Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

about him. However, this almost reluctant concession to peace did not

prevent Descartes from entering the fray, once again, when he heard about

criticisms of his philosophy at Leiden in. Descartes was evidently in

a psychological state in which he wanted to cease hostilities, but he could

not resist the temptation to engage his ‘enemies’ on a new front. What

he wanted to do shows his state of mind; what he actually did follows the

patterns of a life engaged almost continuously in controversy.

Egmond-Binnen

Despite the apparent depression that hindered his normal output of work,

Descartes continued to grow plants in his garden, and to perform the

anatomical investigations that were required to complete work on what he

referred to as a treatise on man and/or a treatise on animals.Although

he wished for nothing other than ‘security and tranquility’, he became

involved in local affairs when Meeus Jacobs stabbed to death his stepfather,

Jacob Clopper, in the course of a row at an inn in Egmond-Binnen in

August. The results of the trial were appealed by the prosecutor,

and the convicted Jacobs fled the jurisdiction rather than risk appearing

and being given a harsher sentence. In his absence, he was sentenced to

being banished forever from Holland, Utrecht, and Zeeland, and to having

all his goods seized. Descartes seems to have been persuaded that Jacobs

was being harshly treated and, in particular, that the effect of the sentence

would be to harm his wife and children. In those circumstances, he wrote a

lengthy plea to Huygens, requesting that he intervene with theStadtholder

onbehalf of his unfortunate neighbour.

I appreciate that you have so many more important things to do than to interrupt your

work to read the greetings of a man who associates here only with peasants, that I

would not dare interfere by writing to you unless I had a reason to trouble you. The

reason I write is to give you an opportunity to exercise your charity towards a poor

peasant, who is a neighbour of mine, and who had the misfortune to kill someone else.

His relatives would wish to have recourse to the clemency of His Highness [Prince

Frederik Hendrik], to try to obtain his favour, and they also wish me to write to you

about it to ask you to put in a good word on their behalf if you have an opportunity of

doing so.

Descartes pleaded that the dead man had been battering his wife, that she

had separated from him, and that Jacobs had intervened in a brawl between

his stepfather and his brother-in-law. Jacobs was described as having led a