Cartesius Page #9

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realities are,

but through the ways

of reason it guides

man towards the contemplation of God.

Are you sure that mathematical

procedures are suitable

by their own nature for

approaching man's mind

to such a subtle

reality as God is?

Dear Beeckman ,

I wrote this to Father Mersenne

and I repeat it to you

and I will repeat it to all those

who raise objections on this point.

I will never talk about

theological things, never.

They depend on the truths revealed

through the word of Jesus Christ

and his prophets, but as

for questions of philosophy,

I say that these must all

be examined by human reason.

It is through this path that I

proved the foundations of physics

and through the same path

- beyond the physical sciences -

I am firmly convinced

that I can demonstrate

philosophical and

metaphysical questions.

Now, as for the

question you asked me,

if by their nature mathematical

procedures are suitable by their nature

for approaching man's mind

to the mystery of God,

I reply that everything

created is His work

and that mathematical

truths that depend on Him

are His work,

as is the rest

of creation.

To say that these truths are

uprooted and independent of Him,

would be like comparing

God to a Jupiter or a Saturn,

it'd be like wanting to subject God

to a reality external to him

and independent of him.

The clarity of mathematics, its rules,

come from God and

are subjugate to him.

Why should we be afraid

then for them to be used

by we men as an instrument

to know all the truths.

As always, your arguments

are exact and acute,

and I regret that your departure

will deprive me in the future

of the consolation I derive

from listening to them.

I'll write to you.

That I don't believe at all.

You know me little, dear Beeckman ,

the thought of your friendship

will always be of great

comfort to me.

The blood of all living

beings pulses in the veins

and is moved and pushed from

all parts at the same time,

and so the veins all pulse

at the same instant

because they all depend on the

heart that moves them continuously

This is what Aristotle taught us,

who like all the

ancients called veins,

what we today call arteries.

The heart is the cause

of this movement.

The heart of an eel for example,

once extracted

and placed on a table or on a

hand clearly behaves like this,

and the same is true for

the hearts of small fishes

and of all cold-blooded beings.

Even if in fish and in

all cold-blooded beings,

such as snakes and the frog ,

the heart is paler when it moves,

it returns to its bright red

colour during moments of stasis.

These observations,

sirs, are not my own,

I can only say that I have

confirmed them with my experience

as I have performed many vivisection operations

and dissections on land and sea animals.

These observations were written

for the first time in a book

the typographer Wilhelm Frietzer

printed at Frankfurt

with the title ''De motu cordis

et sanguinis in animalibus'',

written by a man that I repute

to be among the greatest

men of science in the world,

Sir William Harvey.

In 1628 he presented the unbiased

and indomitable Charles,

King of Great Britain, with this book.

Harvey wrote:

The heart of living beings

is the basis of life,

the lord of everything connected

with life, the sun of the microcosm.

All vital acts

depend on the heart,

energy and all vigour

come from the heart,

in the same way in which the king

is the basis of his realm

the sun of the state.

Blood succeeds in reaching the

most extreme parts of the body

through the arteries

and ever finer conduits,

and by entering the

tissues it waters them

with vigour and makes them live.

The veins in their turn,

collect and return it to the heart

and this determines

a perennial circuit.

What you maintain is that blood

is alive in the bodies of animals,

of fish and men without

any external influence.

Do you deny the influence of the stars?

Certainly, certainly.

When we dissect the

bodies and see life

pulsing inside an organism,

we are convinced that many

doctrines sustained until our times

by the men of science preceding

us, are pure fantasies.

Discovering nature's secrets imposes

a long struggle on the scholar.

It is necessary to observe, calculate,

compare, for days and days and if this

is not enough, for years and years.

It is necessary to humbly

correct one's own mistakes

and if necessary to go back to the

start, without any presumption.

The road to knowledge is terribly slow

and has nothing to do with the

illusory excitement of fantasy.

Your words sir, are

illuminated and too rarely

do we find this today

among learned men.

They prefer to believe

that the fables

written by the ancients about the

nature of the world are infallible.

Do you share the

doctor's doctrine then?

I agree with it, certainly.

I also have dissected fish

and many other animals

and I too an convinced

that blood circulates

in the way Dr Harvey

has taught and add

that in my opinion,

blood is effervescent

by its own nature

and that its continuous

re-boiling in the heart

is the cause of the pulsing found

in all living bodies.

In this, sirs, I agree

with Aristotle's doctrine.

The heart is a very hot vessel

and this easily explains

the mechanism of cardiac motion.

It is hearth in which the matter

and the principle of innate heat

are contained and conserved

from where it is transmitted

to all the other organs.

On this point,

I don't agree with you.

As Dr Harvey says,

the movements of the heart

consist of very rapid beats

and of instantaneous stokes

produced as by a muscle,

whilst this boiling

process you talk of

has no relation to all this.

In a boiling process, as you

know, you can only notice

a slow rising and a gradual descent

whilst on the contrary,

in the heart of whatever

species of animal,

we have extremely

rapid beats instead.

I still need to reflect on this point.

I hope that you will

come every day here,

to this university to compare

your reflections with ours.

I deeply regret that I cannot

return here among you,

because I greatly

appreciate your doctrine,

but in coming days

I 'm going to Amsterdam,

to meet other learned men.

You do well sir, very well,

and I envy you.

In our century it is no longer

possible to acquire a doctrine

other than by visiting the

universities and by comparing

the opinions of different

learned men;

it is necessary, as Bacon wrote,

to free ourselves

from the idols of false philosophy

and to construct a new science.

On this point, we all agree sir.

I n the same year in which Cardinal

Richelieu set siege to La Rochelle,

Wallenstein, set siege to Strapsunt

in Germany at the mouth of the Oder.

Richelieu, won at Rochelle however,

and the Huguenots were defeated,

whilst Wallenstein was forced to

abandon the siege and to retreat.

Yes that was a fatal year for him.

Yes, he had to bend before

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