A RATIONAL WORLD CONCEPTION 217 



seems to have ignored them all. There is evidence that he read 

 with avidity all that might be written about himself or his 

 opinions, either for him or against. He appears to have read 

 little else. He had a contempt for the learning of books ; 

 doubtless his disdain was not unfounded. Though he wrote 

 many himself, it is recorded that when a company of distin- 

 guished savants came to visit him in his retreat at Holland 

 and they asked to see his library, he showed them his dissecting- 

 room, decorated with dismembered chickens and cats. 



Descartes was, says Huxley, an unwearied dissector ; in 

 physiology and in mathematics he did an undoubtedly original 

 work. It was on the side that probably interested him most 

 that he most signally failed. It is as a philosopher possibly 

 that he takes highest rank ; he invented an elaborate system, 

 which has inspired almost as many imbecile pages as that of 

 Kant. His life, if we may trust his English admirer already 

 quoted, " was the consecration of doubt," yet few men ever 

 taught more dogmatically of things which they did not know, 

 nor described more vividly things that do not exist. It was a 

 remark of a witty compatriot that he established doubt as the 

 corner-stone of his philosophy, then calmly ignored it the rest 

 of his life. 



After all, his philosophy was but an incident, a means to an 

 end. Descartes was a mathematician. It was he who applied 

 algebra to geometry, and therefore became the founder of the 

 analytic department of that excellent art. It was he who, in 

 some sense, made possible the achievements of Newton. It was 

 in geometry that Descartes believed that he had found the key 

 to the invisible for that matter, to the universe as well. 



When he was twenty-four, on a campaign in Germany with 

 Prince Maurice of Nassau, he had a sort of a dream in which 

 the whole future of knowledge seemed to lie before him as 

 through an open door. It must have been a remarkable ex- 

 perience. He has described it at length in his celebrated 

 Discours de la Methode, the work which made his early fame. 

 Up to this he had led the easy life of a young man with plenty 

 of money, had made extensive researches in the gay society 

 of Paris, had travelled much. He speedily found that, for him, 

 the most interesting things in this world were inside of his head, 

 and he spent the rest of his days in tracking them out. He 

 tried Paris for a few years more ; but it would not let him 



