a party in
Holland, which asserted that he himself was a Jesuit. The hostility of
his Dutch opponents did not materially retard the progress of his
opinions, nor could the Jesuits prevent his receiving a flattering
invitation from Louis XIII. to return to France.
In 1641, appeared his Meditations De Primâ Philosophiâ, on the Soul, on
Freewill, and on the Existence of a Creator. Various parts of this
treatise were criticised by Hobbes, Gassendi, and some others; but so
much was the reputation of Des Cartes increased in France, that the
exertions of Mersenne, made by the desire of the author, could not
obtain more than one opponent to this work out of all the Sorbonne. This
was the afterwards celebrated Arnaud, between whom and Des Cartes a
friendly controversy was maintained. But in Holland, the active enmity
of Voet, the rector of the university of Utrecht, and others, raised a
clamour against Regius, who publicly taught Cartesian doctrines at
Utrecht. Des Cartes himself, averse to controversy, wrote strongly to
his pupil not to deny or reject any thing commonly admitted, but merely
to assert that it was not necessary to the proper conception of the
doctrine taught. But Voet, not content with writing books, instituted an
unworthy course of clandestine persecution against Des Cartes, by which,
in 1642, he obtained the condemnation of the ‘Meditations’ by the
magistracy of Utrecht, and gave the author some personal trouble and
anxiety. On the other hand, the new philosophy at this time made great
progress among the Jesuits, its former opponents. In the middle of the
year Des Cartes returned to France, and superintended a new edition of
his Principles of Philosophy. But in the following year he went again to
Holland, where some decisions in his favour, in matters of alleged
libel, the too virulent enmity of Voet, the public teaching of Cartesian
doctrines at Leyden by Heereboord, and other things of the same kind,
made his reputation gain ground rapidly. About 1647, we find him clear
of violent opposition, and actively engaged in the dissemination of
various opinions by personal correspondence. He returned again to
France, where a pension of 3000 livres was obtained for him: but he is
said never to have received any part of it. He came back to Holland, but
next year was recalled to France by the promise of another pension,
which turned out to be fallacious. He once more returned to Holland,
which he left the same year, to fix his residence in Sweden, at the
desire of the queen Christina, with whom he had been some time in
correspondence. He arrived at Stockholm in September, and while engaged
in projecting an Academy of Sciences, at the desire of the queen, was
seized with an inflammation of the lungs, which carried him off,
February 11, 1650, at the age of 54. His body, seventeen years after,
was removed to the church of St. Geneviève at Paris.
Des Cartes was under the middle size, and well proportioned, except that
his head was rather too big for his body. His voice, owing to an
hereditary weakness of the lungs, was unable to sustain any long
conversation. He was very temperate, slept a good deal, and, as before
noticed, wrote and thought much in bed. He was very particular in
choosing his servants, engaging none but such as were both well-looking
and intellectual; and several of his attendants afterwards rose in the
world. Baillet mentions a physician, a Regius professor, a
mathematician, and a judge, who had served Des Cartes in different
capacities. He inherited from his mother an income of about 6000 livres
a year. His expenses in experimenting were considerable, but he never
would accept the offered assistance of his friends. He read little, and
had few books. We have already noticed the obscure connection from which
his daughter Francina derived her birth: he also paid his addresses to a
lady, for whom he fought a duel with a rival. With these exceptions, he
seems to have been insensible to female influence. He told the
last-mentioned lady, somewhat bluntly, that he found nothing so
beautiful as truth. He was a devout Catholic, and writers of that
persuasion think that his doctrines were more favourable to them than
those of Aristotle.
His character as a philosopher is that of extraordinary power of
imagination, which frequently carried him beyond all firm foundations.
His ingenuity is very great; and had he been contemporary with Newton
and Leibnitz, he might have been a third inventor of fluxions. Father
Castel says of him, that he built high, and Newton[10] deep; that he had
an ambition to create a world, and Newton none whatever. It is usual to
compare these two great men; but we do not think them proper objects of
comparison. Des Cartes lived at a time when the power of mathematical
analysis was but small, compared with what he himself, Wallis, Newton,
and others afterwards made it. He pursued his studies before Stevinus
and Galileo had yet made the first additions to the mathematical
mechanics of Archimedes. It is not, therefore, with Newton that he ought
to be tried, but with those philosophers of his own age, who were in the
same position with himself, and wrote upon similar subjects with similar
methods. And here if we had room we could easily show, that, for variety
of power, and comparative soundness of thinking, he was above all his
contemporaries, and well deserves his fame.
Footnote 10:
The good Father first transcribed Newton, then read him twenty times,
then wrote his comparison of the two, and kept it twenty years; and
finally, decided that Des Cartes was the better philosopher, for the
reasons given in the text. _Nous avons changé tout cela._
It were much to be wished that his writings were better known in this
country, particularly by those who represent him as nothing but a wild
schemer, because they hold the system of Newton. It is a sort of article
of faith in many popular English works on astronomy, that Des Cartes was
a fool. To any one who has imbibed that opinion, we recommend the
perusal of some of his writings.
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