Discourse on the method for conducting one's reason

The king’s privilege, placed in the Dutch bookseller, led to the printing of Descartes’s philosophical essays after he had left Leiden.

The 4 treatises came out of the press on June 8, 1637.

But its title was different from the one Descartes had sent to Father Mersenne for the Paris edition: “Discourse on the method for rightly conducting one’s reason, and seeking truth in the sciences. Plus, the Dioptrics, the Meteors, and the Geometry, which are essays of this method.”

He begins on the method with considerations on the sciences.

He then proposes the main rules of the method that he sought for his particular use in the manner of conducting his reason.

After, he puts forward some maxims of morality that he drew from this method. Then he makes a deduction of the reasons by which he proves the existence of God, and of the human soul, which are the foundations of his metaphysics.

One sees there then the order of the questions of physics that he sought, and particularly the explanation of the movement of the heart, and of some other difficulties that concern medicine, with the difference that is found between our soul and that of the beasts.

Lastly, he makes a deduction of the things that he believes are required to go further in the search for nature than had been done until then. He ends by protesting that all his views only tend to the utility of the neighbor, but that he is very far from ever wanting to apply himself “to what can only be useful to some by harming others,” asking for all recognition from those who were to profit from his researches, only the freedom to enjoy his leisure without trouble.

Several have considered this discourse on the method of Mr. Descartes as the logic of his philosophy: and it is difficult not to be of their opinion, when one considers that the end of his method is none other than to form the judgment, and to prescribe rules to the mind to conduct itself.

Some have claimed that the true logic of Mr. Descartes was none other than his geometry, because they regarded it as the key to all liberal arts, and to all sciences.

They supposed in this thought that without the help of any other rule or knowledge that one should have learned beforehand, it can alone serve not only to make us judge very happily of all that concerns philosophy, but also to make a just and certain test of the inventions of others, and to examine what is defective and superfluous in what has appeared until now, and what remains to be added to carry the sciences and arts to their perfection, and to acquire them.

Others have estimated that the true logic of Mr. Descartes is properly the treatise that he gave three years after under the title of metaphysical meditations, because it is there mainly, where after having proposed the stripping of all prejudice and all knowledge acquired by education, custom, and authority, he establishes thought as the great principle on which he wanted to build all his philosophy. Mr. Gassendi who is one of the main authors of this opinion took the trouble to reduce this work to its main points, and to make a summary of it, which he titled Logica Cartesii.

Other authors said that the logic of Descartes was new.

For example, Father Rapin heard it said that Descartes had begun a logic, but that he had not finished it.

Descartes’ disciple, Mr. Clerselier, had all that Descartes had ever written.

But as long as the work concerning the direction of the human mind in the search for truth remains buried in darkness, it will be permitted to us to regard the discourse that he published on his method as his true logic. It must be admitted that it is only a sketch of a just dialectic, of which he was content to give some traits.

He did not pretend to form the mind there in all its functions, whether for the sciences, or for civil life; but to teach it only to discover certain truths by the sole natural light. It is claimed nevertheless that this little that he gave, deserves better the name of logic or entry to philosophy and to all other sciences, than the organon of Aristotle, because that is simpler and less metaphysical, and that it seems more proper to minds that are not yet prejudiced by any knowledge.

But what Descartes was content to sketch, has since been carried to its perfection by his disciples: and after what Clauberg, professor of Duysburg in Germany, and mainly the author of “The Art of Thinking” in France have published on this subject, it is no longer permitted to complain that the philosophy of Mr. Descartes is destitute of a regular and methodical logic.

I very willingly leave to the followers of our philosopher the care of making us see the advantages of his method above the organon of Aristotle, and of all other logics. They have not had great reason to be accused of negligence on this point until now.

But it must be admitted that what his adversaries have recognized as singular and of excellent merit is still more worthy of attention. They agree among themselves that what Mr. Descartes proposes in this discourse is not badly imagined; and that although it is new, nothing odious appears in it, nor anything that repels our mind.

They recognize that not one of the moderns has thought better than he, and that a depth of meditation is found in it that is particular to him. If they are divided in their opinions, it is to say with H. Moore, that he shows a modesty of mind that makes him lovable, and a greatness of soul that makes him admired: or with Father Rapin, that traits of sincerity are found in it that discover the true foundation of his mind, especially in places similar to the one where he says that one acquires by philosophy only the means of speaking plausibly of all things, and of making oneself admired by the least learned.

The defects of this treatise are perhaps the same as those that one is accustomed to remark in the works that the authors have first made only for themselves, and which owe their publication only to chance. For it is good to warn those who have suspected Mr. Descartes of having wanted to act as a master and a doctor in this treatise, that it is not a method that he had ever had the thought of prescribing to others, but that he had followed himself, by the right that the freedom to conduct himself according to the natural lights that he had received from God gave him. His adversaries have found in this discourse on the method less order, less regularity, than in the organon of Aristotle; and they have believed that it was the least methodical of his works.

Also, it must be admitted that it is less a dogmatic treatise on his philosophy, than a familiar narration of his studies and his imaginations, which he believed he should write in a simple and neglected style, to be clearer, and to make himself more intelligible to the most mediocre minds. But no one deserves to be listened to better on the defects of this treatise than he himself. He counted for nothing this supposed negligence that his adversaries perceived there, and this confusion that the mixture of moral, physical, and metaphysical matters seemed to produce there. He appeared indifferent to these defects, if one excepts the obscurity, which he recognized in the article where he had tried to speak of the existence of God. Here is how he excused himself to a Jesuit father who had rendered him very advantageous testimonies of this treatise, and of the others that he had joined to it. It is true that I was too obscure in what I wrote about the existence of God, in this treatise on the method. And although it is the most important piece, I admit that it is the least worked of the whole work: which comes in part from the fact that I only resolved to join it there at the end, and when the bookseller was pressing me.

But the main cause of its obscurity comes from the fact that I did not dare to expand on the reasons of the skeptics, nor to say all the things that are necessary to disengage the mind from the senses. For it is not possible to know well the certainty and the evidence of the reasons that prove the existence of God according to my manner, than by remembering distinctly those that make us notice uncertainty in all the knowledge that we have of material things: and these thoughts did not appear to me proper to put in a book, where I wanted even women to be able to understand something, while the most subtle would also find enough matter to occupy their attention. I also admit that this obscurity comes in part, as you have very well remarked, from the fact that I supposed that certain notions, that the habit of thinking has made familiar and evident to me, should also be to others: on which I proposed to give some clarifications in a second impression.

Those who will find in this discourse on the method other places that they will judge to need clarification, can be referred to the commentaries that have been made by the Cartesians to explain them. The most important of the works that have appeared on this subject, are the book of Sieur Clauberg, professor of Duysburg, who published two years after the death of our philosopher in Amsterdam an ample exposition of his method, with defenses against Revius and Lentz or Lentulus; and that of Father Poisson, a priest of the Oratory, who had printed in Vendôme in 1670 the remarks he had made on this method.

It was not enough that the adversaries of Mr. Descartes believed or wanted to make it believed that he knew no other “logic” than what he retails in his method: it was still necessary that they published that he had no other “morality” than the four maxims that he had prescribed to himself for the particular conduct of his life, and that we have reported at the end of the fifth chapter of the first book of this work. If he had pretended to make the first of these maxims general and common to all kinds of people, it must be admitted that it would be done with his reputation among Christians.

It consists in obeying the laws of one’s country; in living in the religion of one’s fathers; in following a way of life that is equally distant from the two extremities. There is none of these three conditions that can make this maxim rejected as pernicious, if one considers that Mr. Descartes only established it for a man quite similar to him, that is to say for a Frenchman, for a Catholic, and for a philosopher of common life whom God did not lead by the ways of Chasteuil, Pont-Château, La Trappe, and the other French hermits, whom providence chose among the nobility and the learned, to make examples of the most severe practice of the evangelical counsels.

Descartes had received this maxim only for himself; and he would have been the first to condemn it in a man who would have had other qualities, other commitments, and other dispositions than he. This is what his adversaries have neglected to pay attention to. But without dwelling on their procedure, let us be content to let them know that the four maxims of morality that are found in the method of Mr. Descartes, as excellent as they are, have never passed in his mind for a regular and accomplished body of moral philosophy. Persuaded that he had no vocation to give laws to others, he always remained subject to those who were legitimately prescribed to him: and one can assure that he never embraced or retailed any other moral philosophy, than that of St. Thomas who was his favorite author, and almost the only theologian he had ever wanted to study.