in 1625. But again friends would call on him before he was up (he seldom got up before midday),
so in 1628 he joined the army which was besieging La Rochelle, the Huguenot stronghold. When
this episode was finished, he decided to live in Holland, probably to escape the risk of
persecution. He was a timid man, a practising Catholic, but he shared Galileo's heresies. Some
think that he heard of the first (secret) condemnation of Galileo, which had taken place in 1616.
However that may be, he decided not to publish a great book, Le Monde, upon which he had been
engaged. His reason was that it maintained two heretical doctrines: the earth's rotation and the
infinity of the universe. (This book was never published in its entirey, but fragments of it were
published after his death.)
He lived in Holland for twenty years ( 1629-49), except for a few brief visits to France and one to
England, all on business. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Holland in the
seventeenth century, as the one country where there was freedom of speculation. Hobbes had to
have his books printed there; Locke took refuge there during the five worst years of reaction in
England before 1688; Bayle (of the Dictionary) found it necessary to live there; and Spinoza
would hardly have been allowed to do his work in any other country.
I said that Descartes was a timid man, but perhaps it would be kinder to say that he wished to be
left in peace so as to do his work undisturbed. He always courted ecclesiastics, especially Jesuits--
not only while he was in their power, but after his emigration to Holland. His psychology is
obscure, but I incline to think that he was a sincere Catholic, and wished to persuade the Church--
in its own interests as well as in his--to be less hostile to modern science than it showed itself in
the case of Galileo. There are those who think that his orthodoxy was merely politic, but though
this is a possible view I do not think it the most probable.
Even in Holland he was subject to vexatious attacks, not by the Roman Church, but by Protestant
bigots. It was said that his views led to atheism, and he would have been prosecuted but for the
intervention of the French ambassador and the Prince of Orange. This attack having failed,
another, less direct, was made a few years later by the authorities of the University of Leyden,
which forbade all mention of him, whether favourable or unfavourable. Again the