Such a persecution from all sides,must necessarily suppose a most exalted merit as well as a very distinguished reputation,and indeed he possessed both.Reason at that time darted a ray upon the world through the gloom of the schools,and the prejudices of popular superstition.At last his name spread so universally,that the French were desirous of bringing him back into his native country by rewards,and accordingly offered him an annual pension of a thousand crowns.Upon these hopes Descartes returned to France;paid the fees of his patent,which was sold at that time,but no pension was settled upon him.Thus disappointed,he returned to his solitude in North Holland,where he again pursued the study of philosophy,whilst the great Galileo,at fourscore years of age,was groaning in the prisons of the Inquisition,only for having demonstrated the earth's motion.
At last Descartes was snatched from the world in the flower of his age at Stockholm.His death was owing to a bad regimen,and he expired in the midst of some literati who were his enemies,and under the hands of a physician to whom he was odious.
The progress of Sir Isaac Newton's life was quite different.He lived happy,and very much honoured in his native country,to the age of fourscore and five years.
It was his peculiar felicity,not only to be born in a country of liberty,but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were banished from the world.Reason alone was cultivated,and mankind could only be his pupil,not his enemy.
One very singular difference in the lives of these two great men is,that Sir Isaac,during the long course of years he enjoyed,was never sensible to any passion,was not subject to the common frailties of mankind,nor ever had any commerce with women--a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments.
We may admire Sir Isaac Newton on this occasion,but then we must not censure Descartes.
The opinion that generally prevails in England with regard to these new philosophers is,that the latter was a dreamer,and the former a sage.
Very few people in England read Descartes,whose works indeed are now useless.On the other side,but a small number peruse those of Sir Isaac,because to do this the student must be deeply skilled in the mathematics,otherwise those works will be unintelligible to him.But notwithstanding this,these great men are the subject of everyone's discourse.Sir Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage,whilst Descartes is not indulged a single one.According to some,it is to the former that we owe the discovery of a vacuum,that the air is a heavy body,and the invention of telescopes.In a word,Sir Isaac Newton is here as the Hercules of fabulous story,to whom the ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes.
In a critique that was made in London on Mr.de Fontenelle's discourse,the writer presumed to assert that Descartes was not a great geometrician.Those who make such a declaration may justly be reproached with flying in their master's face.Descartes extended the limits of geometry as far beyond the place where he found them,as Sir Isaac did after him.The former first taught the method of expressing curves by equations.This geometry which,thanks to him for it,is now grown common,was so abstruse in his time,that not so much as one professor would undertake to explain it;and Schotten in Holland,and Format in France,were the only men who understood it.
He applied this geometrical and inventive genius to dioptrics,which,when treated of by him,became a new art.And if he was mistaken in some things,the reason of that is,a man who discovers a new tract of land cannot at once know all the properties of the soil.Those who come after him,and make these lands fruitful,are at least obliged to him for the discovery.I will not deny but that there are innumerable errors in the rest of Descartes'works.
Geometry was a guide he himself had in some measure fashioned,which would have conducted him safely through the several paths of natural philosophy.Nevertheless,he at last abandoned this guide,and gave entirely into the humour of forming hypotheses;and then philosophy was no more than an ingenious romance,fit only to amuse the ignorant.He was mistaken in the nature of the soul,in the proofs of the existence of a God,in matter,in the laws of motion,and in the nature of light.He admitted innate ideas,he invented new elements,he created a world;he made man according to his own fancy;and it is justly said,that the man of Descartes is,in fact,that of Descartes only,very different from the real one.
He pushed his metaphysical errors so far,as to declare that two and two make four for no other reason but because God would have it so.
However,it will not be making him too great a compliment if we affirm that he was valuable even in his mistakes.He deceived himself;but then it was at least in a methodical way.He destroyed all the absurd chimeras with which youth had been infatuated for two thousand years.He taught his contemporaries how to reason,and enabled them to employ his own weapons against himself.If Descartes did not pay in good money,he however did great service in crying down that of a base alloy.
I indeed believe that very few will presume to compare his philosophy in any respect with that of Sir Isaac Newton.The former is an essay,the latter a masterpiece.But then the man who first brought us to the path of truth,was perhaps as great a genius as he who afterwards conducted us through it.
Descartes gave sight to the blind.These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences.The path he struck out is since become boundless.Rohault's little work was,during some years,a complete system of physics;but now all the Transactions of the several academies in Europe put together do not form so much as the beginning of a system.In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found.We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.
