Excuse my laughing, gentlemen, but the fact is, I always _do_ laugh when I think of this case,--two things about it seem so droll. One is, the horrid panic or “funk” (as the men of Eton call it) in which Des Cartes must have found himself upon hearing this regular drama sketched for his own death,--funeral,--succession and administration to his effects. But another thing which seems to me still more funny about this affair is, that if these Friezland hounds had been “game,” we should have no Cartesian philosophy; and how we could have done without _that_, considering the world of books it has produced, I leave to any respectable trunk-maker to declare.
However, to go on; spite of his enormous funk, Des Cartes showed fight, and by that means awed these Anti-Cartesian rascals. “Finding,” says M. Baillet, “that the matter was no joke, M. Des Cartes leaped upon his feet in a trice, assumed a stern countenance that these cravens had never looked for, and, addressing them in their own language, threatened to run them through on the spot if they dared to offer him any insult.” Certainly, gentlemen, this would have been an honor far above the merits of such inconsiderable rascals,--to be spitted like larks upon a Cartesian sword; and therefore I am glad M. Des Cartes did not rob the gallows by executing his threat, especially as he could not possibly have brought his vessel to port, after he had murdered his crew; so that he must have continued to cruise forever in the Zuyder Zee, and would probably have been mistaken by sailors for the _Flying Dutchman_, homeward bound. “The spirit which M. Des Cartes manifested,” says his biographer, “had the effect of magic on these wretches. The suddenness of their consternation struck their minds with a confusion which blinded them to their advantage, and they conveyed him to his destination as peaceably as he could desire.”
Possibly, gentlemen, you may fancy that, on the model of Cæsar’s address to his poor ferryman,--“_Cæsarem vehis et fortunas ejus_,”--M. Des Cartes needed only to have said, “Dogs, you cannot cut my throat, for you carry Des Cartes and his philosophy,” and might safely have defied them to do their worst. A German emperor had the same notion, when, being cautioned to keep out of the way of a cannonading, he replied, “Tut! man. Did you ever hear of a cannon-ball that killed an emperor?” As to an emperor I cannot say, but a less thing has sufficed to smash a philosopher; and the next great philosopher of Europe undoubtedly _was_ murdered. This was Spinosa.