--- Descartes, according to Michael Allen Gillespie in The Theological Origins of Modernity (2008, 183)
Gillespie excerpt:
Why did Descartes leave Paris and hide himself away from the public eye? He himself gives us a preliminary answer to this question with his famous assertion that “he lives well who lives unseen.” This humanist claim, however, does not capture the truth of the matter, for Descartes did not really retreat from society. In fact, he moved around a great deal, spending considerable time in Amsterdam, which he called his “urban solitude,” and in a number of smaller towns. It was not therefore a bucolic, Petrarchian solitude that Descartes was seeking. It is more likely that he wanted to find a place he could work and publish more freely and without fear of retaliation. On May 5, 1632, he wrote a paean on Holland to his friend, the poet Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac: “What other land [is there] where one can enjoy a liberty so entire, where one can sleep with less inquietude, where there are always armies afoot expressly to guard you, where poisonings, treason, calumnies are less known, and where the innocence of former times remains?” It is important to remember that he had already been accused of Rosicrucianism. His fears on this score were not misplaced, as the actions taken against a number of the libertines indicate. Already in the Little Notebook, he had recognized the need to conceal his true features and during his years in Holland he went to great lengths to develop and perfect this mask. In fact, Descartes assiduously cultivated the appearance of orthodoxy, although it is clear that at least theologically he had adopted heterodox positions from very early on.
