A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find philosophy, like everything
else, very much changed there. He had left the world a plenum, and he
now finds it a vacuum. At Paris the universe is seen composed of
vortices of subtile matter; but nothing like it is seen in London. In
France, it is the pressure of the moon that causes the tides; but in
England it is the sea that gravitates towards the moon; so that when you
think that the moon should make it flood with us, those gentlemen fancy
it should be ebb, which very unluckily cannot be proved. For to be able
to do this, it is necessary the moon and the tides should have been
inquired into at the very instant of the creation.
You will observe farther, that the sun, which in France is said to have
nothing to do in the affair, comes in here for very near a quarter of its
assistance. According to your Cartesians, everything is performed by an
impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to Sir
Isaac Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much
unknown to us. At Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a
melon, or of an oblique figure; at London it has an oblate one. A
Cartesian declares that light exists in the air; but a Newtonian asserts
that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half. The several
operations of your chemistry are performed by acids, alkalies and subtile
matter; but attraction prevails even in chemistry among the English.
The very essence of things is totally changed. You neither are agreed
upon the definition of the soul, nor on that of matter. Descartes, as I
observed in my last, maintains that the soul is the same thing with
thought, and Mr. Locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary.
Descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes matter, but
Sir Isaac adds solidity to it.
How furiously contradictory are these opinions!
"Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites."
VIRGIL, Eclog. III.
"'Tis not for us to end such great disputes."
This famous Newton, this destroyer of the Cartesian system, died in
March, anno 1727. His countrymen honoured him in his lifetime, and
interred him as though he had been a king who had made his people happy.
The English read with the highest satisfaction, and translated into their
tongue, the Elogium of Sir Isaac Newton, which M. de Fontenelle spoke in
the Academy of Sciences. M. de Fontenelle presides as judge over
philosophers; and the English expected his decision, as a solemn
declaration of the superiority of the English philosophy over that of the
French. But when it was found that this gentleman had compared Descartes
to Sir Isaac, the whole Royal Society in London rose up in arms. So far
from acquiescing with M. Fontenelle's judgment, they criticised his
discourse. And even several (who, however, were not the ablest
philosophers in that body) were offended at the comparison; and for no
other reason but because Descartes was a Frenchman.
It must be confessed that these two great men differed very much in
conduct, in fortune, and in philosophy.
Nature had indulged Descartes with a shining and strong imagination,
whence he became a very singular person both in private life and in his
manner of reasoning. This imagination could not conceal itself even in
his philosophical works, which are everywhere adorned with very shining,
ingenious metaphors and figures. Nature had almost made him a poet; and
indeed he wrote a piece of poetry for the entertainment of Christina,
Queen of Sweden, which however was suppressed in honour to his memory.
He embraced a military life for some time, and afterwards becoming a
complete philosopher, he did not think the passion of love derogatory to
his character. He had by his mistress a daughter called Froncine, who
died young, and was very much regretted by him. Thus he experienced
every passion incident to mankind.
He was a long time of opinion that it would be necessary for him to fly
from the society of his fellow creatures, and especially from his native
country, in order to enjoy the happiness of cultivating his philosophical
studies in full liberty.
Descartes was very right, for his contemporaries were not knowing enough
to improve and enlighten his understanding, and were capable of little
else than of giving him uneasiness.
He left France purely to go in search of truth, which was then persecuted
by the wretched philosophy of the schools. However, he found that reason
was as much disguised and depraved in the universities of Holland, into
which he withdrew, as in his own country. For at the time that the
French condemned the only propositions of his philosophy which were true,
he was persecuted by the pretended philosophers of Holland, who
understood him no better; and who, having a nearer view of his glory,
hated his person the more, so that he was obliged to leave Utrecht.
Descartes was injuriously accused of being an atheist, the last refuge of
religious scandal: and he who had employed all the sagacity and
penetration of his genius, in searching for new proofs of the existence
of a God, was suspected to believe there was no such Being.
Such a persecution from all sides, must necessarily suppose a most
exalted merit as well as a very distinguished reputation, and indeed he
possessed both. Reason at that time darted a ray upon the world through
the gloom of the schools, and the prejudices of popular superstition. At
last his name spread so universally, that the French were desirous of
bringing him back into his native country by rewards, and accordingly
offered him an annual pension of a thousand crowns. Upon these hopes
Descartes returned to France; paid the fees of his patent, which was sold
at that time, but no pension was settled upon him. Thus disappointed, he
returned to his solitude in North Holland, where he again pursued the
study of philosophy, whilst the great Galileo, at fourscore years of age,
was groaning in the prisons of the Inquisition, only for having
demonstrated the earth's motion.
At last Descartes was snatched from the world in the flower of his age at
Stockholm. His death was owing to a bad regimen, and he expired in the
midst of some literati who were his enemies, and under the hands of a
physician to whom he was odious.
The progress of Sir Isaac Newton's life was quite different. He lived
happy, and very much honoured in his native country, to the age of
fourscore and five years.
It was his peculiar felicity, not only to be born in a country of
liberty, but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were banished
from the world. Reason alone was cultivated, and mankind could only be
his pupil, not his enemy.
One very singular difference in the lives of these two great men is, that
Sir Isaac, during the long course of years he enjoyed, was never sensible
to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor
ever had any commerce with women--a circumstance which was assured me by
the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments.
We may admire Sir Isaac Newton on this occasion, but then we must not
censure Descartes.
The opinion that generally prevails in England with regard to these new
philosophers is, that the latter was a dreamer, and the former a sage.
Very few people in England read Descartes, whose works indeed are now
useless. On the other side, but a small number peruse those of Sir
Isaac, because to do this the student must be deeply skilled in the
mathematics, otherwise those works will be unintelligible to him. But
notwithstanding this, these great men are the subject of everyone's
discourse. Sir Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage, whilst Descartes
is not indulged a single one. According to some, it is to the former
that we owe the discovery of a vacuum, that the air is a heavy body, and
the invention of telescopes. In a word, Sir Isaac Newton is here as the
Hercules of fabulous story, to whom the ignorant ascribed all the feats
of ancient heroes.
In a critique that was made in London on Mr. de Fontenelle's discourse,
the writer presumed to assert that Descartes was not a great
geometrician. Those who make such a declaration may justly be reproached
with flying in their master's face. Descartes extended the limits of
geometry as far beyond the place where he found them, as Sir Isaac did
after him. The former first taught the method of expressing curves by
equations. This geometry which, thanks to him for it, is now grown
common, was so abstruse in his time, that not so much as one professor
would undertake to explain it; and Schotten in Holland, and Format in
France, were the only men who understood it.
He applied this geometrical and inventive genius to dioptrics, which,
when treated of by him, became a new art. And if he was mistaken in some
things, the reason of that is, a man who discovers a new tract of land
cannot at once know all the properties of the soil. Those who come after
him, and make these lands fruitful, are at least obliged to him for the
discovery. I will not deny but that there are innumerable errors in the
rest of Descartes' works.
Geometry was a guide he himself had in some measure fashioned, which
would have conducted him safely through the several paths of natural
philosophy. Nevertheless, he at last abandoned this guide, and gave
entirely into the humour of forming hypotheses; and then philosophy was
no more than an ingenious romance, fit only to amuse the ignorant. He
was mistaken in the nature of the soul, in the proofs of the existence of
a God, in matter, in the laws of motion, and in the nature of light. He
admitted innate ideas, he invented new elements, he created a world; he
made man according to his own fancy; and it is justly said, that the man
of Descartes is, in fact, that of Descartes only, very different from the
real one.
He pushed his metaphysical errors so far, as to declare that two and two
make four for no other reason but because God would have it so. However,
it will not be making him too great a compliment if we affirm that he was
valuable even in his mistakes. He deceived himself; but then it was at
least in a methodical way. He destroyed all the absurd chimeras with
which youth had been infatuated for two thousand years. He taught his
contemporaries how to reason, and enabled them to employ his own weapons
against himself. If Descartes did not pay in good money, he however did
great service in crying down that of a base alloy.
I indeed believe that very few will presume to compare his philosophy in
any respect with that of Sir Isaac Newton. The former is an essay, the
latter a masterpiece. But then the man who first brought us to the path
of truth, was perhaps as great a genius as he who afterwards conducted us
through it.
Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and
of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless.
Rohault's little work was, during some years, a complete system of
physics; but now all the Transactions of the several academies in Europe
put together do not form so much as the beginning of a system. In
fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine
what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.