[8] Prin. p. 56.
[9] Bacon, Descriptio Globi Intellectualis.
Whatever the causes might be, his system was well received and rapidly adopted. Gassendi, indeed, says that he found nobody who had the courage to read the Principia through;[10] but the system was soon embraced by the younger professors, who were eager to dispute in its favor. It is said[11] that the University of Paris was on the point of publishing an edict against these new doctrines, and was only prevented from doing so by a pasquinade which is worth mentioning. It was composed by the poet Boileau (about 1684), and professed to be a Request in favor of Aristotle, and an Edict issued from Mount [391] Parnassus in consequence. It is obvious that, at this time, the cause of Cartesianism was looked upon as the cause of free inquiry and modern discovery, in opposition to that of bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance. Probably the poet was far from being a very severe or profound critic of the truth of such claims. “This petition of the Masters of Arts, Professors and Regents of the University of Paris, humbly showeth, that it is of public notoriety that the sublime and incomparable Aristotle was, without contest, the first founder of the four elements, fire, air, earth, and water; that he did, by special grace, accord unto them a simplicity which belongeth not to them of natural right;” and so on. “Nevertheless, since, a certain time past, two individuals, named Reason and Experience, have leagued themselves together to dispute his claim to the rank which of justice pertains to him, and have tried to erect themselves a throne on the ruins of his authority; and, in order the better to gain their ends, have excited certain factious spirits, who, under the names of Cartesians and Gassendists, have begun to shake off the yoke of their master, Aristotle; and, contemning his authority, with unexampled temerity, would dispute the right which he had acquired of making true pass for false and false for true;”—In fact, this production does not exhibit any of the peculiar tenets of Descartes, although, probably, the positive points of his doctrines obtained a footing in the University of Paris, under the cover of this assault on his adversaries. The Physics of Rohault, a zealous disciple of Descartes, was published at Paris about 1670,[12] and was, for a time, the standard book for students of this subject, both in France and in England. I do not here speak of the later defenders of the Cartesian system, for, in their hands, it was much modified by the struggle which it had to maintain against the Newtonian system.
[10] Del. A. M. ii. 193.
[11] Enc. Brit. art. Cartesianism.
[12] And a second edition in 1672.
We are concerned with Descartes and his school only as they form part of the picture of the intellectual condition of Europe just before the publication of Newton’s discoveries. Beyond this, the Cartesian speculations are without value. When, indeed, Descartes’ countrymen could no longer refuse their assent and admiration to the Newtonian theory, it came to be the fashion among them to say that Descartes had been the necessary precursor of Newton; and to adopt a favorite saying of Leibnitz, that the Cartesian philosophy was the antechamber of Truth. Yet this comparison is far from being happy: it appeared rather as if these suitors had mistaken the door; for those [392] who first came into the presence of Truth herself, were those who never entered this imagined antechamber, and those who were in the antechamber first, were the last in penetrating further. In partly the same spirit, Playfair has noted it as a service which Newton perhaps owed to Descartes, that “he had exhausted one of the most tempting forms of error.” We shall see soon that this temptation had no attraction for those who looked at the problem in its true light, as the Italian and English philosophers already did. Voltaire has observed, far more truly, that Newton’s edifice rested on no stone of Descartes’ foundations. He illustrates this by relating that Newton only once read the work of Descartes, and, in doing so, wrote the word “error,” repeatedly, on the first seven or eight pages; after which he read no more. This volume, Voltaire adds, was for some time in the possession of Newton’s nephew.[13]
[13] Cartesianism, Enc. Phil.
(Gassendi.) Even in his own country, the system of Descartes was by no means universally adopted. We have seen that though Gassendi was coupled with Descartes as one of the leaders of the new philosophy, he was far from admiring his work. Gassendi’s own views of the causes of the motions of the heavenly bodies are not very clear, nor even very clearly referrible to the laws of mechanics; although he was one of those who had most share in showing that those laws apply to astronomical motions. In a chapter, headed[14] “Quæ sit motrix siderum causa,” he reviews several opinions; but the one which he seems to adopt, is that which ascribes the motion of the celestial globes to certain fibres, of which the action is similar to that of the muscles of animals. It does not appear, therefore, that he had distinctly apprehended, either the continuation of the movements of the planets by the First Law of Motion, or their deflection by the Second Law;—the two main steps on the road to the discovery of the true forces by which they are made to describe their orbits.
[14] Gassendi, Opera, vol. i. p. 639.