XIV 



ON DESCARTES' "DISCOURSE TOUCHING' THE 

 METHOD OF USING ONE'S EEASON EIGHTLY 

 AND OF SEEKING SCIENTIFIC TRUTH." 



IT has been well said that " all the thoughts of men, 

 from the beginning of the world until now, are linked 

 together into one great chain;" but the conception of 

 the intellectual filiation of mankind which is expressed 

 in these words may, perhaps, be more fitly shadowed 

 forth by a different metaphor. The thoughts of men 

 seem rather to be comparable to the leaves, flowers, and 

 fruit upon the innumerable branches of a few great stems, 

 fed by commingled and hidden roots. These stems bear 

 the names of the half-a-dozen men, endowed with intel- 

 lects of heroic force and clearness, to whom we are led, 

 at whatever point of the world of thought the attempt 

 to trace its history commences ; just as certainly as the 

 following up the small twigs of a tree to the branchlets 

 which bear them, and tracing the branchlets to their 

 supporting branches, brings us, sooner or later, to the 

 bole. 



It seems to me that the thinker who, more than any 

 other, stands in the relation of such a stem towards the 

 philosophy and the science of the modern world is Rend 

 Descartes. I mean, that if you lay hold of any charac- 



