SKETCH OF RENfi DESCARTES. 833 



SKETCH OF RENE DESCARTES. 



PROF. HUXLEY, comparing the thoughts of men to the 

 leaves, flowers, and fruit upon the branches of a few great 

 stems bearing the names of the half-dozen men of strongest and 

 clearest intellect, is of the opinion that " the thinker who more 

 than any other stands in the relation of such a stem toward the 

 philosophy and the science of the modern world is Rend Descartes. 

 I mean," he adds, " that if you lay hold of any characteristic prod- 

 uct of modern ways of thinking, either in the region of philoso- 

 phy or in that of science, you find the spirit of that thought, if 

 not its form, to have been present in the mind of the great 

 Frenchman." 



The London Spectator, reviewing Prof. Mahaffy's life of the 

 philosopher, regards him as presenting the spectacle of a twofold 

 life. " He was a man of society ; he was a philosopher — the two 

 were so completely distinct that they never came into collision. 

 On the one side, he was inflexible, a pillar of intellect never devi- 

 ating by a hair-breadth from rigid perpendicularity ; on the other, 

 he was all things to all men. For his intellect, the law was rejec- 

 tion of authority, assertion of absolute freedom ; for the rest of 

 him — for the man, distinguished from the philosopher — the law 

 was courteous compliance all round." 



Rene Descartes was born at La Haye, Touraine, France, 

 March 31, 1596, and died in Stockholm, Sweden, February 11, 1650. 

 He was the second son and third child of Joachim Descartes, who, 

 having done some military service, had purchased a commission 

 that gave him a place in the demi-noblesse. He inherited from 

 his mother, who died at his birth, a feeble constitution, the marks 

 of which he bore through life, and by reason of which the doctors 

 predicted that he would die young ; was baptized and brought up 

 in the Roman Catholic faith ; and betrayed from early infancy an 

 insatiable curiosity and a disposition to inquire into the causes of 

 things, which led his father to call him his philosopher. At eight 

 years of age he was sent to the College of La Fleche, of the Jesuits, 

 where he was remarked for his studious habits and the rapid prog- 

 ress he made in the knowledge of the ancients and in history. 

 His delicate health seems to have contributed to his advance in 

 scholarship, inclining him more to study than children of robust 

 constitutions, and securing his exemption from morning duties, 

 whereby he acquired the habit of meditating in bed. In that 

 position a great part of the real work of his life was done. He 

 accounted for his fondness for books by suggesting that the read- 

 ing of good books was like a conversation with the brightest men 



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