Descartes: A Biography

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

In Search of a Career (–) 

Adding further insults to those already hurled, the sarcastic corre-

spondent asks if his former Dutch academic guide had ‘ever discovered

anything in your whole life that is genuinely worthy of praise’ (i.). To

help answer the question, he distinguishes three kinds of discovery: (a)

those that are found by the sheer power of one’s own mental ability; (b)

those discovered by chance; and (c) those that resemble the bits of glass

found by a blind man and mistakenly protected and concealed in a treasure

chest as if they were precious stones.Referring to Beeckman’s journal,

in which the Dutch mathematician carefully noted and dated various ideas

as they occurred to him, Descartes wrote: ‘I certainly do not wish to com-

pare your manuscript with such a chest, for I can scarcely believe there

could be anything better in it than bits of glass and debris’ (i.). He

then proceeds to reduce the two items for which Beeckman might have

claimed originality, his work on music and on hyperbolas, to what was

widely known to everyone who was familiar with the disciplines in ques-

tion. Descartes concludes by claiming, rather implausibly: ‘You should

believe that I wrote this letter, not in a fit of anger or with any malevolent

intentions towards you, but in a spirit of genuine friendship. For in the

first place, why should I be angry with you? Because you think that you

are better than me? As if I would care about that, I who am accustomed to

place myself among the lowest....’ (i.). Having congratulated himself

onhis own ‘characteristic modesty’, Descartes concludes by hoping that

his advice to an old friend will assist his recovery from whatever illness

has affected his judgment and that, once restored to health, ‘I shall not

be ashamed to be your friend and you will not regret having received this

letter from me’ (i.).

This whole quarrel about the extent to which he was intellectually

indebted to Beeckman was in stark contrast with what Descartes had

written to his special friend, about the very same issue, before embarking on

his travels in.Atthat time he had acknowledged to his Dutch mentor

that ‘you roused me from my indolence’ and that, if anything worthwhile

were to result from his studies, Beeckman could rightfully ‘claim it all

as [his] own’ (x.). The transition from being an immature, almost

obsequiously grateful and amorous admirer of Beeckman to the tetchy

and resentful independence of his mature years began with Descartes’

travels to Germany.

The radical nature of the transition, however, is hardly explained by

external factors. Descartes’ relations with other friends and supporters