Descartes was interested in the supposed power of Lull's mystical methods of obtaining knowledge. He asked Beeckman about it, and the latter, who had read some of the works of Lull, explained to him that Lull had invented a wheel on which the nine letters B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, and K were arranged. These nine letters stood for attributes of creation (which were akin to the ten attributes of God, the Sefirot, in the Jewish Kabbalah). By producing permutations of these letters using circles revolving within other circles in a geometrical device, new concepts could be derived. Descartes' letters to Beeckman in 1619 give us the first indication of the young man's curiosity about mystical methods and ideas.
Lull's medieval magic would be reflected in the teachings of a secret society emerging in the early seventeenth century, and Descartes would find himself in the midst of these explorations of science and mysticism.
When Descartes returned to his camp in Breda, he began to suspect that he might never have a chance to see the military action he longed for. The prince of Orange had signed a truce with his enemies, and as part of this arrangement, had made a commitment not to engage in battle for a period of twelve years.
Descartes felt betrayed by this truce since he felt that the promise he had been given when he volunteered to serve the prince—that he would see military action—would likely never be met. Descartes had known since the previous year, 1618, that important political events were taking place in Bohemia and in Germany, and that these events could lead to war. By that time, the winds of religious war had been blowing in Europe for an entire century.
When Martin Luther (1483-1546) posted his ninety-five theses on the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, launching the Lutheran branch of Christianity and hence Protestantism, religious confrontations erupted all over Europe. Luther's act is generally taken as the starting point of the Reformation, a movement for reform of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. The controversy between Catholics and Protestants had a strong political aspect as well, since religion and nationality tended to correlate across the Continent. By 1530, the rulers of the German states of Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg, and Brunswick had been won over to the reformed belief, as were the kings of Sweden and Denmark. Consequently, these rulers broke away from Catholicism and made the churches in their realms conform to Protestant principles.
Calvinism, a form of Protestantism based on the teachings of John Calvin (1509-64), which includes the idea of predestination, was founded in 1536 and took hold in parts of France, western Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Scotland. Since the rest of Europe remained Catholic and loyal to the pope, the continent was deeply divided. In France, the Wars of Religion took place in the mid-to-late sixteenth century between Catholics and the Huguenots—French Protestants. These wars were complicated by the interventions of Spain, Savoy, and Rome on the side of the Catholics, and of England, Holland, and several German principalities on the side of the Huguenots. By the time Descartes was growing up, however, there was relative peace. But this peace was not to last for long.
In 1613, a young German prince, Frederick of the Palatinate—a region in southern Germany that included part of the Rhine and the city of Heidelberg—arrived in London to marry Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of King James I of England and Anne of Denmark, and granddaughter of Mary, Queen of Scots. Many in Europe saw in this royal wedding the forging of an important alliance between England and Protestant forces on the continent. But in fact, King James I had every intention of remaining neutral in the religious conflict that was brewing on the continent, and was hoping to balance the apparent favoring of Germany that might have been implied by his daughter's wedding by forging a similar union with Catholic Spain.
Frederick took his bride to Heidelberg, sailing down the Rhine, and they established their home in Heidelberg castle, where they lived happily and in peace for five years. But then things began to change. A strong movement on the continent saw in Frederick a potential leader who could unite the Protestant forces in Europe against the Catholic forces of the Austrian Habsburg empire, whose capital was Prague.
The Habsburg emperor Rudolf II, a benevolent and tolerant ruler who had moved the center of the Habsburg empire from Vienna to Prague, died in 1612, precipitating a power struggle for his succession. Prague under Rudolf had been a flourishing city in which new ideas were developed and learning was promoted. Rudolf had a strong interest in magic and mysticism, and under his rule, Prague became a center for alchemical, astrological, and magico-scientific studies of all kinds. Jews practiced Kabbalah in this city, and were treated equally and without discrimination. Many others studied the occult and the magical. Rudolf's palace had “wonder rooms” in which mechanical magical arts were practiced, including inanimate objects that were made to seem to talk, numerological analyses, astrological predictions, and alchemical wonders. In the 1580s, the famous English mystic and mathematician John Dee (1527-1608) spent several years in Prague spreading his magical knowledge. Dee's ideas would form the foundation of knowledge pursued by a mystical secret society. This new society would also develop a strong political agenda for reform in Europe, and its members would see their great hope for political salvation in the person of Prince Frederick of the Palatinate.
Descartes, a devout Catholic, was serving in the Protestant army of Maurice of Nassau, who happened to be Frederick's uncle. Descartes followed closely the events in Bohemia that resulted from the power vacuum following the death of Rudolf II. He knew that on May 23, 1618, the defenestrations had taken place in Prague, in which the rebellious Bohemians threw their Habsburg governors out of the windows of their castle. The state of Bohemia then raised two armies, one headed by the count of Thurn and the other by the count of Mansfeld. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, a Catholic, reacted by raising an army to help the Austrians of the Holy Roman Empire against the rebelling Protestant Bohemians. He allowed eight thousand men and two thousand horses to pass through Bavaria on their way from the Catholic Spanish Low Countries (allied with the Habsburgs) to prepare to attack Prague. Descartes, eagerly following these developments, could not hold back his anticipation of battle.
Since it was clear that Prince Maurice—because of the treaty he had signed—could not take his troops there, Descartes made the decision to quit his commission and travel to Germany on his own, with the intention of joining someone else's army. He was hungry for travel and adventure, and he hoped to see action.
But Descartes did not want to leave Breda without saying good-bye to his friend Isaac Beeckman. On April 20, 1619, Descartes wrote to Beeckman: “I ask of you at least to respond to me by an intermediary, since he is at my service, and to tell me how you are doing, what occupies your time, and are you still concerned with getting married?” Beeckman responded within a day. He was working on mathematics— on the ideas Descartes had discussed with him at their last meeting. And, no, he hadn't found a wife yet. It was unusual for the two of them not to see each other. When Descartes was in Breda—from the time they first met, in November 1618, until January 1619—the two friends met almost every day. But Descartes was now with the troops and Beeckman was in Middleburg, so a letter had to suffice.
Descartes wrote to Beeckman again on April 23, 1619, saying that he wanted to see him. He told him that his soul was already traveling. Borrowing Virgil's words in the Aeneid (III.7), Descartes wrote: “I don't know yet where Destiny will guide me, nor where I shall stop along the way.” He continued:
Since the threat of war no longer leads with certainty to Germany, and I fear that I would find there many armed men but no combat, I will stroll, while waiting, through Denmark, Poland, and Hungary, until I find in Germany a road clear of brigands and highwaymen to take me surely to war. If I stop somewhere along the way, as I hope to do, I promise you to put in order my work on Mechanics or Geometry, and to honor you as the promoter of this work.
After saying good-bye to Beeckman, on April 24, 1619, Descartes traveled north. He left Amsterdam on April 29 and headed for Cop
enhagen, where he stayed for some time, and also visited the rest of Denmark. From there he continued east to Danzig. Some weeks later, Descartes headed south, traveling through much of Poland, and entered Hungary. Then he turned west and reached Frankfurt on July 20, 1619. He arrived there to witness an important event: the election of the new Holy Roman Emperor. The king of Bohemia, Ferdinand II, was elected emperor on August 28 and crowned two days later. Descartes was present at this magnificent ceremony. The new Holy Roman Emperor was given the globe and scepter of Charlemagne, and was passed Charlemagne's sword, which he raised high for all to see.
Bohemia no longer had a king, and the rebellious Protestant Bohemians—in clear defiance of their Austrian overlords—decided to elect a king, rather than submit to Habsburg rule. By that time, all of Protestant Europe had been looking up to Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine (so called because he was one of the German princes with the privilege of electing the Holy Roman Emperor), as their potential leader. The Bohemians easily elected Frederick of the Palatinate to become Frederick V, king of Bohemia, and offered him the crown.
The prince of Orange, Frederick's maternal uncle, supported his assuming the role for which he had been elected; but James I of England, Frederick's father-in-law, who was very worried about this development, told Frederick that he thought that he was too young and inexperienced to assume what he considered the precarious role of king of a nation about to face a massive military attack. However, James's daughter, Frederick's wife, was eager to become a queen, and she pressed her husband to take the throne. Frederick should by all rights have listened to the advice of his father-in-law, for in order to remain king he would badly need England's support, and James I was clearly uninterested in helping him. As it turned out, Frederick listened to his wife and uncle and allowed himself to be crowned. Three days after the coronation of her husband, Princess Elizabeth of England was anointed Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia.
Predictably, the Austrians were outraged by the coronation of the new king and queen of Bohemia, viewing it as a rebellion by a province. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria then resolved to go to war in order to help the Austrians overthrow the new king. “During all these movements, Descartes enjoyed the tranquillity that came from his complete indifference to all these foreign affairs,” Baillet tells us. Descartes stayed on in the region to work on mathematics, but soon decided to pass through Bohemia and observe the imperial and Bohemian armies fighting each other. He saw cities and towns pass from one hand to another, and then back, as one army or the other enjoyed success in battle.
Descartes then made his decision: he would join the army of Maximilian, the duke of Bavaria. He would again be a volunteer and would not carry a musket, only his sword. Descartes would enjoy all the privileges he had enjoyed in Prince Maurice's army, including retaining his valet and having as much free time as was possible. With these terms signed, Descartes headed south, and in October 1619 reached the small town of Neuburg an der Donau, perched on the banks of the Danube in southern Germany about halfway between Munich and Nuremberg. This was where Duke Maximilian's forces were encamped for the winter. The clouds gathering over Europe that fall of 1619 would signal the beginning of the Thirty Years War. It would end only in 1648, with the signing of the Peace of Westphalia.
Chapter 4
Three Dreams in an Oven by the Danube
Now settled with the troops on the banks of the Danube, Descartes prepared to spend the winter working on science and geometry. In his Discourse on the Method, published in 163 7—some years before the Peace of Westphalia put an end to the Thirty Years War—Descartes wrote:
I was at that time in Germany, where the occasion of the wars that have not yet ended called me. As I left the coronation of the emperor to return to the army, the onset of winter forced me to remain in quarters that offered no opportunities for conversation or entertainment, and, by good fortune, also no worries or passions to trouble me. I remained, each entire day, alone in a closed oven [poeL], where I had all the time, at my leisure, to entertain myself with my own thoughts.
The “oven” Descartes mentions was a room heated by a large central woodstove. The stove was used both for cooking and for heating in winter. Descartes' thoughts in the oven took place in November 1619. And we know that, in particular, something happened to Descartes on the night of November 10-11, 1619, while he slept in his oven—something that would bring about a transformation of his life and a sharpening of his thinking.
Baillet, who had access to the material in the inventory made after the death of Descartes, and who, in particular, read Descartes' manuscript described in the inventory as “Item Cl: A small parchment register entitled Olympica” (now lost, but also copied by Leibniz), detailing the events of that fateful night, tells us the story.
The date of the event is significant: November 10 was the first anniversary of Descartes' initial meeting with Beeckman, which resulted in his solving the geometrical problem from the poster in Breda and sparked his love of mathematics. It was also the third anniversary of the acceptance of Descartes' law thesis at the University of Poitiers. But a year after meeting Beeckman and making the realization that he was a gifted mathematician, now twenty-three years old, Descartes still had not decided which course his life should take.
In the Olympica, Descartes described the day: “10 November 1619, I was filled with enthusiasm since I was on the verge of discovering the foundations of an admirable science.” According to Baillet, this is what happened during the night. November 10-11 was Saint Martin's Eve, which was customarily a night of drinking and debauchery. The other soldiers all went out drinking in celebration of the saint's feast. But Descartes said much later that he consumed no alcohol that evening, and in fact had not drunk any wine for three months before this day. So we are left deprived, perhaps, of the simplest explanation for the unusual nature of what Descartes experienced next.
He went to bed in his oven and had a sequence of three very vivid and very powerful dreams. Arguably, Descartes experienced in the night of November 10-11, 1619, the three most famous and most frequently analyzed dreams in history. In fact, his dreams that night would change history, for they would eventually lead to the first unification of two major branches of science—the wedding of geometry with algebra—which would also give us the Cartesian coordinate system, the basis for so many modern technologies.
Descartes did not say when he went to bed. But as soon as he fell asleep, he had the first dream. In this dream, Descartes was walking the streets and was beset by a violent wind raging through a town, bending the trees and howling through doorways. The wind was so strong that he had to lean and walk hunched to the ground. He felt the pain from this great natural violence and was desperate to find shelter from the storm. Suddenly he saw a college, his own College of La Fleche, and on its grounds, the church he knew. He wanted to enter the church to pray, but remembered that he had just passed a person without salutation and wanted to retrace his steps to excuse himself. But the violent wind pushed him strongly “against the church.” At this moment he saw in the courtyard of the college outside the church another person he knew, and that person called to him by his name. He spoke to him politely, asking him if he would like to go to see Monsieur N., since that man had a melon to give him, a melon that had been brought from a foreign land.
What struck Descartes most, as he described it in the Olympica as reported by Baillet, was that he noticed that everyone around him was suddenly walking very straight, while he was still curved down to the ground and unsteady on his feet because of the wind. Suddenly the wind diminished significantly, Descartes straightened up, and woke up from his dream. Waking up, he felt “a deep sorrow that made him believe it was the work of an evil spirit that wanted to seduce him.” He prayed to God for protection from the unknown forces he feared were bent on punishing him for his sins, for he felt that his offenses must have been very serious for him to have encountered the wrath of a storm from heaven upon his head. He spent th
e next two hours awake, “thinking about the good and the bad in this world.”
Descartes had been sleeping on his left side. He changed sides and fell asleep again. Then he experienced his second dream. In this dream, Descartes was in a room, and he felt the room fade, and suddenly he heard a terrible sharp bang, which he believed to be thunder. The storm of the previous dream had returned, but it felt like a hallucination. The tempest could not reach him—he was protected in the safety of his room. Then Descartes saw the room fill with magnificent sparkles of light, and he woke up again.
In the third dream, Descartes was sitting at his desk with an encyclopedia (or a dictionary, according to one interpretation) in front of him. When Descartes put forward his hand to reach for the encyclopedia, he found another book, entitled, in Latin, the Corpus poetarum. He opened this book to a random page and found there a poem, Idyll XV, by the Roman poet Ausonius. He began to read its first line: “Quod vitae sectabor her?”—What road shall I follow in this life? Then an unknown person appeared and presented Descartes with another Ausonius verse, titled “Est et Non.” But as soon as Descartes tried to take hold of the Corpus poetarum, it disappeared. Instead of it, he found again his encyclopedia—but this time it was not quite as complete as it had been earlier. Then both the unknown person and the book disappeared. Descartes continued to sleep, but he was now in a heightened state of consciousness that told him that what he had just experienced was a dream. He was able to interpret the dream while still asleep.
Descartes understood the encyclopedia to represent all the sciences put together. The Corpus poetarum he took to stand for “philosophy and knowledge joined together.” The reason for that assumption was Descartes' belief that poets—even ones writing “silly” verses—all had something to say that was no less valuable than the works of philosophers. The poets brought Descartes his revelation, but also his “enthusiasm” experienced the day before the dreams—a euphoric feeling of discovery. Descartes took the poem “Est et Non” to represent “the Yes and the No of Pythagoras, understood to mean truth and falsehood in the secular sciences.”
Descartes's Secret Notebook Page 5