Fermat Versus Descartes

We can’t better relieve Mr. Descartes from the troubles that the printing and distribution of his book had caused him than by having him take a walk to the siege of Breda, where some of his friends from both France and Holland were. This is what we can imagine as most likely to try to reconcile something with Sieur Borel, who, supported by the accounts of his friend De Ville-Bressieux, has published in a very affirmative tone that Mr. Descartes was personally present at two sieges of the city of Breda.

We have remarked elsewhere on the impossibility of Mr. Descartes being present at that of the year 1625, where the Marquis de Spinola took the city from the Dutch.

We see little more likelihood of believing that he would have wanted to be at that of this year, where the Prince of Orange retook this city from the Spanish. Since the siege of La Rochelle, upon his return from which he had entirely left the sword to take the cloak, he had so stripped himself of his warlike mood, and he made such a public profession of “cowardice” (not to lose his terms,) that it is out of all likelihood that he would have wanted to serve in the troops with these dispositions.

Having once left his retreat, and seeing himself on the borders of the Catholic Netherlands, he may have had the thought of going to Flanders before shutting himself up in his stove.

It appears at least that he was in Douai around that time, if it is safe to rely on the faith of a person of probity, who maintains having seen Mr. Descartes in Douai, and having seen him again about seven years later in Paris, both at the Boncourt college with the Knight D’Igby, and at the Theatines with Father Chappuis, which only happened in 1644. According to this account, Mr. Descartes, accompanied by a Polish gentleman, came to visit Mr. de La Bassecourt, governor or commander of the city of Douai for the king of Spain, who kept him for eight or ten days to entertain him and listen to him reason about his philosophy, with which he had fallen in love. The governor, applying himself above all to entertaining his host by the diversity of the objects he presented to him, had not forgotten to procure for him the company of the most skilled people of the university of the place at his table, in order to tie between them curious and learned conversations after the meal. One of the most renowned was a small hunchbacked doctor named François Silvius, a skilled Thomist, one of the great theologians of his century, and the first ornament of the university since the death of Estius. He was from Braine-le-Comte on the extremities of Hainaut and Brabant: he had occupied the royal and ordinary chair of theology for about eighteen years; and his death only preceded that of Mr. Descartes by a year and a few weeks. Mr. de La Bassecourt having invited this doctor to come and eat at his house every evening as long as Mr. Descartes would be there, procured for himself a pleasure in their conversations, of which he made it an honor for the rest of his days. Mr. Descartes spoke little there according to his usual: but what he said was accompanied by a phlegm mixed with cheerfulness. The ardor of the discourse was most often between Doctor Silvius and the Polish gentleman.

The conversation almost always degenerated into a dispute that lasted very late into the night, but never outside the terms of philosophy: and the heat almost always carried them away to the great diversion of Mr. de La Bassecourt. They always came back to Mr. Descartes as the arbiter of the parties: and he never abused their confidence, nor their submission to his judgment. He began by making both of them come back from the extremities where the dispute had thrown them, and he “ended their difference in a few words, but in a way that satisfied one without dissatisfying the other, because besides the gentleness and politeness that he brought to it, he proposed his thought with an air of doubt rather than of decision.” As much as the modesty of Mr. Descartes pleased Mr. Silvius, as much did this one testify to being little satisfied with the violence with which he felt pushed by the Pole. It was nevertheless this doctor who was the cause that they disputed about philosophy until the departure of Mr. Descartes. For notwithstanding the resolution he had taken from the first day of no longer wanting to commit himself with the gentleman, he did not fail to return the next day with new arguments to repair the bad success of the day before: and although he always returned making new protestations of no longer entering the lists, the politenesses of Mr. Descartes joined to the desire to at least once get a reason from the Pole, made him forget his protestation; and it was only the farewell of Mr. Descartes that was capable of finally making him keep the promise he renewed every day of no longer returning to the charge.

Descartes, filled with the friendships of Mr. de La Bassecourt, returned to Holland towards the beginning of the winter.

But he only remained in Amsterdam as long as he needed to look for a place of retreat, where he could give himself some sort of establishment without moving too far from the amenities of life. He believed he had finally found what he wished for in North Holland near the city of Alkmaar in the county of Egmond. There were then in this county three villages of the name of Egmond, of which there are still two remaining today in a fairly flourishing state. The one that now appears almost entirely ruined was called Egmond Sur Mer or Op-Zée, to speak with those of the country. It was located to the west of Alkmaar, but the waves with which its houses have been beaten have so mined it that there now remain only a few huts to serve as a retreat for fishermen. The place is not in reputation of being very healthy or very convenient, so Mr. Descartes never stayed there. At half a league from there, but always to the west of Alkmaar is another Egmond, which is called T’Huis Te “Egmond, or Egmond-the-House and very close is the hamlet of Hoef, which is a place of pleasure because of the beautiful gardens that are maintained there.” Mr. Descartes has sometimes taken his lodging in this Egmond, and even in the hamlet of Hoef, which is considered to be part of this Egmond. But his main residence and the place of the longest stay that he made in Holland is Egmond, formerly surnamed De Abdie, because of a famous Benedictine abbey that flourished there before the revolutions of religion in the United Provinces.

This Egmond to which it seems that the surname of Binnen is given today has always passed for the most beautiful village of North Holland. It is to the southwest of Alkmaar, a league and a half from this city, and a quarter of a league from Egmond-De-Hoef. Mr. Descartes having been informed of the amenities that are found there for life went to lodge there from the end of the year 1637.

He was mainly led to prefer this place to any other in the country by the consideration of his religion, for the exercise of which he did not believe he should be content with an internal worship. Now there was in Egmond a church for Catholics, with which this village was filled: and the exercise of our religion was entirely free and all public there. What also contributed to stopping him there was the neighborhood of Alkmaar and Haarlem, where there was likewise a large number of Catholics, and among others some priests of his friends, good people, very known and very loved in the country, making a profession of mathematics, and of the other sciences. After having therefore established his correspondences in Haarlem, and in Amsterdam, he shut himself up in Egmond De Binnen to taste the pleasures of solitude that he had so sought until then, and that he had not yet found so accomplished elsewhere.

While he was occupied with his move, he left to the learned and to the curious the leisure to read his book. One of those who appeared first to give him an account of it was the doctor Fromond, or Froimond.

This man who was about nine years older than Mr. Descartes, and who died three years after him, had already acquired a beautiful reputation in the Catholic Netherlands both for philosophy, and for theology, which he had taught with a lot of sufficiency, “both in Antwerp and in Louvain.” He was actually a royal professor of the holy scriptures in the university of this last city for about two years, that is to say, since the promotion of Jansenius his predecessor to the bishopric of Ypres. Mr. Descartes who knew this doctor by reputation, having learned that he was the one who had best written on meteors in the judgment of skilled people, was not content with seeing the work he had had printed in five books in Antwerp as early as the year 1631: but to give him marks of his esteem he had sent him a copy of what he had just had printed. Mr. Fromond did not believe he could better recognize his politenesses, than by putting himself incessantly to the reading of this new book, of which he knew how to make the price sufficiently valid. He even collected the difficulties that stopped him, and the points on which he could not agree with the author, according to the request that Mr. Descartes had made him. He put them in the form of objections, which he sent him immediately. Mr. Descartes received them before his departure for Egmond; and he was surprised by the diligence of a man who had a lot of occupation elsewhere. He received at the same time other objections concerning the movement of the heart from Plempius his friend, a professor of medicine in Louvain, who had made himself the intermediary of the commerce that he was beginning to have with Fromond.

Mr. Descartes wrote back to Plempius in a way that made it appear that he apprehended to find marks of too great a precipitation in his remarks and in those of Fromond, given the little time they had had to read his book, besides that several of his other readers had told him that one could not make an equitable judgment of it “until after having read and re-read it several times.”

Nevertheless, he testified to being very obliged to Plempius for the applause that his book received in his country, and to Fromond for the favor he had done him of writing him his feelings about it: imagining that “in the judgment of so great a man, and so well versed in the matters he treated, he would find as if gathered the opinions of many others.” In order not to abuse the honor that Fromond was doing him, he wanted to imitate his diligence, and respond on the spot to the main objections that he had proposed to him “concerning various places of his method, of his dioptrics, and of his meteors.” He addressed his response to Plempius to show it to Fromond, and asked him to let him know if he would have been satisfied with it after having read it, and if he would have nothing to reply to ask for some new clarification. We have this response translated from Latin into our language in the second volume of his letters.

Plempius had no sooner received it than he showed it to Fromond, and then told Mr. Descartes what he had done. Mr. Descartes was surprised to learn that his response had given occasion to Fromond to believe that he would have been a little piqued by his writing, to which he had however in no way thought. He had only been content to imitate his style, and to render him a part of the expressions that he had employed in this writing: in which he was obliged to force his inclination to make himself more conforming to him. He had imagined that Fromond who was accustomed to the practice of the schools of philosophy and theology for exercises, and to the controversy against the Protestants, had wanted to give an air of dispute to the questions that were at issue between them: and it had only been to oblige him, and to condescend to his ways that he had subjected himself to responding to him in a scholastic style, against his humor and his custom; for fear, he said to Plempius, that in supporting his effort too loosely and with too much softness, this game would be less pleasant to him. And as those who wage war against each other at chess or checkers are not for that reason less good friends, he continues, even to the point that the address in this game is often the cause or the occasion of the friendship that is contracted, and that is maintained between several people: thus I tried to deserve his benevolence by my response.

Mr. Descartes was not deceived in the judgment he made of the affair he had with Fromond. It was an occasion for them to know each other more particularly, and to tie between them a close friendship, which they took care to maintain by mutual recommendations, until the death of Mr. Descartes. Here is what he wrote about it a few months later to Mr. de Zuytlichem who had heard of their dispute. For Mr. Fromond, he said, the little difference “that was between him and me did not deserve that you should know about it: and there could have been so few faults in the copy that you have seen of it, that it was enough to entirely disfigure what you could have found there less disagreeable.” Besides, this dispute passed between him and me like a game of chess. We remained good friends after the game was finished, and we no longer send each other anything but compliments.

Mr. Descartes made no less a case of the objections that Plempius had made him on the movement of the heart. They contained according to him all that one could reasonably object to him on this matter: and because he had made them to him as a friend “to better discover the truth,” and in a sincere design to learn, he believed he should respond to him in the same style that he had written to him, and the thing was then terminated to the satisfaction of both.

In effect, Mr. Descartes then counted Plempius among one of his best friends, and Plempius did not dissimulate to anyone the honor and the advantage that he believed he received from this friendship. He was a native of Amsterdam, and his baptismal name was Vopiscus Fortunatus. He was five years and almost nine months younger than Mr. Descartes, whom he survived by almost twenty-two years. He had done the greater part of his studies in the Catholic Netherlands, and in Italy; and had been made a doctor of medicine in Bologna.

Having returned to the country, he was practicing medicine in Amsterdam, when in 1633 he was called by the Infanta Isabella, governess of the Spanish Netherlands, to profess this science in Louvain in a chair of the university. The friendship he had for Mr. Descartes was older than that of Fromond: it also seemed to end sooner. We will see at least in the rest of this history that Plempius caused an alteration there a few years later.

He had no sooner read Mr. Descartes’s book, than he wanted to procure for others the satisfaction that he had received from it. It was with this view that he lent the book to Father Ciermans who was actually teaching mathematics in the Jesuits’ college in Louvain.

This father who had been born in ’s-Hertogenbosch “was barely older than Mr. Descartes.” He had only made the four solemn vows in the company for eighteen months. He since became disgusted with the profession of human sciences, and his zeal for the propagation of the gospel made him ask for the mission for China, where his superiors allowed him to go and preach: but he died in Portugal in the year 1648. Mr. Descartes had no habit with this father: but having learned from Plempius that he had undertaken the reading of his book, he told him that he would be very happy if this father wanted to make his remarks about it, and put them in writing: because, he said, it was not to be believed that anything but good and well-concerted could come from any of this company; and that the stronger the objections that would be proposed to him, the more agreeable they would be to him.

In effect, having no other passion in all that he wrote than to discover the truth, and not believing himself capable of succeeding alone, he sought, so to speak, adversaries rather than approvers, so that the obligation to respond to them and to examine their objections would make him more and more exact, and would open his eyes on what he would not have been able to discover before. I wish, he testified to Mr. de Zuytlichem, that several attack me in the same way that Mr. Fromondus, Doctor Plempius, and some others have done; and I will not complain about the time that I will employ to respond to them, until I have enough to fill an entire volume. For I persuade myself that it is a good enough way to show if the things I have written can be refuted or not. I would have desired above all that the reverend Jesuit fathers would have wanted to be of the number of the opponents: and they had made me hope for it by letters from La Flèche, from Louvain, and from Lille. But I have recently received a letter from one of those of La Flèche, where I find as much approval as I could wish for from anyone, even to assure me that he desires nothing in what I have wanted to explain, but only in what I have not wanted to write: from where he takes occasion to ask me for my physics and my metaphysics with great instance. And because I know the correspondence and the union that is between those of this order, the testimony of a single one is sufficient to make me hope that I will have them all on my side.

Father Ciermans made some observations on meteors, with some reflections on Descartes’s geometry.

He held his objections on the colors of the rainbow through the intermediary of Plempius, without making himself known to him.

Descartes found them so judicious and so solid that he did not put in deliberation to respond to them,

Father Ciermans appeared so satisfied with his response, that he allowed him to have what he had sent him printed with this response, provided that he took care not to express his name there, which he knew well had been indicated to him by Sieur Plempius against their convention.

Descartes had this father thanked for all his politenesses by the same Plempius: and he took from then on the resolution to have all the objections that had been made to him printed by Fromond, Plempius, Ciermans, and by various learned men of France on his dioptrics, his meteors, and his geometry, with his responses to these objections.

But it was necessary to wait until enough had been amassed to fill a just volume: and during this time obstacles arose that thwarted the execution of this design.

If the public has finally recovered something of all that these obstacles and the indifference of Mr. Descartes had thought of making them lose, it is indebted for it to the care of Clerselier, who took the trouble to translate among others the writing of Father Ciermans, with the response that Descartes made to it, and to insert them in the first volume of his letters. One sees there what this father could judge of the rest of the philosophy and of the force of Mr. Descartes’s mind by these essays. What pleased him mainly was this boldness that made that straying from the beaten paths and the ordinary routes, he had the assurance of seeking new lands, and making new discoveries.

It was, according to this father, to discover a new world in philosophy, and to attempt unknown routes, than to reject as Mr. Descartes did all these troops of qualities, to explain without them, and by things that are sensitive, and as if palpable, all that is “most hidden in nature.” One finds there a particular praise of the treatise on geometry of which he claims that the excellence alone would not fail to acquire an immortal glory for its author.

He thinks that this work deserved to be put in a separate volume, instead of being rejected at the end of a book, in which he complained that Mr. Descartes had not done it justice.

He believed that it would have been more appropriate to make it bear the name of “pure mathematics,” than that of “geometry,” because the things that this treatise contains do not belong more to geometry than to arithmetic, and to the other parts of mathematics. He says that the other treatises are filled with an infinity of very beautiful things that recommend themselves enough, and that do not need anyone’s approval to make known the greatness of their price; that of all the other matters even which appear there to be subject to more dispute, and to a greater diversity of opinions, he has not found one that was not worthy of a very particular praise, both for the beauty of the invention, and for the novelty of the reasons of which he serves to explain and clarify them. He had nevertheless remarked there some places where he “would have wished” a little more truth, or at least more light to recognize it. To indicate some to him, he had chosen the discourse on the rainbow, which is the place where it seemed to him to have shown the most wit, and on which he wanted to make him some objections. He ends his writing by exhorting Mr. Descartes with all his might not to tire of giving the public from time to time some new testimonies of the beauty of his mind. Mr. Descartes satisfied this father, both on the colors of the rainbow, and on the title of his treatise on geometry: and he promised him all the clarifications that would depend on him, if he did him the favor of proposing to him the other difficulties he would find in his writings.