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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, before I set myself to write it, I thought I knew of the nature of
material objects. 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 compense 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
Reason Discourse |
