Descartes: A Biography

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The Quarrel and Final Rift with Regius 

and published hisPhysical Foundations.Heincluded a dedication to Prince

Frederik Hendrik datedAugust,onthe second page of which he

defended his right to depart from the philosophical path set out by his

master.

Unfortunately,Physical Foundationswas as far from Cartesian meta-

physics as Descartes had feared. However, it was also an accessible and

compact introduction to a range of philosophical problems, and it was

presented in a style that provided competition for Descartes’Principles.

The final and longest chapter, Chapter, was devoted to human nature.

Here Regius suggested that it would be redundant to ask how the mind

thinks; its nature is to think, just as the nature of matter is to be extended.

He argued that we know from Scripture that the human mind is a dis-

tinct substance that can exist apart from the human body, although this

is not something that we can discover by using our reason.By contrast,

wedefinitely know from experience that our mind is very closely joined

to the body ‘in a single substance’ and that its nature is such that it is

affected by the body and, in the opposite direction, that the mind affects

the body.He also introduced a descriptive phrase here that would be

the subject of further dispute with Descartes in: that ‘the human

mind, although a substance that is really distinct from the body, is nev-

erthelessorganicas long as it exists in the body,’ and that this so-called

organic connection is confirmed by epilepsy, apoplexy, and other similar

conditions in which the mind cannot avoid being affected by an injury to

the brain.Many of Regius’ specific suggestions about mental functions

were similar to those found in Descartes – for example, that the activity

of remembering depends on vestiges of prior thoughts that remain in the

brain, or that the will is a form of thought by which the mind accepts or

rejects something that it has understood.

Regius also addressed the fundamental question that had been raised by

Princess Elizabeth inas a criticism of Descartes’Meditations:howcan

a mind (which is apparently purely spiritual) move the human body simply

bydeciding to move it, if ‘deciding’ is understood as a form of thinking?

Regius adopted a solution that was very similar to what was implicit in

Descartes’ earlier work and that became explicit only later, in thePassions

of the Soul.The ‘solution’ involved two steps, the first of which was

that there is a ‘natural’ coincidence between the occurrence of certain

thoughts in the mind and corresponding motions in the body. According

to Regius, ‘we are equipped in this way by nature.’The second step