Discourse on the Method, part 2, ¶ 1-9

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René Descartes

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Elnath (stars.astro.illinois.edu) ELNATH (Beta Tauri). Equally well called El Nath, Elnath lies at the tip of the great northern horn of Taurus, the Bull.

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Discourse on the Method (Veitch translation)

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And because we have all to pass through a state of infancy to manhood, and have been of necessity, for a length of time, governed by our desires and preceptors, (whose dictates were frequently conflicting, while neither perhaps always counselled us for the best,) I farther concluded that it is almost impossible that our judgments can be so correct or solid as they would have been, had our Reason been mature from the moment of our birth, and had we always been guided by it alone.

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And, to speak of human affairs, I believe that the past pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in particular, for many of these were very strange, and even opposed to good morals, but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to a single end.