One of Galileo's countrymen, G. B. Clemente de Nelli, was right when he declared that, had it not been for the assistance and consolation which he received from Sister Celeste, Galileo would have succumbed to the blows that were showered upon him during the most trying part of his career. An indication of this is given in one of the letters written by Sister Celeste in the last year of her life.
While in a fit of despondency and imagining his friends had forgotten him, Galileo, in a moment of bitterness, wrote in a letter to his daughter: "My name is erased from the book of the living." "Nay," came at once Sister Celeste's cheering reply, "say not that your name is struck de libro viventium, for it is not so; neither in the greater part of the world nor in your own country. Indeed, it seems to me that, if for a brief moment your name and fame were clouded, they are now restored to greater brightness, at which I am much astonished, for I know that generally Nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua. I am afraid, however, if I begin quoting Latin, I shall fall into some barbarism. But, of a truth, you are loved and esteemed here more than ever."[245]
How much Sister Celeste was to her father in every way was not known until after her premature death in her thirty-fourth year. He was never the same man afterward. Disconsolate and broken, he fancied he heard the voice of the daughter he so fondly loved resounding through the house. Brooding over his great loss, the heart-broken old man writes to a friend in words of infinite pathos, "Mi sento continuamente chiamare della mia diletta figlioula—I continually hear myself called by my dearly beloved daughter." The eighth of January, 1642, he answered her call and went to join her in a better world.
Two other noted investigators, one of them a contemporary of Galileo, owed much to the inspiration and encouragement which they received from women. These were Descartes and Leibnitz. And the women that had the most influence on them were representatives of royal families, who were famous in their day for their love and knowledge and the extent of their intellectual attainments.
One of the most noted of these was Elizabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine. She was the favorite pupil of Descartes, and it was to her that he dedicated his great work, Principia Philosophiæ. She, he declared, understood him better than any one else he had ever met, for "in her alone were united those generally separated talents for metaphysics and for mathematics which are so characteristically operative in the Cartesian system."[246]
To this earnest student who was always absorbed in the mysteries of metaphysics and the problems of geometry, Descartes could refuse nothing. When distance separated them he continued his instructions by correspondence. One of the results of this correspondence was his treatise on Passions de l'Âme, in which he develops certain ethical views suggested by the Vita Beata of Seneca.
Another distinguished pupil of Descartes who exercised a marked influence over him was the celebrated daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, Queen Christine of Sweden. A mistress of many languages and an ardent votary of science, she was a munificent patron of scientific men, a great number of whom she had attracted to her court. The most distinguished of these was Descartes, to whom she was deeply attached, and with whom she had planned great things for science in Sweden, when his career was cut short by a premature death.
Not the least influence on the intellectual life of Leibnitz was Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia and mother of Frederick the Great. She was the niece of Descartes' illustrious friend, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and, as the pupil of Leibnitz, quite as gloriously associated as had been her aunt with the father of Cartesianism.
Leibnitz was as distinguished by genius as his royal pupil was by birth. Besides being eminent as a philosopher and a statesman, he shared with Newton the honor of discovering the calculus. Huxley pronounced him "a man of science, in the modern sense, of the first rank," while the King of Prussia declared of him, "He represents in himself a whole academy." Through the coöperation of Sophia Charlotte he founded the Berlin Academy of Sciences. For her he wrote one of the most notable of his productions—his famed Theodicy.
It would be difficult to estimate the influence of this learned queen on Leibnitz, but it was undoubtedly greater than any other single influence whatever. Her death was the greatest loss he ever suffered, and when she was no more, the beautiful Berlin suburb, Charlottenburg—named after her—where he had been so happy in reading and philosophizing with his illustrious pupil, lost all attraction for him.