Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

objections, they could send them to Descartes in Holland and he would

reply. Such corrections and the author’s replies could be printed at the

back of the book.

Descartes allowed Mersenne plenty of latitude in arranging for the

publication of theMeditations.Hegavehim permission to ‘correct or

change everything that you think is appropriate’ (iii.), and he left it

to Mersenne to choose those who would be invited to submit objections.

When sending the text in November, Descartes included a model of

what appropriate objections might look like. He had already requested

some from ‘a priest at Alkmaar’ who wished to remain anonymous,

although he also divulged his name as Caterus.Given the anticipated

problems of making copies available to relevant theologians, Descartes

suggested that it might be more practical to have twenty or thirty copies

printed in advance – a plan he had abandoned earlier when he could not

trust the local printer, because he did not wish the text to be seen by

‘the ministers of this country before our own theologians see it’ (iii.).

This decision, of limiting circulation to Catholic theologians, was evidently

compromised when Mersenne invited Thomas Hobbes to compose objec-

tions. Descartes, however, clung to his original decision. When Huygens

suggested, much later, that he might invite objections or comments from

Caspar Barlaeus (–), a Remonstrant theologian and professor of

philosophy at Amsterdam, Descartes politely declined.

Between Decemberand August,when the first edition

appeared in Paris, Descartes corresponded frequently with Mersenne

about the sets of objections that he had collected, the problems involved

in correcting printer’s errors at such a distance from Paris, and the need

to win the approval of the Sorbonne as a protection against future possible

objections. It is clear that, given the distance involved and the unreliabil-

ity of the messengers, Descartes lost control of the project in more senses

than one. For example, he informed Mersenne that he should not be sur-

prised if he did not find in the book ‘one word about the immortality of the

soul’, because he demonstrated only that the mind was completely distinct

from the body. Thus the human soul was not naturally subject to death as

the body was, although he could not demonstrate that God could not

annihilate it.Despite this clarification, the subtitle of the first edition

was printed as follows: ‘in which God’s existence and the immortality of

the soul is demonstrated’. One might assume that this was supplied by

Mersenne, because Descartes quite intentionally changed the subtitle, in