Descartes The Lost Episodes

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DESCARTES: THE LOST EPISODES 437
Descartes: The Lost Episodes

PA U L S . M A C D O N A L D *
THE LIVES OF GREAT FIGURES in the history of ideas exert a perennial fascination for
those who find their ideas exciting. This fascination is even more evident in cases
where enough is known to sketch the figures outline or silhouette, but not quite
enough to fill in the details. One approaches the life of Lucretius, for example,
compressed in a single paragraph, with a sense of forever knowing too little; and
leaves a thousand-page biography of Russell with a sense (perhaps) of knowing
too much. What is known about Descartess life story falls somewhere between
these two extremesenough to whet the appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. An
underlying curiosity focuses on those long gaps and peculiar hiatuses between his
infrequent early letters; a curiosity aggravated by his penchant for leaving so many
things unsaid. Several conferences and symposia in 1996 commemorated the 400th
anniversary of Descartess birth; in addition to discussion of his philosophical
doctrines and heritage, several respected scholars have taken the opportunity to
reevaluate his philosophical contributions in the context of his life story.
The starting point for any historical investigation of Descartess life is the first
full-scale biography by Adrien Baillet (Paris, 1691), who had access to a great deal
of original manuscripts through Descartess associate Clerselier, which have long
since vanished. Gregor Sebba1 conducted a meticulous study of Baillets unique
access to these documents and witnesses, and his scrupulous probity in reporting
My thanks to the special collections staff at Palace Green Library, Durham University, and the
Durham 17th Century Studies Group where, in spring 1999, many of the original ideas of this paper
were first tried out. My thanks also to the University of Western Australia Philosophy Research Semi-
nar for questions and comments; to Dr. Toby Burrowes (UWA) for help in retrieving records from the
Hartlib Papers Project; to Dr. Emma Rooksby (ANU) for help in translating seventeenth-century French;
to Clare Brown, the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, for details about Digbys 1636 letter. I am
especially indebted to an anonymous reader whose detailed criticisms and suggestions compelled me
to clarify some of the evidence and sharpen the arguments.
The following abbreviations are used in this paper: CSM: Ren Descartes, The Philosophical Writ-
ings, 2 vols., Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985) and The Correspondence, Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, and Kenny, trans. (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991). AT: Oeuvres de Descartes, New Edition, 11 vols., Charles Adam and Paul
Tannery, eds. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1996).
1
Gregor Sebba, Baillets Life of Descartes, in Problems of Cartesianism, T. M. Lennon et al., eds.
(Montreal: McGill University Press, 1982), 4860.
* Paul S. MacDonald is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Murdoch University.
Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 40, no. 4 (2002) 43760

[437]
438 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 40:4 OCTOBER 2002
to his employers. Sebbas work establishes quite clearly Baillets basic reliability as
the chronicler of Descartess life. After fifty years of outstanding research in
Descartess life and thought, G. Rodis-Lewis retains a positive assessment of Baillets
basic probity. In her words, he is a conscientious historian, who often enough
shows a critical mind, though she does caution that readers should be vigilant,
without mistaking his positive contribution.2 My current research is devoted to
expanding our understanding of three crucial episodes in Descartess life, two of
which were mentioned by Baillet, but without corroborative support. Each of these
episodes was an important learning experience (as one says today) and had a
profound impact on the next stage in Descartess philosophical enterprise. On a
number of salient points this paper will bring in recently uncovered support, in
one form or another, for what until now has been dismissed as little more than
the subject of wishful thinking.
1. OBSERVATIONS IN MARVELOUS PRAGUE, NOVEMBER 1620

Almost every biographer of Descartes until 1900 has concurred with his first biog-
rapher, Pierre Borel (writing only three years after the philosophers death), who
placed him at the Battle of White Mountain, November 8, 1620, in the armies of
the Catholic League. Since the publication of Charles Adams biography, which
completed the landmark twelve-volume edition of Descartess works (18961910),
questions have been raised about the legitimacy of this claim. In considering the
evidence pertinent to the issue of Descartess presence in Prague it will be helpful
to review the historical context. The Catholic League had been organized against
the Protestant Union when the Czech Estates dethroned the Emperor Ferdinand
and offered the crown of Bohemia to Prince Friedrich, the Calvinist Palatinate
Elector, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of King James of England. In 1616 the
Winter King and Queen moved their court to Prague, the Bohemian capital, which
at that time still attested to the pervasive influence of Emperor Rudolf II, who had
died in 1612. Under Rudolf, Prague had become the cultural center for a wide
variety of heterodox thinkers, protected and encouraged by the Emperors own
personal interests. Lured by the courts great wealth and Rudolfs insatiable curi-
osity, alchemists, astrologers, hermeticists, and magicians descended on Prague.
Among other, perhaps less-welcome visitors, were some celebrities: John Dee and
Edward Kelly, Giordano Bruno, Michael Mayer, Tycho Brahe, and Johann Kepler.
The Hradcany Castle was an architectural labyrinth with its wonder-rooms con-
structed of mirrors and false walls, alchemists laboratories, archives of hermetic
manuscripts, elaborate astronomical equipment, mechanical automata, and dread-
ful dungeons.3 During the ten days after the battle in which the Catholic armies
looted the city, the young Descartes might have had an opportunity to discover at
first hand this unique assemblageafter that date the collection was dispersed
throughout Europe.
2
G. Rodis-Lewis, Descartes: His Life and Thought, Jane Marie Todd, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1998), xiiixiv.
3
For a very detailed description of Prague Castle, building by building, and floor by floor, see
Erhard Gorys, Czecho-Slovakia (London: Pallas-Athene, 1991), 83124.
It is my contention that what he witnessed there had a profound influence on
his thinking, especially his hypothesis about the machine-like nature of animal
and human bodies; his utter rejection of the false sciences, such as alchemy and
astrology; and his lifelong interest in contrived optical illusions. In the summer of
1997 the Prague City Council sponsored several exhibitions that allowed visitors
to examine for the first time in almost 400 years a substantial portion of the origi-
nal Rudolfine collections in their original locations;4 these exhibits are the back-
ground for some of my speculations. The present inquiry focuses on the claim,
which has achieved the status of Prague legend, that the young cavalier Descartes
was present at the battle. This legend originates with his first biographer, Borel
who, as Rodis-Lewis comments, sends him to the maximum number of battles
and sieges, and was endorsed by Baillet5 in his great work La Vie de M. Descartes in
1691. Most writers on Czech history simply repeat this legend, without any fur-
ther corroborationfor example, Peter Demetz, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and
Frances Yates6though others such as Angelo Ripellino and R. J. Evans do not
feel that such second-hand testimony merits attention.7 Even the most recent Czech
National Encyclopedia (1995) recounts the illustrious Descartess involvement in
words straight from Baillets biography. Although it is generally agreed that Baillet
sometimes allows his imagination and enthusiasm for his subject to carry him away,
it is hard to believe that he invented such an episode out of whole cloth. Given the
bald fact that Descartes himself never referred either to Prague or the crucial
battle, making a case for his presence or absence must rely on the persuasive
force of indirect evidence. In her most recent book, Rodis-Lewis goes to great
lengths to show that he could not have been in that place, at that time.8 Gaukroger
says that it is quite possible that he was no longer a serving soldier [in July 1620]
and the circumstantial evidence indicates that he was probably not present at the
Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague.9 But this statement is misleading
about the relation of circumstantial evidence to probability; there is no direct
evidence that he was at the battle, and the indirect evidence shows nothing about
the probability of his not being somewhere, rather it shows a high probability that
he was some place whose details match all the available oblique references.
4
See Eliska Fuchikova et al., eds., Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1997), viiiix.
5
Adrien Baillet, La Vie de M. Descartes (Paris, 1691), facsimile reprint, 2 vols. in 1 (New York:
Garland, 1970), vol. 1, 7080.
6
Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold (Penguin Books, 1997), 227; Patrick Fermor, A Time of
Gifts (Penguin Books, 1979), 246; Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1972), 1146.
7
Angelo Ripellino, Magical Prague, David Marinelli, trans. (London: Picador Books, 1995); R. J.
W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997); see also Josef Petran and Lydia
Petranova, The White Mountain as a symbol in modern Czech history, in Bohemia in History, Mikulas
Teich, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 14363.
8
Rodis-Lewis, op. cit., 502; see also her article, Descartess life and the development of his
philosophy, in Cambridge Companion to Descartes, John Cottingham, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1992), 323.
9
Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),
126.
In order to properly assess the probability that he was in Prague in mid-No-
vember 1620, let us briefly review the salient events in his life before that date.
Descartes received his degree from the Jesuit College of La Fleche in June 1615,
went to study law at Poitiers and was awarded his license to practice10 in 1616 (the
ceremony was held on November 10, a highly symbolic date). By late 1618 he was
in Holland where, on November 10, he met Isaac Beeckman, with whom he stud-
ied mathematics off and on during the next two years. In March 1619 he wrote to
Beeckman that he was about to depart on his travels; after leaving Amsterdam he
hoped to visit Gdansk, Poland, the part of Hungary near Austria, and Bohemia
(AT X.159). One month later he was still in Holland, but again informed Beeckman
about his plans, though he was uncertain where his route might take him: The
preparations for war have not yet led to my being summoned to Germany, but I
suspect that many men will be called to arms, though there will be no outright
fighting. If that should happen, I shall travel about in Denmark, Poland and Hun-
gary, till [reaching] Germany,11 until such time as I can find a safer route, one not
occupied by marauding soldiers, or until I have definitely heard that war is likely
to be waged (AT X.162). Seven months later military events had overtaken the
young chevaliers travel plans: At that time I was in Germany, where I had been
called by the wars that are not yet ended there. While I was returning to the army
from the coronation of the Emperor, the onset of winter detained me in quarters.
. . . He made this statement according to his recollection seventeen years later in
the Discourse (AT VI.11; CSM I. 116). The coronation ceremonies took place in
Frankfurt from July 20 to September 9 (AT XII.47), after which he began moving
in a more or less eastward direction, i.e., in an effort to rejoin the forces of Prince
Maximilian.
On November 10, 1619, he fell asleep in those winter quarters and experi-
enced two (or three) extraordinary dreams, about which much ingenious specu-
lation has been expended. The location of this house was most likely in the prin-
cipality of Neuburg, near Ingolstadt, on the northern border of Bavaria,12 and not
in the town of Ulm, the site which has entered the standard history books. The
confusion between the sites of Ulm and Neuburg may have been occasioned by
Baillet himself who corrects his earlier reference to Ulm in an abridgement of his
biography published the next year, where he clearly situates the stove-heated room
in Neuburg. An important recent discovery clinches the case: an antiquarian col-
lector discovered an edition of Pierre Charrons Trait de la sagesse, dedicated in
Latin to the most learned dear friend, and little brother, Ren Cartesio, Father
Jean B. Molitor S. J., end of year 1619. Father Molitor was resident at the newly
established Jesuit retreat in Neuburg, which Descartes obviously visited exactly
during the winter he claimed his dreams occurred.13 In his Private Thoughts,
10
J.-R. Armogathe et al., La Licence en droit de Descartes: un placard inedit de 1616, Nouvelles
de la Republique des Lettres 8 (1988): 12345.
11
The phrase donec in Germania is strangely missing from the CSM translation, CSM III.4.
12
Rodis-Lewis, op. cit., 36; this mistake was made by Baillet himself, who in the opening of vol-
ume two backtracks to the wrong site; Baillet corrected this mistake, but his correction is usually
ignored.
13
Reported by Rodis-Lewis, ibid., 44.
Descartes recorded this signal event in the Olympica section with these words: X.
Novembris 1619, cum plenus forem Enthusiasmo, et mirabilis scientiae fundamenta
reperirem, that is, filled with a strong enthusiasm, I discovered the foundations of
a marvelous science (AT X.179). After this date he probably began some of his
geometrical experiments (or observations) which immediately follow the Olympica
section. Another entry, written in the margin of the former, appears to refer to
the same date, but the next year: XI. Novembris 1620, coepi intelligere fundamentum
inventi mirabilis, that is, I began to understand the foundation of a marvelous
invention (or discovery). Another entry shortly after the previous two enigmatic
entries refers to either one conjoint promise or to two separate promises: Before
the end of November, I shall head for Loreto. I intend to go there on foot from
Venice, if this is feasible and is the custom. If not, I will make the pilgrimage with
all the devotion that anyone could normally be expected to show. This is im-
mediately adjacent to the next few lines: At all events, I will complete my treatise
before Easter, and if I can find publishers, and I am satisfied with what I manage
to produce, I shall publish it. This is the promise I have made today, 23 February
[or September] 1620 (AT X.218; CSM I.5).
There has been much discussion14 ever since the first publication of Leibnizs
transcript of the Private Thoughts in the Foucher-Careil edition (1859) about
whether February or September 1620 is the correct reading of the second prom-
ise. Even if the vow to visit Loreto, and not just the completion of his treatise, were
dated as late as September 1620, and hence only six weeks before the great battle,
there is no reason to think that Descartes might not have changed his mind. In
any case, the issue of the entrys date and the issue of whether or not he ever
made it to Loreto do not directly pertain to the principal claim advanced here
that he could have been on the outskirts of Prague in early November 1620. It is
almost certain, however, that Descartes was indeed in Ulm in July 1620, perhaps
drawn to that place to observe the treaty signed between the Catholic League and
the Protestant Union.15 According to Daniel Lipstorps unique recollection of
these events (first published in 1653), Descartes visited the mathematician Johann
Faulhaber at his home in Ulm, where the older scholar quizzed the young man
on his knowledge of geometry and showed him his collection of instruments,
models and other new inventions that would fill a room in a museum. (AT X.252
3). William Shea draws our attention to an entry in the Private Thoughts (AT
X.2412) where Descartes describes several instruments for making drawings that
he probably observed in Faulhabers house. Shea also mentions an associate of
the astronomer Kepler, a minor figure named Simbert Wehe, who had a book
printed in Ulm in 1619, which refers to a young scholar named Castra or Castrae,
yet another variant on the name des Cartes. Even more significant because of its
precise date of February 1, 1620 is a letter from another Kepler crony, Johann
14
Among others, in minute detail by Henri Gouhier, Les Premieres Penses de Descartes (Paris: J.
Vrin, 1979), 825, 10410; Rodis-Lewis, op. cit., 4958. In the 1936 edition of Descartess Correspon-
dence, edited with Milhaud (Tome I, 223), Charles Adam proposed an alternate itinerary for Descartess
movements during these two years, a proposal which extrapolates backwards from comments made in
letters written by Descartes almost thirty years later (164849).
15
Gaukroger, op. cit., 126; Demetz, op. cit., 22530.
Hebenstreit, to Kepler himself, asking whether the astronomer had received a
letter entrusted to a certain Cartelius [sic], a man of genuine learning and singu-
lar urbanity. I do not wish to burden my friends with ungrateful and shameless
vagrants, but Cartelius seems of a different sort and really worthy of your help.16
The fact that Hebenstreit had given Cartelius a letter for Kepler, then in Linz,
and that he was concerned lest Kepler might feel burdened with a vagrant, that is,
a visitor, seems to indicate that Descartes intended to visit Kepler.
It seems that one can confidently place Descartes in Bavaria in the spring and
summer of 1620, but after that time his movements are open to conjecture. The
only indication of any date before his reappearance in Denmark at the end of
1621 is the puzzling entry in the Private Thoughts already mentioned above. In
the margin of the register next to the date of the dream entry, in a more recent
ink, but surely in the same hand as the author, this line appears: 11 November
1620, I began to understand the foundation of a marvelous discovery (or inven-
tion). It is important to bear in mind that Descartes wrote his Private Thoughts
in this parchment register in two directions: from the front and from the back,
leaving blank pages in the middle. When Leibniz made his personal copy from
the original in Paris in 1676, sometime before Baillet examined the manuscript,
he simply transcribed it straight through. Thus, one cannot infer from the order
of entries any strict chronological order in the sequence of events.17 In fact, it is
not unusual for commonplace books to be disarranged in this fashion and for
errors to creep in when an interpreters order is imposed upon the original. As
with the vow to visit Loreto, there has been much scholarly discussion of the sig-
nificant difference between the two dates, November 10, 1619 and November 11,
1620. Gouhier has examined every possible interpretation of the context, formu-
lation, and connotation of these two entries;18 although the Olympian dreams are
the only obvious candidate for the former, there are numerous conjectures about
the discovery mentioned in the latter.
Rodis-Lewis has also examined these two dates and built an argument about
the basic purport of the second date that needs to be challenged here. Rodis-
Lewis dismisses the thesis that Descartes might have been in Prague in November
1620 by noting that his attendance at the Battle of White Mountain, did not
prevent Descartes from making a new and admirable discovery on the anniver-
sary of his dreams. She also claims that he first proposed to continue to travel,
going to Italy after the hot season to celebrate piously the anniversary of the 1619
dreams. She shows great surprise that, we might even think that the days of
violence that followed the battle of 8 November would have made altogether im-
possible a serene scientific meditation capable of eliciting an important discovery.19
But her confident assertions state the issues back to front, imputing some sort of
design or intention behind this dated entry. There is nothing in the second entry
from the Private Thoughts to show that Descartes set out to find a solitary, quiet
spot in order to make a scientific study. Surely the more plausible interpretation
16
William Shea, The Magic of Numbers and Motion (Washington, D.C.: Science History, 1991), 105.
17
Gouhier, op. cit., 118.
18
Gouhier, ibid., 3841, 746, 7885.
19
Rodis-Lewis, op. cit., 501.
is that he found himself in some place where he made a marvelous discovery, and
that by chance this was the same date as his previous discovery. That is why he made
the second entry adjacent to the first entry, not to emphasize the similarity of the
discovery, but to underline the striking coincidence in the dates. Of course, one
can only wonder at the number of significant events in Descartess life which oc-
curred on November 10: his license at law, his first meeting with Beeckman, the
dream episode, the battles aftermath, and (later) his encounter with Sieur de
Chandoux. Thus, there are two separate events, recorded in two adjacent entries;
they are partially discriminated by subtly different formulations. The first says,
mirabilis scientiae fundamenta reperirem, placing the emphasis on find out or dis-
cover the foundations (plural) of a marvelous science. The second says, coepi
intelligere fundamentum inventi mirabilis, placing the emphasis on understand
the foundation (singular) of a marvelous discovery (or invention). There is a
profound difference between, on the one hand, discovering or even inventing a
new science, one that does not already exist, and on the other hand, beginning to
understand a discovery or invention, which may after all not be ones own.
My preference for an appropriate interpretation of the second entry is that
after the victory of the Catholic forces on November 8, Descartes entered the city
of Prague. By November 11, he might have made his way to the Castle where he
discovered the extraordinary wonder-rooms, alchemical apparati, ornate gardens,
startling automata, and other marvels assembled by the Emperor Rudolf before
his death in 1612. Within weeks of the Protestant forces defeat, large convoys of
wagons carried most of this booty out of the city, to be dispersed across the Conti-
nent and never seen as an integral collection again. The final irony is that during
the last five months of his life, at the court of Queen Christina in Stockholm, he
would have seen more treasures from Prague, removed in late August 1648 by the
Swedish army corps which then occupied the Czech capital;20 perhaps Descartes
recognized some of these rare and unusual Rudolfine artifacts. After the conclu-
sion of the Westphalian peace treaties, the Queen prevailed on her reluctant French
philosopher to compose an elegant pageant, The Birth of Peace,21 first staged
in Stockholm on December 19, 1649. Within two months the philosopher had
succumbed to the frigid cold and dawn tutorials demanded by the Queen.
Despite the lack of explicit references to Prague in the Private Thoughts,
there are traces from passages in later texts to this marvelous city, fraught with
internal divisions, and threatened by external dangers. In an undated register
entry under the heading Experimenta, written entirely in French unlike all the
other entries in Latin, this observation is recorded.
In a garden we can produce shadows to represent certain shapes, such as trees; or we can
trim a hedge so that from a certain perspective it represents a given shape. Again, in a
room we can arrange for the rays of the sun to pass through various openings so as to
represent different numbers and figures; or we can make it seem as if there are tongues of
flame, or chariots of fire, or other shapes in the air. This is all done by mirrors which focus
the suns rays at various points. Again, we can arrange things so that when the sun is shin-
ing into a room, it always seems to come from the same direction, or seems to go from west
20
Demetz, op. cit., 218.
21
First published in 1920 and only recently reprinted in the revised edition of AT V, 61627.
to east. This is all done by parabolic reflectors; the suns rays must fall on a concave mirror
on the roof, and the mirrors focal point must be in line with a small hole, on the other side
of which is another concave mirror with the same focal distance, which is also aligned on
the hole. This causes the suns rays to be cast in parallel lines inside the room. (AT X. 216;
CSM I. 3)
This meticulous account strikes me as a first-hand description of an actual site.

There is hardly any need to point out Descartess persistent interest in optical
illusions, an interest that appears throughout several later works. What is unusual
about this passage is its attention to contrived illusions that are generated by elabo-
rate optical apparati. Without stretching the point too far, there is a very good
candidate for the original exemplum of this careful description in one of the
wonder-rooms in Prague Castle. On the north side of the Royal Palace, overlook-
ing the Deer Moat, is the Powder Tower; built in the late fifteenth century and
used in the sixteenth century as the gun and bell foundry, it was converted into
alchemists workshops under Rudolfs direction. During the citywide exhibitions
in the summer of 1997, some of the rooms in the Powder Tower were restored to
their 1612 state. One of these rooms comprised an elaborate optical apparatus
whose mirrors and lenses, positioned on the walls, ceiling, and floor, created un-
natural movements of sunlight and shadows.22 And further, almost thirty years
later, after taking up residence at Queen Christinas court in Stockholm, he com-
posed the unfinished dialogue, The Search After Truth; although there is some dis-
pute about this,23 November or December 1649 seems the most likely date for its
composition. As mentioned above, a substantial portion of the remainder of
Rudolfs marvelous collection had been removed from Prague the previous year
and was now housed in Queen Christinas palace. Given the philosophers actual
setting when he wrote the dialogue, the following exchange between Epistemon (the
learned scholar) and Eudoxus (Descartess spokesman) seems highly significant for
our hypothesis about traces of Magical Prague in Descartess later writings.
Epistemon: I should like you to go on to clarify for me some special difficulties which I find
in every science, and chiefly those concerning human contrivances, apparitions, illusions,
and in short all the marvelous effects attributed to magic . . .
Eudoxus: After causing you to wonder at the most powerful machines, the most unusual
automatons, the most impressive illusions, and the most subtle tricks that human ingenuity
can devise, I shall reveal to you the secrets behind them, which are so simple and straight-
forward that you will no longer have reason to wonder at anything made by the hands of
men. (AT X. 5045; CSM II. 4045)
From his Private Thoughts, his early letters to Beeckman, and Beeckmans
own journal one can discover Descartess particular, even obsessive interests at
that time. These interests included, among others: the Rosicrucian manifestoes;24
22
Some of these wonder-rooms can be seen in the CD-ROM, Bird of Paradise: Rudolf IIs Curiosity
Cabinet (Prague: Avant-Bozell, 1997); Fuchikova, op. cit., 199208; see Ripellino, op. cit., 746. Will-
iam Shea argues that Descartes was thinking about Della Portas Magia Naturalis and draws several
ingenious parallels with entries in his Private Thoughts, op. cit., 1078, n. 50.
23
On the date of The Search After Truth, see Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus
to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 286, n. 24.
24
See esp. Shea, op. cit., 95120; Gaukroger, op. cit., 1015; Gouhier, op. cit., 13441, 1507.
25
astronomical experiments, especially those of Kepler and Brahe; guides to the
art of memory, such as the works of Lull, Bruno, and Schenkel; ornate and topiary
gardens; automata, especially complex full-scale machines; and wonder-rooms,
such as the one above, with elaborate optical effects. There was one place in Eu-
rope at that time where he could have satisfied his immense curiosity about all
these things, one place where they were all collected together and displayed: the
City of Prague. My contention here is that there are important traces, though they
are sometimes subtle and oblique, to his first-hand experiences of such experi-
ments after the Battle of White Mountain, during the ten days before Prince
Maximilans troops removed them.
First, as Frances Yates has so eloquently demonstrated,26 the Rosicrucian fan-
tasy or story, which spread through Central Europe between 161520, was inex-
tricably linked with the Winter King and Queen, first at their court in Heidelberg
and then in Prague. The three genuine Rosicrucian tracts, the Fama, the Confessio,
and The Chemical Wedding, were printed at or near the Palatinate and were prob-
ably written by senior members of the court circle. Descartes himself contem-
plated such an esoteric tract, the so-called Mathematical Thesaurus of Polybius
the Cosmopolitan, mentioned without further explanation in the Private
Thoughts (AT X.214; CSM I.2). Second, Kepler and Brahe (died 1601) had
separately established their astronomical headquarters in one of the Prague pal-
aces during the reign of Rudolf II, who died in 1612. Third, Prague was one of
the centers for the study of the art of memory, and both Bruno and his disciple
Schenkel had lived there.27 Fourth, although ornate gardens could be found at
several royal palaces, one of the best known was the South Gardens (Jizni Zahrady)
below the Hradcany Gates, which overlooked the steps down to the Little Quarter
(Mala Strana). The gardens were laid out in 1562 and an elaborate circular pavil-
ion was built for the Emperor Matthias in 1617. It is in fact the site of the
defenestration of the three Catholic nobles in 1618, who by good fortune sur-
vived the steep fall by landing in a large manure pile. In front of the magnificent
Belvedere building is an ornate geometrical garden in the center of which is the
Singing Fountain. Built in 1568, it still survives and produces various musical
sounds when the water passes through hidden pipes and bronze bowls. Perhaps
Descartes had this garden in mind28 when he wrote in the Treatise on Man (circa
16302): You may have observed in the grottos and fountains in the royal gar-
dens that the mere force with which the water is driven as it emerges from its
source is sufficient to move various machines, and even to make them play certain
instruments or utter certain words. . . . (AT XI. 130; CSM I. 100). Fifth, one of
the single greatest collections of automata at that time had been assembled by
Rudolf II; although it is not possible to match specific descriptions of such ma-
25
On Descartess and Beeckmans interest in Keplers astronomy in 162829, see Gaukroger, op.
cit., 2201; John Schuster, Descartes and the Scientific Revolution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1977), vol. 2, 56679.
26
Yates, op. cit., 129.
27
See Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1969), 355
66.
28
Gaukroger makes a very good case that Descartes may have seen some of these gardens with
working automata as early as the years 161416 in St. Germain-en-Lay (Gaukroger, op. cit., 634).
chines in Descartess texts and letters with items in Rudolfs inventory, Prague
Castle was still one of the best places to observe them.
And finally, given his tendency to sometimes use real examples to illustrate his
imaginary experiments, perhaps one should pay more attention to Descartess
hypothesis about an artificial human, or perhaps more accurately, a human-beast
conceived as the artifice of a great craftsman. In the Treatise on Man he says, I
suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God
forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us. [He
also] places inside it all the parts required to make it walk, eat, breathe, and in-
deed to imitate all those of our functions which can be imagined to proceed from
matter and to depend solely on the disposition of our organs (emphasis added).
Shortly after this he defines the animal spirits as a certain very fine wind, or
rather a very lively and pure flame (AT XI.120, 129; CSM I. 99, 100). This pas-
sage occurs in the context of his remarks about royal gardens, automata, and
clockwork machines. In the Meditations he clearly identifies this concept of soul
before rejecting it in favor of the mind as a thinking thing: the soul, he says, is
something tenuous, like a wind or fire or ether, which permeated my more solid
parts; and on the next page, it is a wind, fire, air or breath (AT VII. 26, 27; CSM
II. 17, 18). He often refers to the heart as a source of fire: again in the Treatise on
Man (AT XI.202, CSM I.108), in the Description of the Human Body (AT XI.226;
CSM I.316), and in the letter to Vorstius, June 1643 (AT III.687; CSM III.225).
Richard Carter has examined these organic-mechanical images in some detail,
underlining the novelty and peculiarity of Descartess hypothesis, explicitly with
regard to the template of an automaton made of earth or clay.29 In Part Five of the
Discourse, Descartes recapitulates some of the principal theses of the Treatise on
Man, which he had withheld from publication when he learned about Galileos
condemnation.
I supposed too that in the beginning God did not place in this body any rational soul or
any other thing to serve as a vegetative or sensitive soul, but rather that he kindled in its
heart one of those fires without light [like] that of the fire which heats hay when it is stored
before it is dry, or which causes new wine to seethe when it is left to ferment from the
crushed grapes. And when I looked to see what functions would occur in such a body, I
found precisely those which may occur in us without our thinking of them, and hence without
any contribution from our soul. . . . Those functions are just the ones in which animals
without reason may be said to resemble us. (AT VI.46; CSM I.134; and again AT VI.54;
CSM I.138)
Now there is an exemplar for Descartess beast-human, fabricated from earth,

with the breath of life, a fire in its heart, and which imitates the movements of a
human beingthe Golem. In Prague legend, Rabbi Loew, with the help of two
associates, created the Golem in about 1580 in order to provide a guardian or
sentinel for the Jewish Quarter. The Golem was made out of earth or clay, re-
ceived the breath of life from the Cabbalist Rabbi, and was doused with water and
29
Richard Carter, Descartess Medical Philosophy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1983), 1759; see also his Descartess Bio-Physics, Philosophia Naturalis 22 (1985): 22349.
30
Ripellino, op. cit., 13143; see also G. G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, Ralph
Manheim, trans. (New York: Schocken Books, 1996), 6470.
30
fire from his associates in order to incorporate the other basic elements. The
earliest version of this legend is the Nifluot Maharal, the Miracles of the Maharal
Rabbi Loew, composed in the early 1600s, which tells the story of the oppression
experienced by the Prague Jews. The Emperor Rudolf held Rabbi Loew in high
esteem and assured him that the court would not permit any further blood libels
against his people, i.e., that a crime committed by a single Jew would not impli-
cate the whole Jewish populace. But the Rabbi had an implacable and dangerous
enemy in the Catholic Priest Thaddeus who was reputed to be a powerful sor-
cerer. When the Rabbi called upon the Lord in a dream to give him advice, the
Lord told him to create a Golem out of clay to destroy the enemies of Israel. He
confided this instruction to two learned friends trained in the mystical Cabbala;
they purified themselves for seven days in preparation for the ritual. One winter
day in 1580, the three magicians made their way to the city of Moldau; and there,
on the clay bank of the river, they molded the figure of a man three ells in length.
They fashioned for him hands and feet and a head, and drew his features in clear
relief. The second rabbi circled the figure seven times from right to left, and the
Golem began to glow like fire; the third rabbi circled the figure seven times from
left to right, at which steam issued from the Golem; all three chanted Cabalistic
spells. Then Rabbi Loew circled the Golem seven times, and all three chanted in
unison the line from Genesis, chapter 2, verse 7, and God breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soulat which the Golem
came to life.31
It is not credible to assert that the Golem was the model Descartes had in mind
when he described the human body as an automaton. However, there are defi-
nitely striking similarities between the two images: a statue made of earth, whose
material parts imitate organic functions, whose heart is like a fire, and whose vital
spirits are infused through a fine wind or breath. Moshe Idel and Byron Sherwin
have made the connection between the concept of the Golem and the earliest
scientific efforts to imagine the living body as an organic machine.32 The fact that
Descartes may have been aware of this Czech legend is hardly conclusive in itself,
but in conjunction with the many other hints and clues discussed above, all of
which find their historical and geographical epicenter in this Central European
city, it becomes more and more difficult to resist Baillets assertion that Descartes
did indeed visit the marvelous city of Prague.
Descartess experiences there had a complex and multi-faceted influence on
his thinking about many different issues in natural science. One might say that his
attitude toward automata, optical devices, and occult practices crystalized around
these observations, that his previously only partly formed ideas, both positive
and negative, were made concrete during the period between November 1619
and November 1620. The most pervasive fashion in which these nascent ideas
reached some form of full expression can be seen in three (or more) thematic
31
Synopsis from Bedrich Thieberger, The Great Rabbi Loew of Prague (New York: Farrar, Strauss,
1955).
32
Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany: The
State University of New York Press, 1990); Byron Sherwin, The Golem Legend: Origins and Implications
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985).
concerns that wind in and out of his texts and letters from this date. First is the
undeniable importance that he attached to the very notion of the human (and
animal) body as an automaton or organic machine. He returned to the study of
the body-machine again and again, laying great stress on the significance that this
mechanistic understanding of the material dimension of human being had for an
insightful, intuitive understanding of the union of mind and body. Second, it is
the incentive for his persistent lifelong fascination with both the nature and func-
tion of the visual apparatus and of light itself, an account of which often drew
pertinent lessons from the ways in which optical illusions deceived our senses. His
account of the process of human vision, in the Essay on Optics and The World, or
Treatise on Light, was closely tied to his philosophical arguments about sensory
perception in the Discourse and the Meditations. Third, it would be difficult to over-
state his negative and derisory attitude33 toward the false sciences such as al-
chemy, astrology, and cabalism, marvels exhibited in such abundance in Prague.
Recalling the earliest stage of his own education in the Discourse, he comments on
the false sciences: I thought that I already knew their worth well enough not to
be liable to be deceived by the promises of an alchemist or the predictions of an
astrologer, the tricks of a magician or the frauds and boasts of those who profess
to know more than they do (ATVI.9; CSM I.115). In addition to his exceptional
achievements in formulating algebraic geometry, the mechanical model of the
organic body, and various elementary physical laws, Descartes was almost alone in
this period in his total dismissal of the pseudo-sciences.
2. THE CHANDOUX AFFAIR, WINTER 1628

Richard Popkin once described Descartess meeting with the mysterious Chandoux
as a pivotal event in the young philosophers development, a microcosm of the
plight of the whole learned world.34 Aside from Baillets detailed synopsis of this
lecture to a small audience, only one letter from Descartes and one from Mersenne
testify to the facts in the matter. Although Gaukroger, Rodis-Lewis, and others
repeat Baillets account, they do not attach much weight to it, claiming that since
the biographers story is uncorroborated there is no other way to confirm the
information. Moreover, this episode is usually treated as an incursion of skeptical
doubt at an early date in his life; for example, Gaukroger reprises Popkins re-
marks and then comments that he can find nothing in letters or texts from the
late 1620s to indicate any interest in scepticism on Descartess part at this time.35
However, as we shall attempt to show here, this encounter had little or nothing to
do with systematic doubt or a robust rebuttal of skepticism. Nevertheless, as these
same scholars point out, this event marks a watershed for Descartess philosophi-
cal development, since shortly after this episode he abandons work on the Rules.
33
See also his letter November 1629 seeking assistance from Jean Ferrier about how the right
techniques in the use of light and air can simulate all the illusions that magicians are said to make
with the help of demons, AT I, 61; and his letter to Villebressieu, summer 1631, upbraiding his friend
for twelve years of fruitless trials in the medical-alchemical use of adulterated metals (AT I, 216).
34
Popkin, op. cit., 175.
35
Gaukroger, op. cit., 184; for Popkins imputation of systematic doubt, see his History of Scepti-
cism, 177; for another account of this episode, see Stephen Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 469.
The manuscript of the Rules ends at Rule XVIII, with several others planned for its
completion; there have been many, many speculations about why the author be-
came dissatisfied both with the subject matter and the approach or method. In
the Discourse, he refers to a dramatic event nine years after his marvelous discov-
ery (November 1619) and exactly eight years earlier (this part was completed
perhaps in late 1636) which made him change direction.
Sometime about the middle of November 1628, at the home of the papal nun-
cio, a number of learned men, including Cardinal Berulle, Marin Mersenne, Car-
dinal Barberin, de Villebressieu, and perhaps Gabriel Naud, gathered to hear a
lecture by the itinerant savant Chandoux on the new philosophy. Baillet re-
ported that Chandoux gave a great speech to refute the way philosophy is usually
taught in the schools; he even set forth a fairly ordinary system of philosophy that
he claimed to establish and which he wanted to appear as new;36 Baillet sug-
gested that his views were a mixture of Aristotle, Bacon, Mersenne, Gassendi, and
Hobbes. Everyone except Descartes was favourably impressed by what Baillet de-
scribed as a sustained and clever attack on neo-Aristotelian Scholastic philosophy
using skeptical tropes in the demolition of its prime tenets. It seems that Descartes
fell into a brown funk and could not be roused to give his opinion for some time.
But eventually, to everyones astonishment, the young cavalier held forth at some
length on the utter lack of grounds and abundant sophistry in the peroration
which they had just heard. He showed that Chandoux wanted to accept probabil-
ity as the standard of truth, that opposite conclusions were at least as probable,
and that every skeptical trope could be countered with another, turning every
truth into a falsehood. Descartes commented that this was the same thing as School
Philosophy disguised in new terms and unless the principles of a true and reliable
method were established there was little point for further scientific inquiries. Car-
dinal Berulle was very impressed with this impromptu speech and persuaded
Descartes to organise and publish his arguments on this matterthese were the
seeds that bore fruit in The World, or Treatise on Light and later in the Discourse.
It is unfortunate that due to a lack of primary, corroborative testimony, this
decisive episode is given scant attention by most Descartes scholars. However,
Popkin and Gaukroger have argued that this encounter was one of the incentives
for Descartess lifelong search for a certain foundation and method for scientific
knowledge. Thus, this episode synopsizes two aspects of Descartess turning away
from the old world and turning toward the new world. First, his response high-
lights some sort of philosophical disgust that anyone adroit enough with rhetori-
cal tropes could turn any statement on its head, and hence inspired in him an
irritable repugnance toward this sophistic approach. And second, it signals
Descartess abandonment of the mathematical research he had already under-
taken as being irremediably undermined by its lack of proper metaphysical foun-
dations. Descartess reaction to Chandouxs speech can be summed up in a few
words: this is utter rubbish and youve all been taken in.
Despite the presence of such luminaries at this salon, there is a startling lack of
testimony for this event or to the person of Chandoux. Thorough searches of the
36
Baillet, op. cit., vol. 1, 1605.
indices of the letters and papers of Gabriel Naud, Cardinal Bagni, Cardinal
Barberin, Cardinal Berulle (who reported directly to Richelieu), and Richelieu
himself reveal not a single mention of the mysterious Chandoux. There is one
memoir from Mersenne,37 written perhaps in response to Descartess letter to
Villebrissieu (AT I. 213; CSM III. 32) about Chandouxs execution for forgery in
August 1631. Mersennes aide-memoire dates the event to approximately Novem-
ber 15, 1628 and is probably one of the sources of Baillets account. Descartess
letter to his good friend (also present in the salon) mentions the same names and
remarks that Chandouxs speech provoked him into a defense of the art of right
reasoning, but provides no further details. The only other source indicated by
Baillet in his marginal notes is the manuscript dossier from Clerselier; this alone
provides in paraphrase the only record of what Chandoux actually said. J. R.
Partington briefly mentioned Chandoux in his survey of minor characters in the
seventeenth-century development of chemistry38 and provided a reference to Lynn
Thorndikes history of experimental science. Thorndike gave a brief synopsis of
the 1628 affair and then commented, Chandoux seems to have preached better
than he practiced, since within three years he was hanged for counterfeiting; but
perhaps his philosophy was counterfeit too.39 Thorndike made a reference to
Mersennes letter and to the entry for Chandoux in the mid-eighteenth-century
Nouvelle Biographie Generale, which is worth quoting in full:
Chandoux, French physician and chemist, died in 1631. He was one of the free spirits who
appeared in large numbers during the beginning of the 17th century and who declared
themselves adversaries of Scholasticism. Ardent in the search for a new philosophy, the
eloquence with which they developed their ideas told in favor of their principles. His repu-
tation grew much larger [for] Cardinal de Bagni. Chandoux almost completed a book on
chemistry and its application to the decomposition of metals. France then was distressed
by a number of criminals who profited from the royal troubles, [and] who defrauded by
various means in the making and title of money. Louis XIII, in order to suppress the abuse,
established in the Paris arsenal a special chamber of justice; Chandoux was tried, found
guilty of the alteration and falsification of metals; and, despite his eloquence and numer-
ous protectors, hung at the gallows.40
One can only wonder whom these numerous protectors were, whether they
had been clients of Chandouxs alchemical expertise, or whether they figured
among those who attended Cardinal Bagnis reception three years earlier. No
trace has survived of the nearly completed book on chemistry and its application
to the decomposition of metals. But the best clue is the statement that he was
one of the free spirits, the erudite libertines, like Gabriel Naud and Guy Patin,
who caused such annoyance through their various outrages in the French capi-
37
Marin Mersenne, Correspondence, Tome III, C. de Waard, ed. (Paris: CNRS, 195988), 199200.
38
J. R. Partington, History of Chemistry (London: Macmillan, 1963), vol. II, 431.
39
Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press,
1957), vol. VII, 188.
40
Nouvelle Biographie Generale (Paris, 1854), Tome IX, 663 (my literal trans.). This entry is based
on an entry in the 1759 edition of Louis Moreri, Le Grand dictionnaire historique, Tome III, 465, which
oddly enough does not appear in the 1727 edition; Moreris entry is itself based on the original report
in the 1632 issue of Mercure Francois (the copy examined for this paper is in Leeds University Library).
41
tal. In any case, the Sieur de Chandoux was only known by his patronym, and
has until now not been identified. He seems to have preferred to be known only
under this name, an impostor who skillfully mimicked the person of a skeptic or
anti-Scholastic, who disguised Scholastic philosophy in new terms, and who was
executed for counterfeiting or defacing the currency, at that time a capital of-
fense. These characteristics are all that is really known about him, but together
they give us a picture, like a photo-fit, not of a skeptic or a reformer or an anti-
Scholastic, but of a cynic. Diogenes the dog and his followers often used nick-
names, pretended to be members of a school or inner circle only to mock their
hosts, and sometimes took as their motto, DEFACE THE CURRENCY. Perhaps
Chandoux may have delighted in the only barely concealed pun on his name,
chien-doux, nice dog;42 but he certainly had made something of a career from
defacing the currency and defrauding the public.
R. B. Branham has argued43 that defacing the currency was what the cynics
were all about: overturning religious, political, and ethical beliefs; subverting the
status quo; and mocking everyones pretensions to superior knowledge. One of
the legends attached to Diogenes himself was that he (or his father) had been
exiled from Sinope for defacing and counterfeiting the currency. Branhams notes
refer to archaeological discoveries of Sinopean coins from Diogenes era which
have been mutilated with a chisel stamp and which bear the name of Diogenes
father, Hicesias. When Descartes epitomized Chandouxs speech he said that this
charlatan had turned the true into the false, had replaced probability with im-
probability and certainty with uncertainty, and had overturned their confidence in
the right use of reason. It is my contention then that Chandoux was a cynic, an
infiltrator, who disguised himself as a philosopher in order to confuse and disen-
chant those who attended the Cardinals educational evening.
The mysterious Sieur de Chandoux has a well-recognized place in Descartess
biography; he stands as an enigma or cipher at that juncture in Descartess devel-
opment where one project is abandoned in favor of another project. But we can
now help in removing Chandouxs mask and exposing his disguise; he did have
another name, and that was Nicolas de Villiers. An undated, but definitely early
seventeenth-century, factum in the Bibliotheque Nationale reports this deed or
claim in the courts:
Finding [about] Nicolas de Villiers, Sieur de Chandoux, and Robert le Toul, Sieur de Vassy,
royal councilor, bailiff and provost of Avallon in Bourgongne, prisoners in the palace con-
cierge, defendants and incidental applicants for absolution and restoration [of goods],
and so forth, against the royal procurator general. [Note] The defendants had been impli-
cated in an information against Father Dies and falsely accused of dogmatism and magic.
41
In addition to the classic studies of Ren Pintard and Frdric Lachvre, several recent works
have explored some of the connections between the erudite libertines and philosophical movements
in seventeenth-century France. See especially Joan DeJean, Libertine Strategies: Freedom and the Novel in
17th Century France (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1981).
42
The epithets kind dog and false dog were used by the later Greek cynics, according to John
Moles, University of Durham (personal communication, May 1999). See his paper Cynic Cosmopoli-
tanism, in The Cynics: the cynic movement in antiquity and its legacy, R. B. Branham and M.-O. Goulet-
Caz, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 10520.
43
R. B. Branham, Defacing the Currency, in The Cynics, 81104.
The deed and memoirs are preceded by summary of the lawsuit shown between Nicolas
de Villiers, Sieur de Chandoux, and Robert le Toul, Sieur de Vassy.44
It seems that on at least one previous occasion Chandoux had been charged
with dogmatism and magic (though what exactly constitutes the criminal of-
fense of dogmatism remains unknown) but had been exonerated; he and his
equally shadowy colleague Robert le Toul were suing for replevin of goods seized
through distraint. On the presumption that this factum precedes the salon evening
at the home of the papal nuncio, by late 1628 Chandoux had improved his game
enough to fool all but one of his auditors. Although Descartes never again di-
rectly refers to Chandoux, traces of his cynical provocation and the distaste it
caused him surface again and again. In two letters to Mersenne in April and May
1630, Descartes refers to a nasty book (almost certainly La Mothe de Vayers Dia-
logues45) which he thought should be replied to immediately, since it was very
dangerous and very false. He devised an ingenious scheme (never executed)
in which the book might be published, without the authors knowledge, inter-
leaved with anonymous refutations (AT I. 1445, 1489; CSM III. 224). La Mothe
de Vayer was an erudite libertine, but not so erudite that Popkin could not call
him an insipid Montaigne, who concealed his impiety, ridicule, and atheism
beneath a cloak of pseudo-skepticism.46 In several letters to Mersenne and Huygens
in 1637, Descartes sometimes refers to his fulfilling the promise to publish his
researches as paying off a debt. At the end of May 1637, alluding to his receipt
of the French Kings license to publish the Discourse, Descartes appeals to Huygens
good faith in these efforts, knowing that the Dutchman would not be willing to
pass off bad money for good (AT I. 638; CSM III. 60), an unequivocal phrase
drawing an analogy between false or insincere arguments and counterfeit money.
In Part Three of the Discourse, when he recounts many of the decisions he
made as a young man after his marvelous discoveries in November 1620, Descartes
affirms his allegiance to a provisional moral code whose maxims reveal an obedi-
ent, conservative attitude toward religious and political authority (AT VI.238;
CSM I. 1225). He reprises these same maxims in one of his Letters to Elizabeth
in August 1645 (AT IV.2656; CSM III.2578) and again in the Preface to the
French edition of the Principles (AT IXB.13; CSM I.1856). On several occasions
he was concerned that the method of systematic doubt not spill over into hyper-
bolic or exaggerated doubt, as he explicitly indicates near the close of the Sixth
Meditation (AT VII.89; CSM II.61) and again in response to Father Bourdins
misdirected objections (AT VII.460; CSM II.308). In the Seventh Objections, the
implacable Father Bourdin attempts to turn Descartes himself into some kind of
cynic or libertine; Descartess increasingly angry responses are similar to those
that he made thirteen years earlier in his riposte to Chandouxs overly clever
pseudo-arguments. Descartes responds to Bourdins goading by rejecting the skep-
tical technique of equal-weighted claims (isosthenia) (AT VII.465; CSM II.313),
just as he had rejected Chandouxs recourse to this technique. He twice likens
44
Bibliotheque Nationale, no. FRBNF 36763468; available through BN-Opal Plus from July 1999.
45
The wicked book identified by Ren Pintard and Richard Popkin, op. cit., 271, n. 71 as
[Oratius Tubero] Cinq dialogues faits limitation des anciens, published in the early 1630s.
46
excessive skepticism to some sort of mental infection (AT VII.481, 512; CSM II.324,
349); in the Letter to Father Dinet, he says that the skeptical disease can only be
cured by refutation (AT VII.574; CSM II.387). Contrary to Bourdins feeble ef-
forts to contend with the skeptical assault, he asks with some frustration just ex-
actly what it is that the worthy father would suggest. We should not suppose that
sceptical philosophy is extinct. It is vigorously alive today, and almost all those
who regard themselves as more intellectually gifted than others, and find nothing
to satisfy them in philosophy as it is ordinarily practised, take refuge in scepticism
because they cannot see any alternative with greater claims to truth (AT VII.548
9; CSM II.374). He could have had someone like Chandoux in mind, someone
who thought himself more intellectually gifted than others, and managed to
persuade the gullible that this self-assessment was true.
He would have had no tolerance whatsoever for the libertines, either the trendy
or the erudite variety, those strong spirits whom Baillet refers to immediately
before recounting the Chandoux affair. Descartes and Mersenne would have been
familiar with the Jesuit Francois Garasses 1623 work La Doctrine curieuse des beaux
esprits de ce temps, an unwieldy, overstuffed polemic directed at what the author
thought were the underlying atheist tendencies behind the libertines and strong
spirits. In 1624 he followed this with an Apologie pour son livre contre atheistes et
libertines, and in 1625 his final exhaustive statement, La Somme Theologique. In each
of these works what Garasse lacked in scholarly expertise he more than made up
for in zeal, roundly condemning every fashion in which skeptical and libertine
thinkers fell away from the Catholic faith.47 One of Garasses former pupils at
Poitiers was Guez de Balzac, who adopted much of his Jesuit teachers angry argu-
ments against the libertines and false-thinkers who so plagued French literary
society at that time. Sylvain Matton has offered clear textual evidence to show that
one of the principal targets of Garasse and Balzac in the 1620s was the persistent,
irritable presence of revitalized cynicism. The gist of Garasses Doctrine curieuse, in
her words, is that Diogenes was nothing but a hypochondriac, a madman, a dolt,
and an idiot, a buffoon, an ill-mannered and self-conceited fool, and an atheist to
boot. Matton quotes from Balzacs rant against the nasty cynics, where he re-
marks on some of the ways in which they behave. Their attitude is to violate laws
and customs; it is to be without shame or honesty; it is to recognize neither family
nor friends; it is to be always yapping or biting, and so forth.48 Strong words
indeed, perhaps stronger than Descartes might have voiced, but certainly ones he
would have agreed with. Guez de Balzac was one of Descartess favorite writers,
someone he admired, not just for his superb literary style, but also for his sound
philosophical judgment.49 In an open letter written in 1628, Descartes defends
Balzac in very decided terms: everything that he undertakes to say is explained
with such sound arguments and is illustrated with such fine examples. . . . [He]
generally uses arguments that are so clear that they easily gain credence among
the common people, and for all that they are so certain and so true that the better
47
Popkin, ibid., 1115.
48
Sylvain Matton, Cynicism and Christianity, in The Cynics, 2604.
49
See Gaukroger, op. cit., 1812; Shea, op. cit., 1246; see the index in AT V, 716 for the many
letters to and from Guez de Balzac.
the mind of the reader the more sure they are to convince (AT I.10). Sometime
later that same year, confronted with Chandouxs cynical mockery and pretense,
Descartes might have been forcefully reminded of just what separated genuine
skepticism from its paltry imitation.
It is crucial to our attempted reconstruction of this lost episode, as well as to
the general picture of philosophical debates in this period, that one carefully
discriminate between the skeptical and the cynical approach to serious questions.
It will further our comprehension of the cynical approach to first characterize
some of the essential features of the skeptical attitude. These are the argumenta-
tive and substantive strategies the skeptics employ: (a) in opposition to a given
dogmatic claim to assert an equal-weighted claim contrary to the former; (b) to
withhold or suspend judgement about those questions that cannot be known for
certain; (c) to seek quietude or tranquility from the cognitive disquiet or distur-
bance generated by attempts to resolve questions that are basically uncertain; (d)
to disallow or prevent doubts raised by metaphysical questions from infecting or
spilling over into practical issues, especially moral concerns. In contrast, the cyn-
ics strategies and purposes can be typified in these ways: (e) to pretend that what
is true is false and that what is false is true, i.e., to turn the truth into the semblance
of truth; (f) to disguise oneself as a dogmatist or skeptic or fideist (and so forth)
in order to expose their position to ridicule and contempt; (g) to encourage, or
at least not disallow doubts raised by metaphysical questions from infecting or
spilling over into practical issues, especially to undermine moral and religious
authority; (h) to seek out and provoke disquiet and agitation attendant on the
cognitive disturbance generated by attempts to resolve questions that are basi-
cally uncertain. The cynic thus has an enlightened false consciousness, assidu-
ously maintaining a superior and detached attitude, that is, detached from and
indifferent to whether the dogmatist or the skeptic is correct. Whereas the skeptic
genuinely cares that the dogmatist is wrong, and vice versa, the cynic does not
care at all who is right and who is wrong. The cynic is also superior in that he
secretly despises and laughs at both the skeptic and the dogmatist for being fools
of an equal stature. Where Descartes took seriously the challenge posed by skep-
tical assaults on the certainty of scientific knowledge, he reacted with vigorous
repugnance to the cynics pretense and ridicule.
3. THE EVIL DEMON OF LOUDUN, 163234

Ever since his death there has been some dispute about the exact site of Descartess
birth; whether it was Chattelerault, 20 kilometers north of Poitiers, or La Haye in
Touraine, just to the north of Poitou.50 In either case, he spent most of his early
childhood, as well as his school holidays, in Chatellerault with his maternal grand-
parents. After leaving the College of La Fleche, he returned to Poitiers where, as
we have seen, he received his license in law in November 1616, dedicated to his
maternal uncle Ren Brochard, chief judge of Poitiers until 1621. In November
1618, Beeckman referred to his young friend as Ren le Poitevin, and in Paris in
50
Rodis-Lewis argues that this dispute arose out of an inter-regional rivalry between Poitou and
Touraine, where each claimed the privilege of the famous philosophers birth.
16235 he was sometimes known as the young man from Poitiers. In a letter to
Mersenne of May 1637 (AT I.376), he mentions that he had recently received his
letters of privilege for nobility; in the next letter of June 14 (AT I.379), he com-
ments that he learned in Leyden of Beeckmans death after a long trip of six
weeksmore than enough time to visit Chatellerault. It was common practice at
that time for a noble to attend the place of his privilegement, in this case his
family demesne near Poitiers. In any case, after moving house from Poitiers,
Descartes either visited there or exchanged letters about family business on a
number of occasions.
During the summer of 1637, the scandalous stories and exposs about the
possessions and exorcisms in Loudun had circulated throughout France, Hol-
land, and the Low Countries. Now, the town of Loudun is located about thirty
kilometers from Chatellerault, and about forty kilometers from Poitiers. The final
stages of Urbain Grandiers trial were conducted before the presidial of the town
of Poitiers, where Descartess uncle, Ren Brochard, though retired from the mag-
istracy, still served in an advisory role until his death in 1648. With a strong motive
to visit Poitiers, an area completely embroiled in the possession scandals, and an
uncle closely connected with the trial itself, how likely is it that Descartes would
have heard nothing? This straightforward connection between simple geographi-
cal and biographical facts has not been mentioned in any account of Descartess
life.
Another chain of events may help to explain how Descartes became aware of
the Loudun affair. In 1636, the eccentric philosopher-alchemist Kenelm Digby
went to Loudun where he took part in an extended sance with some of the towns
principal figures. What transpired during this conference with the spirits is not
known, though his manuscript account of this episode is extant.51 In October
1637, the ever-curious Digby, on the recommendation of Claude Mydorge,52 sent
Thomas Hobbes a copy of Descartess Discourse; it was the essay on Optics which
provoked Hobbes to work on the Latin Optical Manuscript. In early 1641, Digby
went to great lengths to obtain a private interview with Descartes at his retreat in
Egmont, Holland, some time before the publication of Descartess Meditations, ac-
cording to the memoir of des Maizeaux (AT XI. 670); an eight-day visit to
Descartess retreat is confirmed by the most recent editors (AT III.90). According
to des Maizeauxs recollection, Digby wanted to persuade Descartes to visit En-
gland, questioned him about the construction of the human body, its application
for the prolongation of life, and other useful and agreeable knowledge.53 Given
Descartess intense interest at that time in possible sources of cognitive and per-
ceptual deception, my conjecture is that something about the events in Loudun,
51
R. T. Peterson, Sir Kenelm Digby (London: J. Cape, 1956), 335, n. 124; the manuscript reference
which Peterson makes is to the Bodleian manuscript B. P. 5304, Smith 21. Some of the details of this
letter to the Prince de Guieme have been supplied by Clare Brown, the Bodleian Library, Oxford
University, June 2001.
52
For the full texts of the letters from Digby to Hobbes, see Thomas Hobbes, Correspondence,
Norman Malcolm, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), vol. I, 4253.
53
Descartes had a modestly good opinion of Digbys work, which he mentions in letters on sev-
eral occasions; see AT II, 192, 271, 336, 398; III, 73, 483, 582, 590; IV, 209, 221, 323; CSM III, 105,
251, 277.
possibly transmitted by Digby in this interview, may have confirmed Descartes in
his hypothesis of the malin genie. Three years later, in 1644, after the publication
of his own Hermetic-Cartesian work, Two Treatises: of Bodies and of Mans Soul, Digby
again met Descartes, this time in Paris. Did Digby recognize the French
philosophers employment of the fiction of an evil demon who systematically de-
ceived the meditator at every point? The simple answer is that we do not know.
However, the significance of Digbys first visit to Descartes and the opportunity
which he may have had to communicate his thoughts about demonic possession
has never been mentioned in connection with the development of his philosophi-
cal thought.
It is hardly necessary to recount the events in this famous case of witchcraft
and possession, but a brief sketch may serve to highlight the theological and philo-
sophical significance of the exorcisms. Within a short time after his appointment
as parish priest, Urbain Grandier had won the support and patronage of several
powerful Catholic families, but had also antagonized other equally powerful Prot-
estant families. It is almost certain that he seduced the daughter of one of these
notables, publicly humiliated others, and having escaped charges of indecency
and assault two or three times, showed an unwise smugness and lack of contrition.
Robert Rapley54 has shown that Grandier was probably employed by the Duke of
Armagnac to report on Protestant activities and to vigorously defend the Dukes
claim to retain his walled citadel in Loudun, directly against King Louiss and
Richelieus orders to have the walls torn down. The weight of documentary evi-
dence shows that powerful forces were allied to bring down Grandier at any cost.
His enemies best opportunity came when the Ursuline Convent nuns began to
report disturbances and nightly visitations. The Baron de Laubardemont and the
Bishop of Poitiers began a protracted investigation over the next two years to
discover the truth of the nuns accusations, especially the most strident of these
from the Mother Superior, that Father Grandier was a witch who had inflicted
them with demons. Lurid stories of the nuns behavior spread through France,
placards and pamphlets appeared everywhere, and during the spring of 1634
thousands of onlookers attended the public exorcisms.
Marin Mersenne, who was in regular contact with Descartes at that time, was
certainly well informed about the progress of events. He had received a copy of a
detailed report from Ismael Boulliaud to Pierre Gassendi;55 and in June 1634, he
received an excited letter from the physician Christophe de Villiers (not the same
de Villiers, Sieur de Chandoux), who posed an intellectual question after making
an astute observation:
I am greatly amazed that so many members of the religious orders are found among the
demon-possessed. It is said in this land that a priest [Grandier] is responsible, as if a man
had the ability through magic to turn souls over to the devil. If indeed such things have
occurred, then why do these magicians not have more people possessed in the same way? I
54
Robert Rapley, A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Montreal: McGill-Queens Uni-
versity Press, 1998), ch. on Public Exorcisms.
55
Mersenne, op. cit., Tome III, 400. For the full text, see Cabinet Historique, T. de Larroque, ed.
(Paris, 1879), Series II, vol. III, 114.
certainly do not believe that God has granted these people such abilities, or else all the
world would be in the demons power.56
Descartes addressed the same question when the meditator has to contend with
the supreme doubt he has himself raised: could not an all-powerful demon have
affected the entire world with doubt?
The Loudun church, the magistrates court, and the marketplace became the
arena for a struggle for supremacy between Catholic and Protestant forces, and
the focus of this struggle became centered on a theological doctrine: did the
exorcist priest have the power to compel the demon to tell the truth?57 The Catho-
lics claimed that he did and the Protestants that he did not; the Catholics pro-
posed several criteria for demonic possession and the Protestants keenly exam-
ined the nuns responses to catch them out.58 The Catholic priests and their lay
supporters were trapped several times when the Mother Superior, speaking through
the persona of Asmodeus, clumsily accused one of the cabal behind the prosecu-
tion, made serious factual errors or contradicted her own previous testimony. But
the twofold question remained: was the woman really possessed by the devils
agent, and if so, could the devil be compelled to tell the truth? At the end of a
terrible ordeal lasting three months Father Grandier was charged, convicted, and
executed, but the judicial reports, medical examinations, trial proceedings, and
declamatory pamphlets continued to be published into the early 1640s. In fact,
other manifestations of demonic possession made sporadic appearances in Loudun
until 1638 and it was not until 1640 that the principal nun wrote her memoirs.
Several connections can be drawn between the Loudun affair and the articula-
tion of Descartess philosophical arguments after the Discourse. It would have been
almost impossible for any person, even a semi-recluse like Descartes, to have heard
nothing about this celebrated scandal, perhaps the most famous case of posses-
sion in early seventeenth-century Europe. In addition, the fact that the evil de-
mon argument does not occur in the Discourse (1637) proves nothing about
Descartess knowledge (or ignorance) of the events. Perhaps it was only further
reflection on specific documents or the report of Digbys sance that provoked
Descartes to attempt to solve the puzzle posed by the exorcists and their superi-
ors. The process-verbal had exposed a serious difficulty for the prosecutor: how to
demonstrate the presence of a malign spirit in the witness when the assumption
was that such a spirit would always deceive. Was there any way to expose the de-
mon based entirely on declarations of subjective experience? Were there any inter-
nal marks whereby an expression of judgment could be deemed to be false?
Twenty years ago, Richard Popkin suggested that the possessed of Loudun may
have been the source for Descartess evil demon argument, and remarked that, a
more extensive examination of the issues discussed in the learned world as a re-
56
Mersenne, ibid., Tome IV, 1923 (my literal trans.).
57
An important point made by D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits (Philadelphia: Penn State University
Press, 1981), 715; Stephen Greenblatt, Loudun and London, Critical Inquiry 12 (1986): 32646;
and Michel de Certeau, La possession de Loudun (Paris: Gallimard, 1980).
58
The absurdity of some of these interrogations was described with great relish by the arch
skeptic Pierre Bayle, The Historical and Critical Dictionary, French ed. 1697, English trans., London,
1710, vol. III, 14507. For some highly pertinent examples, see James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness:
Witchcraft in England 15501750 (London: Routledge, 1996), 190210.
sult of the Loudun trial may throw some light on the source and significance at
the time of Descartess great contribution to sceptical argumentation59but
Popkins provocative suggestion has thus-far never been taken up.
It is this third episode that has the most far-reaching consequences for the
development of Descartess mature philosophical arguments. In addition to the
evil demon fiction employed to capture the notion of a persistent and systematic
deception, elements in the Loudun affair provide an important case-study of a
profound disturbance in the je or ego which speaks and the je or ego which thinks.60
This disturbance is epitomized in the nuns response Je est un autre (I is an
other) to the question Who are you? This strange declaration dislocates the
subject from the speaker through the agency of a putative demonic power. On
this view, the demon is supposed to be distinct from the living person, already
known to the self and to others, and yet it is identified as the ego. In other words,
it is not some other person (say, Marthe) who is this demon (Asmodeus), but je
(Jeanne) who is this demon. The demon is only able to speak through me by
making myself an other for myself. In this diremption between the ego and the person
there lies, on the one hand, the abyss of psychosis, the radical psychic splitting
exhibited in madness. On the other hand, there lies disclosed for the first time
the clearing or opening which makes possible the Cartesian grounding of truth
and certainty entirely within the objective reality of cognition. Je est un autre is
a nonsense statement which could not be understood in terms of Scholastic, neo-
Aristotelian psychology except as an instance of demonic possession.
On the Scholastic view, since the soul (anima) was the ruling part of the spe-
cific form which the persons material body assumed, the soul was inextricably
linked with its owners body. Thus, if the nuns soul had been usurped by another
soul, that other souls body must also be present, even if it was the invisible, intan-
gible body of a demon. Since Descartes conceded that the mind and body were
separate and separable substances, each of which could exist independently of
the other, it was conceivable that the nuns ego was still present somewhere, and
that another ego was now also present, but without taking its place. There was no
need to posit an invisible, intangible demonic body, since the mind, unlike the
soul, did not require the persons body to give it a specific intelligible form. Hav-
ing rejected the notion of an informed material particular, the Cartesian account
of mind as a thinking thing faced a new problem; how to discriminate within the
realm of thoughts (cogitata) true from false judgments, including judgments made
about the nature of ones own ego. The criteria of clarity and distinctness cannot
be invoked for externally observable, behavioral, or material manifestations due
to the problems of sense illusions and cognitive delusions; rather, the criteria of
truth and falsity have their application in terms of the objective reality of ideas
and their proper cognitive mode. The rational insights directed at the objects
of ones thoughts are accessible only through an inner sense, a point of view
which is ruled out in principle for any neutral observer, and that includes the
exorcist priest in cases of alleged possession.
59
60
For which, see Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992),
1025.
On the double assumption that a demon was indeed present and that an exor-
cist could compel a demon to tell the truth, anything the demon said, through
the nuns voice, was taken to be true. The principal ground of an accusation against
a sorcerer, such as Father Grandier, was the declaration of his guilt by the pos-
sessed person, a declaration which had to be confirmed at least once under the
compulsion procedure invoked by the exorcist priest. This is another way to ex-
press the theological paradox at the heart of the Loudun affair: if the priest has
the power to compel the demon to speak the truth, then the demons accusation
of a sorcerers guilt must be true; but if the priest does not have this power then
the demons accusation does not have to be true (though, of course, it might be
true anyway). Now since there was no agreement on whether a Catholic priest
had this power, either of the two claims in the consequents followed. Some of the
exorcists apparently thought that, if they could show that everything the demon
said was true, or at least did not entail anything false, then they had shown that
they had the power to compel the truthbut this is a fallacious argument, i.e.,
affirming the consequent. Some of the critics of the exorcists power argued that,
since the priest could not compel the demon to tell the truth, all of the demons
claims were false, insofar as the devil is the father of liesbut this also is a falla-
cious argument, i.e., denying the antecedent. The clash between Catholic and
Protestant political forces around the town of Loudun in the 1630s exacted a
price through the death of an innocent priest. But his execution could only have
followed from a confirmation of his guilt in the case of the Ursuline nuns alleged
possession by demons. Although the Catholic Church had established criteria
that gave probable cause for the investigation of specific allegations, it was still
the task of the exorcist to determine whether a demon or malign influence was
actually present in the particular case. But no matter how they attacked the issue,
the trial transcripts reveal profound conceptual problems, fallacious arguments,
and question-begging tactics.
4. CONCLUSION
For each of the three episodes, we have tendered a hypothesis about Descartess
personal experiences which depends to a large degree on where he was, whom he
was with, and what he knew at a certain date. In each case, there is a fact of the
matter to be discovered; in each case, the proof of our contention relies on the
preponderance of circumstantial evidence pointing in one direction rather than
another. Other scholars of Descartess life and work have either withheld judg-
ment, as the ancient skeptics advised, or have not hesitated to draw the inference
that he was not where his earliest biographer Baillet claimed that he was. Perhaps
the more prudent attitude is to remain content with the non-committal citation
of these events as possibilities in the formation of Descartess beliefs. But further
information, brought forth above, seems to counter-balance the standard interpre-
tation and provide greater weight for the contrary interpretation. Thus a healthy
skepticism should incline one to give some credence to the hypothesis that makes
the best sense of all the available information, and not remain indecisive due to
the fact that we do not have complete knowledge about these events.
In the first episode, it is Descartess reactions to his experiences in the city of
Prague which are significant in terms of his expression of a new universal science
in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. The various pseudo-sciences such as al-
chemy, astrology, and mnemonics, as well as complex automata, optical illusions,
the Rosicrucian manifestoes, and so forth, were important features of the intellec-
tual landscape of this period. But what makes Descartess reaction so unusual is
his utter rejection of pseudo-scientific explanation, his refusal to countenance oc-
cult powers behind the appearances. Instead he focuses his exceptional talents
on a rigorous and complete natural scientific model, according to which one can
deduce the causal forces at work in such devices as complex automata and animal
bodies. The soul-terms he employs in this contexta wind, a fire, or a very subtle
matterare precisely the operative powers that drive the marvels he observed. It
is the mind alone, the thinking thing, which resists all efforts to be accommo-
dated in this mechanical scheme and thus must have the status of a separate sub-
stance.
In the second episode, Descartes encounters someone who gives equal weight
to both the dogmatic and the anti-dogmatic view about the connections between
appearance and reality, who turns every assertion into a denial, every truth into a
falsity, and so forth. But this is not an actual version of skepticism, rather it is a
mockery of the skeptics method of doubt, and reveals Chandouxs real character
as a disguised cynic or erudite libertine. This hypothesis is further supported by
our identification of Nicolas de Villiers as the Sieur de Chandoux, and the close
connection between counterfeit coinage and cynical subversion. The third part
of this paper has attempted to show that the pre-Cartesian notions of soul and
body, the epistemic criteria for judgments, and the confusion of external with
internal marks of evidence were incapable of making sense of anomalous phe-
nomena such as demonic possession. It was through Descartess complete over-
throw of these traditional notions, and his solution to the supreme test case of an
evil demon, that a new way of ideas would permit an understanding of the man-
ner in which one can be an other for oneself, and an understanding of the man-
ner in which certainty can be grounded within the objective structures of con-
sciousness.

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