Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

There are fewer surviving letters in the opposite direction, most likely

because Beeckman did not write as often to his junior colleague. However,

he did write from Middelburg, in a letter addressed to Descartes at Copen-

hagen after his departure. In this letter Beeckman refers to Descartes as

‘his special friend’, and expresses the hope that they might join forces in

future to collaborate on scientific projects. ‘May God grant that we may

live together for some considerable time to penetrate to the core of the

kingdom of science. Meantime, take care of your health and be careful in

all your travels, lest the only thing that you appear to lack is the practice

of that science which you value so highly’ (x.–).

Given the evidence of the letters alone, it is difficult (almost four cen-

turies later) to interpret Descartes’ understanding of his relationship with

Beeckman. At the time of this correspondence, he was twenty-three years

old and seems not to have had any genuinely intimate friends, and none

who were women. His relationship with Beeckman points to a pattern

that is familiar to many young men, then and since, who are educated

ataresidential school for boys and who fail subsequently to establish

genuine friendships with women as easily as their more socially expe-

rienced counterparts. Whatever the exact details of Descartes’ friend-

ship with Beeckman, he at least gives the impression in these letters of

being emotionally immature, of having a strong affectionate attachment

to an older and more experienced mathematician, and of writing to him

with an intensity of feeling and immediacy that one would normally

expect between lovers. As already mentioned, Beeckman married his

fianc ́ee the following year, and Descartes’ correspondence with him lapsed

until.

The fact that Descartes was not married at this stage of his life is not

itself significant. His brother, Pierre, who was five years older than him,

married only in(at the age of thirty-one), and Beeckman married at

the age of twenty-nine. Some of Descartes’ other contemporaries, such as

Pierre Fermat, married at about the same age, once they had established

themselves in a career with a steady source of income.Since Descartes

had no career and had not even reached the age required to inherit the

bequest from his mother, the mere fact that he remained unmarried at the

ageoftwenty-three is insignificant.

The intensity of his initial friendship with Beeckman, however, is rel-

evant in the context of his later career, and is confirmed by Descartes’

emotional response when he heard, ten years later, of an exchange of