A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason / and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences

And considering how many different opinions there may be on the same thing, maintain’d by learned Men, and yet that there never can be but one only Truth, I reputed almost all false, which had no more then probability in it.

I hope it will be profitable to some, without being hurtfull to any; and that the liberty I take will be gratefull to all.

Those who have the strongest reasoning faculties, and who best digest their thoughts, to render them the more clear and intelligible, may always the better perswade what they propose, although they should speak but a corrupt dialect, and had never learnt Rhetorick: And those whose inventions are most pleasing, and can express them with most ornament and sweetness, will still be the best Poets; although ignorant of the Art of Poetry.

For ’tis not enough to have good faculties, but the principal is, to apply them well.

The greatest Souls are as capable of the greatest Vices, as of the most eminent Vertues: And those who move but very slowly, may advance much farther, if they always follow the right way; then those who run and straggle from it.

I learn’d to beleeve nothing too firmly, of what had been onely perswaded me by example or by custom, and so by little and little I freed my self from many errors, which might eclipse our naturall light, and render us lesse able to comprehend reason.

distinguish Truth from Falshood, that I might see cleerly into my actions, and passe this life with assurance.

And I had always an extreme desire to learn to distin

Beyond all, I was most pleas’d with the Mathematicks, for the certainty and evidence of the reasons thereof; but I did not yet observe their true use, and thinking that it served only for Mechanick Arts; I wondred, that since the grounds thereof were so firm and solid, that nothing more sublime had been built thereon. As on the contrary, I compar’d the writings of the Ancient heathen

neither change or augment the value of things, to render them the
more worthy