With the former, these laws are the products of the Elaborative Faculty, and are reached by leading this, that, and the other fact, to unity; evolving thus out of the particular and the contingent the universal. With the latter, these laws are not products at all, for they are not formed, but given in consciousness, and discovered by Analysis. They are thus intuitive and immediate, and by intuition and demonstration does Descartes essay to construct Philosophy.[1]
To the high generality of the principles of the Cartesian Synthesis, taken in conjunction with his non-discrimination of the twofold import of his criterion of truth, are, perhaps, to be attributed the most daring of the philosopher's errors.—Descartes has not analysed his criterion of truth into its ultimate elements, nor can he be said accurately to have determined its sphere. He has not distinguished, though including both under clear knowledge, that knowledge given in the agreement of one thought with another, and that afforded in the harmony of a thought with its object. This is manifest from his adherence to the Ontological Demonstration of the existence of the Absolute. This demonstration founds on the concept or notion of God, which includes necessary existence; and from the notion alone, as possessed of this character, determines that God or the Absolute is really existent. It thus assumes that the thinking of a thing in harmony
- ↑ See the Method, P. VI.
