Descartes: A Biography

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Magic, Mathematics, and Mechanics 

about that of others, I have been able to live as solitary and withdrawn a life as in the

most remote deserts without lacking any of the conveniences that are available in the

busiest town. (vi.–)

It may have seemed, from the perspective of, that this transitional

period in his life was part of a grand design. However, Descartes cannot

have understood it that way in, when it remained unclear whether

anything of significance would result from further travel. He may have

thought that a change of climate would remove some of the most obvious

tensions in his life. One of those was a conflict between constructing a

viable philosophy of nature and the dominant influence of a pious religious

tradition according to which spirits were as real as stones or mountains.

Spirits in the World

Descartes’ brief and passing interest in the writings of Lull, Della Porta,

and Campanella provided an opportunity to reflect on the almost universal

belief at that time in the existence of spirits and their alleged influence

onthe natural world. It was almost a truism for most of his contempo-

raries that God is a spiritual being, that angels exist, that human minds

are spiritual, and that all these spirits have a significant impact on the

observable realities of our experience. There was an equally widespread

belief in witches and their nefarious powers.The Rose Cross fraternity

was completely unacceptable to its critics, not because of the powers that

it claimed for its members, since nearly everyone believed at the time that

such powers were commonly exercised, but because they were at the dis-

posal of Protestant preachers and were being used to undermine the faith

of uneducated Catholics or in some other way to cause evil.

Had anyone reported, in thes,that various religious or mystical

believers had visions or had exercised miraculous powers, hardly anyone

in France would have said that such was impossible or incredible.The

Spanish mystical writers of the Carmelite tradition in the sixteenth cen-

tury, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, were well known

and widely admired. Seventeenth-century France was notable for the bur-

geoning religious devotion that was designed to counteract the effects of

the Reformation. This emerged in many different forms that were adapted

to the capacities of various types of believers. While most people did not

know Latin and therefore could not understand what was being said in