836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



edge that could not be acquired elsewhere. From his observations 

 he gained the great advantages of learning to believe nothing 

 lightly, and not to hold obstinately to the things which example and 

 habit had accustomed him to believe. He visited Holland, France, 

 Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol, Venice, and Rome. At Venice he 

 witnessed the ceremony of the wedding of the Doge with the Adri- 

 atic. He made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Loretto. 



Returning to France, Descartes entertained for a time the 

 thought of purchasing a position as lieutenant-general of the 

 province, at Chatellerault, but the legal chicanery connected with 

 the office was not to his taste, and he gave up the scheme. He 

 then took lodgings in Paris, and lived in the style of a modest 

 gentleman at ease. He gathered a few friends around him, among 

 whom were Mersenne and Mydorge, who were interested in the 

 problems of the refraction of light ; and together they experi- 

 mented in the grinding of lenses. With others who came to wit- 

 ness the experiments, the house became a kind of academy, and 

 too busy a resort to favor Descartes's studies. Meetings of literary 

 men and students had become common in Paris, the more impor- 

 tant ones being held with the Papal nuncio and Cardinal Riche- 

 lieu. Descartes, urged by his friends, attended them frequently. 

 He had, in his reflections on the choice of a position, become con- 

 firmed in the thought that he should not confine himself to any 

 business, but should devote his life to the cultivation of the 

 reason, and to advancement by every possible means in the knowl- 

 edge of the truth according to the method which he had pre- 

 scribed. At one of the meetings Cardinal de Bdrulle was struck 

 by a remark of Descartes's that the true art of memory was not to 

 be gained by technical devices, but by a philosophical appreciation 

 of things. He was thereby prompted to urge upon him a plan of 

 life in almost exact accord with his conviction. 



His associations in Paris, with their distractions not being 

 favorable to the close attention which he sought to exercise to 

 qualify himself for the execution of his purpose, Descartes deter- 

 mined to retire to some place where he could be alone and could 

 pursue his studies untrammeled. He went to Holland, where he 

 found variety and congenial retreats during the period from 1629 

 to 1649 in thirteen different places, and where he composed or re- 

 vised most of his works. In the choice of these residences he 

 seems to have been influenced, according to Mr. Wallace, by the 

 two considerations of the neighborhood of a university or college, 

 and the amenities of the situation. He appears to have also had 

 a decidedly religious inclination. He found Franeker, the seat of 

 a university, very agreeable, because it afforded him opportunity 

 for attending mass, and gave him freedom in the religious exer- 

 cises on which his attention was apparently most fixed during the 



