Fermat Versus Descartes

Descartes resolved not to have his works printed during his lifetime.

His friends did not like his decision.

It had been eight full years since he had been living in retirement in Holland, where he had found himself as alone and unattached in the midst of people of the greatest commerce as if he had been in the most secluded deserts.

The length of this term seemed to furnish just pretexts for the reproaches that those who had only consented to his removal from Paris to reap the fruits of his solitude were making to him.

Besides, the number of forty years of life had acquired for him a maturity of mind capable of protecting him from all that one is accustomed to alleging against the precipitation of young people who want to appear as authors before their age. These considerations led him to put in order what he found among his papers that seemed to him most in a state to see the light of day: and as soon as he had arrived from Friesland in Amsterdam, he let Father Mersenne know that he was seriously going to become an author, and that he had only come to this city with the intention of printing. For a long time, the Elzeviers, whether out of compliment or out of a serious eagerness, had made him know that they would consider themselves very honored to be his booksellers.

Leaning on what he had always had them answered with civility, and that he had not appeared to them to reject their proposals, they saw him tranquilly in Amsterdam without worrying about anticipating him: and presuming that he would not escape them, they wanted to let him come, and appeared to want to be begged.

Descartes believed he had immediately penetrated their mind; and he resolved on the spot to do without them. He could choose other booksellers in Amsterdam, in Leiden, or in any other city in Holland that it would have pleased him: but before determining anything, he wanted to deliberate about it with Father Mersenne who held his council in Paris.

He told this father that he was ready to send him his writings, if he judged that they could be printed in Paris more conveniently than in Holland, and if he wanted to take care of the printing according to the obliging offers that he had made him formerly. In this assumption, he warned him about the numerous faults of spelling and punctuation that he would have to correct, and about the figures traced by his hand, that is to say quite badly, that he would have to rectify, and make the engraver of Paris understand.

He even allowed him to choose a bookseller, and to deal with him for the stipulation of two hundred copies, and the quality of the paper and the characters, without nevertheless finishing concluding the treaty, before he had given him notice of what he would have done. He sent him in advance the title of the four treatises that it was a question of printing, and which, according to his calculation, were only to make together a volume of fifty or sixty sheets, of the form that is called “in quarto.”

This title was then conceived in these terms,

“The project of a universal science that can elevate our nature to its highest degree of perfection. Plus the Dioptrics, the Meteors, and the Geometry; where the most curious matters that the author has been able to choose to give proof of the universal science that he proposes are explained, in such a way that even those who have not studied can understand them.”

Father Mersenne who was not ignorant of the art of accommodating the service of his friends with the practice of the rule of his convent, would not have failed to lead this affair happily to the end. But the apprehension that Mr. Descartes had of the embarrassments that it would have caused this father, joined to the consideration of the clarity of the characters, the excellence of the paper, and the other conveniences that he could receive from a printing in Holland, to which his presence would not be useless, made him decide to choose Jean Maire, a printer from Leiden. He could be content with the privilege that this bookseller obtained from the states on December 22 of the year 1636.

But his heart would not have been content, if to mark his love and his perfect submission to his king, and to procure for his book the advantages of those that are printed in France by public authority, he had not set about to obtain a privilege from the most Christian king. It was granted to him with great marks of esteem and distinction on the fourth of May of the year 1637, to have printed not only the four treatises in question, but also all that he had written until then, and all that he could write in the rest of his life, “in any part that it seemed good to him, inside and outside the kingdom of France,” etc. Although the king was already informed of the merit of Mr. Descartes, it appears that the favor that was done to him, regarded less his person than the interest of the public good.

He did not fail to consider it as if it had been for him alone. He could, on the manner of the terms of the privilege, which bore that his majesty “desired to gratify him, and to make it known that it was to him that the public had the obligation of the inventions” that he had to publish; and that “the invention of sciences and arts accompanied by their demonstrations and the means to put them into execution, being a production of minds that are more excellent than the common, has been the cause that princes and states have always received the inventors with all kinds of gratifications, so that the places of their obedience where these things are introduced become more flourishing.”

A privilege conceived in such honorable terms would have been a great subject of vanity to many authors: and someone of those who prided themselves on knowing the value of it had already said aloud, “that he esteemed it more than he would have done letters of knighthood.”

But what could cause jealousy to others only served to give confusion and embarrassment to Mr. Descartes. To discharge himself from the envy, he tried to throw the matter on Father Mersenne: and wanting to find fault with the zeal that this father had shown for his service in this encounter, he reproached him on the affectation that he had shown in wanting to make him distinguish from other authors on this point; on the facility that he had had in showing his copy to some curious people against his will; and on the little discretion that he had had to break the secret, and declare his name, after what he had told him about the resolution he had taken to remain anonymous.

He wrote back to him in the movement of the chagrin that the delay of his affairs caused him, that he would have much better liked a privilege in the simplest form, as he had expressly asked him for it; and he reminded him that he had rejected what appeared too much in his favor in the project that he had sent him. He urged him to send it in whatever form it could be, or to tell him that it had been refused rather than to delay any longer. He found it bad that this father had asked for a general privilege for all his works done or to be done, because it was giving a just subject to Mr. the chancellor to refuse it even for the copy in question. For besides that he made him speak in this privilege in a manner quite immodest, and completely contrary to his intentions, by having him ask for a “grant” for books that he had shown he did not intend to print: he seemed to want to make him, in spite of himself, a “maker and seller” of books, which was very opposed to his humor and very unworthy of his profession. All that could regard him in this was only the permission to print: for as for the privilege, it is only for the booksellers; who fear that others will counterfeit the printing, in which authors have no interest.

Father Mersenne found himself a little mortified by the reprimand that his friend was making him. Mr. Descartes noticed it by the answer that this father made him: and fearing to have treated with too much harshness a person who had only failed by an excess of benevolence, he excused himself to him, and protested to him that he had only intended to complain of the too much care that he was showing to oblige him. It was an effect of the apprehension that he had of what had indeed happened since, that this father would not put the copy (which he had only sent him to show to Mr. the chancellor) in the hands of people who would retain it to read it, without worrying about hurrying the privilege, notwithstanding the impatience of the bookseller of Leiden, who was already at the end of his printing. On what Mr. Descartes had added in his letter of reprimand, “that he did not dare to write all that he thought of it,” Father Mersenne had imagined that he suspected him of having wanted to retain his work to transcribe it, and convert it to his use to the prejudice of its author. This thought had truly afflicted him, believing that his fidelity had become suspect. Mr. Descartes more vividly touched by this point than by the rest, wrote back to him in these terms. I feared that those to whom you had let see my copy, in order to have all the more time to read it and do what they judged appropriate, had persuaded you to ask for a general privilege, which would not fail to be refused on these conditions; and that thus a lot of time would pass in all these movements. It is for this alone that I told you that I “did not dare to write what” I thought of it. For I swear to you that it has never entered my mind that you had a desire to take advantage of what is in this book; and that I am very far from having such opinions of a person, of whose friendship and sincerity I am very sure: seeing that I could not even have it of those whom I knew did not love me, and who were besides people who try to acquire a reputation under false colors, like B H F and their like. If I complained about the form of the privilege, it was only so that those to whom you could speak of it would not believe that it was I who had asked for it in this way: because one would have had it seems to me a very just reason to mock me, if I had dared to pretend to it so advantageous, and that it had been refused to me. But having obtained it, I do not fail to esteem it extremely, and to have a very great obligation to you for it… as for what you have told my name to some, and that you have shown them this book, I am very persuaded that you have only done it to oblige me; and I would have to be in a very bad mood if I was offended by a thing that I know was only done to serve me: but I feel particularly indebted to this lady who wrote to you, for what it pleases her to judge me so favorably.

Father Mersenne, content with the satisfaction that Mr. Descartes was giving him, and the clarifications that he had received from him, redoubled his care to have the privilege expedited, to which there was no obstacle or delay on the part of Mr. the chancellor. After having withdrawn it from the seal, he retained a collated copy to use on occasions, and sent the original to Jean Maire in Leiden by the first ordinary post, as Mr. Descartes had asked him. The bookseller, to whom this waiting had made him suspend his printing and defer pulling the last sheet, had the privilege read to Mr. Descartes who had been in Leiden for some time. He appeared struck when he saw his name expressed in the privilege, against what he had expressly told Father Mersenne. He put on the best countenance he could not to let his discontent show; and using the remedy that remained in his hand, he withdrew his privilege, and contented himself with giving an extract to the bookseller, where he suppressed the name of the author.

The remedy was almost without effect.

When it was a question of distributing the gifts of his book, he at least noticed that it was useless to dissimulate the name of the person from whom they were to be received. I must admit (he said to a gentleman of the court of the Prince of Orange) that having not wanted to put my name on my writings, I had not expected that they should give me occasion to have it said to people as high as those to whom it is a question of presenting them. But having received these last days a privilege from the king in which it has been put, whatever care I have had to conceal it, I believe I must now do as if I had had the intention of publishing it; and I can almost no longer suppose that it is unknown.

But because some clauses have been added in this privilege that I have never seen in other books, and which are much more advantageous for me than I deserve, although I have not desired them, and that I have only asked to be received in the number of the most vulgar writers: I am so obliged to the king that I do not know what means I must seek to show him my gratitude. For I do not believe that we are only indebted to the great for the favors that we receive immediately from their hands, but also for all those that come to us from their ministers, both because they give them the power, and because having made a choice of such people rather than others, we must believe that their inclinations to oblige us are the same as we notice in those to whom they give power to do us good. Thus although I do not have the vanity to believe that the thoughts of the king have lowered themselves to me, and that he knows nothing of the privilege that Mr. the chancellor had the kindness to seal for me, I do not fail to have the first and principal obligation to his majesty.

France is much better governed than the city of Ephesus was formerly, where it was forbidden to excel: seeing that they not only gratify those who excel, in the rank of which I do not dare to aspire, but even those who make some effort to “do well,” even if it is by extraordinary ways, which is a thing of which I admit that one would have had the right to accuse me, if I had lived among the Ephesians.