Descartes

by A. C. Grayling

  The to-and-fro of Descartes' unhappy thoughts about the affair are here obvious to see. He is going to keep his thoughts forever secret; he does not want to offend the Church; how can the Church dare to pronounce on such matters; they do not even allow the hypothesis to be advanced as a merely explanatory device; yet . . . after all . . . it is only the Inquisition, not the Pope or Council which has condemned the Copernican view, so maybe one day his own views will see the light of day . . . Back and forth Descartes went, fearing and hoping, desiring Mersenne's advice, reassurance, help, protection and sympathy.

  Months later, in August, he was still harping on the matter. By this time he had seen a copy of Galileo's book, brought to him by Beeckman—now on restored terms—though Descartes only had thirty hours to leaf through it, because Beeckman was en route to Dordrecht. He disagreed with parts, and found that other parts agreed with his own views. To Mersenne he said, "I must admit, however, that I have come across some of my own thoughts in his book."

  Although Descartes' initial scare quietened somewhat, enough to excerpt parts of Le Monde and put them together with his writings on method to constitute the celebrated Discourse on Method, issued in 1637 as his first published work, in 1640 he was still nervous that the Church would discover that he harboured Copernican views, and persecute him for it. In December of that year he iterated all his anxieties to Mersenne, and all his customary protestations about being "zealous for the Catholic religion" and keen not to "hazard its censure, because believing very firmly in the infallibility of the Church"38—but by then he was considering publishing an account of his scientific views anyway, for reasons that were becoming stronger than his fear of censure.

  What makes Descartes' reaction to Galileo's condemnation the more surprising and, one has to say, unedifying, is that other savants, among them Gassendi and Mersenne himself, went ahead and published pro-Copernican works in the years immediately after the Inquisition's judgement. Indeed, in 1634, even as Descartes wrote one after another frightened letter to him, Mersenne published Galileo's Mechanics and—mirabile dictu—a summary of the Dialogue itself.39

  7

  Francine

  Descartes was without question a man of scientific bent. On Sunday 15 October 1634 he wrote in the flyleaf of a book that on that day he had conceived a child with the serving maid Helena Jans in the room he rented in the house of an Englishman called Thomas Sargent in Amsterdam's Westerkirkstraat. The confidence of this announcement—it proved true-—is striking. Baillet was in a dilemma, having thus to report his hero's commission of the sin of fornication with a maidservant, and not just that but the subsequent production of a bastard child; so he ascribed the aberration— as he thus implied it to be—to Descartes' scientific interest in anatomy.

  In the register of baptisms in the Reformed Church at Deventer (no Catholic church being available), on 7 August 1635, the arrival was recorded of Francine, daughter to Helena Jans and "Rener Jochems" (Rener son of Jochems). There is no evidence, documentary or circumstantial, that Descartes married Helena Jans, but later enemies who were Catholics accused him of apostasy because he had married a Calvinist in a Protestant church, the claim doubtless being a fabrication from the fact that he had his child baptised in such a church.

  And as it happens, Francine was not an illegitimate child despite the fact that Descartes did not marry her mother, for the law of the United Provinces stated that it was enough for children to be legitimate that their fathers acknowledged them.

  Helena Jans was not the only servant in whom Descartes took an interest. Quite differently, he became fond of a manservant called Jean Gillot, and taught him mathematics so well that Gillot eventually became the head of an engineering college in Leiden.

  At this time Descartes reconnected with the man he would describe as "at once my translator, my apologist, and my mediator." Claude Clerselier was one of the chief sources of our information about Descartes' life. He was an ardent admirer, and as Descartes' remark implies, he played a significant role in disseminating Cartesian ideas during Descartes' lifetime—but even more so after his death, by editing and publishing his letters, seeing unpublished works into print, and collecting and making available materials for use by the earliest biographers, not least among them Baillet.

  Clerselier had made a good marriage, for his wife Ann de Virlorieux brought him a handsome dowry. It was a family-arranged marriage; he was sixteen and she twenty-two when it took place, but it proved happy, and they had thirteen children. He was a counsellor in the Parlement of Paris, and later served as proxy treasurer-general of the Auvergne when the official holder of that office, Pierre Chanut, went as France's ambassador to Sweden. (Chanut figured large in Descartes' story too, for he arranged for Descartes to go to Sweden as a guest of its monarch, Queen Christina, in 1649.) Both Clerselier and Chanut knew Descartes from his Paris years, and thereafter Mersenne kept them in touch with his work. When Clerselier became involved in translating and editing Descartes' work he thereby became closer to it and to Descartes than Mersenne had ever been.

  The significance of Clerselier to the story of Descartes' excursion into paternity is that he left a record of a conversation he and Descartes had about the matter. As reported by Baillet (who was always concerned to present Descartes in the best light, at a time when fathering children out of wedlock was frowned upon) the purport of the conversation was as follows: "The mistake [Descartes] made once in his life contrary to the honour of his celibacy . . . is less proof of an inclination to women than of weakness. God quickly raised him above it, so that the recollection of his fall could be the source of constant reproof to him, and so that his repentance would be a healthful remedy, elevating to his soul. By this glorious restitution he could return to a perfectly Christian philosophy [and] innocence of life."1

  Whatever the real source of this pious exclamation—and Clerselier was a pious man quite capable of lacquering his hero's character to protect it in the eyes of posterity—it does not quite sit with Descartes' proud and independent character, nor his public acknowledgement in the baptismal register of Deventer that he had fathered a child. Nor does it square with the fact that he delighted in Francine, and loved her, as events proved.

  It is humanly improbable that Descartes only ever had sexual intercourse once, even if his flyleaf entry about Francine's conception is possible evidence to that effect—though how he knew that successful conception had taken place is anyone's guess. As Watson tellingly observed, as a scientist Descartes would most likely have wished to repeat any experiment he undertook, and several times at that, to see whether the results were uniform.2 I agree.

  Glimpses of Descartes as a family man are few but tantalising, and in respect of Helena Jans a little ambiguous. In a letter written in August 1637 he set out arrangements for Helena and Francine to join him in new lodgings. His hostess was, he wrote, perfectly happy to have the little girl (Descartes referred to her as "my niece") to come and live with him, "and that we would easily agree on the price because it was indifferent to her whether she had one child more or less to take care of"3 As Descartes' hostess was in need of a servant he also suggested that Helena hasten to leave her present employment "before St. Victor's Day," this being the traditional date for hiring and firing servants, and to come to work where he was lodging.

  What this suggests is that Descartes and Helena did not live as a couple, although they liked to be together if they could, and that he was fond of his little daughter and wished to have her with him. If Helena worked as a maid in the house where Descartes and his "niece" lived, Helena could be near her daughter and she and Descartes could continue to engage, pace Clerselier's pieties, in anatomical experiments, without marrying or openly living in sin.

  The evidence of affection between Descartes and Helena, apart from the fact that they shared a daughter, lies in a remark, touching in its implications, that occurred at the end of the letter just quoted. Descartes concluded it by saying,"the letter I have written to
Helena is not urgent, and I would prefer that rather than giving it to your servant to take to her, you keep it until she comes to find you, which I believe she will do at the end of this week to give you the letters she has written to me."4 This shows that she was literate, and wrote him letters, and that he wrote to her; and this is two years after Francine's birth, evidence of a settled domestic tie.

  In a letter written a year later, in August 1638, Descartes described to Mersenne a scene of domestic pleasure, which strongly appealed to Watson's lively imagination: a father with his small daughter on his knee, clapping his hands to make an echo bounce back from a corner of a garden filled with tall weeds. The little girl runs to see what is there, but of course finds nothing; she runs back; herself tries unsuccessfully to provoke the echo; and laughs with delight when her father repeats the trick.5 By this time Descartes was living in the country near Santpoort, and had a garden where just such scenes doubtless often occurred. The pleasure his daughter gave him must have been enhanced by signs of intelligence, because Descartes had ambitious plans for Francine; he had by then begun to make arrangements for her to be educated in France with a Madame du Tronchet, whom Baillet says was a distant relation of Descartes and a highly respectable lady ("the mother," Baillet breathlessly assured his readers, "of an ecclesiastic")

  On the first of September 1640 Descartes was in Leiden, engaged in discussions with his publisher, when a messenger arrived posthaste from Santpoort saying that Francine was dangerously ill. He rushed home as fast as he could, to find her covered in a rash with a raging temperature. It was scarlet fever.6 This illness, caused by streptococcal bacteria in the throat, is now easily curable but was then a desperately serious childhood disease. With its short incubation period of just one to two days it struck quickly and violendy, first with fever and a sore throat, then with a sandpapery rash that started on the neck and chest and spread to the whole body. Descartes had long nourished an amateur interest in medicine, hoping that his infallible method for acquiring knowledge would eventually reveal to him the secret of longevity. But as he had told Mersenne in a letter written in February 1639, he had never been able to cure a fever.

  And so it proved again. After eight days of illness, on 7 September 1640, Francine died. She was aged just five. A few months later, in a letter to Alphonse Pollot, Descartes wrote that he was not the kind of philosopher who thinks that men should not cry, and added that he knew what he was speaking about, because he had just lost two of the people who had been dearest to him.7 Baillet said that Francine's death was "the greatest sorrow that Descartes ever experienced in his life,"8 and one can well believe it.

  "Two people": might Helena also have succumbed to the fevers that, as Descartes reported to Mersenne, raged in the late summer of 1640? After this time there is no more mention of her in his correspondence, or in any other sources; she vanishes from view. Descartes' father had also recently died; so had his sister; and he might have meant either of them by this remark. But he had seen neither of them for years, and had maintained little contact with either. The possibility that he meant Helena is a real one, and deepens the tragedy.9

  Descartes' letter to Pollot, written in January 1641, was occasioned by the fact that Pollot had himself just suffered a bereavement—his brother had died—and Descartes' aim was consolation.

  I have just learned the sad news of your loss, and though I do not undertake to say anything in this letter which could have any great power to soften your pain, I still cannot refrain from trying, so as to let you know at least that I share what you feel. I am not one of those who think that tears and sadness are appropriate only for women, and that to appear a stout-hearted man one must force oneself to put on a calm expression at all times. Not long ago I suffered the loss of two people who were very close to me, and I found that those who wanted to shield me from sadness only increased it, whereas I was consoled by the kindness of those who I saw to be touched by my grief. So I am sure that you will listen to me better if I do not try to check your tears than if I tried to steer you away from a feeling which I consider quite justified.10

  But Descartes also believed that consolation should be accompanied by encouragement to fortitude, for life goes on. It is clear, from the letters he wrote to Mersenne and others after the grief of the previous September, that he found his best consolation in work, and had returned to it after some weeks with gratitude for the relief it gave him.

  Nevertheless [he therefore continued] there should be moderation in your feelings, and while it would be barbaric not to be distressed at all when one has due cause, it would also be dishonourable to abandon oneself completely to grief; we do ourselves no credit if we do not strive with all our might to free ourselves from such a troublesome passion . . . Now I certainly do not want to advise you to use all your powers of determination and steadfastness to check the internal agitation you feel straight away—for this would perhaps be a cure more troublesome than the original sickness. But equally I do not advise you to wait until time alone heals you, still less to sustain and prolong your suffering by your own thoughts. I ask you merely to try to alleviate the pain little by little, by looking at what has happened to you from whatever perspective can make it appear more bearable, while at the same time taking your mind off it as much as you can by other activities. I am well aware that I am telling you nothing new here. But we should not despise good remedies just because they are in common use; and since I have myself made successful use of this one, I felt myself bound to include it in this letter.11

  "Since I have myself made successful use of this one": writing four months after the worst sadness of his life, Descartes was showing the spirit of the philosopher in its most redoubtable form.

  8

  The Shape of Snow

  The six short years that elapsed between the conception and the tragic death of Francine Descartes—1634 to 1640—were seminal ones for Descartes in other respects too. The Galileo debacle of 1633 had left him temporarily silenced and constrained despite four years of concentrated work, but although the anxieties thus provoked lasted all of Francine's short lifetime, his silence did not. On the contrary, within a couple of years Descartes had decided to use some of the work that went into Le Monde for a book that would set out his thesis without being theologically controversial, and which he hoped might pave the way for the eventual acceptance of his ideas by serving as a textbook for schools.

  In the immediate aftermath of the Galileo affair Descartes continued with his studies in anatomy, medicine, astronomy and optics; his letters to Mersenne and others were full of technical detail on all these subjects. But the prospect of the founding of a new university in Utrecht, at which Descartes' friend and disciple Henry Reneri had been invited to take a professorship, offered a fresh opportunity to get the results of his work more widely known. Reneri was determined to put Descartes' ideas into the public domain by means of his lectures. He knew those ideas well; he had discussed them with Descartes over several years, and had read the manuscript of Le Monde as it was being written. But although a university platform promised a substantial advance in the direction of Descartes' aims, it was by no means the same as having his ideas available in print. In any case, as both he and Reneri saw, there had to be a book setting out some at least of Descartes' key conceptions to accompany the lectures. And he was very keen that merely verbal reports—even worse, misreports—of his views should not get into circulation, especially to avoid offence to the Church. Ambitious as ever, Descartes accordingly set to work with the plan of a book different in scope from Le Monde.

  The new university of Utrecht was officially opened at a ceremony on 26 March 1636. Reneri began to lecture on Descartes' ideas immediately, and they were enthusiastically received. The promised book was still not ready, but by then preparations for it were well advanced. It appeared at last in June 1637, printed by Jean le Maire of Leiden. It was Descartes' first published work; he was forty-one, so it had been a long time coming. Although few peop
le, even among savants, realised it at the time, its appearance was a major event in the history of thought. Some scholars now regard it as one of the two seminal texts of the modern world (the other being Newton's Principia). The book was, of course, the celebrated treatise now called the Discourse on the Method and Essays.

  Descartes found organising the material for the book a relatively smooth matter, for most of it was already written. The process of publication was less smooth. At first the firm of Elzevir—already at that time a famous publishing house—told Descartes that they wished to be his publishers, but when he visited Leiden to start the complex process of seeing the book into print they began to make difficulties. Descartes did not specify what they were when telling Mersenne about them, but anyway he took the manuscript elsewhere. Mersenne offered to arrange for its publication in Paris, and Descartes was tempted by the offer; but in replying he said, "my manuscript is no better written than this letter; the spelling and punctuation are equally careless and the diagrams are drawn by me, that is to say, very badly. So if you cannot make out from the text how to explain them to an engraver, it would be impossible for him to understand them."1 It was clearly an advantage for an author to be present during the publication process for the reasons Descartes suggested, but Mersenne's offer was attractive enough for Descartes to consider accepting it, and he told Mersenne that he wished to have the work printed in "a handsome fount on handsome paper," with two hundred copies for himself to distribute.