tem, and, strictly speaking, is the theme of the "prima philosophia." The second expression is, therefore, a correction of the first, which was chosen for theological and religious reasons, as the dedication declares. Descartes' theory of the immortality of the soul is based on the difference of essence between soul and body; and metaphysics deals with principles, not with deductions from them. The explanation given by Descartes' last biographer again sacrifices truth to emotion. While Descartes was engaged in publishing the "Meditations," his father died, and almost at the same time his daughter and eldest sister. Now, it was full of consolation to the philosopher, to read on the title-page of his work "de animæ immortalitate." It was not really the title of his work, but an epitaph! If such feelings demanded any expression in such a place, the words "animæ humanæ a corpore distinctio" would have been just as comforting.1

The "Meditations" developed the course of thought by which the fundamental principles of the new philosophy were discovered and established. His next work was the systematic exposition of his entire system. Descartes began it immediately after the publication of the "Meditations," and completed it within the course of the year. "The Principles of Philosophy," in four books, was published by Elzevir in Amsterdam in 1644, and was his second comprehensive and important work. The first book treats of the principles of human knowledge; the second, of the principles of bodies; the third, of the visible world; the fourth, of the earth. The first two form the doctrine of principles, strictly speaking, metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. In the progress of his works, the "Meditations" were, in time as in fact, the middle term between the methodological essays and the system of metaphysics. Descartes called them his 'metaphysical essays," and thus aptly indicated that they combined the characteristics of "philosophical essays" and the "Principles of Philosophy." He wrote this work in the

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1 J. Millet: Descartes, son Histoire depuis 1637, pp. 23-25.

happiest period of his life. The success of his previous publications had raised him above the fear of public literary activity. He was perfect master of the matter to which he had to give form and order, and nothing could give greater pleasure to his methodical mind than such activity as this. He exercised the skill of the architect, which he gladly used as an example, in order to show the imperfections of patchwork in comparison with a systematic work produced by one mind. He erected this temple of his thoughts while he was living in the free and idyllic leisure which the country palace of Endegeest permitted him to enjoy; always in the neighborhood of, and often in conversation with, the gifted princess, who understood him perfectly, and knew how to appreciate him. The Countess-palatine Elizabeth was then the world for whom he wrote; and he dedicated to her his work, unconcerned about the doctors of Sorbonne. But already a storm was gathering about the new doctrine and the philosopher.

CHAPTER VI.

BEGINNINGS OF A SCHOOL. DISCIPLES AND OPPONENTS.

I. CONTROVERSIES IN UTRECHT.

1. Reneri and Regius.

S little as Descartes sought the diffusion of his doctrine, he could not prevent it from gaining friends and disciples, who soon formed the nucleus of a school; for whose public activity in teaching, his works offered a definite basis, and the universities of the Netherlands the first field of labor. With friends came antagonists. Even in its origin, the school was violently attacked. In attacking disciples, the master was attacked; every means of suppressing the new doctrine was tried; even the person of its author was threatened. The University of Utrecht was the place where the school began to form, and where it was first opposed. It was not so much a definite theory which provoked its antagonists, as Descartes' mental importance in general; it was the novelty and power of his thoughts, which excited the hostility of those who would gladly have made themselves the subject of the first command, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

In order to understand the course and character of the controversies of Utrecht, we must go back a little. In the first part of his stay in the Netherlands, Descartes had become acquainted with Henry Reneri (Renier) in Amsterdam, who studied in Liège and Lyons, was converted from Catholicism to the Reformed Church, and, therefore, disinherited by his father. An exile from his native country,

he had sought an asylum in Holland, and started in Amsterdam a private school. He had become acquainted with Descartes through Beeckman. Through his intercourse with Descartes, Reneri became deeply interested in philosophy; and by diligent study he made such attainments that he was called to the University of Leyden after the death of the Aristotelian there, from thence to Deventer, and in the year 1634 to Utrecht. Descartes' first disciple was the first professor called to the newly founded university, with whose history that of the Cartesian system was interwoven during its first years. Reneri's career as professor in Utrecht was short but brilliant. For five years he was an ornament of the university. After his early death (March, 1639), by order of the city and university the highest honors were paid to his memory. The funeral oration, delivered by Anton Æmilius, professor of history and rhetoric, himself a disciple of the new philosophy, was likewise a eulogy of Descartes. The government wished that the philosopher and his system should be mentioned with commendations, and that the oration should be published. On its titlepage Reneri was called the friend and disciple of Descartes, "the Atlas and Archimedes of our century." Envy and hatred followed close upon this public and somewhat extravagant praise: they sought first to strike the philosopher through his disciples.

Among Reneri's pupils in Utrecht was an exceedingly talented young medical student by the name of Regius (Henry le Roi), who had mastered the new doctrine with enthusiastic zeal, and so expounded it in his private lectures on physiology that he soon won a crowd of enthusiastic students. There was only one chair of medicine in the university, and this was filled by Straaten. He wished to teach nothing but anatomy and practical medicine, and, therefore, urged that another chair should be established for botany and theoretical medicine. Regius was chosen for the new position, and was appointed professor in ordinary in

1638. After Reneri's death he was the leader of the new philosophy in Utrecht, and, therefore, the first target of its

enemies.

2. Gisbertus Voetius. The leader of his opponents was one of the most highly respected and influential men in Utrecht, Gisbertus Voëtius, the first professor of theology in the University of Utrecht, and the first clergyman of the city. He had been one of the most violent Gomarists in the synod at Dort, and, since the victory of his party, one of the most overbearing. He strode along with a pompous air, his person carefully attended to, with an expression of perfect self-satisfaction. For a long time he had regarded his talents, merits, and worth as incomparable, and despised every thing in which he was deficient; and he was deficient in much. His scholarship was narrow and superficial; his reading limited, embracing little beyond the loci communes, some commentaries and abridgments. He made the grossest blunders in his writings, because he quoted authorities without having read and understood them. His judgment was without acuteness, his thoughts lacked connection and order; in philosophy, his ability and knowledge were limited by the ordinary scholasticism. It is difficult to believe that a person of such mediocrity could be so respected and feared, and become the dangerous antagonist of so great a thinker. His inclination, however, led him to a kind of activity for which he had most talent. He chose polemics, a field where much can be accomplished with a large audience, without learning and real culture. He was not a controversialist of ability, but a mere fighting-cock, fitted to please a mob. He lacked both the fairness, and judgment necessary to a just and impartial estimate of an opponent. He hated Catholics and philosophers worst of all; and pas sion so blinded him that he was scarcely able to distinguish them, and in his malignity he regarded the same man as a Jesuit and an atheist. Yet he was shrewd enough to decry an opponent as an atheist when addressing Jesuits, and as a