Descartes: A Biography

c CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (–) 

a different language (Latin). He explained to Hayneuve, with profuse

apologies, that he was evidently the author of the theses that had been

attacked at the Jesuit college, although he did not know the name of his

critic. He lied: ‘I assure you that no one has written me the name of whoever

proposed those theses, nor even the name of the discipline that he teaches,

although I can guess easily from the reasoning used that it is physics or

mathematics’ (iii.–). He then revealed the real reason for his worries.

Descartes imagined, not without some basis in reality, that the Jesuits acted

collectively and cohesively on all matters. There was therefore a danger

that the critique of a relatively obscure professor at Clermont College was

likely to represent the considered judgment of the whole Society of Jesus

onhis physics.

Since I know that all the members of your Society are so tightly united together that

nothing is ever done by one member that is not approved by all, and therefore that

whatever is written by one of you has much more authority than what is written by

individuals, I think it is not unreasonable for me to ask and expect from your reverence –

or, rather, from your whole society – what has been promised publicly by one of your

members. (iii.)

Having explained that he was willing to be taught once again by the Jesuits,

as he had been instructed earlier at La Fleche, the apparently docile alum-`

nusrequested a written version of the objections that had been disputed

in his absence in Paris.

A letter from Huygens onJuly provided another opportunity for

Descartes to reflect on his ambivalent relations with the Jesuits. Huygens

was on military manoeuvres again. On this occasion he was camped at

Reek, where he was taking refuge in his tent from ‘a great storm of wind

and rain’, and he was embarrassed to have heard a rumour that Descartes

had published something ‘about the soul and the divinity’ without even

telling him about it (iii.). Descartes dismissed the rumour as false.

He confirmed that he had not yet written anything that could be given to

a publisher, and that he was trying ‘to clarify what I wrote in the fourth

part of theDiscourse on Method’(iii.). He also repeated the phrase he

had used the same day, when writing to Mersenne, that he was about ‘to

go to war with the Jesuits’ because of what one of their mathematicians

had said about hisDioptrics.‘Ihaveknown the proverb for a long time:do

not stir up the hornets.Nonetheless, since they get stirred up all on their

ownand I cannot avoid it, I believe that it is better if I confront them all