Problems of Cartesianism 9780773563964

Table of contents :
Contents
Editors' Introduction
Adrien Baillet and the Genesis of His Vie de M. Des-Cartes
Cartesianism and Biblical Criticism
Bayle, Jurieu, and the Politics of Philosophy: A Reply to Professor Popkin
The Cartesian Model and Its Role in Eighteenth-Century "Theory of the Earth"
The Role of Hypotheses in Descartes's and Buffon's Theories of the Earth
Transubstantiation among the Cartesians
Transubstantiation: Test Case for Descartes's Theory of Space
Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata: Henry More (1646–1671)
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
P
R
S
T
V
W

Citation preview

The typical Cartesian collection contains papers which treat the problems arising out of Descartes's philosophy as though they and it appeared for the first time in a recent journal. The approach of this collection is quite different. The eight contributors concentrate on problems faced by Cartesianism which are of historical significance. Without denigrating the importance of the technique of exploiting the texts in a manner that appeals to contemporary philosophical interests, the contributors show how Cartesianism was shaped over time by the criticism it received. This criticism took place in many areas—politics, theology, natural science, and metaphysics—and its scope is reflected in this collection of papers. The efforts of advocates of Cartesianism to produce a biography of Descartes, and the political difficulties they faced, are no less a part of the problems of Cartesianism than are the difficulties alleged against the Cartesian ontology of thought and extension in accounting for transubstantiation. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theories of the formation of the earth, for example, were historically part of the same set of problems as the difficulties in Bible criticism. These significant issues and many others are discussed in this volume. Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and John W. Davis are members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.

M c G i L L - Q u E E N ' s STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS Richard H. Popkin, Editor 1

PROBLEMS OF CARTESIANISM

EDITED BY

Thomas M. Lennon John M. Nicholas John W. Davis

McGill-Queen's University Press Kingston and Montreal

McGill-Queen's University Press 1982 ISBN 0-7735-1000-1 Legal deposit 1st quarter 1982 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Main entry under title: Problems of Cartesianism (McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas, ISSN 0711-0995; 1) Includes index. ISBN 0-7735-1000-1 1. Descartes, Rene, 1596-1650 - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Philosophy, Modern - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Science - Philosophy Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Lennon, Thomas M. (Thomas Michael), 1942- II. Nicholas, John M. III. Davis, John W., 1921IV. Series. B1875.P76 194 C81-095091-X

Contents

Editors' Introduction

1

Adrien Baillet and the Genesis of His Vie de M. Des-Cartes G R E G O R S E B B A , Emory University

9

Cartesianism and Biblical Criticism R I C H A R D H. P O P K I N , Washington University

61

Bayle, Jurieu, and the Politics of Philosophy: A Reply to Professor Popkin W A L T E R E. R E X , University of California, Berkeley

83

The Cartesian Model and Its Role in Eighteenth-Century "Theory of the Earth" J A C Q U E S R O G E R , University of Paris I

95

The Role of Hypotheses in Descartes's and Buffon's Theories of the Earth F R A N c o i s D U C H E S N E A U , University of Montreal Transubstantiation among the Cartesians R I C H A R D A. W A T S O N , Washington University

113 127

Transubstantiation: Test Case for Descartes's Theory of Space R O N A L D L A Y M O N , Ohio State University

149

Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata: Henry More (1646-1671) A L A N G A B B E Y , Queen's University of Belfast

171

Index

251

This page intentionally left blank

Editors' Introduction

I

ntellectual movements, as the expression felicitously represents, are not static, but are transformed in response to the criticism of their opponents, and the natural eagerness of their proponents to expend their scope. Cartesianism did not, of course, restrict its concefn solely to the problems immediately suggested by the Principia Philosophiae. It is only to be expected that it would have been pushed and drawn into a variety of new domains. The wide range of topics addressed by the papers in this volume amply confirms this expectation. An example is the effect of Cartesianism on the warfare between science and religion. According to Professor Richard H. Popkin, the crucial date in this complex story was near to 1650. Prior to that time it was widely believed that Scripture disclosed a supernatural dimension of the world essential to understanding man's destiny; subsequently, a critical and historical approach was adopted, which denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the authenticity of existing biblical texts, and denied that the Bible provided the framework for human history. Depending on the point of view, Spinoza may be regarded as the hero or the villain of the piece. Popkin provides three test cases as illustrations of his thesis: Spinoza's "Cartesian" approach to biblical criticism; Toland's application of Cartesian criteria to religious knowledge; and finally, the use of Cartesian methodology by Catholic polemicists. Popkin's discussion of the little-known Isaac La Peyrere as an influence on Spinoza is of particular interest. The Cartesian and anti-Cartesian proposals in this period with respect to biblical criticism anticipate almost the full range of positions that were to be advocated for some three hundred years in the warfare between science and religion. Professor Walter E. Rex in reply to Popkin gently chides him for taking the philosophical arguments of the disputants at face value by failing to take into account the polemical context of the controversy. [ 1]

2

Problems of Cartesianism

While Rex insists that there was more eclecticism on both sides than Popkin allows, Rex's account is better regarded not so much as a denial of Popkin's thesis as a complement to it. In addition, the papers of both Popkin and Rex continue their long-standing and fruitful disagreement over the reading of Pierre Bayle. Put briefly, for Popkin, Bayle is the fideist par excellence. For Rex, Bayle is concerned with religion as a potential evil force that leads to holy wars and religious persecution, so that despite his philosophical learning and acumen, Bayle's aim is ultimately political. Professor Richard A. Watson argues that Descartes's program was designed as much to supersede theology as to replace Peripatetic physics and philosophy. A crucial area of concern for the Cartesian program was transubstantiation. The attempts of Descartes and the Cartesians to explain transubstantiation on their principles was to end in failure, and it was this debate and not Cartesian physics, according to Watson, which touched off the major opposition to Cartesianism. Watson finds three distinct theories of transubstantiation in Descartes, and not one as is usually supposed. He also contends that, although there was indeed a protracted argument over whether or not real accidents can be supported without underlying substance, the real issue was that of the individuation of the matter that makes up the body and blood of Christ. Professor Ronald Laymon pursues two major lines of investigation in his paper. He begins by analyzing Descartes's first account of transubstantiation. Why, asks Laymon, did Descartes choose a relatively complicated explanation of transubstantiation when simpler explanations were available? He finds the answer in the fact that Descartes shaped his account to meet the objections of Arnauld. In this first account a curious ontological reduction is adopted in which species are identified with superficies, and yet superficies are maintained to be purely modal and causally efficacious. Laymon also criticizes Watson's contention that the crucial issue between Scholastic and Cartesian philosophers was the individuation of the matter of Christ's body and blood. Historically, at least according to Watson's texts, there is no evidence that the disputants saw this as the crucial issue. Laymon claims, contra Watson, that Descartes systematically posed the individuation question in terms of mind and not matter.

Introduction

3

Professor Jacques Roger proposes that the "Cartesian model," deriving from the third and fourth parts of the Principles, had a profound effect on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century speculation on the formation of the earth. Although it was subject to reinterpretation even by its exponents, and to strong criticism by its opponents, the model legitimated and fortified the attempt to account for the structure of the earth with an appeal to a genesis from an initial disorder, passing through necessary intermediate steps, and culminating in the present frame of the world. Descartes's conception of the model was highly idiosyncratic, and incorporated a view of scientific explanation that was sophisticated beyond the requirements of those like Thomas Burnet who later exploited it. For Descartes proposed that we may better grasp the nature of the world generally if we fabricate its genesis or evolution according to certain simple and comprehensible principles, "as it were from some seeds," than if we consider things as God directly and originally created them, as we must believe him to have done. Descartes's account of the origin of the earth was closely imitated by later writers, but without any concern on their part for the special epistemological function that he envisaged for avowedly counterfactual explanation from "seeds." Burnet proposed a quasi-Cartesian theory of the evolution of the earth, but understood it to be an entirely realistic and factual account. This and other transformations, together comprising what Roger calls "a brilliant misinterpretation," permitted the reconception of the model as being inextricably bound up with the development of mankind and, through the eyeglass of the biblical account, as having an indelible historical and chronological component. Roger sees Burnet as having replaced Descartes's conception of a logical necessity constraining the evolution of the earth with his own Iogico-hist6rical determinism. Nevertheless this proposal, according to which events subsequent to the primal condition must follow by some kind of necessity, was preserved in the face of strong criticism. Newtonians, for example, denied the validity of any program that ascribed to the blind action of natural forces what was for them a direct expression of God's immanent, providential activity. These assaults notwithstanding, Roger proposes, the Cartesian model remained influential at least until the early years of the nineteenth century.

4

Problems of Cartesianism

While generally endorsing Roger's account of Descartes's model and its influence, Professor Frangois Duchesneau places great emphasis on the a priori deduction of scientific theories in Descartes's methodology, and he proposes that Descartes's explanation from "seeds" be understood as bound up with that conception. The model is not to be understood as a counterfactual fabrication but, rather, as a vehicle for linking selected, significant phenomena with real conditions of intelligibility. Duchesneau then points to Buffon's criticisms of the hypotheticalists such as Burnet and Whiston, and his distinction of factually based theories from hypotheses merely specifying possibilities. Although Buffon repudiated much of the Cartesian enterprise, and placed great emphasis on induction from the tableau de la nature, he does, Duchesneau notes, espouse certain principles that may count as akin to the Cartesian principles of intelligibility. However, the principle of order invoked is that of the tableau rather than the mathesis universalis. Duchesneau concludes with comments on Buffon's use of mechanical analogies. Professor Alan Gabbey's paper traces More's changing attitude toward Cartesianism from 1646 and the publication of the first of More's works to show a Cartesian influence, Democritus Platonissans, to 1671 and the publication of the Enchiridion Metaphysicum. The change in More's attitudes is representative of the gradual evolution of English thought with respect to Cartesianism: quick acceptance, serious examination with accumulating ambivalence, final rejection. The years 1648-50 saw More's excited admiration; a more critical attitude appeared in 1655-60 as his interests became almost exclusively theological, and ended with the open hostility of the Enchiridion. Gabbey's aim is "to consider evidence, some of which derives from new or little-known sources, which might add to our appreciation of what was involved in More's early sympathy for Descartes and his philosophy, and allow a fresh interpretation, and a more accurate chronology, of his subsequent disillusionment with the Cartesian philosophical enterprise." The early More viewed Cartesianism as of instrumental value in his "magnification of the Divine goodness and the soul's immortality." But More's use of Cartesianism illustrates less his conviction in its basic principles than in the theology it might support. In fact his use

Introduction

5

of it was only part of a methodological eclecticism with an apologetic intent: to "review diverse philosophical positions, however dubious the source, and ... select from them what seems best suited for [the] purpose." In addition, More saw Descartes's works to have a poetic force, which in producing conviction was more effective than their metaphysical arguments. Said More, "if this sweet ethereall gale of divine breathing [as perhaps uniquely expressed by the "free heat of Poesie"] do not quicken and enliven the sent and relish of such arguments as Reason, Nature, and story will afford, they will all prove weak and useless." In 1648 More was persuaded to initiate what became "one of the more significant sets of 'objections and replies' in Descartes's correspondence." More expressed differences with Descartes that range over a broad spectrum of metaphysical and physical issues from mind-body problems, space and time, and so forth, to refraction, the structure of vortices, etc. According to Gabbey, all of More's subsequent criticisms of Cartesianism are already contained in this correspondence, just as all the merits of Descartes never to be denied by More—his personal qualities and the conclusions of his system—are also there. Thus More's "gradual estrangement" from Cartesianism is not, as has been believed, the passage from an initial acceptance to a final rejection; instead it must be interpreted "in terms of the [changing] function of Cartesian ideas within his own philosophical and theological development." Gabbey's major polemical thesis is that More's post-1660 theological interests are less a shift than the culmination of an apologetical program. Although More saw uses for Cartesian mechanism in rebutting Epicurean tychistic materialism, in the end it fell prey to his conviction that not all natural phenomena can be explained mechanistically. Thus in The Immortality of the Soul (1659) he recommends that Cartesianism be taught in the universities so that the limits of mechanical explanation might be clearly recognized and its danger to religion neutralized. Gabbey points to a number of cases where More's worst suspicions were confirmed about the detestable uses to which Cartesianism might be put. For example, the Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres, Exer-

6

Problems of Cartesianism

citatio paradoxa (1666) of Spinoza's friend Lodewijk Meyer argued "that Scripture was not sui interpret, . . . but must be interpreted only according to the rational criteria provided by philosophy. The true meaning of the obscurely worded texts of Scripture must agree with philosophical truth." This prompted the explicit attack—in More's Divine Dialogues (1668)—that Cartesianism was incapable of explaining any number of passages from Sacred Scripture. Even more painful was the work of the Spinozist Adriaan Koerbagh, Een Bloemhof, which "as far as its numerous theologically sensitive readers were concerned, was really a hair-raising catalogue of the most unprecedented blasphemies against the whole of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition." All of this was propagandized as Cartesianism. Gabbey shows the likely role reports of this work played in moving More finally to write the Enchiridion; More's judgment had become that Cartesianism was "the womb of impiety and godlessness." Professor Gregor Sebba's paper relates the story of Descartes's biographer, Baillet, from his appointment in 1680 as librarian to Frangois de Lamoignon to the publication of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes in 1691. The importance of the Vie is indisputable, both for its biographical information and for the texts it preserves. Sebba does what no one has done before in accounting for the circumstances that led Baillet to produce this crucial document in the history of Cartesianism. Baillet very successfully organized and catalogued Lamoignon's huge library, a task for which he was compulsively suited by both talent and inclination. His first publication, Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs, was in a sense an extension of that work; it was to be a catalogue of "thousands of authors from the Greeks to his own time, giving critical assessments of each author's work in a given field. These fields, broken down into a host of subdivisions, would cover printers, bibliographers, philologists, poets, orators, letter writers, historians, biographers, legalists, scientists, philosophers, and theologians." Although impossible to complete, four volumes of it nonetheless appeared in 1685, and five more the following year. The principles of its composition are relevant to the Vie. Given Baillet's reputation as "a hagiographer determined to make a devot out of Descartes," it is surprising that his first rule was "de ne rien dire de

Introduction

7

moi-meme." According to Sebba, Baillet's "only duty is to report, his only responsibility to be faithful to the authors he quotes and to give his sources; the ultimate judgment is left to the reader." His last rule is quite another matter. He forswears "la moindre envie de choquer personne," and promises to suppress whatever in his work may be the cause of personal distress. But this injunction against polemic seems to have served just the opposite purpose. Sebba points out that in thejugemens, Baillet attacked the "lawyer, polyhistor, and polygrapher Gilles Menage" as " 'vaniteux, susceptible, polemiste d'une memoire prodigeuse, d'un esprit claquant et sec, souvent ridicule', . . . an abbe galant who could write bad erotic poems in four languages, had a seemingly inexhaustible fund of off-color stories, and [most importantly and not unexpectedly] was a great friend of the Jesuits." This attack was the immediate background of the Vie. For various reasons the Jugemens was viewed by the Jesuits as Jansenist propaganda, and their replies to it were replies to the political threat Jansenism was thought to represent. Even prior to its publication, the Vie was attacked by virtue of the fact that its author was seen to be a tool of the Jansenists. Baillet was engaged for the Vie by the abbe Jean-Baptiste Legrand, to whom Clerselier had left the remains of Descartes's unedited correspondence. Legrand's intention was to publish this material as part of a new oeuvres completes along with a Descartes biography. But while careful and thorough, Legrand was slow, and the need for the Vie was great, since anti-Cartesianism was then reaching a peak. According to Sebba, "somehow Descartes needed to be disengaged from the theological entanglement he had so carefully avoided in his own lifetime." Baillet had been collaborating with Legrand in the preliminary work of the Vie, and what argued the choice of Baillet was that "he had what Legrand lacked: an almost inhuman capability to produce work at short notice." Against his expressed disinclination, Baillet was persuaded to write the work itself by persons of autorite, as he says, for the identity of whom Sebba offers some interesting hypotheses. THOMAS M. LENNON JOHN M. NICHOLAS JOHN W. DAVIS

This page intentionally left blank

Adrien Baillet and the Genesis of His Vie de M. Des-Cartes Gregor Sebba

A

nti-Cartesianism is not just a philosophical, scientific, and theological issue; it is also, and above all, a political phenomenon, as Professor Walter E. Rex pointed out in the 1974 Symposium on Anti-Cartesianism. It would be surprising if it were otherwise. No great philosopher before Hegel had Descartes's conviction and awareness of being a decisive thinker at the threshold of a new era for humankind, a shaper of the future. His evasive maneuvers in the sea of politics are an embarrassment to the student of his philosophy who would prefer him to have stuck to his guns instead of throwing some of them overboard to save his cargo; but then, Descartes was a different kind of hero. The story of his biography offers a glimpse of the political currents and countercurrents underneath the philosophical and theological controversies, forty years after his death when his philosophy had become a movement—Cartesianism. The scholarly literature tells us almost nothing about the history of this biography, which was published exactly at the time when the anti-Cartesian wave reached its peak. A strange little paragraph in a letter by Mme de Sevigne provided the first of the many clues scattered in the literature of the time, but vital information is lacking, some of it almost certainly censored out. Under the circumstances the only promising method of solving the riddle was that of the roman policier; but the suspects can no longer be assembled and presented with the weight of evidence that will make the unsuspected culprit confess. Only a search for new documentary evidence can provide what this paper lacks: conclusive proof or disproof of its hypothetical findings concerning the genesis of Baillet's biography of Descartes. But enough

[ 9]

10

Problems of Cartesianism

evidence is presented to prove that the publication of the work had political aspects, and that strong forces were operating behind the scenes, trying to prevent it. MME DE SEVIGNE, MME DE GRIGNAN, M. DE LAMOIGNON

The last months of the year 1688 were anxious ones for Mme de Sevigne and excruciating for her daughter, Mme de Grignan, whose son, not yet seventeen, had joined the Dauphin's army as a volunteer in the opening campaign in the War of the League of Augsburg. "With a cruelty unheard of even in her," as Mme de Sevigne wrote in a bitter moment,1 Mme de Grignan had left Paris for Provence, far from news about the long siege of Philippsburg, where her son would be under fire for the first time. On October 11 Mme de Sevigne wrote to her: "My dear Comtesse, if it be possible, have pity on yourself and us: you are more exposed than your child. . . ."2 But on All Souls' Day she can give her daughter the good news, fresh from the battlefield: "Philippsburg is taken, my dear child: your son is well."3 Vauban had led the siege, making sure that it was almost bloodless. Mannheim too was to surrender after a brief siege; on November 9, its last day, the petit marquis was struck by a spent shell fragment, an event unusual enough for the Dauphin to report it to the king. Mme de Sevigne got the news as she was finishing an affectionately teasing letter to her daughter: "I am always with you wherever I may be; but since I am not a philosopher like Descartes, I cannot help thinking that this is only in my imagination, and that you are not here. Would you not accept that, even as a disciple of that great man?"4 Now she 1

Mme de Sevigne to Comte de Bussy Rabutin, Paris, November 3, 1688. Lettres de Madame de Sevigne, de sa famille et des ses amis, new edition by Adolphe Regnier, published in Les Grands Ecrivains de la France, series of 14 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 18621927), 8:242 (cited hereafter as GEF). The new, brilliant, and definitive edition, Madame de Sevigne, Correspondance, 3 vols., ed. and annotated by Roger Duchene (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1972-78), had not progressed beyond vol. 1 when this paper was written, but its third volume, covering the period under discussion, appeared in time to be considered in n. 12, below. 2 GEF, 8:203. 3 Mme de Sevigne to Mme de Grignan, "A Paris, le jour de la Toussaint [1688], a neuf heures du soir" (GEF, 8:236). 4 Mme de Sevigne to Mme de Grignan, "A Brevannes, ce lundi 15e novembre [1688]" (GEF, 8:262).

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

11

can add a postscript about her grandson's slight injury, enclosing a letter from the young man himself, "who is very lucky to have gotten away so cheaply."5 Her neighbor and close friend, Francois de Lamoignon, the avocat general, must have sent his congratulations to Mme de Grignan about a week later, explaining that he had been waiting for a full report. Mme de Grignan answers from Aix-en-Provence on December 1,6 taking Lamoignon to task for being so tardy in relieving a mother's torturing anxiety. It is a strange letter, considering that this mother would have avoided much of the anxiety had she stayed in Paris. Stranger still, Mme de Grignan had received the news from her mother before M. de Lamoignon even posted his letter, and she knew that the avocat general was quite aware of that.7 Why then this expression of unfounded grievance? Was she leading up to something? Unfortunately the letter breaks off in the middle of a sentence, just when it might become very interesting indeed. Meanwhile Frankenthal near Mannheim had been besieged; it fell on November 18; the Dauphin had earned his laurels and returned to Versailles, and so did the little Marquis de Grignan, hero of three sieges, the talk of Paris and the court, if we are to believe all that Mme de Sevigne writes to her daughter. The awkward teenager blossoms in the limelight, chatting easily with M. de Lamoignon at the fireside, making the social rounds, going to the opera with the Dauphin.8 There is even some talk of his marrying Lamoignon's daughter, who is about the right age—fourteen—and has great expecta-

5

End of the same letter, "A Paris, a cinq heures du soir" (GEF, 8:264). Letter no. *1097, first published in GEF, 8:294f., "revue sur une copie de 1'autographe" (not in Correspondance 3, ed. Duchene, since it is not addressed to Mme de Sevigne). 7 At a dinner he gave for Mme de Sevigne and the Chevalier de Grignan on November 20, Lamoignon made "a thousand compliments about this contusion," as Mme de Sevigne writes to her daughter on November 22, 1688 (GEF, 8:278). Mme de Grignan had already received this letter when she wrote to Lamoignon, for she refers rather acidly to the address that the avocat general was to give before the parlement de Paris and which he had read to his dinner guests (GEF, 8:294: "Ceux a qui vous donnez a souper et que vous regalez d'une repetition de cette belle et grande action. . ."). 8 See the letters to her daughter of November 19, 22, and 30 (GEF, 8:275, 277f., 289f.), the petit fnpon's first note from Paris to his mother, December 8 (GEF, 8:310, and 328f., 351, 408). 6

12

Problems of Cartesianism

tions from her maternal grandfather, but Lamoignon nips the idea in the bud.9 This does not affect Lamoignon's friendship with Mme de Sevigne and the Grignans or dampen the exuberance of the holiday season. On January 9, 1689 Mme de Coulanges gives a jolly dinner "for the gouty," including Mme de Sevigne and M. de Lamoignon; le petit homme entertains the merry company.10 On January 14 Mme de Sevigne writes her daughter about the terrible cold that has Paris icebound: "Notre riviere est prise . . . on ne se soutient pas dans les rues. . . ." Then, abruptly, a new paragraph:11 J'ai fait souvenir M. de Lamoignon de la sollicitation que vous lui avez faite pour M. B ; cet homme sentira de loin comme de pres votre reconnoissance. J'aime cette maniere de n'avoir point de reconnoissances passageres: je connois des gens qui non-seulement n'en ont point du tout, mais qui mettent 1'aversion et la rudesse a la place.

Who is this M. B whom Mme de Sevigne describes with the condescension of the aristocrat toward a faithful domestic in undeserved trouble? What has M. de Lamoignon to do with him? Why did Mme de Grignan intervene from Aix on his behalf? Had she asked Mme de Sevigne to transmit her request to Lamoignon? Had she solicited his help in writing, perhaps in the lost part of her letter of December 1 ? The date would fit: this letter should have reached Lamoignon in about a week; after waiting nearly four weeks for his reply, she would have asked her mother to see him and let her know whether he had done anything about it. There are no clues to the missing part of this letter in her mother's correspondence. Besides, the matter seems trivial. Still, that ripple in the flow of Mme de Sevigne's prose should alert 9

GEF, 8:360f., 403. Mme de Sevigne to Mme de Grignan, Paris, January 10, 1689. The "gouteux" were: "1'abbe de Marsillac, le chevalier de Grignan, M. de Lamoignon (la nephretique tint lieu de goutte), sa femme et les Divines, toujours pleines de fluxions, moi en consideration du rhumatisme que j'eus il y a douze ans, Coulanges qui la merite" (GEF, 8:402). 11 Mme de Sevigne to Mme de Grignan, Paris, "ce vendredi 14e Janvier [1689]" (GEF, 8:409f.). 10

Baillet's Life of Descartes

13

scholars, for there was indeed a M. B who lived in the house of Lamoignon, taught his small son, served in his library, had been in trouble before, and was being consulted about a life of Descartes just when Mme de Grignan, "la fille de Descartes," was urged from Paris to intervene on his behalf; for this is where word about the trouble must have come from. Even the character of M. B fits. Nor is it surprising that M. B 's troubles have left few traces in the literature of the period if he was indeed, as we suspect, Adrien Baillet12 12

Recognition was almost instant when, in 1949, the word sollicitation in Descartes's Olympica ("les charmes de la solitude . . . presentez par des sollicitations purement humaines," Baillet, Vie de M. Des-Cartes, Paris, 1691, 1:85) led from Littre to this text, which shed unexpected light on the allusions to M. de Lamoignon in Baillet's Jugemens des auteurs and Menage's Anti-Baillet, which I was then reading. Mme de Sevigne's description fitted Baillet in every respect. But no supportive evidence could be found in the GEF edition of her letters. Now Roger Duchene's magnificent restoration of this correspondence has turned up a seemingly decisive, hitherto suppressed text in Mme de S6vigne's letter to her daughter, of March 25, 1689: "M. Bigot a gagne son proces et sail parfaitement ceux qui ont sollicite pour lui" (Correspondance, ed. Duchene, 3: 557). A note clarifies: "Les Grignans ont sollicite pour lui" (ibid., 3:1422, n. 1). Hence the identification: "Le nom se restitue d'apres la lettre 1090, p. 557; il s'agit de Robert Bigot, frere de 1'erudit Etienne Bigot" (ibid., 3:1383, n. 1 to p. 472). One would gladly sacrifice M. Baillet on the altar of Mme de Sevigne retablie—it would not affect the thesis of this paper—if only the circumstances fitted M. Bigot half as well as they fit M. Baillet. In the context of this paper it is the solicitation, not the identification, that matters. Let us look at the affairs of M. Bigot and the Grignans, who also had a lawsuit pending, an age-old one then entering the final stage (they would win it in August 1689, ibid., 3:1205f.). Their case had been transferred in December 1683 from Grenoble to the quatrieme chambre des enquetes at Paris, where in 1688-89 M. Bigot happened to be conseiller. Their solicitation for him thus was a case of manus manum lavat, or, legally speaking, do ut des—except that no des followed the do. Here is the record, including the M. B text. January 14: Mme Sevigne has reminded Lamoignon of the solicitation for M. B . February 4: she goes to see M. Bigot; "il y etait, mais il etait retire quoiqu'il ne fut pas six heures. J'y retournerai" (ibid., 3:497). March 25: M. Bigot has won his suit. April 4: Mme de Sevigne has called on four parties to get support for the Grignans, including "M. Bigot, a qui j'ai laisse un billet de vos compliments" (ibid., 3:569). With this, the unreachable M. Bigot disappears as suddenly from the correspondence as he had appeared in it three months earlier. Is he the man of whom she wrote: "J'aime cette maniere de ne pas avoir point de reconnaissances passageres"? Her next sentence would fit him better: "Je connais des gens qui non seulement n'en ont point du tout, mais qui mettent 1'aversion et la rudesse a la place" (ibid., 3:472). There is no evidence that she knew the elusive M. Bigot well enough to draw her character sketch, if indeed she knew him at all. The Grignans' solicitation on his behalf is incontestable. But was it Mme de Grignan's only intervention at that time? The context developed in the present paper strongly suggests that in December

14

Problems of Cartesianism

"qui avait la patience et I'opiniatrete d'un paysan, 1'esprit encyclopedique d'un primaire et 1'intransigeance d'un clerc Janseniste."13 HERMANT AND BAILLET

After the death of his father, Guillaume (le grand Lamoignon), first president of the parlement de Paris, the avocat general had turned to Geoffrey Hermant, his father's close friend and director of conscience, for advice concerning the choice of an outstanding librarian for the splendid library he had inherited.14 "I have your man as far as essentials go, so long as you are not put off by his rather unpolished appearance," said Hermant. Lamoignon replied that the essentials were what mattered; "the exterior does not bother me; the local air and a discreet grain of salt will do the rest: he will find it here." This is how Adrien Baillet came to enter the house of Lamoignon in May 1680, after much soul-searching concerning his fitness for the task, his appearance and coarse manners, and the troubles he might bring upon Hermant and Lamoignon. Hermant saw no need to ask him to modify his conduct "except with regard to city manners and some reserve toward the people he would see at M. de Lamoignon's." This 1688 she independently appealed to M. de Lamoignon on behalf of Baillet in a matter so sensitive that Mme de Sevigne had to repeat the request weeks later. Mme de Grignan was "la fille de Descartes" as well as a Grignan, and M. de Lamoignon figures in this episode not only as the influential magistrate. For it was in his house that La Vie de M. Des-Cartes would be written. 13 R. d'Amat, art. "Baillet," Dictionnaire de Biographie Frangaise, ed. M. Prevost and R. d'Amat (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1933- ), vol. 4, col. 1268. 14 The most useful single source for Baillet's life and work prior to the Vie de M. Des-Cartes is the second edition of the Jugemens des Savans sur les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs par Adrien Baillet, corrected and enlarged by Mr. de La Monnoye (Amsterdam: aux depens de la Compagnie, 1725). This edition, eight volumes in 4°, henceforth cited as JdS, contains Baillet's Jugemens des Savans (1685, 1687), Enfans celebres (1688), Satires personnelles (1689), and Auteurs deguises (1690), the Praefatio prioris Indicis Bibliothecae Lamonianae and the Plan general de I'Ouvrage des Jugemens des Savans (1694). Vol. 7 reprints the Anti-Baillet of Gilles Menage (1688) and two anonymous Jesuit attacks on the Jugemens des Savans (1691) and the Vie de M. Des-Cartes (1692), respectively. For the "Abrege de la Vie de Mr. Baillet" in vol. 1 see n. 15, below. Guy de La Monnoye had been a close friend of Gilles Menage. His natural bent is expressed in his chosen anagram "lo amo le donne," but his corrections of errors committed by Baillet and Menage are scholarly and his notes and general observations are judicious, sensitive, and unbiased.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

15

is all that Baillet's nephew, Augustin Frion, finds it advisable to say about the matter in his short life of Baillet.15 Adrien Baillet was a peasant's son whom his bishop, the ardent, saintly Jansenist, Nicholas Choart de Buzenval, had sent to school at the petit seminaire of Beauvais. The boy learned well enough, "mais il faut avouer qu'il n'y brilloit pas."16 He was born a bookworm, not a scholar. In his student years, history, especially ecclesiastical history, became a passion; philosophy left him cold, while his theological studies under Hasle and the Jansenist Beaupuis merely strengthened the peasant devotion that had made the child run to the Franciscans to serve them as an acolyte and at their table whenever he could slip away. Almost morbidly ascetic,17 he longed for a solitary life among the books he kept accumulating by living like a beggar. No wonder he wanted to be a Trappist. But his bishop made him teach the lower classes at the College de Beauvais, then ordered him as vicar to the poorest of his parishes, Lardiere near Beaumont. Baillet managed to antagonize his wealthier parishioners by his unkempt exterior and his asceticism while keeping away the poor by his aloofness, until he was 15 JdS, l:xxxf. Frion identified himself in the epitaph he wrote for Baillet (ibid., xlii): "Posuit Testamenti Curator A. FRION Professor Marchianus." He had been at Baillet's deathbed in Lamoignon's house (1704). Immediately after his uncle's death he informed Lamoignon of Baillet's privately expressed last wishes concerning his manuscripts; the next day he collected all the manuscripts he could find (ibid., xlif.), presumably also Baillet's correspondence and notes. Nothing is known about the disposition of these materials. Baillet might well have asked Frion to keep manuscripts concerning controversial figures in his possession in order to avoid embarrassing Lamoignon and to make posthumous publication possible. On this, see n. 20, below. Frion wrote his sketch of Baillet's life with the utmost discretion but found indirect ways of suggesting Baillet's stand in controversies too touchy to be discussed. No such precautions were necessary for Baillet's earlier life. 16 Frion's comment, JdS, l:xxv. At Beauvais, Latin and Greek were taught by the Port-Royal method; Baillet, who had avidly read the expurgated Latin poets, confined his reading of French poets to those "que la Methode de Port-Royal propose." 17 "II traitoit durement son corps, comme un ennemi insolent qu'il faut toujours tenir assujeti," as Frion says. He had trained himself to sleep only five hours, often going to bed without undressing; to take only one meal a day; to abstain from wine. As soon as company left him he would extinguish the fire and hide the firewood to disguise this act of mortification (JdS, xliii). Even in Lamoignon's house "son exterieur etoit plus neglige que propre . . . il ne se donnoit pas le terns ni le soin de ranger ses habits, son meuble, ni ses Livres; se contentant d'oter de la vue tout ce qui auroit pu la blesser: le reste alloit comme il pouvoit" (ibid., xliif).

16

Problems of Cartesianism

left alone with his books. After a year he went to Beaumont as a cantor; his appearance and manners caused such an uproar in the village that after two weeks the authorities had to intervene.18 With two scandals in the past, Baillet had good reason to fear trouble in the future. But there was more to it than that, for among the people he would see at M. de Lamoignon's were some of the most influential Jesuits of the time, and Geoffroy Hermant was a militant Jansenist and an implacable enemy of their order. Whether Baillet himself had been "converted to Jansenism" by Hermant and Beaupuis de Walon is a matter of definition. 'Jansenism" meant many things in those days, and Baillet was no Pascal. But he knew that for the Jesuits he would always remain the man whom Geoffroy Hermant had planted in the house of Lamoignon.19 Hermant himself, born in Beauvais in 1617, had been star-crossed almost from the beginning.20 No attention was wasted on this bril18

JdS, xxviiif. The point was still made by a Jesuit in 1691: "Eh bien Monsieur, c'est ce Baillet, le meme, qu'un Chanoine de la Cathedrale de Beauvais a donne depuis a Mr. 1'Avocat General de Lamoignon" (Reflexions sur les Jugemens des Savans, JdS, 7:266). 20 For the following, see La Vie de Geoffroy Hermant par feu Adrien Baillet (Amsterdam: chez Pierre Mortier, 1717). According to d'Amat (n. 13, above), the book is falsely ascribed to Baillet, but there is reason to think that it does go back to a manuscript or to material collected and partly worked up by Baillet and given its final form by another hand. The passionately partisan inside accounts of the persecution of the Beauvais Jansenists cannot possibly be ascribed to Baillet, and there is evidence of interpolations and rewriting in a number of other places. Yet it is inconceivable that Baillet should have seen the body of his teacher, confessor, and benefactor being brought from the street into Lamoignon's house without resolving to preserve the record of Hermant's remarkable life. On a similar occasion, the death of his former teacher, Hasle, in 1680, he interrupted his work at once and wrote a short life of Hasle for circulation among friends (JdS, l:xxxii). His interest in biography went back to his student days when he attempted a Life of Peiresc "for his amusement" (ibid., 1 :xxviii). Within a year after the Vie de M. Des-Cartes, in September 1692, he wrote to a friend: "Je m'y amuse a composer la Vie du fameux [Edmond] Richer au sujet duquel votre Sorbonne a tant etc troublee. Mais ce ne sera pas a Privilege dans le Royaume." Frion amplifies: "Celle de Descartes avoit fait trop de bruit. Celle de Richer lui paroissoit d'une nature a en faire encore plus, & en France & en Italie" (ibid., l:xxxvif). Yet Frion does not mention a Vie de Mr. Hermant by Baillet. Nonetheless, parts of that book seem indeed to be by Baillet's hand, particularly the discussion of Hermant's ecclesiastical works, the intimate glimpses of his relationship with Lamoignon father and son, the character sketch at the end, and certainly the classified bibliography of Hermant's writings. The style, too, is often unmistakably Baillet's. (Cf. La Monnoye's observa19

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

17

liant boy at the college at Beauvais, since the principal was convinced that child prodigies die young anyway.21 His bishop, Augustin Potier, knew better; he sent the boy, who had just received the tonsure at the age of thirteen, to the Jesuit College de Clermont in Paris. This college, later renamed Louis le Grand, was to play a disastrous role in Hermant's life. If his biographer is right in claiming that two Jesuit fathers there "n'oublierent aucun sacrifice pour le porter a se faire Jesuite,"22 the ground for his hatred of the order may have been laid there, even though he attended the college for only three months as an externist. He did his philosophy and theology at the College de Navarre and the Sorbonne and was ready to take the baccalaureat at nineteen, three years before he could receive it under Sorbonne rules. He taught for a while at the College de Beauvais, where Charles Walon de Beaupuis was one of his outstanding students. Then his bishop sent him back to Paris to tutor his nephew, M. d'Ocquerre of the Potier d'Ocquerre branch of the family. Again the bishop's hand was unwittingly shaping his protege's future life. Guillaume de Lamoignon, still Maitre de Requetes, married d'Ocquerre's tions.JdS, l:vif.) It is likely that Frion found among Baillet's papers a Hermant file with at least a draft of a biography, perhaps also notes and pertinent documents, material probably used by Bayle in his article "Hermant" as well as for the brief Life of Hermant appended to a biography of Buzenval, which suppressed "ce qu'il contient de plus curieux," according to the anonymous editor of the Vie de Hermant, who claims to be "celui qui avoit le Manuscrit original" of Baillet. He gives the title page of this manuscript as follows: "Vie de saint-Julien, ou bien La vie de Hierome d'Angefort Sieur de Bellevacque [Beauvais], ecrit par Daniel retabli ST de Villeneuve." At first blush this looks like an absurd, self-defeating attempt to authenticate Baillet's authorship. Any reader would ask why Baillet had put this bizarre title on a manuscript that names GeofFroy Hermant in the very first line. Moreover, "saint-Julien" was Hermant's well-known pseudonym, the "d'Angefort" anagram was equally transparent, and "Daniel retabli" had identified himself publicly in 1689. It makes more sense to assume that this title is indeed genuine. Baillet might have jotted it down when the idea of a Life of Hermant first occurred to him while he was preparing the Satires personnelles for the printer in 1688-89. This playful work swarms with anagramatically disguised Baillets; its "Troisieme Entretien" opens with a burlesque list of twenty-seven fictitious books written by twenty-seven Baillets in anagrammatic dress. The "author" of no. 27 is "Daniel retabli." At that time Hermant was still alive and able to furnish information. Frion may have found this title sheet in Baillet's file. 21 Vie de Hermant, p. 5. 22 Ibid., p. 6.

18

Problems of Cartesianism

sister, and thus began the friendship that tied Hermant to the future first president of the parlement de Paris and to his son, the avocat general, whose house guest he was when he suddenly died in 1690. Hermant's brief, brilliant, stormy career at the Sorbonne began in 1640. He quickly attained distinction through his profound New Testament scholarship and his mastery of Latin.23 In 1643 his bishop honored him by appointing him to a vacancy in the cathedral chapter of Beauvais, apparently a purely honorary appointment, since he lacked ordination. The bishop's timing could not have been more unfortunate, for just then the Jesuits were renewing their demands to have their College de Clermont incorporated in the University of Paris, and the Sorbonne chose Hermant to present its case against them to the general public. In his Apologie de I'Universite de Paris, contre le discours d'un Jesuite, published anonymously in 1643 and reprinted in 1644, he argued, in his biographer's words,24 that admitting the Jesuits might ruin the university and would be dangerous to religion and the state alike. In the heated controversy that followed he went far beyond the immediate issue and attacked the Jesuits on all fronts, castigating their "maniere de precher, de diriger & d'ecrire, comme c'eut ete une suite naturelle de son sujet."25 The next year, 1644, he committed the ultimate crime by defending, again anonymously, Arnauld's Livre de la frequents communion against "un libelle public par les Jesuites."26 In two years Hermant had published six anonymous attacks on the Jesuits, not counting the defense of Arnauld. The university, which once again won its case, rewarded him by appointing him prior of the Maison de Sorbonne. A half year later, in mid-1645, he was laid low in the most unexpected manner: his bishop suddenly recalled him to Beauvais, ordered him to be ordained and to serve not only as canon but as chapter theologian as well, a position that would require permanent residence and 23

Even the Jesuits, who thought little of Sorbonne Latin and still less of Hermant, are quoted as saying of him: "Tandem unus in Sorbona qui latine loquitur" (Vie de Hermant, p. 25). 24 Vie de Hermant, p. 14. 25 Ibid., p. 15. 26 The libelle, though distributed by the Jesuits, was not written by a Jesuit (Vie de Hermant, pp. 2iff.).

Baillet's Life of Descartes

19

keep him under stiff theological control. Hermant was in tears,27 but the bishop remained inflexible, though he did allow him to visit M. d'Ocquerre in Touraine before biting the bullet.28 "The grace of ordination did not suddenly heal . . . the most hurtful cuts and the sharpest convulsions one can imagine," as Hermant put it,29 but he had to reconcile himself to being condemned to stay in Beauvais, "qu'il regardoit comme le lieu de son exil, & comme son sepulcre."30 However, rescue came from Paris, and Guillaume de Lamoignon seems to have had a hand in it.31 The bishop was his wife's uncle, and Lamoignon was jurist and diplomat enough to present the university's wishes in terms that the bishop could accept. In 1647 Hermant was permitted to resign from the theologale on condition that he remain canon,32 that is, subject to recall. Back in Paris, he was elected rector of the Sorbonne, serving for six trimesters and successfully defending the university against new lawsuits, one of them brought again by the College de Clermont. But the battle over Jansenism at the Sorbonne was inexorably moving toward a decision. Hermant could still be received docteur en Sorbonne in 1650, but in January 1651 27 Vie de Hermant, p. 27. Two pages earlier Hermant is said to have already resolved to leave Paris before his bishop suddenly ordered him back, his desire being "d'aller resider en qualite de Clerc mineur dans le Choeur ou son Canonicate le demandoit" (p. 25). A Sorbonne professor as lay brother in the chapter? 28 Hermant left, "temoignant qu'il iroit au Japon, pourvu qu'on ne lui parlat point d'Ordination" (Vie de Hermant, p. 28). 29 Vie de Hermant, p. 28. The statement about the unexpected failure of ordination to produce an instantaneous state of grace is vintage Baillet: naive and bitingly ironical at the same time. 30 Letter of Hermant, August 2, 1646 (Vie de Hermant, p. 31). 31 In a letter to Hermant (September 19, 1645) Guillaume Lamoignon told him that he had to submit to the bishop, whatever the latter's motives might be; but the proposition concerning the theologale he found "astounding." He suggested that Hermant, without "going into exile in Picardy," might be just as useful to the cathedral if he merely preached the Advent and Lenten sermons while residing permanently in Paris (Vie de Hermant, pp. 29f.). A month later he wrote Hermant that in his understanding the theologale was to last for only a year (a diplomatic way of suggesting a way out) and reminded Hermant of his duty to the Sorbonne and his need to complete his License (letter of October 14, 1645, Vie de Hermant, p. 30). The bishop subsequently allowed Hermant to go to Paris for this purpose in March 1646. Lamoignon's arguments were beginning to work. 32 Vie de Hermant, p. 32.

20

Problems of Cartesianism

he was back in Beauvais, excluded from the Sorbonne but welcomed by the new bishop of Beauvais, Nicolas Choart de Buzenval, who had succeeded his uncle, Augustin Potier, and was, like him, related to the d'Ocquerres and thus to Guillaume de Lamoignon. At this point Hermant's history merges with the better-known one of the struggle at Beauvais over the Five Propositions and the formulaire. The chapter split; a Jansenist minority held out with their bishop for thirteen years; the nine Jansenist canons were barred from performing their ecclesiastical duties and deprived of their living until, in 1668, they submitted unreservedly, together with their bishop, being spared only the signing of the formulaire. But Buzenval's successor in 1679 revoked all ecclesiastical privileges granted since 1668, thus forcing the Jansenists to sign or tacitly accept the formulaire. Hermant alone refused to ask for reinstatement and withdrew once more into solitude and poverty, to the new bishop's embarrassment. And when Hermant heard rumors that Lamoignon had been asked to invite him to Paris in order to remove him from the scene, he declined all his invitations for five years, "although he owed the Avocat General at least one visit per year."33 His last visit to Lamoignon prior to this decision had been in April 1680, in the midst of the new storm at Beauvais. It was then that he had personally introduced Baillet to the avocat general.34 "JUGEMENS DES SAVANS"

M. de Lamoignon's librarian was all that Hermant had promised. Within six months the library was reclassified and reshelved according to the needs of the avocat general and the erudites who consulted the library in growing numbers.35 The amazing librarian then completed in twenty-one months a huge classified authors-and-subjects index, which filled no less than thirty-two folio volumes.36 His personal ad33 34

Ibid., p. 117.

Frion, JdS l:xxxi. Cf. Baillet's "In Priorem Bibliothecae Lamonianae Indicem Praefatio," JdS 1: Ixxiff. 36 The catalogue volumes covering the law and ecclesiastical matters were much used and admired for their organization. According to Frion, several great prelates and magistrates asked for copies of the whole catalogue or parts of it (JdS, l:xxxii). 35

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

21

justment seems to have been swift too. Hermant had taken him around to his friends before leaving Paris; from them, but mostly from the visitors at the Lamoignon library, Baillet learned enough about the manners and the style of the gentlemen of the republique des lettres to pass muster, making up by his vast bibliographical knowledge what he lacked in solid scholarship and literary polish. M. de Lamoignon made him a member of the circle of learned friends who continued to meet at his country house in Baville as they had done in his father's time.37 Despite the social distance between them, the relationship between the avocat general and his librarian became close enough to remind one of Guillaume de Lamoignon's friendship with Geoffroy Hermant, which had weathered all the anti-Jansenist storms. It was to Adrien Baillet that M. de Lamoignon confided the education of his eldest son, who had been a child of four when Baillet entered his service. Baillet was certainly an ideal schoolmaster. His erudition, crammed with curious encyclopedic detail, his naive love of poetry, and his orderly classifying mind brought him close to a growing boy's level. But what decided M. de Lamoignon's choice was undoubtedly Baillet's disciplined way of life, his unaffected priestly manner, and his simple Catholic faith. It is unthinkable that the great magistrate should have allowed his child to be infected with Jansenist notions, but there was no fear of that: Baillet's Catholicism was of the kind that Descartes had called "the religion of my nurse," while his personal bearing must have reminded the avocat general of his own father's austere, unbending morality. The priest would be a living example to Lamoignon's heir, an example healthily limited in its effect by the boy's knowledge that he had been born for better things. It was an admirable choice. If Baillet had a vice, it was the compiler's vice of stopping at nothing short of total coverage. As a theology student he had conceived of writing single-handedly a dictionary of ecclesiastical history and geography, which insensibly grew to encompass no less than "1'histoire de la fortune de toutes des parties du monde depuis Adam jusqu'a nos terns."38 Now that his monster catalogue was completed, 37

JdS, 7:viii.

22

Problems of Cartesianism

he thought of a vast extension of it, covering the work of thousands of authors from the Greeks to his own time, with other authors' critical assessments of each author's work in a given field. These fields, broken down into a host of subdivisions, would cover printers, bibliographers, philologists, poets, orators, letter writers, historians, biographers, legalists, scientists, philosophers, and the theologians.39 Why not publish this supercatalogue, even if it would take at least a hundred and thirty volumes and thirty years of work to complete it? He would publish the work section by section, part by part, as he finished them. And so, within one year, the first four volumes of the Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs were ready for the printer. The only trouble was that Baillet, at the age of thirty-five, had never published before. What he had learned about the republique des lettres did not fill him with confidence either. Judging from the tone of the "Avertissement" to the Jugemens,40 he must have felt like a Christian entering the lions' den, clad in shining principles. These principles are worth looking at, for they are those of the future Descartes biographer. It is true that by the time he wrote that biography he was a much sadder man, but the punishment he had taken merely taught him to practice henceforth what he had professed, without any deviation whatsoever. His first principle is the resolution "de ne rien dire de moi-meme." His only duty is to report, his only responsibility to be faithful to the 38

Frion, JdS, l:xxvi. Just before his death in 1704, Baillet decided to start work on that youthful project of a "Dictionnaire universel ecclesiastique" (ibid., l:xxxix). 39 La Monnoye prints the detailed outline of the Jugemens, privately printed in 1694, on nearly twenty-five double-column pages. The nine published volumes of the Jugemens cover only the first page and a half of the outline. One small example may show how much was lost when Baillet was forced to abandon the Jugemens. Among the "Poetes Prosaiques, ou les Auteurs de Romans & de Fictions en prose" he lists the modern authors "qui ont fait des descriptions de Pompes, de Triomphes, de Fetes publiques mais seculieres, de ceremonies, de decorations, d'entrees, de receptions, de joustes, de tournois, de carrousels, de balets, de spectacles, de jeux publics, & autres representations ou la Fable est employee pour le divertissement plus que pour 1'instruction," including some reference to some who wrote on games "a cause de la proximite du sujet" (JdS, l:xlviii). It would have been rich material for students of the Renaissance and the Baroque. 40 JdS, l:xi-xxii.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

23

authors he quotes and to give his sources; the ultimate judgment is left to the reader. For himself he reserves only the right to assess the authority his sources may carry.41 Second, since he might be blamed for citing critics who praise Protestant authors or find fault with Catholic ones, he declares his own stand in the most orthodox form: let no one assume that he or the authors he cites are "assez malheureux pour pretendre toucher a la purete & a la verite de la Religion Catholique, dont le centre est & sera toujours le Siege Apostolique des Successeurs de S. Pierre."42 Third, eulogies are suspect, unless they come from adversaries of the author or from critics who have no cause or inclination to praise.43 As to living authors and their sensitivities, Baillet boldly asserts that he does not have nor ever had "la moindre envie de choquer personne." If, despite the "simplicity of his intentions," some "regrettable effects" should ensue from his presentation, he will suppress whatever might cause such reactions44—a determination soon to be tested and found wanting. So much for the principles, and now for the execution. The first four volumes appeared in August 1685. These Jugemens were "un tissu a la Mosaique, compose de diverses pieces taillees par diverses mains, & rassemblees artistiquement par une seule"—the hand of a man of prodigious reading, "who, suprisingly, had an extraordinary ease in writing, despite his rather unnatural diction," as La Monnoye said. The work was well received. "Nul Ouvrage de cette espece n'avoit etc vu dans le Royaume";45 it brought to life 41

Ibid., l:xiiif. Ibid., l:xiv (italics added). 43 Ibid., l:xvi. 44 Ibid., l:xix. 45 "Preface de 1'Auteur des Notes," JdS, l:vi. La Monnoye notes that Baillet broke with tradition in translating into French all quotations from sources in Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, running the translator's risk of missing the precise, true meaning. These observations are useful in judging Baillet's translations and paraphrases from Descartes manuscripts no longer extant, but one must remember that he got his higher education in translating at the hands of the merciless critics of the Jugemens, who drove their lessons home by ridiculing him. Baillet had to be prepared for the same kind of criticism regarding Descartes, since he could not know that some of the 42

24

Problems of Cartesianism

such unpromising material as printers and their emblems, learned journals, library catalogues, text criticism, philology, and translations. Baillet's scholarship was shallow and insecure, but he was remarkably knowledgeable about the currents and undercurrents in the republique des lettres. The resolution to keep his mouth tightly shut must have been hard to bear, for Baillet had feelings and convictions that wanted out. Under such pressure his easily flowing style became inflated and stiffly circumstantial. Like the peasant who must suppress his anger, he had a deadpan way of letting nasty things happen of themselves while he was somewhere else. In these first four volumes caution is still the word, but he is already sharpening up his needles and sinking them in here and there. The blank innocence with which he makes doublefaced statements can be very amusing, except to his victims. He will hang a man by his own words, defending him against their implications with disastrous results. He knows how to lace the bland concoction he serves up with some sweetly poisoned praise here, an involuntary confession there, with quotations that explode in the author's face. By the standards of his time it is pleasantly sardonic though mild stuff. It is a tribute to Baillet's exceptional gift for getting himself into trouble that his preferred practice target was the lawyer, polyhistor, and polygrapher Gilles Menage, seventy-two years old, "vaniteux, susceptible, polemiste, d'une memoire prodigieuse, d'un esprit claquant et sec, souvent ridicule," an old friend of the Lamoignons and of Mme de Sevigne whose tutor and lover he had reputedly been in the days when she was still Marie de RabutinChantal,46 an abbe galant who could write bad erotic poems in four manuscripts he had before him would be lost before anyone could use them to check his versions. Baillet translated Latin rapidly at sight, using stereotype bridge passages and expanding texts while scanning the next sentence. A thorough study of his translating technique in the Life of Descartes is urgently needed; it would have to consider the philological and factual corrections of the Jugemens by Menage and by La Monnoye (who rectifies Menage as well as Baillet)and compare Baillet's translations and paraphrases in the Jugemens with those in the Vie de M. Des-Cartes. The Jugemens were extensively cribbed, as were their errors: "Pope-Blunt, Morhof, & les Continuateurs de Moreri ne les ont que trop copiees," as La Monnoye says. 46 Gerard-Gailly in his Pleiade edition: Madame de Sevigne. Lettres, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1953-57), 1:959. Roger Duchene finds no contemporary evidence of Menage

Baillet's Life of Descartes

25

languages, had a seemingly inexhausible fund of off-color stories, and was a great friend of the Jesuits. Baillet could not resist the temptation to revive the controversy about grammar and etymology between Menage and his friend Father Bouhours which had kept Paris laughing as the learned Jesuit praised the learned abbe for his ingenuity in deriving the word "jargon" from "barbarus" and "larigot" from "fistula," to which the enraged abbe replied that his friend knew neither Greek nor Hebrew, was ignorant of Scholasticism and canon law, and had not read the Church Fathers or even the Bible. Baillet concluded his report with the backhanded statement that if Menage had said less, "on en auroit cru peut-etre un peu d'advantage."47 He forgot that quod licet Jovi non licet bovi. To be exposed to ridicule by a "nouveau venu au Parnasse . . . qui ne savoit aucune Science; qui ne savoit pas le Grec . . . ; qui n'avoit lu aucuns Originaux, & qui n'etoit qu'un Copiste de Copiste"48 was outrageous. Menage's friends rallied, and a barrage of insulting poems fell on the hapless librarian. Among others, more than twenty Jesuits (by Menage's count) dipped their poetic pens in gall. The poem that Baillet resented most was the anonymous Asinus in Parnasso by the Jesuit Commire. It describes the beast of burden climbing to the seat of the Muses, only to be driven off by a swarm of infuriated bees who work there. All seemed to be set for a public execution; even lists of Baillet's numerous bevues and stylistic lapses were prepared, compared, and compiled. It is hard to understand that so small a cause should have prohaving been her tutor (Correspondance, ed. Duchene, 1:842, n. 6, and 847f., n. 2, to p. 19). A good sampling of Menage's interests may be found in the Menagiana, edited by his colorful friend Guy de la Monnoye. 47 Jugemens, art. 756 on Menage, and art. 758 on Bouhours (JdS, 2:356, 361). Baillet's animosity against Menage is unmistakable, though he praises Menage where praise is due. He disliked Menage's uncontrolled vanity and was offended by his "galanterie," which in his prudish, puritanical view was an incitement to sin. But the real reason for his dislike comes out when, in his art. 564 (JdS, 2:259), he cites the Anglican bishop of Chester, John Pearson, as calling Abbe Menage "le grand Ornement de 1'Eglise Gallicane," adding that since Menage had never done anything for the glory of that church, the reference must be to Menage's rich benefice, "parce que c'est 1'endroit par ou Mr. Menage a rapport a a 1'Eglise Gallicane." To Abbe Baillet this kind of "abbe" was an abomination. 48 Menage, preface to the Anti-Baillet (JdS, 7:v).

26

Problems of Cartesianism

duced such agitation. Even more puzzling is the silence that followed. That Menage did not publicly explode was a minor miracle, wrought by practiced hands. But a good deal of maneuvering took place behind closed doors. Baillet himself gave a veiled account of it in the "Eclaircissements," which appeared in 1686 in the fifth volume of the Jugemens. The intervention began with a visit by certain gentlemen representing the injured parties; according to Baillet's version they told him that he would have been the man "selon leur coeur," had he confined himself to eulogies; that they "needed their reputation" for the success of their work; and that Baillet had acted without the respect and submission he owed them. Baillet stood his ground but promised to correct any misstatements or errors in his forthcoming volumes. The visitors seemed to respond to this offer in a cooperative spirit, but what happened afterward forced Baillet to conclude "qu'ils m'ont abandonne des le commencement."49 Menage has a different version, as we shall see, but he too believed that the visit had ended with an amicable, fair, and honest settlement. Baillet was shocked out of this belief by the subsequent visit paid to him by Abbe Jean-Paul de la Rocque,50 a journalist of dubious reputation who had quit the Jesuit order after three years and was now the proprietor of the Journal des savans. De la Rocque brought up "quelques difficultes" so unforeseen and puzzling to Baillet that he did not even understand what he was expected to do about them. He proposed that these "difficulties" be publicly raised in the Journal, but Abbe de la Rocque ruled this out, so that Baillet had no way of answering them. But he had heard the message. Gradually and gingerly he will reveal it, mentioning "en passant" the accusation "que le fonds de I'Ouvrage que j'ai public venoit de plus loin"—a direct quotation, italicized to mark it as such. The charge was of course not plagiarism, for Baillet finds it necessary in the very next section51 to profess his great respect for "une Societe considerable dans 1'Eglise & dans 1'Etat," the usual circumlocution for the word "Jesuits." 49

"Discours pour servir d'Eclaircissement a quelques endroits qui ont pu arreter quelques personnes dans les premiers Volumes de cet Ouvrage," Jugemens, vol. 5 of the original edition (JdS, 3:3-5). 50 JdS, 3:8f. 51 Ibid., 3:10-12.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

27

After another long diversion the cat finally climbs out of the bag: Baillet has been charged with attacking the Jesuits at the instigation of Port-Royal; he has even heard that his adversaries "n'ont point fait difnculte de publier que j'avois voulu favoriser une Societe que je n'ai jamais connue que par la lecture de quelques Ouvrages qu'on lui attribue, Be que cette supposition, toute fausse qu'elle est, ne laisse pas de servir de principal fondement au chagrin qu'ih out con^u contre moi."52 The issue was Hermant, not Menage, and Baillet knew it: "... qu'on veuille me definir ce que c'est que leur Societe que j'ai pris long-terns pour une chimere a laquelle on a attache un nom de Secte ["Jansenistes"] qui est rejette de tout le monde, & dont je ne pretens pas renouveller la memoire apres la defense qui en a ete faite par 1'Arret du Conseil de 1'an 1668." That was the year when Buzenval and Hermant unconditionally surrendered. Baillet would not be Baillet had his defense not included at least one example of his art of not saying anything of his own. To the charge of having treated the Jansenists as heroes he answers that he had reserved that title for humanists like Scaliger and Saumais; only once had he called Port-Royal a Trojan horse whose belly was pregnant with heroes. But, he adds, he had said that same thing about the Spanish Jesuit Casuists, namely, "qu'ils sont sortis du sein de 1'Espagne comme du ventre du Cheval de Troye,"53 leaving it to the reader to guess what they did to Troy after emerging from the horse's belly. But in the matter of religion he stands like a rock. He is not one whom Providence has called "to the defense, or even to the examination, of the truths of our religion":54 Elle m'a fait naitre dans le sein de 1'Eglise Catholique: elle m'y a fait elever dans un amour parfait pour son Unite & pour la verite Orthodoxe. . . . Rien au monde ne sera jamais capable de me faire quitter ce sein de notre Mere commune. . . . L'amour que j'ai pour son Unite, me fait detester tout Schisme & toute Di52 53 54

Ibid., 3:19 (italics added). Ibid., 3:20. Ibid., ad finem.

28

Problems of Cartesianism vision; celui que j'ai pour sa Doctrine me donne horreur de toute Heresie & de toute nouveaute.

Passionate and firm to the end, the priest refuses to be drawn into internal divisions in the church "qui vont quelquefois jusqu'a lui dechirer les entrailles." This is his answer to those members of the "Societe considerable dans 1'Eglise & 1'Etat" who had used Gilles Menage as their stalking horse. BAILLET'S LAST "JUGEMENS"

It was an angry Baillet who gave the second set of Jugemens to the printer, five new volumes on the poets. The manuscript had been almost ready when the first set had appeared, but new material had to be written and at least one score had to be settled: the Asinus in Parnasso would make an ass out of Menage, a warning to the "nation farouche des Critiques."55 When the work came out in August 1686, Menage found himself mercilessly attacked "de tous cotez; du cote de mon age; du cote de mes ecrits; du cote de mes moeurs," as he himself says; "& avec une rage & une fureur, qui n'est pas, je ne dis pas d'un Pretre, mais d'un Chretien. II m'y traite de parjure; il m'y traite de profane, & d'impenitent; plus profane & plus impenitent que 1'Aretin, de qui on a dit qu'il avoit dit du mal de tout le monde excepte de Dieu, & qu'il s'en etoit excuse en disant qu'il ne le connoissoit pas. . . . Et tout cela, parce que je m'ai loue en vers . . . & qu'a'iant une pension de quatre mille Livres sur deux Abbayies j'ai fait des vers de Galanterie. Verba mea arguuntur, adeo factorum innocens sum."56 Baillet had caught the old man in a net woven from his own words, and he had caught bigger fish as well. Thus Menage had written that without Venus the sun god Apollo is a mere statue of ice: et profecto sine Venerefriget Apollo.^7 By this standard Menage is a great poet, says Baillet, while by the same standard there are only "des Versificateurs froids et languissans dans toute la Societe des Jesuites," including 55 56 57

JdS, 4:310. Anti-Baillet, JdS, 7:vii. Jugemens, art. 1515 (Menage), JdS, 4:347.

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

29

the Mambruns, the Rapins, and the Commires; for, although they did write verse, it is true "qu'ils n'ont pourtant juge a propos d'y meler . . . aucun amour profane que pour en inspirer de 1'aversion, & pour en decouvrir la difformite, & qui n'ont point voulu souffrir que Venus vint echauffer leur Apollon." One may be sure that not one of the multiple insinuations in this passage and others of this sort were missed by Father Commire and his friends. Did Baillet really expect them to remain silent while he continued his Jugemens at the rate of four to five volumes per year until he reached the areas of philosophy and theology? After the visit from M. de la Rocque he could not have had any illusions about the reaction he was provoking. But this visit had changed things in an unexpected way. A literary quarrel had turned into a religious confrontation, and Baillet saw the Jugemens in a new light: what the authors had written and what the critics had said is as nothing before the ultimate jugement, which is the Judgment of God. And so Adrien Baillet can open his article on "Mr. de Moliere . . . , Parisien, mort en Comedien" with the words: "Mr. Moliere est un des plus dangereux ennemis que le Siecle ou le monde ait suscite a 1'Eglise de JESUS-CHRIST: & il est d'autant plus redoutable qu'il fait encore apres sa mort le meme ravage dans les coeurs de ses Lecteurs, qu'il en avoit fait de son vivant dans celui de ses Spectateurs."58 Baillet had selected his article on Pierre Corneille, "tant mort qu'il est," as a vehicle for a statement of principle, since he wanted to avoid censoring living poets on the issue of the morality of what they wrote and did. In a glowing eulogy he praises Corneille as "un de ces heureux Genies des derniers siecles, qui ont contribue beaucoup a fermer la bouche a ces Idolatres de 1'Antiquite, qui publient injurieusement pour les terns posterieurs que la Nature s'est epuisee dans ces grands Hommes . . . de la Grece et de 1'ancienne Rome."59 Corneille is their equal, at the very least. But he takes liberties of two kinds, on his own authority; one concerns morality, the other the rules of poetry. On the first issue Baillet tells his readers, in italics, "que je comprens dans cette reflexion tons les Poetes vivans, tant ceux des 58 59

Ibid., 305. Jugemens, art 1530 (Pierre Corneille), JdS, 4:316.

30

Problems of Cartesianism

Theatres que ceux des Ruelles, de la Cour & de I'Ecole meme, en quelque Langue &f en quelque genre de Poe'sie qu'ils se soient divertis, ou qu'ils ayent diverti les autres."60 He does not lack respect for the merits of the poets now living and writing; nor should he be suspected "de vouloir confondre les qualites de leurs moeurs avec celles de leur style," which is precisely what he had done in the case of Menage and the Jesuit poets. His strictures should, rather, be pleasing "aw mains a ceux entre eux qui, bien que profanes dans leur Poe'sie, ne sont pas encore alles jusqu a / 'exces d 'appliquer le caractere de la Bete sur celui de leur Bateme, & qui sont persuades que le veritable Dieu qu'ils reconnoissent traitera les belles Divinites de leur Parnasse comme les autres Demons, & qu 'il jugera leurs Poesies aussi-bien que nos paroles inutiles." This language of Baptism and the Beast, of the Poets at the Last Judgment, of the Demons worshiped on Mount Parnassus was new in Paris under the reign of the Sun King who had appeared as Apollo in a ballet at the Fetes de Versailles and had ordered Moliere to write and present a new comedy on that occasion. Baillet himself is forced to cite Nicole as saying that "si les Comedies pouvoient s'accorder avec les regies du Christianisme, ce seroient sans doute celles de Mr. Corneille." But then, Baillet was not a Jansenist but a Christian with a vengeance. Although Corneille "passe meme dans 1'esprit de ces Messieurs pour le plus modeste & le plus retenu de tous les Poetes Comiques," Baillet finds "que ses Comedies & ses Tragedies sont encore beaucoup plus dangereuses que celles de tous les Anciens." For none of the ancients "frappoit 1'esprit des Spectateurs de 1'idee horrible d'une prostitution a laquelle une sainte Martyre avoit ete condamnee." But "les gens du Monde . . . n'aiment pas qu'on les trouble dans leurs inclinations."61 Baillet had touched a sensitive nerve, just as Hermant had done when, as rector of the Sorbonne, he had banned the student plays. The time had come to stop the Pascal from Beauvais and his Jugemens Provinciales.

eo Ibid., 319. Ibid., 319-21. Nicole wrote this under the pseudonym Damvilliers.

61

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

31

THE SECOND INTERVENTION

There is no word from Baillet about the reaction to the Jugemens of 1686. But Gilles Menage, who had been successfully bottled up in 1685, speaks of it in the preface to his Anti-Baillet, published in Holland in 1688, permission to print in Paris having been denied. The work, "une lourde refutation dont la lecture est une souffrance," as d'Amat unkindly but not unjustly says,62 is nonetheless a rich source of scholarly information, some of it as erroneous as Baillet's, written in haste and drawing on an exceptional memory that was beginning to fade. There is nothing in it to justify the denial of the Privilege, but the short preface is quite another matter. For here Menage talks out of school. Too uninformed to know all that has happened, too vain to see anything in it other than a protest on behalf of himself and his friends against an impertinent, pretentious pseudoscholar, he makes an excellent witness, for he knows not what he is saying. The preface reveals the role of the avocat general in these controversies, carefully concealed by Baillet. In 1685 Menage, confined by illness to his house, had been persuaded to let friends compose his quarrel with Baillet. The mediator was the abbe de Santeuil of SaintVictor, a friend of both. Menage gave him a long list of "fautes grossieres" in the Jugemens and even invited Baillet to dinner in order to show him more errors, promising to receive him kindly. Baillet expressed his regrets (Menage says "repentance") to the visitors, Santeuil, Du Cange, and Petit, and promised to correct any errors in the forthcoming volumes. Menage had every reason to believe that he would be treated more properly in the future, since Baillet had committed himself to this course: "Et particulierement Monsieur 1'Avocat General de Lamoignon Ten aiant convie: en lui remontrant 1'amitie particuliere que Monsieur le Premier President de Lamoignon avoit eue pour moi. C'est ce que j'ai sii d'un homme digne de foi qui etoit present a ce discours de Monsieur 1'Avocat General de Lamoignon."63 This is the first word we hear about Lamoignon's taking a 62 63

R. d'Amat, art. "Baillet," Dictionnaire de biographie franfaise. Anti-Baillet, "Preface de Mr. Menage," JdS, 4:vi.

32

Problems of Cartesianism

hand in settling the affair. The avocat general had carefully read Baillet's manuscript before accepting the dedication of the Jugemens.64 He must have been surprised and embarrassed by Menage's harsh reaction; hence the "discours" he addressed to his librarian. Menage knew of de la Rocque's intercession only from Baillet's "Eclaircissements," and what he had read evidently meant nothing to him. He expected to see Baillet do him justice and found himself savagely treated, despite the gentlemanly agreement. So far as he was concerned, Baillet had broken his word, and the righteous stance of this holy man without savoir vivre made the betrayal even worse. Baillet in turn had felt betrayed too, believing that the visit of Menage's friends had been a trap, luring him into an "amicable settlement" in preparation for making demands of a quite different kind. There is no telling whether or not his suspicion was justified. What is certain is only that the Jesuits were taking a long-range view of the Jugemens and of Baillet's literary activities, on the principle that when the garden has to be weeded, even small weeds must not be overlooked. For these were the years when the fight against the twin evils of Jansenism and Cartesianism was reaching its peak. Menage is curiously silent about the reactions to the Jugemens of 1686, probably realizing that silence was what the censor, President Louis Cousin, would prefer. He responds to Baillet's attack with a sense of deep personal hurt and not without dignity, once more invoking the name of Lamoignon:65 Si j'etois coupable de la centieme partie des choses dont m'accuse Monsieur Baillet, je serois indigne de 1'amitie dont m'honore Monsieur de Lamoignon son patron. Et j'estime tant 1'amitie de ce grand Magistral, que cette consideration toute seule ut ete capable de m'engager a refuter les medisances & les calomnies que Monsieur Baillet a publiees centre moi.

Then follows the sentence that may well have cost him the Privilege:

64

65

Frion, JdS 1 rxxxiii.

Anti-Baillet, JdS, 7:vii.

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

33

Mais outre cette consideration, j'ai ete excite a les refuter, non seulement par des personnes de grande vertu, mais par des Religieux: & par les Religieux d'un Ordre considerable par toute I'Europe.

To have dragged the name Lamoignon into this preface was a mistake; Menage compounds it by exposing the Jesuits as the driving force in the controversy. The preface ends calmly enough, considering Menage's temper, with a reference to the "fautes grossieres, ou plutot de monstres de fautes," which Baillet will find corrected in the Anti-Baillet in response to his own request to his readers for just such a service, rendered here in the spirit of Christian charity to make Baillet "rentrer dans lui-meme" and treat his betters more civilly next time. It is a good close—except that the preface unexpectedly continues with a paragraph so different in character that it must have been written in anger after the refusal of the Privilege. Menage goes out of his way to prove that he is not alone in protesting against Baillet, heaping name upon name:66 "Tous les Peres Jesuites generalement en ont fait des plaintes. . . . Le Pere Bouhours & le Pere de la Rue s'en plaignent partout"—Menage is speaking of a present event. "Et le Pere Bouhours a cesse de voir Monsieur de Lamoignon dans sa maison de campagne, pour n'y point voir Monsieur Baillet." But there has been action as well as complaints: Et Monsieur Baillet n'ignore pas que le Reverend Pere de la Chaise, Confesseur du Roi, se plaignant pour 1'interet de sa Compagnie du Livre de Monsieur Baillet a Monsieur de Lamoignon, il lui declara que si Monsieur Baillet continuoit a maltraiter les Jesuites, il en feroit des plaintes au Roi, & lui demanderoi justice.

This time it is not just Abbe de la Rocque speaking to Abbe Baillet. We can be sure that the confessor of the king did not come to the avocat general for the sake of the "Versificateurs froids & languis66

Menage's list (ibid.) is impressive. It includes "Monsieur de Benserade, Monsieur de Valois, Monsieur Perrault, Monsieur de la Fontaine," among many others.

34

Problems of Cartesianism

sans" among the Jesuits, nor did it take a king to deal with a librarian. The Affair Baillet has taken another unexpected turn, and the date of Menage's last paragraph becomes significant. It was in all probability written in the early months of the year 1688, at the end of which Baillet became involved with the project of a life of Descartes. "REFLEXIONS D'UN ACADEMICIEN"

While Menage was still at work on his Anti-Baillet, an anonymous Jesuit was composing imaginary conversations about Baillet and his Jugemens. The first of these four letters addressed to Baillet, dated "le 1. Mai, 1687," begins: "Monsieur, J'ai lu votre ouvrage; j'ai commence par le cinquieme Tome; c'est le premier qui me soil tombe sous la main." The last letter carried the date June 23, 1687. Yet these Reflexions sur les Jugemens des Savans, envoyees a VAuteur par un Academicien did not appear until 1691; they were illegally printed in France, although the title page bore the imprint of Leers at The Hague.67 On February 19, 1691 Baillet's Vie de M. Des-Cartes had gone to press.68 In 1692 there followed the Reflexions d'un Academicien sur la Vie de Mr. Des Cartes, envoyees a un de ses amis en Hollande, published in the same clandestine way in the wake of Baillet's Abrege of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes of 1692.69 Both Reflexions are part of one merciless attack on Baillet; both are linked to the publication of his Descartes biography; both take the same position, make the same arguments, and claim to be by the same hand. But why publish a critique of the Jugemens four years after it was supposedly written, seven years after the last set of Jugemens had appeared? Were the first Reflexions really written in 1687? And if they were, what prevented their being published then and what justified their revival in print later? 67 "Avertissement sur cette nouvelle edition," JdS, !:[!]. The Reflexions sur les Jugemens are reprinted in JdS, 7:261-328. 6 * Frion, JdS, l:xxxvi. 69 See n. 67, above, and the text of the Reflexions . . . sur la Vie de Des Cartes, JdS, 7: 325-65. The "Avertissement" gives a cock-and-bull story about the origin and dating of the work, but it contains two useful indications: Baillet's Abrege came to the author's attention too late to be considered, and the writing began before Menage's death on July 23, 1692 (ibid., 7:327f.). The last page is signed "A Paris, ce 22 Nov. 1691" (Ibid., 7:365). The "Avertissement" dedicates the work to Menage, the "Varron de notre siecle."

Baillet's Life of Descartes

35

That the Reflexions sur les Jugemens des Savans were indeed written around the middle of 1687 seems indubitable, on internal evidence and from the context. The author, a close friend of Menage or one of his Jesuit admirers, writes: "On m'a dit qu'il preparoit un gros AntiBaillet"; he had not seen Menage's preface or else he would not have ascribed the anonymous hendecasyllables against Baillet, which Menage prints there as his own, to Commire.70 The Reflexions were written in the context of the protests of Menage and his literary friends against the second set of the Jugemens and particularly against the "Eclaircissement" in the fifth volume. Bayle was right in characterizing them as coming from the Jesuits who were "fachez au dernier point centre Mr. Baillet, de ce qu'il a temoigne quelque partialite pour le Port Royal & qu'il a parle peu obligeamment de quelques'uns de leurs Auteurs." 71 There is not the slightest indication that the author of the Reflexions was aware of Baillet's beginning involvement with the project of a life of Descartes toward the end of 1688. Strange as it seems, this very innocence was to make the polemic against Baillet as author of the Jugemens an ideal basis for launching an attack upon him as author of the biography and against Descartes himself. For in attacking the Baillet of the Jugemens, the long line is laid bare which leads from Hermant to Baillet and from the Jugemens to the Vie de M. Des-Cartes. After all, in the affair of the Jugemens Baillet was the principal; in the case of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes the topic overshadowed the biographer. The attack on the biography would have been ruined if it had been necessary to go into Baillet's background and affiliation as the first Reflexions did; yet this attack required the establishment of that background in order to bring in the political "Jansenism" issue, since neither the life nor the work of Descartes provided the necessary point d'appui. The author of the Reflexions had guarded his anonymity well. Today he is almost unanimously identified as the obscure Jesuit Antoine 70

Speaking of Baillet, Bayle continues: "On le tourne cruellement en ridicule sur sa Vie de Descartes. L'autre ecrit n'est si vif, ni si agreablement tourne," a judgment with which not every reader will agree. Compared to the elegantly composed, coldly sarcastic Reflexions sur les Jugemens, the sequel is a heavy bore. Bayle read the attack on Descartes with greater pleasure than the stale quarrel over the Jugemens. 71 Pierre Bayle, "Lettre CCXI, p. 423," as cited by La Monnoye, JdS, !:[!].

36

Problems of Cartesianism

Boschet, but at the time there was a good deal of guessing. It is significant that the work was most commonly ascribed to one of the ablest, most powerful members of the order, Father Michel le Tellier, Father La Chaise's successor as confessor of the king,72 presumably on account of the political character of the work as well as its polished, sophisticated style. Yet it is obvious that its author was quite removed from the political scene and more at home in Menage's literary and erudite circle. The "Avertissement" to the Reflexions sur les Jugemens, which explains the reasons for their belated publication, supports this judgment. On its own evidence this "Avertissement" was written two years after the work itself, in response to Baillet's publication in June 1689 of the ANTI, or Satyres personnelles, which were his reply to the AntiBaillet of 1688.73 Boschet asserts that he had written the four "letters" on the Jugemens intending "de les envoyer des qu'il les eut ecrites: mais on 1'assura que M. Baillet avoit interrompu son travail & meme que 1'envie d'imprimer lui avoit passe. Cela fit qu'il les supprima, parce qu'elles ne tendoient qu'a guerir ce nouvel Auteur de la passion d'ecrire, ou a 1'engager a le mieux faire." This refers to mid1687. But nine or more months later Menage speaks in his preface to the Anti-Baillet of continuing protests against Baillet. What kept them alive, if Baillet had already given an assurance that he would discontinue the Jugemens'? And why was it necessary in 1688 to bring out the heaviest artillery yet—Father La Chaise and his extraordinary threat —if the battle was over? The "Avertissement," however, claims that Baillet had not yet given up: Ainsi ces Lettres n'auroient pas paru, si M. B. n'eut plus ecrit: mais les ANTI . . . ont appris au public qu'il n'avoit pas encore renonce a 1'impression. . . . D'ailleurs on a su de fort bonne part qu'il continuoit son Recueil; & qu'il devoit bien-tot enrichir les Bibliotheques de cinq ou six volumes tout a la fois.

72 73

La Monnoye, citing a note by Marchand (JdS, !:[!]). Frion, JdS, l:xxxv.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

37

But this makes no sense either. That Baillet had continued work on the Jugemens despite all interference we may readily believe. He probably had a good deal of new material under way and he might have hoped to continue and complete the Jugemens once the storm had blown over. His final act of renunciation, the private publication of the plan for the Jugemens, did not come until 1694. But to have considered publishing a new set of Jugemens toward the end of 1689 would have been supreme folly, for at that time he was already involved with the Life of Descartes. After the intervention by Father La Chaise, even Baillet, with all his stubbornness, knew that such an act of provocation would put an end to his literary plans, as will become obvious when we turn to the prehistory of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes. This leaves only two explanations of Boschet's remark. One is that he did not want to link the Reflexions sur les Jugemens too obviously to the Vie de M. Des-Cartes. The more likely one is that the "Avertissement" was written in 1689 with the intention of publishing the Reflexions while Baillet was still collecting material for his biography, but that somebody with better judgment advised or ordered Boschet not to publish just then, since the Jugemens were by that time water over the dam and there was too much support behind the coming Vie de M. Des-Cartes. It is the content of the Reflexions, viewed in the light of literary action against a Life of Descartes, that speaks for this second explanation. In the first letter of the Reflexions Boschet leads Baillet through his life up to the time when he committed his crime, like a prosecutor making his case before a jury. He brings out Baillet's provincial origin, his education at the College of Beauvais "ou Ton n'enseigne ni la Theologie, ni le Droit Canon, ni le Droit Civil, ni les Mathematiques, ni la Medecine."74 There he had made friends "qui n'aimoient pas les Jesuites: ces Messieurs lui ont rendu des services essentiels" (they had introduced him to Lamoignon); consequently they had a right to expect some "complaisance" on his part, at the very least by rendering them the service "de leur sacrifier quelques Jesuites."75 Let us note that even Boschet does not accuse Baillet of being a Jansenist; the 74 75

Reflexions sur les Jugemens, letter 1 (JdS, 7:268). Ibid., 7:272, col. 1 (italics added).

38

Problems of Cartesianism

issue is political, not theological, and none of Baillet's adversaries ever credited him with enough theological sense to be one:76 ". . . le Bibliothecaire ne hait pas les Jesuites: ses plus puissants amis ne le souffriwient pas: mais nous croyons . . . qu'il aime Messieurs de PortRoyal. . . . " This is a direct reference to the avocat general and his friendship with Father Bouhours and other Jesuits. There are traits of Lamoignon in the third letter, which introduces a guest invited for the fourth and last conversation, a gentleman "autant entete de B. que B. Test de M. Hermant et de tout le Port-Royal,"77 a figure molded on the Jesuit in Pascal's Provinciates, yet "un homme reel," "tout a la fois riche, liberal & curieux; il est homme a paier les confidences qu'on lui fait." But these are mere allusions. The new participant "se dit disciple de S. Augustin: mais il Test de Mr. d'Ypres sans savoir pourtant trop de quoi il s'agit, & sans etre bien avant dans la distinction du fait & du droit";78 in American parlance, a fall guy who in the fourth letter will in all innocence make the case against "ces Messieurs." This last letter sheds further light on the extent to which Baillet had antagonized "des Ordres religieux tous entiers, & d'autres Corps considerables": the "Messieurs de 1'Academie" who will never forget the insult to Corneille, Malherbe, the Benedictines, and the Carmelites. But the issue is Port-Royal. The "disciple de Mr. d'Ypres" puts it bluntly: Tout ce que je peux vous repondre la-dessus . . . est que ces Messieurs temoignerent beaucoup de joie, lorsque B. leur proposa le sujet de son Recueil: ils 1'encouragerent le plus qu'ils purent, lui promettant de 1'aider pour & contre. Vous m'entendez? Fort bien, Monsieur, repartit Mr. 1'Abbe. C'est-a-dire, que ces Messieurs se chargerent d'ecrire ce qui regardoit les Auteurs de Port Royal, & de fournir des memoires contre les Auteurs de la Societe. 76 77 78

Ibid, (italics added). Letter 3,JdS, 7:305. Ibid., 7:306.

Baillet s Life of Descartes

39

Ce n'est pas tout-a-fait cela, repliqua le Mr. d'Ypres, mais quelque chose d'approchant.79 It is again he who is made to demolish Baillet's profession de foi: Jansenists are Jansenists, whether or not they signed the formulaire. In the light of the "prejugez du siecle ou nous vivons," Baillet had been wise in asserting that among all the groups in the republique des lettres "il n 'y en a peut-etre pas dont il ait moins de connaissance que de ces Messieurs. Cette declaration est fort prudent, au 'peut-etre' pres. . . . On ne sauroit trop se cacher sur un article aussi delicat que celui- la." After all, he continues, "Mr. Nicolle . . . dans 1'Heresie imaginaire [et] Mr. Arnauld, dans le Phantome du Jansenisme" had said just about the same.80 His remark leads to the heart of the matter, which is not theological but political: Jansenism is subversive. "Mr. d'Ypres," now more respectfully referred to as "le D. de D.M.," professes to have been appalled when "one of the most eloquent" among the Jansenists advised him that the Truth can prevail only by moving "a 1'ombre du deguisement, pour ne pas dire du mensonge." This, the eloquent Jansenist had revealed, was the method by which his party had infiltrated the Court and even the Holy See, insinuating itself into the friendship of the pope "lorsqu'il n'etoit encore que le Cardinal Odescalki [sic]," silencing its enemies and defending the doctrines of Mr. d'Ypres and Saint Augustine with the very pen that had signed the formulaire: Au milieu de la paix nous avons fait une cruelle guerre, nous avons battu nos ennemis, sans qu'ils aient ose crier: & grace a notre sagesse, quoique defaits et morts en apparence, nous sommes vraiment vivans, & toujours sur nos pieds, attendant 1'occasion de produire la verite, & de paroitre ce que nous sommes. Q1

Videant consules ne quid detrimenti res publica capiat. Father Boschet had laid the ground for the attack on the Vie de M. Des-Cartes by present79 80 81

Letter 4, JdS, 7:308. Ibid., 7:308f. Ibid., 7:313.

40

Problems of Cartesianism

ing Adrien Baillet as a tool in the hands of those who were waiting for the occasion "de produire la verite, &: de paroitre ce que nous sommes." "LA VIE DE M. DES-CARTES"

Boschet had reason to be apprehensive about a resumption of the Jugemens, but the effort to discourage Baillet from publishing was hopeless. He went on with clockwork regularity, excepting the year when a half-dozen volumes of the Jugemens were stopped at the last moment: 1685:

Jugemens (4 vols.)

1686:

Jugemens (5 vols.)

1687:

nothing

1688:

Enfans celebres (1 vol.)

1689:

Satyres personnelles (2 vols.)

1690: Auteurs deguises (1 vol.) 1691:

Vie de M. Des-Cartes (2 vols.)

1692:

Abrege de la Vie de Descartes (1 vol.) [Vie de Richer. 1 vol., posthumously published]

1693:

Abrege de la Vie Descartes, 2nd ed. rev. (1 vol.) Histoire de Hollande (4 vols., pseudonymously published) Traite de la devotion a la sainte Vierge (1 vol.)

With the final abandonment of the Jugemens in 1694 and the Traite de la devotion a la sainte Vierge of the preceding year, Baillet turned from the secular to the religious and ecclesiastical field, "to the exasperation of the devout" (d'Amat): 1694:

Plan [des] Jugemens des savans (1 small vol.)

1695:

TraitS de la conduite des dmes (1 vol.)

1695-1701: Les Vies des Saints (12 vols. in 8)

Baillet's Life of Descartes 1703:

Histoire des fetes de I'Eglise (5 vols.)

1704:

Translation of the Maxims of S. Etienne de Gramont

41

One look at this publication list will rectify the picture that Charles Adam may unwittingly have created in the few lines he devotes to his predecessor, whose material has passed into his own Grande Edition and his own life of Descartes.82 In the briefest of notes on Baillet (five lines) he cites only the Traite de la devotion a la sainte Vierge, the Traite de la conduite des dmes, "et surtout Les Vies des Saints, 17 vols."83 No wonder Baillet acquired the reputation of a hagiographer determined to make a devot out of Descartes. The much cited disquisition on the moral life of Descartes in the preface to the Vie de M. Des-Cartes supports this view, assuming that one does not know that the Vie des Saints had earned Baillet the title of "denicheur des saints" and that in the Devotion a la sainte Vierge he had rejected Immaculate Conception and Assumption. Baillet's religious position is stated in the "Avertissement" and the "Eclaircissement" to the Jugemens des Savans; it is in this light that his pages on the personal life of Descartes must be read. He had no love for the man. Only the retiring life of the philosopher, his singleminded devotion to his work, and his disciplined, sober habits (which Baillet mistook for asceticism) struck a chord in his biographer's soul —but then there was Francine to put a damper on such feelings. That he undertook to write a life of Descartes is puzzling for other reasons as well. Baillet had no interest and no grounding in philosophy; he had his hands full with work closer to his heart; he had made relentless enemies; moreover, he was again in deep trouble at the time. Finally, Descartes and Cartesianism were much more explosive issues than printers, grammarians, and poets. How did Baillet come to accept his commission? And why was he, of all writers, chosen to write this Vie? The request had come in the course of Baillet's collaboration with Abbe Jean-Baptiste Legrand, who had intended to write the work 82 Charles Adam, Vie & Oeuvres de Descartes, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 13 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1897-1913), 12:iv (hereafter cited as AT). 83 Ibid., 12:iii, n. (a).

42

Problems of Cartesianism

himself and had already collected material for it. Legrand was confident that Baillet could produce a biography of the type needed and agreed on; Baillet, despite his misgivings, was equally confident, or else he would not have accepted. Yet both men knew that Baillet was, if not the last, then certainly the most exposed writer to be considered for a book on so controversial a figure. Frion, passing over the Vie de M. Des-Cartes in just one paragraph, makes a surprising disclosure of the state of Baillet's affairs at the time: Mr. Baillet etoit determine a laisser en repos ses Auteurs deguises, aussi-bien que la suite des Jugemens des Savans, en attendant que la Providence lui presentat 1'occasion indispensable d'en continuer la publication, lorsque Mr. 1'Abbe le Grand 1'engagea avec quelques autres interesses a ranger par ordre les memoires qu'il avoit recueillis sur la Vie & la Philosophie du celebre Philosophe de nos jours Mr. Descartes. En bien moins d'un an elle fut mise sou la Presse, des le 19 Fevrier de 1691.84

Frion's embarrassed statement reduces the work, which has perpetuated Baillet's name, to an insignificant byproduct in his literary career, a mere organizing of Legrand's "memoires," thus shifting the responsibility from Baillet to Legrand. What else could Frion do after Boschet's (or Le Tellier's) demolition of Baillet as a biographer and historian? But the information he gives in a few words is startling indeed. Frion confirms Boschet's account point by point: the first intervention had indeed forced Baillet to make the promise not to go on with the Jugemens and not to go on publishing. Nonetheless he was preparing new volumes of the Jugemens, waiting for Providence to do something for him. He had also published the Enfans celebres in 1687 and the ANTl in 1688, which led to Boschet's first letter. Most importantly, however, Frion states that Baillet at that point evidently promised again not to publish more Jugemens and to hold back the Auteurs deguises as well. This understanding was reached at about the time when the collaboration with Legrand began and the project of the Vie 84

Frion, JdS, l:xxxvi.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

43

de M. Des-Cartes came alive. This provides us with a terminus a quo: the last months of 1688. Let us then look at the Enfans devenus celebres pour lews etudes & lews ecrits for the publication history leading up to the Vie de M. Des-Cartes. Baillet had amused and instructed his pupil, Lamoignon's eldest son, by letting him discover the identity of authors hidden behind a false name. The young Marquis de Baville himself called this "lejeu des Masques d'Auteurs." In the dedication of the Enfans celebres (1688) to his pupil, Baillet had announced the Auteurs deguises as forthcoming.85 Two volumes were planned, one on pseudonyms, the other on anonymous works. Immediately after the ANTI had come out in June 1689, Baillet prepared the first volume of the new work for the printer. His friends expected to see the book early in 1690 and one of them (Frion?) asked for a copy "vers le Careme de cette annee." Baillet replied in a perhaps deliberately confusing way: . . . il faut vous dire qu'il n'est rien de ce qu'on vous a pu dire de 1'impression de mes Auteurs deguises. Je vous ai deja dit autrefois que j'avois abandonne de bonne heure les Anonymes. Pour ce qui est de mes Pseudonymes [the "Auteurs deguises"] il est vrai qu'ils sont en etat d'etre imprimes, & que j'en ai meme le Privilege, scelle, controlle & registre . . . ; que le Libraire & 1'Imprimeur ont fait tous les preparatifs necessaires, & qu'ils me persecutent a outrance pour leur abandonner ma Copie pour la publier.86 Why was publication held up? Baillet gives one reason, which is not the only one: his "Epitre Dedicatoire" had grown into "un petit Traite que je fais actuellement imprimer. Mais mon voyage a la campagne [his summer vacation, which he would take in September!] m'empechera de le mettre au jour avant mon retour." The "petit Traite" expanded within a few months into the nearly seven hundred pages of a volume published in August 1690 in Paris under the title Auteurs deguisez sous des noms Etrangers, Empruntez, Sup85 86

Baillet, Des Enfans devenus celebres, JdS, 5:1. Baillet, undated letter (Frion, JdS, l:xxxv).

44

Problems of Cartesianism

posez, Feints a plaisir, Chiffrez, Renversez, Retournez, ou changez d'une Langue a une autre, the "Traite preliminaire" to the main work, addressed but not dedicated to Lamoignon's son. If Frion is correct in saying that the Vie de M. Des-Cartes was written in less than a year before Baillet delivered the manuscript at the end of February 1691, Baillet began writing it in March or April 1690, while simultaneously engaged in a piece of detective work, matching his wits against the ruses of the authors in disguise, he being one of them himself. That one man could write two works so different in subject and tone at the same time is remarkable. But to publish the "Traite preliminaire" was a sheer act of folly, committed in full awareness of what he was doing. In a note sent to his friend with a copy of the Auteurs deguises he said: "Tant que je ferai des folies, il faudra que vous en ayes votre part. J'en viens d'en faire une toute nouvelle, &je ne sais pas encore ce qu'il me coutera."87 Baillet had held the providential occasion to publish the real Auteurs deguises in his hands, sealed, controlled, and registered. But that work was never to go into print. Had Lamoignon intervened? Was the manuscript prevented from reaching the printer in order to protect the Vie de M. Des-Cartes that was ready to be written? Whatever happened, Baillet knew it, and knew the reasons behind the move as well. Expanding the dedicatory letter into a large book and publishing that book was his way of outfoxing those who thought they had stopped him. It was indeed an act of folly, but for once Providence was on his side: the Vie de M. Des-Cartes eclipsed the Auteurs deguises, and Boschet and his friends were content to hold their fire until they could strike Descartes by attacking Baillet. THE GENESIS OF THE WORK

It is time to turn from Baillet's troubles to the greater political troubles of Cartesianism. What Victor Cousin called "the persecution of Cartesianism in France" was reaching its climax toward the year 1690. In Cousin's words,88 the Jesuits, "ne comprenant bien ce que se faisait," 87

Undated letter [August 1690] (Frion, JdS, l:xxxv f.). "De la persecution du cartesianisme en France," originally a paper read in 1837, presenting two new documents about the submission of the Oratory. It reached its 88

Baillet's Life of Descartes

45

had allowed the philosophy of Descartes to spread, but after the death of the philosopher their policy hardened: "L'avant-garde [de 1'autorite religieuse], la Compagnie de Jesus, prit decidement parti contre la philosophic nouvelle, et lui fit une guerre implacable, qui se termina par une persecution veritable." The following very brief list of dates is instructive, especially if one keeps in mind the parallel list of dates in the battle against Jansenism. The drive against teaching Cartesianism achieved its first success in 1662, the year when the Jesuit drive to have the works of Descartes put on the Index over the matter of transubstantiation began; and this issue made it possible to develop a popular notion of "Cartesianism-Jansenism" as inflammatory and notionally vague as the terms "capitalism," "socialism," and "colonial imperialism" are today. In the thirty years from 1662 to 1691 the drive reached its goal, the official suppression of teaching the "new philosophy" in all schools: 1662: Louvain submits. 1667: The chancellor of the University of Paris is forbidden to give the oraison funebre at the reburial of Descartes at Sainte-Genevieve. 1671: The Sorbonne submits under pressure from Archbishop de Harley. 1671: The Oratoire submits. 1675: The Oratoire and the University of Angers submit by order of the king. 1678: The Congregation of Sainte-Genevieve submits. 1678: The Benedictine Congregation of Saint-Maur submits. 1678: Final and complete submission of the Oratoire. Ban on final form in Cousin's Fragments de philosophic, 5th ed., 3 vols. (Paris, 1866), 3:297-332. Bouillier's Histoire de la philosophic cartesienne, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Paris, 1868), esp. vol. 1, chaps. 22 and 27, gives a more balanced picture. A century ago the political aspect of anti-Cartesianism was seen more sharply than it is today: the basic issue was still alive in France, although the political context had changed.

46

Problems of Cartesianism teaching Jansen and Baius in theology, Descartes in philosophy. 1691: Cartesianism reduced to eleven propositions, "comme on a reduit le jansenisme a cinq propositions" (Cousin). Ban on teaching these eleven propositions in all schools, by order of the king.

This is as much a record of resistance as of persecution, and the resistance was not confined to the academic field. The Cartesian circles radiated out from the philosophers and theologians into the world of the aristocracy, as in the case of the Commercy group around Cardinal de Retz, who was remotely linked to Mme de Sevigne by marriage and a very close friend of hers to the end of his life. Mme de Grignan was an ardent and active "Cartesian." Corbinelli, who had been close to the cardinal and remained a confirmed Cartesian with Jansenist leanings, became secretary of Mme de Sevigne. Mme de Grignan was in contact with the Cartesians, and her mother was an intimate friend of M. de Lamoignon who, Frion claims, treated Adrien Baillet "comme son frere & son meilleur ami."89 The political struggle was fought out on the ideological front as well as at the centers of power. The Cartesians had every reason to be apprehensive when, toward 1690, Descartes once more moved into the foreground of controversy, after Malebranche had been the center of action. Daniel Huet's Censura Philosophiae Cartesianae of 1689 raised a storm.90 The Jesuit Daniel Gabriel brought out his brilliant Voyage du monde de Descartes in 1690. He had been working on it for 89 Frion (JdS, l:xxxi), speaking of the time when Hermant introduced Baillet to Lamoignon. 90 "Ce que j'ay escrit centre lui [Descartes] m'a attire plus d'affaires que tout ce que j'ay jamais escrit, quoy que je n'aye pas veu la dixieme partie de ce qu'on a fait pour ou contre" (Huet to Chr. Huygens, September 16, 1691, in Oeuvres completes de Christiaan Huyghens, published by the Societe Hollandaise des Sciences in 22 vols. [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1888-1950], vol. 10, no. 2696, 143-45. From Baillet's Vie de M. DesCartes Huet had learned about the intimate friendship between Descartes and Huygens's father and he was worried about the son's reaction to his Censura. The Traite de la lumiere, which Huygens had sent him, reassured him.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

47

three years and the news got around,91 for here was a piece of serious philosophical criticism presented in the popular form of the "imaginary voyage" and spiced with subtle raillerie. Beneath the surface new coalitions were forming in the republique des lettres, loose but intellectually powerful: Huygens and Leibniz were getting ready to enter the lists, and the Cartesians had nothing of that weight to oppose them, as Leibniz observed. One has to turn from published books to the correspondence of the time, especially that of Huet, Huygens, and Leibniz, and to the indefatigable activity of Abbe Nicaise, the "facteur de Parnassus,"92 to get a sense of the tension and the intellectual forces aligning themselves in seemingly confused and certainly confusing ways. Most of these alignments sooner or later lead to Rome, in this case to the statesmanlike Jesuits, to whom the philosophical and ideological struggle was one for the unity of the Roman Church against Gallicanism and Protestantism in any form, just as their counterparts at the Court were fighting for the unity of France against all internal dissension, even if it meant fighting Gallicanism. More deeply still, it was a struggle between two 91 "II y a pres de trois ans que ce Livre est en etat de paroitre; & s'il etoit de quelque importance d'en convaincre le public, on pourroit le faire par le temoignage de personnes non suspectes en cette matiere; & qu'on n'auroit nulle peine a croire, lorsqu'elles parleroient en faveur de 1'Auteur." Moreover, part of the work was already obsolete at the time of publication. Voyage du monde de Descartes, 1st ed. (Paris, 1690), "Avis" [1,2]. The Privilege was registered "le 28 juin 1680." 92 Guy de la Monnoye celebrated Nicaises's death in an "epitaph" deploring the loss of the spreader of news, citing among the bereaved Huet, Leibniz, Graevius, and many others: "Mais nul n'y perd tant que la poste." Reprinted in Leibniz, Philos. Schriften (Gerhardt), 2:257 and elsewhere. In a letter to Leibniz, October 25, 1692 (ibid., 2:529-32), Nicaise informs him of his activities concerning Leibniz's "beautiful and just" critique of Descartes: one copy for the Journal des Savans, one for Huet, one for the censor, President Cousin, which is where the letter becomes interesting. Cousin, says Nicaise, is more than ever "brouille avec la Societe" since the recent death of Menage, who left the Jesuits his library and who had once praised Cousin's gifts as a translator who, as he remarked, could not even translate a virgin into a woman, with details about the president's marriage. Ill feelings of this kind might have helped Baillet obtain the Privilege for the never published Auteurs dtgwses, which was certainly not suppressed because of its harmlessness. The Vie de M. Des-Cartes might have been another occasion for Louis Cousin to vent his feelings. Nicaise wrote, on Baillet's behalf, for material on Descartes to Auzout, Leibniz (but see n. 109, below), Graevius, Le Clerc, Witte, Bayle, and Basnage de Beauval (Vie de M. Des-Cartes, preface, l:xxvi).

48

Problems of Cartesianism

ways of life: popular, joyful Baroque Catholicism, wise in the ways of the world, with its theme of the Ecclesia triumphans, which the Ecclesia militans had adopted at Trent, against the somber Protestant spirit whose asceticism was a political and not only a religious threat to the unity of the new centralized French state.93 It is in this widest context that the episode of the Vie de M. DesCartes needs to be placed and the genesis of this work reconstructed —unfortunately only hypothetically, until new documentary evidence replaces or refutes hypothesis. The story of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes begins with the unexpected death of Descartes in Stockholm in 1650, when the French ambassador, Chanut, his friend and host, took possession of the philosopher's unpublished manuscripts. He later turned them over to Claude Clerselier, who published three volumes of correspondence, with enough manuscript left over to make one more. At his death in 1684 he left his material to Abbe Legrand with a sum of money for publishing this volume.94 Instead of doing so, Legrand planned a new complete edition of the works and correspondence of Descartes. A Life was to be added, presumably a relatively brief one, since it was to be part of this edition. Adam has described Legrand's editorial work in detail, using the information given in Baillet's preface. Legrand made a thorough and quite successful search for missing correspondence and sought out persons who had known Descartes. There is no indication that his biographical work went beyond writing minutes of the information he collected. Legrand seems to have been an excellent, careful editor, but he could never come to an end. He worked for twenty years, died in 1704, and still nothing had been published. 93

As late as 1745, the continuing veneration of Buzenval at his tomb in Beauvais Cathedral was stopped by removing the body, burying it in an unknown grave, and destroying the tombstone. Saintliness that would judge Caesar by evangelical standards was intolerable. Saints had to be otherworldly. 94 See Adam's summary in AT, 1 :xliiff., and Baillet, Vie de M. Des-Cartes, l:xxii. Adam's judgment of the value of Baillet's work is still the best we have (AT, l:xlv). The mass of detail piled up by Baillet "sans faire grace aux lecteurs de tant de menus fails" has become invaluable to the modern historian because of "ce souci minutieux du reel, qui caracterise Baillet." This is a very different tone from that of Menage, La Monnoye, and Boschet, but Baillet had learned meticulous scholarship in the hard school of the Jugemens. He now knew what to guard against.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

49

The biography would have shared the fate of Legrand's edition had it not been lifted out of its status as an introductory piece. The idea of making it an independent work cannot have come from Legrand, judging from his way of working. He had no sense for what was urgently needed at the time, or else he would have published Descartes's inedita without delay, following them up with the Life of Descartes. There is no doubt that Cartesians of all types kept abreast of Legrand's plans and work. Unlike Legrand they were not concerned with editorial problems. A new edition including material as yet unknown would be a philosophical event, but the event took its time and the need for action was pressing. Somehow Descartes needed to be disengaged from the theological entanglement he had so carefully avoided in his own lifetime. When, where, and how the answer was found we do not know. But we can say what it was: the germ of an idea, embedded in a technicality. Detach the "Vie de Mr. Descartes" from the "Oeuvres de Descartes" and make it a book in its own right, in the language and spirit of the Discours de la methode, not of the Meditationes de prima philosophia. Taking the biography out of the context of the "Oeuvres" changed the concept and function of the proposed Life of Descartes. The change made it necessary to find a swifter writer than Legrand. We are back at the question: Why Baillet? The episode of the Auteurs deguises of 1690 shows with what tenacity he held on to thejugemens and their offshoots. This is where his heart was. On the other hand, he had what Legrand lacked: an almost inhuman capability to produce work at short notice. But his scholarship had been exposed as dilettantish, his Latin had been ridiculed, he had been accused of being the Jansenists' literary henchman, and the Jesuits had him on their list of people to send back where they came from. Why then had he beeen asked, and by whom? And why did he accept? He himself raises the question, and answers it in the very first paragraph of the preface to his Vie de M. Des-Cartes: "Lorsqu'on est venu me proposer d'ecrire la Vie de Monsieur Descartes, j'etois dans tout 1'eloignement que pouvoit m'en donner 1'opinion que j'avois d'etre le dernier des Ecrivains qu'on eut du choisir pour cet effect."95 Precise95

Baillet, Vie de M. Des-Cartes, l:i (italics added).

50

Problems of Cartesianism

ly. Why then did he accept? The next sentence gives the unexpected answer: Le merite de ceux qui se sont addressez a moy pour me charger de cette commission, ne m'a pas empeche de combattre longterns centre eux. Tant qu'ils ne m'ont attaque qu'avec des raisons, je n'ay pas manque de forces pour leur resister; mais je j'en ay point eu assez pour me defendre contre leur autorite.

This text is crucial. It tells us that the request came from a group of persons, and that these were persons of "authority." Baillet says elsewhere "que M. Legrand a etc le plus ardent & le plus inflexible de ceux qui m'ont engage en ce travail."96 But Legrand was Baillet's equal; he could use arguments but lacked the "autorite" to force him to do what he was determined not to do. Baillet, not usually given to direct expression of his feelings, makes no effort to hide his bitterness: "La honte d'avoir succombe. . . ,"97 This preface was written late and revised while the work was in press and nearing publication,98 but even then this sharp expression was allowed to stand. A third time, in a different context, the point is reaffirmed: "Si mes efforts n'ont pas suffisamment repondu a mes devoirs ou a 1'importance de mon sujet, on ne doit point s'imaginer quej'aye voulu me vanger de ceux qui m'ont charge malgre moy d'une execution si difficile. C'auroit ete mal reconnoitre 1'honneur qui semble etre attache a cette commission."99 The honor of becoming Descartes's biographer was bitter honey for Baillet. It is a mark of his stylistic ability that he could both hide and disclose his taste for this kind of honor in one word: "qui semble etre attache. . . ." On one point, however, Baillet stood firm, and here he had the full support of Legrand. Let us quote Adam on this: "Baillet . . . nous apprend aussi comment Legrand et lui entendaient leurs devoirs de 96 97

Ibid., hxxiii. Ibid., l:i.

98 A letter from Jonquet, dated "du 20. Avril 1691," almost two months after the manuscript went to press, is used in the text of the preface (Baillet, Vie de M. Des-Cartes, 1 :xiii). 99 Vie de M. Des-Cartes, l:iii. (italics added).

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

51

biographe et d'editeur: c'etait d'une toute autre fagon que Clerselier, et beaucoup plus satisfaisante."100 Baillet expressed these terms as follows, still showing his resentment: ". . . j'ay cru que les obligations de mon engagement ne consistoient qu'a dire simplement ce qu'a etc ce Philosophe; & a exposer simplement ce qu'il a pense, ce qu'il a dit, & ce qu'il a fait, de la meme maniere que nous souhaitons de voir des pensees, des paroles, & des actions toutes nues."101 And again, on the same page: "Je me suis fortement persuade qu'on ne seroit point en droit d'exiger autre chose de moi que la verite des fails, avec un peu d'ordre et de methode." Translated into Bajuletian, this means: no Jugemens this time. The bibliographer had been forced to write a history. Henri Gouhier was right, if somewhat less than just, in his judgment of Baillet: "erudit scrupuleux et historien suspect."102 Thanks to Baillet's hints, the pieces begin to fall into place. We know already from Frion that Baillet did the actual writing in "less than a year" before giving the manuscript to the printer at the end of February 1691; since it had to be submitted to the censor, actual writing would have begun between January and March 1690. He was able to complete the writing in such a short time thanks to his systematic way of putting "un peu d'ordre" into the material he had accumulated, so that the writing task consisted chiefly in producing a continuous narrative. The preparation of the material while waiting for information must have taken much longer than the writing itself. Was that the long period between being offered and accepting the commission? Once more we are thrown back on conjecture and shall have to reconstruct the chronology tentatively until new documentary fact turns up.103 We have seen that the decision to give precedence to a full-scale biography over the slowly developing Legrand edition came long before Baillet accepted the commission to write it. It 100

Adam, in AT, l:xlvii. Vie de M. Des-Cartes, l:ii (italics added). 102 Henri Gouhier, Les premieres pensees de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1958), p. 20. 103 A vast am ount of correspondence of the period has been discovered through the searches of Paul Dibon, Richard Popkin, and their collaborators in France, the Netherlands, and Italy. According to Paul Dibon, whom I want to thank for this information, there are references to Baillet's search in this correspondence. 101

52

Problems of Cartesianism

makes sense to assume that this decision set Baillet off on a search for material beyond what Legrand had turned up. He would do so regardless of whether Legrand, he, or anybody else would in the end become the author of the work, for at this stage he was still acting as a librarian. When his search in Paris and in France began, we cannot tell; but Victor Cousin has preserved a first letter of Baillet to Father Nicaise, asking him to serve as intermediary in the search for material abroad. This undated letter begins: Ayant appris de M. 1'abbe Legrand que vous vitnes hier chez moi, et que Ton songe a donner une vie accomplie de M. Descartes et une histoire du cartesianisme, j'ai pris la liberte de 1'adresser a vous comme a 1'agent general de la republique des lettres, pour lui faciliter les moyens d'obtenir les secours necessaires pour un si grand et si beau dessin.104

He then requests Nicaise to write to Graevius and includes a "Liste des livres pour Utrecht" needed in Paris, promising that all expenses will be paid. The letter closes: La consideration du merite particulier de M. 1'abbe Legrand vous fera sans doute agir en cette occasion avec votre affection ordinaire pour le bien de la republique des lettres. . . .

Cousin publishes two replies from Graevius, dated June 7, 1689 and February 26, 1690 (both old style). In the latter, evidently in reply to a follow-up inquiry, he writes: "Opuscula plura de Cartesio nee ego nee amici mei potuerunt reperire, quamvis in iis pervestigandis nihil studii nobis reliqui fecerimus."105 Le Clerc sent material to Nicaise on February 8, 1691.106 In view of the long time these searches took, it is reasonable to assume that Baillet's first letter to Nicaise went out toward the end of 1688, perhaps even earlier. Through the courtesy of Dr. Albert Heinekamp we can add a hith104 V. Cousin. Fragments de philosophie moderne (Fragments philosophiques 4), new ed. (Paris, 1855), pp. 108ff. 105 Ibid., p. 110. 10 6 Ibid., p. 111.

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

53

erto unpublished piece of evidence about this search abroad.107 Leibniz visited Auzout in Rome shortly after arriving there on April 14, 1689. In an undated draft of a letter to Auzout, he writes: "A 1'occasion de ce que vous me dites hier, qu'on travaille a une vie de M. des Cartes; je vous envoye a lire ces remarques que j'avois deja faites. II y a quelques observations touchant sa vie; tirees de ses Manuscrits, le reste regarde la doctrine."108 This refers to the Notata quaedam G.G.L. circa vitam et doctrinam Cartesii. Leibniz does not mention any name, neither Legrand's nor Baillet's, which indicates that Nicaise wrote to Auzout in general terms only. But it is significant that as late as October 1690 Leibniz does not seem to know who the author of the work will be.109 Several facts stand out from this sparse material. First of all, Baillet writes to Nicaise on behalf of Legrand, but he carefully avoids stating who will write the proposed work. In April 1689 Auzout can tell Leibniz only that there are people in France preparing this biography. Second, at the time Baillet wrote to Nicaise—toward the end of 1688—the project consisted of a complete Life of Descartes, including a "history of Cartesianism." No such history is attempted by Bail107

I am much indebted to Dr. Heinekamp of the Leibniz Archiv in Hannover for a complete survey of the relations between Auzout and Leibniz in the spring of 1689. The following references are quoted from his letter of August 19, 1974. 108 Niedersachsische Landesbibliothek, Hannover, LH IV, 4H, BI. 30. 109 According to Dr. Heinekamp, Leibniz was in Rome from April 14 to the beginning of May 1689, and again from the end of May to November; Leibniz must have met Auzout soon after he arrived, since a letter to Thevenot dated April 24 was sent via Auzout (Leibniz, Akademie-Ausgabe, series 1, vol. 5:680). In a letter to Gerhard Meier, October 16/26, 1690 (Akademie-Ausgabe, series 1, vol. 6:272), Leibniz repeats: "Cum Roma essem Cl. Auzoutus mihi referebat, esse nunc in Gallia, qui Cartesii vitam parant." Dr. Heinekamp also refers to a letter of Leibniz to Placcius, March 27/April 6, 1696 (Leibniz, Opera, ed. Dutens [1768], 6:69.) We know from Frion (JdS, l:xxxvi) that Daniel Lipstorp (d. 1684), author of the first biographical sketch of Descartes (1653), visited Baillet during a stay in Paris. Baillet discussed his Latin version of the Auteurs deguises with Lipstorp and asked him to mention it to his friend Placcius, who was working on the same subject. Placcius replied in 1688, offering Baillet access to his own material. Baillet would not have let the German visitor go without finding out what he knew about Descartes, since Lipstorp had been a student at Leiden two years after the philosopher's death. Lipstorp, who had been an efficient cause in the de Raey affair, would have been one of Baillet's sources of information about it. Cf. Vie de M. Des-Cartes, 1: xxvii-xxx.

54

Problems of Cartesianism

let in his Vie de M. Des-Cartes. It is possible that the term merely referred to controversies during the lifetime of the philosopher; the list of desiderata that Baillet drew up for Graevius requests only material concerning Descartes and controversies in which he himself was involved. Still, there was no reason to mention a "history of Cartesianism" if no more than coverage of the life of Descartes was intended. It is in keeping with Legrand's striving for completeness to assume that he did indeed conceive of a work that would be a history of this philosophy as well as of the life of Descartes. Baillet knew better than Legrand that such a history would be a hornets' nest: his experiences with the Jugemens des Savans had taught him that. The project thus seems to have gone through three stages: (1) a Life of Descartes to open and round out the complete edition of the works (Legrand); (2) a separately published Life plus a history of Cartesianism (Legrand); (3) a biography of Descartes, confined to his lifetime (Baillet). Baillet's letter to Nicaise also tells us indirectly that he was already deep into the work of assembling the data needed for the biography, as his list for Graevius shows. (It is interesting that he asked for the biography by Tepelius, published in 1674.) His collaboration with Legrand must therefore go back very much further. It was a very close and cordial one, as Baillet gratefully acknowledges.110 What concerns us here is the fact that toward the end of 1688 Baillet takes the initiative in the search, at the prodding of Legrand; for it is evidently Legrand who had sent Nicaise to Baillet to serve as an intermediary. Was it only because Baillet had his lists of needed documents ready? Baillet's letter to Nicaise rather suggests that the question of authorship had not been settled; Baillet certainly was not acting as the prospective author, and Legrand was not either: sunt nunc in Gallia qui Cartesii vitam parant, to cite Leibniz. Since it makes no sense to mobilize all those who might have information on Descartes unless there was some prospective author, we are forced to conclude that Baillet must have been approached about taking on the work before this letter was written (and on the strength of his own statement in the Vie, it would have been Legrand who first broached the subject, around mid-1688), and that by the end of the year the 110

Vie de M. Des-Cartes, Irxxii.

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

55

commission had been offered to Baillet, who refused to accept it. Acceptance was forced on him early in 1690, after he had already done just about all he could do for the biography, short of writing the book and putting his name to it. If Carreyre111 is right in claiming that the original Auteurs deguises remained unpublished on "the advice of friends," these "friends" would most likely be the persons of "authority" who forced Baillet to accept. Who were they? Again, only the few facts we have can help us to an educated guess. That they were persons of considerable importance is evident, since the Vie de M. Des-Cartes appeared with a dedication to the chancellor, Louis Boucherat, "executeur de la revocation de 1'Edit de Nantes," as Charles Adam states.112 The Baillet of the Jugemens, who did not even dare to dedicate his subsequent books to M. de Lamoignon could not have thought of asking that the work be placed under the chancellor's patronage, nor would such a request have been honored. Only M. de Lamoignon could have made that request. Not without reason does Baillet take as the theme of his dedication 'Tunion que Dieu a etablie entre la Justice & la Verite," its very first words. But if Lamoignon was close to "le premier Ministre de la Justice," it still needed a different kind of authority to vouch for the scholarly stature and the political inoffensiveness of a work that regards "M. Descartes comme 1'un des principaux Ministres de la Verite que Dieu n'a point revelee, & dont il a bien voulu abandonner la recherche & la discussion aux Hommes."113 Legrand could vouch for the reliability of the work, but there had to be a guarantee that no "Bailleterie" would be permitted. Yet nobody could prevent Baillet from committing follies except those whom he respected and accepted as authorities: the friends of Hermant, men like Nicole or Arnauld, and members of Cartesian circles who sympathized with the 111

J. Carreyre, art. "Baillet," Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographic ecclesiastiques, ed. A. Baudrillart (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1912-), 4 (1931), col. 253-55. 112 Adam, AT, 12:iii n. 113 Vie de M. Des-Cartes, "A Monseigneur le Chancelier," l:[iii]. The comparison between the "premier Ministre de la Justice" and the "principaux Ministres de la Verite," the philosophers, brings out two points: that Justice and Truth go together, and that so far as God has left both to man, He has left both of them in the hands of fallible beings.

56

Problems of Cartesianism

Messieurs de Port-Royal without necessarily being "disciples de saint Augustin." To them the Jesuit attacks on Baillet were no deterrent, provided the librarian could be restrained from continuing the battle. The man who could mediate between these persons of authority and Baillet was Lamoignon. Legrand and Baillet had much in common. Both were dedicated, single-minded scholars, both had a concern for minutiae, and both were unselfish in helping one another. But Legrand's plans tended to become unmanageably large, and time was of no concern to him; Baillet had an eye for the feasible and was a rapid worker. The need for biographical and bibliographical help might well have brought Legrand to the Bibliotheque Lamoignon while he was working through Clerselier's edition 01" the correspondence of Descartes and preparing his own edition; after he decided to add a life of Descartes, the help of a man like Baillet became almost indispensable. The collaboration between the two men must therefore have begun at an early stage, with Baillet's role gradually changing from that of reference librarian to active participant in the search for material and finally to that of author. Legrand's own far-flung searches, designed to interest "the relatives, the allies, and the friends of the philosopher" in the project,114 would hardly have failed to arouse the interest of the enemies of Descartes as well, including the Baillet watchers. When Baillet addressed his request to Nicaise as the "agent general de la republique des lettres," there could no longer be any question about the degree of his involvement. Such a request to Nicaise, who was no keeper of secrets, amounted to a declaration of work on the project, even if Baillet carefully put Legrand's name in front of it. At the end of 1688, at the latest, he was overtly linked to the planned Descartes biography. I say "at the latest" because Nicaise might well have served as an intermediary in domestic inquiries before being asked to write to Graevius and others abroad. At the Bibliotheque Lamoignon he certainly was no stranger. Considering that Baillet had published nothing in 1687 and nothing offensive in 1688, we have to ask again why the agitation about him continued into the early part of 1688 when, in mid-1687, even 114

Ibid., l:xxiff.

Baillet's Life of Descartes

57

Boschet seemed satisfied that he had learned his lesson. The most puzzling question concerns the intervention of Pere La Chaise. What was its purpose? BAILLET, LAMOIGNON, DESCARTES

Boschet had written his Reflexions sur les Jugemens des Savans with the therapeutic aim of curing Baillet of his desire to publish. But Baillet was incurable. There was only one way to stop the obnoxious librarian: get him out of Paris and back to Beauvais. It had worked in the case of Hermant, it would work even better in this one. Without a proper living, without the resources of Lamoignon's library, without the avocat general's protection he would be finished for all practical purposes. Was this the burden of the message which Pere La Chaise gave the avocat general? If so, neither the complaints about Baillet's past literary activity nor the possibility that Baillet might continue the Jugemens or reply in kind to Menage's Anti-Baillet could justify so drastic a step as even to intimate that the avocat general had better dismiss his librarian. But if at that time Baillet was becoming visible as an active collaborator in a Cartesian work, the Jesuits would be apprehensive, for this would no longer be a purely literary matter. They regarded Baillet as a tool in the hands of thejansenists. Should he be allowed to become a tool in the hands of the Cartesians as well? The big "if is, of course, the chronology. The only relatively firm date for Baillet's overt involvement with the biography is the end of 1688. This is also the time when, in all likelihood, Baillet was being considered for the authorship of the work, if he was not indeed offered the commission. But this date is too late to explain Father La Chaise's intervention, except as a preventive warning to Lamoignon, motivated by Baillet's ever closer cooperation with Legrand. But at the end of this year 1688 we do have a date: Mme de Grignan's solicitation on behalf of Adrien Baillet. This time it was not only Baillet who was in trouble, but Lamoignon as well. There must have been fear that ihe avocat general was wavering in his support for Baillet, who had as yet done nothing to cause new trouble. With no motive on the part of either Baillet or

58

Problems of Cartesianism

Lamoignon, the crisis must have been brought on by still another outside intervention, and for stronger reasons than the earlier ones. The future Vie de M. Des-Cartes was the only acute issue at that time. If the commission to write it had been offered to Baillet, or if this was under discussion, the Jesuits would be alarmed; if there was a possibility that Baillet might be dismissed and thus become unavailable, the backers of the work would be alarmed. Both sides would bring pressure on the avocat general, with whom the decision rested. Whether or not the subject had already been broached by Father La Chaise, the issue in November 1688 would have been Baillet's service in the house of Lamoignon. We know what the decision was. Baillet stayed on, and Mme de Grignan probably had little to do with that. As a librarian Baillet was literally irreplaceable, and Baillet was more than that: he was the tutor and guardian angel of Lamoignon's eldest son. And if the pressure on Lamoignon was stronger than ever, so was his position. His stature was growing rapidly: soon he would be President a mortier. Moreover, it was not a matter ofjugemens, Satires personnelles, or Auteurs deguises; this time the issue was Descartes. The first complete biography of Descartes would be a monument to France's greatest, if controversial, philosopher, whose name would overshadow the author's, whoever he was.115 Baillet's refusal to accept or consider a commission could not have mattered less. Lamoignon knew that his obstinate librarian could resist almost anything except more work. He would do everything short of writing the book; in the end he would be told that the time for writing it had come. He would yield to respected authority, especially if that authority had saved him from the fate of Geoffroy Hermant. Mme de Sevigne, with her sharp eye for character, had seen it: "cet homme sentira de loin comme de pres votre reconnaissance. J'aime cette maniere de n'avoir point de reconnaissances passageres. ..." We can be sure that the obligatory "discours" addressed to Baillet was not omitted either. It was surely M. de Lamoignon who denied Baillet the indispensable opportunity to offend more people with 115 In fact Baillet's name does not appear in the work. Only the dedication is signed "Le tres humble, & tres-obeissant serviteur, A.B."

Baillet 's Life of Descartes

59

morejugemens, but Lamoignon wisely did not ask of him the impossible—to stop working on what Baillet, after all, considered his lifework. The difference between criticial bibliography and a work of national importance would have been impressed upon the unwilling author. Perhaps it was then that Lamoignon spoke of his requesting the chancellor to accept the dedication. Baillet certainly got the point. This dedication is a praise of the reign of LOUIS LE GRAND. It is also a tribute, indirectly, to Lamoignon as a representative of Truth and Justice, and of Patience and Wisdom as well. We have come to the end of this story, and back to where it began. Perhaps it is a bit more understandable now; but this does not prove that the conjectures holding it together are correct. Only new documentary evidence can help, by providing missing facts. We have deliberately drawn on only the published sources of the period, treating the bits and pieces of facts that they reveal as indications of what is merely intimated, or not said at all. For this whole affair is a political one from beginning to end, an episode in the large struggle for and against Cartesianism in the last two decades of Descartes's century. After all, Descartes himself had not been entirely nonpolitical in advancing his philosophy. Perhaps it is not amiss to close with a word about the auteur malgre lui. Baillet preserved invaluable texts and information that would have been lost without him, but he preserved them in his own fashion. A thorough study of his style, his manner of translating and paraphrasing, and his scholarship is needed in attempting to reconstruct lost texts for which he is the only source. This requires following his development from the Jugemens to the Vie. As to his so-called hagiographic bias, we need to quote only one text. It stands in the second volume of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes, on p. 381. Speaking of Pascal, he says: ". . . au lieu de borner ses vues a la recherche de tout ce qui peut contribuer a la felicite temporelle de cette vie, comme avoit fait M. Descartes, il s'eleva . . . jusqu'a celle des veritez de notre Religion, ou M. Descartes ne s'etoit jamais juge capable d'atteindre." It is as simple as that. One cannot rise to the "verities of our Religion" without putting the "temporal felicity of this life" down where it belongs. To the peasant scholar from Beauvais this

60

Problems of Cartesianism

was an indisputable fact, but he had enough discipline to make his confession of faith where nobody would look for it, instead of allowing his religious radicalism to distort his portrait of Descartes.

Cartesianism and Biblical Criticism Richard H. Popkin

T

wo of the major intellectual developments of the seventeenth century were (1) the launching of "the new philosophy" with Descartes's presentation of his method for overcoming skepticism and his construction of the new metaphysical basis for science, and (2) the unfolding of the theological consequences of a historical and critical approach to the Bible. Modern philosophy issuing from Cartesianism and modern irreligion issuing from Bible criticism became two of the central ingredients in the making of the modern mind, the "enlightened" scientific and rational outlook. These two movements, though developing at the same time and often through the activities of the same persons, have rarely been studied as parts of a common intellectual drama. It is the thesis of this paper that one of the major factors, if not the major one, in the development of modern irreligion, was the application of the Cartesian methodology, and the Cartesian standard of true philosophical and scientific knowledge, to the evaluation of religious knowledge. When this was done by certain bold seventeenth-century thinkers, a world shorn of the biblical deity was revealed. Some of those realizing the immense consequences of this marriage of certain Cartesian themes with a historical interpretation of theJudeo-Christian picture of the world proposed ways of rejecting the rationalistic approach to religion, which set the guidelines for much of post-Enlightenment theology. The drama involved in the application of Cartesianism to Bible criticism in the presentation of a totally naturalistic world-view, and in the reaction to this by those trying to save a meaningful content of Judeo-Christianity through the rejection of Cartesian methods and standards when applied to religions materially, encompasses a vast number of philosophers and theologians in France, England, the [ 61 ]

62

Problems of Cartesianism

Lowlands, and Germany. I shall try to present just some vignettes of what I believe happened, in terms of three basic cases: (1) Spinoza's development of a "Cartesian" approach to biblical studies; (2) Toland's application of Descartes's criterion of clarity and distinctness to religious knowledge; and (3) the use of Cartesian methodology by Catholic polemicists like Richard Simon, Pierre Nicole, and Paul Pellisson, and of Cartesian standards by liberal Calvinists like Jean Le Clerc and Elie Saurin. The consequences of these intellectual gambits, as seen by leading opponents such as Bishop Stillingfleet, Pierre Jurieu, and Pierre Bayle, and the counterpositions worked out by these thinkers, pretty much encompassed the range of positions that were to be advocated for the next three centuries in the ongoing warfare between religion and science. I have argued elsewhere1 that the warfare between religion and science was not the consequence of the development of the new physics and the astronomy of the seventeenth century, nor of its mechanistic formulation but, rather, of the application of some of the features of the new science to Bible criticism. It had been fashionable until relatively recently to portray the Cartesian revolution as the initial presentation of the scientific and irreligious world-view, through its overt statement of a basis for rejecting Scholasticism, and a covert or implied basis for rejecting the Judeo-Christian picture of the world. The studies of Cartesianism launched by Etienne Gilson, Henri Gouhier, and Alexandre Koyre have led to a recognition of the compatibility of Cartesianism and Christianity, and to seeing Descartes himself as a religious thinker, trying to ally religion and science in a new harmonious relationship.2 Descartes's position was continuously formulated by its author as being compatible with his professed religious view, Catholicism, and as providing a better position for defending the framework of faith than other philosophies. 1

See R. H. Popkin, "Scepticism, Theology and the Scientific Revolution in the Seventeenth Century," in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, eds., Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 1-39. 2 See Etienne Gilson, Etudes sur le role de la pensee medievale dans la formation du Systeme cartesian (Paris, 1930); Henri Gouhier, La Pensee religieuse de Descartes (Paris, 1924); and Alexandre Koyre, Essai sur I'idee de Dieu et les preuves de son existence chez Descartes (Paris, 1922).

Biblical Criticism

63

Descartes insisted he was not going to deal with theology, but also was not challenging its accepted conclusions, and was offering proofs of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul that were compatible with the mechanistic picture of the physical world.3 Although Jesuit and Calvinist opponents saw dangerous irreligious implications in Cartesianism, Descartes insisted that his views were orthodox.4 Major portions of his philosophy were adopted and defended by seventeenth-century Augustinian movements in the Oratory, among the Jansenists, and among some Calvinist groups. As long as Cartesianism was a vital intellectual movement, it had leading advocates among the theologians who insisted that there was no real conflict between Cartesian philosophy and science and Christian theology. By employing the Cartesian method only for gaining natural knowledge, the Christian Cartesians kept their faith while developing the new science.5 Bible criticism, emerging from humanistic studies and Reformation and Counter-Reformation polemics, also kept within an accepted religious framework, at least until the mid-seventeenth century. Those who were trying to establish a more accurate text of Scripture, and a more precise understanding of its meanings, through the utilization of historical and critical tools were, as far as we know, trying to explicate their own versions of the Judeo-Christian tradition.6 Prior to Spinoza (or maybe Uriel da Costa and Juan de Prado just before him) 7 we do not know of any Bible critics who were denying that 3 Rene Descartes, Meditationes de prima Philosophia, "Epistola," "Praefatio," and "Synopsis," in Oeuvres de Descartes, publiees par Charles Adam &? Paul Tannery: Nouvelle Presentation, ed. B. Rochot, P. Costabel, J. Beaude, 11 vols. (Paris, 1964-74), vol. 7. Hereafter cited as AT (NP). 4 See Descartes's answer to Father Bourdin in "Objectiones Septimae, cum notis authoris," in AT (NP), 7:451—561. This is followed by Descartes's complaint to Father Dinet, the Jesuit provincial, pp. 563-603. Descartes's answer to the Calvinists Gisbert Voetius and Martinus Schook is in his "Epistola Renati Des Cartes ad Celeberrimum virum D. Gisbertum Voetium," in AT (NP), 8:2. 5 This seems to have been the case for such Christian Cartesians as Geulincx, Arnauld, Malebranche, and Bernard Lamy. 6 See Klaus Scholder, Ursprunge und Probleme der Bibelkritik in 17 Jahrhundert (Munich, 1966). 7 On Uriel da Costa, see Carl Gebhardt, ed., Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa (Amsterdam, 1922); and Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Uriel de Costa, Notas relativas a sua

64

Problems of Cartesianism

Scripture presents the fundamental message for mankind. The Bible scholars had vehement disagreements, and very often denounced their opponents as heterodox, as atheists, and the like. But, just the same, I think it can be maintained that prior to about 1650 nobody was denying that Scripture contained some special, revealed knowledge about the supernatural dimension of the world, and that this knowledge was essential for comprehending the origin, nature, and destiny of mankind. The interpretations of the nature and content of this knowledge, of course, cover an enormous number of positions, many of which are fundamentally incompatible with one another.8 Out of the welter of theological views, a way of discerning the biblical message began to become structured, namely, the historical and critical approach. Its leading figure before Spinoza, from the Catholic Erasmus to the Calvinist Jacques Cappel, pressed the importance of philological and historical information in order to comprehend and interpret Scripture. It is possible that this sort of research could have continued up to our own day without undermining the general religious world had not some of the methodology and standards of Cartesian thought been introduced into Bible scholarship. The radical step that is usually taken to be the beginning of the higher criticism of the Bible is the denial of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the denial of the authenticity of the existing biblical text, and the denial of the Bible as the framework for human history. These three steps were taken by the eccentric theologian Isaac La Peyrere (1596-1676) in his Prae-Adamitae (men before Adam), first written in 1641, and finally published in 1655 in Amsterdam. In order to defend his special messianic interpretation of what was going on (namely, that Jewish history was about to reach its culmination in mid-seventeenth-century France), La Peyrere argued that Moses could not have written the documents that have come down to us, and that what we possess is "a heap of copie of copie." The real text has to be reconstructed, and its message is that the Bible is the histo-

via e as suas obras (Coimbra, 1922). On Juan de Prado, see I. S. Revah, Spinoza etjuan de Prado (The Hague, 1959). 8 On this, see R. H. Popkin, "Bible Criticism and Social Science," Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14:339-40.

Biblical Criticism

65

ry of the Jews, not the history of mankind. The development of Jewish history is the divine drama. The history of everybody else, the pre-Adamites, has no real significance except in relation to Jewish history, through which everybody, Adamites and pre-Adamites, will be saved.9 La Peyrere's many heretical views (for which he was condemned all over Europe, and briefly jailed until he personally recanted to the pope and converted from Calvinism to Catholicism)10 were based upon internal analyses of conflicting biblical texts, personal (usually cabalistic) readings of texts, pagan historical data,11 and recent anthropological information gained from the Voyages of Discovery.12 Although La Peyrere's theses were one of the great scandals of seventeenth-century thought, he himself, in his own idiosyncratic way, was still maintaining that the message for humankind was in the Bible—when reconstructed and properly understood, partly through the use of scientific method and scientific information. 13 His denial of the Mosaic authorship was taken up by Hobbes,14 and many of his views were adopted and transformed by Spinoza.15 9

On La Peyrere, see R. H. Popkin, "The Marrano Theology of Isaac La Peyrere," Studi Internazionali di Filosofia 5 (1973):97-126. See also Rene Pintard, Le Libertinage erudit (Paris, 1943), pp. 355-61, 379, 399, 420-24, 430; David R. McKee, "Isaac de la Peyrere, a Precursor of the 18th Century Critical Deists," PMLA 59 (1944):456-85; and Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah (Urbana, 1963), pp. 86-90, 130-37; Hans Joachim Schoeps, Philosemitismus in Barok (Tubingen, 1952), pp. 3-18; and Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, (New York, 1965), chap. 3. 10 For the documents of what happened, see Jean-Paul Oddos, Recherches sur la Vie et I'Oeuvre d'haac de Lapeyrere, These de 3eme Cycle (Grenoble, 1974), chaps. 9 and 10. 11 In his Du Rappel de Juifs, La Peyrere based many of his readings on cabalistic interpretations that seem to derive from Guilliaime Postel. Professor Marion D. Kuntz and I are preparing a study of La Peyrere and Postel. In a forthcoming study, "The Development of Religious Scepticism and the Influence of Isaac La Peyrere's PreAdamism and Bible Criticism," in R. R. Bolgar, ed., Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500-1700 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 271-80, I deal with La Peyrere's use of pagan historical data. 12 In my article, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance" (in Edward P. Mahoney, ed., Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller [Leiden, 1976]), I deal with the relation of the Voyages of Discovery to new versions of the theory, especially La Peyrere's. 13 See, for instance, La Peyrere's Lettre a Philotime (Paris, 1658), pp. 105-7; and Apologie de la Peyrere (Paris, 1663), pp. 21-23. See also Popkin, "Marrano Theology of La Peyrere," pp. 107-8. 14 Hobbes published these claims in Leviathan, pt. 3, chap. 33. La Peyrere's manuscript had been circulating among common friends like Grotius and Mersenne. A detailed study of the connection between Hobbes and La Peyrere is needed. 15 We cannot tell when Spinoza acquired La Peyrere's book. Strauss, in Spinoza's

66

Problems of Cartesianism

There is strong reason to suspect that Spinoza's break with the synagogue came at least partly from his accepting some of La Peyrere's views. La Peyrere was in Amsterdam a few months before Spinoza's excommunication, and was in contact with Spinoza's teacher, Menasseh ben Israel.16 Spinoza and two of his friends apparently adopted some of La Peyrere's views as soon as they read his book, and all three were expelled from the synagogue in 1656.17 Spinoza wrote a long defense then, which has disappeared.18 A couple of years later he is quoted as holding the view that "God exists, but only philosophically."19 When he finally published his views about the Bible in 1670, he had already carefully studied and analyzed Cartesianism in his Principles of Descartes's Philosophy (1666). The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus expounds his method of Bible interpretation —namely, that the method for interpreting Scripture is almost the same as the method of interpreting nature. 20 Spinoza's method involves determining the truth of scriptural statements by ascertaining whether they agree with rational analysis based on clear and distinct ideas of God or nature. When, as he claimed, most matters discussed in Scripture cannot be demonstrated, then they are to be interpreted philologically, historically, psychologically, and so forth, in terms of scientific knowledge, which Critique of Religion, pp. 264, 327, lists specific points Spinoza drew from La Peyrere for the Tractatus. Spinoza owned a copy of the Prae-Adamitae. It is no. 54 in Freudenthal's list in Die geschichte Spinozas (Leipzig, 1899). 16 See R. H. Popkin, "Menasseh ben Israel and Isaac La Peyrere," Studia Rosenthaliana 8 (1974): 59-63. 17 See I. S. Revah, "Aux origines de la rupture spinozienne: Nouveaux documents sur 1'Incroyance dans la communaute judeo-portugaise d'Amsterdam a 1'epoque de 1'excommunication de Spinoza," Revue des Etudes jmfs 3, no. 23 (1964):359-429. Spinoza's friends were charged with holding that there was no proof that the world began as described by the Jews, and that Chinese history was at least 10,000 years old (La Peyrere's figure). 18 In Lucas's life of Spinoza, given in Freudenthal, Die Geschichte Spinozas, p. 25, a work is listed: " 'apologie de Benoit de Spinoza, ou il justifie sa sortie de la Synagogue' cette apologie est ecrite en Espagnol, et n'a jamais ete imprimee." 19 The text is quoted from a Spanish Inquisition document in Revah, Spinoza etjuan de Prado, p. 32. 20 Baruch de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, cap. vii, in Opera quotquot reperta sunt, ed. J. Van Vloten et J. P. N. Land (The Hague, 1914), 2:172.

Biblical Criticism

67

may account for the occurrence of such items, for people's belief in them, though they cannot be found to be true. Spinoza's revolutionary way of treating the Bible was developed at least in part out of his version of Cartesianism. In a note in the Tractatus, he said, "We doubt of the existence of God, and consequently of all else, so long as we have no clear and distinct idea of God, but only a confused one." When we possess the clear and distinct idea of God, we know "that God exists necessarily, that He is omnipresent, and that all our conceptions involve in themselves the nature of God and are conceived through it. Lastly, we see that all our adequate ideas are true."21 So the clear and distinct idea of God is the source of understanding everything. When applied to biblical statements, many of them turn out to be impossible as claims of what God is like. These statements, then, were analyzed by Spinoza in terms of how their occurrence can be accounted for, since they cannot be true on philosophical (i.e., Cartesian) standards. God, known through the clear and distinct idea of him, is not a historical being. He does not act, have emotions, change his laws, et cetera. Spinoza's method of Bible criticism was, then, to insist that scriptural statements be taken literally and judged on the basis of clear and distinct ideas of God and the laws of nature as to whether they imparted demonstrably certain or morally certain information about reality. It turned out, on the application of this method, that Scripture had little cognitive content. This content consisted in basic moral truths, which could also be discovered through philosophy. The bulk of the content of Scripture exhibited a great deal about what ancient Hebrews taught and did. The significance of this was then to be determined by the best scientific analysis of the language, the behavior, and so forth, of those ancient writers. But the significance was not in terms of the nature of reality, but in terms of human history. 22 Thus Spinoza reduced the relevance of most of Scripture to the

21 22

Ibid., note to cap vi, on p. 315. This is the message of most of the Tractatus, see esp. chaps. 1-10.

68

Problems of Cartesianism

insight it might give us about how an earlier group of human beings functioned. The understanding of the world, he insisted, was to be achieved through philosophy, using the methods close to Descartes's that he developed in his Principles of Descartes's Philosophy and his Improvement of the Understanding. "The sphere of theology is piety and obedience."23 It does not and cannot offer proof of the truth of its prescriptions. Theology, kept to this role, will be in accord with reason, if what it asks people to do and to believe is supported by philosophical evidence. Thus rational philosophy replaces theology as the basis for understanding God and his role in the universe. Spinoza's earliest known thesis—that God exists, but only philosophically—sets up a framework in which the biblical God, God active in history, is not possible as the metaphysical source of all events. Spinoza's use of Cartesian standards for determining the true characteristics of this philosophical God exclude practically all of the scriptural account as meaningful. Rather than offering the later village atheist's evaluation of this, namely, that Scripture is just not true, Spinoza offered an analysis that removed the interpretation of Scripture from the realm of "scientific truth." "To sum up, we may draw the absolute conclusion that the Bible must not be accommodated to reason, nor reason to the Bible."24 The first accommodation, which Spinoza attributes to Maimonides and his followers, violates the literal meaning of Scripture, and involves rewriting or reinterpreting it to meet rational standards. The second involves destroying all rational criteria, and presenting a devastating basis for skepticism, since reason would no longer be certain if the kind of world in the Bible were accepted as the measure of the kind of world we can understand. The best science would have to be discarded in favor of the inchoate world of Scripture. And "who, unless he were desperate or mad, would wish to bid an incontinent farewell to reason, or to despise the arts and sciences, or to deny reason's certitude?"25 Spinoza, with his vision of reason as the messianic force that would liberate mankind, removed 23

Spinoza, Tractatus, cap. xv, p. 254. Ibid., p. 254. 2 5 Ibid., p. 256. 24

Biblical Criticism

69

the biblical world from the intellectual stage, and left the rational new science as the path to the Kingdom of God. Modern Bible criticism, as outlined by Spinoza, got much of its force and perspective from his use of Cartesian methods and standards and from his extension of Cartesian rationalism to evaluating the biblical framework of interpreting man and his place in the universe. Spinoza's application of these Cartesian elements to Bible studies led him to remove Scripture from the intellectual world, and to leave it as just a source of moral action for those who were intellectually unable to find the rational basis for human conduct. The revolutionary implications of Spinoza's biblical criticism were immediately apparent. The Tractatus was banned, and its author was soon denounced as the arch atheist. For example, Henry More had been convinced that Cartesianism was a form of infidelity. He had heard that in Holland there were Cartesians who were "mere scoffers at religion, and atheistical." Then he heard "that Spinosa, a Jew first, after a Cartesian, and now an atheist" had written the Tractatus, attacking the bases of biblical religion.26 Even before the publication of the Ethics, many realized that the way of treating the Bible introduced by Spinoza would deny any validity or importance to the Judeo-Christian tradition. This challenge, coupled with the naturalistic system of explanation developed in the Ethics, would allow for a totally new perspective on human experience. What Pascal portrayed as the misery of man without the biblical God was for Spinoza the liberation of the human spirit from the bonds of superstition and fear. The daring vision of a nonbiblical world was so far beyond the acceptable possibilities of the mid-seventeenth century that it would take more than another hundred years before one could safely claim to be a Spinozist (as various figures in the German Enlightenment found out). Bayle asserted that Spinoza "was a systematic atheist who employed a totally new method." According to Bayle, the Tractatus was "a pernicious and detestable book"27 containing the seeds of atheism that 26 Henry More, letter to Robert Boyle, June 5, 1665, in Robert Boyle, The Works, photoreproduction ed. (Hildesheim, 1966), 6:514. 27 These claims are in the body of the article Bayle wrote on Spinoza, the longest article in the Dictionary. See Pierre Bayle, art. "Spinosa," Dictionnaire historique et critique.

70

Problems of Cartesianism

were revealed full-blown in the Ethics. Spinoza's views were so far ahead of his contemporaries that those attracted to his new method gingerly retraced the steps by which he reached his revolutionary conclusions regarding the status of revelatory information in Scripture. Practically no one would admit to holding Spinoza's conclusions, or even admiring his efforts. But the force of applying Cartesian standards attracted some bold spirits. The theological establishment in just about all the religious groups of the time made Spinozism synonymous with the most dastardly and dangerous views. A Spinozist was bound to be an intellectual outlaw. But what Spinoza had accomplished in terms of "scientifically" interpreting the Bible had its appeal to some of those imbued with the possibilities of solving man's problem by reason alone. Two decades after Spinoza, a brash freethinker, John Toland, launched the deist controversy by applying the Cartesian criterion of clear and distinct ideas to the Mysteries of Christianity in his Christianity Not Mysterious, written in 1694-95 and published and burned in 1696. Toland, then in his mid-twenties, had imbibed a version of liberal Cartesian theology in Holland from Locke's friend, Jean Le Clerc. In his shocking work, Toland contended that there cannot be any mysteries that are contrary to reason or above reason. "Reason is the only Foundation of All Certitude."28 Toland's opponent Bishop Stillingfleet saw this view as amounting to saying that "we must have clear and distinct Ideas."29 The result of this application of the Cartesian criterion of knowledge to Christian doctrines is stated in Toland's subtitle "that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to Reason nor Above it, And that no Christian Doctrine can be properly call'd A Mystery."30 Toland's first opponent, Bishop Stillingfleet, immediately pointed out the potentially devastating implications of this kind of Cartesian Bible criticism. Both central Christian doctrines and the metaphysical explications of them would be discarded "out of the reasonable part of the World." For example, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the 28

John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (London, 1696), p. 6. Edward Stillingfleet, A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1697), pp. 232-33. 30 Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious, title page. 29

Biblical Criticism

71

explication of it in terms of the concepts of "substance" and "person," would be declared uncertain because, "on this new way of reasoning" we do not have clear and distinct ideas of these matters.31 Bishop Stillingfleet had been defending the Judeo-Christian view of the world against many challenges, including those of La Peyrere, Spinoza, and Hobbes,32 by contending that the traditional religious view is more reasonable and more certain than its denial. Stillingfleet had based his case on commonsense standards. He saw, in his various controversial works, that if stronger standards requiring certainty beyond all "reasonable doubt" were employed, religion would become uncertain. Toland's use of Cartesian standards pushed the matter further. As Stillingfleet perceived it, the adoption of Toland's method and that of John Locke (who, the bishop thought, was the philosophical mentor of the deist Toland) would undermine any reasonable person's assurance of the truth and/or certitude of the central doctrines of Christianity. So, Stillingfleet's last writings, his letters to Locke, dissecting the Cartesian elements in Toland's deism, and revealing the potentialities for religious doubts if Locke's theory of knowledge were to be applied to religious data, were an attempt to sound the warning of the dangerous threat to religious belief emerging from the use of "the new way of ideas" in understanding Christianity. The orthodox Calvinist leader of the French Reformed Church in Holland, Pierre Jurieu, saw the menace of the employment of Cartesian standards in religion even more strongly. On the one hand, Jurieu saw that liberal Protestants, developing Arminian and Socinian themes against the rigid doctrinal position of the Synod of Dordrecht, were using Cartesian standards in order to modify, reinterpret, or reject some of the accepted Calvinist tenets. On the other hand, Catholic opponents of Calvinism were using a version of the Cartesian method of doubt to show that the Calvinist attempt to base its theological claims on the literal sense of Scripture would lead to 31 Stillingfleet, Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, pp. 230-62; and The Bishop of Worcester's Answer to Locke's Letter (London, 1697). 32 On Stillingfleet's intellectual career, see the new study by Robert Carroll, Edward Stillingfleet (The Hague, 1975); and see also R. H. Popkin, "The Philosophy of Bishop Stillingfleet," Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (197l):303-19.

72

Problems of Cartesianism

an unending quest for religious knowledge that could never attain any certainty. Both approaches, that of the liberal Protestants and that of the Catholic polemicists, would lead to either Socinianism (the worst heresy of the day, short of atheism) or Pyrrhonism in religion, that is, a complete skepticism about whether any religious knowledge is possible. Against the first threat, which Jurieu saw as represented by the Remonstrant, Jean Le Clerc, and by the liberal Calvinist pastor at Utrecht, Elie Saurin, the answer proposed was to fight back and defend Christianity by utterly rejecting the contention, "qu'il ne faut rien croire dont nous n'ayons une idee claire & distincte." Jurieu pointed out what would follow, namely, that we would have no clear and distinct ideas of the mystery of the Trinity. To combat this destructive Cartesian incursion into religion, one had to reject utterly the view "que la raison humaine est le juge souverain des matieres de la foy."33 The threat posed by the Catholic polemicists raised a different kind of problem from that of the development of some sort of religious rationalism through using the Cartesian criterion of true and certain knowledge in religion. Starting with Father Richard Simon's critique of the Calvinist attempt to base their faith on Scripture alone, Bible criticism was used to show that in order to discover the accurate text of the Bible and to discern the true sense of any biblical text, a vast research project would have to be undertaken, involving inordinate philological and historical inquiries of the sort proposed by Spinoza. Father Simon, in his many works on the history of the biblical texts, the history of the manuscripts of the texts, and the history of the editions and translations, kept showing that there was an immense gulf between the human (and therefore fallible) information available about what people took to be the Bible, and the actual Word of God upon which the Calvinists proposed to found the True Faith. Catholic polemicists like Pierre Nicole and Paul Pellisson combined the scholarly difficulties in finding the message of the Bible 33 Pierre Jurieu, La Religion du Latitudinaire, avec I'apologie pour la Sainte Trinite, appelle I'heresie des trots Dieux (Rotterdam, 1696), preface.

Biblical Criticism

73

with a Cartesian analysis of a kind of search for truth that was needed to reach an indubitable conclusion. Nicole, in Les Pretendus Reformes convainus de schisme, and Pellisson, in Reflexions sur les Differends de la Religion, developed their case. They argued first that the message of the Bible was not evident, since there had been and still are disputes about this. To find out the truth one had to make an "examen." On the scholarly side, this would involve trying to learn all the languages involved, what they meant when employed in Scripture, what the historical facts about the content of Scripture were, and so on. Then this "examen" would have to involve scrutinizing all the different views on the matter to determine which is the right one. And Nicole claimed, "on ne doit croire les choses non evidentes par elles mesmes, & sur lesquells il y a partage d'opinions qu'apres un examen suffisant pour nouse faire dire, cela ne pent etre autrement."*4 Each point of the Bible critics, each varying interpretation, posed something that had to be examined. The examination could stop only if one reached a conclusion that could not possibly be doubted. Otherwise one had to suspend judgment as to what was really true in religion. (The Catholic polemicists insisted they were not driven to this kind of religious skepticism, because they had an infallible judge of religious truth—the pope.) The religious case, Nicole claimed, was not soluble in the same way as one discovered and recognized mathematical truths. In the latter case, the natural light enables one to ascertain what is clear and distinct, what is evident, and hence true. But religious-knowledge claims remain open to question and doubt. Hence, the Calvinists, forced to use "la voie d'examen," and forced to apply Descartes's method of doubt to religious-knowledge claims, will never arrive at any certitude. And, in religion it is not safe to accept opinions. One must have certainty.35 Jurieu, in his Vray systeme de I'eglise, diagnosed that at the heart of Nicole's and Pellisson's attack was again the Cartesian criterion of 34

Cited in Pierre Jurieu, Le Vray systeme de I'eglise & la veritable analyse de lafoy (Dordrecht, 1686), p. 371. Nicole and Pellisson developed their case in the works mentioned above. 35 See Pierre Nicole's discussion of this in bk. 1, chap. 17, of his Les Pretendus Reformex convaincus de Schisme (Paris, 1684) and Jurieu's answer in Vray systeme de I'eglise, pp. 347-443.

74

Problems of Cartesianism

true knowledge, applied this time to the finding and recognition of religious truth rather than the understanding of it; and this Cartesian principle, applied to religion "est la plus perniceuse qui puisse etre avancee; Celle qui fait les sceptiques, les impies & les athees."36 Pierre Bayle, in his article "Nicole," also pointed out "les effets funestes" of this Cartesian maxim when applied to religion.37 Both Bayle and Jurieu showed that the Cartesian method of finding indubitable truth could be applied with equally devastating results to the Catholic religious-knowledge claims, since they had to be examined before being accepted. The examination of them would involve the same proliferation of scholarly problems, this time about documents, decisions of councils and popes, and the like. It would also involve having to suspend judgment unless it was clearly and distinctly perceived that the Catholic Church was right, and the disputes over this indicate that it is not so perceived. Hence the application of Cartesian method to the disputes within Christianity would lead to a suspension of judgment about what version of Christianity is correct.38 (Jurieu went a bit further and contended that it would also lead to suspending judgment as to whether Christianity was true rather than another religious alternative, and whether theism was true rather than something like "le nouveau systeme d'Atheisme de Spinosa," since one would not clearly and distinctly perceive that the arguments for Judaism or for Spinozism could not be true.)39 Hence the applications of Cartesianism to Scripture by Spinoza, by Toland, and by the Catholic polemicists Nicole and Pellisson each revealed ways in which a skepticism about traditional religiousknowledge claims could be raised. Spinoza offered a wholesale attack, making Cartesian rational standards and the new science the framework for interpreting tradtional religion, with the result that almost all the content of Scripture could not be counted as knowledge about the real world. Spinoza's elimination of revealed knowledge, reinforced by his Cartesian method and outlook, had such far36

Jurieu, Vray systeme de I'eglise, p. 373. 37 Pierre Bayle, art. "Nicolle," rem. C, n. 32. 38 Bayle, arts. "Nicolle, Pierre," rems. C and D, and "Pellisson, Paul," rems. D and E; and Jurieu, Vray systeme de I'eglise. 39 Jurieu, Vray systeme de I'eglise, p. 374.

Biblical Criticism

75

reaching consequences as to be beyond the pale of what his contemporaries could consider. The smaller applications of Cartesianism to central Christian doctrines by Toland and by liberal Calvinists in Holland raised enough problems for those trying to preserve the traditional framework of Judeo-Christianity. The use of Cartesianism by the Catholic polemicists revealed how a skeptical crisis of the kind set forth in Descartes's First Meditation could be generated, without the possibility of overcoming it through finding any clear and distinct religious truth. Some of the attempts to deal with these problems raised by applying Cartesianism to religion set forth some of the modern forms of the basic options for defending the claim that there is genuine religious knowledge. Here I shall deal briefly with three of these: Pierre Bayle's version of fideism, Pierre Jurieu's psychologism, and Bishop Stillingfleet's commonsense defense of Christianity, which present some of the major possibilities of defending religion in the face of modern Bible criticism. Without going into a problem that Professor Rex, I, and many others have debated for years, namely, what Pierre Bayle's actual views were, if we consider the view he put forth over and over again in the Dictionnaire historique et critique, and in more pronounced form in his later works, Bayle accepted the type of skepticism Spinoza rejected: that of making Scripture, or Revelation, the measure of what is true, with the ensuing result that where philosophy, science, and rational analysis disagree with Revelation, then philosophy, science, and rational analysis are to be abandoned in favor of accepting knowledge by faith. In the famous Remark B to the article "Pyrrho," Bayle presented the case that Christian theology furnishes invincible arguments for complete philosophical skepticism. The heart of the case set forth is that if one accepts Christianity, including the doctrine of the Trinity, transubstantiation, and the doctrine of original sin, then the clearest and most distinct philosophical truths must be false. The criterion of philosophical truth is not acceptable if the gospel is true. In his Third Clarification, entitled "What has been said about Pyrrhonism in this dictionary cannot be harmful to religion," Bayle spelled out a most thorough statement of pure fideism, rejecting any philosophical, scientific, or historical evidence as relevant to religious knowledge. Pyrrhonism shows that rational activity is unable to arrive

76

Problems of Cartesianism

at any indubitable conclusions, and that when pressed, rational activity becomes completely self-destructive, achieving only contradictory and incredible results. The realization of the bankruptcy of reason leads to abandoning reason and accepting the Revelation on faith alone. This faith Bayle put in Saint-Evremont's words: "I could bear to be crucified for religion. It is not that I see more reason in it than I did before; on the contrary, I see less than ever. . . . Away with reason; this is the true religion, away with reason."40 As I have pointed out elsewhere, Bayle stated a version of fideism very similar to that of S0ren Kierkegaard.41 Hume, probably ironically, stated a similar view in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, when he claimed that to become a philosophical skeptic is the first and most essential step to becoming a true and believing Christian. 42 The religious fanatic J. G. Hamann saw Hume's version as the voice of orthodoxy, and went on to reject all the results of biblical criticism in his contention that "lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the foundations of our faith."43 Kierkegaard went further, in his Philosophical Fragments, in insisting that the central claim of Christianity—that God had entered history—was an absolute paradox, a logical contradiction, a rational impossibility. No historical evidence or philosophical evidence could support the Christian contention. The rational evaluation of the contention, be it a Cartesian, an empirical, or a Hegelian one, only showed that reason was irrelevant to religion, and that religion was based on faith supported by no evidence, and contradicted by all available evidence.44 40 Bayle, Dictionnaire, "III Eclaircissement, Que ce qui a etc dit la Religion." This passage is translated in R. H. Popkin, Pierre Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary (Indianapolis, 1965), p. 431. 41 Cf. my introduction to Pierre Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary; my "Kierkegaard and Scepticism," Algemeen Tydschrift voor Wysgebeerte en Psychologie 51 (1959): 12341; and my "Theological and Religious Scepticism," Christian Scholar 39 (1956): 15058. 42 David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith, 2nd ed. (London, 1947), p. 228. 43 Johann G. Hamann, Schriften, pt. 1, (Berlin, 1821), p. 425. "Lugen und Romane miissen wahrscheinlich sein, Hypothesen und Fabeln; aber nicht die Wahrheiten und Grundlage unseres Glaubens." 44 This is the burden of chaps. 2-5 of the Philosophical Fragments.

Biblical Criticism

77

Bayle set the pattern for rejecting the application of Cartesianism to religious knowledge and to the way of ascertaining such knowledge. The unfolding of the rejection of reason in religion advanced by Bayle led to modern fideism and the so-called Neo-Orthodox method, culminating in the full irrationalism presentation by the Russian Orthodox theologian Lev Shestov.45 An additional part of Bayle's campaign to build religion on the ruins of reason appears in his longest article, "Spinosa." This article is usually treated as representing a bizarre misunderstanding of Spinoza's views. Bayle tried to understand them, tried to get Spinozists to explain them to him.46 No matter how hard he worked on this, the result came out that Spinoza's rationalism, which Bayle was often willing to grant was the most complete rationalist system, led to contradictory and absurd results, and possible justifications of all sorts of irrational views. Bayle claimed Spinoza's views involved "the most monstrous hypothesis that could be imagined, the most absurd, and the most diametrically opposed to the most evident notions of our mind."47 In later remarks he contended that Spinoza would have had no basis for rejecting the existence of apparitions, witches, demons, and so on.48 Hence, if Spinoza's rationalism, and what Bayle called his systematic atheism, were the finest achievements of the mind, employing clear and distinct ideas, but led to contradictions, and absurd and silly conclusions, what was left for the rational mind? In the very curious Remark M of "Spinosa," Bayle described the efforts of Johannes Bredenburg, who refuted Spinoza's central thesis of the Tractatus most solidly in 1675. Bredenburg's refutation apparently consisted of putting Spinoza's case into a completely demonstrable argument, which he could not break down. Bayle recognized that the light of reason taught Bredenburg that his religious views were false, but he believed them nonetheless because the light of reason is not infallible, and he preferred to believe the Word of God rather than a meta45

See Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances (New York, 1932), and Athens and Jerusalem (Athens, Ohio, 1966). 46 See Bayle, art. "Spinosa," rem. DD. 47 This is what Bayle said in his article "Spinosa" about Spinoza's total system. He developed his reasons for this in rem. N. 48 This point is made in Bayle's rem. Qto art. "Spinosa,"

78

Problems of Cartesianism

physical demonstration. This would appear to indicate that Bayle may have held that Spinoza's naturalistic rationalism cannot be refuted, though it can be shown to be ridiculous. The best answer to it is just acceptance of faith or Revelation, not argument.49 The position Bayle presented is that of accepting faith without any evidence, and maybe in spite of conflicting evidence. His erstwhile mentor and then leading enemy, Pierre Jurieu, offered a somewhat different solution. In his rejection of the skeptical results the Catholic polemicists ground out by applying Cartesianism to the search for scriptural truth, Jurieu contended that the kind of "examen" proposed by Nicole and Pellisson would lead to a skepticism about everything, even simple beliefs about who one is and what one is doing. If one examines how, in the face of a lack of clear and distinct ideas, we do in fact reach satisfactory conclusions, it is by an "examen du sentiment." The search for truth goes on until one feels or, as Jurieu sometimes stated it, tastes the truth. In ordinary affairs, as in his example of counting money, one could make a mistake. Recounting could still yield mistaken results. However, finally one has found the answer, and stops the counting process. In other cases, the importance of finding a satisfactory answer makes it necessary to believe something, and it is again psychological satisfaction that stops the potentially endless quest for sufficient evidence. His famous, or notorious, remark, ' Je le croi parce que je veux croire," indicated that belief was not a function of evidence, but of volition. The desire to believe can be produced naturally or supernaturally. Naturally it is the result of custom, education, or passion. Supernaturally it is the action of divine grace. Jurieu admitted that no one could be absolutely sure whether one's beliefs were caused by God or by natural factors, but if one had strong enough feelings, one believed and was convinced that these feelings were the result of divine grace.50 Jurieu's theory bases belief on psychic feeling instead of evidence. The will to believe is the sole foundation of religious views. Carte49

Bayle, art. "Spinosa," rem. M. This position is developed in the second half of Jurieu's Vraj systeme de I'eglise and some of his other works. For citations, see my "Hume and Jurieu: Possible Calvinist Origins of Hume's Theory of Belief," Rivista Critica d\ Storia della Filosofia (1967), fasc. IV, pp. 405-9. 50

Biblical Criticism

79

sian-oriented opponents, like Elie Saurin, pointed out that Jurieu's "defense" of orthodox Calvinism really was a form of irrationalism, in which no standards were left, other than how the believer felt, for distinguishing enthusiasm, madness, and divinely inspired views.51 Jurieu seemed content just to keep insisting that his feelings were sufficient to justify his complete assurance and his condemnation of his many opponents for heresy. Jurieu's resting his case on psychological factors could lead, as I have argued elsewhere, to a purely naturalistic theory of belief such as appears in Hume's philosophy.52 It also may be the ancestor of William James's "Will to Believe," in which any belief can be "justified" if the believer finds it sufficiently important and rewarding personally. A third alternative to the developing skepticism about traditional religion engendered by the application of Cartesian knowledge to religious knowledge is that of Bishop Stillingfleet. The bishop had built up a position opposing La Peyrere, Spinoza, Hobbes, Catholic polemicists, Puritans, Toland, and Locke, in which he readily admitted that it was not possible to gain infallible certainty about religious matters. The basic concepts were not clear and distinct, and the historical evidence for the claims of Judeo-Christianity were not demonstrable. However, Stillingfleet contended that a reasonable case could be made out that was more plausible than opposing views. In spite of the efforts of La Peyrere and Spinoza, it was more plausible that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that Adam was the first man, that the flood was universal, than opposing claims. An adequate conception of God and his relation to the world could be developed so that the Christian picture of man's history and destiny was more acceptable than alternative views. Atheism was less creditable than theism. Stillingfleet appealed to the standards of the reasonable, commonsense person, and argued that a better historical case could be made for the truth of the Christian religion than for any denial of it.53 51 Cf. Elie Saurin's two answers, Examen de la Theologie de Mr. Jurieu, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1694), and Defense de la veritable doctrine de VEglise reformee sur le principe de lafoy, contre le hvre de M. Jurieu (Utrecht, 1697). 52 See my "Hume and Jurieu," pp. 411-17. 53 This is what Stillingfleet argued in his Origines Sacrae (against La Peyrere), first published in 1662, and reissued into the eighteenth century, and in his Letter to a Deist (1677) against Spinoza.

80

Problems of Cartesianism

Stillingfleet's position, which is still being set forth in terms of the present state of the historical evidence, has the weakness that it is at the mercy of what reasonable men find plausible as historical knowledge changes and as interpretations of it alter. Hume, at the end of the essay "Of Miracles," pointed out that a hundred years after Stillingfleet's writing, it was more plausible to a reasonable man to believe the Bible was a fraud or a story, than to believe it was true, and that anyone in Hume's "enlightened" age would find that it would take a miracle to believe something so contrary to custom and experience.54 A present-day reader, influenced by three centuries of Bible criticism and historical research about the biblical world, is hardly likely to find Stillingfleet's historical arguments particularly convincing. If the standard is the common sense of reasonable persons, this has undergone a tremendous development with the growth of scientific and historical knowledge. As a result the evaluation of traditional religious views has changed in a direction Stillingfleet never foresaw, and the present historical defenses of Christianity are a very pale shadow of the views the bishop espoused. To come to the end of this excursion into the interplay of Cartesianism and biblical criticism in the seventeenth century, the development commenced by Spinoza of employing Cartesian standards and methods for evaluating religious knowledge revealed a basic conflict between knowledge claims of the new science and the new philosophy and those of traditional religion. If the criterion of truth of the former were applied to the latter, a skepticism about traditional religious knowledge ensued. Spinoza is either the hero or the villain of the piece for revealing the problem and for posing the framework for a new solution: a world portrayed in solely naturalistic categories. The problem could be met by refusing to use Cartesian standards in religion, or by rejecting these standards in favor of pure blind faith (Bayle), or by rejecting evidence as relevant to belief (Jurieu), or by accepting religious views on less than certain standards (Stillingfleet). Some people at the time, while imbued with the new science, could ignore the problem, as Sir Isaac Newton did in his 54 David Hume, "Of Miracles," in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Selby Bigge (Oxford, 1951), p. 130.

Biblical Criticism

81

Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel. Newton accepted the historical findings about the history of the biblical texts, but went on to insist that "the authority of Emperors, Kings, and Princes is human. The authority of Councils, Synods, Bishops, and Presbyters is human. The Authority of the Prophets is divine, and comprehends the sum of religion."55 He contended that prophetic language is to be read in a certain way, and then gave his interpretation of the prophecies. Newton's scientific views are still readable. His religious writings seem to have come from an age that has long since passed away. A solution I find more congenial for those of us raised in the scientific age, and infused with the findings of modern historians, anthropologists, and archeologists, is that offered by Father Richard Simon in the late seventeenth century. Simon answered his critics, who claimed that he was undermining religious belief through his researches, by announcing that he accepted the maxims of Spinoza (that is, the canons of his Bible criticism), but not Spinoza's conclusion that there was no supernatural message to be found in the Bible and the religious tradition. 56 Scientific Bible criticism may have produced a crise de conscience, but I do not see that it requires a complete abandonment of belief. Instead, following Simon, there can be an ever ongoing problem of defining and redefining what is meaningful and/or believable in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Scientific findings and the Cartesian criterion can show what cannot be established, and what seems the most likely historical interpretation of scriptural views. But, unlike Spinoza, I do not believe that this exhausts the possibilities and eliminates all viable and important significance of the Judeo-Christian tradition for modern man. The application of Cartesianism to Bible criticism created an "enlightened" way of looking at the religious tradition. But this way does not have to be coupled with Spinoza's naturalistic world. Perhaps a reexamination of how we lost our innocence about our religious heritage in the seventeenth century will help us find what is still viable in it for us today, as the various forms of modern naturalism become less credible. 55 Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733), p. 14. 56 See, for instance, Simon's claim in De I'lnspiration des Livres Sacrees (Rotterdam, 1687), p. 80; or his letter to M. Dallo of the Sorbonne, in Lettres Choisies (Amsterdam, 1730), p. 80.

This page intentionally left blank

Boyle, Jurieu, and the Politics of Philosophy: A Reply to Professor Popkin Walter E. Rex

I

am most impressed with the scope of erudition of Professor Popkin's paper. I would not dream of attacking his boldly conceived, strongly buttressed, plausible-seeming thesis from the front. But perhaps I may be permitted a rather small-scale flanking operation from one side. Eventually my remarks will bear upon the French Protestants who were discussed in what seems to me a somewhat doubtful perspective by Professor Popkin. I will be particularly concerned with his treatment of Pierre Bayle. But, with the reader's permission, my point of departure is not going to be Professor Popkin's learned, if occasionally debatable, paper; I shall start instead with Descartes himself or, rather, the brief introduction to Descartes's Discourse on Method first composed in 1939 by Professor Gilbert Gadoffre of Manchester (it was reissued in 1961). Among other useful observations, Professor Gadoffre reminds us that at the time Descartes composed his Discourse, or shortly before, important individuals in many fields were, quite on their own, turning to precisely the kinds of values Descartes was to sanctify for the rest of the century. In the theory of architecture, for example, with Jean Goujon, and in the theory of music, too, we find a new stress on the importance of geometry and mathematics. In poetical theory the new reforms of Malherbe stressed clarity and precision as being among the most essential qualities of language. Even in the chaos of the physical sciences, there is beginning to emerge at just this time a new sense of rational order, of the laws that govern phenomena. I cannot begin to do justice to the subtle wisdom of Professor Gadoffre's remarks; the point

[ 83 ]

84

Problems of Cartesianism

is that he invites us to view Descartes not only as an exceptional genius who turned within himself to discover a way out of the impasse of skepticism and founded what Hegel called modern philosophy, but as someone who, at the same time, gave expression, in an astonishingly perfect way, to the new currents of his age. In short, we may also view Descartes as someone taking part in a movement far greater than himself—as a symptom, as well as a cause. The validity of such an approach was strikingly confirmed by my own investigations of the background of Pierre Bayle, particularly of his Cartesian training. As we all know, Bayle was converted to the philosophy of Descartes, or perhaps we should say, the physics of Descartes, at the Academy of Geneva where he went to study in the fall of 1670. He had just reconverted to Protestantism, after having tried out Catholicism with the Jesuits in Toulouse, and as he arrived in the city of Calvin he was in a particularly receptive state of mind. Cartesian philosophy was being openly taught at the academy by a remarkable young Genevan, Jean-Robert Chouet, in his philosophy classes; and Cartesian philosophical principles were being applied, semiopenly Bayle tells us, in the classes of one of the professors of theology, Louis Tronchin. Surely here was a paradox, that this controversial, dangerous, "X-rated" philosophy, which so many persons, both Protestant and Catholic, were trying to suppress in France, should have quietly sneaked into the very citadel of orthodox Calvinism, alma mater of all Calvinist institutions training young men for the ministry. It seemed worthwhile to investigate the background of the two Cartesian professors mentioned by Bayle, and the trail led very quickly to the most famous of the French Protestant academies, the Academic de Saumur: Chouet had been professor of philosophy there before going to Geneva, and Tronchin had received training in theology at Saumur as a student. Saumyr had long been a hotbed of Calvinist liberal theology: it was the most controversial of the Calvinist academies; the liberal theology of Saumur had actually been condemned as heretical by other, more conservative institutions. It had been condemned by the Academy of Sedan, for example, and it had been condemned, after tumultuous debate, in Geneva. Indeed, Louis Tronchin, the professor of theology mentioned by Bayle as using

Bayle andjurieu

85

Descartes, was forced to hold his classes privately in his home in Geneva because he was not allowed to speak freely about liberal theology in the academy itself. One of the features of the liberalism of Saumur was a greater degree of rationalism in the approach to theology, that is to say, they were somewhat more outspoken about the importance of using reason in matters of faith. I hasten to add that they did not think that religion should be scaled down to the limited dimensions of reason: for, on the contrary, they held that the sublime mysteries of Christianity went far beyond the confines of things rationally understood, not to mention that man's reason had been enfeebled by original sin. But on the other hand, they said (Perry Miller in his book on the Puritans has likened this almost miraculously swift change of attitude to a phoenix rising from the ashes) reason does have a most constructive role to play in matters of faith, and the sublime mysteries, though they rise above reason, never contradict reason, for, as St. Thomas declared, grace perfects nature, but does not destroy nature. In short, reason was thought of as a guardian against absurdity, and it could make man infallibly sure that Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation were contrary to reason and therefore unquestionably false. It is my belief that the main cause of the rationalistic emphasis of the theology of Saumur was a change in their conception of the psychology of the act of faith, of the way they thought grace acted in the mind and will of a sinner as he was turned to God. This is an admittedly technical matter, and I certainly am not going to enter into its details; however, I need to establish its main outlines because of what I am going to say later about the quarrel between Bayle and Jurieu, so I must ask the reader to bear with me. Traditional Calvinism, before Saumur, held that when God converted a sinner, his grace acted upon both of man's faculties: it acted upon one's intelligence, enlightening it in such a way that it saw the truth of religion, and at the same time, in a separate action, grace also acted on the will and heart, inclining one to cleave to the truth and to love God and neighbor. Action was necessary to both faculties, they said, because man was by nature so obstinate that even when the intelligence knew the truth, the will would sometimes re-

86

Problems of Cartesianism

bel. They often quoted a line from Medea in this connection: "I see the good, and I approve of it; but I follow evil." This view fits perfectly with the idea of predestination, since all the faculties of man are at every moment totally controlled. There is no free will at all, except in the Augustinian sense of the term. Such was the view of the psychology of the act of faith accepted everywhere by Calvinists before 1618, which is the date of the arrival at the Academic de Saumur of a lively, temperamental Scotsman named John Cameron, an inspiring teacher, whose theological reforms were to make quakes in Calvinism for the rest of the century. One of his reforms concerned the matter at hand, the psychology of the act of faith: Cameron declared that there was no separate action of grace on the will, the only action was on the intelligence, but this faculty was enlightened with such force, he said, that the will could not resist, in fact it was infallibly impelled to adhere to the truth proposed to it. Thus, for Cameron faith is a matter of understanding, an illumination so powerful that it sweeps all else before it, and in his view there is no need to postulate any sort of blind brutish force constraining man's restive will to obey. On the contrary, the will joyously, spontaneously, and infallibly assents when truth is so persuasive. It is my conviction that Cameron's doctrine of faith as a demonstration in the intelligence led to the rationalistic emphasis one finds in the theology of his disciples. The seed of this development had been planted before anyone at Saumur had heard of Descartes, and the first generation of Cameron's disciples actually rejected Descartes in favor of Aristotle; but in the long run Cartesian philosophy was more in tune with the critical attitude and the rationalistic emphasis of Saumur than with conservative Calvinism. It seems almost inevitable that in 1664 Saumur would be the first academy in France to accept a professor of philosophy who was outspokenly Cartesian— Jean-Robert Chouet, whom we met before as Bayle's teacher in Geneva. And it seems inevitable, too, that later theologians trained at Saumur, such as Louis Tronchin, would turn to Cartesian philosophy, rather than to Aristotle, when applying philosophy to matters of faith. I do not think Descartes changed much, if anything, in Louis Tronchin's approach. In fact Tronchin does not really seem to have

Bayle and Jurieu

87

understood Cartesian theories very well, and felt perfectly free to pick and choose among the doctrines of the new philosophy. In the psychology of the act of faith, for example, he states what amounts to Cameron's doctrine—that faith is in the intellect properly speaking, and is only in the will as a consequence of being in the intellect—and then proceeds to label it, quite wrongly, as Cartesian. But the point is that it really does not matter what label Tronchin puts on doctrine, for the essence of the matter is simply the concept that the will always assents to the truth once it is clearly perceived by the intelligence. The disciples of Cameron affirmed this in their way, as the Cartesians did in theirs. With someone who was a trained philosopher and whose principal concern was in fact philosophy, such as Jean-Robert Chouet, one can expect a more objective and correct presentation of such matters, but with the Calvinist theologians one almost never can: to them Cartesianism was simply another weapon in the struggle against Catholicism, another arsenal of proofs for arguments that had already been decided in advance. In short, Cartesianism was absorbed by the Calvinist theologians into something they considered far greater than any philosophical system, and was used only insofar as it seemed helpful. In the writings of Jean Claude, for example, the most eminent of the French Calvinists, or in the early Jurieu, though Calvinist rationalism is everywhere evident it is often impossible to tell from their published works whether these theologians were Cartesian or not. Pierre Bayle affords us another example of someone whose approach was essentially polemical, like the theologians, and who was quite content to mix Malebranche with a little Gassendi as told by Bernier and to explain the result using the terminology of Aristotle. Perhaps it is time to celebrate the incomparable work of Madame Elisabeth Labrousse on this topic. For in Bayle this mixing together of elements drawn from separate and actually incompatible philosophical systems had often been pointed to as something subversive, underhandedly destructive of truth. Whereas Madame Labrousse shows us that in Bayle's time such eclecticism in philosophy was probably the rule: the exception would be a Rohault or a Malebranche who actually believed that the important truths of the universe

88

Problems of Cartesianism

were enclosed in a specific philosophical system. Bayle, on the contrary, built his fire with whatever wood was at hand. When discussing the psychology of the act of faith, for example, in the sequel to his refutation of Maimbourg, he uses the Aristotelian terminology and then, when he finishes, he explains how one can convert what he has just explained into the Cartesian system simply by switching the labels. To Bayle it did not matter at all which system one used, for in his view the issue was not essentially philosophical. There are two points that Bayle never tires of reiterating: first, in religion and philosophy a person can give assent only to something that seems true; one cannot love a doctrine one honestly believes to be false. Second, in religion, doctrines are not verifiable according to the same clear and distinct proofs required in philosophy. By definition, religious doctrines are mysteries that go beyond man's intelligence; one takes them on faith. No doubt Bayle sincerely believed both these points as a philosopher, but the reason he stresses them so insistently is not philosophical, at least not in the abstract sense; it has to do with religious persecution. If it is true, as he says again and again, that man can give assent only to something that seems true, to constrain him to accept something of which he is not convinced is contrary to the essence of religion and philosophy. Persecution is inherently an impiety. But on the other hand, no religion can claim to have found a way of proving its doctrines according to universal rules of evidence: there is no proof; hence, for this reason also, no religion has the right to persecute any other. These two points may seem somewhat contradictory: the first seems to invite a person to use his intelligence before accepting an article of faith; it urges him to scrutinize doctrines and accept only those that seem true. The second point says that, objectively speaking, there is no truth or evidence of truth, and what we take for evidence may be simply prejudice or instinct: Why then bother to examine anything? By the time we get to the Dictionary, Bayle's attitude is more and more ironical over this logical impasse, and he is more and more forced to concede that, logically speaking, there does not seem to be much reason to examine doctrines very carefully before accepting them. Yet, illogically enough, Bayle never ceases to praise the very theologians who stress the necessity of examination,

Bayle and Jurieu

89

nor does he fail, as Professor Popkin has pointed out, to undermine those, like Nicole and Pellisson, who write against it. We may conclude, I think, that for Bayle these points relate essenially to two aspects of the question of religious toleration: it is a matter of politics, not of philosophical consistency. Here, of course, Bayle ran headlong into the intolerance of Pierre Jurieu, who indeed thought the magistrate should take charge of religion, and furthermore maintained, as Professor Popkin so rightly stated, that faith was a matter of the will: "Je crois parce que je veux croire." But perhaps we may take a closer look at Jurieu's concept of the will than Professor Popkin had time to do. I noted earlier that it had two different sets of functions attributed to it, depending on whether one used the Aristotelian or the Cartesian system: the Aristotelians thought the will's function was simply to show adherence to something, whereas the Cartesians thought it actually examined the data presented to it by the intellect, and, if it saw they were clear and distinct, automatically inclined. Jurieu is such a master of having his cake and eating it at the same time: when his opponents accused him—because of his "Je crois parce queje veux croire"—of leading Calvinism straight toward the murky thickets of mysticism, he answered superciliously with the Cartesian definition, explaining with some impatience that the act of willing implies a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence. And then, in the next breath, he could switch gears and revert to what amounts to the older Aristotelian concept; and it is here, in fact, that he finally settles, for in the last analysis Jurieu's "Je crois parce queje veux croire" is essentially antiintellectualist. Perhaps part of the reason for this trend in Jurieu, as Professor Popkin suggests, is that Jurieu saw the dangers inherent in rationalism, Cartesian rationalism if you will, as it was applied to matters of faith. No doubt his horror of what he dubbed "Socinianism" was real, especially since, as Bayle demonstrated in an almost mischievous way in his article "Socin," the arguments of these heretics were so enticingly plausible. On the other hand, Jurieu certainly inflated the extent of the vast Socinian conspiracy he imagined around him: surely he must have known that such an eminent person as Elie Saurin was basically using the same limited rationalist approach that Jean

90

Problems of Cartesianism

Claude and even Jurieu himself had used in their anti-Catholic controversies before the Revocation. Again I find the answer to such contradictory behavior not in the dangers of Cartesianism, but in politics. And to support my contention I turn to a text from Jurieu's Second Apology dating from 1692: Jurieu's opponents had taken him to task for declaring that early Christianity had spread through the authority of the emperors, and that without this authority the temples of the idols would still stand. Jurieu's opponents were shocked by this view: they had always been •told by their pastors that the gospel had spread because it was the true faith, because it was accompanied by miracles, and because the early Christians lived such edifying lives. I trust there is no need to add that the conduct of the early Christians was of critical importance to the Calvinists of the seventeenth century because they identified so strongly with them. Jurieu is master of the self-righteous snarl, that tone of voice that somehow manages to make his opponents appear in the wrong, even when he is agreeing with them. Surely, he replies, he knows that the pure doctrines, the miracles, the saintly lives of the early Christians, along with God's grace, spread the gospel. Nor is there any need to tell him that the elect, the children of God, are not converted by the authority of the emperors. It is God's grace that converts; he knows that too—in fact he knows it perhaps a little better than his opponents do. On the other hand, he goes on (and here it is a marvelous sight to see him take away with this other hand what he had just given with the first), the church is composed not only of the elect, but of the reprobates; indeed, as chaff to the grain, the reprobates far outnumber the chosen few. It is the chaff that was brought into the church by the emperors, borne, so to speak, on the wind of favor. And God used the emperors' authority also to call the elect into his church. For many who had turned Christian merely to please the emperor were later genuinely touched by the beauty and goodness of this religion. And even though the parents might not have the right motives for joining the Christian church, after all, their children might become true children of God. Providence uses human means whenever God chooses. Indeed it was the authority of the emperors that closed the temples of idols. And had they not done so, idolatry

Bayle and Jurieu

91

would still exist. For men are always more inclined to evil than to good. Thus most persons would still be pagan, because paganism flatters cupidity, while Christianity combats it. Having now completely painted himself into a corner, Jurieu breaks off his argument and begins denouncing his opponents for raising the question in the first place. Even for Jurieu this is an extraordinary performance. In 1692, the date of the Apology, the persecution of the Huguenots in France was still pursuing its terrible course, and the Catholics had used precisely this same line of argument to justify their treatment of the Huguenots (though they never admitted they used violence, to be sure): in fact, such things as the Caisse de Pellisson had been devised with just such a theory in mind. Particularly painful to the Huguenots was the subject of their children's religion, for indeed they feared that if their children were raised as Catholics, they would never know the true faith; the next generation would be lost to them. Now it is well known that Jurieu, having turned prophet and then agent for William III with a network of spies in France, had been hoping for an invasion of France by the countries of the League of Augsburg. For years in his writings he had been showing why Protestants should want to join in a holy war against the Antichrist who was seated on the throne of France and install the true religion. It seems clear that if Jurieu uses Catholic arguments favoring the use of the civil authority in matters of religion, he hoped to do to the French Catholics what they had done so successfully to the Huguenots: when the Protestants took over France, the Catholics would all convert to Protestantism to please their masters, just as the pagans had done under the Christian emperors. Naturally Jurieu reduces religion to a mere matter of will, so that anyone who so willed might join the religion of the state. No doubt, as with the pagans, their enlightenment would come later, and in any event the children would be true believers. This is to say that Jurieu's anti-intellectualism in religion is due essentially, not to the crisis in Cartesianism, but to politics. As a final point I would like to discuss one of Bayle's biblical articles from the Dictionary. I do not pretend to have got to the bottom of it; in fact it is in a number of ways quite mysterious. But it will serve at least as an example of something Eric Haase said in his book

92

Problems of Cartesianism

on the literature of the Refuge: that after Bayle, religious controversy in the usual sense of the term was simply finished. The article in question is one of four articles on the first family; this one is entitled "Eve." Eve, wife of Adam, was called thus by her husband because she was to be the mother of all living human beings. She was formed of one of Adam's ribs, and brought near him that she should be his wife. God gave them his benediction and commanded that they increase and multiply and fill the earth, and yet Adam gave no thought to his conjugal duty until after he and his wife had transgressed against God's prohibition. It was Eve who, first, disobeyed God's command. She let herself be deceived by the lies and fair words of the snake. At this point the narration is interrupted by Remark A, which fairly teems with curious observations that had been made about the snake by commentators of the past. Bayle says he would never finish if he tried to relate all the foolish things people had written about it. What is one to think of the commentators who maintained that at the time of Adam snakes actually talked, their faculty of speech being curtailed only after the snake had taken advantage of Eve's innocence? Or of those who said the real reason the snake had deceived Eve was jealousy? According to these, the snake had seen Adam and Eve naked and having intercourse. Aroused with passion, the snake was secretly hoping Adam would die when he ate the apple so that he, the snake, could replace him. And then there were the heretical Ophites who, according to Saint Augustine, thought the snake was actually Jesus Christ in disguise: that was the reason they kept their own pet snake, which would slither onto the altar at the appropriate moment in their religious ceremonies, wrap itself around the offerings, and lick them. (Good taste is not Bayle's strong point.) Some thought the snake had the face of a beautiful girl. Nicholas of Lyra mentions this curious idea, and in German Bibles printed before Luther, among other figures one finds that of a serpent, which has a very pretty girl's face. The Sirens were something like this—part animal with a human face—and would that Eve had been as prudent as Ulysses. As it was, she listened all too much to the words of the seducer. Not that he spoke so long or said so many ingratiating

Bayle andjurieu

93

things. In fact, according to Moses' account, the matter was settled in very few words indeed. Never was there an undertaking of such magnitude; for at stake was the destiny of the human race for all the centuries to come; the eternal felicity, or the eternal damnation of all men depended on its outcome. And yet, never was a bargain so promptly concluded; never perhaps did the Demon get the best of man so cheaply. And as for those two individuals to whom God entrusted the salvation of mankind, they could hardly have done worse; they yielded the fort to the enemy virtually without a single blow, and instead of fighting for their trust even as much as sinful men today fight for their religion and their country, they did not even put up as much resistance as a child does when one takes away its toy. You might have thought it was a matter of a pin. Reading Bayle on Holy Writ is a little like listening to someone who has no ear for music and no sense of drama describe a performance at the opera. Bereft of all the grandeur of its poetry, the account of Genesis becomes a most destructive parody of itself; decked out with all the idiotic interpretations and glosses of the commentators, the tale of man's fall turns into a gigantic, grotesque lampoon. And, of course, I have read only a small fraction of the text; the complete article goes on for pages and pages before finally dwindling to a halt. I certainly am not going to speculate on the reasons Bayle may have had for writing such a devastating piece. But I shall suggest that there is nothing very Cartesian or anti-Cartesian in Bayle's approach to exegesis. In fact Bayle is simply doing what Protestant commentators had always done: first he gives careful attention to the text of the Scripture itself, and then he weighs the commentaries against the text, rejecting anything not specifically authorized or inherently implied in the biblical account. In Bayle the method has gone sour, of course; in fact the commentaries are devouring the text they are supposed to illuminate. No doubt the irony we see in the article is due to the fact that Bayle was writing in a generation that hungered for clear and distinct ideas—such was the spirit of the times. But I do not think Bayle cared very much about such abstractions as philosophical truth, or even about the evidence for the divinity of the Scripture as such. He does care about religion as a potential force of evil in the

94

Problems of Cartesianism

world, about the holy wars waged in its name, and about the persecutions done allegedly for its benefit. Perhaps Professor Popkin's stimulating paper might have shown more awareness of this context, insofar as it dealt with the Huguenots. To discuss the theoretical Cartesianism of these Calvinist exiles is a little like analyzing the student proposals for university reforms put forward a few years ago in the United States without taking into consideration that they were composed during the invasion of Cambodia; or, to use a more recent example, it is as if one treated the question of presidential confidentiality in the United States without mentioning the Watergate tapes. In a word, I am most impressed by Professor Popkin's synthesis; however, I am pleased to suggest to one of the founders of the Journal of the History of Philosophy that he may be taking the history of philosophy just a bit too seriously, and to suggest also to the author of a book about President Kennedy's assassination, that he may not be taking politics seriously enough.

The Cartesian Model and Its Role in Eighteenth-Century "Theory of the Earth" Jacques Roger

I

t is somewhat difficult to determine what the place of Descartes in seventeenth-century scientific life really was. In the domain of mathematics and physics, and especially of optics, things are quite clear, and the role of Descartes may be considered as important. In cosmology and biology, things are anything but clear. Descartes's cosmology was generally defined by contemporary scientists as "a romance of nature," and it was said that his Traite de I'homme dealt with "man as created by Mr. Descartes" ('Thornine de Mr. Descartes") rather than with man as he really exists in nature. And Descartes himself would have agreed with these views, since he had presented his cosmogony as a "hypothesis" and his man as a hypothetical "machine," not as a real man. I do not intend to enter here into the difficult problem of the explanatory power Descartes himself attributed to his hypothesis. But it may be observed that, while most of the metaphysical works of Descartes are currently available in numerous and sometimes popular editions, and while these metaphysical works, and the mathematical ones as well, have been translated into English, the last two parts of the Principia, which contain Descartes's cosmogony, are now available in only two editions, and have never been translated into English. This in itself could be taken as an indication of posterity's verdict. And, if you look at the article "Descartes" in the recent Dictionary of Scientific Biography, you will find very good accounts of his scientific philosophy, of his works on mathematics, physics, mechanics, physiology, but only one paragraph on his embryology and not a word on his cosmogony. [ 95 ]

96

Problems of Cartesianism

That might lead us to the following remark: as far as physics and natural sciences were concerned, that is, leaving out of account the mathematical works, Descartes's science had to deal with two different objects. On the one hand, in optics, for example, it studied current phenomena, and it had to determine the laws these phenomena were obeying. With some significant differences, Cartesian physiology had the same aim, namely, knowing how a living body actually works. On the other hand, there are two works whose aims are very different, that is, the essay De formato foetu ("On the Formation of the Embryo") and the last two parts of the Prindpia. Here Cartesian science is dealing not with current physical processes and their laws, but with physical structures, either the structure of a living body or the structure of the solar system and of our earth. And here we might find a key for understanding contemporary reactions to Cartesian physics—taking the word "physics" in the broad sense that it had at that time. Contemporary scientists accepted Cartesian laws of optics; they even accepted Cartesian laws of motion, until Huygens and others proved them to be false; and they even accepted widely, if not unanimously, the way Descartes explained the functioning of a living body, and iatro-mechanicism became fashionable among physicians, persisting for a long time. What they did not accept, with very few exceptions, was the way Descartes explained structures, either in embryology or in cosmogony. And it must be immediately pointed out that the disagreement did not arise about what the structure actually was. This is particularly clear in the case of the structure of living bodies, because scientists generally accepted the Cartesian physiology, that is, the description of the structure of a living body as a machine, and the description of its mechanical functioning. What they did not accept was the Cartesian way of explaining a structure. Thus the question arises: What is "understanding a structure" according to Descartes? The answer is contained in a well-known paragraph of the Prindpia (pt. 3, art. 45): I do not doubt that the world has been created at the beginning with all the perfection that it presently has, so that the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the Stars immediately existed, and the

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

97

Earth not only contained in itself the seeds of plants, but plants themselves covered a part of it; [and Adam and Eve were not created] as children, but at the age of grown up men. It is the Christian Religion's will that we believe so, and natural reason convinces us absolutely of that truth, because, if we consider that God is the Almighty, we must think that everything He did was possessed from the beginning of all the necessary perfection. However, as we should know much better what was the nature of Adam and of the trees in Paradise if we have investigated the way in which children are progressively formed in the mother's womb, and the way in which plants come out of their seeds, than we could by considering only what they were when God created them, in the same way, we shall explain more clearly what the nature of everything in the world generally is if we may imagine some principles, very understandable and very simple, from which we clearly show that celestial bodies and the earth and finally all the visible world could have been produced as from some seeds, though we know that it was not produced that way, than if we only describe it as it is, or as we believe it to have been created.

Putting aside the problem of Descartes's religious sincerity, the answer is very clear: in order to know what Descartes calls the "nature" of things, a mere description is not sufficient; we must also know the genesis of things. How may we find out what this genesis is? (I do not say was, for a reason that I shall explain later.) Or, what do we know about it? First, we know its result, that is, what Descartes calls "the wonderful structure of the visible world," a structure that he describes in a very general way in the first pages of the third part of the Principia (arts. 5-42). Second, we know the "principles," the "very understandable and very simple" principles, from which the present structure of the world has evolved "as from some seeds." But what is a "principle"? The word is highly ambiguous. On the one hand, it means some a priori affirmations that we must consider to be true because they are clear and evident. For example: the nature of a body is constituted only by its extension and its shape (Principia, pt. 2, art. 4); there is only one matter in the world, which is divisible and actually divided

98

Problems of Cartesianism

into particles; these particles are moved in circular motions, the quantity of which is constant (ibid., pt. 3, art. 46). But "principles" also means some assumptions, which are, and are to remain, merely hypothetical. After having quoted the first affirmations I just mentioned, Descartes goes on (art. 46): But we could not determine in the same way how large the particles are into which matter is divided, nor what circles they follow. For God could order these things in infinitely different ways. Thus, it is by observation [experience] only, and not by the power of reason, that we can know which of these ways He actually chose. So that we are now free to assume the way that we will, provided that all the effects we deduce from it entirely fit observation.

What Descartes actually assumes is that God at the beginning divided matter into equal medium-sized parts, rotating on their own center and circulating in different vortices around centers, dispersed throughout the world, which were to become shining stars. "These few assumptions," he says, "seem to me enough for using them as causes or principles, from which I will deduce all the effects that appear in nature" (ibid., art. 47). Thus we have three things now: we have fundamental axioms about matter and motion, axioms that are absolutely true; we have some hypothetical assumptions about the primeval order that God introduced into the world at the beginning; and finally we have the present state of things. But we have to perceive that the primeval order is not absolutely necessary. In the fifth part of the Discours de la Methode, Descartes had imagined the primeval state of the universe to be "the Chaos of the poets, that is, a complete confusion of every part of the Universe." Finally, in the Principia, he thought that this disorder did not answer God's perfection. But, for our argument, that means that the present order of things, the "wonderful structure of the visible world," could have evolved from total disorder. How was it possible? By means of the last thing we have to put into the picture: laws of nature. What these laws are, we know by reading the second part of the

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

99

Principia (arts. 37ff.). As Descartes says: "Because God is not exposed to change, and because He is always acting in the same way, we can get a knowledge of some rules, which I call laws of nature, and which are secondary causes of all the different motions that we observe in all the bodies" (ibid., art. 37). Actually, and as Descartes describes them, these laws are the inertia principle and the seven Cartesian laws of motion. What is important for us, however, is the role that Descartes assigns to them in the process of genesis. If Descartes thinks that he is able to deduce from the principles "all the effects that appear in nature," it is "by using only the above mentioned laws." Because "these laws of nature are such that, even if we supposed the Chaos of the Poets, that is, a complete confusion of every part of the Universe, one still could demonstrate that, through the action of these laws that confusion should, step by step, come back to the order that presently exists in the world" (Principia, pt. 3, art. 47). We can now more precisely understand what Descartes intended to do in order to explain "the nature of everything in the world," "the wonderful structure of the visible world": he intended to explain how this "wonderful structure" has evolved from an initial disorder—or from a primeval order, this does not matter—by the simple play of the laws of nature. And this is precisely what contemporary scientists generally did not accept, and for two main reasons. First, they did not believe that laws of nature are able to predominate chance if there is no preexisting structure, no preexisting order: so that laws of nature may explain how the machine is running, but not how the machine was formed. Laws could not explain order. This is particularly clear in Boyle's essay The Origin of Forms. Second, they were generally sensitive to the argument from design and to the existence of final causes, which Descartes had clearly rejected. Hence they were disposed to discover in every existing structure direct evidence of God's wisdom, which supposed the structure to have been immediately created by God. Not before Maupertuis, that is, in the 1750s, was the argument from design transferred from purposeful structures to purposeful laws. What Descartes actually did in the last two parts of the Principia is much more complicated than might have been expected according to the theory. While telling us the story of the formation of the solar

100

Problems of Cartesianism

system, he not only supposes that matter always obeys laws of nature, but he assumes, too, that, under the visible structure of the system, there is an invisible and underlying structure, that of the minute particles of matter, endowed with different shapes, speeds, and magnitudes. This invisible structure is also the key to the understanding of many phenomena, such as light, heat, fire, magnetism, and so on. This is not inconsistent with his general theory, because the shaping of the minute particles of matter is the first result of matter being put in motion, and obeys general laws of nature. In the same way, Descartes describes the supposed inner structure of the earth, the core made of the "first element" and the different layers of different matter that were formed one on the other. So that what Descartes actually tells us is the history of a changing structure, becoming more and more complicated as the process goes on. At every step, laws of nature are obeyed, and observational data are offered as evidence for the possibility of the described events. But, and this deserves to be underlined, for the possibility only. Titles of articles are very clear on that point: they read like "How it may happen that. . . ," "That sometimes a vortex may be destroyed. . . ," "How planets may have been formed. . . ." The hypothetical character of the reconstruction is never forgotten, even when Descartes shows how perfectly his deductions fit the observations, and how morally sure he is that he is right. What Descartes actually offers us is what we now call a model, the invisible structure of things that explains visible phenomena; but, at the same time, he tells us the story of this structure and how it was built. He had done the same, and very unsuccessfully, in the case of the structure of the living body. In the case of the structure of the earth, however, and of its genesis, the Cartesian model was to become a very successful theory of the earth. We now have to discover how this success was made possible. We know how Descartes precisely describes the formation of the earth. First, a mass of the first element was driven to the center of the vortex, and this was a shining star, like our sun. Then, a layer of the second, "very opaque" element was deposited on this first sphere, first in small masses, like the sun's spots, and finally covering all the surface of the sphere of the first element. At that time, the

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

101

earth's vortex was captured by the sun's vortex, and the earth became a planet. Then other layers were deposited on the layer of the second element: first a layer of earth, then a layer of water, a layer of air, and a last layer of earth, finally surrounded by air. The formation of the upper crust of earth was quite difficult to explain, but Descartes needed it because, when this upper crust was exposed to the sun's heat, it began drying and cracking and finally broke down into the underlying air and water. So that our mountains, our continents, our islands are broken parts of this upper crust, sometimes piled up one on each other, sometimes partly emerging from the sea, sometimes completely immersed under the surface of the sea. The question arises: Was this genesis a history of the earth from its beginning to the present day? Things are anything but clear for many reasons, but I think that, for Descartes, this was a genesis and not a history. We are today in the habit, inherited from the nineteenth century, of considering any development as a historical process. Maybe modern science, and especially modern genetics, will oblige us to get out of this habit or, at least, to look more carefully at things. Anyway, it seems that, if we take into account the Cartesian conception of time and of continuous creation, such a thing as what we call "history" is difficult to conceive. If by "history" we mean a chronological sequence of events linked to each other, Descartes clearly destroys this notion. We have, he says, "to be aware of the nature of time. . . . Because it is such that its parts do not depend on each other and never exist together, so that from the fact that we now exist, it does not necessarily follow that we are to exist a moment later, if some cause, namely the same that produced us, does not keep on producing us" (Prindpia, pt. 1, art. 21). If God creates the world anew at every moment of time, it is clear that any distinction between natural genesis and divine creation is purposeless, at least at a metaphysical level. So that the story that Descartes is telling us may be considered as a development, in the mathematical sense of the word, of God's creative act, and this development may be given "without injuring the miracle of creation," as Descartes says in the Discours de la Methode. But this was a very sophisticated and metaphysical way of consider-

102

Problems of Cartesianism

ing the problem, and soon after the publication of the Principia it became clear that many people did not intend to enter into these philosophical subtleties. What they actually understood was that Descartes had written a kind of scientific commentary to the biblical account of the creation of the world. This was, for example, the interpretation of Christopher Wittich, who published in 1659 a Consensus veritatis in Scriptura divina et infaillibili revelatae cum veritate philosophica a Renato Cartesio detecta, or of Johan Amerpoel, who is believed to be the author of a Cartesius Mosaizans published in 1677. If we think of the difficulties that a faithful disciple of Descartes like Cordemoy had to face in order to understand and to make understandable the Cartesian view of the problem, it is perfectly obvious that a historical interpretation was much easier to grasp than the original views of the philosopher himself. Curiously enough, one may wonder whether a comparison of the Cartesian account of the genesis of the world with the biblical narration was a compelling reason to interpret the former in a historical way, because the same question arises with both, namely: Are they historical accounts of a chronologically extended process, or an analytical account only? We know how deeply concerned Saint Augustine was with the problem about the two narrations of the creation that are to be found in the book of Genesis. When was the world completed? In the first and last instant of creation, or after the sixth day? When did time start? Did it start when "in the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty"? or when "God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good"? Both Descartes and the book of Genesis raise the same question. Both stop telling their story when the world is completed—except for one point: in the book of Genesis, the great catastrophe of the deluge happens six hundred years after the creation. In Descartes's Principia, there is no mention of a deluge. But Descartes had, by means of his scarcely credible theory of an exterior layer of earth that conveniently collapses, managed to get a catastrophe of his own, which perfectly fitted the story of the biblical deluge. So that both the comparison of the Cartesian narration with the biblical one, and their historical interpretation, became inevitable. This was the first distortion of the genuine Cartesian model, and this distortion is perfectly exemplified by Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sac-

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

103

ra, whose first two books were published in London in 1681. As for the formation of the earth, Burnet follows Descartes quite closely, with only two significant changes: first, his story starts with a primeval chaos, which he imagines as a liquid mixture of all the elements; second, these elements are not the Cartesian ones any more, made of particles of different shapes and magnitudes, but are the common elements, earth, water, air, oil. So that from the primeval chaos, the elements separated from each other according to their density: earth went to the center, liquid matter covered it, and air surrounded the whole. Then liquid matter separated into two layers, an inferior layer of water and a superior layer of oily liquids. The dust contained within air slowly went down to the oily liquids and formed with them an upper crust of light and rich soil, which was to become the dwelling of the first men. At that time, the earth was egg-shaped and the axis of the poles was perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, so that the first man enjoyed an even and always pleasant climate. But the direct effect of the sun's heat and the steam of the underlying water finally caused the upper crust to fissure and break down into waters: and this was the biblical deluge. Burnet's history of the earth is so similar to that of Descartes that it is clear that he borrowed it from the French philosopher. What is more interesting, however, is to point out the differences. First of all, Burnet separates the history of the earth from that of the universe, which he thinks to be much older than the earth. In this way, Cartesian general cosmogony becomes merely a theory of the earth. The main reason for not attempting to reconstruct the history of the universe, according to Burnet, is that we have no evidence about this history. But it might be observed that Descartes had no more evidence about it, and had not been prevented by this lack of evidence from telling us the whole story of the elements, the vortices, and so on. This is clearly a shift from the Cartesian model and from its most typical features, from a distinctly deductive science to a more empirical and historical type of knowledge. In this view of the problem, theoretical questions become historical ones, and factual answers are given by the Bible. It is no longer possible to be in doubt as to whether the first state of the earth was a chaos or something else. It was a chaos, and more exactly a liquid one, because it is said in the

104

Problems of Cartesianism

first verse of the book of Genesis that "the earth was void and empty, and the spirit of God moved over the waters." And this primeval chaos is all the more to be accepted in that it is related by all the old myths of almost every religion, which interpret it in their way—a nonscientific one, of course—but which bear unanimous witness to the historical truth of this first event. Burnet here is a representative of a new attitude that tries to explain old myths historically instead of symbolically, an attitude that was to flourish throughout the eighteenth century and later. But, after the formation of the upper crust, Burnet has to consider that people lived on it and cultivated it, so that he feels obliged to find out how waters could come from under the crust to its surface and run on it, even though there were neither mountains nor hills. That was indeed difficult to explain! But this shift to history does not prevent Burnet from maintaining that his theory is at the same time entirely logical. In a very Cartesian way, he asserts that he has "discovered the order of things, or at least a so likely one that it may not be distinguished from the true one by any evidence nor any reasoning." Moreover, he is afraid of being merely too theoretical, and he tries to reassure his readers: We have now given an Account of the first great Revolution in Nature, and of the Universal Deluge, in a way that is intelligible, and from Causes that answer the Greatness of the Effect; We have suppos'd nothing but what is also prov'd, both as to the first Forme of the Earth, and as to the manner of its Dissolution: and how far from that would evidently and necessarily arise a general Deluge; which was that, which put a Period to the old World, and the first state of Things. And tho' all this has been deduc'd in due Order, and with Connexion and Consequence of one thing upon another, so far as I know, which is the true Evidence of a Theory; yet it may not be sufficient to command the Assent and Belief of some Persons, who will allow, it may be, and acknowledge, that this is a fair Idea of a possible Deluge in general, and of the Destruction of a World by it; but this may be only an Idea, they'll say; we desire it may be prov'd from some collateral Arguments, taken either from Sacred History, or from Observation, that this has really been exemplified upon the Earth, and that Noah's Flood came to pass this way. And seeing we have

Eighteenth-Century

Cosmogony

105

design'd this first Book chiefly for the Explication of Noah's Deluge, I am willing to add here a Chapter or two extraordinary upon this occasion; to show, that what we have delivered is more than an Idea, and that it was in this very way that Noah's Deluge came to pass. (The Sacred Theory of the Earth, bk. 1, chap. 7)

Now, by putting together, at least theoretically, a strict logic and true historical events, Burnet introduces the most significant change: instead of the Cartesian logical necessity, which actually was a logical possibility, Burnet links the events of his history by a logico-historical necessity, that is, by a determinism. What historically happened must logically happen. As soon as God, in one way or another, allowed the primeval chaos to exist, all the events following, including the deluge, became necessarily inevitable. And the process is presently going on, because the history of our earth, according to Burnet, did not stop as its surface took its present shape. Because of the sun's heat, the earth becomes increasingly dry, and this uninterrupted process actually prepares the last burning of the earth, as predicted in Saint Peter's epistle. I do not intend to discuss here the theological problems that were to face Burnet for his interlacing the thread of God's will with that of physical causality: he does not seem to worry too much about it, and we need not worry more than he did. But this interlacing actually means a mixing of the history of mankind and of the history of nature; and this mixing led Burnet to some new problems, which Descartes seems not to have been aware of, and especially that of chronology. The depth of time through which the succession of events developed itself in Descartes's cosmogony was a theoretical one, able to be actually reduced to the very instant of the creation. In Burnet's theory, time became a historical time, the duration of which had to be computed. Burnet's computation answers the generally accepted standards of biblical chronology, because his history of the earth is at the same time a history of mankind, as told us by the Bible, but also because his views of the physical events do not demand a very long time; it is clear for him that the earth cannot be very old because, if it were, erosion would have worn off all the mountains and made the surface of the earth completely flat. This

106

Problems of Cartesianism

was to become a widely accepted argument about the age of the earth. But it is more interesting, perhaps, to see how Burnet, by mixing sacred history and natural history, is surreptitiously and maybe unconsciously driven to attribute a kind of moral value to the history of our planet. The primeval chaos was rich in every possibility. The first state of our earth was the happiest one, physically and morally as well: a fertile soil, a temperate climate, and a virtuous mankind living in this Paradise. The catastrophe of the deluge is obviously connected with original sin, and if our present earth looks like a ruin, a fact that Burnet emphasizes very strongly, it is a consequence of a moral as well as of a physical catastrophe. And the great fire, which is to destroy and, at the same time, to purify our earth, is also a consequence of our sins, and will be followed by a millennium of happiness. So that the history of our earth, from the primeval chaos to the ultimate fire, is the history of a moral and physical decay. The physical sign of this decay is the increasing dryness of the earth, the continuous evaporation of the water through infinite space, under the influence of the sun's heat. And it is not necessary to remind the reader that water, in the Aristotelian as well as in the Christian tradition, is the symbol of both physical and spiritual life. The last two books of The Sacred Theory of the Earth, dealing mainly with the future of our planet, with its final burning and with the millennium that is to come, was published in 1691, that is, after the "glorious Revolution," in a time when many religious people were convinced that the end of the world was coming, and this perhaps contributed to the success of Burnet's theory. But what is more interesting for us is that this very peculiar mixture of natural and sacred history was what allowed the Cartesian, or the "Cartesio-Burnetian" model to survive the possible attacks from the Newtonian school. The first evidence for this interpretation is a letter sent by Newton to Burnet in January 1680/81. Burnet had probably sent his manuscript to Newton and received a first letter, which is now lost. He answered this letter and received a second answer. The mere fact of a Newton discussing Burnet's theory seriously seems strange enough to us. But the way in which he discusses it may seem much more strange, because he investigates attentively the possibility of finding a chemical

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

107

alternative to the physical theory proposed by Burnet; and this reminds us that the first scientists who tried to explain scientifically the formation of the earth according to the book of Genesis were chemists, like van Helmont for example, and that the works of these chemists were well known in England in the late seventeenth century, as witnessed by Boyle's works. What Newton and Burnet agreed upon is the possibility of explaining scientifically the biblical narrative of the creation, because they were convinced, both of them, that this narrative is a historical one, and, since it involves physical events like formation of the earth out of a chaos and the deluge, it is right to find a scientific explanation for them. They prove equally ingenious in interpretating Holy Writ, since Newton, in the same letter, proposes not less than three alternatives to Burnet's theory. At the very end of the letter, however, Newton writes prudently: "I beg your excuse for this tedious letter, which I have the more reason to do because I have not set down anything I have well considered, or will undertake to defend" (Newton's Correspondence 2:334). In January 1681, obviously, Newton had not already written the famous sentence: "Hypotheses non fingo"! But, if Newton himself thinks that such hypotheses are not mere dreams, it is because he thinks of the primeval chaos and of the formation of the earth as historical events. He does not allude to a better understanding of the nature of things, nor to the logical necessity that could link these historical events. On the contrary. And here I should like to quote a very typical passage of the letter. The argument is about the length of the first days of creation, and Burnet, sensing that these days must have been much longer than ours, given all the work done in each of them, had proposed that the earth had, before the deluge, a much slower rotation than today, so that a day lasted, say, one year. But what about the age of Adam, who, according to the Bible, died at the age of 930, if we have to multiply this by 365? Here is Newton's answer: Now for the number and length of the six days: by what is said above, you may make the first day as long as you please, and the second day too if there was no diurnal motion till there was a terraqueous globe, that is till towards the end of that days work.

108

Problems of Cartesianism And then, if you will suppose the earth put in motion by an even force applied to it, and that the first revolution was done in one of our years, in the time of another year there would be three revolutions, of a third five, of a fourth seven, etc. and in the 183d year 365 revolutions, that is as many as there are days in our year, and in all this time Adam's life would have be increased but about 90 of our years, which is no such great business. But yet I must profess I know no sufficient natural cause of the earth's diurnal motion. Where natural causes are at hand, God uses them as instruments in his works, but I do not think them alone sufficient for the creation, and therefore may be allowed to suppose that amongst other things God gave the earth its motion by such degrees and at such times as was most suitable to the creatures. (Newton's Correspondence, 2:334)

It is not really surprising, but very revealing, to see how Newton succeeds, by using the Galilean laws of uniformly accelerated motion, in giving Adam's life a reasonable length, that is, not much more than 930 years. This mixture of sophisticated science and biblical concerns is a typical feature of the spirit of that time. But it is more interesting to look at the role that Newton gives to natural causes as mere instruments of God, possibly replaced by God's direct intervention. This is a first indication of what was to become one of the main features of Newton's natural philosophy, namely, that we may understand how the solar system works, that is, what is the law of the system, but that we cannot understand in which way the system was built, because it was directly created by God. And this means that we cannot know the genesis of the structure: "Hypotheses non fingo." We are therefore at the antipodes of the Cartesian model. The model survived, however, because it had become a biblico-historical narrative, told in a scientific language. But its way of being "scientific" was absolutely not the Cartesian way. Newton seems to feel completely free to imagine any kind of physical event that could fit the biblical narrative, and he calls these events "natural causes." But he feels free, also, to imagine that these so-called natural causes directly depend on God's will, and even that God immediately interferes with the course of natural events. This has nothing to do any more with Cartesian logico-scientific necessity, nor with Burnet's logico-historical determinism.

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

109

The Newtonian way of building a theory of the earth is exemplified by Whiston's New Theory of the Earth, published in 1696. According to this theory, the earth had in its first form been a comet, and this is the form of the primeval chaos. And then God decided to give it a more regular course around the sun and a less chaotic structure. This was the first earth, where a happy virtuous mankind lived in Paradise. But the original sin occurred and God had to punish corrupted mankind. To this end he sent another comet that passed very close to the earth, so that the attraction pulled out the waters from the earth's womb, while all the aqueous vapors contained in the comet's tail condensed into horrible rains. This is the explanation of the passage in Scripture that says: "All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floodgates of heaven were opened." This is clearly a series of physical events, obeying the Newtonian law of gravitation, but absolutely not linked to each other by any kind of physical necessity. Obviously, in this work at least, Whiston is more a theologian than a scientist. But we must not forget that he was a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College, where he was Newton's immediate successor, until he was dismissed for being an Antitrinitarian. He belonged to that peculiar species of theologians-scientists that flourished at that time, but his science was not a false one, and he wrote good treatises on mathematics. At least his Theory of the Earth did not bring on him the bitter attacks that another faithful Newtonian scholar, the mathematician John Keill, launched against Burnet's theory in his first book, An Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth, published in 1698. This is not to say that Keill did not criticize Whiston's theory, but not in the same way as he did that of Burnet, which he considered as an atheistic attempt to substitute for God's purposeful creation the blind action of natural forces. And, behind Burnet's theory, the ultimate goal of Keill's attack was Descartes himself, whom he convicted of having made fashionable his foolish ambition to make a world of his own. It is curious to see how Newton himself, repudiating the views expressed in his letter to Burnet, finally accepted Keill's views on this point of natural philosophy, and strongly condemned all the efforts of the "world-makers," as Keill described them. "It's unphilosophical," Newton wrote in 1706 in what was to become the famous 31st Query of the Opticks, "to seek

110

Problems of Cartesianism

for any other Origin of the World [than creation], or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature." Religious reasons are obviously responsible for this statement, but one must recognize that this attitude perfectly fits all Newtonian epistemology: observation and induction allow us to establish the laws of nature but not to know the genesis of the structure of the world. It was already too late, however, to prevent the theory of the earth from developing, and all the more so as a new problem had come into the picture, the problem of fossils. As the reader may have inferred, neither Descartes nor Burnet, nor Newton, nor Whiston seems to have been aware of this problem, nor—and this is perhaps more surprising—of Steno's work on sedimentary rocks. Discussions about the true nature of "figured stones" had already been raging for a long time, and actually involved very complex attitudes toward the powers of nature. But even the scientists who believed these "stones" to be remains of living animals were not ready to consider them as witnesses of a time when the surface of the earth had been in an entirely different state. From the highest antiquity, "figured stones" had been considered as witnessing local changes in distribution of sea and dry land. But these local changes did not suppose a general history of the earth. Even Hooke, whose works on geology are especially important, was not able to enlarge his views of the history of our planet to the necessary extent, and his works were of such a nature as to be more easily recognized by historians of today than by contemporary scientists. But when John Woodward, in 1695, published his Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth, "figured stones" began being accepted not only as remains of living bodies, but also as witnesses of an entirely vanished stage of the history of the earth, and, more precisely, as "monuments" or "medals" of the deluge. The extraordinary success of this idea allows us to believe that it met a specific need, the need for a consistent and linear history of the earth, able to fit the consistent and linear history of mankind. But the cohesion of this history was not a scientific one. The succession of events was a direct result of the succession of God's decisions. It is clear that such an attitude was not to resist for long the heavy attacks launched against it by scientists and by philoso-

Eighteenth-Century Cosmogony

111

phers, or by scientists who were philosophes. This is a well-known story, and it is not necessary to tell it again here. What is more interesting, however, is to look at the result of this crisis, that is, at the theory of the earth as it flourished in the 1750s and later, with the works of Johann-Gottlob Kriiger (History of the Earth in the Oldest Times, 1746), Johann-Gottlob Lehmann (An Essay towards a History of Sedimentary Mountains, 1756), Buffon (Epochs of Nature, 1778), Abraham-Gottlob Werner (A New Theory of the Formation of Veins, 1802), and many others. It is linear history, from an absolute beginning (the creation of the world or the formation of the earth) to the present state of our planet. After the formation of primeval mountains, the earth was surrounded by waters (either by the waters of the deluge or by a natural ocean), and the history of the earth is properly the history of the progressive and slow receding of the waters, which gradually found their way through the huge caves that existed at the beginning in the bowels of the earth. During this long process, the waters receded from the top of the highest mountains, pulling out rocks and earth from their slopes, and depositing their remains on the lowest parts of the surface of the earth, mixed with organic remains, shells of sea animals, leaves of trees, and so forth, which we now find petrified in the layers of sedimentary rocks. The process has now come to end, as waters have reached their definitive level. We have therefore in this scheme a transposition of the Cartesian model, where the link between two successive stages is established not only by chronology, but also by the uniqueness of the physical factor, water. Given the first stage of this history, that is, a globe surrounded by waters, subsequent events must necessarily happen. This is not, of course, the same kind of logical necessity that was to be found in the genuine Cartesian model. It is much closer to the Burnetian type of historico-physical determinism. But the method is more Cartesian, because the first stage of this history is clearly a hypothesis, whose probability is deduced from the fact that its consequences perfectly fit the phenomena that the hypothesis has to explain. The evidence that Burnet found in Scripture or in the old myths is not evidence any more for these scientists, even for Lehmann, who believes in the historicity of the deluge but thinks that it is better to leave it out of scientific theory in order to preserve its

112

Problems of Cartesianism

supernatural character. History of mankind and history of the earth are now completely separated, and the result of this separation is, curiously, that the history of the earth resumes its first status of Cartesian hypothesis. We might conclude, therefore, by saying that the Cartesian model, which had appeared as a product of a very specific philosophy of knowledge, actually directed the main development of the science of the earth throughout the eighteenth century. But we must add that it was able to do so not because of its genuine nature, but, on the contrary, thanks to a kind of brilliant misinterpretation. From a logical model, the theory of the earth evolved to a reconstructed history and, in this way, could play a very important and specific role in the development of natural sciences and natural philosophy throughout the eighteenth century. The Cartesian model, however, was not to outlive the eighteenth century, at least as far as earth sciences are concerned. At the end of the century, new scientists were less and less interested in a general theory which, as they believed, could not give satisfactory accounts of observational data and, above all, was merely hypothetical. They preferred to study more accurately the structure of more restricted areas and to establish with a greater precision a chronological order, not related, however, to any general history of the earth. On the other hand, fire, whose role in nature had been associated until that time with volcanoes only, began being considered as a more manageable power, able to explain the rising of new mountains. This was the great contribution of Hutton's Theory of the Earth. Since new mountains could appear at any time in the history of the earth, the old linear history, which was the history of the decrease of the primeval ocean, could not survive. The history of the earth was now an indefinite succession of degradations and upheavals. The last sentence of the first Hutton's Theory is well known: "I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end." By writing it, Hutton put an end to both the theory of the earth and its Cartesian model. Geology was born.

The Role of Hypotheses in Descartes's and Buffon's Theories of the Earth Frangois Duchesneau

A

fter Professor Jacques Roger's brilliant paper, I think it would be interesting to set in a slightly different light the Cartesian theory on the formation and nature of the earth: that is, to throw into relief the epistemological problems this theory implies. The second part of my comments will consist in an account of the tenets on which Buffon builds his natural history of the earth. Descartes is perfectly aware that the new astronomy has a subversive character in the case of the object earth. Thus he rejects the opinion of those who believe "that the earth is the principal part of the universe, because it is the abode of man, on behalf of which they are convinced without any ground that all things have been made."1 And Descartes adds "that Astronomers, who are wont to know that the Earth, in comparison with the Heavens, stands only for a point, will not find it so strange."2 In the Principles of Philosophy, when Descartes rejects the ideological and anthropomorphic conception of the earth, he bases himself on the metaphysical sections in which he discards the teleology of divine final causes from science.3 The earth 1

Jacques Roger, "La Theorie de la Terre au XVII e siecle," Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 26 (1973): 23-48. 2 Prinapes de la philosophie, pt. 3, art. 40, in Oeuvres de Descartes, publiees par Charles Adam &? Paul Tannery: Nouvelle Presentation, ed. B. Rochot, P. Costabel, J. Beaude, 11 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1964-74), 9(2):121. Hereafter cited as AT(NP). 3 Principes, pt. 3, art. 2: "Qu'on presumerait trop de soy-mesme, si on entreprenait de connaitre la fin que Dieu s'est propose en creant le monde"; art. 3: "En quel sens on peut dire que Dieu a cree toutes choses pour I'homme" (AT[NP], 9[2]:104).

[ 113 ]

114

Problems of Cartesianism

is reduced to the status of an object of investigation among many such objects; it has lost its "ontological" priority; and precisely in this way it is relegated to a place within the group of the planets. 4 On that account, one can also add that the theory which is supposed to explain planetary phenomena is quite a relativistic one. Part 3, Article 15, of the Principles, "Qu'on peut user de diverses hypotheses pour expliquer les Phenomenes des Planetes," is a skeptical section insofar as it questions the possibility of building a system of the world with the earth as the absolute point of reference. Descartes, when criticizing Copernicus's and Tycho's hypotheses, suggests that his own hypothesis seems to be "the simplest and most convenient for getting to know the phenomena as well as for seeking their natural causes."5 If as a hypothesis it turns out to be a false supposition, the more so in the case of all more complex and less convenient hypotheses; thus if his hypothesis is not true, none of the others can claim to be true. It seems to me that Descartes overthrows the metaphysical doctrine about the specificity of the earth as a natural object, but that, at the same time, he grounds his own explanation of the formation of the earth on a theory of truth, hypothesis, and phenomena. From the conceptual point of view, this theory is closely knit. In comparison with it, the attempt to reconcile his views with the text of the Bible will appear as a mere replastering. In the letter to the translator of the Principles, Descartes mentions the two reasons that give sufficient ground to the true principles: "the first is that they are very clear, and the second, that everything else can be deduced from them."6 With these criteria, he claims that he will deduce from the principles in his metaphysics "those of Physics which are about corporeal things, namely, that there are bodies extended in length, breadth, and depth, which have different shapes and are moved in different ways."7 The order of the deduction is supposed to enable him to infer from the principles the truth of all 4 5 6 7

Prindpes, Pnncipes, AT(NP), AT(NP),

pt. 3, art. 13 (AT[NP], 9[2]: 107-8). p. 3, art. 19 (AT[NP], 9[2]:110). 9(2):9. 9(2): 10.

Descartes and Buffon

115

other things. Probably this means that one must link ideas in such an order that the effects will be conceived in the line of their productive cause. And it can be added that, by a process of internal clarification, the productive cause is to be reduced to the common notion that can represent in its nature the intelligible essence of the effect. This is the way one may interpret the text in which Descartes explains the program of his physics. "After having found the true principles of material things, we examine in general, how the entire universe is constituted, then in particular, what is the nature of this Earth and of all the bodies, which are to be found most frequently about it."8 So Descartes gives the model of such cosmogonic explanations as the one that Kant develops in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels: the self-sufficiency of the transcendent productive cause (God) is clearly displayed by the fact that, provided the nature of matter be given from the start, the formation of the universe can be deduced from it with necessity, since the primeval nature of material reality affords the necessary condition of all effects that are deducible from it. In a second step, the principles are acknowledged to be mathematical and their truth is asserted. Let us refer to Part 2, Article 64 of the Principles, whose title reads as follows: "Queje ne regois point de principes en Physique, qui ne soient aussi regus en Mathematique, afin de pouvoir prouver par demonstration tout ce que j'en deduirai; et que ces principes suffisent, d'autant que tous les Phenomenes de la nature peuvent etre expliques par leur moyen."9 The demonstration stands on two tenets: (1) the quantity of geometers is the only notion of matter kept by Descartes, and he considers it as subject to divisions, shapes, and motions; thus he has the proper ground for deductions in physics that will be attended with evidence. (2) All phenomena of nature can be accounted for in this way. At the level of such principles we do not have to deal with hypotheses, and one would be mistaken to argue that the explanation is hypothetico-deductive in this part of Descartes's physics. For the author of the Principles, both the conception of the essence of matter as being a pure 8 9

AT(NP), 9(2): 14. AT(NP), 9(2): 101.

116

Problems of Cartesianism

extension, diversely shaped, wherein motions happen, and the phoronomic explanation of all modifications of matter cannot pass for hypotheses. On the contrary, they are the conditions for the intelligibility of what is real in all material phenomena. What, then, could be considered as a hypothesis in Descartes's natural philosophy? The status of hypothesis depends on: (1) the definition of what he calls phenomena; (2) the methodology of description. Descartes defines phenomena as "the effects that are in Nature, which we take notice of through the operation of our senses."10 For an illustration of this definition, I suggest the reading of Part 3, Article 128, where Descartes recalls the main phenomena of comets.11 One could examine in this connection the Cartesian explanation of imagination, which results in reducing all sensible knowledge to confused notions of the material things insofar as they can interact with our own body. So the perception of material things involves (or enfolds) the notion of the essence of such things, but from the point of view of the very complex relation they have with the state of our own body. This theory becomes somewhat modified in post-Cartesian philosophy, but is retained in its essentials, I believe, throughout the period with which we are concerned. As for the methodology of description, Descartes justifies it in Part 3, Article 4 of the Principles.12 Starting with the principles of the physics, one may conceive (or deduce) more effects than those actually contained within our world. And in the course of a single life one cannot proceed to an intellectual inspection of the entire real world. So, for Descartes, a brief description (brevem historiam) of the main phenomena is fully justified in order to know the effects that one shall attempt to explain by their causes. Like many of his contemporaries, for instance Hobbes, Descartes distinguishes between a priori and a posteriori knowledge on account of the way ideas are linked. The second-mentioned case is that of the order effect-cause; the first is that of the order cause-effect, which is the only one that affords the guarantees of true deducing. But, with a given cause, one can build 10

Pnndpes, pt. 3, art. 1 (AT[NP], 9[2]:103). AT(NP), 9(2): 179. !2 AT(NP), 9(2): 104-5. 11

Descartes and Buffon

117

the representation of an indefinite plurality of possible effects. I believe the reason for this is the infinitely complex structure of sensible representations admitting of a great number of combinations between sensations. Whatever the case may be, the question for Descartes is to link the notion of the true cause with the idea of a constant effect, which idea is afforded by sensible perception. This is where the hypothesis intervenes. For one has to determine the significant phenomena, those which exemplify most clearly the order and economy of nature. By the order of the significant phenomena he chooses, Descartes states that the terrestrial phenomena hold not a primordial but an intermediary position if we consider the whole economy of nature. He sets his science of nature on a chosen order for natural objects, which can only be validated by the easy way it presents for deduction. As a matter of fact, Descartes gives as an instance of a valid application of the method a description of the way cryptograms may be solved. And he suggests that we should try to solve problems by supposing some order between things where at first sight there does not seem to be any. In this respect, the theory of the earth cannot but be humanly built. But we have to assess what degree of certainty it can, from Descartes's point of view, lay claim to. Let us take on that account the last sections of the Principles. Part 4, Article 20513 defines moral certitude, and it compares the discovery of a code enabling us to make sense out of a series of signs with the explaining of all phenomena by means of a deduction that would start with the causes presumed at the beginning of the treatise. If one considers how many diverse properties of magnet, fire, and of every other thing which is in the world, have been most evidently deduced from very few causes which I surmised at the beginning of this treatise, even though one fancied that I surmised them by chance and without reason persuaded them to myself, nevertheless, one might find at least as many reasons for judging that they are the true causes of everything I deduced from them, as we have for believing that one has found the true 13

AT(NP), 9(2):323-24.

118

Problems of Cartesianism meaning of a ciphered message, when one finds it derives from the signification we gave conjecturally to each sign.

To solve a cryptogram we must possess a key. In the same way, the hypothesis we try to deduce phenomena from must correspond to some formal conditions: it must enable us to account for the given particular effects in such an order as to comprehend them all. Above all, if we refer to Article 206,14 the hypothesis must be inserted within a set of principles that can bestow on it "une certitude plus que morale." The certainty of metaphysical principles extends to mathematical principles and to those which afford the proper ground for deducing the mechanical laws that, in due turn, rule over the agency of material modifications. This all-inclusive certainty overlaps on at least two hypotheses necessary to the Cartesian physics and theory of the earth: (1) the reducing of sensible qualities to the status of effects resulting from mechanical impressions on the body; (2) the thesis that the "plenum" through which the flux of light is transmitted has a corpuscular structure. In the Principles, Part 3, Article 45,15 we may read that Descartes presents his whole system of the world as hypothetical. In this way Descartes will be able to argue that his doctrine does not contradict the explanations contained in Genesis on the formation of the universe and, more specifically, of the earth. This passage reads as follows: We will explain better what is generally the nature of all the things which are in the world, if we can image some principles, most intelligible and most simple, from which we will clearly show that the stars, the Earth and all the visible world could have been produced, as if from some seeds (even though we know it has not been produced this way): that would be a better explanation than if we were satisfied with describing the world as it is, or as we believe it was created.

The hypothetical character of this deduction consists only in the fact 14 15

AT(NP), 9(2):324-25. AT(NP), 9(2): 124.

Descartes and Buffon

119

of using a history (description) of significant phenomena, to direct the deduction toward its end: that is, the explaining of physical effects by their necessary cause. Hence it does follow that reason should finally substitute a system of certitudes to the tentative explanation of phenomena by means of hypothetico-deductive models. I think Jacques Roger's interpretation would be that "Descartes confesses his work could pass for a hypothesis, which might prove to be far away from truth. Descartes's explanation might be possible, probable, without being true. The giving a coherent meaning to a ciphered text does not imply that the real cipher has been found."16 For me, this does not express Descartes's real meaning. The entire Cartesian epistemology supports the thesis that what is most intelligible and simple is true. As far as the probable is concerned, it corresponds to the state of the message we have tentatively succeeded in deciphering. We gave a meaning to the elements according to the way they combine; we do not know yet the principles that actually determined the combination. If we knew the law of formation for all possible cryptograms, provided that the message significantly represents the combinations of the cipher, then we could raise our hypothesis to a more than moral certitude. For Descartes, the law of all possible combinations for the phenomena is the axiom that the most simple is most intelligible. At the other end of the chain, there is the manifold of the given phenomena; in between, probable systems about the order of specific phenomena: like a planetary system, a theory of light, a mechanistic physics and physiology. Maybe in Descartes's mind his theory about the formation of the earth is able to correlate systems and to afford the intermediary links that will enable the true deduction of nature's particular realities. Probably, on this view, the Genesis text can only be a metaphorical pattern of explanation to be interpreted in view of the cosmogonic hypothesis when such a hypothesis is deductively verified and has therefore ceased to be a mere hypothesis. But, as Professor Roger points out, various readings of the Principles still remained possible. However, one point is clear: the question for Descartes was not to give a cosmogonic and geomorphical explanation that would have 16

"La Theorie de la Terre," p. 35.

120

Problems of Cartesianism

been a mere "history" of celestial and terrestrial events. If he intended to ground his explanation on the seeds of things, these seeds were not conceived as real seeds but as real conditions of intelligibilityI agree with Professor Roger that the Cartesian cosmogony became a history, through a confrontation of the theoretical fable (in the Principles) with the biblical cosmogony. I easily concede the central role played by Thomas Burnet and William Whiston in these attempts at a physico-theological synthesis, and I agree in acknowledging as an important epistemological fact the inserting of a notion of the fossil shells into the earth theory. The fossil shells become for Buffon one of the touchstones of his argumentation, and the proof par excellence to validate his hypothesis on the formation of terrestrial relief. From an epistemological standpoint, it would make sense to correlate this moment in the evolution of the earth theory with the methodology of the Experimental Philosophy and the doctrine of truth, which makes up a common party with the writing of natural histories. What seems characteristic of this trend is: (1) the criticism and rejection of hypotheses insofar as they form purely a priori premises for deduction and do not depend on any process of validation by means of experience; (2) the preference for a historical method, based on observation and the classification of experimental data, conceived as process properly revealing the structure of natural realities; (3) induction considered as the true means of proving—and this seems to be a kind of revolution against the Cartesian theory of truth. But this new science still bestows preeminence on the mechanical models and analogies. To synthesize the data of experience still requires principles which seem to square with a rationalist conception of truth (for instance, the principles of the simplest order, continuity, constancy, of the orderly connection of causes). Now let us turn to a view of the doctrine which seems to determine the subsequent evolution of the theory of the earth, that of Buffon. A first version occurs in the Second Discours de I'Histoire Naturelle (1749) and a second version in Les Epoques de la Nature (1778). In 1749 Buffon's criticisms focus on Whiston, Burnet, Woodward —in a word on the physico-theologians of the earth. He objects

Descartes and Buffon

121

mainly to their framing hypotheses that appeal to cataclysmic causes to account for the phenomena. No such causes are actually observable, at least in the degree required. Buffon notes: One must remember that a historian is supposed to describe, not to invent, that he should not indulge in any supposition, and that he should not make use of his imagination, but for combining observations, generalizing facts, and framing such a whole of them, that it present the mind with a methodic ordering of clear ideas, and coherent and probable relations.17 Does this mean that Buffon will oppose cosmogonic theories? Not at all, provided they are given as mere surmises and are rendered as probable as possible. He also adds that the physical history of the earth in its actual state can be conceived independently from any system on its formation and first state.18 The difference is that between "a theory based on facts" and "a hypothesis which encloses possibilities only." Thirty years later, in Les Epoques de la Nature, Buffon will reinstate more closely his account for the genesis of planets inside the history of the earth, but he will still exclude the possibility of framing a probable account for the "impetus" of the comets.19 By the way, Buffon at that time had abandoned the thesis of the unity of time for creation and replaced it with a pseudotransformist doctrine on the development of nature's specific phenomena. But he still relied on the principle that nature is "contemporary to matter, space, and time" and that "its history is that of all substances, all places, all epochs,"20 that is, he used the principle of unity in the natural order through times and spaces to link by means of analogies all those ideas that are suggested by actual facts, and which can recall the time of the origins. The question is to start with the actual "tableau" of nature in order to trace back the successive rough drafts of it. The "anciens monuments du premier age" serve as guiding-marks for 17 Oeuvres philosophiques de Buffon, ed. Jean Piveteau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954), p. 46A. 18 Ibid., p. 65B.

19 Ibid., p. 331A. 20 Ibid., p. 117B.

122

Problems of Cartesianism

this analogical inference. And this introduces the subject matter of principles and hypotheses in the Histoire et Theorie de la Terre. For Buffon, the theory of the earth belongs to a "Physics in which no system is to be admitted."21 Buffon makes use of the historical method, which requires the description of the facts, their generalization, and the setting of generalized facts in a rational order that can reveal probable relations between them. Hypotheses result from a process of induction from certain facts (such effects being certain, the induction can get to very plausible reasons). For instance, we constantly observe the alternate phenomena of erosion and sedimentation, we know the general motion of tides from east to west, and we know that whole countries are exposed to invasion by the sea. "Should not all this induce us into thinking that there effectively happened great revolutions on the surface of the Earth, and that the Sea may have receded from the greater part of those lands it had occupied formerly?"22 Descartes would ground his account of the genesis and structure of the earth on an a priori deduction, itself based on geometrical and mechanical principles. He would use for the occasion a mechanical theory of "vortex" and a geometrical theory of the gravity of bodies. For Buffon, on the contrary, the science of the earth can have no other foundations besides inductions proceeding from the features of the present tableau de la nature. He seems decidedly to turn his back on the Cartesian system. However, some principles are still of foremost importance in the building of his own theory of the earth. The best-known of these principles is that of the actual causes. Here is a clear illustration of it: "To find out what happened on this earth in the past, let us take in view what happens nowadays on the bottom of the sea, and hence, we may draw reasonable inductions as to the external form and internal constitution of those lands we dwell on."23 This principle—which will be criticized by Cuvier, yet seems to have played an essential part in the methods of the theory of the earth throughout the eighteenth century (on this point, Roger might 21

Ibid., p. 45A. Ibid., p. 55A. 2 3 Ibid., p. SOB. 22

Descartes and Buffon

123

give us further comments)—this principle is linked with other principles, which seem to be somewhat interchangeable. 1.

Principle of permanence: "For to decide on what happened and even on what shall happen, we may content ourselves with examining what is happening."24

2.

Principle of continuity: "The kind of organization of the Earth we perceive everywhere, this horizontal and parallel disposition of strata, can only come from a constant cause and orderly motion, which is for ever directed in the same way."25

3.

Principle of the slow causes (which I present as it is applied to the explanation of the sedimentary layers): "This agency has been produced by the waters, or to be more precise, by the sediments they have deposited in process of time. . . . A particular accident, a revolution or overthrow would not have produced such an effect on the entire earth-surface."26

4.

Principle of connected causes (for instance, in the explanation of sea sedimentation, where Buffon concludes by presuming connected causes): "There are many other causes which confer with the continuous sea motion from East to West, in order to produce the effect we speak of."27

It is quite clear that these principles may be construed as presuppositions depending on a principle of order, somewhat akin to the Cartesian principle of intelligibility, but conceived in terms of the spatio-temporal connections between observed phenomena. Epistemologically, the Cartesian model is still operative within this history of the earth, but with the reservation that strictly speaking the order is no more that of the mathesis universalis but that of the tableau de la nature. Buffon expresses this better than I do when he says: 24 25 26 27

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. 55A-B. p. 50A. p. 103A. p. 55B.

124

Problems of Cartesianism

"Even if my hypotheses are objected to, and that my tableau is but a very imperfect draft of the tableau de la nature, I remain convinced that those who would honestly examine the draft and compare it with the model, shall find sufficient similitude to satisfy at least their eyes and to settle their ideas on the grandest objects of Natural Philosophy."28 As a matter of fact, in a paper, "Condillac, critique de Locke,"29 I precisely tried to show that the classificatory pattern of the tableau is, for some of Buffon's contemporaries, a standard pattern of analysis, which forms an alternative to the pattern of algebra—this second pattern, more akin to the mathesis universalis, offers the standard for developing identity relations by means of signs. It seems to me that the main distortion of the Cartesian model in Buffon's theory of the earth pertains to the way he conceives the application of the principles to the phenomena of nature, or, to be more precise, that it pertains to the status of hypotheses: hypotheses resulting from the inference process, when the "effets generaux" are connected together by means of the principles. A passage taken from Les Epoques de la Nature sets this point in clear light: Since we know nothing but by comparing, as soon as we lack any relation whatsoever, and that no analogy is given, all light fades out; not only our reason, but even our imagination, are found at fault. 30

Hence the beautiful and picturesque analogies that Buffon makes use of, and which develop at a quite different level from Descartes's mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena. Let us take as an example the reasons why Buffon in his theory of volcanoes rejects (at least in 1749) the hypothesis of a central fire and even that of a deep fire. These reasons are based on the analogy of a mechanical pattern, that of the cannon: (1) air is required for the deflagration of explosive material; (2) the force required for a vertical projection at a distance 28 Buffon, Les Epoques de la Nature, Oeuvres, p. 187A—B. 29 See Studi Internauonali di Filosofia, 6 (1974): 77-98. 30 Buffon, Les Epoques de la Nature, Oeuvres, p. 13IB.

Descartes and Buff on

125

decreases in direct ratio of proximity between the breech and the muzzle; it would become excessive if the breech were very deep; (3) the recoil caused by a deep explosion would result in the destruction of the cannon if we suppose the matter of the cannon and that of the projectile to be equally dense; (4) the length of the cylinder would cause a friction, which would considerably lessen the impetus of the parts of the fusible matter.31 However, the rational principles that determine the formulation of general consequences from observations (principle of the actual causes, of continuity, etc.) cannot determine the limit of validity for the mechanical models insofar as the correlation of facts is concerned. So Buffon sometimes becomes the innocent victim of his own analogies: witness the aberrations owing to the geometrical circle and pattern, and to the mechanical wheel pattern in the history of the formation of the planets.32 Theoretically this problem did not pertain to Cartesian science because, for Cartesian science, starting with purely intelligible principles, deduction could transform hypotheses into rationally validated consequences. The theory of the earth as conceived by Buffon allows of gaps and unwarranted inferences because of the overall use of analogical patterns of explanation. It seems as if these gaps called for that experimental logic which would dispense with the continuous chains of analogies in breaking away from the system of a priori principles still of use in the tableau de la nature.

31 32

See ibid., pp. 59-60. See ibid., pp. 69A, 73A, 132A-133A.

This page intentionally left blank

Transubstantiation among the Cartesians Richard A. Watson 1.

DESCARTES'S THEOLOGICAL AMBITIONS

I

t is worthwhile to consider a very specific reason (as contrasted to the general epistemological reasons I examine in The Downfall of Cartesianism)1 for the decline and fall of Cartesianism.2 Like the problems considered therein, it is a difficulty Cartesians get into because of their adherence to ontological dualism. It also stems from Descartes's desire to be all things to all disciplines. Certainly in the history of modern philosophy few philosophers have been so egotistic and ambitious as Rene Descartes. During that stretch of time extending between Aristotle and Hegel, no other philosopher takes so personally as his own province the total world-view, sacred and profane. Thomas Aquinas and many lesser commentators do work out a Christian-Aristotelian world-view, and philosophers such as Leibniz and Kant do have polymath interests. Both Galileo and Newton understand that they are altering if not overturning a world-view. However, among these giants only Descartes contends that his own, new philosophy should replace that of Aristotle both in science and in religion. 1

Richard A. Watson, The Downfall of Cartesianism, 1673-1712: A Study of Epistemological Ideas in Late Seventeenth-Century Cartesianism, International Archives of the History of Ideas, no. 11 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). 2 Leonora Cohen Rosenfield examines another such specific reason for general disabusement with Cartesianism in her excellent book, From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie, new enlarged ed. (New York: Octagon Books, 1968). However, contrary to what one might think, Descartes's mistaken physics was not held against the Cartesians, in part because several of them were good physicists, and in part because—like Malebranche—they admitted their errors and adopted Newtonian principles. As I remark in chap. 6 of Downfall, Samuel Clarke thought it perfectly appropriate to present Rohault's Traite de physique in Latin and English translations with a few corrections as a Newtonian text.

[ 127 ]

128

Problems of Cartesianism

To further his aim, Descartes undertook a major attack on Scholasticism. His scorn for philosophers who ground physics on species, substantial forms, and occult forces is well known, and his role in advancing the mechanistic philosophy of Galileo, Gassendi, and Mersenne is well documented. Here I lay stress on an application of Descartes's philosophy that he had hoped would be as important to religion as are his contributions to the rise of modern science. Despite his occasional protests to the contrary, Descartes had in mind while constructing his philosophical system its implications for the reconstruction of both natural philosophy and Christian theology. In fact, Descartes was not himself inclined to develop a Cartesian theology. He was occupied with setting out his metaphysical position, and with its implications for natural science, in such a way as to avoid sharing Galileo's fate. What he rather hoped was that some theologians, preferably of the dominant Jesuit sect, would base a solid theological structure on Cartesian principles, just as Thomas Aquinas had on Aristotelian principles. Descartes's arrogance was to see himself not as another Thomas Aquinas, but as a modern Aristotle. Among scholars of Cartesianism, J.-R. Armogathe3 and Jean Laporte have best documented Descartes's theological ambitions. Laporte cites a letter of January 28, 1641 in which Descartes encourages Mersenne to accommodate theology to Cartesian principles. Descartes says: II n'y aura, ce me semble, aucune difficulte d'accomoder la Theologie a ma fagon de philosopher; car ie n'y voy rien a changer que pour la Transubstantiation, qui est extremement claire & aisee par mes principes. Et je seray oblige de expliquer en ma Physique, avec le premier chapitre de la Genese, ce que je me propose d'envoyer aussi a la Sorbonne, pour estre examine avant qu'on rimprime. Que si vous trouvez qu'il y ait d'autres choses qui meritent qu'on ecrive un Cours entier de Theologie, & que vous le vouliez entreprendre, je le tiendray a faveur, & vous y serviray en tout ce que je pourray.4 3 Theologia Cartesiana: L'explication physique de I'Eucharistie chez Descartes el Dom Desgabets, International Archives of the History of Ideas, no. 84 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977). 4 Jean Laporte, La Rationalisme de Descartes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

Transubstantiation

129

Mersenne had better sense than to try. Those who did—Denis Mesland, Emmanuel Maignan, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre Cally—suffered for their pains by having church sanctions imposed upon them.5 Descartes himself made only one detailed attempt to accommodate Christian dogma to his principles. In his reply to Arnauld's objections to the Meditations, Descartes puts forward a Cartesian explanation of transubstantiation. He makes further suggestions in four letters to Mesland. Obviously Descartes believed that he might have in Pere Mesland a Jesuit champion. Disabusement was swift. The exchange of letters began in 1644 and was terminated abruptly in 1646 when, as extreme discipline for his commerce with Descartes, Mesland was banished to Canada. He died on the Canadian mission in 1672 without, so far as is known, inquiring further into the subject of transubstantiation. Why was Mesland dealt with so severely? Undoubtedly it was for the same reasons that led Descartes to drop his guard to make some tentative proposals about Cartesian theology himself. The issue of transubstantiation was crucial for at least three reasons. First, the doctrine of substantial forms that Descartes held up to ridicule was best known to all Catholic scholars and priests through the role of subsistent accidents in transubstantiation. Second, the sacrament of the Eucharist was the central symbol of the authority and sacredness of the priesthood. Only the ordained could take the sacrament; only they could participate in the miracle. Third, a major Protestant position was that the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation leads to idolatry. Among the views of Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, and Calvin that the Catholics deemed most heretical is the opinion that the Eucharist is merely symbolic: Christ is there in spirit, but not in flesh and blood. This became a central issue in the Protestant revolution.6 And as recently as 1965, Paul VI at Italy's

1950), p. 339; Descartes to Mersenne, in Oeuvres de Descartes, publiees par Charles Adam fc? Paul Tannery: Nouvelle Presentation, ed. B. Rochot, P. Costabel.j. Beaude, 11 vols.(Paris: J. Vrin, 1964-74), 3:295-96. Cited hereafter as AT(NP). 5 Laporte, La Rationalisme de Descartes, p. 317. 6 James Thomson Shotwell, A Study in the History of the Eucharist (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1905), p. 1.

130

Problems of Cartesianism

National Eucharistic Congress warned against the interpretations of such contemporary Catholic theologians as Piet Schoonenberg, Luchesius Smits, and Edward Schillebeeckx who belittle, ignore, or deny the doctrine of real accidents and actual (as opposed to mystical) transubstantiation. 7 This is still a point on which Protestants are separated from Catholics. The presence of Christ's soul with no actual change of matter is what many Protestants now profess, and this view is close to Descartes's final suggestion about transubstantiation. If Cartesianism is to provide a metaphysical basis to replace that of Scholasticism, then it is essential that Cartesians give some explanation of transubstantiation other than one dependent on unsupported properties. And given the centrality of the Eucharist, it is surely not surprising that Louis XIV and other guardians of the church such as Harlay, the bishop of Paris, forbade discussion on a topic so potentially politically disruptive of established hierarchy. Descartes's works were put on the Index donee corrignatur, and there is good reason to conjecture that what was to be corrected—or removed—were Descartes's comments on transubstantiation. In the following, I first outline the several Cartesian explanations of transubstantiation, and some of the objections to them. They are of intrinsic interest for the light they throw on the mechanistic interactions of Cartesian matter, and on the notion of substance that Descartes offers to replace the Thomistic-Aristotelian conception. Then, in evaluating these explanations in contrast to the Scholastic views, I pose some questions about the basic ontological differences betwen Scholasticism and Cartesianism. It is my contention that the Cartesian explanation of transubstantiation fails, and thus does not support Descartes's attack on substantial forms. Finally, I argue that the Cartesians' inability to explain transubstantiation satisfactorily on mechanistic grounds is paralleled by an inability to explain the nature of man without resorting to a Scholastic model. In the Cartesian explanation of transubstantiation, the 7 Anonymous, "Beyond Transubstantiation: New Theory of Real Presence," Time magazine, July 2, 1965, pp. 52-53; R. P. Desharnais, "Letter on Transubstantiation," Time magazine, July 16, 1965, p. 6; Frank Kinkaid, "Letter on Transubstantiation," Time magazine, July 16, 1965, p. 6.

Transubstantiation

131

sensible qualities of bread and wine are not unsupported, but are modifications of mind caused by material particles that have no other characteristics than size, shape, and motion. Yet, for Descartes, the mind itself is the form of the composite substance man. At death when the union of body and soul is broken, the liberated soul appears most like a substantial form. The peculiarity of Descartes's attempt to present active thinking itself as a substance stems from his taking the Aristotelian form or essence of man—rationality—to be itself an independent substance. 2. DESCARTES'S EXPLANATIONS OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION

The Cartesian distinction between primary and secondary qualities strikes at the heart of Scholastic physical explanations. When sensible qualities are equated with sensations, the seat of their being is transferred from material objects to the mind. Material objects are thus shorn of a multitude of explanatory principles or species. The only modifications of matter retained are figure, size, and motion with which the causal action and individual identity of material objects are to be explained. The wind of Descartes's change thus blows out of the material world the mist of occult forces, powers, or entities, leaving only a passive mechanical skeleton that has motion imposed upon it and that influences only by impact. Descartes singles out for special attack the notion of substantial form: "It is contradictory that real accidents should exist, because whatever is real can exist separately apart from any other subject; but whatever can exist separately is substance not accident."8 Given the role attributed to real accidents in the miracle of the Eucharist, then, it was inevitable that the question of how Descartes explains transubstantiation be raised. Antoine Arnauld sets the problem succinctly in the fourth set of objections to Descartes's Meditations in a section entitled "Matters likely to cause difficulty to Theologians":

8

"Reply to the Sixth Set of Objections," in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1934), 2:250 (cited hereafter as Haldane and Ross); Latin original, AT(NP), 7:434; French translation, AT(NP), 9(1): 234-35.

132

Problems of Cartesianism The chief ground of offence to theologians that I anticipate is that, according to M. Descartes' doctrines, the teachings of the Church relative to the sacred mysteries of the Eucharist cannot remain unaffected and intact. For it is an article of our faith that the substance of the bread passes out of the bread of the Eucharist, and that only its accidents remain. Now these are extension, figure, colour, odour, savour, and other sensible qualities. But M. Descartes recognizes no sense-qualities, but only certain motions of the minute bodies that surround us, by means of which we perceive the different impressions to which we afterwards give the names of colour, savour, and odour. Hence there remain figure, extension, and mobility. But M. Descartes denies that those powers can be comprehended apart from the substance in which they inhere and that hence they cannot exist apart from it; and this is repeated in the reply to his theological critic. Likewise he acknowledges only a formal distinction between these affections and substance, but a formal difference seems not to allow things so distinguished to be sundered from each other even by the Divine power?

In reply, Descartes reiterates that he is "convinced that the only thing by which our senses are stimulated is that superficies which forms the boundary of the dimensions of the perceived body. For contact takes place only at the surface."10 This superficies is not just the gross outline of the body, but the superficies of all the tiny particles of which it is composed as well. As these particles are always in motion, the superficies is always changing. Finally, we must note that, by the superficies of bread or of wine or of any other body, is meant not any part of their substance, nor indeed any part of the quantity of the body, nor even a part of the circumjacent bodies, but merely that limit which is conceived to lie between the single particles of a body and the bodies that surround it, a boundary which has absolutely none but a modal reality.

From this it can easily be seen that if the substances of bread and wine are replaced by substances of flesh and blood in such a way that 9 "Fourth Set of Objections," in Haldane and Ross, 2:95; Latin, AT(NP), 7:217-18; French, AT(NP), 9(1): 169. 10 "Reply to the Fourth Set of Objections," Haldane and Ross, 2:117; Latin, AT(NP), 7:249; French, AT(NP), 9(1): 192.

Transubstantiation

133

the boundaries are unchanged, "it necessarily follows that the new substance would act on our senses in entirely the same way as that in which the bread and wine would act, if no transubstantiation had occurred." This follows "the teaching of the Church in the Council of Trent, session 13, canons 2 and 4, that the whole substance of the bread is changed into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, while only the semblance of the bread remains unaltered."11 Because Descartes believes that everyone will agree that all that is meant by species is whatever is required for acting on the sense organs, he sees no reason for preferring the enigmatic intentional species or real accidents to superficies. Descartes sees no reason why the church should have as a second miracle in the Eucharist real accidents that subsist by themselves. All God need do is "change one substance into another . . . the second substance remaining comprised within the same superficies as that which bounded the former."12 Descartes concludes by expressing his hope that this simple, rational explanation will one day be accepted by theologians in place of the incomprehensible explanation based on the doctrine of real accidents. Descartes probably would have been willing to let the matter rest there had he not been asked further questions by Pere Denis Mesland in letters that are not now extant. Mesland was born in Orleans in 1615 and had been a Jesuit since 1630. Descartes hoped that he would champion Cartesian views among the Jesuits. Mesland's inquiries evidently had to do with the role of real accidents and the individuation of Christ's flesh. Whether the presence of real accidents is a second miracle or not, the Scholastic explanation describes a stark situation in which real flesh and blood replace bread and wine. Flesh lies trembling under accidents unnatural to it, the accidents of bread that stand as unsupported shields, concealing the true properties of the underlying substance. Numerous stories were known of the shield having been dropped, so that the priest saw lying in his hand an actual piece of flesh, or, more spectacularly, a tiny, perfectly formed baby. It seems probable that Mesland—sympa11 12

Haldane and Ross, 2:118; Latin, AT(NP), 7:250-51; French, AT(NP), 9(1): 193. Haldane and Ross, 2:121; Latin, AT(NP), 7:255; French, AT(NP), 9(1): 196.

134

Problems of Cartesianism

thetic to Descartes—was worried about the dismissal of these real accidents. Further, on Cartesian grounds material objects are distinguished by nothing more than size, shape, and motion. If a piece of matter that is Christ's flesh takes on the characteriestics of bread, in what way can it possibly remain also Christ's flesh? The Scholastic version is again more satisfying. Christ's flesh on Aristotelian terms is a union of matter and form, which retains its identity as an individuated substance whatever external characteristics it takes on. This is not a matter of unsupported substantial forms, but one of individuating form, which Descartes had banished from his material world along with all other occult entities. To make his explanation as satisfactory as the Scholastic, Descartes obviously had to say more. Descartes first explains to Mesland that the superficies upon which our sensations depend is nothing but a mode. Like the purported real accidents in the Scholastic explanations, the superficies can remain the same even if the surrounding bodies change, or if the body in question is replaced with one of exactly similar dimensions. As for the Eucharist: Car le corps de I. C. estant mis en la place du pain, & venant d'autre air en la place de celuy qui environnoit le pain, la superficie, qui est entre cet air & le corps de I. C., demeur eadem numero qui estoit auparauant entre d'autre air & le pain, parce qu'elle ne prend pas son identite numerique de 1'identite des corps dans lesqueles elles existe, mais seulement de 1'identite ou resemblance des dimensions.13 Thus, like real accidents, the same properties of bread and wine can remain—as superficies—to cover the matter of flesh and blood. This process of substitution, however, gives rise to another question. How can Christ's body be compressed into the space occupied by a small piece of bread? Descartes puts this question aside because there is difference of opinion in the church as to whether Christ's whole body or only a piece of his flesh is in the Eucharist. However, 13

Descartes to Mesland (February 9, 1645?), AT(NP), 4:164-65.

Transubstantiation

135

he goes on to offer a way of avoiding the question which turns out to be an explanation of transubstantiation completely different from the one he gives to Arnauld. It also provides a way of individuating matter as belonging to Christ. When we eat bread and drink wine, Descartes now says, the small parts are dissolved and transported throughout our bodies where they become parts of flesh and blood. Were our vision fine enough, we could see "qu'elles sont encore les mesmes numero, qui composoient auparavant le pain & le vin."14 This natural transubstantiation takes place throughout our lives; our bodies change their constituents, grow and diminish in size, yet even when all the parts of a human body change over a long period of years, we call it the same idem numero. Such natural transubstantiation took place in Christ's body, too. Hence, 'Tunite numerique du corps d'un homme ne depend pas de sa matiere, mais de sa form, qui est Tame."15 In the miraculous transubstantiation of the Eucharist, then, there is no necessity for the bread to be replaced with the body or flesh of Christ by the removal of the first and a substitution of the second in a miraculously compressed dimension. All that is required is for Christ's soul to be supernaturally joined to the bread. By such union it is no longer bread, but a part of Christ's flesh, supernaturally transubstantiated by union with his soul. To the observer, the only difference between this flesh and that formed by the natural transubstantiation of bread into flesh is that the bread of the Eucharist is large enough to be seen as bread after it is (miraculously) made a part of Christ's flesh. This notion of real presence is dangerously close to Lutheran and Calvinist heresies.16 But beyond that, this explanation suffers from technical difficulties that are examined below. As for the notion of real presence, Descartes himself did not remain long satisfied that it alone is adequate. In a later letter to Clerselier, he combines his first 14

Ibid., p. 168. Descartes to Mesland (May 1645?), AT(NP), 4:346. 16 Laporte, La Rationalisms de Descartes, p. 416. Descartes's contributions to Protestant arguments are discussed by Walter Rex in his Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy, International Archives of the History of Ideas, no. 8 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), pp. 12Iff. 15

136

Problems of Cartesianism

with his second theory. After explaining how the superficies can remain the same when flesh replaces bread, he says that "outre le matiere du corps de lesus Christ, qui est mise sous le dimensions ou estoit le pain, 1'ame de lesus Christ, qui informe cette matiere, y est aussy."17 This is Descartes's final word on the matter. Not only is the actual matter of bread repaced by the actual matter of Christ's flesh with the superficies remaining the same, but also the transubstantiated matter is individuated by being united with Christ's soul. 3.

DOM ROBERT DESGABETS, CHAMPION OF CARTESIAN TRANSUBSTANTIATION

The Dominican, Robert Desgabets, was probably the unhappiest of Cartesians. His main published work is a defense of Malebranche, which led that good man to comment caustically, "// me semble que ceux qui se melent de deffendre ou de combattre les autres, doivent lire leurs Ouvrages avec quelque soin, afin d'en bien s^avoir les sentimens."18 Desgabets was never banished to Canada, and was even permitted to continue writing. His punishment was that permission was refused for publication of anything after his famous Critique de la Critique de la Recherche de la verite in 1675.19 Desgabets's reputation as a busybody does not stem entirely from his Critique. The 1660s and 1670s were years during which Cartesianism was being viewed with more and more official disfavor. C-^rselier had hesitated to print Descartes's letters to Mesland on transubstantiation, but had instead circulated copies among the learned and influential, ever hoping to get a sponsor for their publication. Cardinal de Retz explained the disapproving views of the archbishop of Paris 17

Descartes to Mesland, March 2, 1646, AT(NP), 4:373. Nicolas Malebranche, "Avertissement centre Desgabets et Foucher," placed at the head of vol. 2 of De la recherche de la verite ou Von traite de la nature de I'esprit de Uhomme, et de I'usage qu'il en doit faire pour eviter I'erreur des sciences (Paris: Andre Pralard, 1675); reprinted in Oeuvres completes de Malebranche, ed. Andre Robinet, 20 vols. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1963-65), vol. 2 (ed. Genvieve Rodis-Lewis), p. 500. This is, of course, just a version of Malebranche's bon mot against Foucher (see chap. 5 of Watson, Downfall). It was as dangerous to defend Malebranche as to attack him. 19 Paul Lamaire, La Cartesienisme chez les Benedictins. Dom Robert Desgabets son systeme, son influence et son ecole, d'apres plusieurs manuscrits et des documents rares ou inedits (Paris: J. Vrin, 1943), p. 54. 18

Transubstantiation

137

and Louis XIV by saying that both Rome and the king knew the danger of novelties. Jacques Rohault had already been forbidden to give public lectures, in part because he defended the viewpoint in the letters,20 when Desgabets entered the picture. Desgabets's fifteen-page tract, "Considerations sur 1'etat present de la controverse touchant le Tres Saint-Sacrement de 1'autel, ou il est traite en peu de mots de 1'opinion qui enseigne que la matiere du pain est changee en celle du corps de Jesus-Christ par son union substantielle a son ame et a sa personne divine," published in 1671, was immediately branded as heretical, and Desgabets was forced to disown the opinions expressed in it. Among other things, he says that the authors of the Art de penser (Arnauld and Nicole) should agree with his opinions, because they include Descartes's theories in their logic. Arnauld was furious at this, because a modicum of peace had just been attained for the Jansenists. Now Desgabets had given more fuel to Jean Ferrier, Louis XIV's Jesuit confessor and a vicious foe of Jansenism. Desgabets apologized to Arnauld, but the damage had been done. Paul Lemaire says that Desgabets's pamphlet set off the persecutions against the Cartesians in France.21 Whatever effect it had, it was certainly not Desgabets's first essay on the subject. He left well over three hundred pages of folio manuscript concerning the problem of the Eucharist.22 To be fair to Desgabets, one can assume that he realized the importance of the issue of transubstantiation to Cartesianism. If theologians would accept Descartes's explanation, then they would have no longer any strong theoretical objections to the Cartesian metaphysical system. As long as substantial forms, real accidents, and the like were enshrined in one of the greatest mysteries of Christendom, 20 Jacques Rohault, Entretiens sur la philosophic (Paris: Michel le Petit, 1671); reprinted in Pierre Glair, Jacques Rouhalt (1618-1672) bio-biographie avec I 'edition critique des Entretiens sur la philosophie, Centre d'Histoire des Sciences et des Doctrines, Recherches sur le XVIIe siecle, no. 3 (Paris: Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique, 1978). See also Henri Gouhier, Cartesianisme et Augustinisme au XVIIe siecle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1978). "Jacques Rohault et 1'histoire de la polemique sur 1'Eucharistique," pp. 71-80. 21 Lamaire, La Cartesienisme chez les Benedictins, pp. 123-33. See also Armogathe, Theologia Cartesiana. 22 Lamaire, La Cartesienisme chez les Benedictins, p. 11.

138

Problems of Cartesianism

there could be no hope that Cartesianism would receive official sanction. Hence Desgabets concentrated his efforts on making the Cartesian explanation of the Eucharist acceptable, to open the way for the Cartesian system of true and certain knowledge. 4. JACQUES ROHAULT'S CLARIFICATION

Jacques Rohault also saw transubstantiation as a central issue in Cartesianism. After Descartes's Meditations had been put on the Index, Rohault set about to clarify the explanation of transubstantiation. He says that of course God could cause the miracle of real accidents existing without a subject, but he thinks this is not necessary.23 Rather, he explains that because sensible qualities are only our own sensations, God could cause us to have sensations of bread and wine although he has actually replaced these substances in our hands with the flesh and blood of Christ.24 Thus, while a miracle still takes place, it is much easier to explain what happens in the Cartesian way, with sensible qualities as modifications of the soul, than to explain how a real accident, which is only a mode, can subsist without an underlying substance. In the Cartesian case, God merely intervenes in the process of perception upon the occasion of exchanging the substances. In the Scholastic explanation, God would have to separate a mode from its substance, which is contradictory, because it is the nature of a mode to subsist in its substance. For offering this occasionalist simplification of the Cartesian explanation, Rohault was accused of being a heretic. Paul Mouy, like Lemaire, also claims that this debate over transubstantiation touched off the persecution of the Cartesians, but asserts that the principal target was Cartesian physics, not Cartesian theology. Mouy himself, however, carefully documents that the only book put on the Index is the 1650 Amsterdam edition of the Meditations, which contains the explanation of the Eucharist in the answers to the "Fourth Set of Objections," and this only donee corrignatur. Mouy believes the major attack is from nonchurchmen, citing Louis XIV's verbal order to the

23 Traite de physique (Paris: Vve de C. Savreux, 1671), pp. 41-42. See also Rohault, Entretiens sur la philosophic. 24 Ibid., p. 57.

Transubstantiation

139

archbishop of Paris, Harlay, to put a stop to the Cartesians' speculations on transubstantiation.25 However, Louis XIV was concerned to keep order, and it must not be forgotten that his confessor, Jean Ferrier, was a violent anti-Jansenist. An attack on the Cartesians was an attack on Arnauld and Nicole. 5. JEAN-BAPTISTE DE LA GRANGE'S ATTACK

There is further evidence that the explanation of transubstantiation touched off major opposition to the Cartesians. In 1675 Jean-Baptiste de La Grange published Les principes de la philosophie, contre les nouveaux philosophes Descartes, Rohault, Regius, Gassendi, le P. Maignan, &c., which was followed by several more works attacking the new philosophers. It is interesting to note that La Grange, like Malebranche, was a member of the Oratory. Unlike Malebranche, however, La Grange is concerned to present and to protect a philosophy that had been taught for over five hundred years in all the academies of Europe. Most of Scholastic theology is based on its principles, particularly those explanations used to explicate mysteries of Christianity to combat the heretics.26 La Grange begins by pointing out that the appeal of Cartesian philosophy rests on its being easier than the Peripatetic. However, there is something very bad in it. Cartesianism ruins a good part of Catholic theology and ordinary philosophy. One need not examine Descartes's works in depth. It is enough to know that he says that Catholic theologians have been deceived for hundreds of years about sensible qualities. So if Descartes's doctrine is not erroneous, it is at least dangerous. All novelties in religion are bad. The major example of Descartes's intent to destroy Catholic theology and ordinary philosophy is in his answer to the "Fourth Set of Objections" to his Meditations. There he says that the Scholastic explanation of the Eucharist is incomprehensible! And then he has the audacity to dedicate the Meditations to the doctors of the Sorbonne. This is nothing but mockery.27 ^5 Mouy, Le Developpement de la physique cartesienne, 1646-1712 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1934), pp. 169-70. y8ta Platonica), More had considered the objection of those who might query the infinitude of God's goodness by asking why he did not create the world sooner, or people other stars, or create a boundless world.8 More's counterargument had been that the universe could not be without beginning in time, or without limits in size, not because of any imperfection in God, but simply because of the nature of things themselves: 7 The unexpected presence in the early poems of lengthy astronomical discussions is explained by More's belief that the superiority of the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic is a sign of the superiority of reason over sense, and therefore of the independence of the soul, and of its superiority over the body. On this aspect of the early poetry see the important article by Staudenbaur, "Galileo, Ficino, and Henry More's Psychathanasia," Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968): 565-78. 8 Sts. 26-28.

176

Problems of Cartesianism Why was this world from all infinity Not made? say'st thou: why? could it be so made Say I. For well observe the sequency: If this Out-world continually hath wade Through a long long spun time that never had Beginning, then there as few circulings Have been in the quick Moon as Saturn sad; And still more plainly this clear truth to sing, As many years as dayes or fleeting houres have been. For things that we conceive are infinite, One th'other no'te surpasse in quantity. So I have prov'd with clear convincing light, This world could never from infinity Been made. Certain deficiency Doth alwayes follow evolution: Nought's infinite but tight eternity Close thrust into it self: extension That's infinite implies a contradiction.9

The opposite view, however, became the focal theme of Democritus Platonissans, which in fact More presented as a corrective sequel to the aforementioned canto of Psychathanasia.10 The presumed mathematical contradiction of the stanzas above was now removed by the recognition that for two measures (whether temporal or spatial) bearing a fixed ratio to each other, the resulting numerical inequality between finite collections of each measure does not hold for infinite collections.11 This permitted More to entertain the idea that the uni9 Sts. 35-36 (quoted in the preface to Democritus Platonissans, see n. 10, below). More's "Out-world" (st. 35) is "The sensible World": "The Interpretation Generall," Philosophicall Poems (Cambridge, 1647), p. 430. 10 To show the relationship between Democritus Platonissans and Psychathanasia, bk. 3, canto 4, More quoted for the reader's convenience the last ten stanzas of the canto in the preface to the new poem. Also, in the 1647 edition of the poems he placed Democritus Platonissans immediately after Psychathanasia and before Antipsychopannychia (the third part of Psychodia Platonica). (In Democntus Platonissans and the Philosophicall Poems [1647] the titles of the 1642 poems appear in Latinized form. I am following this example.) 11 Democntus Platonissans, sis. 28ff. St. 71 reads:

Henry More

177

verse was now infinite in expanse, infinitely old, and infinitely plural in its constituents. An infinity of star-centered planetary systems, each perhaps even supporting some kind of life,12 extended throughout an infinitely extended void space, thus displaying God's infinite goodness: Wherefore this precious sweet Ethereall dew For ought we know God each where did distill, And thorough all that hollow voidnesse threw And the wide gaping drought therewith did fill, His endlesse overflowing goodnesse spill In every place; which streight he did contrive Int' infinite severall worlds, as his best skill Did him direct and creatures could receive For matter infinite needs infinite worlds must give. The Centre of each severall world's a sunne With shining beams and kindly warming heat, About whose radiant crown the Planets runne, Like reeling moths around a candle light. These all together, one world I conceit. And that even infinite such worlds there be, That inexhausted Good that God is hight A full sufficient reason is to me, Who simple Goodnesse make the highest Deity. Ne fear I what hard sequel after-wit Will draw upon me; that the number's one Of years, moneths, dayes, houres, and of minutes fleet Which from eternitie have still run on. I plainly did confesse awhile agone That be it what it will that's infinite More infinites will follow thereupon, But that all infinites do justly fit And equall be, my reason did not yet admit. An important feature of More's arguments concerning infinitude, whether in 1642 or 1646, is that they applied equally to time and space. Unlike Descartes, More viewed space and time as two equally legitimate varieties of extension. Consequently conclusions depending solely on the properties of extension were applicable to either of them. See sts. 64—65 quoted below in text. !2 Ibid., st. 25.

178

Problems of Cartesianism infinite space and infinite worlds there be; This load laid down, I'm freely now dispos'd Awhile to sing of times infinitie, May infinite Time afford me but his smallest fee. For smallest fee of time will serve my turn This part for to dispatch, sith endless space (Whose perplext nature well mans brains might turn, And weary wits disorder and misplace) I have already passed: for like case Is in them both. He that can well untie The knots that in those infinite worlds found place, May easily answer each perplexitie Of these worlds infinite matters endlesse durancie. Wherefore at once from all eternitie The infinite number of these Worlds He made, And will conserve to all infinitie, And still drive on their over-moving trade, And steddy hold what ever must be staid; Ne must one mite be minish'd of the summe, Ne must the smallest atom ever fade, But still remain though it may change its room; This truth abideth strong from everlasting doom.13

It is certain that these reversals in More's thinking were inspired in some measure by the cosmology presented in Descartes's Principia. Although uniquely Cartesian influences are difficult to detect in the text of the poem,14 where it may be noted Descartes's name does not 13

Ibid., sts. 50-51, 64-65, 70. For example, it might appear that in st. 36 More is employing the Cartesian notion of extensionality as the essence of body: 14

What makes a body saving quantity? What quantitie unlesse extension? Extension if 't admit infinity Bodies admit boundlesse dimension.

Henry More

179

appear, the prefatory matter in the 1646 volume proves More's awareness of the Cartesian universe and of some of the philosophical ideas associated with it. On the page facing the first page of the poem proper, More quotes with implicit approval excerpts from the first two articles of Part 3 of Prindpia, in which Descartes reminds the inquirer into the nature of the visible world of the infinity of God's goodness and power, and therefore of the error of imagining limits to his creation, and of our presumption in fixing such limits where he has decreed none.15 Again, in the prefatory remarks "To the Reader" we find an appeal to the authority of Prindpia Philosophiae in support of the ideas of an infinity of worlds and an infinite universe: If I had relinquished here my wonted self, in proving Dogmaticall, I should have found very noble Patronage for the cause [the infinity of worlds] among the ancients, Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, &c. Or if justice may reach the dead, do them the right, as to shew, that though they be hooted at, by the Rout of the learned, as men of monstrous conceits, they were either very wise or exceeding fortunate to light on so probable and specious an opinion, in which notwithstanding there is so much difficultie and seeming inconsistencie. Yet in the 1642 edition of Psychathanasia, which was written and published before More read Descartes, we find the following (bk. 2, canto 2, st. 12): The naked essence of the body's this Matter extent in three dimensions (Hardnesse or softnesse be but qualities)

Consequently he did not take this concept of body from Descartes, but from an older source. In the article on "Body" in "The Interpretation Generall" (Philosophicall Poems, 1647 ed., p. 423) he quotes the definition in Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 3:7: "some define Body as what has three dimensions combined with resistance or solidity" (Loeb ed., 1933, trans. R. G. Bury, p. 351). Then he comments: "Near to this is that description, Psychathan. Cant. 2. Stanz. 12. lib. 2. Matter extent in three dimensions: But for that avmruTrux [resistance], simple trinall distension doth not imply it, wherefore I declin'd it." 15 However, the full text of art. 2 makes it clear that Descartes is forbidding the investigation of final causes, an injunction that will frequently incur More's disapproval.

180

Problems of Cartesianism Nay and that sublime and subtil Mechanick too, Des-Chartes, though he seem to mince it must hold infinitude of worlds, or which is as harsh one infinite one. For what is his mundus indefinite extensus, but extensus infinite'? Else it sounds onely infinitus quoad nos but simpliciter finitus. But if any space be left out unstuffd with Atoms, it will hazard the dissipation of the whole frame of Nature into disjoynted dust. As may be proved by the Principles of his own Philosophic. And that there is space wherever God is, or any actuall and self-subsistent Being, seems to me no plainer then one of the[ir?] 16 xoivcti evvoica17

Yet the precise nature and extent of the Cartesian inspiration in Democritus Platonissans remain uncertain. Was the "new Philosophick Furie" that produced the 1646 essay due solely to a reading of Descartes, with the ancient Atomists providing conventional humanistic trappings? Or to a fresh pre-1644 reading of the Atomists, with Pnncipia Philosophiae as an independent and timely contemporary corroboration of their insights? Or again, to Principia as a catalyst leading More to reevaluate the writings of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius? And given the Cartesian influence in 1646, did it consist solely in the infinitist and mechanistic aspects of Descartes's cosmology? Complete answers to these questions may not be easy to obtain, but a closer look at the passage just quoted will provide some clues. In the first place, it is evident that More is out of sympathy with one of the specially Cartesian variations (pace Nicholas of Cusa) on the ancient infinitist conceptions: the familiar distinction between "infinite," which applied only to God, and "indefinite," which described Descartes's limitless universe. For More the universe is simply either infinite or finite, although from a merely human standpoint a finite universe might appear infinite. Second, in arguing that a universe simpliciter finitus would disintegrate and disperse (in accordance with the theory of vortex pressure which is "the Principle of his own 16 It is "the": 1646 ed.; "their": 1647 ed. Either reading is acceptable, with "their" referring to "the Principles." 17 Democritus Platonissans (1646 ed.), A2r—v. For "mundus indefinite extensus," see Principia, pt. 2, art. 21; for "communes notiones," see pt. 1, arts. 49-50. Why does More write the Greek expression for "communes notiones"? Is this a deft reminder of the Stoic origin of the idea?

Henry More

181

Philosophic" that More has in mind), More is thinking of a single atomistic world placed in an infinite void, a supposition that is quite unintelligible in Cartesian terms; furthermore, he is using a common Atomist criticism of Stoic cosmology.18 Third, the order of precedence in which the ancient Atomists and the modern "Mechanick" are presented in the passage, viewed in relation to the content and title of the poem, implies that in 1646 More saw Principia as a striking contemporary revival of cosmological ideas originally due to the ancient Atomists.19 We note the description of Descartes as a "Mechanick," which from a neo-Platonist like More scarcely suggests the high esteem reserved for, say, Plato or Plotinus, though, on the other hand, it would probably be unwarranted to read "that sublime and subtil Mechanick" as a piece of irony. In More's eyes the author of Principia Philosophiae was the skilled artificer of a cosmological machine within the atomist tradition, and perhaps therefore in that sense a worthy successor to Lucretius. Of supplementary relevance here is the fact that in the collected Philosophical Poems, published in 1647, the only wholly favorable references to Descartes (in the "Notes upon Psychathanasia") are to his mechanical explanation of light, which More finds "far more solid and ingenuous, agreeing exactly with all the properties of light," than that of Digby,20 and to his vortex theory of the tides, which More finds "far more successefull" than that of Galileo, and "exactly agreeable with the (j)cuvou£va of Nature" 21 18 Cf. Epicurus to Herodotus, in Epicurus, The Extant Remains, ed. Cyril Bailey (Oxford: University Press, 1926), p. 23, and Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans R. D. Hicks, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1925), 2:245. 19 More would have been interested to note that Descartes devoted a whole article to an explanation of why "Democriti Philosophiam non minus differre a nostra, quam a vulgari," Pnndpia, pt. 4, art. 202. There would have been no need for this disclaimer had the two philosophies not had sufficent elements in common to make comparison possible. 20 Philosophicall Poems, p. 384. The note in question refers to bk. 3, canto 2, st. 16, where he brings into the discussion "the opinion of that learned Knight in his Book of Bodies," that is, of Sir Kenelm Digby in the first of his Two Treatises: In the one of which The Nature of Bodies', In the other, The Nature of Mans Soule, is looked into: in way of discovery of The Immortality of Reasonable Soules (Paris, 1644; London, 1645). Digby maintained a particle-stream theory of light, as distinct from Descartes's impulse theory. 21 Philosophicall Poems, pp. 391-400. Here the note refers to bk. 3, canto 3, st. 56, which links the motion of the tides to that of the earth.

182

Problems of Cartesianism

It seems, therefore, that for More in 1646 Descartes was essentially a new and gifted (Christian) thinker in the Atomist tradition, the author of a mechanical cosmology, which, pruned of its refinements and separated from its philosophical foundations (which More in any case thought unessential), provided him with influential contemporary support in his magnification of the divine goodness and the soul's immortality, just as the teachings of the Atomists, purified of their darker aspects, provided him with an ancient pagan source for the justification of the same Christian truths: And to speak out: though I detest the sect Of Epicurus for their manners vile, Yet what is true I may not well reject. Truth's incorruptible, ne can the style Of vitious pen her sacred worth defile. If we no more of truth should deign t'embrace Then what unworthy mouths did never soyl, No truths at all mongst men would finden place But make them speedie wings and back to Heaven apace.22

Mutatis mutandis—More never questioned Descartes's moral stature, only the effects of his dualist mechanism on Christian belief— we could substitute Descartes for Epicurus in this stanza, and it would still exemplify a constant component in More's apologetic policy. Mention of policy leads me to a further comment on Democritus Platonissans. In writing that it marked a change in More's "perspectives" in philosophy (see above), rather than a change in philosophical beliefs, I was trying to suggest a feeling that for all his poetic fervor, More lends to the poem a mildly Pyrrhonian flavor, which prevents us from being quite certain about his real views at that time. He labels the poem an "essay" rather than a "song" (as was Psychodia Platonica), and in the preface "To the Reader" makes the following significant remarks: 22

Democntus Platonissans, st. 20.

Henry More

183

I onely make a bare proposall [of the infinity of worlds] to more acute judgements, of what my sportfull fancie, with pleasure hath suggested: following my old designe of furnishing mens minds with varietie of apprehensions concerning the most weightie points of Philosophic, that they may not seem rashly to have settled in the truth, though it be the truth: a thing as ill becoming Philosophers, as hastie prejudicative sentence Politicall Judges. But if I had relinquished here my wonted self, in proving Dogmaticall, I should have found very noble Patronage for the cause among the ancients. . . . . . . For mine own part I must confesse these apprehensions [of the Atomists and Descartes] do plainly oppose what heretofore I have conceived; but I have sworn more faithfull friendship with Truth then with my self. . . . now roused up by a new Philosophick furie, I answer that difficultie [the disparity in the 1642 poem between the finite "Creature" and the infinite Creator] by taking away the Hypothesis of either the world or time being finite: defending the infinitude of both. Which though I had done with a great deal of vigour and life, and semblance of assent, it would have agreed well enough with the free heat of Poesie, and might have passed for a pleasant flourish: but the severitie of my own judgement, and sad Genius hath cast in many correctives and coolers into the Canto it self; so that it cannot amount to more then a discussion. . . . To this we might add the quatrain that stands at the head of the poem: 'Gainst boundlesse time th'objections made, And wast infinity Of worlds, are with new reasons weigh'd, Mens judgements are left free. Part of More's apologetic strategy, which he commends to others, is to review diverse philosophical positions, however dubious the source, and to select from them what seems best suited for his purpose: witness his use of Descartes and the Atomists. Here we have the earliest instance of a major canon of More's propagandist metho-

184

Problems of Cartesianism

dology, a rule of method to which he adhered throughout his life, and which, as we shall see, received explicit formulation in The Apology of 1664. But the above passage shows that in addition More is following a rule of suspension of judgment (which was also explicitly stated in The Apology). I do not think that in Democritus Platonissans cosmological infinitude has necessarily become for More a personal intellectual conviction, as it was for Descartes and Lucretius. Rather, he is proposing it as a respectable opinion, which he himself had mistakenly dismissed in 1642, but which he now sees as an acceptable and persuasive means of demonstrating God's infinite goodness. Perhaps because of uncertainty about the validity of infinitist arguments, he wants to leave the truth of their conclusions an open question: "Mens judgements are left free." What is not an open question is the theological terminus ad quern of the whole exercise: the infinitude of God's creative power and goodness. The last half-dozen lines of the passage above indicate that More's philosophical caution relates directly to his views on the relations between philosophy and poetry. The "free heat of Poesie," which communicates spiritual discovery and imaginative invention, is also the appropriate vehicle for the persuasive power of zealous philosophical conviction. But it must be distinguished from, and tempered by, that "severitie of judgement" without which self-assurance can be an unbecoming impediment to the acquisition of philosophical truth. More's belief in such a distinction between the poetic and the intellectual, and the ironic fact that his own poetic practice is a cautionary example of an attempt to marry lyricism to philosophical commentary,23 illuminate in an interesting way a neglected aspect of his early reaction to Descartes. Were the Cartesian demonstrations of God's existence and the soul's immortality not a forceful example of that self-assurance which grounds itself on arguments supposedly demonstrative yet vulnerable to the severest judgment? And was the whole Cartesian system not the most confident contemporary expression of the power of the philosophical imagination, a system that enticed the 23

On this and other aspects of More's poetic writing, see the excellent introductory study in Philosophical Poems of Henry More, comprising Psychozoia and Minor Poems, ed. Geoffrey Bullough (Manchester: University Press, 1931), esp. pp. Ixxv-lxxvii.

Henry More

185

poet as much as it challenged the philosopher? The texts provide us with affirmative answers to both questions, thereby showing that there was a distinct poetic element in the attraction the Cartesian system had for the young More. Writing in the preface to the second edition of Psychodia Platonica, which appeared in the Philosophicall Poems of 1647, More asks the reader to forbear with him for not finding the time or interest24 to provide "a more determinate decision" of the speculations in his writings to date, but hopes that the additional explanatory notes in this second edition will win for it as many favorable readers as there were for the earlier volume. Then he continues: As for others, whom sensuall immersion or the deadnesse of Melancholy have more deeply seiz'd upon, I must acknowledge that in my own judgement I can seem no better to them then a piece of highly inacted folly, they obstinately preferring that sad ground of incredulity before any thing lesse then a Demonstration. For whose satisfaction Mounsieur des Charles hath attempted bravely, but yet methinks on this side of Mathematicall evidence. He and that learned Knight our own Countryman 25 had done a great deal more if they had promised lesse. So high confidence might become the heat and scheme of Poetry much better then sober Philosophy. Yet has he not done nothing, though not so much as he raiseth mens expectations to. And if he had performed lesse, it had been enough to souls that have well recovered that divine sagacity and quick sent of their own Interest. If this sweet ethereall gale of divine breathing do not quicken and enliven the sent and relish of such arguments as Reason, Nature, and story will afford, they will all prove weak and uselesse: Especially to exercised Wits that have so writhen and wrested their phansies that they can imagine or disimagine any thing, so weak24

"I must crave leave a while to deferre it, till I find the thing it self of more consequence, and my self at better leisure" (Philosophicall Poems, B3r). 25 Digby's purpose in writing the Two Treatises was to demonstrate the immortality of the soul (see n. 20, above, for full title). His proof depended on the fact that bodies, but not souls, obey physical laws: hence the soul is not material. Cf. Betty Jo Dobbs, "Studies in the Natural Philosophy of Sir Kenelm Digby [Part I]," Ambix 18 (1971): 1-25, at 3, 14; Don Cameron Allen, Doubt's Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), pp. 165-66.

186

Problems of Cartesianism ened it that it is born down as wel with the smallest as greatest weight: so crusted and made hard their inward XQitrjOtov by overmuch and triviall wearing it, that the delicate discrimination and divine touch of the soul is even lost, in so much that it would be safer to ask the judgement of young lads or Countrey idiots concerning the force of Arguments for Gods existence or the Souls immortality, then those lubricous Wits and overworn Philosophers. And surely if we will but admit of Providence and her eye to be placed upon man, and this world to be his instruction, together with the undistorted suggestions of his own heart, these easie hints and pointings will be found no fallacious directions. And true opinion is as faithfull a Guide, as Necessity and Demonstration.26

Descartes the metaphysician would seem to be of more dubious apologetic value than Descartes the "Mechanick." Naturally, More approves totally—as he always will—the major results of Descartes's metaphysical investigations: the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. But for More the Christian heart, however lowly, knows these truths independently of metaphysical argumentation, which serves only those already aware of the "divine touch" within them, and which becomes sterile in the absence of this "sweet ethereall gale." Moreover, Descartes's metaphysical demonstrations, though courageous, still lack the mathematical certainty so confidently claimed for them. However much they may be presented as the soberest of philosophical performances, their "high confidence" suggests that they might come more appropriately from the pages of a poetical composition than from the pages of a philosophical manual or metaphysical treatise.27 Yet More had considered Spenserian stanzas a suitable vehicle for his own philosophical explorations, so his comment on Descartes's "high confidence" clearly cannot be a criticism depending for its force on a tacit disdain for poetry. But it does depend on the special distinction (discussed above) between poetry and philosophy, and on 26

Philosophicall Poems, B3r-w. I assume that by 1647 More had acquired one or other edition of Descartes's Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Paris, 1641; Amsterdam, 1642). 27

Henry More

187

the unspoken recognition that there was in Descartes something resembling poetic fervor, be it only the intellectual assurance with which he proclaimed the twin realities of God and the immortal soul. It is as though More saw in Descartes a mechanist philosopher with poetic impulses, thus complementing himself at that date, a Christian poet with philosophical tendencies. Toward the end of the following year More was writing his first letter to Descartes, the opening pages of which are such an extravaganza of praise that it is difficult to know what to take seriously. Nevertheless, a phrase from his eulogy of the Dissertatio de Methodo 28 catches one's attention, if only because it makes one wonder if Descartes would have been entirely happy to read it as a compliment: "In your Method you reveal yourself, with a certain sportful yet handsome sort of discretion, to be such a man that nothing more pleasant and amiable, nothing more noble, more gallant, could be 28 I use the partial title of Etienne de Courcelles's Latin translation of the Discours because this was the version More studied in preparation for his correspondence with Descartes. There are two pieces of evidence for this. First, his letter to Descartes of October 21, 1649 contains verbatim quotations of numerous lines and phrases from de Courcelles's translations of La Dioptrique and Les Meteores: Oeuvres de Descartes, publiees par Charles Adam &? Paul Tannery: Nouvelle Presentation, ed. B. Rochot, P. Costabel, J. Beaude, 11 vols. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964-74), 5:435-44. (This revised and augmented photolithographic edition of AT has now superseded the 1897-1913 edition. I refer to it hereafter as AT[NP].) Second, the covering letter More sent to Hartlib with the first letter to Descartes (see n. 36, below) refers to the latter's published works in the following terms: "The publishing of those precious and incomparable bookes of naturall philosophy, wch specimina are such, that I professe, although I read them with as much prejudice, as any thing I take the paines to read (and I thank God that is with very little) yett they have wonne so high an esteem in my judgement that methinks all that have attempted any thing in naturall Philosophy hitherto, are mere shrimps and fumblers in comparison of him" (More to Hartlib, December 2, 1648: for source see n. 36, below). It is scarcely possible to take "specimina" to be anything other than a direct reference to de Courcelles's translation, the full title of which reads: Renati Des Cartes Specimina Philosophiae: sen Dissertatio de Methodo recte regendae rationis, & veritatis in scientiis investigandae: Dioptrice, et Meteora, Ex Gallico translata, &f ab Auctore perlecta, variisque in locis emendata (Amsterdam, 1644). More might have acquired Principia and Specimina as a single volume. The two works were published by Louis Elzevier at the same time (July 1644), and were usually bound and sold together; see AT(NP), 6:v, and 8 (i):xv. More did have (or had access to) the 1637 French edition, since he makes a textual comparison between the Latin and French editions in the letter to Descartes of October 21, 1649 (AT[NP], 5:440). Because of his much greater familiarity with Latin than with French, however, his working text would still have been Specimina.

188

Problems of Cartesianism

imagined or desired, than your natural qualities and dispositions."29 For More there was a lighthearted, playful aspect to the Dissertatio: "/mono quodam, sed eleganti sane modestiae genere." When we remember that for a seventeenth-century reader lusorio here would have had overtones of "the theater" or of "a performance,"30 we may say that the Dissertatio impressed More as a divertissement philosophique, in which elegance of style, geniality, and the literary device of the autobiographical form were intended to entertain the reader, rather than burden him with dry disputation. And More would surely have been happy to note, in Part 1, Descartes's love of poetry and esteem for eloquence, both of which moreover were gifts of nature rather than acquired disciplines.31 Elsewhere in the same letter More writes that everything in Principia Philosophiae, Dioptrice, and Meteora is "so well-fashioned, and so finely consonant with itself and with nature, that the wit and counsel of men could scarcely desire a spectacle more agreeable or more welcome,"32 and in the covering letter sent to Hartlib with the first letter to Descartes, More talks of the "beauty and comely complyance of one part with another" of Descartes's "frame of Naturall Philosophy."33 Most significant of all, in my view, is a remark in More's letter 29 More to Descartes, December 11, 1648 (AT[NP], 5:237). (Except where otherwise stated, all translations are my own). Note that all More's letters, including those to Continental correspondents, are dated old style (cited as o.s.), whereas those to More from Descartes and other Continental correspondents (such as Limborch) are dated new style (cited as n.s.) 30 For example, Adam Littleton's Linguae latinae liber . . . A Latine Dictionary (London, 1678) gives for lusorium (sb.): "a place to play in, gaming-house, theatre, amphitheatre." The classical sense was "a place where shows of gladiators and wild beasts were given" (Lewis & Short). 31 AT(NP), 6:543. 3 2 AT(NP), 5:237. 33 More to Hartlib, December 11, 1648. John Finch, More's pupil at Christ's College during 1647-51, was later to make a shrewd comment on the virtues of "complyance of one part with another" in philosophical systems. Writing to his sister, Anne Viscountess Conway, in May 1658 he remarked: "As to Descartes my Dear I would with all my heart that I could thinke his Philosophy as true as coherent: but coherency is no argument for he must be a man of mean parts, that forgetts himself so far as to make one deduction contradict another. In short, most of Descartes I looke on as the old Philosophy in new names. . ." (Archibald Malloch, Finch and Baines: A Seventeenth Century Friendship [Cambridge: University Press, 1917], p. 13).

Henry More

189

to Clerselier, of May 14, 1655, where he characterizes Descartes by invoking Horace's tribute to Homer: That line from Horace, Qui nil molitur inepte, suits no one more fittingly than it does that divine man.34

To see the force of the allusion, and at the same time to highlight the significance of the preceding lines from the letters of December 11, 1648, we recall in full the relevant passage from Ars poetica: How much better he who makes no foolish effort: Sing, Muse, for me the man who on Troy's fall Saw the wide world, its ways and cities all. Not smoke after flame does he plan to give, but after smoke the light, that then he may set forth striking and wondrous tales— Antiphates, Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops. Nor does he begin Diomede's return from the death of Meleager, or the war of Troy from the twin eggs. Ever he hastens to the issue, and hurries his hearer into the story's midst, as if already known, and what he fears he cannot make attractive with his touch he abandons; and so skilfully does he invent, so closely does he blend facts and fiction, that the middle is not discordant with the beginning, nor the end with the middle.35

Although as a general rule it would be questionable to substitute for a humanistic appoggiatura the original context from which it was borrowed, I find it difficult to believe that in this case More did not have the whole of Horace's tribute in mind when writing to Clerselier. The last lines of the extract detail, with surprisingly tolerable accuracy, how More might have wished to describe Descartes's whole philosophical system; they sum up in a peculiarly apt way those liter34 AT(NP), 5:248. 35 Horace, Ars poetica 140-52; in Satires, Epistles, Ars poetica, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1926-27), p. 463.

190

Problems of Cartesianism

ary qualities that he found in Descartes's writings. At the same time, the lines remind us that for More the imaginative unity and harmony of Descartes's oeuvre did not require, or entail, freedom from error. Nor should this be surprising: the blending of fact and fiction was a special task of the poet, whereas it was a perennial and unavoidable affliction of the systematic philosopher. The philosophical and theological reasons for More's initial involvement with Descartes's philosophy are well known: Descartes's concern to establish the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, his revival and "Christianizing" of ancient infinitist conceptions about the natural world, his belief in the Platonic ideal of the unity of knowledge, the clarity and distinctness of his philosophical approach, his rejection of substantial forms and the physics of the Scholastics in favor of a new and successful kind of natural philosophy. Yet I think there was another equally important group of characteristics that More was delighted to discover in Descartes's work: its unity as a creation of the imagination, its formal beauty and architectonic structure, its attractiveness and persuasive charm, its poetic force. More's reading of Descartes was as much a poetical experience as it was a philosophical awakening. The material we have examined so far suggests that More's interest in Descartes's ideas progressively widened during the few years following his acquisition of the Principia and Specimina. In 1646 the principal focus of attention was the infinity of the universe, to which was added in 1647 the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and further aspects of Descartes's mechanical hypothesis (i.e., the nature of light and the theory of the tides). By late 1648, however, More's interest was to extend to the broad range of teachings found in the Principia and Specimina. In November of that year Samuel Hartlib and others (notably Cudworth) persuaded him to write to Descartes, then living at Egmond.36 Although initially shy of intro36 Hartlib's important role in the More-Descartes correspondence has recently been demonstrated by Charles Webster, "Henry More and Descartes" (see n. 6, above). Webster's article reveals that Hartlib was the principal initiator of the exchanges, and that it was he who handled the transmission of the letters between Egmond and Cambridge. The proof of this is the 23 autograph letters from More to

Henry More

191

ducing himself to the great man, which would help to explain the eulogistic excesses of the first letter (December 11, 1648), More soon found himself engaged in an exchange of letters that constitutes one of the more significant sets of "objections and replies" in Descartes's correspondence.37 By 1650, therefore, More had acquired a comprehensive and detailed knowledge of most of Descartes's contributions to philosophy, and had developed an all-embracing and lasting interest in their implications for what More considered were the important theological and philosophical issues of the time. It is well known that the letters to Descartes consist mainly of criticisms, which arose naturally from genuine philosophical differences between the two correspondents. Yet it seems to me that it has not been sufficiently appreciated just how extensive these criticisms were, or what the implications of this might be for an assessment of More's changing reactions to Descartes.38 To illustrate the point, I shall enumerate, in no particular order, areas of contention that we find in the correspondence (and the list is not intended to be exhaustive).

Hartlib, dating from December 11, 1648 to July 28, [1655?], and the copy of a letter of November 27, 1648 from More to an unknown correspondent, all of which are in Bundle 18 of the Hartlib Papers, University Library, Sheffield, England. Descartes, his philosophy, and More's correspondence with him, are the principal topics dealt with in this collection, three of which are covering letters sent with the letters to Descartes of December 11, 1648, March 5, and October 21, 1649 (there is no letter to Hartlib of July 23, 1649, the date of More's third letter to Descartes). The Hartlib letters were first noted by G. H. Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius: Gleanings from Hartlib's Papers (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947), pp. vi, 88, but seem not to have been seriously studied before Webster's article. See further my own examination of them in the study cited in n. 67, below. (It should be noted that Webster's article is marred by a dozen or so misreadings and omissions in the transcription of excerpts from More's letters to Hartlib.) 37 There are seven letters in all: More to Descartes December 11, 1648, March 5, July 23, October 21, 1649 (o.s.); Descartes to More, February 5, April 15, end of August 1649 (n.s.). In addition there is More's "Responsio ad Fragmentum Cartesii" (July-August 1655?] (see below in text). I am preparing an edition, and English translation, of the complete More-Descartes correspondence, together with a historical and philosophical commentary. 38 Cf. A. Lichtenstein, Henry More, p. 10; Marjorie Nicolson, "Early Stage," p. 368. On the other hand, Anderson notes that "the whole tone of Descartes' letters implied . . . that the actual meaning of More's criticism was to discredit almost the whole Cartesian system" (Science in Defense of Liberal Religion, p. 127).

192

Problems of Cartesianism 1. More's claim that extensionality is a property common to both corporeal and spiritual substance, which are to be distinguished, rather, by the impenetrability (for More, tangibility) of the former and the penetrability of the latter, in opposition to Descartes's insistence that extension does not at all pertain to the spiritual or the mental, and that impenetrability (which for him differs from tangibility) is a logical consequence of corporeal extension.39 2. More's rejection of Descartes's claim that there cannot be a vacuum in nature, a point of difference that is evidently related to item 1. 3. More's doubts about Descartes's arguments denying the existence of atoms. 4. More's rejection of Descartes's distinction between an "infinite" and an "indefinite" universe (first encountered in the preface to Democritus Platonissans). 5. More's implied assumption of an absolute time and an absolute space (see n. 42, below), in opposition to Descartes's assumption of a God-dependent modal concept of time and of "space" as merely a conceptual mode. 6. More's claim that motion is a force or action, in opposition to Descartes's express insistence that force and motion are quite distinct, motion being a mode of body and force arising from God's creative power. Again, More's objection that the concept of translatio in Principia Philosophiae, Part 2, Article 25, leads to contradictions if taken as a definition of motion, and his skeptical queries about how the mode motion can pass from one body to another, and why rest, another mode with the same ontological status as motion, does not always pass from body to body. 7. More's awkward questions about the mind-body union. 8. More's even more awkward questions about Descartes's denial of a soul in animals, and his counterclaim that animals do have souls, and that indeed the whole universe is furnished with a multitude of spirits of various kinds.

39 See my paper "Force and Inertia in Seventeenth-Century Dynamics," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 2 (1971):l-67, at 7-8, n. 27.

Henry More

193

9. More's claim that there are phenomena that cannot be explained ex rationibus mechanicis. 10. More's difficulties over some of the astronomical parts of Principia Philosophiae. For example, his bland query about how Descartes can maintain both that the vortex containing the earth moves about the sun and at the same time that the earth does not move within its vortex. Also his objection to the vortex hypothesis itself: since every point on the axis of a vortex is the center of a circular slice of celestial matter moving with centrifugal tendencies, why are Descartes's vortices not cylindrical rather than ellipsoidal?40 11. A host of queries and objections arising out of the Dioptrice and Meteora, among them More's dissatisfaction with Descartes's analysis of refraction.41 It is surprising to realize that this lengthy catalogue lists areas of disagreement or particular points of dispute that represent almost all the criticisms that More was ever to level at Descartes on purely philosophical or physical grounds. The criticisms that appear in More's writings from the Antidote against Atheism onward can be found, either fully fledged or in embryo, either explicitly or implicitly, in the correspondence of 1648-49 and, in the case of Descartes's overconfidence in the "Mathematicall evidence" of his metaphysical demonstrations (which was not an issue in the correspondence), in the preface to the 1647 edition of Psychodia Platonica. And if we were to insist on more detailed evidence of More's early adherence to the notions of absolute empty space and absolute time, we could find it in ample quantity in letters of 1650-51 that More wrote to Anne Conway.42 Naturally, over the years More's criticisms of Cartesian 40

More to Descartes, July 23, 1649 (AT[NP], 5:388-89). It is interesting to note that More thought (wrongly) that Descartes was trying to explain the elliptical motions of the planets. It follows from this that More himself (at least) was acquainted with Kepler's "first" law. 41 These formed the content of More's letter of October 21, 1649, to which, however, Descartes did not reply (AT[NP], 5:434-43). 42 More to Anne Conway, September 9 [1650?], May 5 [1651], November 17 [1651], British Library, Sloane MSS., Add. 23, 216, ff. 302r-307t;. Because of their exclusively philosophical content, Marjorie Nicolson omitted these letters from her

194

Problems of Cartesianism

ideas received widely differing degrees of emphasis at different times, they were expressed in varying degrees of detail (often with new examples and counterinstances) in different contexts, and they underwent development and sometimes revision. Yet their basic philosophical or physical content did not, in my view, change significantly after 1650. The same is broadly true of those characteristics of Descartes and his philosophy of which More approved. In this same correspondence of 1648-49 and in the letters to Hartlib, Anne Conway, and others, in his published treatises up to (at any rate) the Divine Dialogues of 1668, More repeatedly commended Descartes's recognition of spiritual reality and of a separation (however philosophically unsatisfactory) between the spiritual and the material, or the more persuasive features of his cosmogony and natural philosophy, or his account of the origin of sensations, or his personal qualities of intellectual power and subtlety, breadth of imagination, and so on. The edition of the Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their Friends, 1642-1684 (London: Oxford University Press, 1930): see pp. x-xi. The letter of November 17 [1651] has been published by Paolo Cristofolini, "Una lettera rattato inedita di Henry More," Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia 24 (1969): 73-80, and republished, together with the two others, in his recent Cartesiani e sociniani: Studio su Henry More (Urbino: Argalia Editore, 1974), pp. 77-103. However, although Cristofolini provides a useful introduction to the three letters (ibid., pp. 77-88), the transcription of the texts themselves is of poor quality. There are numerous misreadings of More's autograph originals, some words are missing, there are several plain misprints, More's orthography is inconstantly maintained, and in eight instances whole sentences or phrases are missing. One effect of this is that in several places the text becomes unintelligible. All three letters, together with Anne Conway's previously unpublished letter to Henry More of December 3, 1651 (Christ's College Library, Cambridge), appear with a philosophical and historical commentary in my "Anne Conway et Henry More: Lettres sur Descartes (1650-1651)," Archives de Philosophie 40 (1977): 379-404. The letters deal with Anne's difficulties with Descartes's philosophy, which at that time she was systematically studying in Principia Philosophiae. The discussion on space and time is confined almost exclusively to the letter of May 5 [1651] (ff. 302r-303w), where More counters Anne's surmise that there cannot be an empty space by giving a series of detailed arguments showing that extension and duration pertain to nonentities as well as to entities. One passage contains this graphic illustration of More's absolute space: "Space is immovable, and impassible. All the porters in London will not be able to carry one foot square of it from Cheepsyde to Charing Crosse" (f. 303r).

Henry More

195

weaknesses and errors that More found in the Cartesian system did not prevent him from recognizing its good points or the personal merits of its creator. In short, and at the risk of oversimplification, the philosophical and physical grounds both of More's criticisms and of his approbation, as well as his admiration of certain qualities in Descartes the man, remained fairly constant between (say) 1648 and 1671. Consequently, More's progressive estrangement from Cartesian philosophy cannot be explained in terms of an initial "acceptance" of its doctrines turning to a final "rejection," or in the terms in which it was viewed by, for example, Majorie Nicolson: "From an almost abject discipleship, he passed to a period of questioning, though mingled with loyal defence, then, as his questions became more and more unaswerable, to a period of doubt and disillusion, until finally he became almost as violent an adversary as he had been a partisan."43 To my mind, a more accurate interpretation of More's gradual estrangement would be in terms of the function of Cartesian ideas within his own philosophical and theological development: the uses he found for them at different times, and the purposes motivating their treatment in his various publications. Accordingly, since More's objectives were influenced by changing circumstances, whether "internal" or "external," whether religious or philosophical (as is shown in part by the themes of most of his published works), his opinions of Descartes's philosophy were expressed in those works in varying ways and in differing degrees of fervor and stylistic explicitness. In support of this thesis I shall present a broadly chronological survey of what I feel are relevant significant features of More's writings. In the Descartes correspondence of 1648-49 the discussion was principally on the level of straightforward philosophical debate, since More's purpose there was simply to understand Descartes's ideas more fully. Although he had to be coaxed into corresponding by Hartlib and others, More was grateful for the opportunity to deepen his grasp of Cartesian principles by conversing with Descartes himself. The letters to Hartlib show clearly More's intentions at that time: 43

Marjorie Nicolson, "Early Stage," p. 363.

196

Problems of Cartesianism I am glad I shall hear from him before he takes this long journey [to Sweden]. For this letter answering is more consyderable to me then the answering of any I wrote yett to him.44 And the two next I intend to write will be muchwhat of the same importance for my designe, viz. the thorough understanding his philosophy, that I may be to my self a safe and able judge of it. Wch I am the more eagre of, because I never mett with any naturall philosophy yett, that seem'd to me worthy of so narrow a search, as this is. But at the very first seizure upon it, it would fall a peeces like rotten duck in a mans hand, or vanish like a mist, and leave nothing but a few empty termes, or Logicall notions, insted of substantiall truth. I pray you if you can learn, impart to me the occasion of Monsieur Des Cartes going into Sueden. . . ,45

And in the letter of September 24, [1649] we read: And now I begin somewhat eagerly to expect an answer from Des Cartes of my last letter [July 23, 1649] to him. For I can settle my self to nothing to any purpose till I have thoroughly perused his Philosophy, nor can I go on in the perusall thereof till such time as I hear from him. . . ,46

As it turned out, More's perusal of Descartes's philosophy by the method of objection and reply was cut short first by Descartes's visit 44 The letter to which More eagerly expects a reply is that of July 23, 1649, in which his queries and objections range over a wider field, including notably the astronomical parts of Principia, than those in the previous letters. More made a similar remark about his letter to Descartes of March 5: "As for this second letter of mine to Monsieur Des-Cartes, wherein I propose many queries to him also, I am more eagre of an answer to it, then to what I wrote before. . ." (More to Hartlib, March 5 [1649]). Evidently, More hoped his successive letters would elicit from Descartes an increasingly detailed exposition of his thought. The "two next" referred to in this letter of August 27 did not materialize in precisely that form: due to the complications arising from Descartes's arrival in Sweden in September 1649, More incorporated all his remaining queries and objections into a single letter, that of October 21. See further my "Avertissement" to More's "Responsio ad Fragmentum Cartesii," in AT(NP), 5:628-47, at 632-37. 45 More to Hartlib, August 27 [1649]. 46 Although More had learned from Hartlib that Descartes intended replying to the letter of July 23 before going to Sweden, he did not in fact receive Descartes's reply (and only a draft at that) until 1655. I give the full details in AT(NP), 5:632-42.

Henry More

197

to Stockholm, where he was too occupied with other things to send replies to More's letters of July and October, and then by his death on February 11, 1650. Descartes's death affected More deeply, and it is easy to understand why. There was the natural affection he had for the Descartes he had come to know through their correspondence,47 and now this personal loss was compounded with the loss of the only genuine source of help in his study of Cartesian philosophy. Gone too was the possibility of completing the great system of philosophy of which the published specimina were for More such a magnificent debut. The letter to Hartlib of April 2, 1650 conveys More's mood of sorrowful frustration perfectly: I am half asham'd to confesse how sad your news of DesCartes death made me. I never liked his journey into Sueden. He show'd more courtship then discretion is going that voiage, I think. That waxen effigies is a poore recompense, he deserves a statue of gold.48 I am sorry one that might have liv'd a good whyle longer to very good purpose, though I think not so long as nine hundred and twenty yeares, as his hert and hopes and mirth might careelesly [sic] give out amongst his more familiar friends,49 should thus unexpectedly be cutt of in the midst of his designes. In his writings he has discover'd himself to be of such excellent accomplishments of minde, that he gained as much in my affections, as in theirs that have been most familiarly and intimately acquainted with his person, and consequently has left me an aequall legacy of sorrow. Wch is an hundred times more for 47 "I thank you for your care in the procuring this answer [Descartes's letter of February 5, 1649] and conveying it. The gentle man is as civill as he is learned" (More to Hartlib, February 20, 1649). 48 An allusion to Valari's wax death-mask of Descartes. See A. Baillet, La Vie de M. Des-Cartes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1691; Olms reprint, 1972), 2:426; also Charles Adam, Vie et Oeuvres de Descartes, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 13 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1897-1913), 12:586. 49 This Methuselan vision was not entirely the product of inventive hearsay. In 1637 Descartes believed that correct living, guided by new discoveries in medical science, would enable him to put back nature's deadline by a hundred years (Descartes to Huygens, December 4, 1637; AT[NP], 1:649). By 1647, however, the figure was four or five hundred years, according to the testimony of Abbe Picot, the translator of the French edition of Principia (A. Baillet, Vie de M. Des-Cartes, 2:448).

198

Problems of Cartesianism that he is dead, then for that he dide before he answer'd my two last letters. For as for those things I proposed there I can play the DesCartes my self, and solve my own quaeries, but all the witts in Europe putt together will not be able, I feare, to complete his designe, I do not mean of living a thousand yeares, for the very conceit of that project did almost disturbe the solemnity of my sorrow, but the finishing of the rest of the members and delineaments of his excellent Philosophy. It will be worth your enquiring to know whether he has left any thinge behinde him consyderable toward that purpose. I must confesse I promis'd my self a great deal of pleasure in the continuing of this letterconference with so thorough-paced a witt, but though I bee thus unexpectedly prevented in my hopes and fruitions, yett your care and paines and charges I esteem never the lesse, and be pleased to accept of the 2 enclosed peeces as a due fee [?] of that goodnesse and industry for wch I must honour you and love you. . . .

So for More in April 1650 an important—probably the most important—chapter in his relationship with Cartesian philosophy had ended. His "thorough perusall" of that philosophy, and its application in his own philosophical and theological program, would now have to continue, for the time being, with the help only of Descartes's letters of February 5, and April 15, 1649 and the works published before 1650. And Hartlib could be of no further help in this respect.50 In More's next four letters to him, dating between 1650 and February 1653, there was no mention of Descartes. There the main item of discussion was the existence and nature of ghosts and spirits, on which it seems Hartlib asked More to write a treatise. The Antidote against Atheism, published in 1653,51 was More's first 50

That is, not until 1655, though only in an ancillary way (see below in text). I have no evidence that Hartlib was able to satisfy More's inquiries about the writings Descartes left unpublished at his death. 51 An Antidote against Atheisme, or an Appeal to the Naturall Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether there be not a God (London, 1653). In the bibliography of More's publications included in her edition of the philosophical writings (see n. 6, above), Flora Mackinnon gives 1652 as the date of the first edition of the Antidote, and gives Harvard University as location. She also lists a 1653 edition. However, I have been informed by C. A. Staudenbaur (private communication) that there are no 1652 editions of the Antidote, and that Harvard possesses only the 1653 edition. The date of the first edition

Henry More

199

systematic treatise on an apologetic theme. The recent Civil Wars, the sectarian strife of the period, and as More put it in the first chapter of the Antidote, "a freer perusal of matters of Religion than in former Ages," had caused among the laity an upsurge in skeptical attitudes concerning the value of religious belief, which often took the extreme form of outright denials that there was a God at all. In the "Praefatio Generalissima" of the 1675-79 edition of his Opera Omnia, More tells us that he was particularly incited to write the Antidote on hearing, during a visit to London, that there were people who seriously indulged in such atheistical talk.52 On a more general theological level, he recalls in the preface to An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660) that the Antidote resulted from an awareness that atheism, "the other abhorred Monster" of "the bold impiety of the present age" (the monstrous twin being enthusiasm), was a natural concomitant of mechanistic materialism. He writes of atheism proudly strutting with a lofty gate and impudent forehead, boasting himself the onely genuine offspring of true Wisdome and Philosophy, namely of that which makes Matter alone the substance of all things in the world. This misshapen Creature was first nourished up in the stie of Epicurus, and fancied itself afterward grown more tall and stout by further strength it seemed to have received from some new Principles of the French Philosophy misinterpreted and perverted by certain impure and unskilful pens.