Descartes: A Biography

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

 Notes to Pages–

.Descartes to Huygens,October(iv.).

.Descartes to Mersenne,October(iv.).

.Descartes to Golius,April, refers to the ‘extraordinary cold’ of the previous

winter (i.).

.Huygens to Descartes,August(iii.), and Descartes to Huygens,

[August?] (iii.). At this time they were discussing the book before its pub-

lication inas:The Use and Nonuse of the Organ in the Churches of the United

Netherlands[Gebruyck of ongebruyck van ’ t Orgel in de Kercken der Vereenighde

Nederlanden] (Leiden: Elzevier). Huygens endorsed the orthodox view that music

is inappropriate in churches if it is offered merely as entertainment. However, if

it is used to assist people to have the appropriate emotions when praying, then

it should enjoy the same contingent justification as singing rather than merely

reciting the psalms.

.Descartes to De Wilhem,May(i.). David le Leu de Wilhem was

a councillor to the prince of Orange who married Constantia, Huygens’ sister,

in.

.Descartes to Golius,April (i.). In his letter to Huygens,November,

Descartes reminds his correspondent of ‘three mornings’ that they had spent

together discussing optics (i.).

.Baillet (), ii.–; Cohen (),.

.Saumaise to Rivet, [April] (iii.).

.Baillet (), ii..

.Ibid., ii.. Baillet reflected on this question in the Preface (vol.,p.ix), where

he refers to Descartes’ ‘secret marriage as something doubtful and a genuine stain

onhis celibacy.’ Toward the conclusion of the biography, Baillet (: ii.)

comments again on the unique blemish on his celibacy as ‘less a proof of his

inclination towards sex than of his weakness.’

.Baillet (), ii.. Italics added.

.Schoock (),–;Verbeek (),.

.Baillet (), ii..

.Cohen (),.

.See Tomalin (),–, which mentions that one of Pepys’ famous scientific

contemporaries, Robert Hooke, also ‘regarded the young female inmates of his

house as his natural prey’ (–). Saumaise commented, in, that pregnancy

among unmarried servants was not unusual, and that the French understood the

misbehaviour of the men involved as ‘gallantry’ (Saumaise to Rivet, [April],

iii.).

.See the information collected in Schama (),.

.Adam (),.

.Huygens wrote to Descartes onSeptember, when he was assisting Prince

Frederik Hendrik at the siege of Breda: ‘I am no further from you than the dis-

tance from here to Alkmaar’ (i.). His anonymous correspondent may have been

Cornelis van Hogelande (a Catholic medical doctor at Leiden), who may have sent

him medical books by canal from Leiden to Amsterdam and onward to Alkmaar

(see i.–).