Descartes' Essays

Here are the first public essays of Mr. Descartes’s philosophy, who, without striving to present works of mind that were perfectly finished in too exact proportions, and polished according to the most scrupulous rules of criticism, only sought to make simple trials of his method.

But he had not neglected to choose from all his philosophy the pieces that he judged most suitable to give a just idea of what the public could hope for from him.

He had, moreover, such a good opinion of these essays that he did not believe that one could find the value of three lines to reject or change; and he had no difficulty in saying that if something false was found in any of the smallest parts of what he had just had printed, the rest of his philosophy was worth nothing.

Although the subjects of these treatises seem at first quite distant, he nevertheless arranged for the last three to have a very close connection with the first.

This is why, after having proposed a sample of a general method that he had adopted, without, however, pretending to teach it to others, he chose in dioptrics a subject mixed with philosophy and mathematics; in meteors one of pure philosophy without mixture; and in geometry one of pure mathematics, to show that there would be nothing in all that he could have of natural knowledge that he did not intend to relate and reduce to this method, and in which he did not hope to succeed perfectly, provided that he had the experiences that would be necessary for it, and the time to consider them.

His manner of writing in all these treatises is that which decent people have always prescribed to themselves in all times and places where people knew how to live as men. He was content to expose his thoughts there all plain without thinking of refuting anyone: and although he could not forget while writing, the distance by which he strayed from the common run of philosophers, he testifies to having been very far from wanting to insult the slightest of the opinions that are received in the schools.

As for his manner of reasoning, it appears that it was considered by others in a way that was completely different from what it actually was according to him. He did not agree on this subject with those who published that the explanations of the things he gave can well be rejected and despised; but that they cannot be fought and refuted by reason.

For admitting no principles that he did not believe to be very manifest, and considering nothing else than magnitudes, figures, and movement in the manner of mathematicians, he excluded himself from all the resources that one reserves to save oneself in case of need, and he closed all the subterfuges of philosophers. So that the slightest error that will have slipped into his principles can easily be perceived and refuted by a mathematical demonstration.

But on the contrary, if something is found there that appears “so true and assured that one cannot overthrow it by any similar demonstration,” this can undoubtedly not be despised with impunity, at least by those who make a profession of teaching. For even if he seems to do nothing else everywhere but propose what he says without proving it: it is nevertheless very easy to draw syllogisms from his explanations, by means of which he believed that the other opinions concerning the same matters could be manifestly destroyed, and that those who would want to defend them would have difficulty in answering those who understand his principles.

The reasons he had for writing in the vernacular rather than in Latin were very consistent with good sense, making a profession of working mainly for the glory and utility of his homeland, and of not distinguishing unlettered people from others in the service he wished to render to everyone. But it seems that his main motive on this point was the fear of finding readers too favorably prejudiced for the ancients: a vice that is very common in those who have studied languages, and who by this means have subjected their reason to the authority of the ancients whom they have read. If I write, he said, in French which is the language of my country, rather than in Latin which is the language of my preceptors; it is in the hope that those who only use their natural reason all pure will judge my opinions better than those who only believe in ancient books. And for those who join good sense with study, and who are the only ones I wish to have as judges, they will not be, I am sure, so partial to Latin, as to refuse to understand my reasons, because I explain them in the vernacular.

He did not judge it appropriate to put his name on these four treatises, both because he regarded the quality of author with a very indifferent eye, and that he was very little persuaded of the solidity of the glory to which common writers aspire by their pen; as well as because he wished to imitate the painter of antiquity, and hide behind his work, or remain unknown in the crowd, to listen to what would be said about it with more freedom. Sieur Lipstorpius attributes this suppression of name to the rare modesty of our philosopher, and to the generous contempt he had for the vain reputation that can be acquired in this world. But to not honor Mr. Descartes here with a virtue that was common to him elsewhere with many decent people of his century: it must be admitted that the quality of “anonymous” has become a rather equivocal sign by the diversity of the motives that led authors to suppress their name at the head of their works. His envious ones would not have neglected to profit from the indifference where the public is on this subject, and to have his conduct attributed to some distrust that he would have had of the truth of his reasons. But he wanted to get ahead of both, and show them that it was neither modesty nor false shame that had led him not to put his name on these first works. He testified since to Father Dinet, provincial of the Jesuits in France, that he had only used it in this way to protect himself from the envy that he foresaw, as unworthy as he was of it according to his judgment, that these writings must attract to him.

The betrayal that Father Mersenne did to him made his precaution completely useless. For this father was not content with revealing him by showing the manuscript to various people before printing it, which he had only entrusted to him for Mr. the chancellor Séguier: he also had his full name put in the privilege, where he allowed, in concert with Mr. Des Argues, to insert the great praises of which we have spoken elsewhere, and which gave as much chagrin as confusion to Mr. Descartes.

Although this conduct completely upset the measures he had taken, it did not, however, make him lose his judgment. To save the remains of his intentions, he cut his name and his praises from the privilege, of which he only wanted to show an extract. He had no sooner received the two hundred copies that he had agreed upon with the bookseller, than he regulated their distribution in the order that his duties and his inclination prescribed to him. He had some prepared first for the king, Cardinal de Richelieu, the chancellor, several lords and officers of the court of France; for some Italian cardinals, and other people of the “court of Rome,” with whom he had formerly contracted habits; for his friends of all state and of all profession spread in Europe. But the first ones distributed were those that there was no need to send out of Holland. He first sent some to The Hague to Mr. de Zuytlichem, his intimate friend, who took charge of having them held on the conditions that he marked him for declaring or not declaring the name of the author. He asked him to present one to Prince of Orange Frederick Henry, by a letter where he treated this prince of “highness,” a new title substituted since a year to that of “excellency,” by the ambassador of France, to whom the princes of Orange had the first obligation of this honor. I beg you, he said to Mr. de Zuytlichem, to want to present the copy to his highness, I do not dare to say in the name of the author, because the author is not named there, and that I do not presume that my name deserves to be known by her: but as having been composed by a person whom you know, and who is very devoted and very affectionate to her service. In effect, I can say that having taken the resolution to leave my country and to move away from my acquaintances to spend a life more gentle and more tranquil than I did before, I would not have thought of retiring to these provinces, and of preferring them to a quantity of other places where there was no war, and where the purity and dryness of the air seemed more proper to the productions of the mind, if the great opinion that I had of his highness had not made me extraordinarily confident in his protection and his conduct. Since, having perfectly enjoyed the leisure and the rest that I had hoped to find in the shadow of his arms, I have a very great obligation to him for it; and I think that this book which contains only fruits of this rest must be offered to him more particularly than to anyone.

Mr. de Zuytlichem presented the book to the prince of Orange before his departure for the siege of Breda, which this prince went to put before this city on July 23. But Mr. Descartes was not so promptly served at the court of France. He had remembered the friendships and offers of service that the Baron de Charnassé, ambassador of France in The Hague, had made him a short time before, when he had gone to pay him a visit in the company of Mr. de Zuytlichem. This is what led him not only to make him a gift of his book that he sent him since through the ministry of the same Mr. de Zuytlichem: but this also made him take the liberty of asking this ambassador to be so kind as to have it be through his intermediary that he could present his book to the king and to Cardinal de Richelieu. Mr. de Charnassé having received from Mr. de Zuytlichem the two copies destined for this, made it a pleasure to embrace the occasion that presented itself to make the merit of Mr. Descartes known to the king and to the cardinal minister.

He promised him to acquit himself of this commission incessantly: but he had to leave for the siege of Breda, where Mr. de Zuytlichem had preceded him by the necessity of accompanying the prince of Orange. The place resisted the Dutch until the following October 10, on which it was rendered by the governor Omer de Fourdin. But the Baron de Charnassé was killed there while relieving the guard at the head of the infantry regiment of which he was colonel for the states, although he was ordinary ambassador of France in Holland. These jobs were not incompatible: and it was not extraordinary to see the ambassadors of the crown pass successively from the pen to the sword, and from the sword to the pen for the service of the allies. Mr. Descartes made a loss in particular at the death of this lord, whose merit he esteemed: and this death left him in the worry of knowing if Cardinal de Richelieu had received his book.

The expedition of the copies that he had destined for Italy seems to have been even more thwarted in the ways that he had chosen to have them held with safety. He had had two prepared for Cardinal de Bagné, and he had accompanied them with a letter to this cardinal, where he marked him that these two copies were for him alone. He had likewise addressed one to Cardinal François Barberin, whom he had known particularly in Paris and in Rome. Although the motive of the friendship with which he was honored by him was more than sufficient to lead him to make him this gift, he nevertheless marked to Father Mersenne that what obliged him to this duty was the observation of the parhelia that he explains at the end of his meteors; and that as this observation had come from this cardinal, the present “that he wanted to make him was only the mark of a recognition of which he did not believe he should dispense.” His intention was to address this copy to Mr. de Peiresc, a counselor at the parliament of Provence, the particular friend of this cardinal, and the general correspondent of the men of letters of Europe. But he had not yet learned, undoubtedly, the death of this great man that occurred on June 24 of the same year. We do not see that he maintained a correspondence of letters with him, and we find nothing on the side of one or the other that makes us see the foundation of their mutual acquaintance.

Mr. de Peiresc not having limited himself to a particular kind of benevolence for those who worked for the advancement of letters and sciences of all kinds, had made it a habit to help all the learned men he had been able to discover, and he had had a heart vast enough not to even exclude any student, provided that he made a profession of loving letters a little. He assisted some with his purse which had always appeared inexhaustible although it was that of a simple individual; he helped others with his lights, fortified them with his advice, encouraged them to work, lifted the obstacles, facilitated the means of succeeding for them, and anticipated their needs and their desires even with a generosity all the more heroic as it was less brilliant.

Mr. Descartes was not of a condition or fortune to be able to profit from the liberality of Mr. de Peiresc. Not having given himself either to antiques, or to manuscripts, or to anything that concerns what one can learn by reading: he had put Mr. de Peiresc out of a state of being able to render him any service. But the inclination that was common to them for the researches of physics and mathematics could have formed some relationship between them. It is not credible that Mr. Descartes had not often heard of Mr. de Peiresc from Mr. de Saumaise his neighbor and his friend; that Mr. de Peiresc had not also been often entertained about the occupations of Mr. Descartes by Mr. Gassendi who was informed enough about them; and that Father Mersenne who was in the habit of writing to both and receiving letters from them had never sent news of one to the other.

Whatever it was, the death of Mr. de Peiresc obliged Mr. Descartes to take other measures to have his book delivered to Cardinal Barberin; and he arranged by the negotiation of Father Mersenne that the pope’s nuncio who was in Paris would be kind enough to take charge of this commission, and of that of having the copies delivered at the same time to Cardinal de Bagné. But I do not know what obstacles arose to their transport which did not happen for more than a year after.

Descartes seeing that he had no news of it looked for a long time in his mind for reasons to explain this delay. He could not imagine any others than those of the scruple where they were beyond the Alps on the new opinions of physics. The worry led him to write about it to Father Mersenne in 1639, to ask him to inquire about the adventure of these copies, and to tell him what was going on. I am worried, he said, to know if the copies that Mr. the nuncio had promised you to have delivered to Cardinal de Bagné etc. have finally been addressed. For I have reason to doubt that the difficulty that was found in having them carried comes from the fact that they were afraid that they would deal with the movement of the earth. In effect, it has been more than two years since the mayor having offered to send some to a bookseller in Rome, this one replied that he would indeed want a dozen copies, provided that there was nothing that touched the movement of the earth: and having received them since, he sent them back to this country, at least he wanted to send them back.

Descartes had not forgotten the Jesuits in the distribution of his largesses.

He remembered what he owed to his first masters who were in this company, where he also had other friends of new acquisition.

But we cannot better express his gratitude towards his regent of philosophy than by the terms in which he wrote to him about it as early as June 1637.

I judge well, he said to this father, that you will not have retained the names of all the disciples that you had twenty-three or twenty-four years ago, when you were teaching philosophy at La Flèche, and that I am of the number of those who are erased from your memory.

But I did not believe for that reason that I should erase from mine the obligations that I have to you. I have not lost the desire to recognize them, “although I have no other occasion to render you testimony of it, except that having had the volume that you will receive with this letter printed these last days, I am very happy to offer it to you as a fruit that belongs to you, and of which you have thrown the first seeds in my mind, as I also owe to those of your order the little knowledge that I have of good letters.”

If you take the trouble to read this book, or to have it read by those of your company who will have the leisure; and if after having remarked the faults, which will undoubtedly be found there in a very great number, you want to do me the favor of warning me about them, and thus still continue to teach me: I will have a very great obligation to you for it, and I will do my best to correct them following your good instructions.

We do not know what were the effects of the prayer that he made to his old master: but it appears that the service that he expected from him was at least rendered to him by the master of Mr. his nephew who was doing his studies under the Jesuits. This father having received the copy that was for him, did not fail to write to Mr. Descartes to thank him for it: and in order to make his gratitude less sterile and more solid, he promised him to read it with the eyes of a true friend, that is to say with the last exactitude, and to give him an account of it without flattery and without indulgence. Mr. Descartes believed he had found the friend he was looking for. He wrote back to this father to mark the joy he had of it, and assured him that he took in very good part the promise that he made him to treat him as a friend, that is to say in all rigor according to the terms of this father, but according to our philosopher in all the favor that he could wish for.

For desiring nothing else than to know the truth, he loved incomparably better the rigor, that is to say the exactitude and the diligence to remark everything, at least in those of the profession and of the company of this father, “whom he knew were animated only by a good zeal, and not capable of committing any injustice,” than he would have their “negligence.” He testified to him that he was not in a hurry to receive his judgment, in order to leave him all the leisure that was necessary for him to make it more exact: and he had no doubt that the later this judgment came, the more favorable it would be to him.

He asked him above all to want to examine his geometry, which could only be done with the pen in hand, and following all the “calculations that are there,” but which appear at first all the more difficult as one is less accustomed to them. In order not to frighten him, he wanted to make him believe that it was a work of only a few days; and he persuaded him to pass from the first book to the third, in order to find more facility there.

The fate of authors is to be pitied even in the things that should most contribute to their pleasure and their glory. One of these things is undoubtedly the custom they have of recognizing their patrons, their benefactors, and their friends by the gifts they make of their books when they have them printed. But by a secret malignity that corrupts the best things in this world, it has happened very often that this custom, as honest and as laudable as it appears, has been until now pernicious to several of those who have followed it. If authors make few presents, they make few discontented people by the large number of those who cannot find it bad to see themselves excluded from the small number.

If they make many presents, they make all the more discontented people, as there are more people who believe they can claim the liberalities of the author with as much or more pretext than many of those who have a part in them. So that the more a poor author exhausts himself in liberalities, the more he exposes himself to the resentment of those who believe themselves forgotten. A single one of these last is often more ardent and more ingenious in ruining the reputation of this author, than all his friends are in establishing it. Two hundred copies were not enough for Descartes to satisfy everyone.

But if he had been able to foresee the future, he would have undoubtedly forgotten a Mydorge, a Hardy, a Picot, a Mersenne, I mean the most intimate of his friends, rather than the good Mr. de Roberval. It is true that Mr. Descartes did not know this man; and he had barely heard of him a single time on the occasion of the chair of Ramus, when Father Mersenne told him that he was one of those who were seeking it.

Roberval who has since risen to the rank of the first geometers of France was six years and a few months younger than Mr. Descartes.

He was born on August 8 1602, not in the diocese of Soissons; “but in that of Beauvais, although his mother had been surprised in the fields of that of Soissons, where she was harvesting.” His name was Gilles Personne: but having come to Paris he took the name of Roberval, the place of the dwelling of his parents. Having found himself in a state of teaching mathematics, he had obtained the chair that is called of Maître Gervais in Paris in the year 1632, and eighteen months later he had carried away at the dispute that of Ramus, which he filled until his death; although he still had another at the royal college after Mr. Morin. Without the profession that Descartes made of remaining in retirement, he would have been less excusable for having been ignorant until then of the merit of Mr. de Roberval.

But this consideration was not strong enough on the mind of this one to lead him to excuse him for not having made him a present of his book. To tell the truth, there was a little of Father Mersenne’s fault, to whom Mr. Descartes had left the disposition of a good number of copies to distribute, according as he would judge it appropriate, to those whom he would know better than him: so that it was less Descartes than Father Mersenne who had forgotten Mr. de Roberval.

Descartes after having determined to join his geometry to the other essays of his method, had had a dozen copies of this treatise printed separately on paper chosen on purpose; and having had them bound with an extraordinary cleanliness, he had addressed them to Father Mersenne, to be distributed in the city and the kingdom to those whom he would judge to be the most skilled geometers of the time to anticipate them. Mr. de Roberval was not included in this number. This appeared to him to be a distinction too injurious not to have resentment of it. He explained himself from then on quite openly, and prepared himself to criticize the geometry of Mr. Descartes well. But seeing since that he had not even been given a share of the 200 copies of the volume that contained the four treatises, he conceived against Mr. Descartes an immortal animosity, of which he did not have the discretion to dissimulate the origin to the friends that he knew besides to be common to him with Mr. Descartes.