Descartes : his life and times / by Elizabeth S. Haldane.

  • Elizabeth Haldane
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Descartes : his life and times / by Elizabeth S. Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    1596-1612] FAMILY CONNECTIONS necessitated his presence there. The Parlement, we must of course recollect, was one of those provincial bodies which held a position similar in nature but subordinate in influence to that of Paris, which was composed of a body of magistrates, and formed the Supreme Court of Judicature: in it the princes of the blood had seats, and it was sometimes presided over by the king. Shortly after his appointment (the contract is dated 1589) Joachim married Jeanne Brochard, the daughter of the Lieutenant-General of Poitiers, by whom three children were born to him. The eldest of these was Pierre, called after his property, de la Bretailliere; he was councillor in the Parlement of Brittany, like his father, who procured this office for him in 1618, after establishing himself in the province. M. de Bretailliere’s second son, M. de Kerleau, was, when Baillet wrote, the head of the family, and it was he who gave him access to the family papers. He was also a councillor, like his father and grandfather. Of his four sisters the youngest. Mile. Catherine Descartes, also gave her assistance to Baillet, and she is said to have upheld the renown of her uncle by her mental qualities—so much so that there was a saying that his mantle had “fallen upon the distaff.” Rene Descartes had a sister named Jeanne, who married a M. Pierre Rogier, and who died soon after her father. Of her we hear nothing from the philosopher’s correspondence. Rene Descartes was the third child of his father’s first marriage, and he was for a time made to bear the name of M. du Perron, greatly against his wish. The name came from a small “ seig- neurie ” belonging to his parents and situated in Poitou, but the entail he sold a few years after it came actually into his possession. The name was used practically only as a means of distinguishing Rene from his elder brother, and scarcely ever except amongst his family or in college. He took his own name whenever he left his home, and strangers soon changed it into the Latin form, Cartesius. This alteration was, of course, common