And yet, though Rembrandt's " Nightwatch " is dated the very year after the publication of the Meditations, not a word in Descartes breathes of any work of art or historical learning.
The gnat larva, for example, breathes at the tail-end, hanging head-downwards from the surface-film.
Europe had sinned in the face of God; otherwise Jerusalem would never have fallen; and the idea of a spiritual reform from within, as the necessary corollary and accompaniment of the expedition of Christianity without, breathes in some of the papal letters, just as, during the conciliar movement, the causa reformationis was blended with the causa unionis.
Every clause breathes the philosopher's humanity.
The spirit of beauty breathes in every line; a sense of music and of colour is everywhere abundant; the reader moves, as it were, under a canopy of apple-blossom, over a flower-starred turf, to the faint harmony of virginals.
