Descartes: A Biography

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The Principles of Philosophy() 

a promise of goodwill from the Society. The pitch to win Jesuit support

forthePrinciples, which is identified as his ‘Philosophy’, is similar to the

overtures to Father Charlet.

Having taken the trouble to write a Philosophy, I know that your Society [i.e., the

Jesuits] alone can do more than the rest of the world to make it valued or despised.

That is why I do not fear that people who are competent judges, and who think that

Iamnot completely lacking in judgment myself, will doubt that I shall do everything

I can to deserve their evaluation. I was very glad to hear that you took the trouble

to read it....I fully acknowledge that views that are very different to those that are

commonly accepted surprise readers initially, and I did not hope that mine would be

accepted immediately by those who read them. But I hoped that, bit by bit, readers

would get used to them and, the more they examined them, the more they would find

them credible and reasonable.

This conveys a completely implausible estimate of how thePrinciplescom-

pare to the philosophy that was widely taught in Jesuit colleges. While

acknowledging that Cartesian philosophy was sufficiently unfamiliar to

surprise or shock readers initially, Descartes suggests that patience and

the familiarity gained by persistent reading would be enough to win their

approval.

Descartes’ letter to Bourdin, apart from the extravagant compliments

and the conventional blandishments of French epistolary style, explains

why he cannot return to Paris again, in the near future, to benefit from

the stimulation afforded by intellectual conversation with his recently

acquired correspondent. The reason given is the usual one: he needs to

spend as much time as possible on research and writing.

The Theology of the Eucharist

The letters to the fourth Jesuit, Father Mesland, were completely differ-

ent from the other three just mentioned. Descartes acknowledged that

they had not known each other before the publication of theMeditations,

and that it was Mesland’s careful reading of that book and subsequent

questions about it that had first put them in contact with each other.

Mesland had evidently asked Descartes about the Tridentine theology of

the Eucharist, in particular about the way in which Christ was supposed

to be present in the Eucharist after the liturgical consecration. In general

terms, the reformed churches made a distinction between the manner in