 |
Glyn Hughes'
Squashed Philosophers The
Condensed Edition of "Cogito, ergo sum" [I think, therefore I am]" |
|
Glyn Hughes'
Squashed Philosophers The
Condensed Edition of "Cogito, ergo sum" [I think, therefore I am]" |
INTRODUCTION
to René Descartes's Discourse on Method
DOUBT, not
scepticism, was Descartes's philosophic starting point. Warned by
the fate of Galileo, he withheld from publication during his
lifetime his treatise on The World which he had finished in 1633.
His search after philosophical certainty is explained in the
Discourse on Method published in 1637. In 1641 he published Meditationes and he dealt with morals
in Principia Philosophiae, and Traite des Passions
de L'Ame. Descartes stands at the head of the school of
mathematicians which linked up the mathematics of the Renaissance
with modern mathematical writings. The invention of analytical
geometry dates from the publication of his Geometry. His
Discourse on Method is a landmark in the modern history of
philosophic thought.
Discourse
on Method
of
Rightly Conducting Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences
by
René Descartes, 1637
The condensed version
first published by Sir John Hammerton in 1919.
Squashed
version edited by Glyn Hughes © 2004
I - THE AIM OF THE
DISCOURSE
GOOD sense must be better distributed than anything else in the
world, for no man desires more of it than he already has. This
shows that reason is by nature equal in all men. If there is
diversity of opinion, this arises from the fact that we conduct
our thought by different ways and consider not the same things.
It does not suffice that the understanding be good - it must be
well applied.
My mind is no better than another's, but I have been lucky enough
to chance on certain ways, which have led me to a certain method
by means of which it seems to me that I may by degrees augment my
knowledge to the modest measure of my intellect and my length of
days. I shall be very glad to make plain in this Discourse the
paths I have followed, and to picture my life so that all may
judge of it, and by the setting forth of their opinions may
furnish me with yet other means of improvement.
It is my design not to teach the method which each man ought to
follow for the right guidance of his reason, but only to show in
what manner I have tried to conduct my own.
I had been nourished on letters from my infancy, but as soon as I
had finished the customary course of study, I found myself
hampered by so many doubts and errors that I seemed to have
reaped no benefits, except that I had observed more and more of
my ignorance. Yet I was at one of the most celebrated schools in
Europe, and I was not held inferior to my fellow-students, some
of whom were destined to take the place of our masters; nor did
our age seem less fruitful of good wits than any which had gone
before.
Though I did not cease to esteem the studies of the schools, I
began to think that I had given enough time to languages, enough
also to ancient books, their stories and their fables; for when a
man spends too much time in travelling abroad he becomes a
stranger in his own country; and so, when he is too curious
concerning what went on in past ages, he is apt to remain
ignorant of what is taking place in his own day. I set a high
price on eloquence, and I was in love with poetry; I rejoiced in
mathematics, but knew nothing of its true use.
I revered our theology, but, since the way to heaven lies open to
the ignorant no less than to the learned, and the revealed truths
which lead thither are beyond our intelligence, I did not dare to
submit them to my feeble reasonings.
In philosophy there is no truth which is not disputed and which,
consequently, is not doubtful; the other sciences all borrow
their principles from philosophy.
Therefore, I entirely gave up the study of letters and employed
the rest of my youth in travelling, being resolved to seek no
other science than that which I might find within myself, or in
the great Book of the World.
Here the best lesson that I learnt was not to believe too firmly
anything of which I had learnt merely by example and custom; and
thus little by little was delivered from many errors which are
liable to obscure the light of nature and to diminish our
capacity of hearing reason. Finally, I resolved one day to study
myself in the same way, and in this it seems to me I succeeded
much better than if I had never departed from either my country
or my books.
II - THE INTELLECTUAL
CRISIS
BEING in Germany, on my way to rejoin the army after the
coronation of the Emperor [Ferdinand II], I was lying at an inn
where, in default of other conversation, I was at liberty to
entertain my own thoughts. Of these, one of the first was that
often there is less perfection in works which are composite than
in those which issue from a single hand. Such was the case with
buildings, cities, states; for a people which has made its laws
from time to time to meet particular occasions will enjoy a less
perfect polity than a people which from the beginning has
observed the constitution of a far-sighted legislator. This is
very certain, that the estate of true religion, which God alone
has ordained, must be incomparably better guided than any other.
And again, I considered that as, during our childhood, we had
been governed by our appetites and our tutors, which are often at
variance, which neither of them perhaps always gave us the best
counsel, it is almost impossible that our judgments should be so
pure and so solid as they would have been if we had had the
perfect use of our reason from the time of our birth and had
never been guided by anything else.
Hence, as regarded the opinions that I had received into my
belief, I thought that, as a private person may pull down his own
house to build a finer, so I could not do better than remove them
therefrom in order to replace them by sounder, or, after I should
have adjusted them to the level of reason, to establish the same
once more.
When I was younger I had studied logic, analytical geometry and
algebra. Of these, I found that logic served rather for
explaining things we already know; while of geometry and algebra,
the former is so tied to the consideration of figures that it
cannot exercise the understanding without wearying the
imagination, and the latter is so bound down to certain rules and
ciphers that it has been made a confused and obscure art which
hampers the mind instead of a science which cultivates it. And as
a state is better governed which has but few laws, and those
strictly observed, I believed that I should find sufficient these
four precepts:
THE first was never to accept anything as true when I did not
recognize it clearly to be so - that is to say, carefully to
avoid precipitation and prejudice, but to include in my opinions
nothing beyond that which should present itself so clearly and
distinctly to my mind that I might have no occasion to doubt it.
The second was to divide up the difficulties which I should
examine into as many parts as possible, and as should be required
for their better solution.
The third was to conduct my thoughts in order, by beginning with
the simplest objects, so as to mount little by little, by stages,
to the most complex knowledge, even supposing an order among
things which did not naturally stand in an order of antecedent
and consequent.
And the last was to make every where enumerations so complete,
and surveys so wide, that I should be sure of omitting nothing.
Exact observation of these precepts gave me such facility in
unravelling the questions comprehended in geometrical analysis
and in algebra, that in two or three months not only did I find
my way through many which I had formerly accounted too hard for
me, but, towards the end, I seemed to be able to determine, in
those which were new to me, by what means and to what extent it
was possible to resolve them.
And so I promised myself that I would apply my system with equal
success to the difficulties of other sciences; but since their
principles must all be borrowed from philosophy, in which I found
no certain principles of its own, I thought that before all else
I must try to establish some therein. By way of preparation (for
I was then but twenty-three years old) I must root up from my
mind my previous bad opinion of it, and must practise my method
in order that I might be confirmed in it.
III - A RULE OF LIFE
MEANWHILE I must have a rule of life as a shelter while my new
house was in building, and this consisted of three or four
maxims.
The first was to conform myself to the laws and customs of my
country and to hold to the religion in which, by God's grace, I
had been brought up; guiding myself, for the rest, by the least
extreme opinions of the most intelligent. Among extremes I
counted all promises by which a man curtails anything of his
liberty; for I should have deemed it a grave fault against good
sense if, because I approved something in a given moment, I had
bound myself to accept it as good for ever after.
My second maxim was to follow resolutely even doubtful opinions
when sure opinions were not available, just as the traveller,
lost in some forest, had better walk straight forward, though in
a chance direction; for thus he will arrive, if not precisely
where he desires to be, at least at a better place than the
middle of a forest.
My third maxim was to endeavour always to conquer myself rather
than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of
the world, and in general to bring myself to believe that there
is nothing wholly in our power except our thoughts. And I believe
that herein lay the secret of those philosophers who, in the days
of old, could withdraw from the domination of fortune and,
despite pain and poverty, challenge the felicity of their gods.
Finally, after looking out upon the divers occupations of men, I
pondered that I could do no better than persevere in that which I
had chosen - so deep was my content in discovering every day by
its means truths which seemed to me important, yet were unknown
to the world.
Having thus made myself sure of these maxims, and having set them
apart together with the verities of faith, I judged that for the
rest of my opinions I might set freely to work to divest myself
of them. For nine years, therefore, I went up and down the world
a spectator rather than an actor. These nine years slipped away
before I had begun to seek for the foundations of any philosophy
more certain, nor perhaps should I have dared to undertake the
quest had it not been put about that I had already succeeded.
IV - 'I THINK,
THEREFORE I AM'
I HAD long since remarked that in matters of conduct it is
necessary sometimes to follow opinions known to be uncertain, as
if they were not subject to doubt; but, because now I was
desirous to devote myself to the search after truth, I considered
that I must do just the contrary, and reject as absolutely false
every-thing concerning which I could imagine the least doubt to
exist.
Thus, because our senses sometimes deceive us, I would suppose
that nothing is such as they make us to imagine it; and because I
was as likely to err as another in reasoning, I rejected as false
all the reasons which I had formerly accepted as demonstrative;
and finally, considering that all the thoughts we have when awake
can come to us also when we sleep without any of them being true,
I resolved to feign that everything which had ever entered my
mind was no more truth than the illusion of my dreams.
But I observed that, while I was thus resolved to feign that
everything was false, I who thought must of necessity be
somewhat; and remarking this truth - I think, therefore I am -
was so firm and so assured that all the most extravagant
suppositions of the sceptics were unable to shake it, I judged
that I could unhesitatingly accept it as the first principle of
the philosophy I was seeking. I could feign that there was no
world, I could not feign that I did not exist. And I judged that
I might take it as a general rule that the things which we
conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, and that
the only difficulty lies in the way of discerning which those
things are that we conceive distinctly.
After this, reflecting upon the fact that I doubted, and that
consequently my being was not quite perfected (for I saw that to
know is a greater perfection than to doubt), I bethought me to
inquire whence I had learnt to think of something more perfect
than myself; and it was clear to me that this must come from some
nature which was in fact more perfect. For other things I could
regard as dependencies of my nature if they were real, and if
they were not real they might proceed from nothing - that is to
say, they might exist in me by way of defect.
But it could not be the same with the idea of a being more
perfect than my own; for to derive it from nothing was manifestly
impossible; and because it is no less repugnant that the more
perfect should follow and depend upon the less perfect than that
something should come forth out of nothing. I could not derive it
from myself.
It remained, then, to conclude that it was put into me by a
nature truly more perfect than was I and possessing in itself all
the perfections of what I could form an idea - in a word, by God.
To which I added that, since I knew some perfections which I did
not possess, I was not the only being who existed, but that there
must of necessity be some other being, more perfect, on whom I
depended, and from whom I had acquired all that I possessed; for
if I had existed alone and independent of all other, so that I
had of myself all this little whereby I participated in the
Perfect Being, I should have been able to have in myself all
those other qualities which I knew myself to lack, and so to be
infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, almighty - in fine, to
possess all the perfections which I could observe in God.
PROPOSING to myself the geometer's subject matter, and then
turning again to examine my idea of a Perfect Being, I found that
existence was comprehended in that idea just as in the idea of a
triangle is comprehended the notion that the sum of its angles is
equal to two right angles; and that consequently it is as certain
that God, this Perfect Being is or exists, as any geometrical
demonstration could be.
That there are many who persuade themselves that there is a
difficulty in knowing Him is due to the scholastic maxim that
there is nothing in the understanding which has not first been in
the senses; where the ideas of God and the soul have never been.
Than the existence of God all other things, even those which it
seems to a man extravagant to doubt, such as his having a body,
are less certain. Nor is there any reason sufficient to remove
such doubt but such as presupposes the existence of God. From His
existence it follows that our ideas or notions, being real
things, and coming from God, cannot but be true in so far as they
are clear and distinct. In so far as they contain falsity, they
are confused and obscure, there is in them an element of mere
negation [elles participent du neant]; that is to say, they are
thus confused in us because we ourselves are not all perfect. And
it is evident that falsity or imperfection can no more come forth
from God than can perfection proceed from nothingness. But, did
we not know that all which is in us of the real and the true
comes from a perfect and infinite being, however clear and
distinct our ideas might be, we should have no reason for
assurance that they possessed the final perfection - truth.
Reason instructs us that all our ideas must have some foundation
of truth, for it could not be that the All-Perfect and the
All-True should otherwise have put them into us; and because our
reasonings are never so evident or so complete when we sleep as
when we wake, although sometimes during sleep our imagination may
be more vivid and positive, it also instructs us that such truth
as our thoughts have will be in our waking thoughts rather than
in our dreams.
V - WHY I DO NOT
PUBLISH 'THE WORLD'
I HAVE always remained firm in my resolve to assume no other
principle than that which I have used to demonstrate the
existence of God and of the soul, and to receive nothing which
did not seem to me clearer and more certain than the
demonstrations of the philosophers had seemed before; yet not
only have I found means of satisfying myself with regard to the
principal difficulties which are usually treated of in
philosophy, but also I have remarked certain laws which God has
so established in nature, and of which He has implanted such
notions in our souls, that we cannot doubt that they are observed
in all which happens in the world.
The principal truths which flow from these I have tried to unfold
in a treatise (On the World, or on Light), which certain
considerations prevent me from publishing. This I concluded three
years ago, and had begun to revise it for the printer, when I
learnt that certain persons to whom I defer had disapproved an
opinion on physics published a short time before by a certain
person [Galileo], in which opinion I had noticed nothing
prejudicial to religion; and this made me fear that there might
be some among my opinions in which I was mistaken.
I now believe that I ought to continue to write all the things
which I judge of importance, but ought in no wise to consent to
their publication during my life. For my experience of the
objections which might be made forbids me to hope for any profit
from them. I have tried both friends and enemies, yet it has
seldom happened that they have offered any objection which I had
not in some measure foreseen; so that I have never, I may say,
found a critic who did not seem to be either less rigorous or
less fair-minded than myself.
Whereupon I gladly take this opportunity to beg those who shall
come after us never to believe that the things which they are
told come from me unless I have divulged them myself; and I am in
nowise astonished at the extravagances attributed to those old
philosophers whose writings have not come down to us. They were
the greatest minds of their time, but have been ill reported.
Why, I am sure that the most devoted of those who now follow
Aristotle would esteem themselves happy if they had as much
knowledge of nature as he had, even on the condition that they
should never have more! They are like ivy, which never mounts
higher than the trees which support it, and which even comes down
again after it has attained their summit. So at least, it seems
to me, do they who, not content with knowing all that is
explained by their author, would find in him the solution also of
many difficulties of which he says nothing, and of which,
perhaps, he never thought.
Yet their method of philosophising is very convenient for those
who have but middling minds, for the obscurity of the
distinctions and principles which they employ enables them to
speak of all things as boldly as if they had knowledge of them,
and sustain all they have to say against the most subtle and
skilful without there being any means of convincing them; wherein
they seem to me like a blind man who, in order to fight on equal
terms with a man who has his sight, invites him into the depths
of a cavern.
And I may say that it is to their interest that I should abstain
from publishing the principles of the philosophy which I employ,
for so simple and so evident are they that to publish them would
be like opening windows into their caverns and letting in the
day. But if they prefer acquaintance with a little truth, and
desire to follow a plan like mine, there is no need for me to say
to them any more in this discourse than I have already said.
For if they are capable of passing beyond what I have done, much
rather will they be able to discover for themselves whatever I
believe myself to have found out; besides which, the practice
which they will acquire in seeking out easy things and thence
passing to others which are more difficult, will stead them
better than all my instructions.
But if some of the matters spoken about at the beginning of the
Dioptrics and the Meteors [published with the Discourse on
Method] should at first give offence because I have called them
'suppositions,' and have shown no desire to prove them, let the
reader have patience to read the whole attentively, and I have
hope that he will be satisfied.
The time remaining to me I have resolved to employ in trying to
acquire some knowledge of nature, such that we may be able to
draw from it more certain rules for medicine than those which we
possess. And I hereby declare that I shall always hold myself
more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy my leisure
undisturbed than I should be to any who should offer me the most
esteemed employments in the world.
René DESCARTES
1596-1650
Descrates' memorial in the
Adolf Fredrik Kyrkogård in Stockholm,
his remains were later removed to Paris