Descartes: A Biography

end CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

Notes to Pages– 

(July) with the words: ‘Meantime, I ask you to love me and to believe that

Iamyour very humble and affectionate servant’ (i.). Likewise, he wrote to

Plemp (October): ‘Goodbye, and continue to love me’ (i.).

.Fer matwas born onAugustand, once he purchased his office in the

Toulouse parliament in, was secure enough financially to marry the following

year at the age of thirty-one.

.Beeckman recorded in hisJournal: ‘Mr. Rene Descartes of Peron, who in ́ 

had written a Treatise on Music for me, in which he shared his opinions about

that subject with me and which has been inserted into this work; this same man, I

say, came to Dordrecht to visit me onOctober,having first travelled from

Holland to Middelburg to look for me there.’ Beeckman (–), iii..

.‘He (i.e., Descartes) is the same one to whom I communicated, ten years ago, what

I had written about the causes of the sweetness of harmonies....’ Beeckman to

Mersenne (March), CM, ii.. See also editors’ notes in Descartes (–

), i..

.Beeckman to Mersenne (October), CM, ii.–.

.Descartes to Mersenne (December): ‘I have recovered one month ago the

original text of the little treatise in which I explain it [namely, musical intervals],

from which you have already seen an extract. It had rested for eleven years in the

hand of Mr. Beeckman, and if that is enough time for prescription he has a right

to claim it as his own’ (i.). Descartes informed Mersenne (January) that

he no longer had anything further to do with Beeckman (i.), and in a letter of

Marchhe quoted in Latin from the retrieved manuscript that he claimed

to have in his hands (i.).

.Cf.Discourse on Method:‘Imaybe mistaken, and what I think is gold and diamonds

may be merely pieces of copper and glass’ (vi.).

.See Chapterof this volume.

.See Evans ().

.Thoren (),–.

.Evans (),.

.Yates (),.

.Cf. Descartes to Mersenne,December:‘As regards the arguments of

Raymond Lull, they are only sophisms and I do not think much of them’ (ii.).

.See Hilgarth (). The subtitle of Sanchez’s book includes: ‘in which theBrief

Artof the illustrious and most pious doctor Raymond Lull is explained.’

.Agrippa (), li.

.Ibid.,.

.Ibid.

.Ibid.,.

.Ibid.,.

.Ibid.,.

.Ibid.,–.

.Ibid.,.

.Ibid.,.

.Ibid.,.