Discuss the passages below. How can the ideas expressed in these passages, taken from the beginning and the end of the Discourse on Method, be reconciled?
From Parts 1 and 2:
“Thus my purpose here is not to teach the method that everyone ought to follow in order to conduct his reason well, but merely to show how I have tried to conduct my own.” (p. 2) AND “That is why I could in no way approve of those troublemaking and restless personalities who, called neither by their birth nor their fortune to manage public affairs, are forever coming up with an idea for some new reform in this matter. And if I thought there were in this writing the slightest thing by means of which one might suspect me of such folly, I would be very sorry to permit its publication. My plan has never gone beyond trying to reform my own thoughts and building upon a foundation which is completely my own.” (p. 9)
From Part 6:
“That is what I mean to make known through the treatise I had written, and to show there so clearly the utility that the public could gain from such knowledge that I would oblige all those who desire the general well-being of men (that is to say, all those who really are virtuous, not just appearing to be so though false pretenses or merely by reputation), both to communicate those experiments they have already performed and to assist me in the search for those that remain to be performed.” (p. 37)