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remuneration it might bring. He always had the pride of family and tradition which this reveals, and this personal pride extended even to the dress befitting his rank, though that rank did not extend beyond that of the smaller landed gentry or the 'noblesse de la robe.' His wigs were made in Paris, and he took the trouble to give careful directions about their manufacture. He always wore a scarf, sword, belt and feather, whether in Paris or the country; and his stockings were of silk.

It was on this early venture into active life that Descartes met one who was to be a friend who influenced him greatly-Isaac Beeckman, Principal of the College of Dordrecht. 'I slept and you awakened me,' he said to Beeckman; and what higher testimony could man give to man? M. Adam compares him to an elder brother who helped in the direction of those studies which applied mathematics to physics and physics to mathematics. Whatever Beeckman's merits may be from the point of view of posterity, he deserves to be remembered for the help he gave to the young philosopher-soldier or soldierphilosopher of twenty-two.

While with the army at the commencement of the great war, and possibly at Ulm on the Danube, where he most likely made the acquaintance of Faulhaber the mathematician, Descartes experienced that wonderful spiritual experience which resembled the conversion' of his great contemporary Pascal. In a warm room where he had settled during the winter-time in Germany in order to give himself to study, he had strange dreams hard to understand, but such as brought him to a consciousness of sin; smitten with remorse he repented of his past life and vowed to make the search for truth the object of his life. It was at this period, too, that he came into touch with the Order of Rosicrucians, of which Faulhaber was a member, and with which he was accused (falsely, if we are to judge by his protestations) of having some connexion at a time when this was considered hardly less than a crime.

The following years of his life, 1620–29, were occupied in the search he had vowed to make. He tried hard to rid himself of his prejudices by the study of mathematics and by reading in the great book of the world.' We do not know whether he fought in the battle of Prague.

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Had he done so, he would curiously enough have taken arms against the father of his future friend and pupil, Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick, Elector Palatine, and Elizabeth, the Queen of Hearts. But of soldiering the future philosopher soon had enough. He returned to France after some further travel, and then made his way to Italy, where he observed the vow made on the occasion of his awakening in Germany, and visited the shrine of Our Lady at Loretto. As M. Adam points out, he was by so doing merely following in Montaigne's footsteps, for Montaigne did the same, not omitting any portion of the ordinary ceremonial. It was the custom of the country and represented traditions in which both men had been bred and with which neither formally broke. It is easy for us to point out that neither of these men was a Christian, in the sense at least that the word then possessed-Montaigne, the man of the world and sceptical exponent of common-sense, perhaps even less so than Descartes, who taught men to doubt in order that they might know the better. Consistency is a virtue of no age or time; our actions are guided by a hundred motives besides those that we advocate by our lips; and if this is so in these days, can we expect it to have been otherwise in those far-off and difficult times?

Subsequently to his 'Wanderjahre,' three years were passed by Descartes more or less in Paris, where he led the life of a young man of fashion in a time of gaiety and intellectual enthusiasm. He read, he listened to music, he fenced, and was even attracted by the gaming table. There is an unauthorised tale of a lady for whom he had a certain regard, 'so mediocre in intellect that her merit could not possibly have affected the great philosopher,' as the early account so rashly states; also of another lady of 'birth and merit,' Mme du Rosay by name, who, however, seems to have felt that for the young man philosophy held the first place. Possibly, being by no means plain, she was hardly flattered by being told that no beauty was comparable to that of Truth,' and that 'a beautiful woman, a good book, and a perfect preacher were the things most impossible to discover in the world.' In any case she seems to have felt that she had little encouragement to proceed with the acquaintance. Paris was at that time the home of

atheists and free-thinkers, as the literature of the day shows, though it was also the centre of a literary life that has seldom been equalled. The age of Corneille, Molière, of the Précieux, of Balzac and Voiture, was opening. Balzac at least was a friend and correspondent of Descartes; but we do not know how far the latter figured in the salons of the gay capital. Scholasticism in these days was on its defence, and new ideas were being rigorously suppressed by Parliament on the requisition of the Sorbonne; this, M. Adam thinks, may have influenced Descartes' resolution to leave the country. In any case he was probably dissatisfied with the life he was living, though this was a time when he made many friends-some literary, but most of them scientific. The friends then made were indeed his constant correspondents during his exile in a country which he already knew, and whose climate suited him better than did the sunny Italian skies.

Holland in the 17th century was a centre not only of commerce and wealth, but also of letters, science and art. Leyden had a university already, but young schools and academies were springing up in many of the little towns -in Utrecht (in 1636 this school became a university), in Breda, and even in the busy commercial town of Amsterdam. It was a time, indeed, when commerce and science were associated in a remarkable degree, for the merchants were men of taste and culture, the patrons not only of Rembrandt and Hals, but also of the publications of the famous Elzevier press. Books like those of Galileo, hardly to be had in the country from which they emerged, were easily procured in Holland. And Descartes was careful to ascertain that the services of a priest of his own religion were to be had in that Protestant country, though it was not tolerance that he sought for so much as solitude and calm. That this was to be found one can judge even now by visiting the quaint little towns and villages like Franeker in Friesland, the first of many of Descartes' abodes in Holland. To this day, if one sought peace, one could hardly find its externals at least more clearly present than in these simple communities of Dutch peasants. Friends of a different sort were of course to be had amongst the learned, and some opponents

too before very long. Constantin Huygens, secretary to the Prince of Orange, a courtier and one of the beaux esprits of the day, was amongst the former; and his family, of whom the great mathematician of later days was one, were included in the number of the philosopher's acquaintance. Their country-house near the Hague must have been an agreeable place of resort. In Amsterdam, also, well supplied with butchers' shops, Descartes sometimes lived in order to find material for his anatomical studies, and at Endegeest, near Leyden, he had a charming abode, a portion of which is still to be seen in the midst of an asylum for the insane. It was in scenes like these that Descartes composed and published his Method' and 'Meditations.' But publication, both scientific and philosophical, was delayed owing to a matter which was agitating Europe.

On June 23, 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition for his 'Dialogue on the two greatest Systems of the World'-those of Ptolemy and Copernicus. The time-honoured doctrine of an immovable earth, in the centre of the universe, round which the firmament turned, was threatened, and the Holy Office felt the time had come to interfere. Now the movements of the earth had formed an integral part of Descartes' theory of physics, and he found himself to his alarm liable to a similar condemnation. No personal injury threatened him in the land he had chosen as the home of his exile; why should he have been so disturbed? M. Adam is clear that it was the ultimate triumph of his ideas that really troubled him, rather than any personal fears. He wanted them to gain entrance, not only to the enlightened spirits, but also to the universities and schools. He hoped to have on his side not only his old friends the Jesuit fathers, but the professors of Louvain and even Douai. What object was there, then, in publishing his 'World,' which would certainly set all these influential persons by the ears? The suppression of this, his first important work (it appeared finally in another form), was not the greatest harm that was done by Descartes' fears. As M. Adam justly remarks, through the sentence of the Inquisition we are deprived of the true Descartes. The Church brought about a moral intimidation which really retarded the progress of science and philosophy for the

time. Science was compelled to disown her findings. The philosophic figures of the century, the new philosophy that was to carry its influence right down to the present day, suffered a check. In point of fact, Descartes found means of presenting his ideas in a modified form, so that he should not have reason to feel anxious about the results that they might bring about. He carefully explained that his system of the heavens resembled that of Tycho-Brahé, rather than that of Copernicus, thereby effecting a sort of half-hearted compromise. But so far as his theories of the world were concerned, they never again displayed the absolute spontaneity that they would otherwise have possessed.

His first actual publication took the form of 'Essays on Dioptric [which M. Adam thinks might have been called the Telescope], Meteors and Geometry,' with the ever-famous 'Discourse on Method,' an autobiography as well as a discourse, as their preface. This appeared in 1637, and the following years were taken up with the usual polemics that in those days followed the publication of a notable book on controversial subjects. It was three years later that the Meditations' were ready for the printer, and it was written in Latin, whereas the first work had been in French, so that anyone-'even women' -might read and understand it. The Meditations' had been sent round the learned of the day for purposes of criticism, and amongst those who responded were Arnauld, of Port Royal fame, and the English Hobbes. With the latter Descartes, of course, had little in common, but Arnauld-the great Arnauld-was an opponent for whom he had an almost exaggerated respect; and it was with him that he discussed that never-failing topic, the true meaning of the Eucharist. In 1644 there followed Descartes' other great work, the 'Principles,' though meanwhile he had been engaged in interminable disputes with theologians and philosophers. This book is a complete scientific statement of how the world and all its manifestations in nature were capable of explanation by methods which were at least rational and possible, however strange they may seem to us. Descartes' idea always was to have a theory of how the operations of nature might be rationally carried on, rather than to trust to the vague surmises and traditional

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