already determined that there is a subject of thought, it being impossible to know that a particular mode of consciousness is a quality, unless we already know that there is a subject of thought. By this process we could only reach the knowledge sought by first taking it for granted in order to prove or establish it. Thus far of what Descartes does not do. What he does is simply to affirm that in knowing the fact of thought, in thinking, or in being conscious in this or that mode, I know also the existence of a determinate something of which this thought is an act, and which it supposes: and this something is Self, or I To suppose that the thinking subject can only be known in as far as it is logically deduced from the higher principle of substance and phænomenon, is to betray an ignorance of the order in which we know, nay, of the condition under which we acquire this more general knowledge; for it is impossible to affirm by a reflective act that every phænomenon implies a substance, every act a subject, until we have first, and, without reflection, affirmed that this or that phænomenon has a substance, and then by reflection affirmed that this or that phænomenon must have a substance. Universal principles are at first given in particular forms—in this or that matter, and it is only by reflection that their necessity and universality become apparent.[1]
These things manifest, it is plain, in the third
- ↑ Compare Descartes' Resp. ad Sec. Obj., p. 74, (ed. 1663,) and M. Cousin, Lect. 14th on the True. (Brussels ed.)
