The Friends of Descartes

Descartes in Paris felt quickly the inconveniences of his reputation, which brought him too many visits.

• He had a visitor everyday.

He wanted to retreat to Holland the soonest.

Des Argues made his duty to keep his whole life. He was:

• a native of Lyon
• distinguished by his personal merit

He wanted to make his knowledge of mathematics and mechanics useful to the public.

He particularly employed his care to relieve the work of artisans by the subtlety of his inventions.

In this he attracted all the more the esteem and friendship of Mr. Descartes, as for his part he was already thinking of the means of perfecting mechanics, to shorten and soften the work of men.

Des Argues contributed mainly to making him known to Cardinal de Richelieu.

Although Descartes did not pretend to draw any advantage from this knowledge, he did not fail to recognize himself as very obligated to the zeal that Mr. Des Argues showed to serve him.

He survived Descartes by a few years.

De Beaugrand was secretary to the king, mathematician of Gaston, Duke of Orléans, whom Mr. Gassendi still called a young man in 1631, also passed for some time as the friend of Descartes.

perhaps because he was the friend of Father Mersenne. One cannot deny that they knew each other quite particularly: but their ties were never very close; and the esteem that Mr. Descartes had for his knowledge based on the report of their common friends diminished a lot since he had published his treatise on geostatics. He died almost ten years before Mr. Descartes.

One can similarly include among the friends that Mr. Descartes acquired in Paris Mr. Silhon, Mr. de Serisay, and Mr. Sarazin, to whose interests he was not indifferent, since he was curious, even in his retreat in Holland, to hear news of them from time to time, although they did not seem to meddle too much in mathematics. Mr. Silhon was a native of Sos in Gascony: he was honored with the title of state councilor, at the time of Cardinal Mazarin, to whom he made himself agreeable and necessary. He was one of those whom Cardinal de Richelieu had chosen to fill the number of the forty academicians, when it was a question of forming a regular body of the French Academy in 1634. In addition to what he did in politics and history, we have from him a work in quarto, which had some relation to the studies of Mr. Descartes. It is that of the immortality of the soul, which according to Mr. Pellisson, is like a natural theology. He survived Mr. Descartes by several years, and he had for successor in the place of academician, Mr. Colbert, minister of state in 1667.

Mr. de Serisay was a native of Paris, and intendant of the house of Mr. the Duke of La Rochefoucauld. He was one of the first among the scholars and the fine minds, who by their free assemblies gave birth to the French Academy, four or five years before it was established by edict of the king. Although he had opposed the proposal that Cardinal de Richelieu had made to their assembly to form a body under his protection, and to assemble regularly by a public authority: he was nevertheless created director of the academy at the moment of its erection. It was he who, despite the ties he had to the interests of his master, an enemy of Cardinal de Richelieu, was charged by the company with composing the letter by which this cardinal was implored to honor the academy with his protection. Mr. de Serisay remained in the world for almost three years beyond Mr. Descartes, and he left his place as academician to Mr. Pellisson, master of requests.

Mr. Sarazin was from Caen in Normandy, and he was secretary to Mr. the Prince of Conty (Armand de Bourbon). His studies, no more than those of Mr. de Serisay, did not have much relation to those of Mr. Descartes. He was nevertheless no less his friend: and Mr. Descartes, who had a taste for politeness and wit, knew how to esteem him as much, and perhaps more than some whom one saw in the academy to his prejudice. They paid each other compliments, rendered each other mutual civilities through the mediation of some common friend in Paris during their absence, and we see that Mr. Sarazin took care to present his books to him.

We must not omit Mr. de Boissat, since Mr. Chorier tells us that he was one of Mr. Descartes’s friends. In this assumption, one can make their friendship go back to a higher source than that of the other friends whom Mr. Descartes only knew in Paris. It is very probable that they had already seen each other from the year 1625 at the siege of Gavi in Italy, where Mr. de Boissat had served under the Constable de Lesdiguières as captain of a company in the Sancy regiment. He was no less a friend of Mr. Gassendi than of Mr. Descartes:

but having to decide on a sect of philosophy, he preferred that of Mr. Descartes, whose disciple he became since he had published his books. Mr. Gassendi was not jealous of it, he did not love him any less, and even praised him for his choice according to the goodness of his nature, which at least made him turn into praise the approvals that his particular interest made him refuse to the philosophy of Mr. Descartes. Mr. de Boissat, Lord of Licieu in Lyon, was a gentleman from Dauphiné, who had no less spirit than heart. He was almost eight years younger than Mr. Descartes, and he lived twelve years after him.

He had been received into the academy from the year 1634, with Messieurs Voiture and de Vaugelas: and he had for successor in this place Mr. Furetière in the year 1662.

It seems that one could also relate to the time of Mr. Descartes’s stay in Paris, the friendship he had with Mr. Frenicle, whom he often calls simply Mr. de Bessy; with Mr. de Sainte-Croix, Mr. de Marandé, and Mr. Picot, although I have not yet been able to fix the beginning of their acquaintance. Mr. Frenicle, Sieur de Bessy, was a Parisian, but originally from the province of Burgundy, and he passed in Paris for one of the great arithmeticians of the century. There were two men of letters of this name at the same time, both mathematicians, both poets. It is with the former that Mr. Descartes seems to have had his habits. They sometimes wrote to each other: but usually Father Mersenne received the questions or requests of Mr. de Bessy for Mr. Descartes, and the answers or solutions of Mr. Descartes for Mr. de Bessy.

Mr. de Sainte-Croix was another famous arithmetician, but an even more intimate friend of Mr. Descartes.

I believe it is the same one that we find called by other people André Jumeau, who was prior of Sainte-Croix, and who had been preceptor of Mr. the Duke of Verneuil. Mr. Descartes testified to particularly esteem the profound knowledge that Mr. de Sainte-Croix had of arithmetic and algebra: and he took a singular pleasure in answering his questions, because he found almost as much satisfaction in it as Mr. de Sainte-Croix showed for his answers. He died before Mr. Descartes.

As for Mr. de Marandé, one can say that his books have made him known enough in the world. But one must be careful not to confuse him with a clergyman of the same surname and of the same time.

This one was named Léonard de Marandé, qualified as councilor and chaplain to the king, and meddled in theology. But the friend of Mr. Descartes was clerk of the court of aids, and gave the rest of the time that his office left him to French translations, and to exercises in philosophy and mathematics.

Claude Picot was the closest friend of Descartes.

He was prior of Rouvre, whom we commonly call the Abbé Picot.

He was not content to publicly declare himself the disciple and admirer of Mr. Descartes, he also wanted to be the translator of his principles, his correspondent for the letters he had to receive and to send; his host in Paris, in the last trips he made from Holland to France; the agent of his domestic affairs; the receiver of his rents from Brittany and Poitou. This abbot was the son of a general collector of finances of Bordeaux.

He had two brothers:

1. First valet de chambre of the king’s wardrobe, then general collector after his father
2. A councilor at the court of aids of Guyenne in Bordeaux.

Descartes being in Paris, was only thinking of making the habits he had with his friends and the people of letters useful, when the news of the death of Chancellor Bacon, which occurred on the ninth day of April 1626, was received there.

This news touched those who aspired to the reestablishment of true philosophy, and who knew that Bacon had been working on this great plan for several years, in a very tangible way.

Those who had hoped to see him succeed in such an extraordinary enterprise regretted his loss more particularly than the others, seeing that God who had withdrawn him in the sixty-sixth year of his age, had not granted him enough life for the execution of his plan. It is true that six years before his death he had brought to light the first volume of his great work on the reestablishment of philosophy under the title of “Instauratio Magna,” of which his “New Organon” is a part. But this was only a test of his sublime projects, capable only of leaving in the mind of his readers a very great idea of what he made posterity hope for.

We also see that he did not go deep into anything; that the propositions and axioms that he puts forward there are rather warnings and expedients to give openings to meditate, than maxims suitable for establishing principles.

The execution of a plan as heroic as that of reestablishing true philosophy was reserved for a genius even more extraordinary than his. But it is with a lot of justice that he received the praises of all the judicious people who could not help but like the plan he had given to rebuild on new foundations. He had noticed that the human mind was becoming more and more embarrassed in the search for truth mainly since the Peripatetics had succeeded in having their scholastic method received almost everywhere.

He had not been able to see without difficulty that this mind was deprived of the true aids for this search, or that at least it did not know how to make good use of those it had; that from this deprivation or from this bad use of the true aids had come an almost total ignorance of natural things followed by a thousand inconveniences. With this in mind, he had believed he should employ all his industry to try to reconcile the human mind with nature or natural things, and to reestablish their trade. He had judged that it was necessary to begin by first correcting the past errors, and to establish the means of preventing those that might occur in the course of time. But he could not hope for these good effects either from the particular forces of the human understanding, or from the aids of dialectics, because the first notions that our mind receives of things seemed to him vicious and confused, and that it was wrong, according to him, to separate these notions from the things themselves.

It is from there nevertheless that the second notions and the other knowledge which are within the scope of human reason depend, so that the whole system of natural sciences appeared to him only a confused mass of false ideas. It was therefore a question of nothing less than of setting up a new system on foundations entirely different from those of the ancients which had seemed so ruinous to him. But he was not discouraged by the difficulty of the enterprise: and he was willing to expose himself to the danger of passing for the most reckless of men, in order to at least break the ice for those of the minds of his kind who might come after him.

Mr. Descartes had no need of his example, except perhaps to justify the boldness he had had of abandoning the path of the ancients, as this chancellor had done. But although he had made a completely new route for himself, before ever having heard of this great man, or of his plans, it nevertheless appears that his writings were not entirely useless to him. One sees in various places in his letters that he did not disapprove of his method, and that he judged it to be quite suitable for those who wanted to work for the advancement of the sciences on experiments made at their expense. Even if Bacon’s views, whom he never calls otherwise than “Verulamius” or “Verulamio” because of the barony of Verulam that he possessed with the viscounty of Saint Albans, had been absolutely useless to him, one can say that the motto, or rather the prophecy of this magistrate, (…), served a lot to encourage him in the hope that others who would come after him could continue what he would have started.