596, nearly three hundred years ago, of a noble family in
Touraine, Rene Descartes grew up into a sickly and diminutive child,
whose keen wit soon gained him that title of "the Philosopher," which,
in the mouths of his noble kinsmen, was more than, half a reproach. The
best schoolmasters of the day, the Jesuits, educated him as well as a
French boy of the seventeenth century could be educated. And they must
have done their work honestly and well, for, before his schoolboy days
were over, he had discovered that the most of what he had learned,
except in mathematics, was devoid of solid and real value.

"Therefore," says he, in that "Discourse"[69] which I have taken
for my text, "as soon as I was old enough to be set free from the
government of my teachers, I entirely forsook the study of letters;
and determining to seek no other knowledge than that which I could
discover within myself, or in the great book of the world, I spent
the remainder of my youth in travelling; in seeing courts and
armies; in the society of people of different humours and
conditions; in gathering varied experience; in testing myself by
the chances of fortune; and in always trying to profit by my
reflections on what happened.... And I always had an intense desire
to learn how to distinguish truth from falsehood, in order to be
clear about my actions, and to walk surefootedly in this life."

But "learn what is true, in order to do what is right," is the summing
up of the whole duty of man, for all who are unable to satisfy their
mental hunger with the east wind of authority; and to those of us
moderns who are in this position, it is one of Descartes' great claims
to our reverence as a spiritual ancestor, that, at three-and-twenty, he
saw clearly that this was his duty, and acted up to his conviction. At
two-and-thirty, in fact, finding all other occupations incompatible with
the search after the knowledge which leads to action, and being
possessed of a modest competence, he withdrew into Holland; where he
spent nine years in learning and thinking, in such retirement that only
one or two trusted friends knew of his whereabouts.

In 1637 the firstfruits of these long meditations were given to the
world in the famous "Discourse touching the Method of using Reason
rightly and of seeking scientific Truth," which, at once an
autobiography and a philosophy, clothes the deepest thought in languag