Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/136

Rh and morality ; while those of Hobbes and Gassendi both somewhat senior to Descartes and with a dogmatic system of their own already formed are a keen assault upon the spiritualism of the Cartesian position from a generally &quot; sensational &quot; stand-point. The criticisms of the last two are the criticisms of a hostile school of thought ; those of Arnauld are the difficulties of a possible disciple. In 1644 the third great work of Descartes, the Principia Philosophise, appeared at Amsterdam. Passing briefly over the conclusions arrived at in the Meditations, it deals in its second, third, and fourth parts with the general principles of physical science, especially the laws of motion, with the theory of vortices, and with the phenomena of heat, light, gravity, magnetism, electricity, &c., upon the earth. This work exhibits some curious marks of caution. Un doubtedly, says Descartes, the world was in the begin ning created in all its perfection. &quot; But yet as it is best, if we wish to understand the nature of plants or of men, to consider how they may by degrees proceed from seeds, rather than how they were created by God in the beginning of the world, so, if we can excogitate some extremely simple and comprehensible principles, out of which, as if they were seeds, we can prove that stars, and earth, and all this visible scene could have originated, although we know full well that they never did originate in such a way, we shall in that way expound their nature far better than if we merely described them as they exist at present.&quot; 1 The Copernican theory is rejected in name, but retained in substance. The earth, or other planet, does not actually move round the sun ; yet it is carried round the sun in the subtle matter of the great vortex, where it lies in equilibrium, carried like the passenger in a boat, who may cross the sea and yet not rise from his berth. In 1647 the difficulties that had arisen at Utrecht were repeated on a smaller scale at Leyden. There the Cartesian innovations had found a patron in Adrian Heerebord, and were openly discussed in theses and lectures. The theological professors took the alarm at passages in the Meditations ; an attempt to prove the existence of God savoured, as they thought, of atheism and heresy. When Descartes complained to the authorities of this unfair treatment, 2 the only reply was an order by which all mention of the name of Cartesianism, whether favourable or adverse, was forbidden in the university. This was scarcely what Descartes wanted, and again he had to apply to the prince of Orange, whereupon the theologians were asked to behave with civility, and the name of Descartes was no longer proscribed. But other annoyances were not wanting from unfaithful disciples and unsympathetic critics. The Instantice of Gassendi appeared at Amsterdam in 1644 as a reply to the reply which Descartes had published of his previous objections; and the publication by Regius of his work on Physical Philosophy gave the world to understand that he had ceased to be a thorough adherent of the philosophy which he had so enthusiastically adopted. It was about 1648 that Descartes lost his friends Mersenne and Mydorge by death. The place of Mersenne as his Parisian representative was in the main taken by Claude Clerselier (the French translator of the Objections and Responses), whom he had become acquainted with in Paris. Through Clerselier he came to know Pierre Chanut, who in 1645 was sent as French ambassador to the court of Sweden. Queen Christina, the daughter of the great Gustavus, was not yet twenty, and took a lively, if a somewhat whimsical interest in literary and philosophical culture. Through Chanut, with whom she was on terms 1 Princip. L. iii. S. 45 8 GEuvr. x. 26. of familiarity, she came to hear of Descartes, and a corre spondence which the latter nominally carried on with the ambassador was in reality intended for the eyes of the queen. The correspondence took an ethical tone. It began with a long letter on Love in all its aspects (February 1647), 3 a topic suggested by Chanut, who had been discus sing it with the queen ; and this was soon followed by another to Christina herself on the Chief Good.^ An essay on the Passions of the Mind (Passions de I Ame), which had been written originally for the Princess Elizabeth, in development of some ethical views suggested by the De Vita Beata of Seneca, was inclosed at the same time for Chanut. It was a draft of the work published in 1650 under the same title. Philosophy, particularly that of Descartes, was becoming a fashionable divertissement for the queen and her courtiers, and it was felt that the presence of the sage himself was necessary to complete the good work of education. An invitation to the Swedish court was urged upon Descartes, and after much hesitation accepted ; a vessel of the royal navy was ordered to wait upon him, and in September 1649 he left Egmond for the north. The position on which he entered at Stockholm was cer tainly no sinecure, and utterly uusuited for a man who had always tried to be his own master. The young queen, full of plans and energy, wanted Descartes to draw up a code for a proposed academy of the sciences, and to give her an hour of philosophic instruction every morning at five. And in order to tie him down to the country she had already determined to create him a noble, and begun to look out an estate in the lately annexed possessions of Sweden on the Pomeranian coast. But these things were not to be. His friend Chanut fell dangerously ill ; and Descartes, who de voted himself to attend in the sick-room, was obliged to issue from it every morning in the chill northern air of January, and spend an hour in the palace library. The ambassador recovered, but Descartes fell a victim to the same disease an inflammation of the lungs. The last time he saw the queen was on the 1st of February 1650, when he handed to her the statutes he had drawn up for the proposed academy. Ten days after he was dead. The queen, in her first grief and enthusiasm, would have liked to bury him grandly at the feet of the Swedish kings, and to raise a costly mausoleum in his honour : but these plans were overruled, and a plain monument in the Catholic cemetery was all that marked the place of his rest. Sixteen years after his death the French treasurer D Alibert made arrangements for the conveyance of the ashes to his native land ; and in 1667 they were interred in the church of Ste Genevieve du Mont, the modern Pantheon. In 1819, after being temporarily deposited in a stone sarcophagus in the court of the Louvre during the Revolutionary epoch, they were transferred to St Germain-des-Pres, where they now repose between Montfaucon and Mabillon. A monument was raised to his memory at Stockholm by Gustavus III.; and some years ago a statue was erected to him at Tours, with the inscription Je pense, done je suis on the pedestal. Descartes was never married, and probably had little of the amorous in his temperament. He has alluded to a childish fancy for a young girl with a slight obliquity of vision ; but he only mentions it a propos of the consequent weakness which led him to associate such a defect with beauty. 4 Mythical rumours represent him as telling a belle that he found no beauty comparable to the beauty of truth. In person he was a little man, with large head, projecting brow, prominent nose, and eyes wide apart, with black hair coming down almost to his eyebrows. His voice was feeble. He usually dressed in black, with unobtrusive propriety.
 * (Euvr. x. 3.
 * CEuvr. x. 53.

