DE RESZKE 



1774 



DESERT 



DE RESZKE, de resh' ke, the family name 

 of two brothers, famous in grand opera. See 

 RESZKE, DE. 



DER'VISH, a Persian word meaning seeking 

 doors, or beggar, is the general term applied to 

 members of Mohammedan religious fraternities 

 who lead solitary, self-denying lives, who solicit 

 alms and are subject to peculiar religious fren- 

 zies. Their origin dates back to the earliest 

 days of the Islam faith. There are various 

 orders, or brotherhoods, whose rituals may con- 

 sist of the repetition of certain prayers or 

 supplications to Allah, of the elaborate whirl- 

 ings or writhings of the dancing dervishes, or 

 of the frenzied performances of the howling 

 variety, who shriek, mutilate their bodies and 

 swallow hot coals and serpents. They are 

 supposed by the faithful natives to possess 

 miraculous healing and divining powers, and 

 they exercise considerable influence over the 

 lower classes. Whether as fanatics or as fakirs, 

 they contribute an important share to the 

 mysticism of the East. 



DESCARTES, dakahrt' , RENE (1596-1650), 

 a celebrated French scholar, whose achieve- 

 ments in philosophy have won him the title 

 "father of modern philosophy," and who is 

 also honored as the inventor of analytical 

 geometry. He was born in the province of 

 Touraine, and was educated at the Jesuit Col- 

 lege at La Fleche. There he was regarded as 

 one of the most promising boys in the school, 

 but it is significant that when he left La Fleche, 

 at the age of sixteen, he threw aside his books 

 and endeavored to forget everything he had 

 learned. This was the result of his dissatisfac- 

 tion with prevailing methods and theories of 

 learning, which made him resolve to keep his 

 mind open to the reception of the truth as it 

 should be presented to him. 



In 1617 he entered the army, but, not finding 

 the life of a soldier much of an aid in the 

 search for truth, he abandoned his military 

 career and settled in Holland. In that country 

 he worked out his philosophical system, wrote 

 his most important books and gathered about 

 him a group of disciples. In 1649 he accepted 

 an invitation from Queen Christina to go to 

 Sweden, but died a few months after arriving 

 at her court. 



By establishing an original philosophic prin- 

 ciple, Descartes began a new era in the history 

 of philosophy. He asserted, first, that, as all 

 existing knowledge rested on an unstable foun- 

 dation, the first step to take was to doubt 

 everything that could be doubted. He found 



the only indisputable fact to be his own 

 existence as a doubter and a thinker. That 

 is, he knew that he thought, and therefore 

 could not doubt that he, the thinker, existed. 

 This relation he expressed in the now-famous 

 saying, Cogito, ergo sum (I think; therefore I 

 exist) . 



Beginning with his own self-conscious exist- 

 ence, he reasoned that there were other ideas 

 as clearly and distinctly true as the surety of 

 one's existence; the first of these ideas is that 

 God is the absolutely perfect being. We do 

 not of ourselves originate this idea, because 

 the imperfect cannot originate the perfect, but 

 it is formed in our minds by God himself. The 

 principles thus absolutely and directly known 

 he classified as innate ideas. 



The influence of Descartes was as far-reach- 

 ing on the progress of mathematics as on philo- 

 sophic thought, and he ranks among the fore- 

 most mathematicians of his time. His most 

 important writings include Essays, Geometry, 

 Discourses on the Method of Reasoning and 

 Principles of Philosophy. 



DESERONTO, desuron'to, a town in Hast- 

 ings County, Ontario, on the Bay of Quinte, an 

 inlet on the north shore of Lake Ontario. It 

 is on the Canadian Northern Railway, and at 

 Napanee, six miles north, has connection with 

 the Grand Trunk. It is 141 miles east of 

 Toronto and twenty-eight miles east of Belle- 

 ville. It has steamship connection with the 

 chief Canadian and American ports on the 

 Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. 

 The neighborhood produces fruits in abun- 

 dance, and also supplies lumber, from which 

 the mills and factories of Deseronto make 

 matches, sashes and doors, boxes and cars. A 

 blast furnace and a cannery are also note- 

 worthy. Population in 1911, 2,013; in 1916, 

 about 2,700. 



DESERT, dez' ert, a region with vegetation 

 insufficient to support human life. It may be 

 hot, like the great Sahara, or cold, like the 

 tundras of Siberia. In the former case lack 

 of rainfall is its cause, in the latter, lack of 

 heat. Rainless regions, however, are deserts 

 according to the usual acceptance of the term. 

 In some instances they exist because mountain 

 ranges lying between them and the ocean from 

 which the prevailing winds blow drain the 

 moisture from all clouds that pass. Sometimes 

 the air may flow into a region of greater 

 warmth; it therefore becomes drier. 



Characteristics. A desert is seldom a monot- 

 onous, flat waste of barren sand. Much of it is 



