168 DESCARTES' DISCOURSE ox METHOD iv 



keen wit soon gained him that title of " the 

 Philosopher," which, in the mouths of his noble 

 kinsmen, was more than half a reproach. The 

 best schoolmasters of the day, the Jesuits, edu- 

 cated him as well as a French boy of the 

 seventeenth century could be educated. And they 

 must have done their work honestly and well, for, 

 before his schoolboy days were over, he had 

 discovered that the most of what he had learned, 

 except in mathematics, was devoid of solid and 

 real value. 



"Therefore," says he, in that 'Discourse' 1 which I 

 have taken for my text, "as soon as I was old enough to be 

 set free from the government of my teachers, I entirely forsook 

 the study of letters ; and determining to seek no' other know- 

 ledge than that which I could discover within myself, or in the 

 great book of the world, I spent the remainder of my youth in 

 travelling ; in seeing courts and armies ; in the society of 

 people of different humours and conditions ; in gathering varied 

 experience ; in testing myself by the chances of fortune ; and in 

 always trying to profit by my reflections on what happened. 

 . . . And I always had an intense desire to learn how to 

 distinguish truth from falsehood, in order to be clear about my 

 actions, and to walk surefootedly in this litV." 



But "learn what is true, in order to do what is 

 right," is the summing up of the whole duty of 

 man, for all who are unable to satisfy tin ir mental 

 hunger with the east wind of authority; and to 

 those of us moderns who are in this position, it is 

 one of Descartes' great claims to our reverence as 



* Discours de la Methode pour bien eonduire sa Kaison et 

 eherditr la ViriU dans Its Sciences. 



