CHAPTER VI. 

 RATIONALISM. 



The characteristic feature of Empiricism is the important func- 

 tion assigned by it to sense-experience, from which source, it held, 

 all knowledge is originally derived. But there were some who were 

 not content thus to limit knowledge in its origin. There are other 

 factors inexperience, it was claimed, the origin of which is" Reason". 

 Reason supplements with higher and truer knowledge the empirical 

 facts given in sense. The men who are representative of this latter 

 view were Des Cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wolff. The two 

 former were greatly influenced by the method which mathematics, 

 especially geometry, was using with so much success, and the 

 philosophy of each cannot be understood without bearing this in 

 mind. 



Des Cartes was an admirer of Gassendi, Galilei and Newton, 

 and deserves an important place in the history of mathematics and 

 physics as well as in the history of philosophy. His high regard for 

 the method of geometry may be illustrated by the following 

 quotations. He says, "above all I was delighted with the mathe- 

 matics on account of the certainty and evidence of their demonstra- 

 tions, but I had not as yet found out their true use, and, although 

 I supposed that they were of service only in the mechanic arts, I 

 was surprised that upon foundations so solid and stable no loftier 

 structure had been raised". 1 And again "those long chains of 

 reasoning quite simple and easy, which geometers are wont to 

 employ in the accomplishment of their most difficult demonstrations, 

 led me to think that everything which might fall under the cog- 

 nizance of the human mind might be connected together in the 



same manner 



2 



It becomes the aim of Des Cartes to produce a philosophy the 

 conclusions of which will be just as certain as those of geometry. 



1 Discours de la Methode, (Torrey's transl.) Pt. I, Par. 10. 



2 Ibid. Pt. 2, Par. 11. 



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