DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 13 



inated by a single individual, they all tended to a 

 single end. In the same way I thought that the! 

 sciences contained in books, (such of them at least \ 

 as are made up of probable reasonings, without 

 demonstrations,) composed as they are of the opin- 

 ions of many different individuals massed together, 

 are farther removed from truth than the simple 

 inferences which a man of good sense using his nat- 

 ural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting 

 the matters of his experience. And because we 

 have all to pass through a state of infancy to - man- 

 hood, and have been of necessity, for a length of 

 time, governed by our desires and preceptors, 

 (whose dictates were frequently conflicting, while 

 neither perhaps always counselled us for the best,) I 

 further concluded that it is almost impossible that 

 our judgments can be so correct or solid as they 

 would have been, had our Reason been mature from 

 the moment of our birth, and had we .always been 

 guided by it alone^y 



It is true, however, that it is not customary to 

 pull down all the houses of a town with the single 

 design of rebuilding them differently, and thereby 

 rendering the streets more handsome ; but it often 

 happens that a private individual takes down his 

 own with the view of erecting it anew, and that 

 people are even sometimes constrained to this when 

 their houses are in danger of falling from age, or 

 when the foundations are insecure. With this 

 before me by way of example, I was persuaded 

 that it would indeed be preposterous for a private 

 individual to think of reforming a state by funda- 



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