Descartes: A Biography

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

Thoughts of Retirement 

Henry More

More wrote two letters to Descartes,DecemberandMarch

,atatime when Brasset was reporting open hostilities between the

royal court and theparlementin Paris.More was interested primarily in

Descartes’ conception of immaterial realities, such as God and the human

mind, and in his definition of matter as extension. The two questions were

interrelated. The courteous replies sent from Egmond testify to Descartes’

respect for the Cambridge Platonist and his acknowledgment of a kindred

spirit in Christ’s College.

Descartes was anxious to clarify that he conceived of God and angels

as powers rather than as bodies of some kind. ‘Thus it follows clearly

that no incorporeal substances are, in a strict sense, extended. I conceive

of them, rather, as certain powers or forces which, although they affect

extended things, are not themselves extended because of that’ (v.).

This conception of God and angels was reinforced by a programmatic

statement about how to conceive of God, and about the limitations

of human thinking in attempting to formulate an adequate concept of

God.

However, since I know that my intellect is finite and that God’s power is infinite, I

never determine anything about the latter. I consider only what I can perceive and

what I cannot perceive, and I am very careful that my judgment never differs from

myperception. Consequently, I boldly assert that God can do everything that I per-

ceive as possible; however, I do not boldly deny, on the contrary, that he is capable

of doing what is inconsistent with my conception. I say simply that that implies a

contradiction. (v.)

This was fundamentally the same reply that Descartes had given Arnauld

the previous year.It was a commentary not directly on our knowledge of

God, but on the limitations of human understanding. It was also consistent

with the answer that he had given Burman in April, when he asked

Descartes about the concept of matter. Descartes had told Burman that

wecannot claim to have adequate knowledge of anything, even of bodies,

and that we are constrained to work within the limitations of our concepts

even if we recognize their limits.This may have been a late discovery or

acknowledgement on Descartes’ part, but such intellectual humility was

better late than never.

The other topic that attracted a lengthy reply to More was the status

of animals. Here Descartes distinguished clearly, in explaining human