Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

Christina was more likely to be interested in novel fancies, as her study

of ancient languages might suggest. In this context he acknowledged that

‘those who boast of having secrets, for example in chemistry or judicial

astrology, no matter how impudent and ignorant they may be, never fail to

attract curious people who buy their very expensive impostures’ (v.).

What he could offer was so far removed from the kind of occult knowledge

that stimulates wonder and desire in people that the queen might be

disappointed.

The final reason for Descartes’ reluctance was his great disappointment

onhis most recent visit to Paris, which was quoted earlier. He was worried

that a visit to Sweden might simply be another cause for regret.

Idonot imagine that anything similar will happen where you are. But the limited

success of all the journeys that I have taken during the past twenty years makes me

fear that, on this one, I shall only meet robbers who will strip me of everything, or that

I shall be caught in a shipwreck which will rob me of my life. Nonetheless, that will

not deter me if you judge that this incomparable queen persists in wishing to study my

views....But if that is not the case, and if she was simply experiencing a temporary

curiosity, I beseech and urge you to arrange, without displeasing her, for me to be

excused from this journey. (v.)

These parallel letters, like the earlier pair of similar letters onFebruary,

show Descartes at his dissembling best. He writes publicly that he is

anxious to serve the queen in any capacity that she may choose, and that

he is ready ‘to obey very exactly everything that is commanded on behalf of

her Majesty’ (v.). In private, he suspects that she may not understand

his philosophy, may not find it exciting enough, and that her passing

fancy is hardly a sufficient reason for someone in his state of health and

semiretirement to undertake a long journey into the northern cold.

The alternative and much more attractive option for Descartes was to

remain in Egmond and to complete a number of unfinished projects. One

of those was thePassions of the Soul. This was closely connected with the

unfinished sections of thePrinciples,inParts V and VI of which he had

hoped to include a discussion of living things and animals. His renewed

interest in physiology during the previous year gave him reason to hope

that he could complete both projects, and possibly publish his treatise on

animals as a fully worked-out version of an earlier draft treatise on human

nature.

Meantime, he also had inquiries from a new correspondent, the

Cambridge Platonist Henry More.