A French thinker faces the same problem. René Descartes at first sight is everything that Bacon is not; whilst the English philosopher is a mixture of recklessness and worldly wisdom, anxious to enjoy everything that power and wealth can beget, and drink to the dregs the cup of life, the French metaphysician recoils from the cares of power and the noisy turmoil of society. A longer consideration, specially from a more philosophic point of view, reveals affinities that were going to tell on their theories. Both lack the youthful enthusiasm common to German and Italian thinkers, and both give shape to their theories with a cautious prudence that marks them as men of the world. Their conclusions betray their divergencies and affinities much better than any analysis of their life and character could; for Descartes certitude is reached by way of induction when in the silence of meditation he comes to his famous statement _Cogito, ergo sum_. The touchstone of certitude is identified with the actual consciousness of man in the act of thinking. If I think surely I am; but of the rest, that is to say of the knowledge of the exterior world I have no control, and traditional science is communicated to me and was originally obtained through the senses just as my actual objective knowledge, therefore it cannot be accepted as certain. Aristotle and all the traditional fetishism come to nought. The _tabula rasa_ is implied as definitely in this as in Bacon’s work; in both cases man must begin his work from the foundation and put to the test of his own experience, empirical in one case, rational in the other, the legacies of his predecessors. The difference however implied in the terms empirical and rational is fundamental and the pedagogy and politics grounded on English philosophy whilst laying down rules and formulas inferred from systematic theories, will always be susceptible of being tempered by a direct call to experience and commonsense. The rationality of French philosophy does not allow of such adaptation. To this day the cogency for good or bad which is characteristic of French theories is the consequence of their perfect deduction from a first principle; hence the radicalness that mars some of their practical application. With the exception of men greatly influenced by foreign philosophy, the French thinkers all took reality as being Rational Reality; and all their systems were bound to be radical in their applications.