VI 



membered that it came from a man to whom " there was no beauty 

 but the beauty of truth," and to whom the natural severity of sci- 

 ence was the proudest adornment of civilisation, and redounded 

 most surely to the enhancement of real, practical life. 



^ Descartes, it has been said, is the cross-roads from which the 

 modern paths of thought diverge. He was the forerunner of New- 

 ton and Leibnitz on the one hand, and of Hume and Kant on the 

 other. The picture presented in this book, of his mental auto- 

 biography, is one of the most pleasing chapters of the history of 

 philosophy. It belongs to the world, from the great heart of 

 which it sprung, free from the mustiness of the study ; and its 

 candor and manliness of view cannot, even now when most of it 

 has become commonplace, and some of it antiquated, fail to arouse 

 the apathy of a people who are hungering for enlightenment. 



To make it more accessible to the people, is our purpose in 

 re-publishing it. The translation is by the late Dr. Veitch, of the 

 University of Glasgow, whose representatives have authorised the 

 reprint, and to whose Introduction in the volume published by 

 Blackwoods we may refer the student for a detailed analysis of 

 Descartes' philosophy. A more general treatment will be found in 

 LeVy-Bruhl's new History of Modern Philosophy in France* 

 For further literature the reader is referred to the Bibliography at 

 the end of the text. 



THOMAS J. McCoRMACK. 

 LA SALLE, ILLS., August, 1899. 



*The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago. London: Kegan Paul 

 Trench, Triibner & Co. 1899. 



NOTE. 



Since the appearance of the first edition of this reprint, Veitch's trans- 

 lation of Descartes's Meditations on the First Philosophy has also been pub- 

 lished in the present series of Philosophical Classics. The same volume also 

 contains translations of parts of the Principles of Philosophy, and of part of 

 Descartes's Reply to the Second Objections, and is prefaced by Le'vy-Bruhl's 

 essay on Descartes's Philosophy. 



