Precipitancy (R. I.): for this tendency coming into exercise while we are conducting a process of thought, stays the process prematurely, and thus determines judgments not in accordance with the matter of our thought.
3. The same is true of his precept to include in our judgments such matter alone as is clearly and distinctly presented (R. I.): and his doctrine of error points also to the necessity of the perfect action of our faculties of knowledge; for error, according to Descartes, arises when we include in our judgments objects obscurely and indistinctly thought.
It ought to be observed that the terms clearness and distinctness, as used by Descartes, do not relate, except in the most general manner, to the qualities of Notions Proper, that is, to the products of the Faculty of Comparison. They refer to the character of the matter of any of the cognitive faculties, though the object known be considered only in itself, that is, simply as possessing certain qualities, and without relation to other objects, with which it may possess qualities in common. Thus viewed, these terms and their opposites, the obscure and indistinct, express merely a higher and lower degree of consciousness, or cognitive activity, in some degree or other of which objects are only known.
That such is the meaning of Descartes may be easily evinced.
For, (1,) he considers the clear and distinct as equivalent to the real in thought, and their op-
