cution of his studies. In 1616 he joined the army of the prince of Orange, and while in garrison at Breda composed his Compendium Musica, which seemed a prelude to the research for harmony which he was soon about to carry into all the realms of knowledge. He was driven to it, doubtless, by the painful uncertainty and chaotic confusion which reigned in nearly all the departments of human inquiry. As a reaction against the prevailing tone, which was the despotism of authorities, many of the finest intellects had taken refuge in scepticism, so that Mersenne could write in 1623: "There are 50,000 atheists in Paris ;" and the most popular verses of the Agrippine of Cyrano were those which sang:

Une heure après la mort, notre âme évanouie
Sera ce qu'elle était une heure avant la vie;

which may be translated:

An hour after death, our soul, released from earth, Will be just what it was an hour before its birth. At the same time there was a bitter reaction against the past in the scientific aspirations of those students of Italy, France, Germany, and England, who began to cast off the fetters of the scholastic logic, and to open new methods of investigation into nature, by means of observation and experiment. Descartes was torn by the doubts of his epoch, but he shared also in its grand hopes; and if he doubted, it was only to cleanse his mind of the errors of the past, and to enable it to move more freely toward the grand constructions of the future. In 1619 he left the Dutch army, and entered as a volunteer into the service of the duke of Bavaria; he was present at the battle of Prague in 1620, and made the campaign of Hungary in 1621. The atrocities which he witnessed in this war are said to have been the occasion of his resigning his commission; but the probability is that his active mind had exhausted the uses of that mode of life, and he was eager to enlarge his knowledge of men and society by more extensive travel. Quitting the profession of arms altogether, therefore, he visited the greater part of the north of Europe, then returned to France, where he sold his estates, and speedily resumed his journeys. He spent considerable time in Switzerland and Italy, being present at Rome during the jubilee of 1625, and wherever he went observing the grand phenomena of nature, and perfecting himself in the acquisition of all existing knowledge. It was at the town of Neuburg, on the Danube, where he passed the winter, that the plan of devoting the remainder of his days to the reconstruction of the principles of human knowledge, which had long been maturing in his mind, took a definite shape. While he wandered from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, he was digesting the outlines of the great discoveries in geometry and method, destined soon to change the intellectual currents of the world. He was but just 33, and in the height and vigor of his powers. Repairing first to Paris, where he moved about from one obscure house to another to escape the intrusions of

friends, he next settled in the neighboring country, and being disturbed there, finally fixed his retreat in Holland, "the busy hive of labor and liberty," where he found it more easy to create the solitude necessary to his profound meditations. His life became that of an ascetic, emancipated from all social ties and relations, in order that he might devote himself the more exclusively to what was now his only wedded wife, the truth. He did not refuse, however, all participation in the affairs of the world; in 1633 he made a brief visit to England, the following year to Amsterdam; and, indeed, he constantly, through the mediation of Mersenne, maintained an active correspondence with the learned men who sought his instruction or his friendship. In 1637 he began a more open career by the publication of a volume from the press of Leyden, entitled Discours de la méthode, which contained treatises on method, on dioptrics, on meteors, and on geometry. The first of these, beside an admirable picture of his life and of the progress of his studies, furnished a clear outline of a new science of metaphysics only expanded in his later and larger works. In 1641 he published in Latin, from the press of Paris, his Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, which carried his speculations into abstruse questions as to the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. He invited criticisms of these, which, in later editions, are arranged and replied to under 7 heads, wherein he considers all the objections raised to his original system. These works filled Europe with his name, and at the close of the year 1641 he was invited to France by King Louis XIII., but he refused to quit his retirement. In 1644 his Principia Philosophia appeared, which 3 years, later was translated into French by one of his friends, Claude Picot. He then went to France, where a pension of 3,000 livres a year was conferred upon him; but as Queen Christina of Sweden invited him to Stockholm, at the same time appointing him director of an academy which she proposed to establish, at a salary of 3,000 crowns a year, he was induced once more to abandon his native country. It was a fatal choice for him, for the rigors of the climate, combined with the unusually early hours exacted from him by the queen, in an eccentric wish to take lessons from him, led to his death in less than two years. He was buried at Stockholm, but 16 years afterward Louis XIV. caused his remains to be disinterred and carried to France, where he was entombed in the church of Ste. Geneviève du Mont, in the midst of magnificent ceremonies, and of the almost universal homage of his enlightened countrymen.-Descartes was an encyclopaedic genius, and it would be impossible, in an article like this, to describe the entire scope and influence of his activity. He created an epoch in the history of the human mind, and can only be classed with men of the first order, like Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Newton, and Kant. With Bacon, he was one of the founders of modern philosophy, but

he pushed his inquiries further than Bacon in many respects, and in a somewhat different sphere. What the latter accomplished for natural science, Descartes accomplished for moral and metaphysical; and it is no exaggeration which considers him as the father of that stupendous movement of intellectual investigation which has given to the world Malebranche and Spinoza, and after them the entire school of the great German idealists, beginning with Leibnitz and Wolf, and culminating in Kant and Hegel. As a metaphysician, he was the fountain head of the speculation of a whole subsequent century, while he added to his glory in that sphere the scarcely inferior distinction of a great discoverer in the mathematics, and of an earnest and sedulous laborer in nearly all the broad domains of physical science then known. Not wholly exempt from the errors of his day, he was yet immeasurably in advance of his day; while he enjoys this singular eminence among the greater number of philosophers, too much given to the jargon of learned words and abstruse phrases, that his style, his manner of expression, is as clear and beautiful as his thought is great. French style appears nowhere more simple, limpid, and direct than in the varied dissertations of Descartes, even when he treats of subjects the most recondite and difficult. Sir James Stephen compares the language of Descartes to the "atmosphere, by the intervention of which we see, though it is itself invisible. It is the nearest possible approach to that inarticulate speech in which disembodied spirits may be supposed to interchange their thoughts. It has no technical terms, no appeals to the memory, no coloring of imagination or of art, no trope or epigram or antithesis, no rhetoric and no passion; and yet it wants neither elegance nor warmth. The warmth is the warmth of a devout solicitude to attain truth and to impart it. The elegance consists in the felicity with which every word, sentence, paragraph, and discussion falls into its proper place, and exactly fulfils its appropriate office." It was owing to this admirable clear ness, perhaps, as much as to the more essential merits of his system, that it was said, at the time of Descartes' death, that everybody, great or small, in England and France, who thought at all, thought Cartesianism. The fundamental principles of the philosophy of Descartes relate to his method, which takes its point of departure in universal doubt, and places the criterion of all certitude in evidence, or in other words, in reason, as the sovereign judge of the true and the false; to the erection of the individual consciousness into the fundamental ground and source of all correct philosophy-cogito, ergo sum; to the radical distinction which is drawn between the soul and the body, the essential attribute of the former being thought, and that of the latter, extension; to the demonstration of the existence of God from the very idea of the infinite; to the division of ideas into those which are innate, or born within us as necessary or inspired, those which are fac

titious, or created by us, and those which are adventitious, or come from without by means of the senses; to the definition of substance, as that which so exists as to need nothing else for its existence, and which is applicable in the highest sense only to God, who has his ground in himself, but only relatively to the thinking and corporeal substances, which need the cooperation of God to their existence; and to the affirmation that the universe depends upon the productive power, not only for its first existence, but for its continued being and operation, or in other words, that conservation is perpetual creation. Other points in this philosophy are important, and other aspects of it are to be regarded by the student; but for the popular reader these chiefly deserve attention, because these were characteristic and creative, and furnished the themes for the greater part of the agitated discussions of later years. From his theory of doubt, except upon evidence, for instance, the philosophy of the 17th century, and the whole of modern philosophy, in fact, derived that disdain for the authority which formerly fettered the free movements of the mind, and that reliance upon reason, which Arnauld, Malebranche, Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, and others appealed to so effectively. This vivid determination of the consciousness, or the ME, as the proper object of metaphysical investigation, was the starting point of those great systems of thought, both Scotch and German, which are such remarkable phenomena in the history of intellectual development. It is easy to trace, also, to his doctrine of substance, the vast pantheistic speculations of Spinoza, and more lately of Fichte and Hegel. In short, the schemes of Geulincx, Leibnitz, Wolf, Kant, and perhaps of Swedenborg, are all more or less directly affiliated to the great leading ideas of the French thinker. As a whole, therefore, we are not surprised to learn that when his system appeared, it produced an instant and vivid sensation. The scholastics were astonished by an assault at once so radical and so vital; the sceptics saw with stupefaction a scepticism more searching than theirs rising into the most solid religious faith; while the independent men of science, who had long been struggling against the methods of the old dialectics, received with joy and gratitude a doctrine which seemed to place their researches on an immovable foundation of truth, and to promise to crown them with the richest fruits of progress. For a while Descartes threatened to succeed to the place of absolute dictation and mastery which had been so long assigned to Aristotle. His influence passed from the oratory and the study to the popular literature; all the great writers of the age of Louis XIV. were tinctured by it; but just as it appeared to have attained a universal acceptation, it began as rapidly to fade and shrink. The reasons of this decline are to be found partly in the growth of Locke's sensational philosophy; partly in the demonstrated impotence of Descartes' principles to resolve many of the higher problems to which ho aspired; but

chiefly in the discoveries of Newton and the progress of physics, which discredited his physical theories, and therefore brought his metaphysical conclusions into distrust. The theory of vortices, by which he endeavored to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies, gave place to the simpler theory of Newton as to a law of universal gravitation; but science has not ceased in consequence to confess its obligations to Descartes for his important discoveries as to the application of algebra to geometry, his contributions to dioptrics, to mechanics, and to hydrostatics, and for that fearless spirit of investigation, which, if it led him into mistakes, enabled him also to anticipate many truths ascribed to a later period.-After the death of Descartes, in addition to the works we have already mentioned, there were published: Le monde de Descartes, ou le traité de la lumière (12mo., Paris, 1664); Le traité de l'homme et de la formation du fœtus (4to., Paris, 1664); Les lettres de René Descartes (3 vols. 4to., 1657-'67). The principal complete editions of his writings are Opera Omnia (8 vols., Amsterdam, 1670'83); Euvres complètes de Descartes (9 vols., Paris, 1724); Œuvres complètes de Descartes, by Victor Cousin (11 vols., 1824-26), which is perhaps the most perfect edition; Euvres philosophiques de Descartes (1835), by Garnier, who added a life, and a thorough analysis of all his writings. On the philosophy of this master, the dissertations are almost without number, but the few most useful or curious are comprised in the following list: Recueil de pièces curieuses concernant la philosophie de Descartes (Amsterdam, 1684, published by Bayle); Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Cartesianisme, by Huet (Paris, 1693); Mémoires sur la persécution du Cartesianisme, by Cousin (Paris, 1838); Histoire et critique de la révolution Cartésienne, by M. Francisque Boullier (2 vols., Paris, 1842); Le Cartesianisme, ou la véritable rénovation des sciences, by M. Bordau Demoulin (2 vols., Paris, 1843). Of late years the study of Descartes has revived among the French philosophers. See Damiron's Essai sur l'histoire de la philosophie en France au XIX siècle, which contains a report in 6 memoirs read to the academy, on the philosophy of Descartes and its effects.

DESCENT, in law, is the transmission of an estate in lands by operation of law, upon the decease of a proprietor, without any disposition thereof having been made by him. The term is derived from a principle existing until very recently in the English law, that an inheritance could never lineally ascend, yet upon failure of lineal descendants, it could ascend collaterally. Thus the father could not be the heir of his son, but the uncle could inherit from the nephew. There was therefore an inaptness in the expression even as used in the common law doctrine of inheritance, and still greater incongruity in American law, which allows a lineal ascent from the son to the father. Succession is the more appropriate phrase in the Roman law,

and from that adopted in the French and other modern systems of law. Gibbon has well remarked that the Roman law of hereditary succession "deviated less from the equality of nature than the Jewish, Athenian, or English institutions." The oldest son of a Hebrew inherited a double portion. By the Athenian law the sons inherited jointly, but the daughters were wholly dependent upon what provision their brothers might choose to give them by way of marriage portion. The English law of primogeniture gives, not a larger proportion, but the whole, to the eldest son; and in various other respects which will be presently referred to, the natural order of equity is singularly disregarded in the law of descent. On the other hand, by the Roman law, when a man died intestate, all his children, both sons and daughters, inherited alike; and in case of the decease of either, the descendants of the decedent would take such share as would have belonged to him or her. The distinction of agnates and cognates was indeed introduced at an early period, whereby the descendants of females, who were called cognates, were excluded; but by imperial constitutions they were restored to the right of succession, with a diminution of a third in favor of the agnates, that is, descendants of males, and even this discrimination was abrogated by Justinian. On failure of lineal descendants, the father and mother or other lineal ascendants were admitted. Such was the rule as to lineal succession. In respect to collateral inheritance, by the law of the 12 tables, agnates, whether male or female, were admitted alike, but by the later law all females of collateral kindred were excluded; the hardship of the rule was in some measure relieved by the prætor, who gave to females thus excluded a share of the personal estate. Justinian restored the right of succession as it had originally existed. Descendants of females of the collateral kindred were still, however, left unprovided for. Thus, though a sister could inherit from her brother, yet her children could not; but the reverse of the rule did not hold, for there was no corresponding disability in the brother to inherit from the children of his sister. The rule of collateral succession was that the nearest agnate (or all the agnates of the same degree) took the whole estate. The mode of estimating the degree of consanguinity was by the Roman law to take the entire number of intermediate persons in the ascending and descending scale between the parties whose relationship was in question. Thus, first cousins would be related in the fourth degree, being each two removes from the common ancestor; whereas by the canon law, which has been taken as the basis of the English rule of descent, the consanguinity is measured by the number of degrees between the most remote of the two persons and the common ancestor, which in the case of cousins would be two degrees; and it would be the same between uncle and nephew. The rules of descent by the common

law of England are exceedingly artificial, being derived chiefly from the old feudal system, and by usage become fixed, though the reasons that first gave rise to them have long ceased to exist. The principal of these rules are as follows: 1. The estate descends lineally to the oldest son, to the exclusion of all others; or if he is deceased, then to his descendants, male or female, following the same rule of preference in all respects as prescribed in this and the following rules. 2. In case of the decease of the oldest son without issue, then to the next oldest and his descendants, and so to the last of the males. 3. In case of failure of male issue, then to the daughters, who, contrary to the order prescribed in the preceding rules, do not take successively, but become seized jointly of a peculiar estate called coparcenery, the incidents of which we need not now stop to discuss, further than to say that each coparcener has an absolute undivided interest, which she may convey, or which on her decease will descend to her heirs. 4. Failing all lineal descendants, the estate does not ascend lineally-that is to say, to the father or grandfather, who by the common law are incapacitated to take directly from the son or grandson, though they may indirectly through collateral heirs-but to the nearest collateral kindred, still following the preference of males to females, and, of the males of the same degree, the oldest having the exclusive right. Thus the oldest brother and his descendants will take; failing whom, the next brother and his descendants; or in default of brothers, then all the sisters in copercenery; but if there be no brothers or sisters, then the kindred of next degree will succeed, subject to the same rules of preference. 5. In respect to collateral succession, several other rules apply. (a.) The heir must be not only the nearest of kin of the person last seized, but must be of the whole blood, that is to say, must be descended from the same two ancestors, male and female; as, if A and B are brothers having the same father but not the same mother, if an estate descends to A from the father and he dies, B shall not inherit from him, although if A had died before the father, B would have been the heir of the father. So far was this exclusion carried by the common law, that a sister of the whole blood would take in preference to a brother of the half blood, and the estate would even escheat rather than it should descend to the latter; and the same rule prevailed in respect to more remote collateral relatives. (b.) It is also necessary, in order to inherit collaterally, to be of the blood of the first purchaser, that is to say, of the person who first acquired the estate; as, if A purchase land and it descends through several generations to B, who dies without issue, no collateral relative of B can take the estate unless he is also of the blood of A, from whom it originally came. (c.) Kindred on the side of male ancestors, how ever remote, are preferred to kindred descended from females, however near, unless the estate

descended from a female, in which case the kindred of such female can alone inherit. Thus the relatives on the father's side are preferred to the mother's, and on the grandfather's to the grandmother's, and so in all the degrees of ancestry. (d.) In computing degrees of consanguinity, the rule of the canon law is adopted as before mentioned, whereby the relationship to the common ancestor is alone considered. According to this rule, brothers are related in the first degree, cousins in the second; but as this would often make a different degree of relationship between the same parties, according as it was computed from one or the other to the common ancestor, it was found necessary to adopt a further rule, that the consanguinity of each to the other was to be determined by that of the most remote from the common ancestor. Again, there might sometimes be different sets of kindred in the same degree of relationship by referring to different ancestors, as a nephew is in the same degree as an uncle, the common ancestor of the one being the father, of the other the grandfather; in such a case, another rule intervenes, viz. that the relative representing the nearest ancestor shall take priority, according to which the nephew would inherit before the uncle. Several important changes have been made in the law of descent by statute 3 and 4 William IV., c. 106 (1833), the principal of which are: 1, that a lineal ancestor is permitted to inherit, and takes precedence of a collateral heir; thus the father is preferred to the brother or sister; 2, relatives of the half blood are relieved from disability to inherit, and succeed next after relatives of the same degree of the whole blood; 3, several provisions are made for the determination of the question who was the purchaser from whom by the rules of common law the descent was to be traced. The person last entitled is to be deemed a purchaser, unless it be shown that he took by inheritance, and so of any preceding ancestor. In the case of a devise by a man to his heir, such heir shall be deemed to have taken by the devise and not by descent, and is to be regarded as a purchaser. When land is purchased under a limitation to the heirs of a particular ancestor, such ancestor is deemed the purchaser. From this summary of the English law of descent, which gives only the general rules without noticing certain exceptions which are said to exist by ancient usage in some places, it is apparent that the basis of the system was a condition of society no longer existing. The theory of seeking for a single male heir to the exclusion of all others belongs to the turbulent period when a military head of a family was needed, and all the other members of the family found shelter in a common inansion, under the protection of an organized domestic force. The perpetuation of the rule, in a period of private immunity from violence, can serve no other purpose than to keep together the estates of great land proprietors. This may be essential for maintaining the respectability of the titles of nobility, but is inapplica

ble to all other proprietors; and moreover, personal property, which was comparatively unnoticed by the feudal law, but which has become a large proportion of the wealth of the kingdom, is distributed by another rule, conforming to the equitable principle of the civil law. The retention of this part of the old feudal law is there fore mainly attributable to the stern prejudice in favor of ancient usage which has always been peculiar to the English people.-The law of descent in the United States is based upon the English statute (22 and 23 Charles II.) for the distribution of the personal estate of intestates, which statute is substantially in conformity with the civil law. In most of the states real and personal estate descend by the same rule, with the exception only of the interest of the husband and wife respectively, the former of whom has an estate for life in all the lands belonging to a deceased wife, and the wife has an estate for life in one third of the lands belong ing to a deceased husband, which is called dower. The rule of descent in the state of New York, which may be taken as the law of most of the other states, is: 1, of the lineal descendants of the intestate, an equal proportion to all who are of equal degree of consanguinity, whether male or female; but in the case of the decease of any one of them, then his or her descendants take the proportion that would have belonged to such deceased party if living; thus, should the intestate leave 2 children and 3 grandchildren, descendants of a deceased child, the estate will be divided into 3 parts, the 3 grandchildren taking the which would have belonged to the parent whom they represent; 2, upon failure of lineal descendants, the father of the intestate will inherit, unless the estate came on the part of the mother; 3, if the father is not living, or cannot for the reason above mentioned take the estate, the mother will be entitled to hold it for life, the reversion to belong to the brothers and sisters; 4, if no lineal descendants or father or mother, then the estate will descend to the nearest collateral relatives of equal degree, and the same rule applies as in the case of lineal descendants, that the descendants of a deceased party take the same share that such ancestor would have been entitled to if living. The rules as to collateral succession are as follows: (a) brothers and sisters, or the children of deceased brothers and sisters, are first entitled; but in case no brother or sister is living, but there are descendants of several, then such descendants take equally per capita, and not per stirpes or representation, as would be the case if one of the brothers or sisters were living; (b) if no brothers or sisters of the intestate nor descendants of deceased brothers or sisters, the next heirs are uncles and aunts on the father's side, or failing these, the same relatives on the mother's side; if, however, the estate came on the part of the mother, then her relatives have the preference; but if the estate had not descended from either father or mother, then the

relatives on the part of both take equally. In the descent, both lineal and collateral, relatives of the half blood are equally entitled with those of the whole blood. The rules of succession by the French civil code are nearly the same as those prevailing in this country. The variations are principally these: 1, if there are father and mother (or either of them) and brothers and sisters, the estate is divided into 2 parts, one of which belongs to the father and mother in equal proportion, the other to the brothers and sisters or descendants of a deceased brother and sister, such descendants taking by representation the share that the child whom they represent would have taken; if either father or mother is deceased, his or her share vests in the brothers and sisters; 2, if there is a father or mother, but no brothers or sisters, the collateral relatives take a half; 3, if there are children of different father or mother, the estate is divided into 2 parts, the paternal line taking one part and the maternal or uterine the other; children of the whole blood take a share in each moiety.

DESERET, a co. of Utah, bounded E. by Great Salt Lake, and W. by California. It is drained by the Mary or Humboldt river, and traversed by several mountain ranges.-The name of Deseret was also given by the Mormons to the territory around the Great Salt lake, but was not accepted by congress, who substituted therefor the name of Utah. According to the Mormons, "Deseret" signifies "the land of the honey bee."

DESERTER, in military affairs, an officer, soldier, or sailor who abandons the public service in the army or navy, without leave. In England the punishment for desertion is, with certain limitations, left to the discretion of court martials, death being the extreme penalty. By the articles for the government of the navy of the United States (art. 12), it is enacted that "if any person in the navy shall desert to an enemy or rebel, he shall suffer death," and (art. 13) "if any person in the navy shall desert in time of war, he shall suffer death, or such other punishment as a court martial shall adjudge.” The rules and articles for the government of the land forces of the United States authorize the infliction of corporal punishment not exceeding 50 lashes for desertion in time of peace, by sentence of a general court martial; and the laws do not permit punishment by stripes and lashes for any other crime in the land service. In time of war a court martial may sentence a deserter to suffer death, or otherwise punish at its discretion.

DESÈZE, RAYMOND, a French magistrate, born in Bordeaux in 1750, died in Paris in 1828. A lawyer in his native city, he was called to Paris by the count De Vergennes, gained repu tation in several important lawsuits, was chosen one of the counsel of King Louis XVI. when arraigned before the convention, and delivered an eloquent defence in his behalf. He was arrested, but liberated after the 9th Thermidor, lived in retirement during the consulate and the