SECOND EPOCH.

FOUNDATION OF THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD.

CHAPTER I.

DESCARTES.

§ I. LIFE OF Descartes.

JUST at the close of the sixteenth century, 1596, there was born in Touraine, of Breton parents, a feeble sickly child, named René Descartes Duperron. A few days after his birth, a disease of the lungs carried off his mother. The sickly child grew to be a sickly boy; and, till the age of twenty, his life was always despaired of.

That boy was one the world could ill afford to lose. Few who saw him creeping on the path, which his companions galloped along like young colts, would have supposed that the boy, whose short dry cough and paleness seemed to announce an early grave, was shortly to become one of the world's illustrious leaders, whose works would continue, centuries after their appearance, to be studied, quoted, and criticised. His masters loved him. He was a pupil of promise; and in his eighth year had gained the title of the Young Philosopher, from his avidity to learn, and his constant questioning.

His education was confided to the Jesuits. This astonishing body has many evils laid to its door, but no one can refuse to it the praise of having been ever ready to see and apply the value

of education. In the college of La Flèche the young Descartes was instructed in mathematics, physics, logic, rhetoric, and the ancient languages. He was an apt pupil; learned quickly, and was never tired of learning.

Was the food supplied by the Jesuits nutritious? M. Thomas remarks, "There is an education for the ordinary man; for the man of genius there is no education but what he gives himself; the second generally consists in destroying the first." And so it was with Descartes, who, on leaving La Flèche, declared that he had derived no other benefit from his studies than that of a conviction of his utter ignorance, and a profound contempt for the systems of philosophy in vogue. The incompetence of philosophers to solve the problems they occupied themselves with, -the anarchy which reigned in the scientific world, where no two thinkers could agree upon fundamental points,-the extravagance of the conclusions to which some accepted premises led, determined him to seek no more to slake his thirst at their fountains.

"And that is why, as soon as my age permitted me to quit my preceptors," he says, "I entirely gave up the study of letters; and resolving to seek no other science than that which I could find in myself, or else in the great book of the world, I employed the remainder of my youth in travel, in seeing courts and camps, in frequenting people of diverse humors and conditions, in collecting various experiences, and above all in endeavoring to draw some profitable reflection from what I saw. For it seemed to me that I should meet with more truth in the reasonings which each man makes in his own affairs, and which if wrong would be speedily punished by failure, than in those reasonings which the philosopher makes in his study, upon speculations which produce no effect, and which are of no consequence to him, except perhaps that he will be more vain of them the more remote they are from common sense, because he would then have been forced to employ more ingenuity and subtlety to render them plausible.'

* Discours de la Methode, p. of the convenient edition of M. Jules Simon. Paris, 1844.

For many years he led a roving, unsettled life; now serving in the army, now making a tour; now studying mathematics in solitude, now conversing with scientific men. One constant purpose gave unity to those various pursuits. He was elaborating his answers to the questions which perplexed him; he was preparing his Method.

When only three-and-twenty he conceived the design of a reformation in philosophy. He was at that time residing in his winter-quarters at Neuburg, on the Danube. His travels soon afterwards commenced, and at the age of thirty-three he retired into Holland, there in silence and solitude to arrange his thoughts into a consistent whole. He remained there eight years; and so completely did he shut himself from the world, that he concealed from his friends the very place of his residence.

When the results of his meditative solitude were given to the world, in the shape of his celebrated Discourse on Method, and his Meditations (to which he invented replies), the sensation produced was immense. It was evident to all men that an original and powerful thinker had arisen; and although of course this originality could not but rouse much opposition, from the very fact of being original, yet Descartes gained the day. His name became European. His controversies were European quarrels. Charles I., of England, invited him over, with the promise of a liberal appointment; and the invitation would probably have been accepted, had not the civil war broken out. He afterwards received a flattering invitation from Christina of Sweden, who had read some of his works with great satisfaction, and wished to learn from himself the principles of his philosophy. He accepted it, and arrived in Stockholm in 1649. His reception was most gratifying; and the Queen was so pleased with him as earnestly to beg him to remain with her, and give his assistance towards the establishment of an academy of sciences. But the delicate frame of Descartes was ill fitted for the severity of the climate, and a cold, caught in one of his morning visits to Christina, produced inflammation of the lungs, which put an end to

his existence. Christina wept for him, had him interred in the cemetery for foreigners, and placed a long eulogium upon his tomb. His remains were subsequently (1666) carried from Sweden into France, and buried with great ceremony in St. Geneviève du Mont.

Descartes was a great thinker; but having said this, we have almost exhausted the praise we can bestow upon him as a man. In disposition he was timid to servility. When promulgating his proofs of the existence of the Deity, he was in evident alarm lest the Church should see something objectionable in them. He had also written an astronomical treatise; but hearing of the fate of Galileo, he refrained from publishing, and always used some chicane in speaking of the world's movement. He was not a brave man; nor was he an affectionate man. But he was even-tempered, placid, and studious not to give offence. In these, as in so many other points, he resembles his illustrious rival, Francis Bacon; but his name has descended spotless to posterity, while Bacon's has descended darkened with more spots than time can efface. It would be hard to say how much difference of position had to do with this difference of moral purity. Had Bacon lived in his study, we should have only praises for his name.

§ II. THE METHOD OF DESCARTES.

There have been disputes as to Bacon's claim to the title of Father of Experimental Science; but no one disputes the claim of Descartes to the title of Father of Modern Philosophy. Ontology and Psychology are still pursued upon his Method; and his speculations are still proudly referred to, by most Continental thinkers, as perfect, or almost perfect, examples of that Method.

In his Dedication of the Meditations to the Sorbonne, he says: "I have always thought that the two questions, of the existence of God, and the nature of the soul, were the chief of those which ought to be demonstrated rather by philosophy than by theology; for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to be

lieve in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it certainly does not seem possible ever to persuade the infidels to any religion, nor hardly to any moral virtue, unless we first prove to them these two things by natural reason." Extraordinary language, which shows how completely Philosophy had gained complete independence.

But if Philosophy is to be independent,-if reason is to walk alone, in what direction must she walk? Having relinquished the aid of the Church, there were but two courses open: the one, to tread once more in the path of the ancients, and to endeavor by the ancient Methods to attain the truth; or else to open a new path, to invent a new Method. The former was barely possible. The spirit of the age was deeply imbued with a feeling of opposition against the ancient Methods; and Descartes himself had been painfully perplexed by the universal anarchy and uncertainty which prevailed. The second course was therefore chosen.

Uncertainty was the disease of the epoch. Skepticism was wide-spread, and even the most confident dogmatism could offer no criterium of certitude. This want of a criterium we saw leading, in Greece, to Skepticism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, the New Academy, and finally leading the Alexandrians into the province of faith, to escape from the dilemma. The question of a criterium had long been the vital question of philosophy. Descartes could get no answer to it from the Doctors of his day. Unable to find firm ground in any of the prevalent systems; distracted by doubts; mistrusting the conclusions of his own understanding; mistrusting the evidences of his senses, he determined to make a tabula rasa, and reconstruct his knowledge. He resolved to examine the premises of every conclusion, and to believe nothing but upon the clearest evidence of reason; evidence so convincing that he could not by any effort refuse to assent to it.

He has given us the detailed history of his doubts. He has told us how he found that he could plausibly enough doubt of