A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason: and the Discovery of Truth in the SciencesDescartes, René
PhilosophyPhilosophy
A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason: and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences
Descartes, René
Methodology; Science -- Methodology
From the description of inanimate Bodies and Plants, I pass'd to that of
Animals, and particularly to that of Men. But because I had not yet
knowledge enough to speak of them in the same stile as of the others; to
wit, in demonstrating effects by their causes, and shewing from what
seeds, and in what manner Nature ought to produce them; I contented my
self to suppose, That God form'd the body of a Man altogether like one
of ours; aswel the exteriour figure of its members, as in the interiour
conformity of its organs; without framing it of other matter then of
that which I had described; and without putting in it at the beginning
any reasonable soul, or any other thing to serve therein for a
vegetative or sensitive soul; unless he stirr'd up in his heart one of
those fires without light which I had already discovered; and that I
conceiv'd of no other nature but that which heats hay when its housed
before it be dry, or which causes new Wines to boyl when it works upon
the grape: For examining the functions which might be consequently in
this body, I exactly found all those which may be in us, without our
thinking of them; and to which our soul (that is to say, that distinct
part from our bodies, whose nature (as hath been said before) is onely
to think) consequently doth not contribute, and which are all the same
wherein we may say unreasonable creatures resemble us. Yet could I not
finde any, of those which depending from the thought, are the onely ones
which belong unto us as Men; whereas I found them all afterwards, having
supposed that God created a reasonable soul, and that he joyn'd it to
this body, after a certain manner which I describ'd.
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