DISCOURSE

ON METHOD 1

FIRST PART

Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world: for everyone thinks they are so well provided with it that even those who are the most difficult to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. In this, it is unlikely that everyone is mistaken; rather, it testifies

1. The Discourse on Method, written in French by Descartes, appeared for the first? time with the Dioptrics, the Meteorology, and the Geometry, in a quarto volume original: "in-4°"; a book size where each sheet is folded twice to form four leaves. published in Leiden in 1637. It is the text of this edition that we have followed, though we have guided ourselves, for spelling, by the French edition of 1668, which is more correct and regular.
2. If this discourse seems too long to be read all at once, it can be divided into six parts. And in the first, one will find various considerations regarding the sciences. In the second, the principal rules of the Method that the author has sought. In the third, some of the rules of morality that he has derived from this Method. In the fourth, the reasons by which he proves the existence of God and of the human soul, which are the foundations of his metaphysics. In the fifth, the order of the questions of physics that he has investigated, and particularly the explanation of the movement of the heart and some other difficulties belonging to medicine, as well as the difference between our soul and that of the beasts. And in the last part, what things he believes are required to go further in the investigation of nature than he has, and what reasons led him to write. — (Note placed by Descartes at the beginning of the DISCOURSE ON METHOD).

René Descartes, Discourse on Method, good sense, reason, truth, sciences, Dioptrics, Meteorology, Geometry, metaphysics, God, soul