Descartes 33 



only to resolve to affirm or deny nothini^ of all we had formerly 

 affirmed or denied, until this has been examined anew, although 

 we are not on this account prevented from retaining in the 

 memory the whole of the notions themselves." In thus deciding 

 to begin by doubting the evidence of experience, Descartes must 

 not be understood to be making scepticism the end of knowledge. 

 For him doubt is not the end but the beginning of knowledge. 

 It is a means for the attainment of certainty. It is the preliminary 

 condition which involves some method of experience. 



The necessity of approaching experience, not in hostile sus- 

 picion, but with an openminded suspension of judgment, with an 

 absence of decision until due reason shall have been found, was 

 recognised by Bacon, and is emphasised by Descartes as the 

 starting-point of methodology. The former, in his tract " Of the 

 Interpretation of Nature," had written as follows : " Whoever, 

 unable to doubt, and eager to affirm, shall establish principles 

 proved (as he believes), conceded, and manifest, and, according 

 to the universal truth of these, shall reject or receive others as 

 repugnant or favourable ; he shall exchange things for words, 

 reason for insanity, the world for a fable. . . He who hath 

 not first, and before all, intimately explored the movements of 

 the human mind, and therein most accurately distinguished the 

 course of knowledge and the seats of error, shall find all things 

 masked and, as it were, enchanted, and, until he undo the charm, 

 shall be unable to interpret." Descartes applies this counsel of 

 Bacon in a very thoroughgoing manner to the method of per- 

 sonal experience as being involved in the wider process of 

 scientific investigation which was Bacon's chief interest. 



Descartes therefore starts with immediate experience, and. by 

 the simple investigation and analysis of the process of knowl- 

 edge itself, seeks to arrive at a true method for the organisation, 

 interpretation, and valuation of experience. 



Knowledge and reality, when thus based upon experience, 

 cannot be separated. Epistemology and ontology have the same 

 experiential basis and are genetically identical. This unity 

 gives reality to thought and intelligibilit\- to reality. " I think " 

 and " I exist " both lose meaning and reality when any analysis 

 is made which severs their functional interaction. The essential 

 and necessarv relation between the " cogito " and the " sum " is 



