Cartesian Mic Drop
From a Letter to Isaac Beeckman, 17 October 1630:
… You reproach me, without any reason or basis, for having sometimes put myself on a level with angels. I still cannot convince myself that you are so out of your mind as to believe this. But I realize that your sickness may be very far gone, and so I will explain what may have given you the occasion to make this complaint. Philosophers and theologians are accustomed, when they want to show that something’s being the case is repugnant to reason, to say that not even God could make it the case. This way of speaking has always seemed too bold to me; so in order to use a more modest expression, whenever - as happens more often in mathematics than in philosophy - an occasion arose on which others would say that God cannot do something, I would merely say that an angel could not do it. If this is the reason that you say I put myself on a level with the angels, you could as well say that the wisest people in the world put themselves on a level with God. I am very unfortunate to have been suspected of vanity on a point in which I can say I was behaving with extraordinary modesty. -R. Descartes