John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Marry, he frightens me!" Ebenezer said.

"Now you must know that at that time More and Newton had no love whatever for each other, and the cause of their enmity was the French philosopher Renatus Descartes."

"Descartes? How can that be?"

"I know not how well you've heeded your tutors," Burlingame said; "you might know that all these Platonical gentlemen of Christ's and Emmanuel Colleges are wont to sing the praises of Descartes, inasmuch as he makes a great show of pottering about in mathematics and the motions of heavenly bodies, like any Galileo, and yet unlike Tom Hobbes he affirms the real existence of God and the soul, which pleases them no end. The more for that the lot of 'em are Protestants: this much-vaunted rejection of the learning of his time, that Renatus brags of in his Discourse on Method : this searching of his innards for his axioms — is't not the first principle of Protestantism? Thus it is that Descartes' system is taught all over Cambridge, and More, like the rest, praised and swore by him as by a latter-day saint. Tell me, Eben: how is't, d'you think, that the planets are moved in their courses?"

"Why," said Ebenezer, " 'tis that the cosmos is filled with little particles moving in vortices, each of which centers on a star; and 'tis the subtle push and pull of these particles in our solar vortex that slides the planets along their orbs — is't not?"

"So saith Descartes," Burlingame smiled. "And d'you haply recall what is the nature of light?"

"If I have't right," replied Ebenezer, " 'tis an aspect of the vortices — of the press of inward and outward forces in 'em. The celestial fire is sent through space from the vortices by this pressure, which imparts a transitional motion to little light globules — "

"Which Renatus kindly hatched for that occasion," Burlingame interrupted. "And what's more he allows his globules both a rectilinear and a rotatory motion. If only the first occurs when the globules smite our retinae, we see white light; if both, we see color. And as if this were not magical enough — mirabile dictu! — when the rotatory motion surpasseth the rectilinear, we see blue; when the reverse, we see red; and when the twain are equal, we see yellow. What fantastical drivel!"

"You mean 'tis not the truth? I must say, Henry, it sounds reasonable to me. In sooth, there is a seed of poetry in it; it hath an elegance."

"Aye, it hath every virtue and but one small defect, which is, that the universe doth not operate in that wise. Marry, 'tis no crime, methinks, to teach the man's skeptical philosophy or his analytical geometry — both have much of merit in 'em. But his cosmology is purely fanciful, his optics right bizarre; and the first man to prove it is Isaac Newton."

"Hence their enmity?" asked Ebenezer.

Burlingame nodded. "By the time Newton became Lucasian Professor he had already spoilt Cartesian optics with his prism experiments — and well do I recall them from his lectures! — and he was refuting the theory of vortices by mathematics, though he hadn't as yet published his own cosmical hypotheses. But his loathing for Descartes goes deeper yet: it hath its origin in a difference betwixt their temperaments. Descartes, you know, is a clever writer, and hath a sort of genius for illustration that lends force to the wildest hypotheses. He is a great hand for twisting the cosmos to fit his theory. Newton, on the other hand, is a patient and brilliant experimenter, with a sacred regard for the facts of nature. Then again, since the lectures De Motu Corporum and his papers on the nature of light have been available, the man always held up to him by his critics is Descartes.

"So, then, no love was lost 'twixt Newton and More; they had in fact been quietly hostile for some years. And when I became the focus of't, their antagonism boiled over."

"You? But you were a simple student, were you not? Surely two such giants ne'er would stoop to fight their battles with their students."

"Must I draw a picture, Eben?" Burlingame said. "I was out to learn the nature of the universe from Newton, but knowing I was More's protégé, he was cold and incommunicative with me. I employed every strategy I knew to remove this barrier, and, alas, won more than I'd fought for — in plain English, Eben, Newton grew as enamored of me as had More, with this difference only, that there was naught Platonical in his passion."

"I know not what to think!" cried Ebenezer.

"Nor did I," said Burlingame, "albeit one thing I knew well, which was that save for the impersonal respect I bare the twain of 'em, I cared not a fart for either. 'Tis a wise thing, Eben, not to confuse one affection with another. Well, sir, as the months passed, each of my swains came to realize the passions of the other, and both grew as jealous as Cervantes' Celoso Extreme ño. They carried on shamefully, and each threatened my ruination in the University should I not give o'er the other. As for me, I paid no more heed than necessary to either, but wallowed in the libraries of the colleges like a dolphin in the surf. 'Twas job enough for me to remember to eat and sleep, much less fulfill the million little obligations they thought I owed 'em. I'faith, a handsome pair!"

"Prithee, what was the end of it?"

Burlingame sighed. "I played the one against the other for above two years, till at last Newton could endure it no longer. The Royal Society had by this time published his experiments with prisms and reflecting telescopes, and he was under fire from Robert Hooke, who had light theories of his own; from the Dutchman Christian Huygens, who was committed to the lens telescope; from the French monk Pardies; and from the Belgian Linus. So disturbed was he by the conjunction of this criticism and his jealousy, that in one and the same day he swore ne'er to publish another of his discoveries, and confronted More in the latter's chambers with the intent of challenging him to settle their rivalry for good and all by means of a duel to the death!"

"Ah, what a loss to the world, whate'er the issue of't," observed Ebenezer.

"As't happened, no blood was let," Burlingame said: "the tale ends happily for them both, if not for the teller. After much discourse Newton discovered that his rival's position was uncertain as his own, and that I seemed equally indifferent to both — which conclusion, insofar as't touches the particular matters they had in mind, is as sound as any in the Principia. In addition More showed to Newton his Enchiridion Metaphysicum, wherein he plainly expressed a growing disaffection for Descartes; and Newton assured More that albeit 'twas universal gravitation, and not angels or vortices, that steered the planets in their orbits, there yet remained employment enough for the Deity as a first cause to set the cosmic wheels a-spin, e'en as old Renatus had declared. In fine, so far from dueling to the death, they so convinced each other that at the end of some hours of colloquy — all which I missed, being then engrossed in the library — they fell to tearful embraces, and decided to cut me off without a penny, arrange my dismissal from the College, and move into the same lodgings, where, so they declared, they would couple the splendors of the physical world to the glories of the ideal, and listen ravished to the music of the spheres! This last they never did in fact, but their connection endures to this day, and from all I hear, More hath washed his hands entirely of old Descartes, while Newton hath caught a foolish infatuation with theology, and seeks to explain the Apocalypse by application of his laws of series and fluxions. As for the first two of their resolves, they fulfilled 'em to the letter — turned me out to starve, and so influenced all and sundry against me that not a shilling could I beg, nor eat one meal on credit. 'Twas off to London I went, with not a year 'twixt me and the baccalaureate. Thus was it, in 1676, your father found me; and playing fickle to the scholar's muse, I turned to you and your dear sister all the zeal I'd erst reserved for my researches. Your instruction became my First Good, my Primary Cause, which lent all else its form and order. And my fickleness is thorough and entire: not for an instant have I regretted the way of my life, or thought wistfully of Cambridge."