Descartes: A Biography

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The Quarrel and Final Rift with Regius 

oblige me enormously if you were to alert me to the mistakes that you will have noticed.

ForIhave not been able to meet anyone, so far, who has told me about them and I see

that most men judge so poorly that I should not bother with their views. However, I

would treat yours as oracles.

Three months later he writes along the same lines to Chanut, asking him

to review thePrinciplesand to point out the many mistakes and obscurities

he would almost certainly find there, since ‘I cannot hope to be advised as

well about them by anyone else.’He had to acknowledge, however, that

the French resident in Sweden was more interested in moral philosophy

than in physics, and that he might lose interest very quickly in reading the

Principles, which had little to say about morality.

ByNovember, Descartes mentions that Chanut is waiting to get

a copy of the French edition of theMeditations,topresent it to Queen

Christina. This provoked Descartes into a lengthy reflection on the disad-

vantages of publication, a theme to which he returned often during these

years.

If I had only been as wise as savages are supposed to believe that monkeys are, I would

never have become known to anyone as someone who writes books. For savages are said

to imagine that monkeys could talk if they wanted to do so, but that they abstain from

talking so that they are not required to work. I have not been as prudent by abstaining

from writing, and therefore I no longer have as much leisure or as much rest as I would

have if I had been smart enough to keep quiet.

Since it was then too late to turn back the clock, and since there were

countless scholastics waiting to object to what he wrote, he thought he

would benefit by having a patron to protect him by their ‘power and

virtue’ (iv.). Despite this overture toward royal protection from afar,

Descartes did not consider travelling to Sweden at that stage. ‘I do not

believe that I shall ever go to the places where you live [Sweden], nor that

youwill retire to where I am [Holland]’ (iv.). The most likely way

in which they could meet and discuss philosophical issues of common

interest, he thought, would be if Chanut were to return to Paris and travel

through Holland en route. Descartes evidently changed his mind about

this in, and travelled to Stockholm on his final journey.

During these transitional years,–, there was also a change

in Descartes’ correspondence with Mersenne and Princess Elizabeth.

Mersenne had deferred a planned journey to Italy in,sothathe

could be in Paris when Descartes visited. Soon after Descartes’ departure,