Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

a spectator rather than an actor in the dramas that unfold there. I rooted out of my

mind all the errors that could have slipped into it. Not that I thereby imitated the

sceptics...onthe contrary, my whole plan was designed only to convince myself, and

to reject the shifting ground and sand in order to find rock or clay. I think I succeeded

reasonably well in this because, by attempting to uncover the falsehood or uncertainty

of the propositions that I studied...byusing clear and certain arguments, I found

none so doubtful that I did not always draw some reasonably certain conclusion from

it, even if only that it contained nothing that was certain. (vi.–)

Toward the end of, when he was still at Neuburg, Descartes

received a copy of Pierre Charron’s bookOn Wisdomfrom a Jesuit priest,

Johannes Molitor (–).In February,herecorded in his

notebooks that he was working on a treatise that he hoped to complete

before Easter of that year (April). He also wrote that he planned to

make a pilgrimage to Loreto before the end of November. Loreto had

been a traditional destination for Christian pilgrims who believed that the

house of the Virgin Mary had been transported there by angels from its

original site in the Holy Land. Descartes must have been familiar, from his

student days, with some of the extensive literature devoted to pilgrimages

and with the cult of the Virgin that was encouraged by the sodality in her

name at La Fl`eche. For example, the Jesuit father Louis Richeome had

written a detailed guide for pilgrims,The Pilgrim to Loreto.Richeome

divided the pilgrimage into forty days, a symbolic number that coincided

with the duration of the church’s pre-Easter penitential season of Lent.

Pilgrims were advised to set out on foot for their destination, to pace their

daily journies with prayers, doing penance and asking God’s forgiveness

fortheir sins. At the conclusion of the pilgrimage, on the fortieth day,

the pilgrim was asked to reflect on the vanity of earthly kings and the

insignificance of working in their service, in contrast to being a soldier of

Christ: ‘What do you expect in your vocation of an earthly army? What can

youearn thereby that is more precious than the friendship of an earthly

king, and the reward of some fickle, human saviour?’The contrast with

worldly kings, their interminable wars, and the vanity of their ostentatious

celebrations would have struck a chord with Descartes. Accordingly, he

promised ‘to reach Loreto on foot from Venice, if I can do so without

discomfort and if that is what is usually done. If I find it impossible to do

so, I shall at least bring to this pilgrimage all the devotion that is usually

involved’ (x.). Despite the obvious enthusiasm of such good inten-

tions, however, there is no evidence that Descartes fulfilled this promise.