or he would have
gone to the fountain-head for authority on Descartes's opinions, namely,
Descartes himself. It is to be wished that Southey had done so, for
no one more than he would have appreciated the exquisitely candid and
lovable nature of the illustrious Frenchman, and the sincerity with
which he cherished in his heart whatever doctrine he conceived in his
understanding. Descartes, whose knowledge of anatomy was considerable,
had that passion for the art of medicine which is almost inseparable
from the pursuit of natural philosophy. At the age of twenty-four he
had sought (in Germany) to obtain initiation into the brotherhood of the
Rosicrucians, but unluckily could not discover any member of the society
to introduce him. "He desired," says Cousin, "to assure the health of
man, diminish his ills, extend his existence. He was terrified by the
rapid and almost momentary passage of man upon earth. He believed it
was not, perhaps, impossible to prolong its duration." There is a hidden
recess of grandeur in this idea, and the means proposed by Descartes for
the execution of his project were not less grand. In his "Discourse on
Method," Descartes says, "If it is possible to find some means to render
generally men more wise and more able than they have been till now, it
is, I believe, in medicine that those means must be sought... I am sure
that there is no one, even in the medical profession, who will not
avow that all which one knows of the medical art is almost nothing
in comparison to that which remains to learn, and that one could be
exempted from an infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even,
perhaps, from the decrepitude of old age, if one had sufficient lore
of their causes and of all the remedies which nature provides for them.
Therefore, having design to employ all my life in the research of a
science so necessary, and having discovered a path which appears to me
such that one ought infallibly, in following, to find it, if one is
not hindered prematurely by the brevity of life or by the defects of
experience, I consider that there is no better remedy against those two
hindrances than to communicate faithfully to the public the little
I have found," etc. ("Discours de la Methode," vol. i. OEuvres de
Descartes, Cousin's Edition.) And again, in his "Correspondence" (vol.
ix. p. 341), he says: "The conservation of health has been always the
principal object of my studies, and I have no doubt that there is