Descartes and Religion

Descartes traveled by post from Lyon to Poitou to:

• check on his property there.
  • He was unable to sell it before his departure
• give an account to Mrs. Sain, his godmother, of what he had done for her late husband’s affairs in the army in Italy.

While in Châtellerault, he was asked to negotiate for the position of lieutenant general of the place, who was pressed to get rid of it to buy another for his son.

They made him understand that he would have it for sixteen thousand crowns or 50,000 livres.

He first rejected these proposals on the pretext that he could not put more than ten thousand crowns of his money into a judicial office.

But having been unable to resist the requests of some friends who offered him money without interest, he promised to write to his father as soon as he was in Poitiers.

This is what he did on June 24 to:

• beg him to assist him with his advice
• determine him in his choice.

He feared that his father, who was then in Paris, would judge him incapable of filling an office of this kind, because having done no other exercise until then than to wear the sword, he would seem to have come too late to enter the profession of the robe. This is why he wanted to anticipate him by pointing out to him the disposition he would be in to go and put himself with a solicitor of the Châtelet, until he had learned enough practice to be able to exercise this office.

His intention was to go and see his father in Paris, as soon as he had received news from him: but the apprehension of no longer finding him in this city made him leave by post without waiting for his answer and arrive at the beginning of the month of July.

Nevertheless, he did not have the satisfaction of seeing his father there who had returned to Brittany a few days before: which, combined with the solicitations of friends who wanted to see him established in Paris, contributed not a little to the failure of his business in Châtellerault, and to his disgust with the province.

He was not dissatisfied with his trip to Italy.

He would have liked his stay there even more if he had not noticed that it is “an unhealthy country for the French,” especially when they eat as much as they would in France.

As for him who had learned early on to govern himself in his diet, who drank very little, and who ordinarily took only coarse and not very nourishing meats, he had not badly taken precautions against the malignancy of the climate.

But if he had stayed there longer, he would have felt perhaps that his complexion would not always have been impervious to the bad impressions of the air that one breathes there, and which causes various diseases by its immoderate heat. Without that, he protests that he would have chosen Italy rather than Holland to serve him as a retreat during the rest of his days, after he had decided to leave France.

It had been more than a month since the legate, whom he had not seen since his departure from Rome, had made his entry into Paris, when he arrived there: and the city was then occupied with a more recent news, which was that of the surrender of the city of Breda made to the Marquis of Spinola by the Dutch on the fifth of June after a siege of nine months. He could not be entirely insensible to this news, if he remembered the two-year stay he had made in this city, under the banners of Prince Maurice who had died two months before, and who had had for successor Prince Frederic Henry his brother.

Descartes lived with a friend of his father, who was also his own in particular, and who had relations with his family by some alliance. This friend was Mr. Le Vasseur, Lord of Etioles, father of Mr. Le Vasseur, who is still alive today, and who is a councilor at the Grand-Chambre.

There, having formed a model of conduct on the manner of living that honest people of the world are accustomed to prescribing for themselves, he embraced the simplest way of life and the most distant from singularity and affectation that he could imagine.

He was served by a small number of valets, he walked without a retinue in the streets. He was dressed in a simple green taffeta, according to the fashion of those times, wearing the plume and the sword, only as marks of his quality, from which it was not free then for a gentleman to dispense himself.

He had postponed until the end of his travels to decide on the choice of a stable profession for the rest of his days: but although he did not appear much more advanced in his deliberations than at the beginning, he did not fail to gradually strengthen himself in the thought of not subjecting himself to any employment.

It is not that he did not still make a very serious review of the various occupations that men have in this life, to see if he would find one that suited him, and which was in conformity with the dispositions of his mind. But after having solidly examined all things with the weight of his reason, he judged that he could do nothing better than to continue in the occupation in which he was currently, since he had gotten rid of the prejudices of his education.

This occupation consisted solely in employing his whole life in cultivating his reason, and in advancing as much as possible in the knowledge of the truth, according to the method that he had prescribed for himself.

The satisfactions that he showed he had received from his mind, since he had begun to use this method were so tangible and so solid, that not believing that one could find more innocent and more real sweetness elsewhere, he closed his ear to all other solicitation.

He was by the grace of God a slave to none of the passions that make young people vicious. He was perfectly cured of the inclination that had been formerly inspired in him for gambling, and of the indifference for the loss of his time.

As for what regards religion, he always preserved “that fund of piety that his masters had inculcated in him at La Flèche”; and he made it appear in the external practices of devotion, to the duties of which he was as assiduous as the common run of Catholics who live morally without reproach.

Descartes was very far from libertinism on the foundations of religion.

He believed that the object of faith cannot be that of reason, and that it would be temerity to pretend to subject it to it.

So that he regarded libertines as people who were in a false principle, and who did not know the nature of faith, when they believed that human reason is above all things.

The irresolution that could remain to him concerning the general views of his state, did not fall on his particular actions. He lived and acted independently of the uncertainty that he found in the judgments he made on the sciences.

He had made a morality for himself, according to the maxims of which he pretended to embrace the most moderate opinions, the most commonly received in practice, and the most distant from excess to regulate his conduct, always doing himself enough justice not to prefer his particular opinions to those of people whom he judged wiser and more sensible than himself.

He brought two reasons that obliged him to choose only the most moderate among several equally received opinions.

1. They are always the most convenient for practice, and probably the best, all the extremities in moral actions being ordinarily vicious.

2. It would be less straying from the right path, in case he came to get lost, and that he would thus never be obliged to pass from one extremity to the other.

He appeared in all encounters so jealous of his freedom that he could not dissimulate the distance he had for all the commitments that are capable of depriving us of our indifference in our actions.

It is not that he pretended to find fault with the laws, which to remedy the inconstancy of weak minds, or to establish safety in the commerce of life, allow one to make vows or contracts, which oblige those who make them voluntarily and legitimately to persevere in their enterprise.

But seeing nothing in the world that remained always in the same state, and promising himself to perfect his judgments more and more, he would have believed he was offending good sense, if he had obliged himself to take a thing for good, when it would have ceased to be so, or to appear such to him, under the pretext that he would have found it good at another time.

With regard to the actions of his life that he did not believe he could suffer delay, when he was not in a state to discern the most truthful opinions, he always attached himself to the most probable.

If it happened that he did not find more probability in some than in others, he did not fail to determine himself to some, and to then consider them no longer as doubtful in relation to practice, but as very true and very certain, because he believed that the reason that had made him determine himself to them was such.

By this means he succeeded in delivering himself from the regrets and the remorses that are accustomed to agitate the consciences of weak and wavering minds, who are too lightly led to practice as good the things they judge afterwards to be bad.

He was strongly persuaded that there is nothing of which we can dispose absolutely, except our thoughts and our desires: so that after having done all that could depend on him for the things outside, he supposed as absolutely impossible with regard to him what he lacked to succeed.

This is what made him resolve to no longer desire anything that he could not acquire. He believed that the way to live content, was to consider all the goods that are outside of us as equally distant from our power, and not to regret those that we lack, in the thought that they would be due to us, when it is not by our fault that we are deprived of them.

He needed a lot of exercise, and a meditation often reiterated to accustom himself to look at all things from this angle.

But having succeeded in putting his mind in this situation once, he found himself all prepared to suffer tranquilly the diseases, and the disgraces of fortune in which it would please God to exercise him. He believed that it was mainly in this point that the secret of the ancient philosophers consisted, who had been able formerly to withdraw themselves from the empire of fortune; and despite the pains and the poverty, to dispute felicity with their gods.

These maxims, which have been perhaps the only ones (with the truths of faith that he had learned in his youth) in the prejudice of which he wanted to remain inviolably all his life, were founded only on the plan he had to continue to instruct himself more and more. He testifies that he could never have limited his desires or made himself content, if he had not been persuaded that the path he had taken to arrive at all the knowledge of which he would be capable, was the same one that was also to lead him to the acquisition of all the true goods, the enjoyment of which could ever be in his power.

Knowing that our will is not led to follow or to flee any thing except as much as our understanding represents it to it as good or bad, he believed that it would be enough for him to judge well to do well, that is to say, to acquire all the virtues, and all the goods that they can produce.

With these internal dispositions he lived in appearance in the same way as those who being free from any employment only think of spending a life sweet and innocent in the eyes of men; who study to separate pleasures from vices; and who to enjoy their leisure without getting bored have recourse from time to time to honest amusements.

Thus his conduct having nothing singular that was capable of striking the eyes or the imagination of others, no one formed an obstacle to the continuation of his plans, and he advanced from day to day in the search for the truth which concerns natural things. But he reserved for himself from time to time a few hours, which he particularly employed in reducing his method to practice in mathematical difficulties, or in others even that he could make almost similar to those of mathematics, by detaching them from all the principles of the other sciences that he did not find firm enough.