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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: that both were gifts of nature rather than fruits of study. Those in whom
the faculty of reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their
thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the
best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though
they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly
ignorant of the rules of rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with
the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the
greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though
unacquainted with the art of poetry.
I was especially delighted with the mathematics, on account of the
certitude and evidence of their reasonings; but I had not as yet a
 Reason Discourse |