第25章 ON DESCARTES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON(1)
A Frenchman who arrives in London,will find philosophy,like everything else,very much changed there.He had left the world a plenum,and he now finds it a vacuum.At Paris the universe is seen composed of vortices of subtile matter;but nothing like it is seen in London.In France,it is the pressure of the moon that causes the tides;but in England it is the sea that gravitates towards the moon;so that when you think that the moon should make it flood with us,those gentlemen fancy it should be ebb,which very unluckily cannot be proved.For to be able to do this,it is necessary the moon and the tides should have been inquired into at the very instant of the creation.
You will observe farther,that the sun,which in France is said to have nothing to do in the affair,comes in here for very near a quarter of its assistance.According to your Cartesians,everything is performed by an impulsion,of which we have very little notion;and according to Sir Isaac Newton,it is by an attraction,the cause of which is as much unknown to us.At Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a melon,or of an oblique figure;at London it has an oblate one.A Cartesian declares that light exists in the air;but a Newtonian asserts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half.The several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids,alkalies and subtile matter;but attraction prevails even in chemistry among the English.
The very essence of things is totally changed.You neither are agreed upon the definition of the soul,nor on that of matter.
Descartes,as I observed in my last,maintains that the soul is the same thing with thought,and Mr.Locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary.
Descartes asserts farther,that extension alone constitutes matter,but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it.
How furiously contradictory are these opinions!
"Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites."VIRGIL,Eclog.III.
"'Tis not for us to end such great disputes."This famous Newton,this destroyer of the Cartesian system,died in March,anno 1727.His countrymen honoured him in his lifetime,and interred him as though he had been a king who had made his people happy.
The English read with the highest satisfaction,and translated into their tongue,the Elogium of Sir Isaac Newton,which M.de Fontenelle spoke in the Academy of Sciences.M.de Fontenelle presides as judge over philosophers;and the English expected his decision,as a solemn declaration of the superiority of the English philosophy over that of the French.But when it was found that this gentleman had compared Descartes to Sir Isaac,the whole Royal Society in London rose up in arms.So far from acquiescing with M.
Fontenelle's judgment,they criticised his discourse.And even several (who,however,were not the ablest philosophers in that body)were offended at the comparison;and for no other reason but because Descartes was a Frenchman.
It must be confessed that these two great men differed very much in conduct,in fortune,and in philosophy.
Nature had indulged Descartes with a shining and strong imagination,whence he became a very singular person both in private life and in his manner of reasoning.This imagination could not conceal itself even in his philosophical works,which are everywhere adorned with very shining,ingenious metaphors and figures.Nature had almost made him a poet;and indeed he wrote a piece of poetry for the entertainment of Christina,Queen of Sweden,which however was suppressed in honour to his memory.
He embraced a military life for some time,and afterwards becoming a complete philosopher,he did not think the passion of love derogatory to his character.He had by his mistress a daughter called Froncine,who died young,and was very much regretted by him.
Thus he experienced every passion incident to mankind.
He was a long time of opinion that it would be necessary for him to fly from the society of his fellow creatures,and especially from his native country,in order to enjoy the happiness of cultivating his philosophical studies in full liberty.
Descartes was very right,for his contemporaries were not knowing enough to improve and enlighten his understanding,and were capable of little else than of giving him uneasiness.
He left France purely to go in search of truth,which was then persecuted by the wretched philosophy of the schools.However,he found that reason was as much disguised and depraved in the universities of Holland,into which he withdrew,as in his own country.For at the time that the French condemned the only propositions of his philosophy which were true,he was persecuted by the pretended philosophers of Holland,who understood him no better;and who,having a nearer view of his glory,hated his person the more,so that he was obliged to leave Utrecht.Descartes was injuriously accused of being an atheist,the last refuge of religious scandal:and he who had employed all the sagacity and penetration of his genius,in searching for new proofs of the existence of a God,was suspected to believe there was no such Being.