Descartes
lance5600
DiscourseonMethod.pdf
A CHRONOLOGY OF RENÉ DESCARTES
March: born at La Haye near Tours.
– Attends the Jesuit college of La Flèche.
Galileo’s observation of the four moons of Jupiter.
Licenciate of Law, University of Poitiers.
Joins the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau in Holland.
Moves to the army of Elector Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, in Germany.
November: dream of a ‘wonderful science’.
Publication of Bacon’s Novum Organum.
– Travels in Europe.
– Imprisonment of Théophile de Viau as ringleader of the Parisian free-thinkers.
– Based in Paris, in the circle of Mersenne.
Publication of Harvey’s Circulation of the Blood.
(or ) Completion of Rules For the Direction of Our Native Intelligence.
(end) Move to Holland.
Work on The Universe.
Publication of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
Condemnation of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition; Descartes abandons plans to publish The Universe.
Birth of Descartes’s natural daughter, named Francine, baptized August (died ).
Publication of A Discourse on the Method, with three essays: Dioptrics, Meteorology, and Geometry.
lxxiv
Publication of Meditations, with the first six sets of Objections and Replies.
Publication of second edition of Meditations, with all seven sets of Objections and Replies. First contact with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia.
Cartesian philosophy condemned at the University of Utrecht.
Visit to France; publication of the Latin version of The Principles of Philosophy (French translation ), and the Latin version of the Discourse and the Essays.
Award of a pension by the king of France; return to France to arrange its receipt. Publication of Comments on a Certain Broadsheet.
April: interview with Frans Burman at Egmond-Binnen. Beginning of the civil war known as ‘La Fronde’ in France. Journey to Sweden on invitation of Queen Christina;
publication of the Passions of the Soul. February: death in Stockholm from pneumonia. Descartes’s remains returned to France, to rest eventually in
Saint-Germain des Prés.
lxxv
This page intentionally left blank
A DISCOURSE ON THE METHOD OF CORRECTLY CONDUCTING
ONE’S REASON AND SEEKING TRUTH IN THE SCIENCES
This page intentionally left blank
If this discourse seems too long to be read all at once,* it may be split up into six parts. In the first will be found several considerations relating to the sciences. In the second, the principal rules of the method that the author has found. In the third, some of the moral rules he has derived from this method. In the fourth, the arguments by which he proves the existence of God and of the human soul, which are the foundations of his metaphysics. In the fifth, the order of the physical questions he has investigated, and particularly the explanation of the movement of the heart and some other problems pertaining to medicine, as well as the difference between the human soul and that of animals. And in the last part, the requirements he believes are necessary to make progress beyond that which he has already made in the study of nature, and the reasons that prompted him to write.
This page intentionally left blank
PART ONE
Good sense* is the most evenly distributed thing in the world; for everyone believes himself to be so well provided with it that even those who are the hardest to please in every other way do not usually want more of it than they already have. Nor is it likely that everyone is wrong about this; rather, what this shows is that the power of judging correctly and of dis- tinguishing the true from the false (which is what is properly called good sense or reason) is naturally equal in all men, and that consequently the diversity of our opinions arises not from the fact that some of us are more reasonable than others, but solely that we have different ways of directing our thoughts, and do not take into account the same things. For it is not enough to possess a good mind; the most important thing is to apply it correctly.* The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues; those who go forward but very slowly can get further, if they always follow the right road, than those who are in too much of a hurry and stray off it.*
For myself, I have never presumed my mind to be any way more accomplished than that of the common man. Indeed, I have often wished that my mind was as fast, my imagination as clear and precise, and my memory as well stocked and sharp as those of certain other people. And I personally know of no any other mental attributes that go to make up an accomplished mind;* for, as regards reason or good sense (insofar as it is the only thing that makes us human and distinguishes us from brute beasts), I am ready to believe that it is altogether com- plete in every one of us, and I am prepared to follow in this the agreed doctrine of those philosophers who say that differences of degree apply only to accidents, and not to forms or natures of individuals of the same species.*
But I venture to claim that since my early youth I have had
the great good fortune of finding myself taking certain paths that have led me to reflections and maxims from which I have fashioned a method* by which, it seems to me, I have a way of adding progressively to my knowledge and raising it by degrees to the highest point that the limitations of my mind and the short span of life allotted to me will permit it to reach. For I have already reaped so many fruits from this method that I derive the highest satisfaction from the progress that I believe myself already to have made in my pursuit of truth, in spite of the fact that in appraising my own achievements I try always to err on the side of caution rather than that of pre- sumption, and that when I cast a philosopher’s eye over the various actions and undertakings of mankind, there is hardly a single one that does not seem to me to be vain and futile.* And I conceive such hopes for the future that if, among the purely human occupations,* there is one that is really good and important, I venture to believe that it is the one that I have chosen.
It is, however, possible that I am wrong, and that I am mis- taking bits of copper and glass for gold and diamonds. I know how likely we are to be wrong on our own account, and how suspect is the judgement of our friends when it is in our favour. Nonetheless, in this essay I shall gladly reveal the paths I have followed and paint my life as it were in a picture, so that everyone may come to a judgement about it; and from hearing the reactions of the public to this picture,* I shall add a new way of acquiring knowledge to those which I habitually employ.
So my aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine.* Those who take it upon themselves to give direction to others must believe themselves more capable than those to whom they give it, and bear the responsibility for the slightest error they might make. But as I am putting this essay forward only as a historical record, or if you prefer, a fable, in which among a number of
examples worthy of imitation one may also find several which one would be right not to follow, I hope that it may prove useful to some people without being harmful to any, and that my candour will be appreciated by everyone.
I was educated in classical studies* from my earliest years, and because I was given to believe that through them one could acquire clear and sure knowledge of everything that one needed in life, I was extremely eager to acquire them. But as soon as I had finished my course of study, at which time it is usual to be admitted to the ranks of the well educated, I com- pletely changed my opinion, for I found myself bogged down in so many doubts and errors, that it seemed to me that having set out to become learned, I had derived no benefit from my studies, other than that of progressively revealing to myself how ignorant I was. And yet I was a pupil of one of the most famous schools in Europe, in which I believed that there must be as learned men as are to be found anywhere on earth. There I had learnt everything that others were learning; and not just content with the subjects that we were taught, I had even read all the books that fell into my hands on subjects that are con- sidered the most occult and recondite.* Moreover, I knew what assessment others had made of me, and realized that I was not thought inferior to my fellow pupils, even though several among them had already been singled out to take the place of our teachers. And finally, our age seemed to me to be as flourishing as any preceding age, and to abound in as many great minds. This emboldened me to judge all others by myself, and to think that there was no body of knowledge on earth that lived up to the expectations I had been given of it.
I did not, however, cease to hold the school curriculum in esteem. I know that the Greek and Latin that are taught there are necessary for understanding the writings of the ancients; that fables stimulate the mind through their charm; that the memorable deeds recorded in histories uplift it, and they help form our judgement when read in a discerning way; that read- ing good books is like engaging in conversation with the most
cultivated minds of past centuries who had composed them, or rather, taking part in a well-conducted dialogue in which such minds reveal to us only the best of their thoughts; that oratory is incomparably powerful and beautiful, and that poetry pos- sesses delightful delicacy and charm;* that mathematics has very subtle techniques that can be of great use in satisfying curious minds, as well as in coming to the aid of all the arts, and reducing human labour; that books on morals contain highly instructive teachings and exhortations to virtue;* that theology charts our path to heaven; that philosophy provides us with the means of speaking plausibly about anything and impressing those who are less well instructed; that law, medi- cine, and other disciplines bring to those who profess them riches and honours;* and finally, that it is worthwhile to have studied all of these branches of knowledge, even the most superstitious and false, in order to learn their true value and avoid being deceived by them.
But I then decided that I had devoted enough time both to the study of languages and to the reading of the books, histor- ies, and fables of the classical world. For conversing with those of another age is more or less the same thing as travelling. It is good to know something of the customs of different peoples in order to be able to judge our own more securely, and to prevent ourselves from thinking that everything not in accordance with our own customs is ridiculous and irrational, as those who have see nothing of the world are in the habit of doing. On the other hand, when we spend too much time travelling, we end up becoming strangers in our own country; and when we immerse ourselves too deeply in the practices of bygone ages, we usually remain woefully ignorant of the practices of our own time. Moreover, fables make us conceive of events as being possible where they are not; and even if the most faithful of accounts of the past neither alter nor exaggerate the import- ance of things in order to make them more attractive to the reader, they nearly always leave out the humblest and least illustrious historical circumstances, with the result that what
remains does not appear as it really was, and that those who base their behaviour on the examples they draw from such accounts are likely to try to match the feats of knights of old* in tales of chivalry and set themselves targets beyond their powers.
I held oratory in high esteem, and loved poetry, but I looked upon both as gifts of the mind rather than fruits of study. Those who reason most powerfully and are the most successful at ordering their thoughts so as to make them clear and intelli- gible will always be best able to persuade others of what they say, even if they speak in the thickest of dialects* and have never learned any rhetoric. And those whose linguistic expres- sion is the most pleasing and who frame their thoughts in the most eloquent and agreeable way would always end up being the best poets, even if they did not know a single rule of poetic composition.
I was most keen on mathematics, because of its certainty and the incontrovertibility* of its proofs; but I did not yet see its true use. Believing as I did that its only application was to the mechanical arts,* I was astonished that nothing more exalted had been built on such sure and solid foundations; whereas, on the other hand, I compared the moral works of ancient pagan writers to splendid and magnificent palaces built on nothing more than sand and mud. They exalt the virtues, and make them seem more worthy of esteem than anything else on earth; but they do not give sufficient indication of how to learn about them; and what they call by such a fine name is in many cases no more than lack of human feeling, pride, despair, or parricide.*
I revered our theology and hoped as much as anyone to reach heaven; but having learnt as an established fact that the path to heaven is as open to the most ignorant as to the most learned, and that the revealed truths that lead there are beyond our understanding, I would not have dared submit them to my own puny reasoning powers, and believed that in order to engage in the task of studying them, it was indispensable to
have some extraordinary assistance from heaven, and to be more than merely human.*
I shall not say anything about philosophy except that, when I realized that it had been cultivated by the best minds for many centuries, and that nevertheless there is nothing in it that is not disputed and consequently is not subject to doubt, I was not so presumptuous as to hope to succeed better than others; and that seeing how different learned men may defend differ- ent opinions on the same subject, without there ever being more than one which is true, I deemed anything that was no more than plausible* to be tantamount to false.
As for the other disciplines, in so far as they borrow their principles from philosophy, I concluded that nothing solid could have been built on such shaky foundations. Nor was the honour and the profit they held in prospect enough to per- suade me to study them; for I considered myself, through the favour of providence, as not being in the position of having to earn my living from a learned profession for the betterment of my fortune; and although I did not go about sneering at worldly glory as is the habit of Cynics,* I nonetheless held that sort of glory, to which I could never hope to have a true claim, in low esteem. Finally, as for the low sciences,* I felt that I already knew well enough what they were worth to avoid fall- ing for any of the promises of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or the tricks and boasts of those who profess to know more than they do.
That is why, as soon as I reached an age that allowed me to escape from the control of my teachers, I abandoned altogether the study of letters. And having decided to pursue only that knowledge which I might find in myself or in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth travelling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of different character and rank, accumulating different experiences, putting myself to the test in situations in which I found myself by chance, and at all times giving due reflection to things as they presented themselves to me so as to derive some benefit from them. For it
seemed to me that I could discover much more truth from the reasoning that we all make about things that affect us and that will soon cause us harm if we misjudge them, than from the speculations in which a scholar engages in the privacy of his study, that have no consequence for him except insofar as the further they are from common sense, the more he will be proud of them, because he has had to use so much more ingenuity and subtlety in the struggle to make them plausible. And I constantly felt a burning desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, to see my actions for what they were, and to proceed with confidence through life.
It is true that while I was thinking about the customs of other men and nothing else, I found little to provide me with certain knowledge; I observed in them as much diversity as I had found earlier among the opinions of the philosophers. And so the greatest benefit I derived from these observations was that when I was confronted by things which, although they seem to us very extravagant and ridiculous, are nevertheless widely accepted and approved of by other great nations, I learned not to believe too firmly in anything that only example and custom had persuaded me of.* So it was that I freed myself gradually from many of the errors that can obscure the natural light of our minds, and make them less able to see reason. But after having spent several years studying the book of the world and trying to acquire some experience of life, I took the decision one day to look into myself and to use all my mental powers to choose the paths I should follow. In this it seems to me that I have had much more success than if I had never left either my country or my books.
PART TWO
At that time I was in Germany, where I had been called by the wars that have not yet come to an end there; as I was returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor, I was halted by the onset of winter in quarters where, having no diverting company and fortunately also no cares or emotional turmoil* to trouble me, I spent the whole day shut up in a small room heated by a stove, in which I could converse with my own thoughts at leisure.* Among the first of these was the realiz- ation that things made up of different elements and produced by the hands of several master craftsmen are often less perfect than those on which only one person has worked. This is the case with buildings which a single architect has planned and completed, that are usually more beautiful and better designed than those that several architects have tried to patch together, using old walls that had been constructed for other purposes. This is also the case with those ancient cities, that in the beginning were no more than villages and have become, through the passage of time, great conurbations; when com- pared to orderly towns that an engineer designs without con- straints on an empty plain,* they are usually so badly laid out that, even though their buildings viewed separately often display as much if not more artistic merit as those of orderly towns, yet if one takes into consideration the way they are disposed, a tall one here, a low one there, and the way they cause the streets to wind and change level, they look more like the product of chance than of the will of men applying their reason. And if one considers further that there have always been officials whose task it was to ensure that the design of private buildings should contribute to the beauty of the town as a whole, it will become clear how difficult it is to carry anything through to completion when working only with what others have produced. This led me to the view that those
nations who were once half-savage and only gradually became more civilized, and whose legislation was forced on them by acts of criminal mischief and legal disagreements, could not be as well governed as those which, from the first moment of their coming together as a nation, observed the constitution laid down by a prudent lawgiver; in the same way, it cannot be doubted that a state which has embraced the true religion whose laws God alone has made must be incomparably better governed than any other. To return to human affairs, I believe that if Sparta once flourished greatly, it was not because of the particular excellence of each one of its laws (seeing that many were very strange and even contrary to good morals*), but because having all been laid down by one man,* they were all directed to a single end. And so I came to believe that book- learning, or at least learning whose rational foundations are no better than generally approved, and which contains no real proof, is not as close to the truth, composed as it is of the opinions of many different people, as the simple reasoning that any man of good sense can produce about things in his pur- view. And so, although I came to believe that, because we were children before we were men, and because for a long time we were governed by our appetites and our teachers (the former being often in conflict with the latter, with neither giving the best advice in every case), it is almost impossible that our judgements are as pure or as solid as they might have been if we had had full use of our reason from the moment of our birth, and had been guided by that alone.*
Admittedly, we do not see people pulling down all the houses of a town for the sole purpose of reconstructing them differently in order to embellish the streets; but we do see many people having their own houses demolished in order to rebuild them, and may note that they are even sometimes forced to do so when the buildings are in danger of falling down of themselves or their foundations are insecure. This example convinced me that it would not be reasonable for an individual to set out to reform a state by changing everything
from the foundations up, and overthrowing it in order to rebuild it, or even to set out to reform the body of knowledge or the established order in schools for teaching it;* but rather, as far as all the opinions I had hitherto accepted were con- cerned, I could do no better than to set about ridding myself of them once and for all, with a view to replacing them afterwards either with better ones, or even the same ones, once I had tested them with my reason and ensured that they were set straight. I firmly believed that by these means I would manage to order my life better than if I built on old foundations and relied only upon old principles which had been inculcated in me when young, without my ever having sought to find out whether they were true. For although I could see a number of difficulties in all this, they were not unsurmountable; nor did they compare with those which are found in the smallest reform affecting the body public. Such a great body is too hard to rebuild if once destroyed, or even to keep standing if once shaken, and its fall cannot be anything other than very heavy. Moreover, as for any imperfections such bodies may have (and their very diversity is sufficient to ensure that some at least will have imperfections), custom may have considerably attenuated them, and even managed to circumvent or imperceptibly to correct many that could not have been so well remedied through the exercise of political judgement.* Finally, these imperfections are nearly all more bearable than change, in the same way that highways that wind their way between moun- tains become in the end so smooth and easy through use that it is much better to follow them than to attempt to seek a straighter path, by climbing over rocky promontories and plunging down into deep valleys.
That is why I could not possibly approve of those meddle- some and restless spirits who are called neither by birth nor by riches to take part in public affairs, yet are forever plotting some reform. And if I thought that there was anything what- soever in this essay that could lead me to be suspected of the same folly, I should be very loath to allow it to be published.
My project has never extended beyond wishing to reform my own thoughts and build on a foundation which is mine alone. And if my work has pleased me enough for me to reveal to you here what it is based on, I do not want for all that to suggest that anyone should copy it. Those on whom God has bestowed His grace in greater measure will perhaps have more lofty designs;* but I very much fear that mine may already be too bold for many. Even the decision to rid oneself of all the opin- ions one has hitherto accepted is not an example which every- one ought to follow. The world is made up almost entirely of two sorts of minds to which such a course of action is wholly unsuitable. First, there are those who, believing themselves cleverer than they are, cannot stop themselves jumping to conclusions, and do not have enough patience to govern their thoughts in an orderly way, with the result that once they have allowed themselves to doubt accepted principles and stray from the common path, they would never be able to keep to the road that one must take to proceed in the right direction, and would remain lost all their lives. Second, there are those who, having enough sense or modesty to realize that they are less capable of distinguishing the true from the false than certain others by whom they could be guided, must content themselves with following the opinions of these others rather than seeking better ones from themselves.*
As for myself, I would perhaps have been in this second category if I had only had one teacher, or if I had not known about the differences of opinion that have always existed among the most learned. But having already discovered at school that there is no opinion so bizarre and incredible that has not been uttered by some philosopher or other,* and hav- ing come later in the course of my travels to the realization that all those who have opinions that are diametrically opposed to ours are not on that account barbarians or savages, but that among their number there are many who make use of their reason as much or more than we do; and having considered how a given man with a given mind, brought up since childhood
among the French or the Germans, develops differently from the way he would if he had always lived among the Chinese or among cannibals, and how even down to our fashion of dress, the very thing that pleased us ten years ago and may perhaps please us in ten years’ time at present seems outlandish and ridiculous to our eyes (this is because we are much more swayed by custom and example than any certain knowledge; and yet the majority view* is of no value as proof of truths which are difficult to discover, because they are much more likely to be discovered by one man by himself than by a whole people); for all these reasons, I could not choose any one person whose opinions struck me as preferable to those of others, and I found myself forced, as it were, to provide for myself my own guidance.
But like a man walking by himself in the dark, I took the decision to go so slowly and to exercise such caution in every- thing that even if I made very little progress, I would at least be sure not to fall. I did not even wish to begin by rejecting abso- lutely all the opinions that might have slipped into my mind without having been introduced there by reason, until I had first spent enough time planning the work I was undertaking and searching for the true method of arriving at the knowledge of everything that my mind was capable of grasping.
In earlier years I had made some study of logic in the philosophy course, and of geometrical analysis and algebra in mathematics, three arts or branches of knowledge that seemed destined to contribute to my plan. But, on examining them, I noted, in the case of logic, that its syllogisms and most of its other techniques are employed more to explain things to other people that one knows already or even, as in the art of Lull, to speak injudiciously about those of which one is ignorant, than to learn anything new.* And although logic really does contain many very true and excellent precepts, there are so many others mixed in with them that are either harmful or superflu- ous, that it is almost as difficult to separate the former from the latter as it is to extract a statue of Diana or Minerva from a
rough block of marble.* As for ancient geometrical analysis and modern algebra, even apart from the fact that they deal only in highly abstract matters that seem to have no practical application, the former is so closely tied to the consideration of figures that it is unable to exercise the intellect without greatly tiring the imagination, while in the latter case one is so much a slave to certain rules and symbols that it has been turned into a confused and obscure art that bewilders the mind instead of being a form of knowledge that cultivates it.* This was why I thought that another method had to be found which retained the advantages of all three but was free from their defects. And just as a great number of laws is often a pretext for wrong- doing, with the result that a state is much better governed when, having only a few, they are strictly observed; so also I came to believe that in the place of the great number of pre- cepts that go to make up logic, the following four would be sufficient for my purposes, provided that I took a firm and unshakeable decision never once to depart from them.
The first was never to accept anything as true that I did not incontrovertibly know to be so; that is to say, carefully to avoid both prejudice and premature conclusions; and to include nothing in my judgements other than that which presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly, that I would have no occasion to doubt it.*
The second was to divide all the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as many as were required to solve them in the best way.
The third was to conduct my thoughts in a given order, beginning with the simplest and most easily understood objects, and gradually ascending, as it were step by step, to the knowledge of the most complex; and positing* an order even on those which do not have a natural order of precedence.*
The last was to undertake such complete enumerations and such general surveys that I would be sure to have left nothing out.*
The long chains of reasonings, every one simple and easy,
which geometers habitually employ to reach their most difficult proofs had given me cause to suppose that all those things which fall within the domain of human understanding follow on from each other in the same way, and that as long as one stops oneself taking anything to be true that is not true and sticks to the right order so as to deduce one thing from another, there can be nothing so remote that one cannot even- tually reach it, nor so hidden that one cannot discover it.* And I had little difficulty in determining those with which it was necessary to begin, for I already knew that I had to begin with the simplest and the easiest to understand; and considering that of all those who had up to now sought truth in the sphere of human knowledge, only mathematicians have been able to discover any proofs, that is, any certain and incontrovertible arguments, I did not doubt that I should begin as they had done. Nor did I expect any other usefulness from this, than to accustom my mind to nourish itself on truths and reject false reasonings. Yet I did not, for all that, intend to study all those particular branches of knowledge which habitually go under the name of mathematics;* I saw that, although their objects were different, they nevertheless all concurred insofar as they only took into consideration the different relations or propor- tions to be found among these objects, and I came to think that it was best for me to examine only these proportions in gen- eral,* without supposing their existence except in those areas of enquiry which would serve to make my knowledge of them easier; and moreover, not to restrict them to those areas, in order to be better able to apply them thereafter to everything else to which they might be applied. Then, having noted that, in order to know them, I would sometimes need to think about them separately, and sometimes only bear them in mind, or consider many together, I came to the view that, in order to consider these proportions best separately, I had to suppose them to hold between lines, because I found nothing simpler nor more capable of being distinctly represented to my imagination* and to my senses. But for the purpose of
retaining them in my memory, or grasping several together, it was necessary for me to designate them by the briefest possible symbols;* by this means I would borrow what was best from geometrical analysis and algebra, and would correct all the defects of the one by the other.
And indeed, I venture to claim that the scrupulous observance of the few precepts I had chosen gave me such ease in unravelling all the questions covered by these two branches of knowledge that in the two or three months I spent investi- gating them,* having begun with the simplest and most general (every truth that I discovered being a rule that I used afterwards to find others), not only did I solve some which I had earlier judged very difficult, but it also seemed to me, towards the end of this period, that I was able to determine, even in respect of those questions which I had not solved, by what means and to what extent it was possible to solve them. In claiming this I will appear perhaps less conceited to you if you consider that, as there is only one truth of any one thing, whoever finds it knows as much as can be known about it, and that, for example, a child trained in arithmetic who does a sum according to the rules can be quite certain of having discovered everything the human mind can find out about the sum in question. In short, the method that teaches one to follow the correct order and to enumerate all the factors of the object under examination, contains everything that confers certainty on arithmetical rules.
But what pleased me most about this method was that, through it, I was certain in all cases to employ my reason, if not perfectly, then at least to the best of my ability; moreover, I believed that, in practising it, my mind was gradually getting used to conceiving of its objects more clearly and distinctly, and that not having set it to work on any particular matter, I was able to set myself the task of applying it just as usefully to the problems of other branches of knowledge* as I had done to those of algebra. Not that I ventured, for all that, to examine all the problems I might come across; for that would have been
contrary to the order prescribed by my method. But having noted that the principles of each branch of knowledge must of necessity all be borrowed from philosophy, in which I could still find no certain principles, I came to think that it was first necessary for me to try to establish some; and that this being the most important thing in the world and one in which undue haste and preconceptions were most to be feared, I thought that I ought not to attempt to carry this task through to com- pletion until I had reached a much more mature age than the twenty-three years I then was, and until I had spent consider- able time in preparing myself for the task, as much by rooting out of my mind all the false opinions I had accepted up to then, as by amassing a large number of experiences to serve afterwards as the matter of my reasoning, and by continually practising my chosen method in order to strengthen my grasp of it.
PART THREE
Finally, just as it is not enough, before beginning to rebuild the house in which one lives, to do no more than demolish it, make provision for materials and architects, or become oneself trained as an architect, or even to have carefully drawn up the plans, but one must also provide oneself with another house in which one may be comfortably lodged while work is in pro- gress; so also, in order not to remain indecisive in my actions while my reason was forcing me to be so in my judgements, and to carry on living from then on as happily as I could, I formed a provisional moral code* for myself consisting in only three or four maxims, which I should like to share with you.
The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country,* and to adhere to the religion in which God by His grace had me instructed from my childhood, and to govern myself in everything else according to the most moderate and least extreme opinions, being those commonly received among the wisest of those with whom I should have to live. For, having begun already to discount my own opinions because I wished to subject them all to rigorous examination, I was certain that I could do no better than to follow those of the wisest. And although there may be as many wise people among the Persians and the Chinese as among ourselves, it seemed to me that the most useful thing to do would be to regulate my conduct by that of the people among whom I was to live; and that for me to know what their opinions really were, I had to take note of what they did rather than what they said,* not only because in the present corrupt state of our morals few people are willing to declare everything they believe, but also because some do not even know what they believe; for the mental act by which we believe something, being different from that act by which we know that we believe it,* often results in one act being present without the other. And I chose only the most moderate
among many opinions which were equally widely received, as much because these are always easiest to practise and likely to be the best (excesses all being usually bad) as to wander less far from the true path in case I should be wrong, and that having followed one extreme, it transpired that I should have followed the other. And in particular, I placed in the category of these excesses all personal commitments by which one relinquishes some of one’s freedom. Not that I disapprove of the laws that, in order to counteract the inconsistency of those who are weak-minded, permit men to make verbal undertakings or contracts which bind them not to break them (in cases where they have some worthy plan, or even, to guarantee the security of commerce, some plan which is no more than morally indifferent); but, because I saw nothing in this world which remained always in the same state, and because in my own case I set myself the task of gradually perfecting my judgements and not of making them worse, I would have seen myself as sinning against good sense if, having once approved of some- thing, I should have found myself obliged to take it to be good later on, when it might have ceased to be so, or I might have ceased to consider it so.
My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I could, and to follow no less constantly the most doubtful opinions, once I had opted for them, than I would have if they had been the most certain ones.* In this I imitated those travellers who, finding themselves lost in a forest, must not wander in circles first to one side then to the other, and still less stop in one place, but have to walk as straight as possible in one direction, and not alter course for weak reasons, even if it might only have been chance which had led them to settle on the direction they had chosen; for by this means, even if they do not end up precisely where they want to be, they will even- tually reach somewhere where they will most likely be better off than the middle of a forest. And, in the same way, as in life we must often act without delay, it is a very certain truth that when it is not in our power to determine which the truest
opinions are, we should follow those which are most likely to be true, and even though we might see no more probability* in some rather than others, we must nevertheless opt for one set, and thereafter consider them not as being doubtful, insofar as they relate to the practice of life, but as altogether true and certain, because the reasoning that led us to opt for them is true and certain. This maxim was able from then on to free me from all the regret and remorse that usually troubles the con- sciences of weak and vacillating minds, who are inconsistent and allow themselves to follow certain practices as though they were good, that they later judge to be bad.
My third maxim was to endeavour always to master myself rather than fortune, to try to change my desires rather than to change the order of the world, and in general to settle for the belief that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts, and after we have tried, in respect of things external to us, to do our best, everything in which we do not succeed is absolutely impossible as far as we are concerned.* This alone seemed to me to be sufficient to prevent me from desiring anything in future which I could not obtain, and thereby to make me content. For as our will is naturally inclined to desire only those things which our intellect represents to it as pos- sible in some way, it is certain that if we consider all external goods as being equally beyond our power, we shall not feel any more regret at failing to obtain those which seem to be our birthright when deprived of them through no fault of our own, than we shall for not possessing the kingdoms of China and Mexico; and by making a virtue out of necessity, as the saying goes, we shall no more desire to be healthy when we are ill or free when we are in prison, than we do now to have bodies made of matter as incorruptible as diamonds or wings to allow us to fly like birds. But I admit that it takes long practice and reiterated periods of meditation* to make oneself used to see- ing things from this angle; and I believe that it is principally in this that lay the secret of those philosophers who were able in earlier times to escape the tyranny of fortune and, in spite of
suffering and poverty, to rival their gods in happiness.* For through constant reflection on the limits laid upon them by nature, they convinced themselves so completely that nothing was in their power other than their thoughts, that this convic- tion alone was sufficient to prevent them from having any desire for anything else; and they controlled their thoughts so effectively that they thereby believed themselves with some reason to be richer, more powerful, freer, and happier than any other men who, not having this philosophy, never have this control over their desires, however favoured by nature and fortune they may be.*
Finally, as a conclusion to this moral code, I decided to review the various occupations that men have in this life, in order to try to select the best one. Without wishing to pass judgement on the occupations of others, I came to the view that I could do no better than to continue in the one in which I found myself, that is to say, to devote my life to the cultivation of my reason and make such progress as I could in the know- ledge of the truth following the method I had prescribed for myself. I had experienced such great joy since I began to employ this method that I did not believe that any sweeter or more innocent pleasures were to be had in this life; and as I discovered daily by its means a number of truths that seemed to me very important and generally unknown to other men, the satisfaction that I obtained from it filled my mind to such a degree that nothing else mattered to me. Besides, the three foregoing maxims were based only on the plan I had to con- tinue to seek knowledge; for since God has given each of us an inner light* to distinguish the true from the false, I would not have believed for one moment that I should content myself with the opinions of others, if I had not intended in due course to use my own judgement to examine them; and I could not have avoided having scruples about following them, if I had not hoped thereby to seize every opportunity to find better ones, in case there were any. Finally, I should not have known how to limit my desires or achieve happiness, if I had not
followed a path by which I thought I was sure to acquire all the knowledge of which I was capable, and, by the same means, all the true goods that it would ever be in my power to obtain; and seeing that our will tends to pursue or shun only what our intellect represents to it as good or bad, it is sufficient to make a sound judgement in order to act well, and to judge as well as we can in order to do our best;* that is to say, to acquire all the virtues and with them all the other goods we are capable of acquiring. And when we are certain that this state of affairs exists, we cannot fail to be happy.
Once I had established these maxims, and set them aside in my mind with the truths of the faith which have always held first place in my beliefs, I took the decision that, as far as the rest of my opinions were concerned, I could freely undertake to rid myself of them. And seeing that I expected to be better able to complete this task in the company of others than by remaining shut any longer in the stove-heated room in which I had had all these thoughts, I set out on my travels again before winter was over. And through all the next nine years* I did nothing but wander through the world, trying to be a spectator rather than an actor in all the dramas that are played out on that stage; and, reflecting particularly in each matter on what might make it suspect and give occasion for error, I proceeded to eradicate from my mind all the mistakes that might earlier have crept into it. In doing this, I was not copying those scep- tics who doubt for doubting’s sake, and pretend to be always unable to reach a decision;* for, on the contrary, the aim of my whole plan was to reach certainty and reject shifting ground in the search for rock and clay. And in this, it seems to me, I succeeded reasonably well, seeing that, in trying to expose the falsity or uncertainty of the propositions that I was investigat- ing not by weak conjectures but by clear and certain reasoning, I found none so doubtful that I could not draw some reason- ably certain conclusion from it, even if the conclusion was no more than that the proposition in question contained nothing of certainty. And just as, in demolishing an old building, one
usually preserves the debris in order to use it in constructing a new one; so also, in destroying all those of my opinions which I judged to be ill-founded, I made various observations and accumulated many experiences* which have been of use to me subsequently in establishing more certain opinions. What is more, I continued to practise the method I had prescribed for myself, for, besides taking care generally to conduct all my thoughts according to these rules, I occasionally set aside a few hours which I spent applying it to difficulties in mathematics, or even to others which I could more or less translate into mathematical terms by removing from them all the principles of the other branches of knowledge which I did not find solid enough; you will see I have done this to many problems that are dealt with in this volume.* And so, while apparently living in the same way as those who, having no occupation other than leading a blameless and agreeable life, take care to keep their pleasures free from vices and who, in order to enjoy their leisure without becoming bored, engage in all those pastimes that are honourable, I never stopped pursuing my plan and making progress in the knowledge of truth, perhaps more than if I had done nothing else than read books* and spend time in the company of men of letters.
However, those nine years passed by before I had reached any decision about the questions that are often debated among the learned, or had begun to look for the foundations of any philosophy which might be more certain than that which is commonly received. And the example of the many excellent minds who, having embarked on this project before me, did not appear to have succeeded,* led me to see it as so difficult that I would perhaps not have dared to undertake the task so early if I had not learned that some people were already spreading the rumour that I had completed it. I cannot say on what they based this opinion. If I have done anything to con- tribute to it by what I have said in public, it must have been by owning up to what I did not know with greater freedom than is usual among those who have undertaken some study, and
perhaps also by revealing the reasons that I had to doubt much that others take to be certain, rather than by boasting of any positive knowledge. But having enough self-esteem not to wish to be taken for other than I was, I came to think that it was necessary for me to try by every possible means to make myself worthy of the reputation I was being given. And it is now just eight years since this desire made me decide to move away from all the places where I might have acquaintances and to retire here,* in a country in which the long period of war has established such good discipline that the armies that are main- tained here seem only to serve to ensure that people enjoy the fruits of peace with correspondingly greater security, and where amid a teeming, active, great people that shows more interest in its own affairs than curiosity for those of others, I have been able to live as solitary and as retiring a life as I would in the most remote of deserts, while lacking none of the comforts found in the most populous cities.*
PART FOUR
I do not know whether I am bound to tell you about the first meditations that I engaged in there, for they are so meta- physical and recondite that they may not be to everyone’s taste. And yet, to make it possible to judge whether the foun- dations I have laid are firm enough, I find myself in a way forced to speak about them. As has already been said, I had long since observed that, as far as morals are concerned, it is necessary sometimes to follow opinions which one knows to be very unsure as if they were indubitable; but because I wished at that time to concentrate on the pursuit of truth, I came to think that I should do the exact opposite and reject as com- pletely false everything in which I could detect the least doubt, in order to see if anything thereafter remained in my belief that was completely indubitable. And so, because our senses some- times deceive us, I decided to suppose that nothing was such as they lead us to imagine it to be.* And because there are men who make mistakes in reasoning, even about the simplest elements of geometry, and commit logical fallacies, I judged that I was as prone to error as anyone else, and I rejected as false all the reasoning I had hitherto accepted as valid proof.* Finally, considering that all the same thoughts which we have while awake can come to us while asleep without any one of them then being true, I resolved to pretend that everything that had ever entered my head was no more true than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately afterwards I noted that, while I was trying to think of all things being false in this way, it was necessarily the case that I, who was thinking them, had to be something; and observing this truth: I am thinking therefore I exist,* was so secure and certain* that it could not be shaken by any of the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics, I judged that I could accept it without scruple, as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.*
Next, examining attentively what I was, I saw that I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world or place for me to be in, but that I could not for all that pretend that I did not exist; on the contrary, from the very fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it followed incontrovertibly and certainly that I myself existed, whereas, if I had merely ceased thinking, I would have no reason to believe that I existed, even if everything else I had ever imagined had been true. I thereby concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature resides only in thinking, and which, in order to exist, has no need of place and is not dependent on any material thing. Accordingly this ‘I’, that is to say, the Soul* by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is even easier to know than the body; and would not stop being everything it is, even if the body were not to exist.
After this, I came to think in general about what is required for a proposition to be true and certain; for since I had just found one such proposition, I thought that I ought also to know in what this certainty consists. And having observed that there was nothing in this proposition, I am thinking therefore I exist, which makes me sure that I am telling the truth, except that I can see very clearly that, in order to think, one has to exist, I concluded that I could take it to be a general rule that things we conceive of very clearly and distinctly are all true, but that there is some difficulty in being able to identify those which we conceive of distinctly.
As a result of which, as I thought about the fact that I was doubting and that consequently my being was not altogether perfect (for I saw clearly that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt), I decided to look for the source from which I had learned to think of something more perfect than I was myself, and I came to the incontrovertible realization that this must be from some nature that was in fact more perfect. As for the thoughts I had about many other things outside myself, such as the heavens, the earth, light, heat, and numer- ous others, I had no such difficulty in knowing where they
came from, because, seeing nothing in them which seemed to make them superior to myself, I could believe that if they were true, they depended on my nature in so far as it contained some perfection; and if they were not true, I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me because I was lacking something.* But this could not be true of the idea of a being more perfect than mine; for it was manifestly impossible that I should hold this from nothing; and because it is no less contradictory that the more perfect should proceed from and depend on the less perfect than it is that something should proceed from nothing,* I could not hold it from myself either. So that there remained only the possibility that it had been put into me by a nature which was truly more perfect than mine, and one which even had in itself all the perfections of which I could have any idea, that is to say, in a word, which was God.* To which thought I added that, because I knew some perfec- tions that I did not myself have, I was not the only being who existed (I shall here freely employ, with your permission, some scholastic terminology), but that of necessity there must be some other, more perfect being upon whom I depended and from whom I had acquired all that I possessed. For if I had been the sole being and had been independent of every other being so as to have, of myself, that small degree of participation in the perfection which I shared with the perfect being, I could have been able to have of myself, by the same reason, all the remaining perfection that I knew myself to lack,* and so be myself infinite, eternal, unchanging, omniscient, in a word, to have all the perfections which I could observe in God. For, by following this line of reasoning, for me to know the nature of God in so far as my own nature permitted it, I only had to consider, in respect of each thing of which I found in myself some idea, whether it was a perfection to possess it; and I was certain that none of those things which manifested any imper- fection was in Him, but that all the others were. In this way I could see that doubt, inconstancy, sadness, and such things could not be in Him, given that I would have been myself very
glad to be free of them. Besides this, I had ideas of many corporeal things in the realm of the sensory; for even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and that everything that I saw or imagined was false, I nevertheless could not deny that the ideas were really in my thought; but because I had already recog- nized in my own case that the nature of the intellect is distinct from the nature of the body, and considering that all com- position is evidence of dependence, and that dependence is manifestly a defect,* I concluded that it could not be one of God’s perfections to be composed of these two natures, and that, as a consequence, He was not so composed; but that, if there were in the world any bodies or other intelligences* or other natures which were not wholly perfect, their being must depend on His power, in such a way that they could not continue to subsist for a single moment without Him.*
I decided after that to look for other truths; I called to mind the object of study of geometers, which I conceived of as a continuous body or a space indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and height or depth, divisible into different parts which could have various figures and sizes, and be moved or transposed in all sorts of ways, for geometers posit all that to be their object of study. I ran through some of their simpler proofs, and observed that the great certainty which everyone attributes to them is based only on the fact that they are con- ceived of as incontrovertible, following the rule that I have just given. I noted also that there was absolutely nothing in them which made me certain of the existence of their object. Thus, for example, I grasped clearly that, supposing a triangle to be given, it was necessary that its three angles were equal to two right angles; yet for all that, I saw nothing in this which made me certain that a single triangle existed in the world. Whereas, going back to the idea I had had of a perfect being, I found that existence was part of that idea, in the same way, or even more incontrovertibly so, that it is intrinsic to the idea of a triangle that its three angles equal two right angles, or to that of a sphere that all its parts are equidistant from its centre; and
that, in consequence, it is at least as certain as any geometric proof that God, who is that perfect being, is or exists.*
But what convinces many people that there is a problem in knowing Him and even of knowing what their soul is, is that they never raise their mind above the realm of sensory things and are so used not to think of anything except by imagining it, which is a mode of thinking peculiar to material objects, that everything which seems unimaginable seems to them unintel- ligible.* This is clear enough from the fact that even scholastic philosophers hold as a maxim that there is nothing in the intellect which has not previously been in the senses,* in which, however, it is certain that the ideas of God and the soul have never been. It seems to me that people who wish to use their imagination in order to understand these ideas are doing the same as if, in order to hear sounds or smell smells, they tried to use their eyes. Except that there is this further difference, that the sense of sight no more confirms to us the reality of things than that of smell or hearing, whereas neither our imagination nor our senses could ever confirm the existence of anything, if our intellect did not play its part.
Finally, if there are still people who are not sufficiently convinced of the existence of God and of their soul by the arguments I have adduced, I would have them know that everything else of which they think they can be more certain, such as their having a body, or there being stars and an earth and suchlike, is in fact less certain. For although for all prac- tical purposes we possess an assurance* of these things such that it seems that no one can doubt their existence without being wilfully eccentric, nevertheless, where metaphysical cer- tainty is in question, no one can deny, short of being irrational, that there are sufficient grounds for not being absolutely cer- tain, as when we note that while we are asleep we can in the same way imagine having another body, or seeing other stars and another earth, without this being in fact the case. For how do we know that the thoughts that come to us in dreams are any more false than the others, seeing that they are often no
less vivid and clear? However much the best minds choose to investigate this matter, I do not believe that they will be able to furnish any argument which is sufficient to remove this doubt, unless they presuppose the existence of God. For, in the first place, even the rule which I stated above that I held––namely, that the things that we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true––is only certain because God is or exists, because He is a perfect being, and because everything that is in us comes from Him.* From which it follows that our ideas or notions, being real things which moreover come from God, insofar as they are clear and distinct, cannot thereby but be true. So that if we quite often have ideas containing some falsity, these can only be those which contain something in some way confused or obscure, because in this they participate in nothingness, that is to say, that they are in us in this con- fused form because we are not wholly perfect.* And it is mani- fest that there is no less contradiction in the proposition that falsity and imperfection as such come from God, than there is in the proposition that truth or perfection come from nothing- ness. But if we did not know that everything that is real and true in us comes from a perfect and infinite being, then, no matter how clear and distinct our ideas were, we would have no reason to be assured that they possess the perfection of being true.
Now once the knowledge of God and of the soul has made us certain of this rule, it is a simple matter to determine that the things we imagine in dreams should in no way make us doubt the truth of the thoughts we have while awake. For even if one should happen while sleeping to have some very distinct idea, as for example, in the case of a geometer discovering some new proof, the fact that he was asleep would not prevent it being true. And as for the most common error of our dreams, which consists in their representing various things to us in the same way as our external senses, it does not matter that it gives us occasion to distrust the truth of such ideas, because our senses could also quite often mislead us without
our being asleep;* as when those who suffer from jaundice see everything as yellow, or when stars or other very distant bodies appear to us much smaller than they are. For after all, whether we are awake or asleep, we ought never to let ourselves be convinced except on the evidence of our reason. And it is to be noted that I say ‘our reason’, and not ‘our imagination’ or ‘our senses’. For although we see the sun very clearly, we should not on that account judge that it is only as large as we see it; and we can well imagine the head of a lion grafted onto the body of a goat, without having necessarily to conclude from this that a chimera exists in the world;* for reason does not dictate to us that what we see or imagine in this way is true. But it does certainly dictate that all our ideas or notions must have some foundation in truth; for it would not otherwise be possible that God, who is all-perfect and altogether true, should have placed them in us unless it were so. Our processes of reasoning are never so clear or so complete while we are asleep as when we are awake (even though our imaginings in sleep are sometimes just as vivid and distinct); so reason tells us also that as our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth there is in them must infallibly* be found in those we have while awake rather than in those we have in our dreams.
