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a command of great ideas, a strangeness of beauty, in his Horatian Ode and even in his trifles. The Fantastic Poetry, when he sets it to deal with familiar themes such as children or gardens, has an almost pathetic charm, as of a wanderer come back from ranging over the world, whose delight in his own house and fireside is quickened and enriched by memories of all the wonders and terrors he has seen. There is a kind of domesticated audacity in his imagination which makes him the true poet of the transition from poetry to prose. The discords of that transition sound like strange harmonies in his verse. He tamed the Fantastic Poetry and taught it common sense; but he did not teach it not to be poetry. That task remained for writers such as Dryden, who, belonging to an age weary of spiritual conflict and mystery, discredited the Fantastic Poetry by sheer parody of its style, before they superseded it with a new kind of verse formed to express new and clearer, but less profound, ideas.

CHAPTER XXVII

DESCARTES AND CARTESIANISM

THE period of Continental history which extends from the beginning of the Thirty Years' War to the Peace of the Pyrenees is, from the point of view of intellectual progress, chiefly noteworthy for the works of Descartes and for the growing influence of the Cartesian Philosophy. Descartes was a Frenchman. Now, he travelled over the whole of Europe; he lived for twenty years in Holland; he was connected with numerous learned men of different countries; and among his pupils were a Princess Palatine and a Queen of Sweden. To some extent, therefore, he represents the whole of Europe, which, moreover, even in his lifetime displayed a fervent partisanship for or against his philosophy.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century France, where Descartes passed his days of studentship, presented, in the world of thought, a spectacle of disorder and confusion. The instruction given in the colleges was still wholly scholastic; but in the field of philosophy the yoke of authority had been cast off since the time of Ramus and the Renaissance. The philosophy of Aristotle was being rejected, and no substitute could be offered in its place except some other system likewise borrowed from the ancients, such as Neo-Platonism, Platonism, Epicureanism, or Stoicism. On the other hand, learning enlisted fewer enthusiasts than in the sixteenth century, and philology was in its decadence. The work of the Renaissance, so far as philosophy was concerned, seemed to be chiefly negative, and drew a number of thinkers towards scepticism.

And, from the religious standpoint, there was not less cause for anxiety in the prevailing condition of mind. Side by side with the development of medieval doctrine, from the fifteenth century onwards, a struggle had manifested itself between faith and reason, which was wholly adverse to the scholastic point of view. On the other hand, the Reformation had with incomparable force reawakened the craving for a personal and living way of belief and thought, as opposed to mere repetition of formulae and of comment upon them. And this movement had not been confined to the Protestants. Towards the middle of

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the sixteenth century the Catholic Church had also experienced its Renaissance of faith and religious life. The celebrated Society of Jesus, which was afterwards so dangerously to confound the policy of man with the service of God, had, in the words of its founder, Ignatius de Loyola, been actually instituted with the object of awakening in men's souls, by means of appropriate exercises, the Christian faith and Christian love. Now, even if an abstract philosophical treatise can sustain side by side doctrines mutually opposed, without any interference of the one with the other, the living human conscience cannot for long endure such an antagonism. Thus all thoughtful men were perturbed by the struggle between faith and reason which had caused the moral revolution of the sixteenth century; whilst, on the other hand, the frivolous were provided with arguments in favour of incredulity.

Moreover, side by side with philosophy and theology a new power was developing which would infallibly claim a share in the guidance of man's mind. This was the science of nature. Hitherto the earth had been regarded as the centre of the world; but Copernicus had recently assigned this place of honour to the sun. About 1604 Galileo, by the discovery of the laws of gravitation and of the pendulum, had proved it possible to explain the phenomena of nature by comparing them with one another, while stating natural laws, and avoiding any recourse to mysterious forces and influences. What would be the effect of this scientific revolution when men came to examine its bearings on philosophy?

In this intellectual atmosphere, in which antagonistic elements were at variance with one another, a class of men frivolous, sceptical, impatient of all restraint, who claimed the right to think and live according to their individual inspiration, was continually on the increase. These were the free-thinkers. They took their inspiration from Montaigne, appropriating in particular his critical and negative conclusions. They were represented by some very prominent men: Cesare Vanini, a young Neapolitan priest, who acknowledged no other God but Nature, Théophile de Viau, a worldly poet, "head of the secret atheists," and, close to the throne, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, who wrote lampoons on God and his sovereign in verse. Such in general was the chaotic state of men's minds.

However, a very different age was at the same time announcing itself. While Richelieu was reëstablishing in society the principle of order and authority it was natural that a similar change should take place in the world of thought. Now, ever since the end of the sixteenth century, Malherbe had been subjecting the poetry, versification, and overloaded style of the Renaissance to the laws of clearness, purity, method, and good taste; and from 1620 onwards the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where particular attention was paid to purity of style, fostered the idea of the French Academy, which was actually established in 1635. Soon, in

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1636, there burst forth with the suddenness of a thunderbolt a masterpiece in which were blended to perfection youthful enthusiasm and scrupulous obedience to rule the Cid of Pierre Corneille.

A desire for order and stability was therefore beginning to make itself felt, and it is to be noticed that men sought for the principles of such order, not in the authority of any established law, but in the supreme right of common-sense, truth, and reason. In 1540 Calvin had published his Institution Chrétienne in French, with a view to attracting the simple as well as the learned to the individual religious life. In the hands of Montaigne (from 1580) the French language had become more pliant, more capable of expressing in a simple and picturesque way the subtle thoughts of philosophy. And thus men of the world were enabled to examine questions formerly reserved for scholars.

All these tendencies, both positive and negative, are united in Descartes, whose work, suggestive and far-reaching, though severely methodical, was at the same time the complete realisation of the thought of his epoch, and the starting-point of future developments.

René Descartes (1596-1650) was born at La Haye in Touraine on March 31, 1596. His family belonged to the petite noblesse, and came originally from Poitou. From 1604 to 1612 he was a pupil at the Jesuit College of La Flèche. Then he spent two years (1615-6) at the University of Poitiers, where he took his Bachelor's, and afterwards his Licentiate's, degree in civil and canon law. In 1617 he entered the service of Prince Maurice of Nassau in Holland as a volunteer. About the same time he was studying the principles of music, algebra, and science. He was justifying the nickname given him by his father, who, from his childhood, had called him the "little philosopher." Then, in 1619, when war threatened in Germany, he went to that country, was present at the coronation of the Emperor Ferdinand II at Frankfort, and enlisted in the Duke of Bavaria's forces. He spent the winter in the duchy of Neuburg, where he remained all day shut up in his little room, untroubled by cares and passions, free to devote himself to meditation. It was then that he fell into a sort of trance of enthusiasm, in the midst of which, so he tells us, he discovered the principles of a wonderful science. And, in order to secure the help of the Blessed Virgin in this undertaking, he vowed to make a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto.

In 1620 he was with the army in Bohemia, and in 1621 in Hungary. Then he abandoned the profession of arms, which he had regarded mainly as a means towards the study of his fellow-men, and came back to France by way of northern Germany and Holland. From 1622 to 1625 he travelled again, in France, in Switzerland, and in Italy. From 1625 to 1629 he stayed for the last time in Paris; then, having been entreated by his friends to publish some portion of his works, he withdrew

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to Holland, hoping, in the healthy climate of that well-governed State, to meet with conditions of life more favourable to meditation than he had found in France. He remained in Holland until September 5, 1649; but while here, in order to escape from interference, he frequently changed his place of abode; and during this period he made several journeys, one of which is said to have been to England (1631). In Holland he composed his great works: Meditationes de prima philosophia, which was not published till 1641, twelve years after it had been written; Le Monde, ou Traité de la Lumière, which he decided not to publish on account of the condemnation pronounced on Galileo (1633), whose opinion as to the motion of the earth coincided with Descartes' own; Le Discours de la Méthode, with La Dioptrique, les Météores et la Géométrie (attempts to exemplify his method) in 1637; Principia Philosophiae in 1644; and Le Traité des passions de l'âme in 1649.

At the same time he was in correspondence with several learned men; with his friend Father Mersenne, who formed a centre of scientific correspondence; with Fermat and Roberval; and, as his philosophy had spread rapidly throughout the Dutch Universities and had excited much opposition among the Aristotelians, he defended himself and his doctrines against his antagonists and enemies. Among his pupils were Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector Palatine Frederick V and of the English Princess Elizabeth, and, afterwards, Queen Christina of Sweden. The latter entreated him to come to her Court, and sent a ship to Amsterdam in order to convey him. After some hesitation Descartes yielded, largely in the hope that he might serve the cause of the Princess Elizabeth in Stockholm. But the winter climate of Sweden proved too severe for him, and he died at Stockholm, February 11, 1650. He was only in his fifty-fifth year.

In addition to his published works he left several manuscripts, which were gradually brought to light. These included, in the first place, a voluminous correspondence; then, a Traité de l'homme et de la formation du foetus (1664), Le Monde, ou Traité de la Lumière (1664); with the Regulae ad directionem ingenii (1701), a work probably composed between 1619 and 1629.

The most salient characteristic of the author of the Discours de la Méthode is his restless and independent disposition. This philosopher is an aristocrat of an adventurous disposition, a worthy contemporary of the heroes of the Thirty Years' War. One day Gassendi apostrophised him with the taunt, "O mens!" But as a matter of fact few men have seen so many countries, or have so ardently longed to come in contact. with reality. At the same time, he is impatient of any kind of restraint, whether material or intellectual. Throughout all his struggles and adventures he endeavours to retain his serenity of thought; he would like his motto to be, bene qui latuit, bene vixit. Descartes is the very reverse of a philosopher of the Schools. Nothing seems alien to him; philosophy