Descartes stayed with his father for several months. He spent his time riding, socializing, working on problems in geometry, developing his nascent philosophy, and writing furtively in his secret notebook. Since Rene was now twenty-six years old, his father decided to turn over to him the major part of the wealth he had inherited from his mother after her death, his older brother and sister having taken their shares earlier. Since much of this wealth was in the form of land holdings, Rene decided to travel to the Poitou region, the location of his new lands, so he could inspect them and perhaps come to a decision as to what to do with them.
Descartes went to Poitou in May of that year, and soon after surveying his vast, sprawling properties, decided to look for buyers. He stayed there until the end of the summer, realizing that such a significant sale would probably take more time to arrange. He knew he didn't want to be a landowner who had to worry about cultivating agricultural tracts and collecting rents from farmers and lodgers, but he wasn't yet sure exactly what else he wanted to do with his life. He had had quite a ride so far, traveling and seeing the world and participating in and observing battles. He had also made great progress in understanding mathematics and developing a philosophy, but he still was unsure about how to proceed. He returned to his father's house just as fall was beginning to set in, but no one in the family could give him any good advice on what to do next. One thing was sure, however: given the wealth he had inherited—the full extent of which had just been revealed to him on his visit to Poitou—Rene Descartes would have nothing financial to worry about; he could devote the rest of his life to doing whatever he wanted.
After staying the fall and winter in Rennes, spending time with his sister and brother as well as getting to know his brother-in-law better, Rene decided in early 1623 to again visit Paris for an extended period of time. He had heard that “a new, clean air was circulating in the capital after three years of contagion from the plague.” He was eager to breathe this new air, find new excitement, and renew his old friendships there. He had not seen his friends in Paris for five years.
Descartes moved to Paris with his valet, traveling there on horseback trailed by a caravan of mules carrying his possessions. By then he had found buyers for some of his lands, bought new clothes and items of furniture, and also carried a certain amount of cash with him to deposit in banks in the capital. When Descartes arrived in Paris, the city was awash with stories about the fortunes of war—the very war Descartes had taken part in. Stories were circulating everywhere about the duke of Bavaria; the deposed Frederick of Bohemia, who with his family had by then taken refuge in Holland to live out the rest of their lives in shameful exile; and about the “Bastard of Mansfeld,” another military leader of that war—the count of Mansfeld, who was the commander of one of the two armies the Bohemians had put together to face the Austrians and Bavarians.
Knowing that Descartes had participated in that war, and had lived in Germany for some time, many people beseeched him to tell them stories about the action he had seen. To his chagrin, and that of his close friends in the capital, Descartes also discovered that there were rumors about him as well: everyone in Paris was sure that while in Germany, Descartes had joined the secret Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. It made so much sense to them that he should have done so, being a scientist. And the story on the street was that the secret brotherhood had just sent thirty-six “deputies” to the entire continent of Europe, six of them to France. All six Rosicrucians were “lodged somewhere in the Marais of the Temple in Paris,” Baillet tells us. But they could not communicate with the world, and one could not communicate with them, “other than through thought joined with will, that is, in a manner imperceptible to the senses.” The chance conjunction of events—the alleged arrival in Paris of six Rosicrucians and the simultaneous arrival of Rene Descartes—caused the conclusion that Descartes was a Rosicrucian.
In typical fashion, Descartes used his reason to combat the assertions he did not like. First, he exploited the fact that the rumored Rosicrucians were “invisible,” and he instead made himself very visible. He ensured that he was seen everywhere in Paris—and always surrounded by his many loving friends. Descartes was seen on the streets, at every merry nightspot, and at places where people listened to good music. And second, he stopped doing any mathematics in public. He would study geometry only in the privacy of his own room or—as Baillet, who is our only source on this period in the life of Descartes, tells us—at the request of a friend who might ask him to solve a difficult problem.
Descartes had to be very careful now, for he had apparently begun to use in his mathematical work the mystical symbols from astrology and alchemy learned from Faulhaber. By now, Descartes had understood that his German friend was connected with the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. He had to hide all his derivations in his private notebook, for if he was seen developing knowledge using these symbols, it would be impossible for him to defend himself against the charge of delving in the arts of the Rosicrucians. For one thing, the Catholic Church was highly opposed to the Rosicrucians. Were Descartes to be labeled one, his scientific career, and perhaps his safety, could be imperiled
A short time after his return to the French capital, Descartes went to the Marais to visit his college friend Marin Mersenne. After teaching for two years, Mersenne had been elected the correcteur (or superior) of his monastery. His confreres soon realized that his talents were far greater than those needed for this job. Consequently, Mersenne was given much free time to study and write. He had a gift for mathematics and science, and the Minim order encouraged him to pursue his studies in these areas, not perceiving any potential conflict between science and faith—something that, perhaps, would not have happened in any other order, the Minims being humble, tolerant, and forward-looking. Marin Mersenne saw his new calling as a conduit of ideas between scientists and theologians. He would foster an understanding among all the major scientists in Europe, and bring them in touch with religious authorities.
Starting out, Mersenne soon realized that a dialogue between the long-accepted scholastic philosophy of the church and the newly emerging scientific revolution was very difficult to maintain, and that often communication between the two camps was in the form of mutual attacks. Mersenne himself began his dialogue with the two groups using a confrontational approach: he attacked the alchemists and the astrologers. But soon he moved to more positive and productive methods of communication. One of Mersenne's former students, Father Jean-Francois Niceron, moved to Rome to teach at the Minims' house of studies at the Church of the Trinita dei Monti. While in Rome, Niceron made contact with the most influential Italian scientist, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). The contacts Niceron had made in Italy became very useful for Mersenne. As Mersenne continued building a dialogue between science and faith he began to see his role in life as the director of an international clearinghouse of scientific ideas. He would soon inaugurate what would become known as “the republic of letters.” Through letters he would write to and receive from all the major scientists in Europe, Mersenne would establish the model for an international academy of sciences. One of the major players in this drama would be Rene Descartes. Pere Rapin, an ecclesiastic of the time, called Mersenne “Descartes' resident in Paris.”
Mersenne's book Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (“Celebrated Questions in the Book of Genesis,” Paris, 1623) demonstrates how he positioned himself between science and religion. In this book, Mersenne discussed religious topics, but at the same time dedicated forty columns to a description of the laws of optics. After the publication of this book, Mersenne devoted less and less time to religion and spent most of his efforts on science and pure mathematics.
Mersenne soon learned the techniques of printing and became an active publisher. In twenty-five years he produced as many books, totaling over eight thousand pages. Some were his own, while others were written by his scientific correspondents. Mersenne read the major scientific works of his contemporaries: Descartes, Fermat,
Desargues, Roberval, Torricelli, Galileo, and others. But his greatest contribution to science was the connections that he forged as an intermediary between all the major scientists of his day. Mersenne's room in the monastery at the Place Royale was converted into a workshop in which the key scientific and mathematical ideas of the seventeenth century were analyzed and reviewed in the worldwide correspondence he received and sent. Among the most important works analyzed and promoted by Mersenne were Descartes' writings.
Descartes shared with his friend Mersenne his advances in mathematics: derivations of new results based on ancient Greek geometry. When he first came to see him, Father Mersenne was distraught about the new rumors about Descartes. He did not view the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross favorably, perhaps because he did not consider its members Christians. Mersenne was worried about the consequences Descartes could face if people were to conclude that he was, in fact, a Rosicrucian.
Chapter 9
Descartes and the Rosicrucians
EVEN THOUGH BAILLET DESCRIBED Descartes' interest in, and later denial of any connection with, the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, some scholars have persisted in their doubts about the connections between Descartes and the Rosi-crucians. But in 2001, Edouard Mehl of the University of Strasbourg published a book, based on his doctoral dissertation from the Sorbonne, in which he analyzed many original sources that had never before been studied. The picture that emerges from his study leaves little doubt that Descartes was deeply influenced by Rosicrucian ideas.
The name Descartes chose for his unpublished notebook, Olympica, appears in Rosicrucian writings. And so does the language Descartes used in his Olympica.“Enthusiasm,” “admirable science,” and “marvelous discovery” had all been used before 1619 as code words by members of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. The name Olympica is echoed in at least three treatises on alchemy attributed to the Rosicrucians: Thesaurinella olympica aurea tripartita (Frankfurt, 1607), Rosarium novum olympicum (Frankfurt, 1606), and in the sentence “Spintus olympicus, seu homo invisibilis,” in the book Basilica chymica (Frankfurt, 1620), written by Oswald Croll. Croll was a major writer on alchemy, and used the term “Olympic” to mean intelligible or comprehensible.
Oswald Croll and Johann Hartmann called themselves the “enthusiasts” of the science of the Rosicrucians in their confrontation with their key detractor, Andreas Libavius, an alchemist who was influenced by mysticism but later came to reject it. Terms such as “marvelous science” and “admirable discovery,” as well as other permutations of these words used by Descartes in his Olympica, are used in the written exchanges between the “enthusiasts” and their opponent. Croll defined the term “admirable science” as intellectual power and intuition, the image of the Creator in his creatures. He used “admirable science” as code words for philosophy, magic, and alchemy. A coincidence? Perhaps.
But as further evidence that Descartes was familiar with Rosicrucian writings we have Descartes' statement in a letter to Mersenne—“I have faith in no 'sympathetic ointment' of Crollius,” a reference to an alchemical universal medicine described by Oswald Croll in his Basilica chymica. Croll was the physician of Christian I of Anhalt, who was the counselor of the Elector Palatine, the Winter King, Frederick V of Bohemia (the father of Descartes' future friend Princess Elizabeth). According to the British historian Frances Yates, Frederick V was the man the Rosicrucians had hoped would win the wars against the Catholics and would reestablish Prague as a center for mystical studies and a capital of a realm from which reform of society and religion along Rosicrucian ideals would spread throughout Europe. Yates argues that the Rosicrucians were so closely allied with the prince of the Palatinate that the Rosicrucian text attributed to Johann Valentin Andrea, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, of 1616, was an allegorical tale, using alchemical symbolism, based on the actual wedding of Frederick and Elizabeth in London in 1613. The Winter King's humiliating defeat in the battle of the White Mountain in 1620 dashed Rosicrucian hopes and eventually led to the decline of the order.
The Rosicrucians published three further major works: a book on spiritual alchemy by Oswald Croll, a treatise on “vitalist philosophy” by Johann Hartmann, and a compendium entitled Harmonic Philosophy and Magic of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. The subjects of the three texts, however, are intertwined. In its early years, the brotherhood could be described as a society of alchemists, and its central figure was Johann Hartmann, who held the first European chair in pharmaceutical chemistry, at the University of Marburg, in Germany, in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Hartmann not only published his own books on alchemy, but was also the editor of Croll's Basilica chymica. Hartmann is believed to have been in possession of the principal Rosicrucian manuscript, the Fama fraternitatis, as early as 1611—three years before the publication of this text.
From Marburg, the center of activity of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross moved to Kassel, also in Germany, and the subjects studied by its members expanded from alchemy to other areas. These included theology, botany, astronomy, and mathematics. Maurice of Hesse was an important figure in astronomy, logic, and mathematics, associated with the Rosicrucians. He carried on a correspondence about astronomical matters with the astronomer Tycho Brahe, which was published in Frankfurt in 1596.
The comets of 1618 created much excitement in the population as a whole, and astronomers—some of them reputed Rosicrucians—were especially attracted to this mysterious spectacle in the sky. Brahe's successor, Johann Kepler, first observed the third comet of the year on November 10, 1618 (as did others in Europe)—a date that, as we have seen, figures repeatedly in the life of Descartes.
But the dates November 10 and 11 appeared several times earlier in the history of astronomy. On November 11, 1572, Tycho Brahe first observed a “new star” in the night sky—a supernova, the most dramatic in the history of astronomy since the Chinese observed the supernova that created the Crab Nebula in A.D. 1054 Five years later, in 1577, astronomers at the observatory of Kassel observed on the night of November 10-11 the first appearance of the comet of that year. The observations of this comet made Brahe abandon the theory of solid celestial orbs. This was the ancient Ptolemaic system, named after the second-century mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy of Alexandria, in which the earth is the center of the solar system, and the sun, moon, and planets rotate in concentric spheres around the earth. The comet and its orbit made it necessary for Brahe to modify the ancient Ptolemaic theory of fixed celestial orbs, supported by the church because it agreed with scripture. Brahe did not adopt the complete Copernican model, still maintaining the earth was immobile, but his discovery of the highly elliptic orbit of the comet, which was not aligned with those of the planets, was the beginning of the collapse of the geocentric theory of the universe and constituted evidence in support of Copernicus. The Rosicrucians kept knowledge secret in part because of the implications of their scientific findings on theories the church held sacred.
Perhaps knowing that November 10 and 11 were important recurring dates in the history of science was somehow related to Descartes having his own revelations on that anniversary in 1619 and again in 1620. Remarkably, under the entry “November 11, 1620,” Beeckman wrote in his journal about the appearance on that day in 1572 of the comet studied by Brahe, and speculated on the composition of comets as vapors and dust of stars, as well as about their orbits in the sky. He did not mention that this day was the anniversary of his meeting Descartes two years earlier.
Descartes' route from Holland to southern Germany led him through Kassel, and there is a possibility that, at least for a short time, he communicated with the Rosicrucians as early as 1619. According to Edouard Mehl, Descartes encountered members of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross in Kassel and found in them a society dedicated to the study of the sciences and mathematics. The unity of scientists of seemingly disparate disciplines may have given Descartes his idea of a “universal science” unifying all knowledge by means of mathematics. Mehl al
so points out a curious coincidence between Descartes' dreams in the oven and Rosicrucian philosophy. In Descartes' dream, he sees the poem 'Est et Non.” Mehl points out that a key tenet in Rosicrucian philosophy is the existence versus nonexistence of every element in the universe. The Rosicrucians named their principle Est, Non est. Descartes' dream in which he sees his room fill with sparkles of light is reminiscent of the Rosicrucian story about the discovery of the burial cave of the founder of the order, Christian Rosenkreuz. The cave, too, sparkled with light that seemed to come out of nowhere, and the dream itself is similar in its feel to the description of the discovery of this cave. Descartes' dream in which he sees a dictionary bears similarity to descriptions of Rosicrucian rituals in which, too, a dictionary or encyclopedia is used.
Kepler himself was interested in the occult. Was Kepler, too, a Rosicrucian? His assistant, the mathematician Jost Burgi (1552-1632), whom Brahe described as “the new Archimedes,” was a member of the brotherhood. Burgi invented many scientific and mathematical instruments, including a proportional compass that is very closely related to the one Descartes is reported to have invented, which lends more support to the theory that Descartes communicated with the Rosicrucians. Burgi's proportional compass, in turn, was a variation of a compass first invented by Galileo in 1606. This was a compass that could maintain set proportions of various quantities because its arms were marked with graduated scales. Galileo had enjoyed some financial success by selling his compass for use in engineering and for military purposes. Burgi's variation of the proportional compass is shown below.
Descartes's Secret Notebook Page 9