280 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xiv. 



science, you find the spirit of that thought, if not its form, to 

 have been present in the mind of the great Frenchman. 



There are 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 epigrammatically 

 said, &quot; he expressed everybody s thoughts better than anybody.&quot; 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 every 

 body s two or three centuries after them. Such an one was 

 Descartes. 



Born, in 1596, nearly three hundred years ago, of a noble 

 family in Touraine, Rene Descartes grew up into a sickly and 

 diminutive child, whose keen wit soon gained him that title of 

 &quot; the Philosopher,&quot; 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. 



&quot; Therefore,&quot; says he, in that * Discourse a which I have taken for my 

 text, &quot; as soon as I was old enough to be set free from the government of 

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

 seek no other knowledge 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 varied experience ; in testing myself 

 by the chances of fortune ; and in always trying to profit by my reflections 

 on what happened. . . . And I always had an intense desire to learn how to 

 distinguish truth from falsehood, in order to be clear about my actions, and 

 to walk surefootedly in this life.&quot; 



But &quot; learn what is true, in order to do what is right,&quot; is the 

 summing up of the whole duty of man, for all who are unable 



1 I forget who it was said of him : &quot; II a plus que personne 1 esprit que 

 tout le monde a.&quot; 



2 &quot; Discours de la Me&quot;thode pour bien conduire sa Raison et chercher la 

 Ve rite dans les Sciences. 



