Xiv.] ON DESCARTES' u DISCOURSE" 321 



tcristic product of modern ways of thinking, cither in 

 the region of philosophy, 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. 



There arc some men who are counted great because 

 they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror 

 it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was 

 epigrammaticallysaid,"he expressed everybody's thoughts 

 better than anybody." l But there are other men who 

 attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of 

 their own day, and magically reflect the future. They 

 express the thoughts which will be everybody's two 

 or three centuries after them. Such an one was 

 Descartes. 



Born, in 159G, nearly three hundred years ago, of a 

 noble family in Touraine, Bene Descartes grew up into a 

 sickly and diminutive child, whose keen wit soon gained 

 him that title of "the Philosopher/' which, in the mouths 

 of his noble kinsmen, was more than half a reproach. 

 The best schoolmasters of the day, the Jesuits, educated 

 him as well as a French boy of the seventeenth century 

 could be educated. And they must have done their 

 work honestly and well, for, before his schoolboy days 

 were over, he had discovered that the most of what he 

 had learned, except in mathematics, was devoid of solid 

 and real value. 



"Therefore," says he, in that "Discourse " 2 which I have taken for 

 my text, " as soon as I was old enough to be set free from the govern- 

 ment of my teachers, I entirely forsook the study of letters ; and 

 determining to seek no other knowledf'e than that which I could 

 discover within myself, or in the great book of the world, I spent the 

 remainder of my youth in travelling ; in seeing courts and armies ; in 

 the society of people of different humours and conditions; in gathering 



1 1 forget who it was said of him : " II a plus que pcrsonne l'esprit que tout 

 le monde a." 



2 " Discours de la Mctliode pour bien conduirc sa Eaison et chercher la 

 Verite daus les Sciences. 



