THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
129 
However, the Ambassador of France and the Prince of Orange 
stopped the proceedings. Subsequently Descartes went to Stock- 
holm to reside, at the request of Queen Christian, daughter of 
the great Gustavus Adolphus. Unfortunately this lady insisted 
on having lectures on Philosophy in the winter time at 5 a.m. 
This was too much for Descartes. He took cold and died of 
pneumonia, at the age of fifty-four. His remains were subsequently 
brought to Paris, and there was to have been a funeral oration 
pronounced; but this was stopped by an order from the court, 
obtained by Father Le Tellier. 
Huxley says, " Descartes lived and died a good Catholic, and 
prided himself upon having demonstrated the existence of God 
and of the soul of man. As a reward for his exertions, his old 
friends, the Jesuits, put his works on the Index, and called him 
an atheist ; while the Protestants of Holland declared him to be 
both a Jesuit and an atheist. His books narrowly escaped being 
burned by the hangman ; the fate of Vanini was dangled before 
his eyes ; and the misfortunes of Galileo so alarmed him that he 
well-nigh renounced the pursuits by which the world has so 
greatly benefited, and was driven into evasions and subterfuges 
unworthy of him." 
In his Discourse on Method Descartes lays down certain rules 
for himself. 
The first was : " Never to accept anything for true which I did 
not clearly know to be such ; that is to say, carefully to avoid 
precipitancy and prejudice, and comprise nothing more in my 
judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and 
distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt." In fact, he may be 
said to have consecrated Doubt, and to have been the progenitor 
of Philosophic Doubt. 
The second : "To divide each of the difficulties under examina- 
tion into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for 
its adequate solution." 
The third: "To conduct my thoughts in such order that, by 
commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I 
might ascend by little and little, as it were step by step, to the 
knowledge of the more complex ; assigning in thought a certain 
order even to those objects which in their own nature do not 
stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence." 
And the last: "In every case to make enumerations so com- 
