John ShaqiResearch Library

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The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I

History

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I

Authors -- Biography; Literature -- Collections

God Almightly had order'd all things as it has best pleased Him; but I
have in my time seen three of the most execrable persons that ever I
knew in all manners of abominable living, and the most infamous to
boot, who all dy'd a very regular death, and in all circumstances
compos'd even to perfection. There are brave, and fortunate deaths. I
have seen death cut the thread of the progress of a prodigious
advancement, and in the height and flower of its increase of a certain
person, with so glorious an end, that in my opinion his ambitious and
generous designs had nothing in them so high and great as their
interruption; and he arrived without completing his course, at the
place to which his ambition pretended with greater glory than he could
himself either hope or desire, and anticipated by his fall the name
and power to which he aspir'd, by perfecting his career. In the
judgment I make of another man's life, I always observe how he carried
himself at his death; and the principal concern I have for my own is
that I may die handsomely; that is, patiently and without noise.




RENÉ DESCARTES

     Born in Touraine in 1596, died in Stockholm in 1650; founder
     of modern general philosophy; educated at a Jesuit college
     in France; lived in Paris in 1613-18; at the siege of La
     Rochelle in 1628; in retirement in Holland in 1629-49;
     defending his philosophical ideas; his first famous work,
     "Discours de la Methode," published in Leyden in 1637;
     published "Meditations of Philosophy" in 1641; a treatise on
     the passion of love in 1649; other works published after his
     death; famous as a mathematician as well as philosopher, his
     geometry being still standard in Europe.




OF MATERIAL THINGS AND OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD[25]


Several questions remain for consideration respecting the attributes
of God and my own nature or mind. I will, however, on some other
occasion perhaps resume the investigation of these. Meanwhile, as I
have discovered what must be done and what avoided to arrive at the
knowledge of truth, what I have chiefly to do is to essay to emerge
from the state of doubt in which I have for some time been, and to
discover whether anything can be known with certainty regarding
material objects. But before considering whether such objects as I
conceive exist without me, I must examine their ideas in so far as
these are to be found in my consciousness, and discover which of them
are distinct and which confused.

[Footnote 25: From the "Meditations," translated by John Veitch.]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

History

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I

Authors -- Biography; Literature -- Collections

God Almightly had order'd all things as it has best pleased Him; but I
have in my time seen three of the most execrable persons that ever I
knew in all manners of abominable living, and the most infamous to
boot, who all dy'd a very regular death, and in all circumstances
compos'd even to perfection. There are brave, and fortunate deaths. I
have seen death cut the thread of the progress of a prodigious
advancement, and in the height and flower of its increase of a certain
person, with so glorious an end, that in my opinion his ambitious and
generous designs had nothing in them so high and great as their
interruption; and he arrived without completing his course, at the
place to which his ambition pretended with greater glory than he could
himself either hope or desire, and anticipated by his fall the name
and power to which he aspir'd, by perfecting his career. In the
judgment I make of another man's life, I always observe how he carried
himself at his death; and the principal concern I have for my own is
that I may die handsomely; that is, patiently and without noise.




RENÉ DESCARTES

     Born in Touraine in 1596, died in Stockholm in 1650; founder
     of modern general philosophy; educated at a Jesuit college
     in France; lived in Paris in 1613-18; at the siege of La
     Rochelle in 1628; in retirement in Holland in 1629-49;
     defending his philosophical ideas; his first famous work,
     "Discours de la Methode," published in Leyden in 1637;
     published "Meditations of Philosophy" in 1641; a treatise on
     the passion of love in 1649; other works published after his
     death; famous as a mathematician as well as philosopher, his
     geometry being still standard in Europe.




OF MATERIAL THINGS AND OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD[25]


Several questions remain for consideration respecting the attributes
of God and my own nature or mind. I will, however, on some other
occasion perhaps resume the investigation of these. Meanwhile, as I
have discovered what must be done and what avoided to arrive at the
knowledge of truth, what I have chiefly to do is to essay to emerge
from the state of doubt in which I have for some time been, and to
discover whether anything can be known with certainty regarding
material objects. But before considering whether such objects as I
conceive exist without me, I must examine their ideas in so far as
these are to be found in my consciousness, and discover which of them
are distinct and which confused.

[Footnote 25: From the "Meditations," translated by John Veitch.]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I

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