perseveres in the same state of motion or of rest; and the second law that simple or elementary motion is always in a straight line.[1] These doctrines of inertia, and of the composite character of curvilinear motion, were scarcely apprehended even by Kepler or Galileo; but they follow naturally from the geometrical analysis of Descartes.
Extended body has no limits to its extent, though the power of God has divided it in lines discriminating its parts in endless ways. The infinite universe is infinitely full of matter. Empty space, as distinguished from material extension, is a fictitious abstraction. There is no such thing really as a vacuum, any more than there are atoms or ultimate indivisible particles. In both these doctrines of à priori science Descartes has not been subverted, but, if anything, corroborated by the results of experimental physics; for the so-called atoms of chemical theory already presuppose, from the Cartesian point of view, certain aggregations of the primitive particles of matter. Descartes regards matter as uniform in character throughout the universe; he anticipates, as it were, from his own transcendental ground, the revelations of spectrum analysis as applied to the sun and stars. We have then to think of a full universe of matter (and matter＝extension) divided and figured with endless variety, and set (and kept) in motion by God; and any sort of division, figure and motion will serve the purposes of our supposition as well as another. “Scarcely any supposition,”[2] he says, “can be made from which the same result, though possibly with greater difficulty, might not be deduced by the same laws of nature; for since, in virtue of these laws, matter successively assumes all the forms of which it is capable, if we consider these forms in order, we shall at one point or other reach the existing form of the world, so that no error need here be feared from a false supposition.” As the movement of one particle in a closely-packed universe is only possible if all other parts move simultaneously, so that the last in the series steps into the place of the first; and as the figure and division of the particles varies in each point in the universe, there will inevitably at the same instant result throughout the universe an innumerable host of more or less circular movements, and of vortices or whirlpools of material particles varying in size and velocity. Taking for convenience a limited Theory of vortices. portion of the universe, we observe that in consequence of the circular movement, the particles of matter have their corners pared off by rubbing against each other; and two species of matter thus arise,—one consisting of small globules which continue their circular motion with a (centrifugal) tendency to fly off from the centre as they swing round the axis of rotation, while the other, consisting of the fine dust—the filings and parings of the original particles—gradually becoming finer and finer, and losing its velocity, tends (centripetally) to accumulate in the centre of the vortex, which has been gradually left free by the receding particles of globular matter. This finer matter which collects in the centre of each vortex is the first matter of Descartes—it constitutes the sun or star. The spherical particles are the second matter of Descartes, and their tendency to propel one another from the centre in straight lines towards the circumference of each vortex is what gives rise to the phenomenon of light radiating from the central star. This second matter is atmosphere or firmament, which envelops and revolves around the central accumulation of first matter.
A third form of matter is produced from the original particles. As the small filings produced by friction seek to pass through the interstices between the rapidly revolving spherical particles in the vortex, they are detained and become twisted and channelled in their passage, and when they reach the edge of the inner ocean of solar dust they settle upon it as the froth and foam produced by the agitation of water gathers upon its surface. These form what we term spots in the sun. In some cases they come and go, or dissolve into an aether round the sun; but in other cases they gradually increase until they form a dense crust round the central nucleus. In course of time the star, with its expansive force diminished, suffers encroachments from the neighbouring vortices, and at length they catch it up. If the velocity of the decaying star be greater than that of any part of the vortex which has swept it up, it will ere long pass out of the range of that vortex, and continue its movement from one to another. Such a star is a comet. But in other cases the encrusted star settles in that portion of the revolving vortex which has a velocity equivalent to its own, and so continues to revolve in the vortex, wrapped in its own firmament. Such a reduced and impoverished star is a planet; and the several planets of our solar system are the several vortices which from time to time have been swept up by the central sun-vortex. The same considerations serve to explain the moon and other satellites. They too were once vortices, swallowed up by some other, which at a later day fell a victim to the sweep of our sun.
Such in mere outline is the celebrated theory of vortices, which for about twenty years after its promulgation reigned supreme in science, and for much longer time opposed a tenacious resistance to rival doctrines. It is one of the grandest hypotheses which ever have been formed to account by mechanical processes for the movements of the universe. While chemistry rests in the acceptance of ultimate heterogeneous elements, the vortex-theory assumed uniform matter through the universe, and reduced cosmical physics to the same principles as regulate terrestrial phenomena. It ended the old Aristotelian distinction between the sphere beneath the moon and the starry spaces beyond. It banished the spirits and genii, to which even Kepler had assigned the guardianship of the planetary movements; and, if it supposes the globular particles of the envelope to be the active force in carrying the earth round the sun, we may remember that Newton himself assumed an aether for somewhat similar purposes. The great argument on which the Cartesians founded their opposition to the Newtonian doctrine was that attraction was an occult quality, not wholly intelligible by the aid of mere mechanics. The Newtonian theory is an analysis of the elementary movements which in their combination determine the planetary orbits, and gives the formula of the proportions according to which they act. But the Cartesian theory, like the later speculations of Kant and Laplace, proposes to give a hypothetical explanation of the circumstances and motions which in the normal course of things led to the state of things required by the law of attraction. In the judgment of D’Alembert the Cartesian theory was the best that the observations of the age admitted; and “its explanation of gravity was one of the most ingenious hypotheses which philosophy ever imagined.” That the explanation fails in detail is undoubted: it does not account for the ellipticity of the planets; it would place the sun, not in one focus, but in the centre of the ellipse; and it would make gravity directed towards the centre only under the equator. But these defects need not blind us to the fact that this hypothesis made the mathematical progress of Hooke, Borelli and Newton much more easy and certain. Descartes professedly assumed a simplicity in the phenomena which they did not present. But such a hypothetical simplicity is the necessary step for solving the more complex problems of nature. The danger lies not in forming such hypotheses, but in regarding them as final, or as more than an attempt to throw light upon our observation of the phenomena. In doing what he did, Descartes actually exemplified that reduction of the processes of nature to mere transposition of the particles of matter, which in different ways was a leading idea in the minds of Bacon, Hobbes and Gassendi. The defects of Descartes lie rather in his apparently imperfect apprehension of the principle of movements uniformly accelerated which his contemporary Galileo had illustrated and insisted upon, and in the indistinctness which attaches to his views of the transmission of motion in cases of impact. It should be added that the modern theory of vortex-atoms (Lord Kelvin’s) to explain the constitution of matter has but slight analogy with Cartesian doctrine, and finds a parallel, if anywhere, in a modification of that doctrine by Malebranche.
Besides the last two parts of the Principles of Philosophy, the physical writings of Descartes include the Dioptrics and Meteors, as well as passages in the letters. His optical investigations are perhaps the subject in which he most contributed to the progress
