Descartes's Fictions: Reading

Philosophy with Poetics Emma Gilby

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D E S C A RT E S ’ S F I C T I O N S
Descartes’s Fictions
Reading Philosophy with Poetics

EMMA GILBY

1
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 Preface

The aim of this book is to trace common movements in philosophy and literary
method. I reassess the significance of Descartes’s writing by bringing his philo-
sophical output into contact with the literary treatises, exempla, and controversies
of his age.
The ‘fictions’ of my title are never far from the ‘inventions poétiques’ and ‘visions
chimériques’ that define the term in early modern France.1 They necessarily set
themselves up in some kind of opposition to truth, truthfulness, and veracity.
Descartes goes in search of truth, and the theory that conduces to it. But he also
has a sharp perception of the human mind as the catalyst for speculative inventions
and imaginative constructions. He gives rules for the direction of the mind, but also
subjects these to modification in their own subsequent application and renarration.
He discourses on method, but also acknowledges the ambiguous conclusions
towards which that method propels him, and the supplementary activities it
invites. Descartes distinguishes quite clearly, at numerous different points and in
different ways, between the natural light of reason and ‘poetic inventions’. And yet
he also occupies a realm that both early modern dictionary-makers and subsequent
critics find hard to classify: one where methods, theories, and fictions coalesce.
Descartes’s writing has sometimes been examined in what we might call a ‘literary’
way, with a due focus on lexis and qualities of style. Often, in these closer readings,
the writing is just a vessel for the thought: the mechanism by which Descartes’s
ideas are transferred more or less persuasively to his readership. The philosophy is
pre-formed in Descartes’s mind before being expressed on the page in ways that
perhaps show rhetorical skill, or perhaps reject the strictures of r­ hetoric entirely, or
possibly do both at the same time, depending on the critic’s point of view. These
options leave aside the idea that Descartes’s language itself performs, or does, a
kind of thinking. I hold that Descartes’s ideas cannot be understood outside his
ways of writing them down, or their contexts. I examine his writing against a back-
ground of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century fictional practice, linguistic culture,
and theories of interpretation. I note the common ground Descartes shares with
writers who fuse poetics, rhetoric, and moral philosophy in their reception of
ancient thought.
What follows needs therefore to be set against the background of the flourishing
of humanist theorizing about the art of poetry in Italy during the Cinquecento,
and the Low Countries’ further contribution to this development, all of which
filters into the pool of critical discourses available in Descartes’s world. The theorizing
takes various forms: short defences, debates, and standard arts of poetry; commen-
taries, chiefly on Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars poetica; finally, the colossi of

1 Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague: A. & R. Leers, 1690), consulted at http://gallica.
bnf.fr.
vi Preface

literary theory of the Renaissance, the classic example being that of Julius Caesar
Scaliger. All of this work is generally acknowledged to have had the most profound
effect upon narrative practice in France in the early seventeenth century, yet
none of it is common currency in departments of philosophy (especially English-
speaking ones).
Drawing on what Descartes says about, and to, his many contemporaries and
correspondents embedded in the early modern republic of letters, this volume
shows that poetics provides a repository of themes to which Descartes returns
repeatedly: imagination, fortune, method, error, providence, passion, and so on.
But poetics has its methodology, too, its systematic analyses of what it means for
an audience to pay attention, and of why they might want to do so. This ­theoretical
scrutiny of attentiveness will find parallels in Descartes’s metaphysics and, towards
the end of his life, his moral philosophy. When situated and evaluated in context,
Descartes’s ideas seem thus to emerge more clearly.
The early seventeenth century is a volatile environment, its controversies dealing
in vicious accusations of failure. At every level, we find tensions between conven-
tion and heterodoxy, openness and secrecy, worldly and theological, scholastic and
humanist, oral and literary, vernacular and Latin, manuscript and print. Descartes
inherits these tensions, and they exert a particular pressure on his work. Poetics,
ethics, and the new philosophy share a common language.
 Acknowledgements

It is a great pleasure to be able to acknowledge the Leverhulme Trust, which offered

me crucial support for this project in the form of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. The
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, along with Sidney Sussex College, and
the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), all
at the University of Cambridge, have together provided an enormously supportive
and engaging environment in which to work. A Fellowship at the Scaliger Institute,
University of Leiden, allowed a happy period of exploration. In the long years of
putting together Descartes’s Fictions, I have built on (and, in general, rewritten)
some earlier articles: ‘Descartes’s Account of Indifference’, in Renaissance Studies,
26.5 (2012); ‘Descartes’s “Morale par provision”: A Re-evaluation’, in French Studies
65.4 (2011); ‘The Language of Fortune in Descartes’, in Chance and Culture in Early
Modern Europe, ed. John D. Lyons and J. Kathleen Wine (Ashgate, 2009). I thank
the editors for permission to reuse any material that has survived. Thanks too to the
Oxford University Press team, especially Ellie Collins, Michael Janes, and Joy Mellor,
for their careful attention to the editing and production of this book.
I owe a great deal to many people who have made me think in new and different
ways. My first debts—for following this project from the beginning, and for
numerous individual acts of support along the way—are to John D. Lyons and
Michael Moriarty. For welcoming me into the world of Cartesian scholarship with
enthusiasm and generosity, I am very grateful to the editors of the forthcoming
Oxford University Press edition of Descartes’s correspondence, Erik-Jan Bos, Theo
Verbeek, and Roger Ariew; as well as to Denis Kambouchner, Daniel Garber
and Susan Paul, Richard Serjeantson, and Michael Edwards. I have derived enor-
mous benefit from my association with the Mouvement Transitions (http://www.
mouvement-transitions.fr), and from being able to watch and learn from the
imagination and intellectual rigour of Hélène Merlin-Kajman and her team.
Alongside Descartes’s Fictions, it was a pleasure to work on the Places of Early Modern
Criticism project with Gavin Alexander and Alexander Marr. Thanks to Guinevere
Glasfurd, author of The Words in my Hand (Two Roads, 2016), for our conversa-
tions about her reimagined tale of Descartes, Helena Jans, and their daughter,
Francine. For their kindness, their encouragement, and their example, I would also
like to thank the following friends and colleagues in Cambridge and elsewhere:
Anne Chassagnol, Tim Chesters, Martin Crowley, Hannah Dawson, Raphaële
Garrod, Lydia Hamlett, Nick Hammond, Katja Haustein, Katherine Ibbett, Helen
Macdonald, Christina McLeish, Isabelle McNeill, Nicole Moreham, Richard
Parish, Anne Régent-Susini, Claire White, Nick White, and Edward and Kelcey
Wilson-Lee. As ever, my thanks to my loves: Tim, Rose, and Sam Lewens.
 Editions Used and Abbreviations

I have used the standard edition of Descartes’s works, by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery,
with translations as listed below. With the kind permission of the editors, I have occasionally
made reference to the forthcoming Oxford University Press translation and edition of
Descartes’s correspondence: The Correspondence of René Descartes: New Critical Edition and
Complete English Translation, trans. and ed. Erik-Jan Bos, Theo Verbeek, and Roger Ariew.
These citations are attributed in the footnotes at the relevant points. If a translation is
unattributed, it is my own.
Where there is no modernized edition of the early modern French sources used, I have
maintained the original punctuation and spelling. Where an original source is in Greek or
Latin, I have provided only the English translation, unless the text itself is not particularly
well known (as in the case of Descartes’s Censura, for ­example) or unless a comparison with
the original seemed instructive.

AT Œuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols.,

rev. edn. (Paris: Vrin, 1996).
Correspondence ‘Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, 1643−1649’,
in The Passions of the Soul, and Other Late Philosophical Writings, ed.
and trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press
[World’s Classics], 2015), pp. 3−118.
CSM I and CSM II The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols. I and II, trans. John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984‒5).
CSMK The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. III: The Correspondence,
trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and
Anthony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Discourse Descartes, A Discourse on the Method, ed. and trans. Ian Maclean
(Oxford: Oxford University Press [World’s Classics], 2006).
MM Meditations on First Philosophy, with Selections from the Objections
and Replies, ed. and trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford
University Press [World’s Classics], 2006).
Passions The Passions of the Soul, and Other Late Philosophical Writings, ed.
and trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press
[World’s Classics], 2015).
 ‘There be more ways to the wood than one.’
English proverb
(John Heywood, A Dialogue of the Effectual
Proverbs in the English Tongue, 1562)
The Proverbs, Epigrams and Miscellanies of
John Heywood, ed. John S. Farmer (New York: Barnes
and Noble, 1966), pp. 93, 187.
 Introduction

T H E E N D O F E D U C AT I O N

When writing about Descartes, critics have tended to start with his own mission
statements. Descartes is known for the strength of his philosophical self-assertion:
for his determined statements of intent, and for his ambitious conclusions. He
seeks to undermine the existing Aristotelian framework for knowledge, dismissing
it as prejudice. Thus he wants to erase scholastic obscurity, and produce philosophy
that is open to everyone.
When Descartes laments the power of prejudice, he starts with that imparted by
his own education, at the hands of the Jesuits. Although he was ‘nourri aux lettres
dès mon enfance’ (‘educated in classical studies from my earliest years’), he has
derived no profit from his years at school, other than that of progressively revealing
to himself how ignorant he is.1 The ‘sciences des livres’—the accumulated opinions
of generations of scholars—are no closer to the truth than ‘les simples raisonne-
ments que peut faire naturellement un homme de bon sens touchant les choses qui
se présentent’ (‘the simple reasoning that any man of good sense can produce about
things in his purview’) (AT VI, 12‒13; Discourse, p. 13). This powerful anti-nostalgia
extends beyond Descartes’s schooldays to his childhood as a whole. At the very
beginning of the Meditations of 1641, Descartes’s meditator is struck by ‘how
many false opinions I had accepted as true from childhood onwards’, and by the
doubtful nature of ‘whatever I had since built on such shaky foundations’ (AT VII,
17).2 He realizes at this point that ‘the whole structure will have to be utterly
demolished’, and that ‘I should have to begin again from the bottom up if I wished
to construct something lasting and unshakeable in the sciences’ (AT VII, 17).
Descartes hereby rejects the force of custom: the lifelong belief that things are just
as our senses perceive them to be. Instead, he espouses a radical form of doubt.
Tracing out complex gradations of knowledge, awareness, opinion, and belief, he

1 Œuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols. (Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1897–1910;
repr. Paris: Vrin, 1996), vol. VI: Discours de la méthode et essais, p. 4. Subsequent references will appear
in the text and footnotes using the abbreviation AT before the volume and page numbers. A Discourse
on the Method, trans. Ian Maclean (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2006), p. 7. English translations
from the Discourse will be from this edition.
2 René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, with Selections from the Objections and Replies,
trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2008), p. 13. English translations from the
Meditations, Objections, and Replies will be from this edition, abbreviated as MM, unless mentioned
otherwise.

Descartes’s Fictions: Reading Philosophy with Poetics. Emma Gilby, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Emma Gilby. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198831891.003.0012
2 Introduction

observes that to believe things is not to know them, nor even to know that one
believes them.
When the professors of the Academy of Utrecht reject Descartes’s new philoso-
phy in the early 1640s, it is, in part, because they judge it to have succeeded
absolutely in his destructive aims: ‘It is opposed to the traditional philosophy
which universities in the whole world have hitherto taught on the best advice, and
it undermines its foundations’ (AT VII, 592).3 But it is also because its immediate
newness is seen as somehow amplificatory, preventing any future engagement with
the past:
It turns young people away from the ancient, sound philosophy and prevents them
from reaching the pinnacle of erudition because, by relying on this pretence of philoso-
phy, they can no longer understand the technical terms used in the books of renowned
authors and the lectures and disputes of their professors. (AT VII, 592‒3)
If Descartes has suspicions about education, education also has suspicions about
Descartes. Descartes is on his own. And this solipsism, imaged in the stove-heated
room in which Descartes once passed an influential day of solitary reflection and
enlightenment, has come pervasively to stand in for his philosophy as a whole.4
Descartes is seen to make individuation, rather than any kind of interactive
learning, the defining condition of personhood. His meditator requires nobody
else—no second-order criticism, no compilation of commonplaces—to imagine
his radical sceptical hypothesis: that all our perceptions have been manipulated by
a powerful evil spirit (AT VII, 21‒3). Taking scepticism to a new extreme, he
shows that this way of thinking negates itself by revealing a fundamental certainty:
the certainty that if I am thinking, I must exist (AT VII, 27‒9). Thought is ‘every-
thing that takes place in us, while we are aware, in so far as there is awareness of it
in us’.5 Thus defined, it is distinct from physical processes, and the meditator’s
certainty does not require sensation in any way, shape, or form. In this way,
Descartes feels that he achieves his goal of rejecting the Aristotelian attempt to

3 These translations are from Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (Cambridge University
Press: 2006), p. 228. See also René Descartes and Martin Schoock, La Querelle d’Utrecht, ed. Theo
Verbeek (Paris: Les Impressions nouvelles, 1998), p. 121.
4 ‘J’étais alors en Allemagne, où l’occasion des guerres qui n’y sont pas encore finies m’avait appelé;
et, comme je retournais du couronnement de l’empereur vers l’armée, le commencement de l’hiver
m’arrêta en un quartier où, ne trouvant aucune conversation qui me divertît, et n’ayant d’ailleurs, par
bonheur, aucuns soins ni passions qui me troublassent, je demeurais tout le jour enfermé seul dans un
poêle’ (AT VI, 11). ‘At that time I was in Germany, where I had been called by the wars that have not
yet come to an end there; as I was returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor, I was
halted by the onset of winter in quarters where, having no diverting company and fortunately also no
cares or emotional turmoil to trouble me, I spent the whole day shut up in a small room heated by a
stove’ (Discourse, p. 12). Baillet dates this to November 1619, when Descartes also apparently had
three influential dreams, in one of which he remembered a line from Ausonius: ‘what path in life shall
I follow?’ The details of these only became known after his early papers, extracts of which are known
as the Olympica, were circulated after his death. See Adrien Baillet, La Vie de Monsieur Descartes (Paris:
Horthemels, 1691), book II, chapter 1, p. 81; and AT X, 180–8. The account in the Olympica overlaps
with those papers given as the Cogitationes Privatae (Private Thoughts) in AT X, 213–48 (p. 215).
5 Principles of Philosophy, Part 1, article 9, in Descartes, The Passions of the Soul and Other Late
Philosophical Writings, trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford World’s Classics: Oxford, 2015), p. 139.
 Introduction 3

ground knowledge in sense-experience. Instead, we must base knowledge on our

own clear and distinct ideas. Pursuing such a goal also means establishing a rational
basis for religious belief: knowing that God exists, and is not a deceiver (AT VII,
36). Descartes’s ambition, to borrow a phrase from Pascal, is eye-popping.6
Thus it is that Descartes’s work is often taken as a turning point: the end of
medieval thought, and the beginning of a modern identification of thinking and
being, or, one might say, of ‘consciousness and existence, egoity and substantiality’.7
This Descartes is a necessary enemy, anathematized, enslaving, but also granted an
extraordinary status and pre-eminence. The advent of his philosophy is a trans-
formative event that is ruthless, as well as radical: Descartes’s work is seen to
embody a brutal dismissal, in the name of a joyously unfettered reason, of the
entire edifice of ancient knowledge and wisdom. For Michel Foucault, Descartes is
emblematic of the new classical age, in which the world is conceived in terms of
mutually reinforcing taxonomies that are subject to calculation and manipulation.8
For literary theorists with an interest in autobiography, Descartes is seen to inaug-
urate a view in which the act of ‘unsituating the self from the world’ is ‘transformed

6 ‘Mais l’infinité en petitesse est bien moins visible. Les philosophes ont bien plutôt prétendu d’y
arriver, et c’est là où tous ont achoppé. C’est ce qui a donné lieu à ces titres si ordinaires, Des principes
des choses, Des principes de la philosophie, et aux semblables aussi fastueux en effet, quoique moins
en apparence que cet autre qui crève les yeux: De omni scibili.’ Pascal, Pensées, ed. L. Lafuma (Paris:
Seuil, 1962), fragment 199. ‘But the infinitely small is much harder to see. The philosophers have
much oftener claimed to have reached it, and it is here they have all stumbled. This has given rise to
such familiar titles as First Principles, Principles of Philosophy, and the like, which are really as preten-
tious, though they do not look it, as this eye-popping example, Of All That Can Be Known.’ On this
fragment, see Vincent Carraud, ‘Approfondir trop et parler de tout. Les Principia philosophiae dans les
Pensées (note complémentaire sur “Disproportion de l’homme”)’, Revue d’histoire des sciences, 58.1
(2005), pp. 29–52.
7 ‘The identification of the “I” with subjectivity, by contrast, is a specifically modern phenomenon,
whose origin lies in the work of the very thinker commonly taken to seal the irrevocable end of
medieval thought, namely Descartes. Only after the Cartesian project to conceive of certitudo cogni-
tionis humanae as the sole and absolute fondamentum inconcussum veritatis is the “I” considered as a
subject, such that consciousness and existence, egoity and substantiality, become strictly correlative.’
Daniel Heller Roazen, Fortune’s Faces: The Roman de la Rose and the Poetics of Contingency (Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 31.
8 ‘La critique cartésienne [. . .] est la pensée classique excluant la ressemblance comme expérience
fondamentale et forme première du savoir, dénonçant en elle un mixte confus qu’il faut analyser en
termes d’identité et de différences, de mesure et d’ordre.’ Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses. Une
archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 66. ‘The Cartesian critique [. . .] is
Classical thought excluding resemblance as the fundamental experience and primary form of
knowledge, denouncing it as a confused mixture that must be analysed in terms of identity, difference,
measurement, and order.’ The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and
New York: Routledge Classics, 2002), p. 58. See also Les Mots et les choses, p. 89: ‘En tout cas, l’épistémè
classique peut se définir, en sa disposition la plus générale, par le système articulé d’une mathesis, d’une
taxinomia et d’une analyse génétique. Les sciences portent toujours avec elles le projet même lointain
d’une mise en ordre exhaustive: elles pointent toujours aussi vers la découverte des éléments simples
et de leur composition progressive; et en leur milieu, elles sont tableau, étalement des connaissances
dans un système contemporain de lui-même.’ The Order of Things, p. 82: ‘In any case, the Classical
episteme can be defined in its most general arrangement in terms of the articulated system of a mathesis,
a taxinomia, and a genetic analysis. The sciences always carry within themselves the project, however
remote it may be, of an exhaustive ordering of the world; they are always directed, too, towards the
discovery of simple elements and their progressive combination; and at their centre they form a table
on which knowledge is displayed in a system contemporary with itself.’
4 Introduction

into a condition of the self ’s authentic nature’.9 Epistemology in the Anglo-Saxon

philosophical tradition is no less dependent upon a narrative of novelty: for
Richard Rorty, epistemology requires as a minimum a field of study called ‘the
human mind’—‘and that field of study was what Descartes had created’.10
To echo Descartes echoing Lucretius, one might say that nothing comes from
nothing.11 Much recent work has pushed compellingly beyond the standard
responses to Descartes. Roger Ariew has pointed out the forms of commonality
between Descartes’s work and a prior scholastic reception of ancient thinking.12
Critics have also focused on the way that the mind-body split so crucial to the
narrative of novelty in the first Meditation occurs only provisionally in Descartes’s
work, given his fascination with psychophysical sensation and the workings of the
imagination.13 Feelings of thirst, hunger, pain, and so forth are modes of thinking
that arise from the fusion of the mind with the body (Sixth Meditation; AT VII,
81), as do the passions, elaborated upon in Les Passions de l’âme of 1649. Whether
we consult (to be brief ) Geneviève Rodis-Lewis on Descartes’s anthropology;
Susan James or Michael Moriarty on the importance to Descartes of our status as
embodied, passionate beings; or Desmond M. Clarke on critical confusion about
Descartes’s theories of mental functioning, we find a questioning of the transparent
certainty often imputed wholesale to the Cartesian mind.14
In his introduction to The Matter of Mind, Christopher Braider negotiates
different positions, referring to Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern
Age on the one hand and to Foucault on the other:
The Cartesian ‘invention of the mind’ was not just the heroic break with prejudice,
fantasy, and error that Blumenberg chronicles. But neither was it simply the hubristic
mask for the new rationalist tyranny epitomized by Foucault’s favourite icons of

9 ‘The Autobiographical Situation’ in Janet Varner Gunn, Autobiography: The Poetics of Experience
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 3–29 (p. 7).
10 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 140.
11 Descartes refers to the common notion that ‘a nihilo nihil fit’ in his responses to the second
objections to the Meditations (AT VII, 135). The most obvious point of reference is Lucretius, De
Rerum Natura, ll. 149–50. As we shall see, Descartes also observes the theological point that God
created the universe ex nihilo.
12 Roger Ariew, Descartes Among the Scholastics (Leiden: Brill, 2011). See also Lilli Alanen, Descartes’s
Concept of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
13 John Cottingham therefore prefers ‘trialism’ to ‘dualism’, with particular reference to the
letter of Elisabeth of 21st May 1643 (AT III, 665): ‘Cartesian Trialism’, Mind, 94.374 (April 1985),
pp. 218–30.
14 The monumental French tradition of Cartesian criticism has always, in any case, worked from
an historicizing impulse that counters generalizations about the Cartesian subject. The references
above are to Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, L’Anthropologie cartésienne (Paris: PUF, 1990); Susan James,
Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997); Michael Moriarty, Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003); Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes’s Theory of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003). See also Erec R. Koch, The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility and Corporeality in
Seventeenth-Century France (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008); and Rebecca Wilkin,
‘Descartes, Individualism and the Fetal Subject’ in d i f f e r e n c e s: A Journal of Feminist Cultural
Studies, 19.1 (2007), pp. 96–127. With the latter I share a wager and a goal: that ‘depriving individu-
alism of its alleged “man-midwife” will go further toward subverting an individualist ideology than
simply reiterating this genealogy to bemoan it’ (p. 120).
 Introduction 5
the modern technocratic state—the insane asylum, the panoptical prison, and the
barracks-like public school.15
Instead, it is a ‘perplexed response’ (p. 3) to a specific historical moment, inevitably
entangled in modes of physical, psychological, and cultural embodiment. No less
than the poets and thinkers who populated the worldly ‘salons’ and learned ‘cabi-
nets’, Descartes uses his work to forge a social legitimacy for himself. It would be
simplistic to regard the wealth of contemporary texts exploring the art of poetry as
neutral intellectual foundations for a smoothly classical theatrical practice, without
noting the extent of their socio-political positioning.16 Similarly, it would be naïve
to neglect the worldly forces shaping Descartes’s assertions of autonomy at the
same historical moment.
An obvious next step is to triangulate: to bring Descartes’s philosophical output
into contact with the literary treatises, exempla, and controversies of that same
­historical moment. Many have theories of poetics at their core—accounts of lit-
erary possibilities and conventions that are central to the Western tradition of
criticism from Aristotle on—and these theories provide a crucial intellectual context
for his work. I shall therefore be paying close attention to the processes of active
reading, watching, and listening that were so vital to early seventeenth-century
French debates about tragedy and tragicomedy, as these deal with the Aristotelian
topoi of imitation, wonder, heroism, verisimilitude, and belief.17 I shall also be argu-
ing that, when corresponding with contemporaries such as Guez de Balzac, Marin
Mersenne, and Constantijn Huygens (themselves profoundly embedded within
the early modern republic of letters), Descartes draws upon their imaginative
orderings and their choices of narrative. His work exists in the same transitional
space as theirs.18 He seeks a role for himself amidst the profuse interconnections of
his contemporaries’ formulations.
Writers and critics of the early seventeenth century return again and again to
the relationship between literary works and the attentiveness that is their object.
We are continually asked to evaluate the divergences between history and fable,

15 Christopher Braider, The Matter of Mind: Reason and Experience in the Age of Descartes (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012), p. 3, quoting Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,
chapter 1.
16 See Déborah Blocker, Instituer un ‘art’. Politiques du théâtre dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle
(Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009).
17 ‘La fréquence et la violence des querelles littéraires tout au long du siècle indiquent l’importance
prise alors par la littérature, puisque c’est à travers elle qu’une grande part de la conflictualité socio-
politique réussit à se dire.’ (‘The frequency and violence of literary quarrels across the century indicate
the importance of literature at that time, as so much sociopolitical conflict finds expression within it.’)
Hélène Merlin-Kajman, ‘Un siècle classico-baroque’, XVIIe siècle, 56.2 (April 2004), pp. 163–74
(p. 164). See also L’Absolutisme dans les lettres et la théorie des deux corps (Paris: Honoré Champion,
2000); and ‘Un nouveau XVIIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 105 (January–March
2005), pp. 11–36.
18 I am evoking here the terminology of the Mouvement Transitions, founded in 2010 by Hélène
Merlin-Kajman, whose aims have recently been summed up in the latter’s Lire dans la gueule du loup.
Essai sur une zone à défendre, la littérature (Paris: Gallimard, 2016). Hélène Merlin-Kajman references
the transitional spaces and objects of psychoanalytic theory in order to consider how modes of
‘partage’ (sharing, distribution) condition both the production of literature and the way we apprehend
its effects. See http://www.mouvement-transitions.fr/.
6 Introduction

between reality and imitation, between truth and verisimilitude. Thinking in 1623
about readerly belief and how it is granted, Jean Chapelain observes the imperfections
of history, and insists that history itself, to be plausible or verisimilar (‘vraisemblable’),
will require manipulation: ‘De deux histoires contraires ou diversement racontées
on suit toujours celle qui a le plus de probabilité’ (‘Of two stories which are oppos-
ing or differently told, we always follow that which is more probable.’)19 Poetry, by
which is also meant verse drama, is one of the ‘sciences sublimes’, and not far from
philosophy (p. 197). Unlike history, poetry
met le premier en considération l’universel et ne le traite particulièrement qu’en intention
d’en faire tirer l’espèce, à l’instruction du monde et au bénéfice commun. (p. 197)
brings the universal to our consideration first, and only deals with particularities in
the intention of drawing out their kind, for the instruction of everyone and for the
common good.
Chapelain is aiming at nothing less than universal benefit.
In his Discours de la méthode, Descartes says that he has learnt all sorts of lessons
about the use value of literature. Thanks to his school curriculum, he knows that
fables stimulate the mind, and that the memorable deeds recorded in histories
uplift it, helping to form our judgement in a discerning way; he knows that
reading good books is like engaging in conversation with the most distinguished
minds of the past, and that oratory can be incomparably powerful; he knows that
poetry can be both delicate and compelling, and that philosophy enables us to
speak plausibly about anything at all.20 Famously, he goes so far as to put forward
his own ‘Discours’ as a fable:
Ne proposant cet écrit que comme une histoire, ou, si vous l’aimez mieux, que comme
une fable, en laquelle, parmi quelques exemples qu’on peut imiter, on en trouvera
peut-être aussi plusieurs autres qu’on aura raison de ne pas suivre, j’espère qu’il sera
utile à quelques uns sans être nuisible à personne, et que tous me sauront gré de ma
franchise.21 (AT VI, 4)
But as I am putting this essay forward only as a historical record, or if you prefer, a
fable, in which among a number of examples worthy of imitation one may also find
several which one would be right not to follow, I hope that it may prove useful to some
people without being harmful to any, and that my candour will be appreciated by
everyone. (Discourse, p. 7)
As many critics have noted, the first-person insistence on exemplarity without
prescription reminds us of Montaigne’s ‘Du repentir’: ‘Les autres forment l’homme,
je le recite’ (‘Others form man; I tell of him’).22

19 Jean Chapelain, ‘Lettre ou discours de Monsieur Chapelain à Monsieur Favereau, Conseiller du

Roi en sa Cour des Aides, portant son opinion sur le poème d’Adonis du Chevalier Marino’, in
Alfred C. Hunter (ed.) and Anne Duprat (rev.), Opuscules critiques (Geneva: Droz, 2007), pp. 185–221
(p. 197).
20 See AT VI, 5–6; Discourse, pp. 7–8.
21 A ‘fable’ can be any kind of fictive narration, from the epics of Homer or Virgil to Ovid’s mytho-
logical poetry to Aesop.
22 Michel de Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris: PUF, 1965), vol. III, ch. 2, p. 804; ‘Of
Repentance’ in Donald M. Frame (trans.), The Complete Works (New York: Alfred A. Knopf [Everyman’s
 Introduction 7

But Descartes also clarifies in the first part of the Discours that history itself, the
story of lives, is not the domain of truth claims or straightforward utility. Rather
like Chapelain, he notes that we need to be aware of the value-laden modifications
that are necessarily made to history in the telling:
Même les histoires les plus fidèles, si elles ne changent ni n’augmentent la valeur des
choses pour les rendre plus dignes d’être lues, au moins en omettent-elles presque
toujours les plus basses et moins illustres circonstances [. . .]. (AT VI, 7)
Even if the most faithful of accounts of the past neither alter nor exaggerate the
importance of things in order to make them more attractive to the reader, they nearly
always leave out the humblest and least illustrious historical circumstances [. . .].
(Discourse, p. 8)23
The reader is confronted with a divergence between the writer and the ‘reality’ or
particularity of written history, rendering the lessons that can be drawn from the
latter unreliable and illusory, so that:
le reste ne paraît pas tel qu’il est, et que ceux qui règlent leurs mœurs par les exemples
qu’ils en tirent, sont sujets à tomber dans les extravagances des Paladins de nos romans,
et à concevoir des desseins qui passent leurs forces. (AT VI, 6‒7)
what remains does not appear as it really was, and that those who base their behaviour
on the examples they draw from such accounts are likely to try to match the feats
of knights of old in tales of chivalry and set themselves targets beyond their powers.
(Discourse, pp. 8‒9)
Such people sound very like Don Quixote after his reading of chivalric romances
like Amadís de Gaula:
These writings drove the poor knight out of his wits [. . .]. In short, he so buried
himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and

Library], 2003), pp. 740–53 (p. 740). All translations will be taken from this edition. See notably
Jean-Luc Marion, Questions cartésiennes, vol. II. Sur l’égo et sur Dieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 2002 [1996]), p. 129; also Etienne Gilson, Discours de la méthode. Texte et commentaire
(Paris, Vrin, 1987), p. 98; Léon Brunschvicg, Descartes et Pascal lecteurs de Montaigne (Neuchatel: La
Bacconière, 1945); Frédéric Brahami, ‘Pourquoi prenons-nous titre d’être? Pensée de soi et pensée de
Dieu chez Montaigne et Descartes’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 49.1 (2006), pp. 21–39, and,
more recently, the 2013 special collection of Montaigne Studies, entitled Montaigne and Descartes.
Hervé Baudry sees fit to dismiss the connection in Le Dos de ses livres. Descartes a-t-il lu Montaigne?
(Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015). Michael Moriarty provides a detailed reading of the echoes, themes,
and strategies that link the two in ‘Montaigne and Descartes’, The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne, ed.
Philippe Desain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 347–64. As he concludes there, ‘despite
the radical difference between their methods of thought and the goals of their thinking, it is hard to
conceive how Descartes could have cultivated his philosophy so successfully if Montaigne had not
prepared the ground for him’ (p. 363).
23 As Denis Kambouchner notes, Descartes’s comments about history’s omission of the humble
also recall Montaigne’s in ‘De la gloire’ (‘On Glory’): ‘Infinies belles actions se doivent perdre sans
tesmoignage avant qu’il en vienne une à profit. On n’est pas tousjours sur le haut d’une bresche ou à
la teste d’une armée, à la veuë de son general, comme sur un eschaffaut’ (II, 16, 622) (‘An infinity of
fine actions must be lost without a witness before one appears to advantage. A man is not always at the
top of a breach or at the head of an army, in sight of his general, as on a stage’; The Complete Works,
p. 573). ‘Descartes et le théâtre du monde’, Sapientia Veterum: Scritti di storia della filosofia dedicati a
Marta Fattori, ed. Massimo L. Bianchi and Riccardo Pozzo with the collaboration of Samantha
Maruzzella (Florence: Olschki, 2016), pp. 105‒17 (p. 111).
8 Introduction
the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain
dried up and he lost his wits.24
In September 1637, Constantijn Huygens has been reading the Discours.25 Self-
deprecatingly, he sends on a sample of his own work to Descartes:
Il m’est advis que je ne vous propose rien de plus difficile qu’une page de l’Amadis de
Gaule, ou on m’a dit que vous souliez jeter les yeux. (AT I, 397)
It is my opinion that I propose to you nothing more difficult than a page of Amadís
de Gaula, at which I am told you often throw a glance.26
In general, Descartes is using the Discours to look for a firmly practical reading
encounter that will depart from the speculative stance of the schools (AT VI, 61‒2).
Instead, it will mobilize and elevate simplicity, internal clarity, and good sense:
Ceux qui ont le raisonnement le plus fort, et qui digèrent le mieux leurs pensées afin
de les rendre claires et intelligibles, peuvent toujours le mieux persuader ce qu’ils pro-
posent, encore qu’ils ne parlassent que bas-breton, et qu’ils n’eussent jamais appris de
rhétorique, et ceux qui ont les inventions les plus agréables et qui les savent exprimer
avec le plus d’ornement et de douceur, ne laisseraient pas d’être les meilleurs poëtes,
encore que l’art poétique leur fût inconnu. (AT VI, 7)
Those who reason the most powerfully and are the most successful at ordering their
thoughts so as to make them clear and intelligible will always be best able to persuade
others of what they say, even if they speak in the thickest of dialects and have never
learned any rhetoric. And those whose linguistic expression is the most pleasing and
who frame their thoughts in the most eloquent and agreeable way would always end
up being the best poets, even if they did not know a single rule of poetic composition.
(Discourse, p. 9)
He annuls any reliance on socially sanctioned models or the ‘rules’ of poetics. His
quest for a new science is characterized by his keenness to rid himself entirely of
(merely) plausible propositions, reliant as they are on opinion:
Considérant combien il peut y avoir de diverses opinions touchant une même matière,
qui soient soutenues par des gens doctes, sans qu’il y en puisse avoir jamais plus d’une
seule qui soit vraie, je réputais presque pour faux tout ce qui n’étoit que vraisemblable.
(AT VI, 8)

24 Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. J.M. Cohen (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1950), p. 32. The sto-
ries of the knight-errant Amadís de Gaula were first collected in 1465 and first published in 1508,
with the first French translation in 1540. On the French reception, see Nicholas Paige, Before Fiction:
The Ancien Régime of the Novel (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2011), pp. 83–5. In
different ways, Anthony Cascardi and Steven Nadler both take up the prompt to compare the predica-
ments of Don Quixote and Descartes’s sceptical persona in the Meditations: Cascardi, ‘Cervantes and
Descartes on the Dream Argument’, Cervantes, 4 (1989), pp. 109–30 and Nadler, ‘Descartes’s Demon
and the Madness of Don Quixote’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 58.1 (January 1997), pp. 41–55.
25 See his letter to Descartes of 18th September 1637 (AT I, 395).
26 This is the translation of Roger Ariew, in Erik-Jan Bos, Theo Verbeek, and Roger Ariew (eds),
The Correspondence of René Descartes, New Critical Edition and Complete English Translation (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, forthcoming). I am very grateful to the editors for making this available in
advance of publication.
 Introduction 9
Seeing how different learned men may defend different opinions on the same subject,
without there ever being more than one which is true, I deemed anything that was no
more than plausible to be false. (Discourse, p. 10)
Yet despite—or perhaps because of—this rejection of the ‘vraisemblable’ in science
and metaphysics, Descartes remains fascinated by verisimilitude. It is not just that,
in day-to-day life, we have to settle for doubtful opinions if nothing more certain
is available. Descartes asks more searching questions, too: questions that define
local literary-theoretical debates about plausibility. How do we get people to pay
attention? How do we ward off their boredom, or impatience? How do we think
about the benefits that their attention might bring them? In what ways should
smooth continuance be disrupted? These questions bear upon the nature as much
as upon the objects of attentive examination. Tracing out gradations of clarity and
intelligibility, and taking for himself a field of study called something like ‘the
human mind’, Descartes is also interested in what it might feel like to be attentive,
and to tease judgement out of confused beliefs. Thus he tries to articulate the
different actions performed by thought:
L’action de la pensée par laquelle on croit une chose étant différente de celle par
laquelle on connaît qu’on la croit, elles sont souvent l’une sans l’autre. (AT, VI, 23)
The mental act by which we believe something, being different from that act by which
we know that we believe it, often results in one act being present without the other.
(Discourse, p. 21)

D E S C A RT E S ’ S L A N G U A G E

The fact that Descartes is a keen observer of, and experimenter in, language has
stimulated many existing studies of his rhetoric. The way that he rejects ‘rhetorical
flavouring’, or ‘rhetorical pretences’ in favour of the simplicity of philosophical
method may itself clearly be seen as a persuasive stance that shows an awareness of
‘audience demands and audience response’.27 Peter France makes the basic point
that the whole of Descartes’s œuvre is a rhetorical enterprise, in the sense that, as we
read the Discours or the Meditations, the Regulae or the Principles (not to mention
the correspondence), we see an author who ‘attempts to set up a current of sympathy
between himself and his reader’ (p. 58).
France is indebted, as he notes, to the work of Henri Gouhier, in La Pensée
métaphysique de Descartes, and in particular to a chapter pithily entitled ‘Une phi-
losophie sans rhétorique’ (‘A Philosophy without Rhetoric’). Gouhier in turn goes
back to the immensely influential account of Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca and Chaïm
Perelman, and their suggestion that we owe to the Discours de la méthode the
collapse of any prestige attached to techniques of persuasion, thanks to that text’s
preoccupation with the concept of evidence, available to anyone possessed of ‘bon

27 Replies to the Fifth Objections to the Meditations (MM 184). Peter France, Rhetoric and Truth in
France: Descartes to Diderot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 51.
10 Introduction

sens’ or ‘good sense’.28 Reason, as the Regulae ad directionem ingenii tell us, needs
to be guided from one evident truth to another.29 ‘Si la vérité est évidence’, asks
Gouhier, ‘[. . .] comment s’imposerait-elle sinon par le seul éclat de cette évidence?
(‘If the truth is evidence, [. . .] how could it impose itself other than through the
light of that evidence alone?’ (p. 96).30 ‘Bon sens’, here, is a basic unit of under-
standing, equivalent to the basic form of communication that is the ‘bas-breton’ of
the Discours (AT VI, 7). Thus Descartes rejects the discipline of rhetoric as taught
in schools. But rhetoric is not the only disciplinary casualty of Descartes’s modern-
izing impulse. Dialectic, too—omnia Dialecticorum præcepta—is the object of
suspicion, as it moves through smooth channels of logical reasoning without ever
requiring a proper kind of attentiveness:
They [dialecticians] prescribe certain forms of reasoning in which the conclusions
follow with such irresistible necessity that if our reason relies on them, even though
it takes, as it were, a rest from considering a particular inference clearly and attentively,
it can nevertheless draw a conclusion which is certain simply in virtue of the form.
(rule 10, AT X, 405‒6)31
This proper kind of attentiveness is the fundamental object of Descartes’s
new rules for the direction of the ingenium, as it is of his method and his phil-
osophy in general. Descartes constantly appeals to the attentus lector (rule 12,
AT X, 416).32 We need to face head on any form of thought that enables us to
avoid paying attention, and restore to it the presence of mind that it lacks: ‘We
search carefully for everything which may help our mind to stay alert’ (rule 10,
AT X, 406; CSM I, 36). Crucially, we can make the decision to cultivate our
attentiveness through craft, or graft: ‘Craftsmen who engage in delicate operations,
and are used to fixing their eyes on a single point, acquire through practice the
ability to make perfect distinctions between things, however minute and delicate’
(rule 9, AT X, 401; CSM I, 33). Having developed our perspicacity at this level,
we will ideally become capable of seeing how ‘all the sciences [scientiæ] are
linked together’ (AT X, 215; CSM I, 3).
The discipline of dialectic screens or occults this kind of movement. It serves
only to reformulate prior premises (premises which may well be faulty); thus, an
art of expression, it is in fact akin to rhetoric:

28 Chaim Perelman et Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, La Nouvelle rhétorique: Traité de l’argumentation

(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958), pp. 3–4.
29 The Regulae were first published in a Dutch edition in 1684. On the controversial question of
the dating of the text, see the edition of the Cambridge manuscript of the Rules for the Direction of the
Ingenium by Michael Edwards and Richard Serjeantson (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming).
30 ‘Le critère de l’évidence, que ce fût l’évidence personnelle du protestantisme, l’évidence ration-
nelle du cartésianisme ou l’évidence sensible des empiristes, ne pouvait que disqualifier la rhétorique.’
Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, La Nouvelle rhétorique, p. 40. ‘The criterion of evidence,
whether it was the personal evidence of protestantism, the rational evidence of Cartesianism or the
sensory evidence of the empiricists, could only disqualify rhetoric.’
31 The translation is by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch (eds), The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. I, p. 36, henceforth CSM I.
32 See in particular Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, L’Individualité chez Descartes, pp. 177–86 (p. 182).
 Introduction 11
Ordinary dialectic is of no use whatsoever to those who wish to investigate the truth
of things. Its sole advantage is that it sometimes enables us to explain to others argu-
ments which are already known. It should therefore be transferred from philosophy to
rhetoric. (rule 10, AT X, 406; CSM I, 37)33
As long as participants in disputations are trying to win, they are more concerned
to be persuasive than properly to weigh two sides of an argument (AT VI, 69;
Discours, p. 56). Descartes’s preface to Picot’s 1647 translation of the 1644
Principles of Philosophy will confirm the suspicion of dialectic: his own logic is dis-
tinguished from
celle de l’Ecole qui n’est autre chose qu’une Dialectique qui enseigne les moyens de
faire entendre à autrui les choses qu’on sait, ou même aussi de dire sans jugement
plusieurs paroles touchant celles qu’on ne sait pas, et ainsi elle corrompt le bon sens
plutôt qu’elle ne l’augmente. (AT IX, 13)
the logic of the Schools, for this is strictly speaking nothing but a dialectic which
teaches ways of expounding to others what one already knows or even of holding forth
without judgement about things one does not know. Such logic corrupts good sense
rather than increasing it. (CSM I, 186)
Thus, writes Descartes in the same text,
Je voudrais assurer ceux qui se défient trop de leurs forces, qu’il n’y a aucune chose
en mes écrits qu’ils ne puissent entièrement entendre, s’ils prennent la peine de les
examiner. (AT IX, 13; CSM I, 185)
I should like to assure those who are over-diffident about their powers that there is
nothing in my writings which they are not capable of completely understanding
provided they take the trouble to examine them.
Anyone can pay attention, but the effort of examination remains the precondition
for success. Descartes’s tribute to Queen Christina of Sweden, who had encountered
his work via Pierre Chanut, makes its fullest sense in this context:
Cette Princesse est bien plus créée à l’image de Dieu, que le reste des hommes, d’autant
qu’elle peut étendre ses soins à plus grand nombre de diverses applications en même
temps. Car il n’y a au monde que Dieu seul dont l’esprit ne se lasse point, et qui n’est
pas moins exact à savoir le nombre de nos cheveux et à pourvoir jusques aux plus petits
vermisseaux, qu’à mouvoir les cieux et les astres.
(To Chanut, 26th February 1649; AT V, 290)
This Princess has been created more closely in the image of God, than the rest of men,
and especially in that she is able to extend her attentiveness to a greater range of
different activities at the same time. For in the whole world there is only God whose
mind never tires, and who is just as precise in knowing the number of hairs on our
heads or in making provisions for even the tiniest worms as He is in moving the
heavens and the stars.

33 Amidst this very rejection, Descartes is engaging with Aristotle’s own definition of rhetoric:
‘Rhetoric is a counterpart of Dialectic; for both have to do with matters that are in a manner within
the cognizance of all men and are not confined to any special science’. Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric,
trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [Loeb], 1926), 1354a1–3.
12 Introduction

Christina has the rapt eye of a skilled craftswoman, but she can also master instabilities
of scale, moving rapidly between intricate detail and overarching generality.
Descartes still needs to give form to his material, that it might encourage his
reader to take this kind of trouble. The very premise behind Descartes’s rejection
of education conventionally viewed, as we have already seen, is that he favours an
alternative experience of learning: self-improvement, self-advancement, his own
rules for the direction of the mind; and this pedagogical emphasis on ‘direction’
itself brings logical pressures to bear upon the notion that solipsism might be the
defining condition of Cartesian personhood. For Henri Gouhier, ‘à son sommet, la
nouvelle philosophie ne distingue plus recherche et enseignement’ (‘at its height,
the new philosophy makes no distinction between searching and teaching’).34
John D. Lyons goes further: Descartes’s concern here goes beyond the establishing
of a ‘current of sympathy’ between himself and the reader. Descartes ‘reconfigures
the terms of the contract between the writer and the reader of philosophical works:
he clearly intends to transmit certain concepts to his readers, but he seems even
more to want to produce a transformation in those readers.’35
Descartes’s distrust of obscure or arcane language thus contributes to a strongly
pedagogical stance. We need also to acknowledge, however, that Descartes’s basic
emphases on methodical thinking and individual truth-seeking are also compli-
cated by a rather sophisticated engagement with analogy, metaphor, and figures of
speech, with the manipulation of ethos and example. Any overview of Descartes
criticism will proffer analysis of the literary techniques he uses (his ‘poétique’, in a
sense often granted in French), from the use of illustrative figures in the Regulae
(‘I wish rather to clothe [this discipline] and adorn it so as to make it easier to
present to the human mind’; rule 4, AT X, 374; CSM I, 17) to the constant
domestic analogizing of Le Monde, the powders in jars, and the organ pipes in
churches; from the metaphors and rhythm of the Discours and the Meditations
to the dialogic dramatizations pitting honnête homme against pedantic scholar in
La Recherche de la vérité.36

34 Gouhier, La Pensée métaphysique, p. 110. Gouhier is referring in particular to the Second Replies
to the Objections: ‘Analysis shows the true path by which the thing was methodically discovered, as if a
priori, so that, if the reader is willing to follow it and to pay sufficient attention to every point, he will
understand it and assimilate it as perfectly as if he had discovered it himself ’ (AT VII, 155; MM 99).
35 John D. Lyons, ‘The Cartesian Reader and the Methodic Subject’, L’Esprit créateur, 21.2
(summer 1981), pp. 37–47 (p. 43).
36 ‘Si vous mettez, par exemple, de la poudre en quelque vase, vous le secouez, et frappez contre
[. . .]’ (‘When you put powder in a jar, you shake the jar and tap it [. . .]’) (AT XI, 17; CSM I, 86);
‘Si vous avez jamais eu la curiosité de voir de près les orgues de nos églises [. . .]’ (‘If you have ever had
the curiosity to examine the organs in our churches [. . .]’; AT XI, 165; CSM I, 104). Le Monde or The
World, Descartes’s first attempt to write a general treatise on physics, is dated to the winter of 1629–30;
he suppresses it after Galileo Galilei is condemned in 1633 for stating that the earth moves around the
sun, and not vice versa (in the Discours, Descartes will give a deliberately vague explanation of why he
did not publish his earlier work on physics, omitting the name of Galileo). Le Monde is first published
posthumously in 1664. The unfinished and undated Recherche de la vérité or Search for Truth was, like
the Regulae, first published in a Dutch translation in 1684. See Frédéric Cossutta, ‘La métaphysique
cartésienne au risque du dialogue philosophique. Schèmes spéculatifs, formes d’exposition et genres
textuels dans le dialogue inachevé La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle’, Dix-septième siècle,
219.2 (2003), pp. 233–57.
 Introduction 13

Some figurative language, such as the metaphor of the ‘droit chemin’ or ‘straight’
or ‘right path’, provides continuity right across the work of Descartes, as he trains
his own judgement that it may never be in doubt—‘In seeking the right path of
truth we ought to concern ourselves only with objects which admit of as much
certainty as the demonstrations of arithmetic and geometry’ (Regulae, rule 2, AT
X, 366; CSM I, 12‒13)—and distances his own thought from that of his scholastic
forebears:
Ce que les anciens en ont enseigné [des passions] est si peu de chose, et pour la plupart
si peu croyable, que je ne puis avoir aucune espérance d’approcher de la vérité qu’en
m’éloignant des chemins qu’ils ont suivis. (Les Passions de l’âme, art. 1, AT XI, 327‒8)
The ancients’ teaching on the subject [of the passions] is so slender, and for the most
part so little believable, that I can have no hope of attaining truth except by departing
from the paths they have followed. (Passions, p. 195)
Yesterday’s meditation, writes Descartes’s meditator in the second, led into a ‘deep
whirlpool’ of doubt (AT VII, 24; MM 17). Today, he ‘will struggle on, and [. . .] try
the same path again’. In the Recherche de la vérité, Descartes’s fellow-traveller is
contrasted with those aimless folk who, having left ‘le grand chemin pour prendre
la traverse’ (‘the main path to find a shortcut’), find themselves lost among briars
and precipices (AT X 497; CSM II, 401).
In the Discours, in the course of elaborating his ‘morale par provision’, Descartes
also contrasts his own circumspection with aimlessness:
Mais, comme un homme qui marche seul, et dans les ténèbres, je me résolus d’aller
si lentement et d’user de tant de circonspection en toutes choses, que si je n’avançais
que fort peu, je me garderais bien au moins de tomber. (AT VI, 16‒17)
But, like a man walking by himself in the dark, I took the decision to go slowly and to
exercise such caution in everything that even if I made very little progress, I would at
least be sure not to fall. (Discourse, p. 16)
He then mixes his metaphors to set the voyage alongside the process of building on
firm ground:
Non que j’imitasse pour cela les sceptiques, qui ne doutent que pour douter, et affectent
d’être toujours irrésolus: car au contraire, tout mon dessein ne tendait qu’à m’assurer,
et à rejeter la terre mouvante et le sable pour trouver le roc ou l’argile. (AT VI, 29)
In doing this, I was not copying those sceptics who doubt for doubting’s sake, and
pretend to be always unable to reach a decision; for, on the contrary, the aim of
my whole plan was to reach certainty and reject shifting ground in the search for rock
and clay. (Discourse, p. 25)
Doubt can now be traversed, with uncertainty put in the service of truth. If doubt
is initially linked with the loss of all bearings, it can subsequently be mapped out.37

37 ‘The very act of positing certainty as a destination already puts the philosopher on firm ground
and keeps him from slipping into a drift of aimless nomadism.’ Georges van der Abbele, ‘Cartesian
Coordinates’, Travel as Metaphor from Montaigne to Rousseau (Minneapolis and Oxford, University of
Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 43. Nathan Edelmann blurs the philological and the psychoanalytical, and
14 Introduction

Thus Descartes differentiates his practice from that of the Pyrrhonists and, as Ian
Maclean notes succinctly, ‘employs doubt as a means of establishing where error
lies, not as an excuse for suspension of judgement’.38 But Descartes also notes that
the paths taken in the present are influenced by the chance events of the past:
Je ne craindrai pas de dire que je pense avoir eu beaucoup d’heur de m’être rencontré
dès ma jeunesse en certains chemins, qui m’ont conduit à des considérations et des
maximes, dont j’ai formé une méthode. (AT VI, 3)39
I venture to claim that since my early youth I have had the great good fortune of
finding myself taking certain paths that have led me to reflections and maxims from
which I have fashioned a method. (Discourse, p. 6)
We shall return to the way that chance or fortune (‘heur’) can, here as for Montaigne,
intermingle with the judgements that we come to pass upon ourselves.40
Descartes’s scientific writings have benefited particularly from the analysis of
imagery, in keeping with Descartes’s Lucretian suggestion in Le Monde that, when
talking about the microscopic particles of matter that suffuse the world, the only
way to advance scientific discussion is to construct analogical models. We might
for example think of imperceptible particles of light by analogy with wooden
spheres like billiard balls. Descartes writes:
Afin que la longueur de ce discours vous soit moins ennuyeuse, j’en veux envelopper
une partie dans l’invention d’une fable, au travers de laquelle j’espère que la vérité ne
laissera pas de paraître suffisamment. (AT XI, 31)
In order to make this long discourse less boring for you, I want to clothe part of it in
the guise of a fable, in the course of which I hope the truth will not fail to become
sufficiently clear. (CSM I, 90)
Analogy in Le Monde is a kind of palliative hypothesis, a provisional step on the
path to truth. A familiar image can guide the reader to an unfamiliar one, as the
imagination, the faculty for contemplating sensory data, can also combine such
data in novel and unusual ways. This helps us attain knowledge that is very useful

finds an anxiety in the insistence on the ‘droit chemin’: ‘By the very pressure of its persistence and
repetitiousness, his figurative language, like a form of subconscious resistance, betrays—although it
would deny—the pressure of an uncertainty that remains to be dealt with.’ Nathan Edelmann, ‘The
Mixed Metaphor in Descartes’, in Jules Brody (ed.), The Eye of the Beholder (Baltimore and London,
Johns Hopkins UP, 1974), p. 117. See also G. Nador, ‘Métaphores de chemins et de labyrinthes chez
Descartes’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, 152 (1962), pp. 37–51.
38 Discourse, p. 73, n. 25. See also Ian Maclean, ‘Degrés de certitude: Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes’,
Montaigne Studies, 26 (2014), pp. 207–24. On the question of how seriously Descartes took Pyrrhonism
to be a threat to philsophical practice, see also Michael Williams, ‘Descartes’s Transformation of the
Sceptical Tradition’, The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), pp. 288–313.
39 ‘Descartes’s “heur” [. . .] allows the subject to take on a contingent, historical authority to exposit
method without losing his resemblance to his readers’. John D. Lyons, ‘Subjectivity and Imitation in
the Discours de la méthode’, Neophilologus 66 (1982), pp. 508–24 (p. 509).
40 ‘J’ay encouru quelques lourdes erreurs en ma vie et importantes’, writes Montaigne in ‘Du
repentir’, ‘non par faute de bon advis, mais par faute de bon heur’ (‘I have fallen into some serious and
important mistakes in my life, not for lack of good counsel but for lack of good luck’). ‘Du repentir’,
III, 2, 814; The Complete Works, p. 749.
 Introduction 15

to life (AT VI, 61‒2), learning, as the Discours puts it, about fire, water, the earth,
the stars, and becoming, famously, ‘comme maîtres et possesseurs de la nature’ (‘as
it were the masters and possessors of nature’ (AT VI, 62; Discourse, p. 51). In the
Météores, for example:
Vous pouvez imaginer même différence entre de l’eau et de la glace, que vous feriez
entre un tas de petites anguilles, soit vives, soit mortes, flottantes dans un bateau de
pêcheur tout plein de trous par lesquels passe l’eau d’une rivière qui les agite, et un tas
des mêmes anguilles toutes sèches et roides de froid sur le rivage. (AT VI, 237)
You can imagine the difference between water and ice to be the same as that between
a pile of little eels, alive or dead, floating in a fisherman’s boat that is full of holes
through which the river water flows and agitates them, and a pile of the same eels, all
dried and stiff with cold on the bank.
The Dioptrique also notably extends the series of similes and analogies between the
properties of visible and invisible entities, again using the properties of the day-
to-day, as Descartes pursues his interest in the less manifest (but none the less
material) properties of light and perception. When Jean-Baptiste Weenix paints
Descartes’s portrait in the late 1640s, he inserts the inscription ‘mundus est fabula’.
Analogical explanations have to be held within a fictional space: Descartes holds
that it is appropriate and indeed necessary to use the unavoidably hypothetical
method of supposition, if these suppositions are confirmed by their subsequent
explanatory success. As he puts it to Huygens,
C’est assez d’imaginer une cause qui puisse produire l’effet proposé, encore qu’il
puisse aussi être produit par d’autres, et qu’on ne sache point la vraie.
(5th October 1646, AT IV, 516)41
It is enough to imagine a cause that might produce a proposed effect, even if that effect
might also be produced by others, and one does not know which is the right one.
The critical literature on this aspect of Descartes’s work is vast.42 Pierre Cahné,
in 1980, used the new computerized databases to establish the unity of Descartes’s
style via studies of his ‘poétique’ (‘imagery’), his semantics, and syntax, taking as

41 See notably Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes’s Philosophy of Science (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1982), and ‘Descartes’s Philosophy of Science’, The Cambridge Companion to
Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 258–86, on Descartes’s commitment
to mechanical explanations rather than the occult powers of the scholastic tradition, and on the rec-
ognition that this type of explanation must be hypothetical.
42 In addition to the work cited earlier, see for example Thomas M. Carr, Descartes and the Resilience
of Rhetoric: Varieties of Cartesian Rhetorical Theory (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
1990), p. 267; Georges Leyenberger, ‘Métaphore, fiction et vérité chez Descartes’, Littérature, 109
(1998), pp. 20–37; Théodule Spoerri, ‘La Puissance métaphorique chez Descartes’, in Descartes,
Cahiers de Royaumont. Philosophie, vol. II (Paris, 1957), pp. 273–87; Claire Gaudiani, ‘La Lumière
cartésienne. Métaphore et phénomène’, Actes de New Orleans, ed. Francis Lawrence. Paris, PFSCL
(1982); Frédérique Aït-Touati, Fictions of the Cosmos: Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century,
trans. Susan Emanuel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). In much the same area, see
Ladina Bezzola Lambert’s Imagining the Unimaginable: The Poetics of Early Modern Astronomy
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002); and the section on Descartes in Erec R. Koch, Pascal and Rhetoric:
Figural and Persuasive Language in the Scientific Treatises, the Provinciales, and the Pensées
(Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 1997).
16 Introduction

axiomatic his description of Le Monde as a fable.43 This approach is coherently

followed through in studies of the Discours, where Descartes’s anonymous self-
presentation is a ‘simple methodological fiction’ that is run together with the
distinction between fable and reality in Le Monde.44 So too is the elaboration of
the meditator persona, himself capable of baroque hypotheses such as the ‘evil
genius’ argument: a malevolent alternative to God has infiltrated our minds.45
Cahné decentres Descartes the rationalist and tries to describe, instead, ‘un autre
Descartes’, a Matamore-like manipulator of analogies.46 Descartes is participating
in the extravagant ‘libertin’ world of Guillaume du Vair, François de La Mothe le
Vayer, or Cyrano de Bergerac: a world where we can only depend on ourselves,
and where we need to impose our own order on the surrounding ‘sound and fury’
(p. 245). Jean-Pierre Cavaillé pursues some of these insights with fine analyses of
baroque nihilism, likewise imaged in the fable of Le Monde, which has to distance
and de-realize the world in order to explain it.47 For Cavaillé, Descartes makes a
virtue of clarity while thinking about its manipulation. We are again in a world
characterized by the mistrust of appearances, a fascination with artifice, and inten-
tional deception: it makes sense that Descartes’s science combines the logic of
evidence with rhetorical skill and appeals to the imagination.
For Fernand Hallyn, Descartes’s rhetorical skill is characterized overwhelmingly
as a dissimulating practice, tactical and political in nature.48 In Descartes’s case, as
in the case of the ‘libertins’ to whom he is allied, this practice of dissimulation is of
a general cultural relevance and has several functions. The first is a kind of elitist
prudence: an effort to ward off the easy misinterpretations of a vulgar or ignorant

43 Pierre Cahné, Un autre Descartes. Le Philosophe et son langage (Paris: Vrin, 1980). See Denis
Kambouchner’s analysis of Cahné in Le Style de Descartes (Paris: Manucius, 2013), pp. 54–62.
44 Cahné, Un autre Descartes, p. 117. See also Sylvie Romanowski: ‘La création de la philosophie sous
nos yeux, que paraissent effectuer les Méditations, est une pure fiction de l’écriture, la philosophie
ayant été élaborée avant et autrement’ (‘The creation of philosophy before our very eyes, which the
Meditations appear to perform, is pure writerly fiction, the philosophy having been elaborated
before and otherwise’). L’Illusion chez Descartes. La Structure du discours cartésien (Paris: Klincksieck,
1974), p. 173.
45 For good readings of the fictive persona of the meditator, see many of the contributions in the
Cambridge Companion to Descartes’s Meditations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014),
and James Helgeson, ‘Others’ Dreams, Others’ Minds in Descartes’s Meditations’, in Ita Mac Carthy,
Kirsti Sellevold, and Olivia Smith (eds), Cognitive Confusions: Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early
Modern Culture (Cambridge: Legenda, 2017), pp. 111–24. For the most renowned treatment of the
first few pages of the Meditations, see Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris:
Gallimard, 1972 [1961]), pp. 56–9, and the reply of Jacques Derrida, ‘Cogito et histoire de la folie’,
L’Ecriture et la différence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), pp. 51–97. For an excellent summary of the issues arising,
see Denis Kambouchner, ‘Descartes. Un Monde sans fous? Des Méditations métaphysiques au Traité
de l’homme’, Dix-septième siècle, 247 (2010), pp. 213–22.
46 Matamore is the stock braggart-captain of the commedia dell’arte, a farcical role further popular-
ized for seventeenth-century French audiences by Corneille’s hybrid Illusion comique, first performed
in 1635/6. The comparison features on pp. 35, 72, 80, 150, 229, 255, 289, 308.
47 Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, La Fable du monde (Paris: Vrin, 1991).
48 Fernand Hallyn, Descartes: Dissimulation et ironie (Geneva: Droz, 2006), p. 11. See also Dalia
Judovitz, Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988). Although ‘Descartes’s arguments are obsessed with fiction’, literary and stylistic
devices are used only to ‘help foster the illusion of the purity, simplicity and transparency of the
Cartesian philosophical position’ (p. 107).
 Introduction 17

reader. The second reveals his concern for the ecclesiastical or political authorities
who might take not just his scientific writings, but the new philosophy in general,
as offensive heterodoxy. ‘Larvatus prodeo’ (‘I come forward masked’), he had written
in the Cogitationes privatæ (AT X, 213; CSM I, 2), and throughout his life he has
to think strategically about how best to tackle the Aristotelian paradigm in both
natural philosophy and metaphysics. Descartes is using the tool of irony to mask
both the difficult and the unpalatable aspects of his writing. The third function of
dissimulation (for Hallyn, the most significant), is an arrogant attempt to present
his philosophy as the only valid and worthwhile kind, placing a veil over gaps in
his argument, imposing his superiority even as he manipulates ‘des silences choisis et
souvent mis en évidence’ (‘deliberate and often obvious moments of silence’; p. 15).
Hallyn gives us his own rhetorical and poetic reading (p. 27) of Descartes’s Le
Monde and Meditations, employing the language of artificial and inartificial proof,
as he himself seeks proof of Descartes’s dissimulating tactics (p. 28). Descartes
masks himself; Hallyn exposes him through careful detective work. Descartes is a
writer who seduces as he traduces. Thus his œuvre is consonant with a literary
attempt to engage and entice, even as it seeks to surpass the book of the world, and
to give us a science of the subject in its general essence.49

D E S C A RT E S A N D P O E T I C S

Here, I want to expand upon these ways of thinking. The language of Descartes
conjures up resistance and entails ambiguities and silences. But this does not just
have to be figured as a cunning ruse to be unmasked by the rhetorically aware
critic. It also comes across as a logical consequence of his engagement with local,
contemporary arguments about what writing does and what it is for: with ‘poetics’
in the larger sense of arts of fiction.
We may take for granted that, at a basic level of abstraction, ‘du poète au philo­
sophe, la proximité est grande’ (‘the proximity of the poet to the philosopher is great’;
that ‘la science paraît d’emblée théâtralisée’ (‘science seems theatrical from the start’),
that ‘the philosopher is poet, the novelist is a philosopher, conjectures are fictions’.50
But we may also look more precisely at the early modern poetic modelling that
breaks down some of these points into their constituent parts. The first decades of the
seventeenth century bring vicious debates about form and function—often centred,
for instance, on tragicomedy. These debates scrutinize the way that conjectures,

49 On how the mathesis universalis attributed to the Regulae (AT X, 377–8) is often run together
with the ‘maîtres et possesseurs du monde’ (‘masters and possessors of nature’) of the Discours (AT VI,
61–2; Discourse, p. 51), and for some of the critical clichés that emerge from both, see Denis
Kambouchner, Descartes n’a pas dit, pp. 111–18.
50 Cahné, Un autre Descartes, p. 117; Cavaillé, La Fable du monde, p. 11, Aït-Touati, Fictions of
the Cosmos, p. 95. Evidently, ‘fiction has no single place it can call home: it lives and thrives in the
borderland between literature, philosophy, and law’. ‘Introduction’, Fiction and the Frontiers of
Knowledge in Europe, 1500–1800, ed. Richard Scholar and Alexis Tadié (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010),
pp. 1–15 (p. 1). See also Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text and Transmission, ed. Jacqueline Glomski
and Isabelle Moreau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
18 Introduction

hypotheses, chance events, and human reactions to them are put on stage or on the
page in order to attract and maintain the attention of an audience.
Prefacing his tragicomedy Clitandre in 1632, Corneille knows that he is running
a risk in this regard: ‘Le moindre défaut ou d’attention du spectateur, ou de
mémoire de l’acteur, laisse une obscurité perpétuelle en la suite’ (‘The slightest fault
in the attention of the spectator or in the memory of the actor leaves a perpetual
confusion in what follows’).51 But he is confident of the remedy that re-reading
will offer those spectators who have failed to follow the plot: ‘Je les supplie de
prendre ma justification chez le Libraire, et de reconnaître par la lecture que ce
n’est pas ma faute’ (‘I beg them to undertake my justification at the bookseller’s,
and to recognize through their reading that this is not my fault’; p. 53). Reaching
a high-water mark with the quarrel surrounding Corneille’s 1637 Le Cid, debates
about tragicomic plots also interact with the productions of illusion in the genre of
romance, with theories of intrigue and suspense, and more generally with the edit-
ing and translation of ancient comedies and tragedies. They look at how to draw
audiences into newly established theatres and ultimately—with the growing
enthusiasm for trips to these theatres—at questions about what theatre ought
properly to do to its public, what happens when authors attain public renown, and
what ‘public’ even means.52 In what follows, we shall be thinking about the way
that a very contemporary reworking of literary and poetic theory leaves its mark on
Descartes’s work.
Our overview of work on Descartes’s language thus far has shown us the value
he finds in communication. This is also clear from the way that activities of cor-
responding, revising, and readjusting can have an ethical value in his work. The
sheer weight of the objections and responses to the Meditations also speaks to this,
as we see in the correspondence with Marin Mersenne (1588‒1648), one of the
most important disseminators of Descartes’s ideas:
Pour les objections qui pourront encore venir contre ma Métaphysique, je tâcherai d’y
répondre ainsi qu’aux précédentes, et je crois que le meilleur sera de les faire imprimer
telles qu’elles seront, et au même ordre qu’elles auront été faites, pour conserver la
vérité de l’histoire [. . .]. (21st April 1641; AT III, 363)
As for the objections that may yet be addressed to my Metaphysics, I shall try to
respond in the same way as to the previous ones, and I think that the best thing will
be to print them as they come, so as to conserve the truth of the story [. . .].
Descartes, it is true, takes some objections much more seriously than others
(‘the distinction between essence and existence is known to everybody’, he replies
to Hobbes, shortly; AT VII, 194; MM 123). But the volume of the correspond-
ence is such that there is no reason to undermine the interest in reception, or the
pursual of dialogue.

51 Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. André Stegmann (Paris: Seuil, 1963), p. 53.
52 The canonical study is Hélène Merlin-Kajman, Public et littérature en France au XVIIe siècle
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004.
 Introduction 19

Towards the end of his life, Descartes writes to Père Mesland as follows:
Je sais qu’il est très malaisé d’entrer dans les pensées d’autrui, et l’expérience m’a fait
connaître combien les miennes semblent difficiles à plusieurs.
(2nd May 1644; AT IV, 111; Correspondence in Passions, p. 169)
I know that it is very difficult to enter into another person’s thoughts, and experience
has taught me how difficult my own appear to many people.
In spite of his overwhelming emphasis on the openness of his work, the fact that
Descartes is difficult to read is repeatedly acknowledged by his contemporaries.
Jean-Baptiste Morin writes,
Vous vous renfermez et barricadez en telle sorte dans vos termes et façons de parler,
ou énoncer, qu’il semble d’abord que vous soyez impregnable.
(22nd February 1638; AT I, 540)
You close yourself off and barricade yourself behind your own terms and manners of
speaking or expressing yourself, in such a way that you seem impregnable.
What is clear to Descartes, says Mersenne, is doubtful and very obscure to others
(AT VII, 122). All of this can be reassuring to the student who reasonably wonders
what exactly is clear or distinct about anything on the Descartes reading list.
The general pedagogical impulse noted earlier in the very idea of ‘direction’ is
more specifically problematized in this context. Descartes himself poses the prob-
lem of persuasion. He aims in his Dioptrique to see if he can ‘persuader aux autres
une vérité après que je me la suis persuadée’ (‘persuade others of a truth after I have
persuaded myself of it’; to Mersenne, 25th November 1630; AT I, 182). Repeatedly,
he has his meditator advance arguments that he will eventually reject. ‘What comes
next? I will imagine’, we read in the Second Meditation, shortly before he uses the
infinitely changeable nature of a piece of wax to show that, in fact, ‘my understand-
ing of these properties is not achieved by using the faculty of imagination’ (AT VII,
27 and 31; MM 20 and 22). Descartes himself experiences a gap between being
certain of something and being persuaded of it: ‘I admit that I was not fully con-
vinced’, Descartes writes of the mind-body distinction in the sixth replies:
My experience was almost the same as that of astronomers, who, when they have
proved by reasoning that the sun is several times larger than the earth, cannot help
judging, when they are looking at it, that it is smaller. (AT VII, 440; MM 209)
His whole metaphysical project acknowledges that:
nous ne pouvons être continuellement attentifs à une même chose, quelques claires et
évidentes qu’aient été les raisons qui nous ont persuadé ci-devant quelque vérité.
(letter to Elisabeth, 15th September 1645; AT IV, 295)
we cannot be continually attentive to the same thing [. . .], however clear and evident
the reasons that have previously convinced us of some truth.53

53 Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, 1643–1649, in René Descartes, The Passions
of the Soul and Other Late Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford
World’s Classics, 2015), p. 52. All translations of the correspondence with Elisabeth are taken from
this edition.
20 Introduction

Descartes takes up various confused points of view in order to direct his readers to
the truth.54 He acknowledges readers who are many and various—‘atheists and
theists, practiced thinkers and amateurs, skeptics and non-skeptics, Aristotelians
and mechanists’.55 But, like his meditator, he also reads himself: ‘It is not enough
to have realised all this, I must take care to remember it’ (AT VII, 22; MM 16).
Descartes knows, because he observes it repeatedly and has it pointed out to him
at length by his correspondents, that the obstacles to persuasion are also the sources
of error. We are, even (especially) as adults, in the grip of habits formed in child-
hood. We defer to authority. The human will is vain and obstinate. It is more
extensive than the intellect. By ‘perfect knowledge’, Descartes only ever means the
‘parfaite connaissance de toutes les choses que l’homme peut savoir’ (‘perfect
knowledge of everything that a human being can know’).56 He works with a scru-
pulous distinction ‘between the conduct of life and the contemplation of the truth’
(Second Replies, AT VII, 149; MM 96); but his emphasis on the obvious limits of
human knowledge spans the orders of practical communication and metaphysical
enquiry. Just as the Discours shows Descartes’s preoccupation with ‘la courte durée
de ma vie’ (‘the short span of life allotted to me’; AT VI, 3; Discourse, p. 6), so the
Meditations adapt themselves to practical constraint: ‘I have delayed so long that
now I should be at fault if I used up in deliberating the time that is left for acting’
(AT VII, 17; MM 13). Rather as Corneille did when prefacing Clitandre, Descartes
asks his readers to use the time available for reading in a particular way. He is fas-
cinated both by systematization and by the acknowledgement of difficulty and
limitation. And throughout his career, he considers rationality’s extremities: not
being sure which way to turn; becoming distracted; seeing one course of action and
pursuing another; changing one’s mind; acting in the grip of passion.
So the Descartes I am presenting here is not just offering us a form of literary
posturing. Nor does it suffice to note a literary influence upon his work. Rather,
the common concerns with the relations between action and responsibility, judge-
ment and fault, imagination and the passions, all make salient the links between
Descartes’s theory and an early seventeenth-century poetics.
In Chapter 1, I discuss in detail how Aristotle’s Poetics, overlapping in various
ways with his Rhetoric and his moral philosophy, uses tragedy to interrogate condi-
tions for the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom. I move on to the rediscovery
and translation of these and other ancient texts on rhetoric, poetics, and ethics. It
was chiefly through the treatises of Italian and Dutch thinkers that Aristotle, Cicero,
Quintilian, and other ancient writers obtained a footing in France. As one starting
point for how Descartes interacts with this body of work, I consider the syllabi of

54 ‘The analytic method of composition I was following [in the Meditations] allows us to make
suppositions on occasion that are not sufficiently investigated at that point. This was clear from the
First Meditation, in which I made many assumptions that were subsequently refuted in later ones’
(fourth replies; AT: VII. 249; MM 160). On how Descartes hereby draws in the reader who has no
prior experience of metaphysics, see David Cunning, Argument and Persuasion in Descartes’ Meditations
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
55 See Cunning, Argument and Persuasion, p. 103 for a consideration of these different types of
reader.
56 Principes, ‘lettre-préface’, AT IX [2], 14, in Passions, p. 124.
 Introduction 21

Jesuit schools such as the one he attended. But I do much more in Chapter 2 to
emphasize his connections with Guez de Balzac and his circle. Here, I offer a close
examination of the language of contemporary poetic practice. Chapter 3 looks at
how Balzac is judged by his contemporaries to exceed the bounds of vivid, plausible,
and persuasive discourse, and at how these concerns with novelty, individualism
and (non-)verisimilitude (all concerns that also colour later critical responses to
Descartes) are inseparable from the debates about tragicomedy taking place at the
same time. Only when we consider the pre-history of responses to Balzac’s work,
notably from François Ogier and Jean Goulu, can we understand Descartes’s
own apology for Balzac, the Censura quarundam Epistolarum Domini Balzacii or
Judgement on Some Letters of Monsieur de Balzac (AT I, 5‒13). Close readings
of all these texts are given.
Part II, ‘Discourons’ (‘Let us discourse’), commences with Balzac’s ‘Discours à
Descartes’ (Chapter 4), which are sent to Descartes in response to the Censura.
These seem to have been very much neglected in the critical literature on Descartes.
However, and along with the wider correspondence between Descartes and Balzac,
they can be seen to anticipate the Discours de la méthode in important ways: they
bring to the fore Balzac’s thinking on chance, custom, and practical reason, on his
relationship to the Stoics, on themes of conversion. These topics again resonate
with contemporary literary debate; and may be seen to provide a stock of themes and
images on which Descartes will draw. This leads us to a reconsideration, in Chapter 5,
of Descartes’s prudential statement to the reader of the Discours de la méthode: ‘Je me
formai une morale par provision, qui ne consistait qu’en trois ou quatre maximes’
(‘I formed a provisional moral code for myself consisting in only three or four
maxims’) (AT VI, 22; Discourse, p. 21). Scrutinizing earlier occurrences of the term
‘par provision’ can also give us a more precise understanding of what Descartes seeks
to communicate at this point, and of how the ‘morale par provision’ tries to supply
the practical conditions for the search for truth. When Mersenne reflects upon the
Discours (Chapter 6), he is anxious about what Descartes teaches us on the subject
of flexibility and changing our minds. Descartes’s response revolves around the
example of Medea, a touchstone for poetic theory in general and the subject of
Corneille’s 1635 reworking of Seneca. Subsequent critical comparisons of Corneille
and Descartes are re-evaluated in this context, and against the background of the
explosion of poetic debate in the quarrel surrounding Corneille’s Le Cid.
In Part III, ‘Changing Minds’, I look further at how the project of contextualiz-
ing Descartes with reference to poetics can also impact our understanding of his
mature writings, with a focus here on the common theme of attention and atten-
tiveness. Chapter 7 starts with Descartes’s statements on attentiveness and the
problem of error. In the Meditations, Descartes comes up against various problems
relating to human hubris, blindness, and bias. In Meditation Four, he pursues a
theory of judgement, tackling the interaction of the will and the intellect in rela-
tion to the clear and distinct ideas on which his search for truth relies. Here, again,
his philosophy resonates with the language of tragedy, as a renowned strand of
secondary criticism has noted; I turn here to the characterization of Descartes as a
‘tragic’ figure.
22 Introduction

In Chapters 8 and 9, I move on from the Fourth Meditation and the ensuing
correspondence to focus on Descartes’s more general articulation of our reliance on
God, who alone, he says, can offer us continuing certainty. Here, I consider
Descartes’s statements about eternal truths. Contemporary debates about whether
we can ‘univocally’ conceive of the divine and the human return us to themes of
conversion, humility, and an attention that is strengthened even as it recognizes its
own limits. They also bear upon Descartes’s extended use of the analogy of God as
sovereign, which finds key expression in the correspondence with Elisabeth, with
the renowned example of a king and two duelling gentlemen. This example is also
considered for its dramatic resonance. In the correspondence and Passions de l’âme,
the transformations effected upon the body of the theatrical spectator yield further
insights and analogies (Chapter 10). In this latter episode of Descartes’s philo-
sophical enquiry, the question of what practical benefits our attention should bring
us is fundamental.
Evidently, this book is an attempt to return to a pre-canonical, pre-Cartesian
Descartes, outside of the general process of the cultural absorption of Cartesian
thinking.57 The literary critic attempting to come to accurate terms with the early
modern period needs to be preoccupied with a curious intermingling of foresight
and hindsight, the simultaneous presence of ghosts of the past and ghosts of the
future, the sense that, from the point of view of the writer writing, success might
come, or it might not. Descartes is particularly interesting because these preoccu-
pations recur in his work. As we have seen, his writing frequently refers to itself as
a persuasive act, and his varying rhetorical practices demonstrate the importance
he attaches to the reader’s discrimination and attentiveness. His intention to persuade
the reader to consistency, firmness, and clarity is paralleled by his awareness that
individual thought processes may be resistant to such qualities. Thus he is inter-
ested in plots and patterns—patterns of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and actions—
and in the failure of those patterns. He acknowledges the complex relationship
between logical clarity and pragmatics, or metaphysics and ethics. Descartes’s place
in the early modern synthesis of poetics, rhetoric, and philosophy needs to be
taken seriously.

57 Terence Cave provides inspiration in Pré-histoires. Textes troublés au seuil de la modernité (Geneva:
Droz, 1999).
 1
Reading Rhetoric and Poetics

Only because of the disciplinary nature of the modern university does the
­association of philosophy and poetics seem unusual. That poetry and poetics could
be a repository for wisdom, and a vehicle for critical enquiry to be extended to
other areas of moral and practical life, is assumed (if argued over) in the early mod-
ern period as it was in antiquity. Engaging, in many cases newly, with the texts of
antiquity, early modern authors also engage with the preeminent pedagogical
authority accorded to poetry in pre-Platonic society, where heroic myths were held
to demonstrate the highest goals of human life. Stories commonly told and passed
on could promote the acquisition of wisdom and of ethical insight, and give both
explicit and implicit pointers as to how human beings should conduct themselves.
Thus we read in the Republic, which will in turn become the high point of attacks
on poetry, of those
encomiasts of Homer who tell us that this poet has been the educator of Hellas, and
that for the conduct and refinement of human life he is worthy of our study and
devotion, and that we should order our entire lives by the guidance of this poet.1
In closing, Plato has Socrates challenge lovers of poetry ‘to speak on its behalf in
prose’, and to show ‘that it is not only pleasant but beneficial’ (607d–e). In the
earlier Gorgias, Socrates had argued that rhetoric in general produces only pleasure,
and not knowledge. When Descartes writes of rhetorical ‘flavouring’, he is
­acknowledging the Socratic comparison of rhetoric and cookery.2

P O E T RY A N D W I S D O M

The great tragedians to or against whom Plato is reacting are also the recipients of
Homer’s epics, his rationalizations of behaviour and his accompanying moral
points. Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles all write plays which, performed
before the city, are set in the heroic past: they give us, in the reported words of
Aeschylus, ‘steaks cut from Homer’s great banquets’.3 These writers take the old
stories and characters of the Homeric texts and set them in the context of sophistic

1 Plato, Republic, in Plato, The Collected Dialogues Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and
Huntingdon Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 606e.
2 AT VII, 350; MM184; Gorgias 462e.
3 Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters, ed. and trans. S. Douglas Olsen (Harvard: Loeb Classical
Library, 2008), 347e.

Descartes’s Fictions: Reading Philosophy with Poetics. Emma Gilby, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Emma Gilby. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198831891.003.0001
26 Debating Poetics

debates about terms and strategies, dramatizing the movement between established
loci and the transference of ideas. As Simon Goldhill explains,
Tragic drama again and again dramatizes the social world of the city at risk from the
force of man’s behaviour as it approaches the extremes of wild transgression and desire
for law and order; again and again, tragic texts, like the sophistic writings, return to
the vocabulary of civic relations, to the terminology of norm, error, punishment; again
and again, like the sophists, the tragedians depict concern with the definition of a
human and his behaviour.4
Human activity is never regarded as entirely autonomous, separable from larger
forces. In the classic account of the social conditions of Greek tragedy, Jean-Pierre
Vernant writes that the ‘tragic moment’ revolves around a tension between heroic,
traditional norms and a new spirit of legal, civic values in a society in flux.5
The development of poetic theory in Aristotle thus relies on these earlier
­iterations of the idea that poets, like orators, might or might not knowledgeably
guide us through life. However, and while he is to some extent responding to
Socrates’ challenge at the end of the Republic to ‘speak on behalf of ’ poetry, Aristotle
neither grants any automatic privilege to the poets nor accepts the conventional
account of their use value. Instead, he engages in various complex ways with the
process of coming to judgement about the particularities of genre and craft. He
pushes against ‘all those Greek critics of poetry who assumed a fixed and unques-
tionable standard of accuracy or truth by which works could be tested and,
perhaps, found wanting’.6 From the start, Aristotle questions the assumption that
poetics is about metre, form, the euphonic, the aesthetically pleasing. In other
words, he goes against the view of the sophists that metre and rhythmic form are
what makes content ‘poetic’ (let us not call Empedocles a poet, he writes in chapter 1
of the Poetics, just because he happened to write scientific works in hexameter).
Indeed, Aristotle’s theory overwhelmingly focuses on the internal logic of the
dramatic action, with plot being the ‘soul’ of tragedy.7 A transformation needs to
occur ‘in a probable or necessary sequence of events, from adversity to prosperity
or prosperity to adversity’ (1451a). Complex plots will contain ‘recognition or
reversal or both’ (1452a), often generating a desirable sense of wonder or awe
(to thaumaston, which also features notably at 1460a11−18). As Terence Cave puts
it, ‘modern notions of suspense (in the sense of a prolonged withholding of crucial
information from audience or reader) or the “twist at the end” (not too far from
the etymological sense of peplegmenos, “folded”) are adumbrated here.’8 Throughout,
the emphasis is on the criteria of plausibility and causal intelligibility.

4 Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 242.
5 Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (Paris:
Maspero, 1972).
6 Stephen Halliwell, The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary (London: Duckworth,
1987), p. 178.
7 Poetics, in Aristotle, Poetics, Longinus, On the Sublime, Demetrius, On Style, Loeb Classical
Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1450a.
8 Terence Cave, Recognitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 31.
 Reading Rhetoric and Poetics 27

In all this, Aristotle’s Poetics overlaps in various important ways with his r­ hetoric,
his ethics, and his metaphysics. As an entity, poetics is counted as a kind of theoria
or contemplation (Poetics 1448b, 4−17), one of the fundamental human actions
outlined in the Metaphysics along with ‘action’ (praxis) and ‘making’ or ‘production’
( poiesis).9 Poetic contemplation must take as its object something general, for the
irreducibly particular would resist any form of outward comprehension, but this
generality must nonetheless be found in the particular, and in no way abstracted
from it. Human action is one such generality that is present in the particular, for it
is defined by Aristotle as a word or deed in which the general tendencies of a person’s
character are enacted. Thus it can be taken as the subject of poetic mimesis: a poet
can show how the potential of a character (something general) can be expressed or
realised in a single instance (something specific). Consequently, says Aristotle,
influencing the Chapelain text we saw in the Introduction, ‘poetry is more philo-
sophical and more elevated than history, since poetry relates more of the universal,
while history relates particulars’ (Poetics, 1451b). He continues with an important
qualification: ‘ “Universal” means the kinds of things which it suits a certain kind
of person to say or do, in terms of probability or necessity: poetry aims for this,
even though attaching names to the agents’ (Poetics, 1451b). We see here the
flexibility of the term ‘probability’, as this is figured in poetic theory. The action
of a character must be probable for that character, and in conformity with their
dispositions; not typical of people in general.
This emphasis on the need for the mimetic depiction of action to be in conformity
with the dispositions of a particular character nonetheless accompanies a require-
ment for a different kind of generality: the tragic protagonist must be ‘someone not
preeminent in virtue and justice, and one who falls into adversity not through evil
and depravity, but through some kind of error (hamartia)’ (Poetics, 1453a7−10).
Repeated at 1453a13−16, on the need for tragedy to show a change ‘from prosperity
to adversity, caused not by depravity but by a great error of character’, the term
hamartia is often understood to reference a profound i­ gnorance. This acknowledges
Aristotle’s comments about a complex plot structure involving reversal and recog-
nition, and gives us a way of getting around the t­ roubling requirement for a kind
of fallibility that, while clearly causal, does not extend to complete culpability.
However, as Martha Nussbaum has shown, Aristotle’s text does not easily support
the yoking of hamartia to ignorance. Rather, it references a whole range of possi-
bilities, encompassing the causal yet unintended participation of characters in the
transformations of their own lives:
Hamartia can include both blameworthy and non-blameworthy missings-of-the-mark:
the innocent ignorance of Oedipus, the intentional but highly constrained act of
Agamemnon, the passionate deviations of akratic persons inspired to act against set-
tled character by erōs or anger.10

9 Aristotle, Metaphysics, vol. I, books 1–9, trans. Hugh Tredennick, Loeb Classical Library
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), book 6, 1025b18–26a3.
10 The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, revised edition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 383.
28 Debating Poetics

The dilemmas faced by tragic protagonists demonstrate the significance of classical

tragedy as a vehicle for robust ethical thought.
Hamartia is clearly implicated in successful catharsis: the composite, pitying-
fearing response whose accomplishment is part of Aristotle’s initial definition of
tragedy (1449b). The misfortune has to be disproportionate enough to arouse fellow-
feeling, but not so improbably undeserved that it precludes fear in the observer.
Thus hamartia involves us in an expansion of the boundaries of personhood into
empathy, but shrinks them with its location of responsibility at the point of error.
Hamartia, in short, embraces all the ways in which human vulnerability, at its
extremes, exposes itself not through sheer, arbitrary misfortune (something inconsistent
with the intelligible plot structure which Aristotle requires of a good play), but
through the erring involvement of tragic figures in their own sufferings.11
If the right kind of plot produces catharsis through ‘the erring involvement of
tragic figures in their own suffering’, it cannot encompass out-and-out random-
ness. We see here Aristotle’s preoccupation with the sense of an ending:
Clearly the denouements of plots should issue from the plot as such, and not from a
deus ex machina as in Medea and the scene of departure in the Iliad. The deus ex
machina should be employed for events outside the drama—preceding events beyond
human knowledge, or subsequent events requiring prediction and announcement; for
we ascribe to the gods a vision of all things. There should be nothing irrational in the
events; if there is, it should lie outside the play, as with Sophocles’ Oedipus.
(1454a35−1454b5)
Euripides’ deus ex machina ending—having killed her children in full knowledge of
what she was doing, Medea then escapes in the Sun’s chariot—is condemned.
Aristotle does, however, allow for irrational events ‘outside of the play’: prayers,
prophecies, and curses all have their place. And wonder or awe is generated par-
ticularly when seemingly irrational and rational components intersect: when
‘events occur contrary to expectation and yet on account of one another’ (1452a);
or when antecedents and consequences are played off against one another
(1460a).12 Again, issues of cause and consequence, contingency and necessity are
highlighted in the concentrated form of drama, as ‘the commonly accepted co-
ordinates of knowledge have gone awry’.13

11 Stephen Halliwell, ‘Introduction’, in Aristotle, Poetics, Longinus, On the Sublime, Demetrius, On

Style (Harvard: Loeb Classical Library, 1995), p. 17.
12 Thus, in Frank Kermode’s terminology, the most powerful and effective tragic plots will follow
disconfirmation with consonance, as we ‘assimilate a peripateia and enact a readjustment of expectation
in regard to an end’. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000 [1966]), p. 18.
13 This is from Terence Cave’s introductory discussion of the recognition scene: ‘In Aristotle’s
definition, anagnorisis brings about a shift from ignorance to knowledge; it is the moment at which
characters understand their predicament fully for the first time, the moment that resolves a sequence
of unexplained and often implausible occurrences; it makes the world (and the text) intelligible. Yet it
is also a shift into the implausible: the secret unfolded lies beyond the realm of common experience;
the truth discovered is ‘marvellous’ (thaumaston, to use Aristotle’s term), the truth of fabulous myth or
legend. Anagnorisis links the recovery of knowledge with a disquieting sense, when the trap is sprung,
that the commonly accepted co-ordinates of knowledge have gone awry.’ Recognitions, pp. 1–2.
 Reading Rhetoric and Poetics 29

That these issues are not just abstract or fantastic, but have an experiential reality
for his readership, is further acknowledged by Aristotle in his Physics, where in fact
the sheer, arbitrary misfortune that he rejects in the Poetics is granted a significant
weight. In the Physics, Aristotle insists on the phenomenological reality of chance.
Beyond those events which happen by necessity and always, and beyond those
events which happen for the most part, there is a ‘third class of events’, which all
say are ‘by chance’: ‘It is plain that there is such a thing as chance and spontaneity;
for we know that things of this kind are due to chance and that things due to
chance are of this kind.’14 Aristotle goes on to exclude from this third class of
events those which do not happen for the sake of something: where there is no
purpose whatsoever involved in the event. What Aristotle is doing is effectively
removing from the category of events described as ‘chance’ all those happenings
which (being entirely random) lack any kind of salience or narrative force for the
describer. He gives us a clarifying scenario:
A man is engaged in collecting subscriptions for a feast. He would have gone to such
and such a place for the purpose of getting the money, if he had known. He actually
went there for another purpose and it was only incidentally that he got his money by
going there; and this was not due to the fact that he went there as a rule or necessarily,
nor is the end effected (getting the money) a cause present in himself—it belongs to
the class of things that are intentional and the result of intelligent deliberation. It is
when these conditions are satisfied that the man is said to have gone ‘by chance’. If he
had gone of deliberate purpose and for the sake of this—if he always or normally went
there when he was collecting payments—he would not be said to have gone ‘by
chance’. (196b32−197a5)
John D. Lyons glosses the central point: ‘Getting the money owed to him is a
purpose but it was not the purpose for which he went to the market where he met
the man from whom he wanted to collect the money.’15 Purpose has to be present
in the chance event for it to have a sufficient interest value for us to designate it as
happening ‘by chance’. In other words, a sense of purpose has to elevate the speci-
fied chance event above the myriad other random collisions that occur in any bust-
ling marketplace.16 Chance and purpose, or ‘intelligent reflection’, move in the
same area:
It is clear then that chance is an incidental cause in the sphere of those actions for the
sake of something which involve purpose. Intelligent reflection, then, and chance are
in the same sphere, for purpose implies intelligent reflection. (197a5−7)

14 Aristotle, Physics, trans. R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gaye, 196b10–33, in The Works of Aristotle, ed.
W.D. Ross (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1930).
15 John D. Lyons, The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century
French Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), p. 4.
16 ‘We must assume that there were scores, perhaps hundreds, of people in the market who met and
spoke with one another in the process of going to purchase things. Their meetings were not planned,
not specifically expected and were not the purpose for which they went to the market. Most of these
people probably knew one another to some extent, but some may have been strangers. There was
nothing remarkable about their encounters—it is, after all, impossible to enter a functioning market-
place without meeting people. Aristotle says nothing about these many other encounters, and for an
obvious reason. They are entirely unremarkable and unmemorable.’ Lyons, The Phantom of Chance, p. 5.
30 Debating Poetics

This connects to the way that, in the Poetics, ‘even among chance events we find
most awesome those which seem to have happened by design’ (1452a). Aristotle
alludes here to the statue of Mitys at Argos, which killed the murderer of Mitys by
falling on him as he looked at it. The notion of incidents seeming to occur ‘against
expectation’ yet on account of something projects in vital ways into the reception
of theories of poetics in the renaissance, as these debate how to identify and put in
place degrees of credibility, and how to maintain the observer’s attention.

RENAISSANCE RECEPTIONS

The simplest and most influential account of renaissance poetics is, to quote the
title of Marvin T. Herrick, about ‘the fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian literary
criticism’.17 But ancient thinking about poetry filters into the renaissance from a
wealth of sources beyond Horace’s Ars poetica and the newly rediscovered
Aristotle.18 The reception histories of Cicero’s seven separate works on rhetoric, the
pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, and Quintilian (the Institutio oratoria
found by Poggio Bracciolini in a monastic library in 1416), also play a role in
bringing poetic exempla to the fore. Averroes’ ‘Middle Commentary’ is translated
by Alemannus in 1256, gaining his version of the Poetics much influence from the
middle ages.19 From the earliest days of the medieval trivium (the humanist cur-
riculum devoted to grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic), the grammarians also teach
literary criticism by means of the study of authors.20 Rhetoric, with its systematic
breaking down of language into the five processes of inventio (the discovering of
material), dispositio (the arrangement of that material), elocutio (its formulation in
language), memoria (its memorization), and actio (its physical delivery), provides a
comprehensive means of teaching students how to evaluate any kind of poetry as
well as prose. Later, the grammar teachers of the renaissance are also known for
their treatises on versification and composition, again blurring any form of distinc-
tion between rhetoric and poetics in their exposition of the language arts. Such
writers as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Longinus, and Demetrius also quote and
criticize poets at length. Longinus’ On the Sublime, found with fragments of
Aristotle’s Problemata in a lacunary tenth-century manuscript (Parisinus 2036), is
edited in 1552 by Robortello, only four years after his commentary on the Poetics.

17 Marvin T. Herrick, The Fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criticism, 1531–55 (Urbana,
IL: University of Illinois Press, 1946).
18 Giorgio Valla’s Latin translation of the Poetics appeared in 1498, with the Greek text published
by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1508, but critical interest really obtained with Alessandro de’ Pazzi’s
edition of the Greek with a Latin translation in 1536, which was reprinted twelve times, and with
Francesco Robortello’s commentary of 1548.
19 Alemannus’ first edition of Averroes’ commentary appeared in print in 1481. In general, the
medieval commentators on Aristotle, in possession of work by Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, set
the Poetics in the context of their thorough knowledge of the rest of the Aristotelian œuvre. See
Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100–c.1375: The Commentary Tradition, ed. A.J. Minnis
and A.B. Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
20 See Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary
Theory, ad 300–1475 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
 Reading Rhetoric and Poetics 31

Quotations from Homer and Sappho are among the most powerful and extensively
cited examples that Longinus gives of his redefined sublime. Demetrius’ On Style
appears in 1542 in an edition by Piero Vettori, who had also edited and commented
on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Throughout, commentaries on Virgil, Horace, Terence, and
so on abound. Renaissance critics will translate, comment upon, transform, and
print these authors for the modern age. It is therefore very clear, as Peter Mack
notes, that works on poetry ‘make an impression on rhetorical works, especially in
areas of shared interest, such as imitation, decorum, character and style’.21 Mack’s
brief summary also gives some sense of the vastness of these common areas:
shared debates about how art, nature, or natural skill relate to what one learns;
about how beauty relates to utility; about how one ought to arrange any kind of
linguistic display; about how one defines and delineates one’s subject matter; about
how to perform in the vernacular (ought it to comprise neologisms and foreign
terms?); and, above all, about how to move an audience or reader, generating a
kind of wonderment that easily transmutes into self-reflection (the English
verb, like the Greek thaumazein, retains the closeness between wondering at
and wondering about).
Robortello, in his groundbreaking edition of Aristotle’s Poetics, claims a new
clarity for his Explicationes: ‘[. . .] Quœ alii rejecerant propter obscuritatem, ea ego
illustrare me posse consider[o]’ (‘Those texts which others have neglected because
of their obscurity, I consider myself able to explain them’).22 From the start,
Robortello follows the Arabic commentators in ascribing poetry to a form of con-
templation or theoria. But unlike other forms of contemplation, this one does not
seek to reproduce or represent nature or universals; instead, it invents its own real-
ity, with its object being an oratio ficta et fabulosa (p. 2). This shift, from poetry as
contemplation (theoria) being the reproduction of the real, to poetry as the inven-
tion of its own reality, brings us directly back, with a new sense of urgency, to
debates about probability. How can something that is ficta et fabulosa still seem
true and effective? As Bernard Weinberg repeatedly emphasizes, Robortello par-
ticularly relates his reception of Aristotle’s concept of imitation to Horace’s demand
that the poet please and instruct (‘aut prodesse velunt aut delectare poetae’),
making pleasure gained by the process of imitation less crucial than the profit
gained by its content.23 The generalities about human behaviour that are made
particular in a plot can be a useful source of learning.

21 Peter Mack, A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), p. 175—although Mack makes ‘study of the links between renaissance treatises on poetics and
rhetoric handbooks’ one of the areas for further study outlined in his conclusion (p. 318).
22 Francisco Robortello, In librum Aristotelis De arte poetical explicationes (Florence: L. Torrentino,
1548), ‘Ad lectorem’. See Déborah Blocker on how this ideal of clarity is in conflict with the political
conditions in which humanists were establishing themselves professionally: ‘Élucider et équivoquer.
Francesco Robortello (ré)invente la “catharsis”, Les Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques 33
(2004). http://ccrh.revues.org/250, p. 2. See also her Instituer un ‘art’.
23 ‘Poets aim at giving either instruction or delight, or at combining the giving of pleasure with
some useful precepts for life.’ Horace, ‘On the Art of Poetry’, in T.S. Dorsch (trans.), Aristotle/Horace/
Longinus, Classical Literary Criticism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 333.
32 Debating Poetics

This is the new clarity Robortello is aiming at: the praise of virtue encourages
emulation; the dispraise of vice acts as a deterrent. Brian Vickers summarizes a
commonly held view: ‘These neo-Aristotelians are in fact applying to mimesis the
basic principle of the epideictic or demonstrative genre’, and this kind of criticism
returns to smooth principles of praise and blame.24 It is concerned with the effect
upon an audience, and makes verbal persuasion an art with rules that can be
learned. Robortello thus emphasizes ideas of poetry as a function of wisdom and
virtue, and correlations between the good poet and the good man, as well as desired
stylistic norms of brevity, simplicity and integrity, which he applies to the visual
arts as well as to poetry. Aristotle, we recall, had said that ‘it is not the poet’s function
to relate actual events, but the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in
terms of probability or necessity’ (Poetics, 1451a). However, there had been nothing
in Aristotle obviously requiring that poetry should promote good behaviour.
Renaissance neo-Aristotelians are, in Gavin Alexander’s phrase, tempted to ‘turn
subjunctive possibility into moral imperative’.25 They suppose that a degree of
credibility has to be in place on moral grounds, because nobody is going to modify
their behaviour on account of a danger they know to be untrue. Choruses, one of
the key features of sixteenth-century humanist drama, can give an explicitly
sententious, moralizing perspective, as Jacques Peletier du Mans notes in his 1555
Art poétique.26

24 Brian Vickers, ‘Rhetoric and Poetics’ in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed.
Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
pp. 715–45 (p. 719). Weinberg writes in this regard of the ‘hopeless deformation of the texts
involved’ and ‘philosophical naïveté’ of their authors: A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian
Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), vol. I, pp. 53–6. We may wish to
argue that, rather than introducing a form of confusion, as in the Weinberg school, Robortello is
responding rather coherently to a confusion that was there from the start: ‘To be fair to the sixteenth-
century commentators, what Aristotle meant by probability was not totally unconnected with rhetorical
ideas of the credible and plausible, but he wanted it to bear chiefly on the logic and coherence of plot
structure and it is that primary meaning that the commentators lose sight of.’ Daniel Javitch, ‘The
Assimilation of Aristotle’s Poetics in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in Glynn P. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge
History of Literary Criticism, vol. III: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
pp. 53–65 (p. 57). See also Vickers: ‘Weinberg’s antithesis between Horace and Aristotle is too
extreme. Aristotle’s Poetics complements his rhetoric and takes over some categories from it, not
neglecting the relation artwork-audience, while Horace gives much space to the perfecting of the work
of art’ (p. 719). François Cornilliat contrasts Weinberg’s rigidity with more supple readings by
J. Lecointe or P. Galand-Hallyn in Sujet caduc, noble sujet. La Poésie de la Renaissance et le choix de ses
‘arguments’ (Geneva: Droz, 2009), pp. 20, n. 30.
25 William Scott, The Model of Poesy, ed. Gavin Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013), p. xlvii. Thus in around 1580 Philip Sidney will write of ‘the divine consideration of
what may be and should be’. Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy (written c.1580, first published 1595),
in Gavin Alexander (ed.), Sidney’s ‘The Defence of Poesy’ and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism
(London: Penguin Classics, 2004), p.11.
26 ‘Le Chore en la Tragédie (nous disons Chœur aux Eglises) est une multitude de gens, soit
homme ou femme, parlant tous ensemble. Il doit toujours être du parti de l’Auteur: c’est-à-dire, qu’il
doit donner à connaître le sens et le jugement du Poète: parler sentencieusement, craindre les Dieux,
reprendre les Vices, menacer les méchants, admonester à la vertu: Et le tout doit faire succinctement
et résolument.’ (‘The chorus in a tragedy (in church, we say a choir) is a multitude of people, men or
women, all speaking together. It should always take the part of the author: that is to say, communicate
the poet’s meaning and judgement, speak in sententious formulations, fear the gods, denounce the
vices, threaten wrongdoers, and encourage virtue. All this it must do succinctly and firmly.’) Peletier,
 Reading Rhetoric and Poetics 33

For these renaissance poeticians, then, the problem of catharsis is to be discussed

in connection with all its social and political implications. As Victoria Kahn puts
it, ‘Central to the debate was whether catharsis purged or merely tempered the
passions, and whether purgation created quiescence or something more like Stoic
resolve.’27 These debates are evidently interwoven with broader interest in practical
wisdom or prudence, as Kahn shows in her wider work.28 Catharsis is a process of
learning how to deal with a fate or fortune that can upend or alter the expected
course of events; or a process that can be understood rationally as proleptic planning,
building up resistance in advance to whatever life may place in one’s path; or a self-
soothing process: the almost homeopathic experience of powerful feelings after
which one emerges calm and collected. Antonio Minturno’s L’arte poetica of 1564,
for example, argues for a prudential combination of recollection and p ­ reparedness:
‘The recollection of the grave misfortunes of others makes us not merely quicker
and better prepared to support our own, but wiser and more skillful in escaping
similar evils.’29
Composed around the time that Robortello’s commentary was made public,
Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetices libri septem was only published posthumously in
1561. Scaliger undertakes a classification of everything that one might ever want
to know about poetry. He gives us an astonishing summary of the genera dicendi,
of poetic subjects and forms, of figures of speech, of the uses of the chorus, of ways
of using the correct term in the correct style and embedding it in the proper structure.
Neglecting the term ‘catharsis’, Scaliger nonetheless focuses on how rhetorical
and poetic eloquence can be used to persuade citizens to ‘right action and perfect

‘Art poétique’, in Francis Goyet (ed.), Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance (Paris: Livre
de poche, 1990), pp. 221–314 (p. 279). Peletier had translated Horace in 1541.
27 Victoria Kahn, Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England (1640–74)
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 271.
28 Kahn’s Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1985) shows how prudence features variously in the different Hellenistic and Roman approaches to
ethics: ‘One can identify it with theoretical wisdom, in which case it is governed by an absolute notion
of the truth (the Platonic ideas); with practical wisdom as the knowledge of good and evil, what to
seek and what to avoid (the Stoics, on occasion Cicero); or with a faculty of practical reason which has
no precepts but is governed in every particular case by considerations of decorum—of the best means
to achieve the end at hand (Cicero, Aristotle)’ (p. 42).
29 Antonio Minturno, L’arte poetica, in Allan H. Gilbert (ed.), Literary Criticism from Plato to
Dryden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 290. Halliwell gives a good sense of the
wider range of renaissance responses: ‘Whether the emphasis was placed on acquiring fortitude or
resistance against the assults of misfortune, as it was by Robortello; or on the administration by tragedy
of a conscious moral lesson, as it was by Segni and Giraldi; or on pity and fear as a means of helping
us to avoid other dangerous emotions (anger, lust, greed, etc.), as it was by Maggi and others—in all
these cases, a much more direct and explicit effect is posited than anything which can reasonably be
thought to have been Aristotle’s meaning.’ Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 300–1. We see that Halliwell is influenced here by Weinberg’s
sense of the inadequacy of the renaissance neo-Aristotelians. On seventeenth-century catharsis, see in
particular Henry Phillips, The Theatre and its Critics in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980); John D. Lyons, Kingdom of Disorder: The Theory of Tragedy in Classical France
(West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1999); Georges Forestier, ‘Passions purgées ou passions
épurées? Le problème de la catharsis’, in Passions tragiques et règles classiques (Paris: PUF, 2003), pp.
141–54; Stephen Orgel, ‘The Play of Conscience’, in Andrew Parker and Eve Kokofsky Sedgwick
(eds), Performativity and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 133–51.
34 Debating Poetics

service’: action according to virtue, whose end is public beatitude or Beatitudo.30

Here too, the whole outlook and ethos of poetic material gives us an interest in
techniques of proof and persuasion, in marrying description and evaluation, and
in addressing the practical intellect concerned with the vita activa, generating a
crucial overlap between the Poetics, rhetoric and moral philosophy. The problems
of verisimilitude are elaborated in this context:
The events themselves should be so organized that they approach as nearly as possible
to the truth, for the play must not be performed merely so that the spectators may
either admire or be overwhelmed (as the critics say used to be true of Aeschylus’
drama), but to teach, move and delight. We are pleased with joking, as in comedy, or
with serious things, if they are properly treated. Most men, however, detest lies.
Therefore those battles at Thebes, and those sieges that are concluded in two hours, do
not please me, nor is any poet wise who undertakes to complete the journey from
Delphi to Athens or Athens to Thebes in a moment of time. Thus in Aeschylus,
Agamemnon is killed and immediately buried so quickly that the actor scarcely has
time to catch his breath. Nor can the scene where Hercules throws Lichas into the sea
be approved, for there is no way of representing it without disgracing the truth.31
Thus Scaliger takes us through exactly what form of unity keeps his attention and
what does not. This interest is developed further by Ludovico Castelvetro in
1570.32 The requisite morality could only obtain if the events depicted were tied
to one action performed by one person at a single time in a consistent series of
events. In keeping with the demands of the unities, the chorus can play a key role
in bringing the outside in, narrating what has happened before.
Such encyclopaedic undertakings coexist with a critical interest in redefining
poetry with a view to creating a properly modern vernacular writing.33 Joachim du
Bellay’s priority is to find ‘quelque plus haut, et meilleur Style’ (‘some higher and
better style’), determined by the twin qualities of variety and propriety.34 The illus-
tration of the French language works through and with a renewal of poetic form:
Chante moy ces Odes, incongnues encor’ de la Muse Françoyse, d’un Luth bien
accordé au son de la Lyre Grecque, et romaine [. . .]. Sonne moy ces beaux sonnets,
non moins docte, que plaisante Invention Italienne [. . .]. Chante moy d’une Musette
bien resonnante, et d’une Fluste bien jointe ces plaisantes Eclogues Rustiques à
l’exemple de Thëocrit, et de Virgile [. . .]. (book 2, chapter 4, pp. 132−6)
Sing me these odes still unknown to the French muse, with a lute well attuned to
the sound of the Greek and Roman lyre [. . .]. Sing me these beautiful sonnets which
are a no less learned than pleasing Italian invention [. . .]. Sing me these lovely rustic

30 Poetices libri septem (Lyons: Crispin, 1561), p. 347.

31 Poetices libri septem, p. 145, trans. Stephen Orgel in The Authentic Shakespeare, and Other
Problems of the Early Modern Stage (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), p. 150.
32 Castelvetro, Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta, 2 vols., ed. W. Romani (Bari: Laterza,
1978–9); see Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, 1963, pp. 61–3.
33 See the work of Sébillet, Aneau, Peletier, Fouquelin, and Ronsard, in Francis Goyet (ed.), Traités
de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance (Paris: Livre de poche, 1990).
34 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et Illustration de la langue françoyse, I, 11, ed. J.C. Monferran (Geneva:
Droz, 2001), book 2, chapter 1, p. 121.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 General Miles,
Report
(Annual Reports of the War Department, 1898,
volume 1, part 2, page 36).

{618}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (July-September).

The War with Spain.
Capture of Manila.
Relations with the Filipino insurgents.
General Merritt's report.
Aguinaldo declared President of the Philippine Republic.

"Immediately after my arrival [July 25] I visited General

Greene's camp and made a reconnaissance of the position held
by the Spanish, and also the opposing lines of the insurgent
forces, hereafter to be described. I found General Greene's
command encamped on a strip of sandy land running parallel to
the shore of the bay and not far distant from the beach, but
owing to the great difficulties of landing supplies, the
greater portion of the force had shelter tents only, and were
suffering many discomforts, the camp being situated in a low,
flat place, without shelter from the heat of the tropical sun
or adequate protection during the terrific downpours of rain
so frequent at this season. I was at once struck by the
exemplary spirit of patient, even cheerful, endurance shown by
the officers and men under such circumstances, and this
feeling of admiration for the manner in which the American
soldier, volunteer and regular alike, accept the necessary
hardships of the work they have undertaken to do, has grown
and increased with every phase of the difficult and trying
campaign which the troops of the Philippine expedition have
brought to such a brilliant and successful conclusion.

"I discovered during my visit to General Greene that the left

or north flank of his brigade camp extended to a point on the
'Calle Real' about 3,200 yards from the outer line of Spanish
defenses of the city of Manila. This Spanish line began at the
powder magazine, or old Fort San Antonio, within a hundred
yards of the beach and just south of the Malate suburb of
Manila, and stretched away to the Spanish left in more or less
detached works, eastward, through swamps and rice fields,
covering all the avenues of approach to the town and
encircling the city completely. The Filipinos, or insurgent
forces at war with Spain, had, prior to the arrival of the
American land forces, been waging a desultory warfare with the
Spaniards for several months, and were at the time of my
arrival in considerable force, variously estimated and never
accurately ascertained, but probably not far from 12,000 men.
These troops, well supplied with small arms, with plenty of
ammunition and several field guns, had obtained positions of
investment opposite to the Spanish line of detached works
throughout their entire extent; and on the particular road
called the 'Calle Real,' passing along the front of General
Greene's brigade camp and running through Malate to Manila,
the insurgents had established an earthwork or trench within
800 yards of the powder-magazine fort. They also occupied as
well the road to the right, leading from the village of Pasay,
and the approach by the beach was also in their possession.
This anomalous state of affairs, namely, having a line of
quasi-hostile native troops between our forces and the Spanish
position, was, of course, very objectionable, but it was
difficult to deal with, owing to the peculiar condition of our
relations with the insurgents, which may be briefly stated as
follows:

"Shortly after the naval battle of Manila Bay, the principal

leader of the insurgents, General Emilio Aguinaldo, came to
Cavite from Hongkong, and, with the consent of our naval
authorities, began active work in raising troops and pushing
the Spaniards in the direction of the city of Manila. Having
met with some success, and the natives flocking to his
assistance, he proclaimed an independent government of
republican form, with himself as president, and at the time of
my arrival in the islands the entire edifice of executive and
legislative departments and subdivision of territory for
administrative purposes had been accomplished, at least on
paper, and the Filipinos held military possession of many
points in the islands other than those in the vicinity of
Manila. As General Aguinaldo did not visit me on my arrival
nor offer his services as a subordinate military leader, and
as my instructions from the President fully contemplated the
occupation of the islands by the American land forces, and
stated that 'the powers of the military occupant are absolute
and supreme and immediately operate upon the political
condition of the inhabitants,' I did not consider it wise to
hold any direct communication with the insurgent leader until
I should be in possession of the city of Manila, especially as
I would not until then be in a position to issue a
proclamation and enforce my authority, in the event that his
pretensions should clash with my designs.

"For these reasons the preparations for the attack on the city
were pressed and military operations conducted without
reference to the situation of the insurgent forces. The wisdom
of this course was subsequently fully established by the fact
that when the troops of my command carried the Spanish
intrenchments, extending from the sea to the Pasay road on the
extreme Spanish right, we were under no obligations, by
pre-arranged plans of mutual attack, to turn to the right and
clear the front still held against the insurgents, but were
able to move forward at once and occupy the city and suburbs.

"To return to the situation of General Greene's brigade as I

found it on my arrival, it will be seen that the difficulty in
gaining an avenue of approach to the Spanish line lay in the
fact of my disinclination to ask General Aguinaldo to withdraw
from the beach and the 'Calle Real,' so that Greene could move
forward. This was overcome by instructions to General Greene
to arrange, if possible, with the insurgent brigade commander
 in his immediate vicinity to move to the right and allow the
American forces unobstructed control of the roads in their
immediate front. No objection was made, and accordingly
General Greene's brigade threw forward a heavy outpost line on
the 'Calle Real' and the beach and constructed a trench, in
which a portion of the guns of the Utah batteries was placed.
The Spanish, observing this activity on our part, made a very
sharp attack with infantry and artillery on the night of July
31. The behavior of our troops during this night attack was
all that could be desired, and I have, in cablegrams to the
War Department, taken occasion to commend by name those who
deserve special mention for good conduct in the affair. Our
position was extended and strengthened after this and resisted
successfully repeated night attacks, our forces suffering,
however, considerable loss in wounded and killed, while the
losses of the enemy, owing to the darkness, could not be
ascertained.

"The strain of the night fighting and the heavy details for
outpost duty made it imperative to re-enforce General Greene's
troops with General MacArthur's brigade, which had arrived in
transports on the 31st of July. The difficulties of this
operation can hardly be overestimated. The transports were at
anchor off Cavite, 5 miles from a point on the beach where it
was desired to disembark the men.
{619}
Several squalls, accompanied by floods of rain, raged day
after day, and the only way to get the troops and supplies
ashore was to load them from the ship's side into native
lighters (called 'cascos') or small steamboats, move them to a
point opposite the camp, and then disembark them through the
surf in small boats, or by running the lighters head on to the
beach. The landing was finally accomplished, after days of
hard work and hardship; and I desire here to express again my
admiration for the fortitude and cheerful willingness of the
men of all commands engaged in this operation. Upon the
assembly of MacArthur's brigade in support of Greene's, I had
about 8,500 men in position to attack, and I deemed the time
had come for final action. During the time of the night
attacks I had communicated my desire to Admiral Dewey that he
would allow his ships to open fire on the right of the Spanish
line of intrenchments, believing that such action would stop
the night firing and loss of life, but the admiral had
declined to order it unless we were in danger of losing our
position by the assaults of the Spanish, for the reason that,
in his opinion, it would precipitate a general engagement, for
which he was not ready. Now, however, the brigade of General
MacArthur was in position and the 'Monterey' had arrived, and
under date of August 6 Admiral Dewey agreed to my suggestion
that we should send a joint letter to the captain-general
notifying him that he should remove from the city all
non-combatants within forty-eight hours, and that operations
against the defenses of Manila might begin at any time after
the expiration of that period.

"This letter was sent August 7, and a reply was received the
same date, to the effect that the Spanish were without places
of refuge for the increased numbers of wounded, sick women,
and children now lodged within the walls. On the 9th a formal
joint demand for the surrender of the city was sent in. This
demand was based upon the hopelessness of the struggle on the
part of the Spaniards, and that every consideration of
humanity demanded that the city should not be subjected to
bombardment under such circumstances. The captain-general's
reply, of same date, stated that the council of defense had
declared that the demand could not be granted; but the
captain-general offered to consult his Government if we would
allow him the time strictly necessary for the communications
by way of Hongkong. This was declined on our part for the
reason that it could, in the opinion of the admiral and
myself, lead only to a continuance of the situation, with no
immediate result favorable to us, and the necessity was
apparent and very urgent that decisive action should be taken
at once to compel the enemy to give up the town, in order to
relieve our troops from the trenches and from the great
exposure to unhealthy conditions which were unavoidable in a
bivouac during the rainy season.

"The seacoast batteries in defense of Manila are so situated

that it is impossible for ships to engage them without firing
into the town, and as the bombardment of a city filled with
women and children, sick and wounded, and containing a large
amount of neutral property, could only be justified as a last
resort, it was agreed between Admiral Dewey and myself that an
attempt should be made to carry the extreme right of the
Spanish line of intrenchments in front of the positions at
that time occupied by our troops, which, with its flank on the
seashore, was entirely open to the fire of the navy. It was
not my intention to press the assault at this point, in case
the enemy should hold it in strong force, until after the navy
had made practicable breaches in the works and shaken the troops
holding them, which could not be done by the army alone, owing
to the absence of siege guns. … It was believed, however, as
most desirable, and in accordance with the principles of
civilized warfare, that the attempt should be made to drive
the enemy out of his intrenchments before resorting to the
bombardment of the city. …

"All the troops were in position on the 13th at an early hour

in the morning. About 9 a. m. on that day our fleet steamed
forward from Cavite and before 10 a. m. opened a hot and
accurate fire of heavy shells and rapid-fire projectiles on
the sea flank of the Spanish intrenchments at the powder
magazine fort, and at the same time the Utah batteries, in
position in our trenches near the 'Calle Real,' began firing
with great accuracy. At 10.25, on a prearranged signal from
our trenches that it was believed our troops could advance,
the navy ceased firing, and immediately a light line of
skirmishers from the Colorado regiment of Greene's brigade
passed over our trenches and deployed rapidly forward, another
line from the same regiment from the left flank of our
earthworks advancing swifty up the beach in open order. Both
these lines found the powder-magazine fort and the trenches
flanking it deserted, but as they passed over the Spanish
works they were met by a sharp fire from a second line
situated in the streets of Malate, by which a number of men
were killed and wounded, among others the soldier who pulled
down the Spanish colors still flying on the fort and raised
our own.

"The works of the second line soon gave way to the determined
advance of Greene's troops, and that officer pushed his
brigade rapidly through Malate and over the bridges to occupy
Binondo and San Miguel, as contemplated in his instructions.
In the meantime the brigade of General MacArthur, advancing
simultaneously on the Pasay road, encountered a very sharp
fire, coming from the blockhouses, trenches, and woods in his
front, positions which it was very difficult to carry, owing
to the swampy condition of the ground on both sides of the
roads and the heavy undergrowth concealing the enemy. With
much gallantry and excellent judgment on the part of the
brigade commander and the troops engaged these difficulties
were overcome with a minimum loss, and MacArthur advanced and
held the bridges and the town of Malate, as was contemplated
in his instructions.

"The city of Manila was now in our possession, excepting the

walled town, but shortly after the entry of our troops into
Malate a white flag was displayed on the walls, whereupon
Lieutenant Colonel C. A. Whittier, United States Volunteers,
of my staff, and Lieutenant Brumby, United States Navy,
representing Admiral Dewey, were sent ashore to communicate
with the Captain-General. I soon personally followed these
officers into the town, going at once to the palace of the
Governor-General, and there, after a conversation with the
Spanish authorities, a preliminary agreement of the terms of
capitulation was signed by the Captain-General and myself.
This agreement was subsequently incorporated into the formal
 terms of capitulation, as arranged by the officers
representing the two forces, a copy of which is hereto
appended and marked.
{620}
Immediately after the surrender the Spanish colors on the sea
front were hauled down and the American flag displayed and
saluted by the guns of the navy. The Second Oregon Regiment,
which had proceeded by sea from Cavite, was disembarked and
entered the walled town as a provost guard, and the colonel
was directed to receive the Spanish arms and deposit them in
places of security. The town was filled with the troops of the
enemy driven in from the intrenchments, regiments formed and
standing in line in the streets, but the work of disarming
proceeded quietly and nothing unpleasant occurred.

"In leaving the subject of the operations of the 13th, I

desire here to record my appreciation of the admirable manner
in which the orders for attack and the plan for occupation of
the city were carried out by the troops exactly as
contemplated. I submit that for troops to enter under fire a
town covering a wide area, to rapidly deploy and guard all
principal points in the extensive suburbs, to keep out the
insurgent forces pressing for admission, to quietly disarm an
army of Spaniards more than equal in numbers to the American
troops, and finally by all this to prevent entirely all
rapine, pillage, and disorder, and gain entire and complete
possession of a city of 300,000 people, filled with natives
hostile to the European interests, and stirred up by the
knowledge that their own people were fighting in the outside
trenches, was an act which only the law-abiding, temperate,
resolute American soldier, well and skillfully handled by his
regimental and brigade commanders, could accomplish. …

"The amount of public funds and the numbers of the prisoners

of war and small arms taken have been reported in detail by
cable. It will be observed that the trophies of Manila were
nearly $900,000, 13,000 prisoners, and 22,000 arms.
Immediately after the surrender my headquarters were
established in the ayuntamiento, or city office of the
Governor-General, where steps were at once inaugurated to set
up the government of military occupancy. … On the 16th a
cablegram containing the text of the President's proclamation
directing a cessation of hostilities was received by me, and
at the same time an order to make the fact known to the
Spanish authorities, which was done at once. This resulted in
a formal protest from the Governor-General in regard to the
transfer of public funds then taking place, on the ground that
the proclamation was dated prior to the surrender. To this I
replied that the status quo in which we were left with the
cessation of hostilities was that existing at the time of the
receipt by me of the official notice, and that I must insist
upon the delivery of the funds. The delivery was made under
protest.

"After the issue of my proclamation and the establishment of

my office as military governor, I had direct written
communication with General Aguinaldo on several occasions. He
recognized my authority as military governor of the town of
Manila and suburbs, and made professions of his willingness to
withdraw his troops to a line which I might indicate, but at
the same time asking certain favors for himself. The matters
in this connection had not been settled at the date of my
departure. Doubtless much dissatisfaction is felt by the rank
and file of the insurgents that they have not been permitted
to enjoy the occupancy of Manila, and there is some ground for
trouble with them owing to that fact, but, notwithstanding
many rumors to the contrary, I am of the opinion that the
leaders will be able to prevent serious disturbances, as they
are sufficiently intelligent and educated to know that to
antagonize the United States would be to destroy their only
chance of future political improvement.

"On the 28th instant I received a cablegram directing me to

transfer my command to Major-General Otis, United States
 Volunteers, and to proceed to Paris, France, for conference
with the peace commissioners. I embarked on the steamer
'China' on the 30th in obedience to these instructions."

Report of General Wesley Merritt

(Annual Reports of the War Department, 1898,
volume 1, pages 39-45).

"Aguinaldo … retired to Malalos, about 25 miles to the

northward, leaving his troops entrenched round Manila, and
there with considerable pomp and ceremony on September 29th,
1898, he was declared First President of the Philippine
Republic, and the National Congress was opened with Pedro
Paterno as President of that assembly."

G. J. Younghusband,
The Philippines and Round About,
page 27.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (July-December).

War with Spain.
Suspension of hostilities.
Negotiation of Treaty of Peace.
Instructions to American Commissioners.
Relinquishment of Spanish sovereignty over Cuba and cession
of Porto Rico, the island of Guam and the Philippine Islands
to the United States.

In his message to Congress, December 5, 1898, President

McKinley gave the following account of his reception of
overtures from Spain, for the termination of the war, and of
the negotiations which resulted in a treaty of peace:

"The annihilation of Admiral Cervera's fleet, followed by the

capitulation of Santiago, having brought to the Spanish
Government a realizing sense of the hopelessness of continuing
a struggle now become wholly unequal, it made overtures of
 peace through the French Ambassador, who, with the assent of
his Government, had acted as the friendly representative of
Spanish interests during the war. On the 26th of July M.
Cambon presented a communication signed by the Duke of
Almodovar, the Spanish Minister of State, inviting the United
States to state the terms upon which it would be willing to
make peace. On the 30th of July, by a communication addressed
to the Duke of Almodovar and handed to M. Cambon, the terms of
this Government were announced, substantially as in the
protocol afterwards signed. On the 10th of August the Spanish
reply, dated August 7th, was handed by M. Cambon to the
Secretary of State. It accepted unconditionally the terms
imposed as to Cuba, Porto Rico and an island of the Ladrone
group, but appeared to seek to introduce inadmissible
reservations in regard to our demand as to the Philippine
Islands. Conceiving that discussion on this point could
neither be practical nor profitable, I directed that, in order
to avoid misunderstanding, the matter should be forthwith
closed by proposing the embodiment in a formal protocol of the
terms upon which the negotiations for peace were to be
undertaken.
{621}
The vague and inexplicit suggestion of the Spanish note could
not be accepted, the only reply being to present as a virtual
ultimatum a draft of protocol embodying the precise terms
tendered to Spain in our note of July 30th, with added
stipulations of detail as to the appointment of commissioners
to arrange for the evacuation of the Spanish Antilles. On
August 12th M. Cambon announced his receipt of full powers to
sign the protocol submitted. Accordingly, on the afternoon of
August 12th M. Cambon, as the plenipotentiary of Spain, and
the Secretary of State, as the plenipotentiary of the United
States, signed a protocol providing:

Article I—
Spain will relinquish all claim of sovereignty over and title
to Cuba.
Article II-
Spain will cede to the United States the island of Porto Rico
and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West
Indies and also an island in the Ladrones to be selected by
the United States.

Article III-
The United States will occupy and hold the city, bay and
harbor of Manila pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace,
which shall determine the control, disposition and government
of the Philippines.

The fourth article provided for the appointment of joint

commissions on the part of the United States and Spain, to
meet in Havana and San Juan, respectively, for the purpose of
arranging and carrying out the details of the stipulated
evacuation of Cuba, Porto Rico and other Spanish islands in
the West Indies.

The fifth article provided for the appointment of not more

than five commissioners on each side, to meet at Paris not
later than October 1st, and proceed to the negotiation and
conclusion of a treaty of peace, subject to ratification
according to the respective constitutional forms of the two
countries.

The sixth and last article provided that upon the signature of
the protocol hostilities between the two countries should be
suspended and that notice to that effect should be given as
soon as possible by each government to the commanders of its
military and naval forces. Immediately upon the conclusion of
the protocol I issued a proclamation of August 12th,
suspending hostilities on the part of the United States. The
necessary orders to that end were at once given by telegraph.
The blockade of the ports of Cuba and San Juan de Porto Rico
was in like manner raised. On the 18th of August the
muster-out of 100,000 Volunteers, or as near that number as
was found to be practicable, was ordered. On the 1st of
December 101,165 officers and men had been mustered out and
discharged from the service and 9,002 more will be mustered
out by the 10th of this month. Also a corresponding number of
general staff officers have been honorably discharged from the
service. The military commissions to superintend the
evacuation of Cuba, Porto Rico and the adjacent islands were
forthwith appointed: For Cuba, Major-General James F. Wade,
Rear-Admiral William T. Sampson, Major-General Matthew C.
Butler. For Porto Rico, Major-General John R. Brooke,
Rear-Admiral Winfield S. Schley and Brigadier-General William
W. Gordon, who soon afterwards met the Spanish commissioners
at Havana and San Juan respectively. … Pursuant to the fifth
article of the protocol, I appointed William H. Day, late
Secretary of State; Cushman K. Davis, William P. Frye and
George Gray, Senators of the United States, and Whitelaw Reid,
to be the peace commissioners on the part of the United
States. Proceeding in due season to Paris they there met on
the first of October five commissioners, similarly appointed
on the part of Spain."

Message of the President to Congress,

December 5, 1898.

The instructions given (September 16) by President McKinley to

the commissioners appointed to treat for peace with Spain, and
the correspondence between the commissioners at Paris and the
President and the Secretary of State at Washington during the
progress of the negotiations, were communicated confidentially
to the United States Senate on the 30th of January, 1899, but
not published until February, 1901, when the injunction of
secrecy was removed and the printing of the papers ordered by
vote of the Senate. The chief interest of these papers lies in
their disclosure of what passed between the American executive
and the peace commissioners on the subject of the Philippine
Islands which led to the demand for their entire surrender by
Spain.

In his instructions of September 16th to the commissioners, on

their departure for the meeting with Spanish commissioners at
Paris, the President wrote on this subject: "By article 6 of
the protocol it was agreed that hostilities between the two
countries should be suspended, and that notice to that effect
should be given as soon as possible by each Government to the
Commanders of its military and naval forces. Such notice was
given by the Government of the United States immediately after
the signature of the protocol, the forms of the necessary
orders having previously been prepared. But before notice
could reach the commanders of the military and naval forces of
the United States in the Philippines they captured and took
possession by conquest of the city of Manila and its suburbs,
which are therefore held by the United States by conquest as
well as by virtue of the protocol. In view of what has taken
place it is necessary now to determine what shall be our
future relations to the Philippines. …

"Our aim in the adjustment of peace should be directed to

lasting results and to the achievement of the common good
under the demands of civilization rather than to ambitious
designs. The terms of the protocol were framed upon this
consideration. The abandonment of the Western Hemisphere by
Spain was an imperative necessity. In presenting that
requirement we only fulfilled a duty universally acknowledged.
It involves no ungenerous reference to our recent foe, but
simply a recognition of the plain teachings of history, to say
that it was not compatible with the assurance of permanent
peace on and near our own territory that the Spanish flag
should remain on this side of the sea. This lesson of events
and of reason left no alternative as to Cuba, Porto Rico, and
the other islands belonging to Spain in this hemisphere. The
Philippines stand upon a different basis. It is none the less
true, however, that, without any original thought of complete
or even partial acquisition, the presence and success of our
 arms at Manila imposes upon us obligations which we can not
disregard. The march of events rules and overrules human
action. A vowing unreservedly the purpose which has animated
all our effort, and still solicitous to adhere to it, we can
not be unmindful that without any desire or design on our part
the war has brought us new duties and responsibilities which
we must meet and discharge as becomes a great nation on whose
growth and career from the beginning the Ruler of Nations has
plainly written the high command and pledge of civilization.

{622}

"Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial

opportunity to which American statesmanship can not be
indifferent. It is just to use every legitimate means for the
enlargement of American trade; but we seek no advantages in
the Orient which are not common to all. Asking only the open
door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open door to
others. The commercial opportunity which is naturally and
inevitably associated with this new opening depends less on
large territorial possessions than upon an adequate commercial
basis and upon broad and equal privileges. It is believed that
in the practical application of these guiding principles the
present interests of our country and the proper measure of its
duty, its welfare in the future, and the consideration of its
exemption from unknown perils will be found in full accord
with the just, moral, and humane purpose which was invoked as
our justification in accepting the war.

"In view of what has been stated, the United States can not
accept less than the cession in full right and sovereignty of
the island of Luzon. It is desirable, however, that the United
States shall acquire the right of entry for vessels and
merchandise belonging to citizens of the United States into
such ports of the Philippines as are not ceded to the United
States upon terms of equal favor with Spanish ships and
merchandise, both in relation to port and customs charges and
rates of trade and commerce, together with other rights of
protection and trade accorded to citizens of one country
within the territory of another. You are therefore instructed
to demand such concession, agreeing on your part that Spain
shall have similar rights as to her subjects and vessels in
the ports of any territory in the Philippines ceded to the
United States."

On the 7th of October, Mr. Day, on behalf of the American

commissioners, cabled a long communication from Paris to Mr.
Hay, his successor in the United States Department of State,
summarizing testimony given before the Commission by General
Merritt, lately commanding in the Philippines, and statements
brought by General Merritt from Admiral Dewey, General Greene,
and others. In part, the telegram was as follows:

"General Anderson, in correspondence with Aguinaldo in June

and July, seemed to treat him and his forces as allies and
native authorities, but subsequently changed his tone. General
Merritt reports that Admiral Dewey did not approve this
correspondence and advised against it. Merritt and Dewey both
kept clear of any compromising communications. Merritt
expresses opinion we are in no way committed to any insurgent
programme. Answering questions of Judge Day, General Merritt
said insurrection practically confined to Luzon. Tribal and
religious differences between the inhabitants of various
islands. United States has helped rather than injured
insurrection. Under no obligation other than moral to help
natives. Natives of Luzon would not accept Spanish rule, even
with amnesty. Insurgents would be victorious unless Spaniards
did better in future than in past. Insurgents would fight
among themselves if they had no common enemy. Think it
feasible for United States to take Luzon and perhaps some
adjacent islands and hold them as England does her colonies.
Natives could not resist 5,000 troops. … General Merritt
thinks that if United States attempted to take possession of
Luzon, or all the group as a colony, Aguinaldo and his
immediate followers would resist it, but his forces are
divided and his opposition would not amount to anything. If
the islands were divided, filibustering expeditions might go
from one island to another, thus exposing us to constant
danger of conflict with Spain. In answer to questions of
Senator Frye, Merritt said insurgents would murder Spaniards
and priests in Luzon and destroy their property if the United
States withdrew. United States under moral obligation to stay
there. He did not know whether the effect of setting up a
government by the United States in Luzon would be to produce
revolutions in other islands. It might cause reforms in their
government. … Answering questions of Mr. Gray, Merritt said
consequences in case of either insurgent or Spanish triumph
made it doubtful whether United States would be morally
justified in withdrawing. Our acts were ordinary acts of war,
as if we had attacked Barcelona, but present conditions in
Philippine Islands were partly brought about by us. Insurgents
not in worse condition by our coming. Spaniards hardly able to
defend themselves. If we restored them to their position and
trenches, they might maintain themselves with the help of a
navy when we withdrew. Did not know that he could make out a
responsibility by argument, but he felt it. It might be
sentimental. He thought it would be an advantage if the United
States would change its policy and keep the islands. (He)
thought our interests in the East would be helped by the cheap
labor in the Philippines, costing only from 20 to 80 cents a
day, according to skill. … Answering questions of Mr. Reid,
Merritt said he considered capture of Manila practically
capture of group. Nothing left of Spanish sovereignty that was
not at mercy of the United States. Did not think our humanity
bounded by geographical lines. After Dewey's victory we armed
insurgents to some extent, but Dewey says it was
over-estimated. Insurgents bought arms from Hongkong merchants
with Dewey's cognizance, but Dewey was not in favor of allowing
this to continue. Spaniards would destroy Aguinaldo and his
principal followers, if allowed to do so."
 October 25, Judge Day cabled a message to Washington, saying:
"Differences of opinion among commissioners concerning
Philippine Islands are set forth in statements transmitted
herewith. On these we request early consideration and explicit
instructions. Liable now to be confronted with this question
in joint commission almost immediately." The differing
statements then transmitted were three in number, the first of
them signed by Messrs. Davis, Frye, and Reid, who said:
"Information gained by commission in Paris leads to conviction
that it would be naval, political, and commercial mistake to
divide the archipelago. Nearly all expert testimony taken
tends to this effect. As instructions provide for retention at
least of Luzon, we do not consider question of remaining in
Philippine Islands at all as now properly before us. We
therefore ask for extension of instructions. Spain governed
and defended these islands from Manila, and with destruction
of her fleet and the surrender of her army we became as
complete masters of the whole group as she had been, with
nothing needed to complete the conquest save to proceed with
the ample forces we had at hand to take unopposed possession.
{623}
The Ladrones and Carolines were also governed from the same
capital by the same governor-general. National boundaries
ought to follow natural divisions, but there is no natural
place for dividing Philippine Islands. … If we do not want the
islands ourselves, better to control their disposition; that
is, to hold the option on them rather than to abandon it.
Could then at least try to protect ourselves by ample treaty
stipulations with the acquiring powers. Commercially, division
of archipelago would not only needlessly establish dangerous
rivals at our door, but would impair value of part we kept."

Disagreeing with this view, Judge Day said:

"I am unable to agree that we should peremptorily demand the

entire Philippine island group. In the spirit of our
instructions, and bearing in mind the often declared
disinterestedness of purpose and freedom from designs of
conquest with which the war was undertaken, we should be
consistent in our demands in making peace. Territory
permanently held must be taken as war indemnity and with due
regard to our responsibility because of the conduct of our
military and naval authorities in dealing with the insurgents.
Whether this conduct was wise or unwise is not now important. We
cannot leave the insurgents to mere treaty stipulations or to
their unaided resources, either to form a government or to
battle against a foe which (although) unequal to us, might
readily overcome them. On all hands it is agreed that the
inhabitants of the islands are unfit for self-government. This
is particularly true of Mindanao and the Sulu group. Only
experience can determine the success of colonial expansion
upon which the United States is entering. It may prove
expensive in proportion to the scale upon which it is tried
with ignorant and semibarbarous people at the other side of
the world. It should therefore be kept within bounds." Judge
Day, accordingly, suggested a division of the archipelago that
would give to the United States Luzon, Mindoro, and Palawan,
and control the entrance to the China Sea. Senator Gray, in a
third statement, dissented from both these views, saying: "The
undersigned can not agree that it is wise to take Philippine
Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse
accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted
upon throughout our history. Propinquity governs the case of
Cuba and Porto Rico. Policy proposed introduces us into
European politics and the entangling alliances against which
Washington and all American statesmen have protested. It will
make necessary a navy equal to largest of powers; a greatly
increased military establishment; immense sums for
fortifications and harbors; multiply occasions for dangerous
complications with foreign nations, and increase burdens of
taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American
labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area
for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions
demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing
questions introduced into our politics; church question
menacing. On whole, instead of indemnity—injury. The
undersigned can not agree that any obligation incurred to
insurgents is paramount to our own manifest interests. … No
place for colonial administration or government of subject
people in American system. So much from standpoint of
interest; but even conceding all benefits claimed for
annexation, we thereby abandon the infinitely greater benefit
to accrue from acting the part of a great, powerful, and
Christian nation; we exchange the moral grandeur and strength
to be gained by keeping our word to nations of the world and
by exhibiting a magnanimity and moderation in the hour of
victory that becomes the advanced civilization we claim, for
doubtful material advantages and shameful stepping down from
high moral position boastfully assumed. We should set example
in these respects, not follow in the selfish and vulgar greed
for territory which Europe has inherited from medieval times.
Our declaration of war upon Spain was accompanied by a solemn
and deliberate definition of our purpose. Now that we have
achieved all and more than our object, let us simply keep our
word. … At the very least let us adhere to the President's
instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon
forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other
islands. Above all let us not make a mockery of the injunction
contained in those instructions, where, after stating that we
took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity and
in the fulfillment of high public and moral obligations, and
that we had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of
conquest, the President among other things eloquently says:
'It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace
should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in
facing war. It should be as scrupulous and magnanimous in the
concluding settlement as it was just and humane in its
original action.' This and more, of which I earnestly ask a
re-perusal, binds my conscience and governs my actions."

But the President had now arrived at a different state of