Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/138

another. In every such series or group there is a dominant element, simple and irresoluble, the standard on which the rest of the series depends, and hence, so far as that group or series is concerned, absolute. The other members of the group are relative and dependent, and only to be understood as in various degrees subordinate to the primi tive conception. The characteristic by which we recognize the fundamental element in a series is its intuitive or self-evident character ; it is given by " the evident con ception of a healthy and attentive mind so clear and distinct that no doubt is left." 1 Having discovered this prime or absolute member of the group, we pro ceed to consider the degrees in which the other members enter into relation with it. Here deduction comes into play to show the dependence of one term upon the others ; and, in the case of a long chain of intervening links, the problem for intelligence is so to enunciate every element, and so to repeat the connection that we may finally grasp all the links of the chain in one. In this way we, as it were, bring the causal or primal term and its remotest dependent immediately together, and raise a derivative knowledge into one which is primary and intuitive. Such are the four points of Cartesian method : (1) Truth requires a clear and distinct conception of its object, excluding all doubt ; (2) the objects of knowledge naturally fall into series or groups ; (3) in these groups investigation must begin with a simple and indecomposable element, and pass from it to the more complex and relative elements ; (4) an exhaustive and immediate grasp of the relations and interconnection of these elements is necessary for knowledge in the fullest sense of that word. 2 " There is no question," he says in anticipation of Locke and Kant, "more important to solve than that of knowing what human knowledge is and how far it extends." " This is a question which ought to be asked at least once in their lives by all who seriously wish to gain wisdom. The inquirer will find that the first thing to know is intellect, because on it depends the knowledge of all other things. Examining next what immediately follows the knowledge of pure intellect, he will pass in review all the other means of knowledge, and will find that they are two (or three), the imagination and the senses (and the memory). He will therefore devote all his care to examine and distinguish these three means of knowledge ; and seeing that truth and error can, properly speaking, be only in the intellect, and that the two other modes of knowledge are only occasions, he will carefully avoid whatever can lead him astray." 3 This separation of intellect from sense, imagination, and memory is the cardinal precept of the Cartesian logic ; it marks off clear and distinct (i.e., adequate and vivid) from obscure, fragmentary, and incoherent conceptions. The Discourse of Method and the Meditations apply what the Rides for the Direction of the Mind had regarded in particular instances to our conceptions of the world as a whole. They propose, that is, to find a simple and inde composable point, or absolute element, which gives to the world and thought their order and systematization. The grandeur of this attempt is perhaps unequalled iu the annals of philosophy. The three main steps iu the argument are the veracity of our thought when that thought is true to itself, the inevitable uprising of thought from its fragmentary aspects in our habitual consciousness to the infinite and perfect existence which God is, and the ultimate reduction of the material universe tD extension and local movement. These are the central dogmas of logic, metaphysics, and physics, from which start the subsequent inquiries of Locke, Leibnitz, and Newton. They are also 1 CEuvrcs, xi. 212. * Disc, de Methode, part ii. 3 CEuvres, xi. 243. the direct antitheses to the scepticism of Montaigne and Pascal, to the materialism of Gassendi and Hobbes, and to the superstitious anthropomorphism which defaced the re awakening sciences of nature. Descartes laid down the lines on which modern philosophy and science were to build. But himself no trained metaphysician, and un susceptible to the lessons of history, he gives but fragments of a system which are held together, not by their intrinsic consistency, but by the vigour of his personal conviction transcending the weaknesses and collisions of his several arguments. " All my opinions," he says, " are so conjoined, and depend so closely upon one another, that it would be impossible to appropriate one without knowing them all." 4 Yet every disciple of Cartesianism seems to disprove the dictum by his example. The very moment when we begin to think, says Descartes, when we cease to be merely receptive, when we draw back and fix our attention on any point whatever of our belief, that moment doubt begins. If we even stop for an instant to ask ourselves how a word ought to bo spelled, the deeper we ponder that one word by itself the more hopeless grows the hesitation. The doubts thus awakened must not be stifled, but pressed systematically on to the point, if such a point there be, where doubt con futes itself. The doubt as to the details is natural ; it is no less natural to have recourse to authority to silence the doubt. The remedy proposed by Descartes is (while not neglecting our duties to others, ourselves, and God) to let doubt range unchecked through the whole fabric of our customary convictions. One by one they refuse to render any reasonable account of themselves ; each seems a mere chance, and the whole tends to elude us like a mirage which some malignant power creates for our illusion. Attacked in detail, they vanish one after another into as many teasing spectra of uncertainty. We are seeking from them what they cannot give. But when we have done our worst in unsettling them, we come to an ultimate point in the fact that it is we who are doubting, we who are thinking. We may doubt that we have hands or feet, that we sleep or wake, and that there is a world of material things around us ; but we cannot doubt that we are doubting. We are certain that we are think ing, and in so far as we are thinking we are. Je pense, done je suis. Of this we cannot doubt, and therefore this is true. In other words, the criterion of truth is a clear and distinct conception, excluding all possibility of doubt. The fundamental point thus established is the veracity of consciousness when it does not go beyond itself, or does not postulate something which is external to itself. We are thinking ; we are minds ; and from the mere primary intuition, which results when we analyze our doubts, we cannot tell that we are more. At this point Gassendi arrested Descartes and addressed his objections to him as pure intelligence, mcns I But even this mens, or mind, is but a point we have found no guarantee as yet for its continuous existence. The analysis must be carried deeper if we are to gain any further conclusions. Amongst the ideas or elements of our thought there are some which we can make and unmake at our pleasure ; there are others which come and go without our wish ; there is also a third class which is of the very essence of our thinking, and which dominates our conceptions. We find that all our ideas of limits, sorrows, and weaknesses pre suppose an infinite, perfect, and ever-blessed something beyond them and including them, that all our ideas, in all their series, converge to one central idea, in which they find their explanation. The formal fact of thinking is what constitutes our being ; but this thought of which we 4 (Euvres, vii. 381.