Descartes

by A. C. Grayling

  The hydrostatics case is the best example of how the friends collaborated, and how therefore Beeckman helped shape Descartes' thought. When Beeckman set Descartes problems he also suggested the rough outline of solutions, which Descartes then proceeded to formulate in detail. The actual person-to-person contact between the two men was restricted to just the first two months (more accurately, six weeks) of their friendship, for Beeckman had to leave Breda at the end of December 1618. Thereafter, the two corresponded. Five of Descartes' letters to Beeckman written during the first half of 1619 are extant. They also testify to the mutual warmth between them. "I shall honour you as the inspiration of my studies and their first author," Descartes told Beeckman in a letter of 23 April 1619. "You are indeed the one who has shaken me out of my nonchalance and made me remember what I had learned and almost forgotten. When my mind strayed far from serious concerns, it was you who guided it back down the right path. If, therefore, by accident I propose something which is not contemptible, you have every right to claim it for yourself. For my part I shall not forget to send it to you, not only so you can profit from it, but so that you can correct it."

  In one of the first letters Descartes sent Beeckman, written on 24 January of that year, he wrote, "Love me, and be assured that I would forget the Muses before I forgot you, because they unite me to you by a bond of eternal affection." And as the hydrostatics solutions show, the closeness of the friendship was not only important for stimulating Descartes' intellectual development, but for the direction it took. Beeckman gave Descartes' mind its first impulse towards the arena in which it made its best contributions, even if it was not until a decade later that Descartes settled systematically to the task of working out and writing down his ideas. Descartes was the smitten pupil in this relationship, a fact that is relevant to what happened ten years later—a deeply unpleasant falling-out between them which did Descartes himself little credit.

  Despite its passionate beginnings, however, the friendship moderated to normal temperature almost as rapidly as it had begun, for in the summer of 1619 Descartes left Breda to embark on a curiously circuitous journey to join the army of Maximilian of Bavaria. The occupations and adventures of this journey might have caused him to write less to Beeckman, but they did not dim his now rewakened interest in science and mathematics. He continued to think hard about the latter especially, and to experiment with the compass (a simple two-pronged version of this instrument is familiar to all schoolroom geometers) which mathematicians of the time employed to carry out arithmetical and geometrical calculations. Galileo had published a pamphlet in 1606 to show how compasses can be used to do some of the things that electronic calculators now do (work out interest, extract square roots, and so on). With great ingenuity Descartes saw how different kinds of compasses can be used to deal with a variety of mathematical problems, and— even more significantly—he explained the underlying principles in algebraic terms. (In a letter to Beeckman, Descartes described a compass for trisecting angles, and other compasses for finding conic and cylindrical sections, and most importantly a version of the ancient "mesolabe" compass of Eratosthenes, which he used for finding solutions to cubic equations.5) Despite what the technical commentators on Descartes' work describe as his frequent carelessness, his ingenuity is unquestionable, as is the significance of some of his innovations: for this early work showed he was on the brink of realising that apparently quite diverse kinds of mathematical problems can be handled by reducing them to a form where their solution is attainable by simpler techniques.

  What Descartes was doing in the summer and autumn of 1619 is sketched prospectively in a letter to Beeckman, written at the end of March that year, describing his travel plans. He was going, he said, to join Duke Maximilian's army in Bohemia, but the uncertain state of affairs in Germany meant that he would have to take a very circuitous route, sailing from Amsterdam through the Baltic Sea to Danzig, and going overland thence through Poland to Hungary and Austria, and so on to Bohemia—a long way round the circumference of a large circle. A glance at a contemporary map shows that he thus avoided Protestant German states and kept to Catholic territory—and in the later stages exclusively Habsburg Catholic territory—for all the overland part of the journey. How far south he intended to penetrate into Hungary and Austria, or how far south he actually went, is open to question; perhaps, if the hypothesis that he was an intelligence agent is correct, he had business in Vienna—delivering or collecting documents, or meeting someone. Under this supposition his journey makes sense: he would have been well placed by it to make direct contact with Jesuit minders close to the Habsburg court, either to deliver papers or a verbal report, or to receive instructions or collect papers for delivery elsewhere. He may even have had something to do en route through Poland.

  One suggestive fact is that Descartes was present in Frankfurt on 9 September 1619 to witness the coronation of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II. Why was he there? He neither held office in any government or embassy, nor was he a member of a company of soldiers or cavalrymen detailed to participate in the ceremonies. Possibly he was one of the idle spectators, but if so he made a mighty journey to be one, and nowhere in his writings or in early accounts of his life is there a record of sufficient enthusiasm for Ferdinand II to make it credible that he was some kind of Imperial fan. The most likely explanation is that he was present at the coronation on business, as a non-clerical participant midway between high official and lowly soldier. What capacity could that have been?

  The place and the event—Frankfurt, and the coronation—were full of meaning because, until a few years earlier, Prague had been the centre of Habsburg power, having been chosen as imperial capital by the eccentric Rudolf II, patron of Archimboldo (Rudolf II had died five years before, in 1612). It was now the seat of a challenger to Ferdinand II's authority as Emperor, and rival to his claim to be King of Bohemia also. This rebel, as Ferdinand II saw him, was Frederick, the Elector Palatine, husband of Elizabeth, daughter of the English and Scottish King James I and VI. The Bohemians had declared Frederick their king and protector, and Ferdinand II naturally took exception. But Ferdinand also had larger fish to fry, and saw the Bohemian difficulty as an excellent opportunity to inaugurate his more ambitious project: to reclaim for Catholicism the lands lost to Protestantism.

  The situation into which Descartes thus ventured, travelling right into its very heart, was extraordinarily fraught. Europe trembled on the edge of a precipice, the abyss being religious conflict prosecuted by force of arms. When it tumbled over the result was thirty years of terrible war in which the bloodshed, rapine, waste, and misery were unprecedented in European history, and which ended by laying the foundations for later wars and atrocities from whose consequences, four and a half centuries later, it still suffers.

  This war lasted almost all the rest of Descartes' life. His silence about it in his later writings and letters is deafening: the silence perhaps of someone who had seen enough of it and knew too much about it. Given that Descartes was somehow involved in the early years of the war, that it was a reason why he later chose to live in self-imposed exile in the United Provinces, and that it is the not-so-distant backdrop to all his endeavours and achievements, its beginnings are crucial to understanding Descartes' life story.

  The long roots of the war lay of course in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation themselves, but the proximate causes can be traced to an incident that took place in 1606 (the year that Descartes first went to La Fleche) in the small city of Donauworth on the Rhine. The city's Catholic minority organised a religious procession aimed at defying the Lutheran-dominated city council, which had forbidden public manifestations of their faith. The inevitable result was a riot. The then Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, took the opportunity to reclaim Donauworth for Catholicism by revoking the city's privileges, expelling most Lutherans from the council and appointing a Catholic majority in their place. He thus directly breached the terms of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which ha
d established the principle cuius regio eius religio, "the religion of the ruler is the religion of the subjects."The principle merely formalised what had been the de facto situation in Germany before 1555, but its official recognition brought an uneasy peace after years of war— and in addition, though incidentally, gave both Catholic and Protestant princes a strengthened hand against whoever happened to be holding the imperial office.

  Rudolf II also decided to remove Donauworth from the "Swabian circle"—a "circle" being an administrative district of the Empire, of which there were ten in all—into the "Bavarian circle." The director of the Swabian circle was a Lutheran; the director of the Bavarian circle was none other than the formidable Duke Maximilian, Descartes' commander-to-be and one of the Counter-Reformation's most zealous champions.

  Rudolf's extremely provocative measures angered the Empire's Lutheran and Calvinist princes. Despite their internal differences of opinion over doctrine and other matters, they therefore decided to form a self-protective league, the "Evangelical Union." It was formally declared in 1608, with Frederick IV the Elector Palatine as its leader. He was, on the face of things, a natural choice for this role; he was a Calvinist eager to resist Catholic encroachments, and he was an important prince because he held electoral office (there were seven electors who, putatively, chose a new emperor when the previous one died, although the Habsburgs' hold on the office was so complete that the title never left the family). But his son Frederick V was a bad choice to succeed him, because he was timid and not especially bright, and therefore relied heavily on the advice of others, especially his chief counsellor, Christian of Anhalt. Had Christian himself been more astute, the younger Frederick's reliance on him would have been no bad thing. But for all his charm and great— too great—self-confidence, Christian of Anhalt was not equal to the dangers of the time, which he exacerbated by his ambition. Either the Elector of Brandenburg or the Elector of Saxony would have been better leaders for the Evangelical Union; but they were both Lutherans who disliked Calvinists as much as they disliked Catholics—this was especially true of Elector John George of Saxony—and some historians argue that neither of these Electors anyway thought the situation was as grave as Frederick V and other Protestant rulers made out.

  Another intriguing detail from the point of view of Descartes' later involvement in these affairs is that Henri IV of France had promised in 1608 to act as the Evangelical Union's patron—not out of religious motives (he was then in his second and final phase as a Catholic) but in order to preserve the balance of power against the Habsburgs. This placed Descartes' home country against the power supported by the Jesuits. But religious affiliation was then the determining factor in loyalties; to think in terms of national loyalties would be an anachronism, even if something different— ethnic and linguistic affiliations—often counted for something. Descartes, accordingly, might more naturally have sided with the Jesuit view of the Catholic cause than with the political interests of France.

  In response to the formation of the Protestant princes'Evangelical Union, the Catholic princes formed their own league whose leader, naturally enough, was Duke Maximilian. The Catholic League was officially sponsored by Rudolf II's cousin, Philip III of Spain. Rudolf II, despite his actions in Donauworth, had to appear to be largely neutral towards both the Catholic and the Protestant interests in the Empire, in an effort not to polarise matters too far, which is one reason why he left the role of sponsor to his Habsburg cousin. But in any case, by this time, because Rudolf's eccentricity and lack of grip had gone too far, his brother Matthias was effectively serving as Emperor, though with not noticeably greater skill.

  Polarisation was the inevitable result of the formation of two leagues so opposed in temperament, outlook and belief. When the Duke of Julich and Cleves died, the two leagues quarrelled not so much over which prince should inherit the territory as which religion should inherit it. The deceased duke had been Catholic, but his nearest heirs by blood were both Lutherans—Philip Ludwig of Neuberg, and the Elector of Brandenburg. To add to the problems, the duchy of Julich and Cleves sat astride the tenuous land link between the Spanish Habsburg possessions of Milan and Brussels (the "Spanish Road" through the heart of Europe, supplying the Spanish Netherlands with goods and troops). The Catholics were therefore very anxious not to lose it to a Protestant prince.

  In this bristling situation the Evangelical Union looked to France's Henri IV, the Catholic League looked to Spain's Philip III, and war loomed. But then Henri IV was conveniently assassinated, his heart going to Descartes' school, La Fleche, for burial. His widow Marie de Medici became regent (Louis XIII being too young to reign) and immediately effected a rapprochement with Spain, at a stroke removing the Evangelical Union's main support. In those circumstances the Union saw little future in standing up to the Catholic League. But almost immediately another twist occurred: Philip Ludwig of Neuberg, taking a leaf out of the freshly murdered Henri IV's book, decided to convert to Catholicism and to offer to marry Duke Maximilian's daughter. The way was thus paved for a compromise: the duchy was partitioned by the terms of the Treaty of Xanten in 1614, Philip Ludwig receiving Julich for his son, and Cleves going to the Elector of Brandenburg.

  This vertiginous series of events did not however remove the threat of war, it merely delayed it. All that was required for a great conflict to occur was a trigger, which came just four years later, when Descartes was in Breda and the intelligence agents of Christian of Anhalt reported their belief that the Empire would collapse when Rudolf II's successor, Matthias, died. Christian's agents thought this because the divisions created by the ineptitude and eccentricity of Rudolf II had not been managed, and certainly not overcome, by anything Matthias succeeded in doing during his short reign since 1612. The Empire's sprawling possessions ranged not only over the German electorates and duchies but also Austria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Tyrol, Styria, Bohemia and Hungary—an inchoate jigsaw of languages, ethnicities and faiths. Much of Hungary was in Ottoman hands, and the rest was an almost wholly independent fiefdom under its Magyar nobility. Bohemia presented the most complex problem of all: with its dependent provinces of Moravia, Lusatia and Silesia it had four different capital cities and therefore four different parliaments (called Diets). The population of Bohemia and its provinces was predominantly Slav and Protestant, though with a mixture of both Protestant and Catholic Germans, and its monarchy was elective. This last factor was a particular irritant to the Habsburgs because they had to pay scrupulous attention to local traditions in order to keep the Bohemian crown in Habsburg hands.

  When Descartes undertook his circuitous journey from Breda to Frankfurt in 1619, it was through some of these unsettled fragments of the Habsburgs' eastern holdings, Silesia and the Austrian-dependent provinces among them.

  None of the Holy Roman emperors in the decades before 1618 had succeeded in establishing unified control over the whole of their heterogeneous and fractious empire, nor even genuine authority in any of the self-governing parts. Sometimes they opted for repression, as Rudolf II had done in Donauworth, and sometimes for concession, as when Rudolf gave a Letter of Majesty to the Bohemian Diets reinforcing their independence. Both repression and concession weakened the Empire further. So when Emperor Matthias died, Christian of Anhalt—chancellor to the Protestant Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate—thought the hour had come to take advantage. It was a mistake; he had not reckoned with the man chosen by Matthias as his successor: Ferdinand of Styria, the new Emperor Ferdinand II, whose coronation Descartes attended in Frankfurt in September 1619.

  Descartes' journey to Bohemia was a direct result of a determination this new emperor had formed, long before his coronation, to deal with the situation in Prague. His predecessor Matthias had angered the Bohemians by appointing Catholics to leading posts on the Council of Regents there. The new regents' first act was to require that all Bohemian religious bodies should revert to the terms of their original foundation, thus at a stroke returning all Protestan
t churches to Catholic control, complete with their endowments and other property. The Bohemian Protestants immediately rebelled. On 22 May 1618 they marched on Prague Castle, took the two leading members of the Council of Regents, by name Martinitz and Slavata, and threw them out of a window. This was the famous "Defenestration of Prague." The two regents fell twenty feet into a pile of rubbish, so the only injury they sustained was to their dignity. (Catholics put it about that they had been caught and gently lowered by angels.)

  The damage to Bohemia was far greater than that to its erstwhile regents. By manhandling the Emperor's representatives the Bohemians had impugned his authority. Realizing that there was no going back, they went forward. They set up a board of thirty deputies to administer the kingdom, called on the dependent provinces to join them in a new confederation, and raised an army. They issued a demand to the Emperor that the provinces should henceforth be autonomous and that all offices should go to Protestants. These were not terms a Habsburg emperor was likely to accept.

  Matthias died in March 1619, and the process of Ferdinand's official election began. He had the three archbishop-electors in his pocket, and he had his own vote as supposed King of Bohemia. If the Protestant electors of Saxony, Brandenburg and the Palatinate had supported an alternative candidate, the Thirty Years War just might have been averted. But there was no obvious alternative to Ferdinand, and the three Protestant electors—one Calvinist, two Lutheran—were, as usual, at odds with one another. It was an expression of their impotence and disunity that they all eventually sided with tradition and voted for Ferdinand.