Rosicrucians, but unluckily could not discover any member of the society
to introduce him. "He desired," says Cousin, "to assure the health of
man, diminish his ills, extend his existence. He was terrified by the
rapid and almost momentary passage of man upon earth. He believed it was
not, perhaps, impossible to prolong its duration." There is a hidden
recess of grandeur in this idea, and the means proposed by Descartes for
the execution of his project were not less grand. In his "Discourse on
Method," Descartes says, "If it is possible to find some means to render
generally men more wise and more able than they have been till now, it is,
I believe, in medicine that those means must be sought... I am sure that
there is no one, even in the medical profession, who will not avow that
all which one knows of the medical art is almost nothing in comparison to
that which remains to learn, and that one could be exempted from an
infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even, perhaps, from the
decrepitude of old age, if one had sufficient lore of their causes and of
all the remedies which nature provides for them. Therefore, having design
to employ all my life in the research of a science so necessary, and
having discovered a path which appears to me such that one ought
infallibly, in following, to find it, if one is not hindered prematurely
by the brevity of life or by the defects of experience, I consider that
there is no better remedy against those two hindrances than to communicate
faithfully to the public the little I have found," etc. ("Discours de la
Methode," vol. i. OEuvres de Descartes, Cousin's Edition.) And again, in
his "Correspondence" (vol. ix. p. 341), he says: "The conservation of
health has been always the principal object of my studies, and I have no
doubt that there is a means of acquiring much knowledge touching medicine
which, up to this time, is ignored." He then refers to his meditated
Treatise on Animals as only an entrance upon that knowledge. But whatever
secrets Descartes may have thought to discover, they are not made known to
the public according to his promise. And in a letter to M. Chanut,