DISCOURSE ON THE METHOD

11

but it is clearly seen that many have their houses torn down in order to rebuild them, and that sometimes they are even forced to do so when the buildings are in danger of falling on their own and when their foundations are not very firm. Following this example, I became persuaded that there was truly no reason for an individual to set out to reform a State Descartes is careful to distinguish his private intellectual project from political revolution, likely to avoid trouble with the authorities of his time. by changing everything from the foundations and overturning it to set it right again; nor even to reform the body of the sciences or the established order in the schools A reference to the Scholastic system of education dominant in 17th-century universities. for teaching them. But, as for all the opinions I had received until then into my belief, I could do no better than to undertake, once and for all, to remove them, so that I might later replace them with other, better ones, or even with the same ones, once I had adjusted them to the level of reason; and I firmly believed that by this means I would succeed in conducting my life much better than if I only built on old foundations and relied only on the principles that I had allowed myself to be persuaded of in my youth, without ever having examined whether they were true. For although I noticed various difficulties in this, they were not, however, without remedy, nor comparable to those found in the reform of the slightest things affecting the public. These great bodies Referring here to large public institutions or social structures. are too difficult to raise up once they have been cast down, or even to hold up once they have been shaken, and their falls can only be very harsh. Furthermore, as for their imperfections, if they have any—and the mere diversity existing between them is enough to ensure that many do—custom has undoubtedly greatly softened them, and has even insensibly avoided or corrected many of them that could not be so well provided for by prudence original: "prudénce"; and finally, they are almost always more bearable than their change would be. In the same way, the great roads that wind between mountains become, little by little, so smooth and convenient through frequent use that it is much better to follow them than to try to go more directly by climbing over rocks and descending to the bottom of precipices.

This is why I could in no way approve of those meddlesome and restless temperaments Descartes distances himself from political agitators or "mouvers of sedition." who, being called neither by birth nor by fortune to the handling of public affairs, never fail to always carry out some new reformation in their imagination; and if I thought there were the slightest thing in this writing by which I could be suspected of such folly, I would be very sorry to allow it to be published. My design has never extended further than trying to reform my own thoughts and to build on a foundation that is entirely my own. And if, my work having pleased me enough, I show you the model of it here, it is not