and is a sign of the new self-confidence that resulted from the progress of science. There is a
freshness about his work that is not to be found in any eminent previous philosopher since
Plato. All the intermediate philosophers were teachers, with the professional superiority
belonging to that avocation. Descartes writes, not as a teacher, but as a discoverer and explorer,
anxious to communicate what he has found. His style is easy and unpedantic, addressed to
intelligent men of the world rather than to pupils. It is, moreover, an extraordinarily excellent
style. It is very fortunate for modern philosophy that the pioneer had such admirable literary
sense. His successors, both on the Continent and in England, until Kant, retain his
unprofessional character, and several of them retain something of his stylistic merit.
Descartes's father was a councillor of the Parlement of Brittany, and possessed a moderate
amount of landed property. When Descartes inherited, at his father's death, he sold his estates,
and invested the money, obtaining an income of six or seven thousand francs a year. He was
educated, from 1604 to 1612, at the Jesuit college of La Flà ̈che, which seems to have given
him a much better grounding in modern mathematics than he could have got at most
universities at that time. In 1612 he went to Paris, where he found social life boring, and retired
to a secluded retreat in the Faubourg Saint Germain, in which he worked at geometry. Friends
nosed him out, however, so, to secure more complete quiet, he enlisted in the Dutch army
( 1617). As Holland was at peace at the time, he seems to have enjoyed two years of
undisturbed meditation. However, the coming of the Thirty Years' War led him to enlist in the
Bavarian army ( 1619). It was in Bavaria, during the winter 1619-70, that he had the experience
he describes in the Discours de la Méthode. The weather being cold, he got into a stove * in
the morning, and stayed there all day meditating; by his own account, his philosophy was half
finished when he came out, but this need not be accepted too literally. Socrates used to meditate
all day in the snow, but Descartes's mind only worked when he was warm.
In 1621 he gave up fighting; after a visit to Italy, he settled in Paris
* Descartes says it was a stove (poêle), but most commentators think this impossible. Those
who know old-fashioned Bavarian houses, however, assure me that it is entirely credible.