The philosophy of Descartes Author:René Descartes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES AND ITS INFLUENCE. The thinking of Descartes, by general consent, marks the beginning of modern speculative philosophy. If origina... more »lity be a test of intellectual greatness, there are but few thinkers in ancient or modern times who can be placed alongside of this remarkable man. The seclusion in which Descartes sought steadfastly to spend his days was merely intended to promote the deeper seclusion of his intellectual life. He desired a first free look at the world, without and within, uninfluenced by the present, untrammeled by the past. Of course it was a vain desire. From the past came down to him the problems which still awaited solution, and the particular form in which they presented themselves was determined by the times in which he lived. The very discipline in the course of which he became aware of them, and by which his mind was prepared to deal with them, precluded a purely individual result, nor would such a result, if attainable, have been of great value. Pure, absolute originality in thought is no more possible than abstract individuality of existence. What Descartes says of himself was therefore not quite true, that had his father given him no education, he should have written the same works, only he should have written all in French. It is safe to say that, but for that scholastic training, he would have written nothing of account, and his name would not have survived the century in which he lived. For the studies which absorbed his eager mind at the college of LaFleche brought to his attention the deepest problems of existence and determined him to that lonely career the single object of which was to solve them. And with such originality and independence as is compatible with that organic connection with other minds, whereby the tho...« less