73 



DESCAKTES, RENE. 



DESHOULIERES, ANTOINETTE. 



671 



tory, and that he often depended more upon his own innate power for 

 going through his exercises than upon the lectures of the professor, 

 or the books which were put into his hands. This character in 

 Descartes was properly appreciated by his friends and tutors. He 

 formed the determination of renouncing all books, and endeavouring 

 to efface from his mind the knowledge which he had been taught, so 

 as to employ the power which he had gained by the discipline of his 

 college only to investigate the fundamental principles of human know- 

 ledge ab initio. Still this can hardly be thought to be a suddenly- 

 formed resolution. Even allowing this to have been a plan gradually 

 formed, the execution of it was a Herculean task ; nor was it 

 unattended with personal danger, as the contemporary history of 

 Galileo sufficiently proves. Considering therefore that Descartes was 

 at this time only nineteen years of age, the whole circumstance is one 

 without a parallel in intellectual history. 



Descartes wisely abstained from publishing his views at this time, or 

 indeed his mathematical discoveries, of which there is some probability 

 that be was in possession at this early age ; but conformably with the 

 fashion of the age among men of his social and political condition, he 

 engaged in the profesiua of arms. He served first as a volunteer in 

 the army of Holland, and then in that of the Duke of Bavaria ; and 

 ho was present at the battle of Prague in 1620, in which he conducted 

 himself with great intrepidity. There is no profession more inimical 

 to the study of abstract science than that of arms, and hence Descartes 

 soon abandoned it for the purer and more honourable career to which 

 his previous 8tudis and native ardour of mind were so admirably 

 adapted. But even during his attachment to the camp he did not 

 neglect his mathematical and philosophical inquiries. It is believed 

 to have been during his stay at Breda that Descartes composed his 

 ' Compendium Musicee,' although it was not printed till after his death. 

 Another circumstance indicative of his devotion to geometry is also 

 narrated in connection with the same campaign, and occurring also at 

 Breda. One day, seeing a group of people surrounding a placard, he 

 found it written in Flemish, a language which he did not understand, 

 and therefore applied to one of the bystanders for an explanation. 

 This person chanced to be Beckmann, principal of the college of Dort, 

 who, wondering that a young soldier should take any interest in 

 geometry the placard being, in keeping with the practice of the age, 

 a problem proposed as a challenge explained the problem to him ; 

 but a said to have displayed something of the collegiate pedantry 

 which was then so common. Descartes however promised him a 

 solution, which he sent to the principal early next morning. 



The cause of his resigning his commission is said to have been disgust 

 at the atrocities which he witnessed in Hungary ; but it is more likely 

 that his object was to see the world under a different aspjct, which 

 his travelling as a private individual would enable him to do. He 

 visited in succession Holland, France, Italy, and Switzerland, and 

 stayed some time in Venice and Rome. It has often created surprise 

 that while in Italy he did not visit Galileo ; and the cause which has 

 been usually assigned was his jealousy of the fame of that father of 

 physics an assumption which there is reason to fear is too well 

 founded. His repulsive conduct towards Fermat, whose overtures of 

 an amicable correspondence he so long rejected with an appearance of 

 disdain, seems alao to intimate the wish of Descartes to reign alone 

 in the circle of his associates, and in the philosophic world altogether. 



After completing bis travels, Descartes determined to devote his 

 attention exclusively to philosophical and mathematical inquiries ; and 

 his ambition was to renovate the whole circle of the sciences. He 

 sold a portion of his patrimony in France, aad retired to Holland, 

 where he imagined he should be more free to follow his inclination 

 without the interruptions to which his celebrity in his own country 

 rendered him perpetually liable. His writings however involved him 

 in much controversy, and the vivacity and dogmatism of his temper 

 often led him to treat in a somewh.it supercilious manner the greatest 

 rnen amongst his contemporaries. The personal courage of Descartes 

 was great ; and, unlike many valiant writers, he was valiant in the 

 most trying personal dangers. 



The tame of Descartes was very great, even in his lifetime ; and 

 that not only among the learned, but in the highest circles of society 

 in every part of Europe. When therefore the church rose in arms 

 against the heresy of his philosophy, and he was subjected to much 

 persecution and some danger, he accepted the invitation of Christina, 

 queen of .Sweden, who offered him an asylum and complete protection 

 from the bigoted hostility of his enemies. He was treated by the 

 queen with the greatest distinction, and was released from the 

 observance of any of the humiliating usages so generally exacted by 

 sovereigns of those times from all whom they admitted into their 

 presence. The queen however, probably from the love of differing 

 from every one else, chose to pursue her studies with Descartes at five 

 o'clock in the morning ; and as hia health was always far from robust, 

 and now peculiarly delicate, the rigour of the climate, and the unsea- 

 sonable hour, which formed such a striking contrast with tho-o to 

 wl.icn be had been many years habituated, brought ou pulmonary 

 disease, of which he very soon expired, in the fifty-lourth year of his 

 age. The queen wished to inter him with great honour in Sweden ; 

 but the French ambassador interposed, and his remains were conveyed 

 for sepulture amongst his countrymen in Paris. Thus fell one of the 

 greatest men of his age, a victim to the absurd caprice of the royal 



patron under whose auspices he had taken shelter from the persecutions 

 of the church. 



Probably there is scarcely a name on record, the bearer of which 

 has given a greater impulse to mathematical and philosophical inquiry 

 than Descartes. As a mathematician he actually published but little, 

 and yet in every subject which he treated h has opened a new field 

 of investigation. The simple application of the notation of indices to 

 algebraical powers has totally new-modelled the whole science of 

 algebra. The very simple conception of expressing the fundamental 

 property of curve-lines and curve-surfaces by equations between the 

 co-ordinates, has led to an almost total supersedence of the geometry 

 of the ancients. The view which he proposed of the constitution of 

 equations is contested as to originality ; but admitting, as we do, his 

 claims on this head to be open to dispute, the writings and discoveries 

 of Descartes have laid the foundation for such a change in the general 

 character of mathematical science as renders it extremely difficult for 

 those who have not given very great attention to the older writers to 

 follow the course of reasoning which they employed. The claims of 

 Descartes however to the originality of his views ou the composition 

 of equations, and the relation between their roots and their co-efficients, 

 are discussed under the name of his competitor. [HARRIOTT.] 



His speculations in physics have often been ridiculed by subsequent 

 writers, and there can be no doubt that they are sufficiently absurd. 

 Still many reasons may be urged in mitigation of that ridicule, and 

 even of the more temperate censure which careful and judicious histo- 

 rians of science have dealt out upon the intellectual character of Des- 

 cartes. It ought especially to be observed that the theories of all his 

 predecessors were mere empirical conjectures respecting the places and 

 paths of the celestial bodies ; they constituted, so to speak, the plane 

 astronomy of those times, in contradistinction to the physical astro- 

 nomy of ours. Those paths were not deduced as the necessary effect 

 of any given law of force, but as the result of some fixed and unalter- 

 able system of machinery invisible to us, and directly under either the 

 control of original accident or the original will of God. Innumerable 

 hypotheses of the nature of this machinery had been framed before 

 the time of Descartes ; and he, being dissatisfied with all others, 

 adopted that of an ethereal fluid, which was continually revolving 

 round a centre, like the water in a vortex. This was not so unnatural 

 to a philosopher living before the 'Principia' made its appearance as 

 it would be absurd in any one to contend for it now. We have indeed 

 been too much in the habit of measuring the philosophical sanity of 

 Descartes by the knowledge of our own times a most unjust test to 

 be applied to the intellectual efforts of any man by his successors. 

 We ought rather to look to what he did accomplish under all the diffi- 

 culties of his position in respect to the then state of science, than 

 measure him by the efforts which were attended with no beneficial 

 result. He was, however, the first who brought optical science under 

 the command of mathematics, by the discovery of the law of the 

 refraction of the ordinary ray through diaphanous bodies. He deter- 

 mined the law itself, but not as the result of any law of force. This 

 was a later discovery : but Descartes led the way. 



His inquiries in the positive philosophy were distinguished by great 

 acuteness and subtlety ; and though his theory has not in a dire.t 

 form obtained many advocates in this country, it has in reality been 

 the foundation of most of the sects which have since risen in every 

 part of Europe. Differing as these systems do so very widely at first 

 sight, this may be considered a paradoxical assertion. It is nevertheless 

 the fact. 



Tho works of Descartes have been collected and reprinted three 

 times. The first: 1, 'Opera Omnia,' 1690-1701, 9 vols. 4 to, Auist. 

 2, 'Opera Omnia,' 1713, also 9 vols. 4to, Anast. 3, 'Opera Omuia,' 

 1724-26, in 13 vols. 12mo. Paris. 



DE.SHOULIERBS, ANTOINETTE DU LIGIER DE LA 

 GARDK, a French poetess, born of distinguished parents in 1633. 

 Great pains were taken with her education : she learned the Latin, 

 Italian, and Spanish languages, and studied poetry under the poet 

 Hesnant, who often assisted her in her juvenile compositions, and 

 polished her verses when defective. Her life was rather a romantic 

 one. In 1651 she married the Sigueur Deshoulieres, a lieutenant- 

 colonel in the service of the Prince of Conde. She visite 1 the court, of 

 Brussels in company with her husband, where she rendered herself 

 suspected by the government, which caused her to be arreated and 

 imprisoned at Vilvorde, near Brussels. Here she passed her time in 

 reading the Bible and the works of the Father*, until, after eight 

 months, she found means to escape, with the assistance of her husband. 

 They were shortly afterwards introduced to Louis XIV., and Madame 

 Deshoulieres was soon esteemed one of the literary ornaments of tho 

 age. Not only did sha write a variety of poems herself, but she was 

 an object of adoration to the contemporary poets, who honoured her 

 with the title of the tenth muse. Racine and Pradou having each 

 written a tragedy on the subject of Plucilra, M.idauie Dashoulierea 

 brought upon herself some discredit by taking the part of tho latter 

 agaiust the former, in ridicule of whom she composed a sati ic,d puetn. 

 Racine, however, soon had his revenge, for Madame Deshoulieroa 

 brought out a tragedy which met with nothing but ridicule, and 

 afforded him an opportunity of writiug a parody. She wrote several 

 other dramatic pieces, but totally without success. The death of her 

 husband, to whom she waa greatly attached, was the occasion of one 



