Table Of ContentJACQUES MARITAIN
The Dream of
Descartes
together with some other
ESSAYS
Translated by Mabelle L. Andison
KENNIKAT PRESS/PORT WASHINGTON, N. Y.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface . 9
Chapter I.—The Dream of Descartes... 11
II.—The Revelation of Science. 31
III. —The Deposition of Wisdom. 59
IV. —The Cartesian Proofs of God. 105
V.—The Cartesian Heritage. 161
Notes . 187
TO PIERRE VAN DER MEER
DE WALCHEREN
PREFACE
I should like to have devoted a whole comprehensive work to
Descartes; but having little hope of finding the leisure necessary
for that purpose, I have decided to gather together at this time,
some studies bearing only upon certain aspects of the Cartesian
system, but dealing with some important problems. The first
three chapters appeared as articles in 1920 and 1922. The
fifth is a lecture which seemed as though it might serve as con¬
clusion. The fourth was written for this volume.
What 1 have attempted to do in this book is to try to deter¬
mine the value and significance of the Cartesian reform with
regard to metaphysical and theological wisdom; and that is what
creates the unity between the diverse studies of which it is
composed. Added to the chapter devoted to Descartes in
Three Reformers, it specifies, I hope, in a sufficiently clear
manner the data of a problem more up-to-date than ever, in my
opinion.
The figure of Descartes dominates all philosophy of the past
three centuries, his historical significance is inexhaustible; the
Cartesian attempt was magnificently carried out. But what M.
Etienne Gilson wrote recently in regard to the cogito can be
applied in a general manner to that tragic experience, classical
rationalism; "The Cartesian experiment was an admirable
metaphysical undertaking bearing the hall-mark of genius; we
owe it a great deal, if only for having brilliantly proven that any
experiment of that nature is doomed ahead of time to failure . .
* E. Gilson, Le Réalisme Méthodique, in Philosophia perennis, vol. II,
p. 748.
The men of today have the very instructive privilege of
watching the historic failure of three centuries of rationalism.
It would be suicidal to blame reason. But they can observe
everywhere, even in the economic order, what is produced by the
claim of imposing upon matter the rule of a reason which itself
refuses to be guided by the highest and most essential realities,
and will be satisfied only with facile clarities. All rationaliza¬
tion inevitably engenders absurd results when it is not the work
of an integral reason, which heeds the order of wisdom and of
nature.
If one takes up one’s position from the viewpoint of what
might be called the sociology of the mind, and if one takes into
account the cultural conditions at the beginning of the seven¬
teenth century, in particular the human power of univocal
prejudices which, immobilizing wisdom, bound it to an out-of-
date idea of the science of the tangible world, the revolutionary
work of Descartes appears as a great blockade-lifting task,
historically necessary. For good and for evil that work has
produced its effects, it is not a question of trying to erase it from
the pages of history. But it is certain that today reason can work
usefully at the general reform everyone feels so necessary only
if it first of all cures itself of Cartesian errors.
CHAPTER I
THE DREAM OF DESCARTES
By Jacques Maritain
Trans, by Mabelle L. Andison
Chapter I
THE DREAM OF DESCARTES
In the month of November, 1619, Descartes went into retire¬
ment in winter quarters near Ulm, following his attendance at
the coronation of the Emperor Ferdinand at Frankfurt. Twenty-
three years old at the time, the young soldier-philosopher was
in the thick of his intellectual activity and scientific enthusiasm;
in fact, his biographer does not hesitate to say that his brain
was greatly over-stimulatedd11 He had spent the previous twenty
months under the exciting influence of his friend, Isaac Beeck-
manm—"I was asleep and you wakened me,” Descartes wrote
him—and had dedicated his first work, Compendium Musicae
(December, 1618) to him; and he turned back to his
studies of physics and mathematics with keen interest. The
beginning of his retirement was marked by an extraordinary
occurrence: X Novembris 1619, he recorded in the daily account
he kept in his youtht3]—cum plenus forem Enthusiasmo, et
mirabilis Scientiae fundamenta reperirem . . . The tenth of
November 1619, he was filled with Enthusiasm, he discovered
the foundations of the Admirable Science, and at the same time
his vocation was revealed to him in a dream.c 11
Descartes took great care to write out a minute description
of this dream, in three parts; Baillet read it carefully and sum¬
marized it. To our profane eyes it may appear insignificant,
13
THE DREAM OF DESCARTES
even absurd; the philosopher, however, looked upon it as com¬
pletely supernatural.
Descartes dreams first of all that a tempestuous wind is whirl¬
ing him about in the street as he struggles, hardly able to keep
his feet, to reach the church of the College (of La Flèche) to say
his prayers; at the very moment he turns to show courtesy to a
man he had neglected to greet, the wind blows him violently
against the Church; soon someone, in the middle of the college
courtyard, tells him that an acquaintance of his has something—
a melon—to give him . . . He experiences pain upon awakening,
turns over on his right side, and prays God for protection against
the bad effect of his dream. After that, falling asleep once more,
he has another dream that fills him with terror; he is awakened
by a burst of noise like a crack of lightning and sees thousands
of sparks in his room. In a third and final dream he sees upon
his table a Dictionary and a Corpus poetarum, open at a passage
of Ausonius: quod vitae sectabor iter? (What path shall I follow
in life?) An unknown man hands him a bit of verse—the words
Est et Non catch his eye.
After several disconnected incidents too unimportant to
relate, Descartes decides in his sleep that it is a dream, and
interprets it. The interpretation obviously merits much greater
attention than the dream itself; unfortunately, what comes to
us through Baillet amounts to only a few very insufficient par¬
ticulars.151 We gather that the Dictionary signifies "all the various
sciences grouped together,’’ and that the Corpus poetarum "marks
particularly and in a very distinct manner, Philosophy and
Wisdom linked together.’’ The words Est et Non, which are the
"Yes and No of Pythagoras,” represent "Truth and Falsity in
human attainment and in secular sciences”; the section beginning
14
THE DREAM OF DESCARTES
with Quod vitae sectabor iter? "marks the good advice of a wise
person, or even moral theology.” As to the wind that hurries
the future author of the Traité du monde toward the College
Church, it is an evil genius which, according to Baillet, "was
trying to throw him by force into a place where it was his
design to go voluntarily”—a malo spiritu ad Templum propelle-
bar, wrote Descartes,C6] without telling us what Temple it was,
symbolized by the Chapel in the College of La Flèche. The
melon is the love of that solitude Descartes reproaches himself
with having sought up till then, for purely human reasons. This
melon highly amused the eighteenth century readers of the Life
of the philosopher.
Finally, the lightning is "the Spirit of Truth that descended
upon him and took possession of him.”
Descartes, Baillet tells us, took the first two dreams as a
warning about his past life—the last, as a revelation bearing
upon the future. It was the Spirit of Truth, he knew beyond all
doubt, that wanted "to open for him, by this dream, the treasure
of all the sciences.” And what is even more extraordinary, Des¬
cartes added that "the genius that heightened in him the enthusiasm
which had been burning within him for the past several days,
had forecast these dreams to him before he bad retired to his bed.”
The historians of rationalism ought to settle for us once and
for all, the identity of this Genius. Could it be by any chance,
cousin to the Mischievous Genius of the Meditations?
The next day Descartes made the vow[7] fulfilled five years
later,[8] to make a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Lorette.
It is undeniably very annoying to find at the origin of modern
philosophy a "cerebral episode,” to quote Auguste Comte, which
15
THE DREAM OF DESCARTES
would call forth from our savants, should they meet it in the
life of some devout personage, the most disquieting neuropatho-
logical diagnosis; and one can understand the dissatisfaction of
these philosophical people in reading Baillet’s account. "The
Life of M. Descartes by M. Baillet,” wrote Malebranche, "is
bound to render him and his philosophy ridiculous.” Huygens,
strongly endorsed by Leibnitz, wrote in his turn: "The passage in
which he relates how his brain was over-stimulated and in a fit
state for visions, and his vow to Our Lady of Lorette, shows
great weakness; and I think it will appear so, even to Catholics
who have rid themselves of superstition.” Even and above all to
Catholics, kind and scholarly Huygens! Any dealing with Genii
who instigate dreams can for them never be anything else than
suspect.
As a matter of fact, the affair appears disconcerting. Baillet
sympathetically strives to reduce the whole thing to a passing
exhaustion due to mental strain. "He tired himself to such an
extent that his brain became overheated and he fell into a kind
of rapture which so worked upon his already exhausted spirit
that it became predisposed to the reception of dreams and visions.”
Mr. Charles Adam now announces, in a tone as resigned as it is
detached, that "an outburst or an attack of mysticism” is perhaps
necessary to lift philosophers "out of themselves, above them¬
selves,” and to lead them to "a new vision of the truth.”191 At
which Mr. Gaston Milhaud, who also speaks of a "mystic critis,”
and who quite rightly calls attention to the capital importance
of that crisis in the origin of Cartesian philosophy, remarks with
equal justice that a mental depression due to intellectual over¬
exertion is not altogether the best way to raise intellectual strength
to! the point of obtaining "a new vision of truth,” and to reveal
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