Further, to enable me to cast this variety of subjects somewhat into the shade, and to express my judgment regarding them with greater freedom, without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned, I resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes, and to speak only of what would happen in a new world, if God were now to create somewhere in the imaginary spaces matter sufficient to compose one, and were to agitate variously and confusedly the different parts of this matter, so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned, and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary concurrence to nature, and allow her to act in accordance with the laws which he had established.

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René Descartes

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June l1th [of 1853]. George Sna-te-lum is chief of the Skagits and is encamped near by. But as Sla-hai is half Kikealis, I took the opportunity of arresting Patch-ka-num, chief of the Kikealis, just as he was landing. In the meanwhile Sna-te-lum, whom I had told Capt. Fay to watch, wisely decamped into the woods. I had put Patch-ka-num into a tent with a sentinel. He took the first opportunity to strip himself, and with a sudden dart he split open the back of the tent with his knife, and with nothing on but a shirt he ran swifter than a deer over the logs and along the beach. He was pursued by the sergeant and the sentinel, but they had no orders to fire, as a collision was not desirable, but this the Indian probably expected or he would not have attempted to escape. A returning hunting party forced him into the woods and it was useless to follow him. I soon realized my mistake in making such a half-hearted arrest in deference to Capt. Fay’s opinion. I should not have made any or have made it in earnest. Fay, however, maintained that the moral effect on the Indians was just as good, and would probably lead to the ultimate surrender of Sla-hai.

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Discourse on the Method (Veitch translation)

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On this supposition, I, in the first place, described this matter, and essayed to represent it in such a manner that to my mind there can be nothing clearer and more intelligible, except what has been recently said regarding God and the soul; for I even expressly supposed that it possessed none of those forms or qualities which are so debated in the Schools, nor in general anything the knowledge of which is not so natural to our minds that no one can so much as imagine himself ignorant of it.

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But like the painters who, finding themselves unable to represent equally well on a plain surface all the different faces of a solid body, select one of the chief, on which alone they make the light fall, and throwing the rest into the shade, allow them to appear only in so far as they can be seen while looking at the principal one; so, fearing lest I should not be able to comprise in my discourse all that was in my mind, I resolved to expound singly, though at considerable length, my opinions regarding light; then to take the opportunity of adding something on the sun and the fixed stars, since light almost wholly proceeds from them; on the heavens since they transmit it; on the planets, comets, and earth, since they reflect it; and particularly on all the bodies that are upon the earth, since they are either coloured, or transparent, or luminous; and finally on man, since he is the spectator of these objects.