The beginning of part 2 of discourse on the method by rene descartes

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 successively determined,

and, as it were, forced upon them simply by experience of the hurtfulness

of particular crimes and disputes, would by this process come to be

possessed of less perfect institutions than those which, from the commencement

of their association as communities, have followed the appointments

of some wise legislator.

It is thus quite certain that the constitution

of the true religion, the ordinances of which are derived from

God, must be incomparably superior to that of every other. And, to

speak of human affairs, I believe that the pre-eminence of Sparta was

due not to the goodness of each of its laws in particular, for many of

these were very strange, and even opposed to good morals, but to the

circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to a

single end.

In the same way I thought that the sciences contained in

books (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings,

without demonstrations), composed as they are of the opinions of many

different individuals massed together, are farther removed from truth

than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural

and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.

And because we have all to pass through a state of infancy to manhood,

and have been of necessity, for a length of time, governed by our

desires and preceptors (whose dictates were frequently conflicting, while

neither perhaps always counseled us for the best), I farther concluded

that it is almost impossible that our judgments can be so correct or solid

as they would have been, had our reason been mature from the moment

of our birth, and had we always been guided by it alone.

It is true, however, that it is not customary to pull down all the houses

of a town with the single design of rebuilding them differently, and

thereby rendering the streets more handsome; but it often happens that a

private individual takes down his own with the view of erecting it anew,

and that people are even sometimes constrained to this when their

houses are in danger of falling from age, or when the foundations are insecure.

With this before me by way of example, I was persuaded that it

would indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think of reforming

a state by fundamentally changing it throughout, and overturning

it in order to set it up amended; and the same I thought was true of

any similar project for reforming the body of the sciences, or the order of

teaching them established in the schools: but as for the opinions which

up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than

resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be

in a position to admit either others more correct, or even perhaps the

same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason.

I firmly believed

that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life,

than if I built only upon old foundations, and leaned upon principles

which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.

For although I recognized

various difficulties in this undertaking, these were not, however, without

remedy, nor once to be compared with such as attend the slightest reformation

in public affairs. Large bodies, if once overthrown, are with

great difficulty set up again, or even kept erect when once seriously

shaken, and the fall of such is always disastrous.