Discourse on the Method of Reasoning | Page 6

as soon as my age permitted me to pass from under
the control of my instructors, I entirely abandoned the study of letters,
and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of
myself, or of the great book of the world. I spent the remainder of my
youth in traveling, in visiting courts and armies, in holding intercourse
with men of different dispositions and ranks, in collecting varied
experience, in proving myself in the different situations into which
fortune threw me, and, above all, in making such reflection on the
matter of my experience as to secure my improvement. For it occurred
to me that I should find much more truth in the reasonings of each
individual with reference to the affairs in which he is personally
interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has
judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study,
regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and
followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they
foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common
sense; requiring, as they must in this case, the exercise of greater
ingenuity and art to render them probable. In addition, I had always a
most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false,
in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life,
and proceed in it with confidence.
It is true that, while busied only in considering the manners of other
men, I found here, too, scarce any ground for settled conviction, and
remarked hardly less contradiction among them than in the opinions of
the philosophers. So that the greatest advantage I derived from the
study consisted in this, that, observing many things which, however
extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension, are yet by common
consent received and approved by other great nations, I learned to

entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which
I had been persuaded merely by example and custom; and thus I
gradually extricated myself from many errors powerful enough to
darken our natural intelligence, and incapacitate us in great measure
from listening to reason. But after I had been occupied several years in
thus studying the book of the world, and in essaying to gather some
experience, I at length resolved to make myself an object of study, and
to employ all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths I ought to
follow, an undertaking which was accompanied with greater success
than it would have been had I never quitted my country or my books.


PART II
I was then in Germany, attracted thither by the wars in that country,
which have not yet been brought to a termination; and as I was
returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor, the setting in
of winter arrested me in a locality where, as I found no society to
interest me, and was besides fortunately undisturbed by any cares or
passions, I remained the whole day in seclusion, with full opportunity
to occupy my attention with my own thoughts. Of these one of the very
first that occurred to me was, that there is seldom so much perfection in
works composed of many separate parts, upon which different hands
had been employed, as in those completed by a single master. Thus it is
observable that the buildings which a single architect has planned and
executed, are generally more elegant and commodious than those
which several have attempted to improve, by making old walls serve
for purposes for which they were not originally built. Thus also, those
ancient cities which, from being at first only villages, have become, in
course of time, large towns, are usually but ill laid out compared with
the regularity constructed towns which a professional architect has
freely planned on an open plain; so that although the several buildings
of the former may often equal or surpass in beauty those of the latter,
yet when one observes their indiscriminate juxtaposition, there a large

one and here a small, and the consequent crookedness and irregularity
of the streets, one is disposed to allege that chance rather than any
human will guided by reason must have led to such an arrangement.
And if we consider that nevertheless there have been at all times certain
officers whose duty it was to see that private buildings contributed to
public ornament, the difficulty of reaching high perfection with but the
materials of others to operate on, will be readily acknowledged. In the
same way I fancied that those nations which, starting from a
semi-barbarous state and advancing to civilization by slow degrees,
have had their laws