Descartes

by A. C. Grayling

  The reason for his "difficulty," which Descartes then set out in detail, was that he had learned that very few people really wished to enter into his theories, and that when they did so, although they might find them surprising at first, they soon realised how much they were simply a matter of common sense, whereupon they no longer thought them important. So he had often tried to explain his views, yet met with relatively little success among the great and powerful; who in any case were much more interested in those who claimed to possess secrets in astrology or alchemy, and who received greater rewards for their impostures than serious philosophers got for their pains:

  I do not imagine that anything similar will happen in the place where you are. But my lack of success in all the visits I have made for the last twenty years makes me fear that on this one I shall simply find myself waylaid by highwaymen who will rob me, or involved in a shipwreck which will cost me my life. Nevertheless this will not deter me, if you believe that this incomparable Queen still desires to examine my views, and that she can find the time to do so. If that is so, then I shall be delighted to be so fortunate as to be able to serve her. But if it is not so, and she merely had some curiosity about my views which has now passed, then I beg and urge you to arrange it so that, without displeasing her, I may be excused from making this voyage.9

  It has become a legend that Christina, not one to brook overmuch hesitance, stopped trying to persuade Descartes and simply sent an admiral in a ship with a force of marines to get him. It is true that an Admiral Fleming of the Swedish Navy was dispatched to the Netherlands at this time, to collect a library of 20,000 volumes that the Queen had lately bought; and the marines were there to carry them aboard ship. The idea of collecting Descartes on the way made obvious sense, and accordingly Admiral Fleming presented himself at the philosopher's home and requested his company to Stockholm. In the pace of life as then lived there was time for Descartes to write a startled letter to Chanut to ask who Fleming was and if this was all above board. In the event Descartes did not accompany the admiral and the books, but put his affairs in order in the Netherlands, and at the beginning of September began the six-week journey by land and sea to the Swedish capital.

  In one respect Descartes had been wrong to think that Christina might not be eager to meet him. She was; she prepared for the meeting by reviewing what she had read of his work, and reported that she felt excitement at being in the company of so great and renowned a thinker. She requested his company the very day after his arrival, which was some time before he could compose himself and get his bearings. When he appeared—a little ageing man with a wig violently curled for the occasion—he was a visual disappointment. Her first reaction was to decide that he had to be given the appearance and aura of greatness that befitted him—a title of nobility, an estate, a pension, and an entourage. It would not do for him to reside with the French ambassador indefinitely.

  All this was very gratifying to Descartes, who began by thinking that he had landed on his feet after all. But two things quickly became apparent. The first was that in the enthusiasm of this first meeting with Christina he had made the deep mistake of speaking to her about her cousin Princess Elizabeth, asking Christina to help her; for Christina had a jealous temperament, and she had never liked the sound of the much more beautiful and perhaps cleverer cousin who had been the correspondent of Descartes for longer than she herself had been. And secondly—and worse, from Descartes' own point of view—while he was in the very process of making his laborious way from the Netherlands to Sweden, Christina's ardour for philosophy had cooled and been replaced by a passion for ancient Greek. Descartes had never thought the classics much use—indeed he thought they were a waste of time; their science was antiquated and false, their morals predated Christianity, and too many people quoted them in place of thinking things afresh for themselves.

  But Christina waved Descartes' objections aside, and instead thought about how to occupy his time. Would he like to travel around Sweden a little, for six weeks or so, to get to know the country? she asked. He declined; he had no intention of travelling anywhere, having just made an unpleasant journey over land and sea to get there, and anyway winter was approaching and the autumn days were swiftly darkening.

  Christina, to Descartes' infinite dismay, had another idea. To celebrate the peace of Westphalia a spectacular new ballet was to be performed in her brand new theatre. Would Descartes take part? Would he write the music? Would he at least write the libretto? In fact, she insisted that he write the libretto, and although he had vigorously rejected the suggestion that he perform or compose music, he had to succumb on the libretto. At least it was to be brief: the subject was the Birth of Peace—the ink was still dry on the famous (or infamous) Treaty signed at Westphalia, and the whole of Europe was in a state of exhausted rejoicing. As with all such compositions, however, the ballet had to span the range from epic to comic. Descartes, who had seen something of war, and who did not think celebrations of the ending of war were a fit subject of comedy, substituted maimed soldiers and indigent refugees for the usual band of comic wags. Conscious that the work was rubbish, he tried to destroy the manuscript; but Chanut misguidedly preserved it. Worse, the audience liked it, and demanded that Descartes write another theatrical piece, this time a straightforward play with a love interest involving a princess, a tyrant, a lover, an escape in rustic dress, and some other standard tropes.

  Descartes, to whom it was now clear that he had made a terrible mistake in coming to Sweden, set to work on this second commission with the profoundest reluctance, but was rescued from the task by another and more fitting scheme—to which the Queen had perhaps been persuaded by Chanut, who was privy to Descartes' groans. This was to draw up statutes for a Swedish Academy on the lines of the Academie Francaise founded by Cardinal Richelieu.

  This was more congenial work, and Descartes—his hopes somewhat reviving—set about it with assiduity. He laid down an interesting rule in the second article of the statutes, which was that only natural-born Swedes could be members of the new Academy.

  Doubtless this was an insurance against his being kept by the Queen in Sweden indefinitely; he was of course already thinking of returning to the Netherlands. Predictably enough, the community of Swedish savants was jealous that the task had been put into Descartes' hands; they murmured and complained, and when they saw what he had produced they disagreed among themselves and with him about its merits. This was familiar terrain for Descartes; echoes of the controversies he had borne with in the Netherlands came loudly back to haunt him. Wearied, he told Chanut that he wanted to go home straight away. "I am out of my element here," he wrote to a correspondent; "and I desire only tranquillity and repose, which are goods that the most powerful kings on earth cannot give to those who cannot obtain it for themselves."

  Doubtless Chanut once again had a quiet word with Christina, who at last told Descartes that she would begin the regular study of his philosophy with him. But she did it with a surprising twist. She had been told much about Descartes by Chanut, and knew his habits; which meant that she knew he liked to spend his mornings in bed, reading, thinking and writing, rising only at midday. Despite this—more likely, because of this—she required that he meet her at five o'clock in the morning for her lessons. Moreover, the lessons were due to begin in January, the coldest and darkest month. What effect this intelligence had on Descartes is scarcely imaginable; nevertheless he obeyed.

  Before going to Sweden, Descartes had pondered on the weather there, but had taken comfort from the thought that people in very cold countries well knew how to insure themselves against its worst effects. He did not like cold himself; from his earliest experience in the "stove-heated room" where he had his first philosophical stirrings, to his habitual mornings in bed, he always carefully kept himself warm. But Christina was a hardy soul, brought up to the horse and the hunting field as well as the schoolroom, and her library at five in the morning was not heated at all. Descartes had to stand durin
g their sessions, and he had to stand bareheaded. He was already very chilled by the time he reached the library each morning, because to get into the palace in the early hours he had to leave his coach and cross a little bridge giving access to a side entrance; and as he did so the freezing wind blew up under his cloak. "I think," he commented, "that in winter here, men's thoughts freeze like the water."

  The unaccustomed hours, the bitter cold, the wretchedness of the situation, quickly took their toll. Within a couple of weeks Descartes began to feel ill. Chanut had already succumbed to fever and bronchitis, taking to his bed on 15 January. Descartes did not trust the Queen's doctors—all of them foreigners—-not least because one of them, a Dutch physician called Weulles, had sided with Descartes' opponents in the Utrecht quarrels of a few years before. In any case Descartes had his own medications and nostrums to rely on. Accordingly, he nursed Chanut in the Embassy, and as his own symptoms developed he nursed himself too. Among the nostrums he used was liquid tobacco taken in warmed wine, the effect of which was supposed to be expectorant, that is, promoting the loosening and expelling of phlegm filling the lungs.

  It is a sad irony that one of the last letters Descartes wrote—to a French diplomatic acquaintance then in Hamburg, who had written asking him to speak to Queen Christina about some matter—was penned on the very day, 15 January, that Chanut took to his bed with the illness that Descartes was to catch. "Since I last had the pleasure of writing to you," Descartes said, "I have seen the Queen only four or five times, always in the morning in her library, in the company of Monsieur Freinshemius. So I have had no opportunity to speak about any matter that concerns you . . . I swear to you that my desire to return to my solitude grows stronger with each passing day, and indeed I do not know whether I can wait here until you return. It is not that I do not still fervently wish to serve the Queen, or that she does not show me as much goodwill as I may reasonably hope for. But I am not in my element here."10

  Chanut got better; at the end of January, still a little weak, he was able to leave his bed. Descartes, on the other hand, was growing worse. By the beginning of February he was definitely in trouble. On the first day of that month he personally handed a fair copy of his proposed statutes for the Swedish Academy to Christina, and later in the day went to say his confession to the chaplain of the French embassy, Father Viogue. This was in preparation for the Candlemas celebration scheduled for the next day, when the embassy staff were to hear Mass together. Although he had grown severely feverish and was having trouble breathing, Descartes attended the Mass on that day, and took Communion. His illness was noted with concern by the embassy staff, who persuaded him to go to bed. At first he refused to let them call a doctor, for the reasons already noted; but on the next day—3 February—he had grown so much worse that he at last allowed Weulles to visit him. It was clear to Weulles that Descartes had pneumonia, and he wanted to bleed him, which was the usual remedy for any feverish illness; but Descartes resisted, feebly crying out, "Gentlemen! Spare this French blood!" But when he had grown too weak to resist he was bled several times, of course growing weaker as a result. He drifted in and out of febrile sleep for several days, his chest so congested with phlegm that he could scarcely breathe. His servant, Henry Schluter, kept feeding him biscuits and soup, because he knew that Descartes believed firmly in the importance of maintaining the digestive functions, and that a complete fast was to be avoided at all costs. Schluter was also able to keep the leeches away. On 8 February Descartes seemed to rally, and on the ninth was even able to have a conversation with Chanut about edifying matters of morality and providence. The next day he felt even better, so that—convinced his improvement had begun—he was confident that he would recover. He went so far as to allow himself the luxury of visitors. When they had gone he asked Schluter to help him get up so that he could sit in an armchair. In the process he collapsed in a dead faint, and when he came round whispered faintly, "My dear Schluter, this blow means I am leaving for good! "Alarmed, Schluter called Chanut, who came hurrying in with his wife. Descartes' sister years later reported that at this juncture he dictated a short farewell letter to his brothers, asking them to maintain the annual pension he paid his old nurse. Whether or not such a letter was dictated at that moment of crisis, it is certain that by the time the priest arrived to administer the last rites Descartes was no longer able to speak. Instead he showed, by moving his eyes in response to the priest's questions, that he accepted the rites and submitted himself to the will of God.

  The rites were duly administered, Chanut and his wife witnessing them at the bedside. At four o'clock the following morning, 11 February 1650, Descartes died. He was six weeks short of his fifty-fourth birthday.11

  When his last breath left him in the small hours of that bitterly cold northern February morning, Descartes was far from the warm sunlit vineyards of Poitou where he had passed his childhood, far from the tumultuous scenes of a deeply divided Europe where he had played a mysterious part in the early years of a great war, far from the neat and comfortable Dutch life—think of the interior scenes being painted by Vermeer even as Descartes lay dying— where he had lived, under enormous skies, for two decades. His work had been finished for some time, and he had turned his attention to seeking preferment and reward, which—and this is how irony always loves to arrange things, it seems—came with fatality concealed in its cloak: for here he was, at a royal court, promised a title and a pension, a courtier to a queen who had invited him and who was capable of understanding him, yet dying far from everything that was home and friendship, in a cold strange land. It was an unhappy ending.

  Scarcely anything could better summarise the bathos of Descartes' end than what then happened. Shocked by Descartes' death, and plagued with guilt, Christina decided that he had to be given a state funeral, and interment in a marble tomb in the temple of Riddenholm, among Sweden's kings. His monument was to be incised with statements in praise of his thought by other great savants of the day. But all this would take time to arrange, so, as a temporary measure, on the day after his death Descartes' corpse was buried in the part of the public cemetery reserved for the "unbaptised"— this on account of his Catholicism—and a wooden mock-up of a tombstone bearing his name and dates was erected above it. Within weeks Christina had forgotten her grand plans for a marble tomb at the side of her ancestors, and in the cold northern rain the wooden planks of the jerry-built monument began to rot quietly away.

  Rumours immediately rose about the circumstances of Descartes' death. It was alleged that he had been poisoned by jealous rivals at Christina's court, or by people determined to stop him and Chanut from seducing Christina into Catholicism, as he was even then suspected of doing. Others at the Court had received death threats in connection with political intrigues or rivalries, so the idea is not wholly baseless. Still, the symptoms and circumstances of the illnesses suffered by Chanut and Descartes, and those attendant on the latter's death, do not support this hypothesis. His manservant Schluter wrote an account of his illness and death the day after he died, and what he said shows clearly that what brought about Descartes' demise was a fever with a congestion of the lungs.12

  Even more fanciful stories were told, including one which claimed that Descartes had not died in Stockholm, but had gone to Lapland to be inducted in shamanic rites of drum-beating, and had caught pneumonia while doing so. Yet others had it that he indeed went to Lapland but did not die—-not until much later, anyway, instead living in the northern wastes for years and even writing further letters to Princess Elizabeth and Queen Christina. Great men attract legend; and legends are more readily believed by the credulous than are plain facts and ordinary probabilities.

  * * *

  Descartes had an effect on Christina, however. He and Chanut had shown her, by their example, that Catholics were not monsters, as Lutherans were taught to believe. Buckley suggests that Descartes encouraged Christina to use the light of reason to examine the claims of religion, confident that Cathol
icism would recommend itself by this means.13 In her journey to the Roman version of the faith, Christina had secretly solicited the help of the Jesuits, and in this too Descartes might have been an influence, although her first known contact with the Order did not occur until the spring of 1651.14

  It is morally certain that Descartes had some part, even if small, in Christina's Catholic adventure. It is hard to believe that she had entertained a leading thinker who was also a Catholic in her palace for five months without once having had a conversation, or formed a thought, asked a question, or been given a hint, on a subject that was so pressing for her. Spoken words leave a record only if there is an attentive ear to capture them and write them down: verba volant, scripta manent; but spoken words can also leave a legacy in action, and it just cannot be regarded as an irrelevant fact that Descartes was Christina's court philosopher for a time, even though it was a very short time, during the prelude to her abdication and conversion to Catholicism.

  Descartes' small body lay in the cold Swedish ground for seventeen years. But it was not destined to remain under its rotten planks forever.15 In 1667 it was exhumed and transported to France. The then French ambassador to the Swedish Court was allowed to amputate the forefinger of Descartes' right hand, and the rest of the body was placed in a copper coffin, made of metal from Sweden's own copper mines in the country's far north. The corpse had a number of different burial places before finally coming to rest in the church of St.-Germain des Pres, where it now lies—without its head, for the skull was taken from it at the original exhumation in Sweden and another put in its place. The skull was then sold and resold to various interested parties over time. The Musee de 1'Horame in the Palais de Chaillot now claims to have it.16 As if reinforcing the point about Descartes' missing head, the bust that stands above his tomb in the side chapel of Saint-Benoit in St.-Germain des Pres is that of Jean Mabillon, monk, historian and palaeographer who, with Bernard de Montfaucon, patristic scholar and also a palaeographer, lies alongside Descartes in the vault beneath the chapel.