Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	call_v	great_a	part_n	2,184	5	4.0120	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35745	A discourse of a method for the well guiding of reason, and the discovery of truth in the sciences; Discours de la méthode. English	Descartes, René, 1596-1650.	1649 (1649)	Wing D1129; ESTC R22748	43,779	138

understand wherein they might contribute to my designe And I thought it easie for me to choose some matters which being not subject to many Controversies nor obliging me to declare any more of my Principles then I would willingly would neverthelesse expresse clearly enough what my abilities or defects are in the Sciences Wherein I cannot say whether I have succeeded or no neither will I prevent the judgment of any man by speaking of my own Writings but I should be glad they might be examin'd and to that end I beseech all those who have any objections to make to take the pains to send them to my Stationer that I being advertised by him may endeavour at the same time to adjoyn my Answer thereunto and by that means the Reader seeing both the one and the other may the more easily judge of the Truth For I promise that I will never make any long Answers but only very freely confesse my own faults if I find them or if I cannot discover them plainly say what I shal think requisite in defence of what I have writ without adding the explanation of any new matter that I may not endlesly engage my self out of one into another Now if there be any whereof I have spoken in the beginning of the Opticks and of the Meteors which at first jarr by reason that I call them Suppositions and that I seem not willing to prove them let a man have but the tience to read the whole attentively and I hope he will rest satisfied For me thinks the reasons follow each other so closely that as the later are demonstrated by the former which are their Causes the former are reciprocally proved by the later which are their Effects And no man can imagine that I herein commit the fault which the Logicians call a Circle for experience rendring the greatest part of these effects most certain the causes whence I deduce them serve not so much to prove as to explain them but on the contrary they are those which are proved by them Neither named I them Suppositions that it might be known that I conceive my self able to deduce them from those first Truths which I have before discovered But that I would not expresly do it to crosse certain spirits who imagine that they know in a day al what another may have thought in twenty yeers as soon as he hath told them but two or three words and who are so much the more subject to erre and less capable of the Truth as they are more quick and penetrating from taking occasion of erecting some extravagant Philosophy on what they may beleeve to be my Principles and lest the fault should be attributed to me For as for those opinions which are wholly mine I excuse them not as being new because that if the reasons of them be seriously considered I assure my self they will be found so plain and so agreeable to common sense that they will seem less extraordinary and strange then any other which may be held on the same Subjects Neither do I boast that I am the first Inventor of any of them but of this indeed that I never admitted any of them neither because they had or had not been said by others but only because Reason perswaded me to them If Mechanicks cannot so soon put in practise the Invention which is set forth in the Opticks I beleeve that therefore men ought not to condemn it forasmuch as skill and practice are necessary for the making and compleating the Machines I have described so that no circumstrance should be wanting I should no less wonder if they should succeed at first triall then if a man should learn in a day to play excellently well on a Lute by having an exact piece set before him And if I write in French which is the language of my Country rather then in Latin which is that of my Tutors 't is because I hope such who use their meer naturall reason wil better judge of my opinions then those who only beleeve in old Books And for those who joyn a right understanding with study who I only wish for my Judges I assure my self they will not be so partiall to the Latin as to refuse to read my reasons because I expresse them in a vulgar tongue To conclude I will not speak here in particular of the progresse I hoped to make hereafter in Learning Nor engage my self by any promise to the Publick which I am not certain to perform But I shall onely say That I am resolved to employ the remainder of my life in no other thing but the study to acquire some such knowledge of Nature as may furnish us with more certain rules in Physick then we hitherto have had And that my inclination drives me so strongly from all other kind of designes chiefly from those which cannot be profitable to any but by prejudicing others that if any occasion obliged me to spend my time therein I should beleeve I should never succeed therein which I here declare though I well know it conduceth not to make me considerable in the world neither is it my ambition to be so And I shall esteem my self always more obliged to those by whose favour I shal without disturbance enjoy my ease then to them who should proffer me the most honourable imployment of the earth FINIS

wits but are capable to rank severall words together and of them to compose a Discourse by which they make known their thoughts and that on the contrary there is no other creature how perfect or happily soever brought forth which can do the like The which happens not because they want organs for we know that Pyes and Parrots can utter words even as we can and yet cannot speak like us that is to say with evidence that they think what they say Whereas Men being born deaf and dumb and deprived of those organs which seem to make others speak as much or more then beasts usually invent of themselves to be understood by those who commonly being with them have the leisure to learn their expressions And this not onely witnesseth that Beasts have lesse reason than men but that they have none at all For we see there needs not much to learn to speak and forasmuch as we observe inequality amongst Beasts of the same kind aswell as amongst men and that some are more easily managed then others 't is not to be believed but that an Ape or a Parrot which were the most perfect of its kinde should therein equall the most stupid child or at least a child of a distracted brain if their souls were not of a nature wholly different from ours And we ought not to confound words with naturall motions which witness passions and may be imitated by Machines aswell as by Animals nor think as some of the Ancients that beasts speak although we do not understand their language for if it were true since they have divers organs which relate to ours they could aswell make themselves understood by us as by their like It s likewise very remarkable that although there are divers creatures which express more industry then we in some one of their actions yet we may well perceive that the same shew none at all in many others So that what they do better then we proves not at all that they have reason for by that reckoning they would have more then any of us and would do better in all other things but rather that they have none at all and that its Nature onely which works in them according to the disposition of their organs As wee see a Clock which is onely composed of wheels and springs can reckon the hours and measure the times more exactly then we can with all our prudence After this I had described the reasonable Soul and made it appear that it could no ways be drawn from the power of the Matter as other things whereof I had spoken but that it ought to have been expresly created And how it suffiseth not for it to be lodg'd in our humane body as a Pilot in his ship to move its members onely but also that its necessary it be joyned and united more strongly therewith to have thoughts and appetites like ours and so make a real● man I have here dilated my self a little on the subject of the Soul by reason 't is of most importance for next the errour of those who deny God which I think I have already sufficiently confuted there is none which sooner estrangeth feeble minds from the right way of vertue then to imagine that the soul of beasts is of the same nature as ours and that consequently we have nothing to fear nor hope after this life no more then flies or ants Whereas when we know how different they are we comprehend much better the reasons which prove that ours is of a nature wholly independing from the body and consequently that it is not subject to die with it And that when we see no other cause which destroys it we are naturally thence moved to judge that it 's immortall PART VI ITs now three years since I ended the Treatise which contains all these things and that I began to review it to send it afterwards to the Presse when I understood that persons to whom I submit and whose authority can no lesse command my actions then my own Reason doth my thoughts had disapproved an opinion in Physicks published a little before by another of which I will not say that I was but that indeed I had observed nothing therein before their censure which I could have imagined prejudiciall either to Religion or the State or consequently which might have hindred me from writing the same had my Reason perswaded mee thereto And this made me fear lest in the same manner there might be found some one amongst mine in which I might have been mistaken notwithstanding the great care I always had to admit no new ones into my belief of which I had not most certain demonstrations and not to write such as might turn to the disadvantage of any body Which was sufficient to oblige me to change my resolution of publishing them For although the reasons for which I had first of all taken it were very strong yet my inclination which alwayes made me hate the trade of Book-making presently found me out others enough to excuse my self from it And these reasons on the one and other side are such that I am not only somewhat concern'd to speak them but happily the Publick also to know them I never did much esteem those things which proceeded from mine own brain and so long as I have gathered no other fruits from the Method I use but onely that I have satisfied my self in some difficulties which belong to speculative Sciences or at least endeavoured to regulate my Manners by the reasons it taught me I thought my self not obliged to write any thing of them For as for what concerns Manners every one abounds so much in his own sense That we may finde as many Reformers as heads were it permitted to others besides those whom God hath established as Soveraigns over his people or at least to whom he hath dispensed grace and zeal enough to be Prophets to undertake the change of any thing therein And although my Speculations did very much please me I did beleeve that other men also had some which perhaps pleas'd them more But as soon as I had acquired some generall notions touching naturall Philosophy and beginning to prove them in divers particular difficulties I observed how far they might lead a man and how far different they were from the principles which to this day are in use I judg'd that I could not keep them hid without highly sinning against the Law which obligeth us to procure as much as in us lies the general good of all men For they made it appear to me that it was possible to attain to points of knowledge which may be very profitable for this life and that in stead of this speculative Philosophy which is taught in the Schools we might finde out a practicall one by which knowing the force and workings of Fire Water Air of the Starrs of the Heavens and of all other Bodies which environ us distinctly as we know the several trades of our Handicrafts