Descartes: A Biography

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Descartes and Princess Elizabeth 

reflect human embodiment, that is, those ‘that belong to the mind insofar

as it is united to the body’ (iv.). The mind-and-body pleasures are

presented to the imagination, confusedly; they tend to appear much greater

than they are in fact, and thus they are potentially misleading. ‘This is the

source of all the evils and all the mistakes of life’ (iv.). This leads

naturally to a discussion of the way in which passions represent goods

that are misleading. ‘Passions often make us believe that certain things

are much better and more desirable than they really are. When we have

taken a lot of trouble to acquire such things...their enjoyment reveals

to us their deficiencies, from which result dissatisfaction, regrets, and

remorse’ (iv.).The principal role of reason, in this context, is to

assist individuals to examine their goals critically and, if necessary, to

override the impulses that result from misleading passions.

By this stage, Descartes not only found that he was replying to letters

sent before his own most recent replies; he was also unsure about the

address of his royal correspondent, because he suspected that she might

have changed residence.Elizabeth reassured him, on September,

that she was living temporarily at Ryswijk, at the house of the prince

of Orange, while her usual accommodations were being refurbished.

Descartes provides a summary of his Senecan morality by listing four

truths on which Elizabeth should focus. These are: (a) that God controls

all things; (b) that the human soul ‘subsists without the body and is nobler

than it’ (iv.); (c) that human beings are relatively insignificant entities

in a vast universe; and (d) that, despite the fact that each of us is a distinct

person, we should ‘always prefer the interest of the whole, of which we

are part, to the interests of a particular person’ (iv.). This advice

was obviously designed to provide a wider context within which Elizabeth

might review some of the relatively minor problems that made her anxious.

It suggested that God was ultimately the cause of everything, that we

should accept what happens to us as an expression of His omniscient will,

and that the promise of immortality should prevent us from fearing even

death.

This must have seemed to Elizabeth almost like a string of cliches. ́

Theologians had discussed the compatibility of human choice with God’s

Providence since the time of Augustine’sOn the Free Choice of the Will,in

the fourth century, and the problem had acquired an added urgency in the

recent acrimonious debates between Arminians and Contra-Remonstrants

within Dutch Calvinism. It was predictable that Elizabeth would ask her