THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
131 
most doubtful opinions when once adopted than if they had 
been highly certain. This principle of adhering to a line of 
action when once adopted was sufficient thenceforward to rid 
me of those repentings and pangs of remorse that usually disturb 
the consciences of such feeble and uncertain minds as are destitute 
of any clear and determinate principle of choice, and allow them- 
selves one day to adopt a course of action as the best, which they 
abandon the next as the opposite." 
His third maxim, he continues, was : "To endeavour always 
to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires 
rather than the order of the world, and in general accustom 
myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there 
is nothing absolutely in our power. This single principle seemed 
to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future 
anything I could not obtain, and thus render me contented." 
He admits, however, that prolonged discipline and frequently- 
repeated meditation is necessary to accustom the mind to view 
all objects in this light. He believed that in this consisted 
chiefly the power of the old philosophers, who were enabled to 
rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and 
poverty, enjoy a happiness their gods might have envied. He 
evidently agreed with the writer of the verse — 
" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage." 
Having provided himself with these maxims, and having placed 
them in reserve along with the truths of faith, he considered that 
he might with freedom set about ridding himself of what re- 
mained of his opinions. And to this end he travelled for nine 
years, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the 
plays exhibited on the theatre of the world. By reflecting 
particularly on what might be doubted, he says that he gradually 
rooted out of his mind all the errors which had hitherto crept 
into it. Not, he says, that he imitated the Sceptics, who doubt 
only that they may doubt, and seek nothing beyond uncertainty 
itself ; for, on the contrary, his design was simply to find ground 
of assurance, and cast aside the loose earth and sand that he 
might reach the rock or the clay. 
Descartes certainly appears to have fallen into error when he 
tries to argue that men alone possess reason and that brutes have 
none, mainly on the ground that animals, although in some 
