ne truth from
another. And I had little difficulty in determining the objects with
which it was necessary to commence, for I was already persuaded that it
must be with the simplest and easiest to know, and, considering that of
all those who have hitherto sought truth in the Sciences, the
mathematicians alone have been able to find any demonstrations,--that
is, any certain and evident reasons,--I did not doubt but that such must
have been the rule of their investigations. I resolved to commence,
therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects, not
anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be
found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth, and
to a distaste for all such reasonings as were unsound. But I had no
intention on that account of attempting to master all the particular
sciences commonly denominated Mathematics: but observing that however
different their objects, they all agree in considering only the various
relations or proportions subsisting among those objects, I thought it
best for my purpose to consider these proportions in the most general
form possible; without referring them to any objects in particular,
except such as would most facilitate the knowledge of them, and without
by any means restricting them to these, that afterwards I might thus be
the better able to apply them to every other class of objects to which
they are legitimately applicable. Perceiving, further, that in order to
understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one
by one, and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the
aggregate, I thought that in order the better to consider them
individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines,
than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more
distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other
hand, that in order to retain them in the memory, or embrace an
aggregate of many, I should express them by certain characters the
briefest possible. In this way I believed that I could borrow all that
was best both in geometrical analysis and in algebra, and correct all
the defects of the one by help of the other.

AN ELEMENTARY METHOD OF INQUIRY

From the 'Discourse on Method'

Seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose
that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and
because some men err in reasoning a