Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

that the former French ‘pupil’ would progress more quickly in his studies

if he were to work with his former friend and adviser. The reply from

Amsterdam is so full of self-justification that it throws considerable light

onits author’s state of mind at the time. It also reveals Descartes’ suspi-

cions about the way in which copies of letters could be used, by copying

or showing them to others – a ruse to which he later succumbed himself.

Yo uwrote to me recently, after a full year of silence between us, that if I wished to

make progress in my studies I should return to you and that I would not be as well off

anywhere else as with you, and other things along the same lines. You also wrote in

familiar and friendly terms as if you were writing to one of your school pupils. What

reason could I think you had for writing in this tone to me, except that you planned to

show the letter to someone else before sending it, thereby giving them the impression

that I usually come to you for instruction....I could not have imagined that you are

so stupid and ignorant about yourself that you really believe that I ever learned, or

ever could learn, anything more from you than I usually do from all natural things –

than I usually learn, I say, even from insects and flies – or that you could teach me

anything. (i.–)

Descartes is either extremely sarcastic or intentionally hurtful, on this

occasion, diagnosing Beeckman’s mistake as the result of an illness rather

than malice: ‘I realize clearly from your recent letters that you have sinned,

not from malice, but from some illness. Accordingly, I shall pity rather than

blame you, and because of our former friendship I shall advise you about the

remedies by which I think you can cure yourself’ (i.). With that in mind,

he introduces a distinction between things that can be taught to someone

else and other things that cannot be learned by a pupil from a teacher. The

former include languages, history, experiments, and certain and evident

demonstrations that convince the mind, such as those found in geometry.

In contrast, if one is led to believe something without convincing reasons

or an authority on which one can rely, then ‘one is not said to have learned

it from someone, no matter how many times they may have heard it said’

(i.). Using this distinction or the criteria used to make it, Descartes

claims: ‘you will easily see that I have never learned anything, apart from

idle fancies, from yourMathematical Physics....Has your authority ever

moved me, or have your arguments convinced me? There were many things

that you said, which I believed and endorsed once I understood them. You

should understand that, just because I believed them immediately, it does

not follow that I learned them from you. I approved them because I had

already thought about the same things myself ’ (i.).