152 INTRODUCTION 



cast off. Descartes, for instance, when he turned from 

 courts and camps to meditation by his own fireside, 

 professed to renounce entirely the methods and results of 

 earlier thinkers, and to draw from his own unaided con- 

 sciousness a system of truth which no learned sophistry 

 could shake. Descartes was the discoverer of the ' plain 

 man.' Unsophisticated mother-wit will of itself produce 

 absolutely certain knowledge, if only we put the right 

 instrument into its hands, or in other words, if we 

 suggest to it a right method l . Thinking thus, Descartes 



1 Cf. Recherche de la Verite par les Lumieres Naturelles, (Euvres de 

 Descartes (Cousin), vol. xi. p. 334 : ' My purpose in this work is to 

 bring to light the wealth of our nature, by throwing open to every 

 one the way by which he may find in himself, without borrowing 

 anything from anybody else, the knowledge that is necessary for 

 the conduct of his life, and by which he may afterwards make use 

 of this knowledge to master the most abstruse sciences to which 

 human reason can attain. But lest the magnitude of my plan 

 should at once fill your mind with such amazement that you can 

 no longer find it possible to have any confidence in what I say, 

 I may tell you that what I am undertaking is not so difficult as 

 might be imagined. In fact, the branches of knowledge which are 

 not beyond the reach of the human mind are united together by 

 so wonderful a bond and can be deduced from one another with so 

 complete a necessity, that not much art and skill are required to find 

 them out, provided we begin with the most simple and learn to 

 rise gradually to the most exalted. This I intend to show here, by 

 means of a succession of reasonings so clear and so commonplace 

 that every one will see that, if he has not noticed the same things 

 as I have, it is only because he has not turned his eyes in the right 

 direction nor given his thoughts to the same objects as I have, and 

 that I no more deserve glory for having discovered these things 

 than would a peasant deserve it for having found by chance under 

 his feet a treasure which had long remained hidden, though 

 diligently sought after. ... I will not inquire into what others 

 have known or have not known. Suffice it to observe that, 

 although all the knowledge we can desire were to be found in 

 books, yet the good they contain is mixed up with so much that 

 is useless and is scattered throughout so many big volumes that life 

 is not long enough to read them, and to recognize what is useful 

 in them would require more ability than to find it out for our- 

 selves. So I hope the reader will not be displeased to find here 

 a shorter way, and that the truths I bring forward will be accept- 

 able to him, although I do not borrow them from Plato or Aristotle 

 but offer them as having value in themselves, like money which 

 has the same worth whether it comes from a peasant's purse or 

 from the treasury.' Cf. Discourse on Method, Part vi. (Veitch's 

 Translation, pp. 109 et sqq.). Huet says that 'though Descartes 



