APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



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, 

 "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than 

 anybody. " But there are other men who attain great- 

 ness because they embody the potentiality of their 

 own day, and magically reflect the future. They 

 express the thoughts which will be everybody's two 

 or three centuries after them. Such an one was 

 Descartes. 



" Learn what is true, in order to do what is 

 right,' 1 is the summing up of the whole duty of man, 

 for all who are unable to satisfy their mental hunger 

 with the east wind of authority. 



When I say that Descartes consecrated doubt, you 

 must remember that it was that sort of doubt which 

 Goethe has called "the active scepticism, whose 

 whole aim is to conquer itself " ; and not that other 

 sort which is born of flippancy and ignorance, and 

 whose aim is only to perpetuate itself, as an excuse 

 for idleness and indifference. 



What, then, is certain ? . . . . Why, the fact that the 

 thought, the present consciousness, exists. Our 

 thoughts may be delusive, but they cannot be 

 fictitious. As thoughts, they are real and existent, 

 and the cleverest deceiver cannot make them 

 otherwise. 



