l6 DESCARTES. 



requisite for orderly and circumspect thinking; 

 whence it happens, that if men of this class once 

 take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opin 

 ions, and quit the beaten highway, they will never 

 be able to thread the byeway that would lead them 

 by a shorter course, and will lose themselves and 

 continue to wander for life ; in the second place, of 

 those who, possessed of sufficient sense or modesty 

 to determine that there are others who excel them 

 in the power of discriminating between truth and 

 error, and by whom they may be instructed, ought 

 ratfier to content themselves with the opinions of 

 such than trust for more correct to their own 

 Reason. 



For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged 

 to the latter class, had I received instruction from but 

 one master, or had I never known the diversities of 

 opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed 

 among men of the greatest learning. But I had 

 become aware, even so early as during my college 

 life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, 

 can be imagined, which has not been maintained by 

 some one of the philosophers ; and afterwards in the 

 course of my travels I remarked that all those whose 

 opinions are decidedly repugnant to ours are not on 

 that account barbarians and savages, but on the con 

 trary that many of these nations make an equally 

 good, if not a better, use of their Reason than we 

 do. I took into account also the very different char 

 acter which a person brought up from infancy in 

 Yrance or Germany exhibits, from that which, with 

 the same mind originally, this individual would have 



