Animus 6 (2001) www.swgc.mun.ca/animus Amour In Descartes' Thought And Life Floy Andrews Doull [email protected] What is the first thing one thinks when the philosopher "Descartes" is mentioned? Too often the reply is "dualism". Descartes is universally recognized as that philosopher who radically distinguished mind from body, mind understood as 'thinking substance', body as 'extended substance'; he is understood to have maintained that thought pertains to his very nature, and cannot be separated from that nature. This is true of Descartes, even though it is not true to conclude that he held that he was a thinking thing and only a thinking thing.1 But we tend to think of Descartes as regarding himself as bodiless, or at best as having some remote relation to his body. Insofar as this is the understanding we have of him, we dismiss his philosophy as obviously abstract and fantastic. However compelling intellectually its first indubitable proposition, "I think, therefore I am", its irrelevance to our own concerns is the chief impediment to taking Descartes seriously. Descartes is a very rigorous philosopher who insists that what comes first is what must be known before something else can be known. It was his genius to recognize that thought precedes what is the object of thought, and thus that mind must be known before body can be known. He established this with such authority that the whole seventeenth century revolution is science was founded upon it. This persists in our own time, in the science now of the twenty-first century, even though we have become terribly confused about these matters and this order of priority of thinking over all else. If ever we needed the antidote of Cartesian reason, it is today when we wonder if the computers we create are really the paradigm of our thinking, or when we speculate that the mapping of the human genome might finally reveal who we really are. But to make Descartes relevant to such discussions, we must be convinced that his philosophy does have something to say not only about mind, not only about body (which is the object of natural science), but about our embodied selves. This paper addresses these matters as Descartes himself addressed them in the last few years of his life. It shows Descartes intimately engaged in his times, in life and friendship, and always in lively thought. Its subject is amour as it appears in Descartes' thought, and also as it is exhibited in his relation to Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate. As we shall see, these two love, as one of the passions which he writes about, and love as he experiences it and shares it with 1 He says this in Meditation II: "I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks; that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason words whose meaning I have been ignorant of until now." But this is preceded by the important statement: "At present I am not admitting anything except what is necessarily true." AT vii, 27. 61 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE Princess Elizabeth, are intertwined in an intriguing, compelling way. Descartes reveals himself tender, compassionate, gentle and loving to this very intelligent, passionate young woman. Descartes met her in 1643 -- she was 24, he was 47 -- at The Hague where with her mother and siblings she lived under the protection of the Dutch government, the family having been exiled from the Palatinate since the beginning of the Thirty Years War [1618-1648].2 It is to answer her questions about her duty to her family, especially as this impedes her pursuit of a philosophical life, that he writes The Passions of the Soul, his final work. To her earlier he had dedicated the Principles of Philosophy. His words on that occasion are not flattery -- he has learned how she abhors the compliments of courtiers3 but the honest esteem of one who sees in her his true intellectual companion and soulmate: I have even greater evidence of your powers and this is special to myself in the fact that you are the only person I have so far found who has completely understood all my previously published works. Many other people, even those of the utmost acumen and learning, find them very obscure; and it generally happens with almost everyone else that if they are accomplished in Metaphysics they hate Geometry, while if they have mastered Geometry they do not grasp what I have written on First Philosophy. Your intellect is, to my knowledge, unique in finding everything equally clear; and this is why my use of the term `incomparable' is quite deserved.4 The correspondence between Descartes and Elizabeth began in May, 1643, and continued until shortly before his death.5 While she resided at The Hague he visited her occasionally from his country house in the village of Egmond, but not as frequently as she would have liked. After her disagreeable mother could take her no longer, Elizabeth removed to Berlin in the autumn of 1646, to the home of her childhood friend and cousin, Frederick William, the elector of Brandenburg, to live again with her Aunt Charlotte, the dowager electress. Descartes and Elizabeth never saw each other again, although it was Descartes' plan three years later that he would, on his return from Stockholm in the summer of 1650, visit her, perhaps even to join her scholarly enterprises at Heidelberg, the long war having finally been concluded with the Treaty of Westphalia, 24 October 2 The actions of her father Frederick, the Elector of the Palatinate, in accepting the throne of Bohemia from Protestant rebels precipitated that war. He was routed from his kingship in less than a year, stripped of his electorship in the Holy Roman Empire and all his territories, and fled to Holland under the protection of his uncle, the Prince of Orange. 3 The opening paragraph of his first letter to her is effusive to an extreme, clearly the efforts of one untrained in the ways of the courtier. She writes back noting that false praise has an opposite effect on her from what is intended: "...my upbringing, in a place where the ordinary fashion of conversing has accustomed me to listen to people incapable of telling the truth, has made me always sure of the contrary of their discourses.." AT, iii, 683. 4 Principles of Philosophy, Dedicatory Letter to Elizabeth, AT viiia, 1-4. 5 His last letter to her is from Stockholm, 9 October 1649, and hers to him on 4 December 1649. He died of pneumonia in Stockholm on 11 February 1650. 62 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE 1648. Elizabeth too had plans. Her brother, Charles-Louis, had returned to Heidelberg, the capital of his ruined kingdom, and immediately set to work to rebuild, re-establish, re- invent the Palatinate. He consulted Elizabeth concerning the re-opening of the University. She drew up a list of scholars to be invited to teach at Heidelberg, and Descartes was of course on her list, as was Spinoza.6 Heidelberg succeeded, the University was restored, but her plans for Descartes and Spinoza did not materialize. The correspondence was initiated by Elizabeth, following a visit to The Hague by Descartes expressly to see her. She was indisposed at the time, and wrote immediately to express her disappointment at missing his visit, especially in view of a question about his metaphysics which she with some urgency wanted to raise with him. Her question, as Descartes observes, is the one which most properly can be put, in view of his published work: how can the soul, being only a thinking substance, move the body by voluntary action? He begins, "There are two things about the human soul on which the entire knowledge of its nature depends. The first is that it thinks, the second that, being united to the body, it can act and be acted upon with it."7 He grants that he has said almost nothing about the second, because his metaphysics rests on the first, and the distinction between soul and body. To discuss their union at the same time would have been a possible hindrance. But on the union depends all ethics and it is an essential part of his project to address that issue. The crucial matter is not to attempt to conceive the action of soul on the body after the manner of one body moving another body. It is in her reply that she gently rebukes him for his excessive compliments, which he never attempts again, and then makes her question more personal and of practical significance. ...the life I am constrained to lead does not leave me the disposition of enough time to acquire a habit of meditation according to your rules. So many interests of my house that I must not neglect, so many conversations and civilities that I cannot avoid, batter my feeble spirit with such bad feelings and boredom that it rendered it for a long time afterward useless for anything else.8 Her life at court, full of tedium and treachery, hypocrisy, the irritability and scorn of her mother who neglected the upbringing and discipline of her many unruly children9, was a source of great tribulation for Elizabeth, yet her sense of duty would not allow her to escape from responsibility for her family and kingdom. Her questions about the interaction of soul and body are not the abstract questions of an academic but the 6 Andrea Nye, The Princess and the Philosopher, Lanham, Maryland, 1999, 159. 7 AT iii, 664;CSMK 217-8. 8 AT iii, 684. 9 Her mother, Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, had squandered what was left of the family money, her eldest brother had died in a boating accident, her father helplessly looking on [he himself died of fever in 1632 on the battlefield], somewhat later her brother Edward will prove traitor to the Protestant cause by converting to the Roman Church to marry a Polish princess, her flirtatious sister Louise will bring down the wrath of her brother Philip on the head of her boastful lover (Monsieur Espinay boasted he had "succeeded" with both Louise and the Queen herself), murdering him on the street. The princes were frequently in brawls and other sorts of rowdiness, and her mother left all responsibility for the behaviour of her siblings with Elizabeth, blaming her for their failings. See Nye, 3, 5-7, and passim. 63 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE questions of a real woman immersed in affairs of family and state who is all the same scholarly and greatly attracted to the Cartesian philosophy. In an effort to do better, although he can only do what a philosopher can do, Descartes replied more amply: there are three kinds of primitive ideas, "each of which is known in its own proper manner and not by comparison with any of the others": the soul conceived only by the pure intellect; body likewise known by the intellect alone, but much better by the intellect aided by imagination; and the union of soul and body, known only obscurely by intellect or even the intellect aided by the imagination, but very clearly by the senses. "It is the ordinary course of life and conversation, and abstention from meditation and from the study of things which exercise the imagination, that teaches us how to conceive the union of the soul and the body." Then he exhorts the Princess to follow his own example: "I can say with truth that the chief rule I have always observed in my studies, which I think has been the most useful to me in acquiring what knowledge I have, has been never to spend more than a few hours a day in the thoughts which occupy the imagination and a few hours a year on those which occupy the intellect alone. I have given all the rest of my time to the relaxation of the senses and the repose of the mind."10 Although he admires her ability to devote time to the meditations needed to know the distinction of mind and body, that is the source of her present difficulties: "I think it was those meditations rather than thought requiring less attention that have made Your Highness find obscurity in the notion we have of the union of the mind and the body."11 He continues: I believe that it is very necessary to have properly understood, once in a lifetime, the principles of metaphysics, since they are what gives us the knowledge of God and of our soul. But I think also that it would be very harmful to occupy one's intellect frequently in meditating upon them, since this would impede it from devoting itself to the functions of the imagination and the senses. I think the best thing is to content oneself with keeping in one's memory and one's belief the conclusions which one has once drawn from them, and then employ the rest of one's study time to thoughts in which the intellect co-operates with the imagination and the senses.12 Her response is frank and inquisitive still: "I see that the senses show me that the soul moves the body, but they do not teach me really (any more than the Understanding or the Imagination) the way in which it does this." Moreover, without such an explanation it still seems possible to her that there might be properties of the soul, unknown to us, perhaps even extension. "Although extension is not necessary to thought, not being repugnant to it either, it could suit some other function of the soul not less essential to it." 10 To Elizabeth, 28 June 1643, AT iii, 692; CSMK 226-7. 11 Ibid., 693; CSMK 227. 12 Ibid., 695; CSMK 228. 64 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE She adds, "I despair of finding certainty in any thing of the world, if you don't give it to me, which is all that keeps me from the skepticism to which my first reasoning led."13 There is a break in the correspondence, and during that time Descartes did visit Elizabeth at The Hague. We do not know his answer to her suggestion, although it is clear enough what he should have answered, that `mind' is precisely what `body' is not, `body' precisely what `mind' is not, both opposed yet related to each other most remarkably `body' as the wholly appropriate object for `mind', possessing characteristics of no interest except in relation to a `thinking thing', 'mind' with faculties wholly appropriate not to itself but to an `extended thing'. He will be moved through the course of their correspondence to make explicit a stronger union of soul and body. A. Descartes As Physician And Psychotherapist When the correspondence resumed in July, 1644, it is clear that there was a growing warmth between them. Descartes writes from France, where he has been on family affairs. He begins:"My journey could not be accompanied by any misfortune, since I have been so happy during it to have been in Your Highness's mind." He is aware that she has been ill, which he attributes more to her soul than to her body. No doubt, he observes, the soul has great power over the body, but not directly through its own volition. Rather only by willing or thinking something else. And the best thing to think about is the power of nature to heal itself, or keep itself from falling ill. He hopes, he says, she is no longer ill. "At the same time, the desire to be certain makes me want very much to return to Holland...As soon as I have put my affairs in order [he was about to visit Poitou on family business] I shall be very anxious to return to the region where I have been so happy as to have the honour of speaking from time to time with your Highness. Although there are many people here whom I honour and esteem, I have not yet seen anything to keep me here." He closes with these words, "And I am, already beyond all that I can say, etc.14 With the appearance of the Principles of Philosophy and its public testimony to Princess Elizabeth, Descartes declared to her and to the world her great worth in his eyes. "It would ill become me to use flattery or to put forward any assertion which has not been thoroughly scrutinized, especially in a work in which I shall be trying to lay down the foundations of the truth. And I know that your generous and modest nature will welcome the simple and unadorned judgement of a philosopher more than the polished compliments of those with smoother tongues. I shall therefore write only what I know to be true either from reason or by experience, and in this introduction I propose to philosophize just as I do throughout the rest of the book." The Dedication is in praise of her virtues and, as already noted, a candid admission that no one understood his work better than she. 13 To Descartes, 1 July 1643, AT iv, 1-3. 14 To Elizabeth, 8 July 1644, AT v, 64-66; CSMK 237-8. 65 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE His admiration is sincere he had nothing to gain from Princess Elizabeth or her ill- fated House except her scholarly appraisal of his work, her intellectual collaboration in prompting its extension to matters pertinent to the union of soul and body, and the warmth of her friendship. His concerns about her health touch her, and there will be letters back and forth about her various illnesses. In May, 1645, he heard that she was ill again, this time gravely. For several weeks she had been having a low-grade fever. Descartes' assessment is again that the condition is psychosomatic. He writes: "The ordinary cause of a slow fever is tristesse [sadness, depression]." He attributes her depression to the continuing persecution of her House and the persons she cares about, and would find its cure in this: "...by the power of your virtue, you would make your soul content in spite of the disgraces of Fortune." Vulgar souls who give themselves up to their passions are only happy or sad insofar as the things that happen to them are agreeable or disagreeable; noble souls have arguments that are so strong and powerful that their reason, in spite of sufferings, remains the master. For on the one side considering themselves immortal and capable of receiving very great contentments, and on the other side considering that they are joined to a mortal and fragile body, subject to many infirmities which cannot but perish in a few years, they do everything in their power to render Fortune favourable in this life, but nonetheless they esteem it so little, in regard to Eternity, that they almost think of events as we know them in the Comedies. And just as the sad and lamentable Histories which we see represented in a theatre, give us as much entertainment as the happy ones, even as they bring tears to our eyes, so those noble souls of which I speak have satisfaction in themselves from all things which happen to them, even the most vexing and insupportable.15 But Elizabeth takes his exhortations as male abstractions. She writes back: "Know then that I have a body imbued with a great part of the weaknesses of my sex, that it registers afflictions of the soul very easily, and does not have the strength to dismiss them." Then she adds, I would confess to you that although I do not place my happiness only on things which depend on fortune or the will of men, or think myself absolutely unhappy when I see that my house will never be restored or my dear ones far from misery, I cannot consider the harmful accidents that befall them as other than evil, nor the efforts which I take for their service useless without much inquietude, which as soon as it is calmed by reason is aroused by yet another disaster.16 To his urging, she gives only more evidence of her suffering He replies acknowledging her great trials, but still he knows only one remedy: "so far as possible to distract our imagination and senses from them, and when obliged by prudence to consider them, to do 15 To Elizabeth, 18 May 1645, AT iv, 200. 16 To Descartes, 24 May 1645, AT iv, 207. 66 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE so with our intellect alone." She should free her mind from all sad thoughts, she should be "like people who convince themselves they are thinking of nothing because they are observing the greenness of a wood, the colours of a flower, the flight of a bird." He admits that all this is well known to the princess, and that it is not the theory but the practice which is difficult. Then he adds a very personal example: "I take the liberty of adding that I found by experience in my own case that the remedy I have just suggested cured an illness almost exactly similar...I was born of a mother who died, a few days after my birth, from a disease of the lungs, caused by some distress [déplaisirs]" From her he inherited a dry cough and a pale complexion, and the doctors thought he would come to an early death. But the condition was cured by his optimism originating in the habit of making his principal happiness to depend solely on himself. 17 There is something perhaps a little neurotic in Elizabeth's reply as she adds a new dimension to the argument. "If I could follow your last advice, I do not doubt that I would promptly cure myself of the maladies of my body and the weakness of my spirit. But I confess that I have trouble separating sense and imagination from things which are continually represented in discussion and letter, because I do not know how to do it without sinning against my duty." His therapy of separating mind and body is for Elizabeth a sin against her obligations. She must live in this world, must confront it and deal with it. She cannot absent herself to his little cottage, walk in his garden and observe with him the "green of a wood, the colours of a flower, the flight of a bird". "This is when I feel the inconvenience of being a little rational. For if I were not at all so, I could find common pleasures with those with whom I must live ... And if I were as rational as you are, I would cure myself as you have done."18 Still he persists, and she resists.19 With great patience and tenderness, he tries another tack. In his letter of 21 July 1645, noting that most letters Elizabeth receives likely arouse unpleasant emotion, declares that his will be different: "...if they do not give you any cause for joy, at least they will not make you sad... To entertain you, therefore, I shall simply write about the means which philosophy provides for acquiring that supreme felicity which common souls vainly expect from fortune, but which can be acquired only from ourselves." He proposes to read with her Seneca's De Vita Beata, "examine what the ancients have written on this question, and try to advance beyond them by adding something to their precepts."20 Andrea Nye says aptly, "...a philosophical troubadour amusing his lady".21 17 To Elizabeth, May or June 1645, AT iv, 218; CSMK 249-50. 18 To Descartes, 22 June 1645, AT iv, 233. 19 In his to her, June 1645, AT iv, 236, where he does not buy the argument that it is her duty to be sad. Then he visits her some four or five days later. 20 AT iv, 251;CSMK 256. 21 Nye, 49. 67 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE B. From Psychotherapy To Philosophy He does not wait for her to reply to his letter, since his intention is simply to bring to her some relief and happiness. He sends his assessment of Seneca on 4 August 1645. He has not found Seneca's work sufficiently rigorous. "I will try to explain how I think it should have been treated by such a philosopher, unenlightened by faith, with only natural reason to guide him." Seneca has said well that `all men want to live happily', and Descartes interprets this to be a perfect contentment of mind and inner satisfaction not dependent on fortune, indeed commonly not possessed by those favoured by fortune. What things give supreme contentment? "It seems to me that each person can make himself content by himself without any external assistance, provided he respects three conditions, which are related to the three rules of morality of the Discourse: 1. Always apply his mind as well as he can to discover what he should or should not do in all circumstances of life; 2. Have a firm and constant resolution to carry out whatever reason recommends without being diverted or appetites. "Virtue, I believe, consists precisely in sticking firmly to this resolution..." 3. Bear in mind that while he guides himself as far as he can by reason, all good things which he doesn't possess are entirely outside his power. Thus he will become accustomed not to desire them. [Nothing can impede our contentment except desire and regret or repentance. When something is clearly outside our power, to be taller or handsomer for example, it is relatively easy to rid ourselves of the desire for such.] Virtue is sufficient to make us content in this life. But virtue unenlightened by reason may be false. The right use of reason, giving us true knowledge of the good, prevents virtue from being false. Thus the greatest felicity of man depends on the right use of reason. This is what Seneca should have taught. Elizabeth does not fully agree: "I do not know how to rid myself of the doubt that one could arrive at the happiness of which you speak without the assistance of what does not depend entirely on one's own will." What about those whose illness prevents them from reasoning at all, or others which diminish the power of reason? Her examples seem in some way to be describing herself. She has recovered but now she is nursing sick Philip, her headstrong brother who will not take his medicine without her. She ends with "I wish to assure you that I will be, all my life, your very affectionate friend at your service."22 These difficulties which she brings to him might be simply her inadequacies and neuroses disguised as somehow universal human problems. But then, they might be more than that revealing inadequacies and lacunae in Descartes' thought. We shall see. 22 16 August 1645, AT iv, 269-70. 68 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE Before her letter arrives another is on the way to her. He does not know whether his last letter reached her. "All the same I shall continue our correspondence in the belief that you will not find my letters any more tiresome than the books in your library." They contain no news, nothing urgent, so they can be read at her leisure. He turns now to what Seneca actually wrote, criticizing it chapter by chapter, giving as appropriate his own views. Seneca didn't distinguish carefully, but Descartes does, these three: happiness, the highest good, the final end at which our actions should aim. Happiness is not the highest good but presupposes it, for it is the contentment of the mind that comes from possessing it. The final end is both the highest good and its possession, therefore both happiness and the highest good. The ancients had three main views about the supreme good and the end of our actions: Epicurus, who said it was pleasure; Zeno, who insisted it was virtue; Aristotle who made it consist of all the perfections. Aristotle is thinking of human nature in general, the good which may be possessed by the most accomplished of men; Zeno is thinking of the supreme good which each person can possess, and he is right to say it is virtue, since that alone depends entirely on our free will; Epicurus, who considered happiness to be contentment of mind. And he is correct, but in order to achieve a contentment which is solid, we need to pursue virtue, that is to say, to maintain a firm and constant will to bring about what we judge to be the best, and to use all the powers of the mind to judge well. Thus Descartes draws together his three rules from the Discourse and the ancients. Elizabeth's next to him, August 1646, assures him that she has received both his letters; and indicates here that she has understood Descartes' views as comprehending and reconciling the views of the ancients in a higher consideration. But in her letter of 13 Sept 1645, Elizabeth takes up Descartes' previous comments, to rebut them. "To evaluate goods adequately, it is necessary to know them perfectly; to be completely acquainted with all those among which we must choose in an active life would require an infinite science." What Descartes has said does not seem to capture her experience. Then she asks the question which will result in Descartes' final work. "I would like to see you define the passions, in order to know them better, because those who call them disturbances of the soul would persuade me that their force only consists in dazzling and subjecting the reason if my experience didn't also show me that there are some that lead to rational actions." We are beginning to understand that between them there is no longer the relation of master to disciple, but a dialectic at work he, the metaphysician relentlessly presenting the consequences of that metaphysics of the separation of mind and body; she, the vibrant living womanly princess for whom "virtue is not a rational distance from emotion nor a stoic attitude of indifference to events. It is the proper handling of life."23 He certainly does not relent in the presentation of his position, altogether consistent with the metaphysics of the Meditations and indeed a deduction from it. This is most evident in his answer to her last letter, where she had asked how one could strengthen the understanding to discern what is the best in all the actions of life. Two things seem 23 Nye, 60. 69 ANDREWS DOULL: AMOUR IN DESCARTES' THOUGHT AND LIFE necessary: knowledge of the truth; the other is practice in remembering and assenting to this knowledge whenever the occasion demands. Only God knows everything. We have to be content with knowing the truths most useful to us. First and chief there is a God on whom all things depend, whose perfections are infinite, whose power immense, whose decrees are infallible. This teaches us to accept calmly all the things which happen to us as expressly sent by God, that is, a firm belief in divine providence. The second thing the nature of our soul, that it subsists apart from the body, is much nobler than the body, is capable of enjoying countless satisfactions not to be found in this life. This prevents us from fearing death, detaches our affections from the things of this world so that we look upon whatever is in the power of fortune with nothing but scorn. Thirdly, there is the immensity of the universe, which would persuade us against the view that all the heavens are made only for the service of the earth, and the earth only for man, a firm antidote therefore to anthropomorphism. We cannot know final causes, and therefore have no sound argument for one outcome in history or nature rather than another. Finally, though each of us is a person distinct from others, whose interests are accordingly in some way different from those of the rest of the world, we ought still to think that none of us could subsist alone...each of us is really one of the many parts of the universe, ...the earth, the state, the society, the family. And the interests of the whole, of which each of us is a part, must always be preferred to those of our own particular person, with measure though since it would be wrong to expose ourselves to a great evil in order to procure only a slight benefit to our kinfolk or our country. "Once someone knows and loves God as he should, he has a natural impulse to think in this way; for then, abandoning himself altogether to God's will, he strips himself of his own interests, and has no other passion than to do what he thinks pleasing to God."24 This is the philosophical and theological basis for the maxims he has proposed to Elizabeth. It is clear from her response that she has no firm belief in the divine providence, for it cannot extend to what arises from free will: "But those [misfortunes] which are imposed on us by men, for which the decision seems to us to be entirely free, for these the existence of God would only console if we had faith that could persuade us that God takes the care to regulate the wills of men and that he has determined the fate of each person before the creation of the world." Further, the immortality of the soul "along with the knowledge that it is much more beautiful than the body, is capable of making us seek death as well as fear it...", again not a firm conviction in taking all elements of our lives as emanating from a benevolent God, as Descartes has indicated. Further, "The great extent of the universe...serves to detach our affections from what we experience in it; but it also separates us from that individual Providence which is the foundation of theology from the idea we have of God."25 In his next to her and her answer, it is clear that she continues to dispute with him, sometimes seeming to play the devil's advocate. She is not the docile disciple but feisty and combative. One thing seems clear: abstract arguments where the conclusions are contrary to her experience do not satisfy her. And this even extends to basic Cartesian principles such as the infinite Divine power, the separation of soul and body, etc. She takes on all of them. He is too sanguine. If he urges `prudence', 24 To Elizabeth, 15 September 1645, AT iv, 290. 25 To Descartes, 30 September 1645, AT iv, 302-3. 70