Descartes 35 



"And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, 

 and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was 

 omitted." (Discourse on Method: Part II.) 



The first concerns our general attitude towards experience and 

 confirms Descartes' rationalistic insistence upon the character of 

 true knowledge and, consequently, of reality. The second is a 

 canon of the genesis of procedure in the statement of problems, 

 an admirable instance of which is to be found in the Discourse 

 itself. The third deals with the development of reality, and in- 

 volves impHcations of which Descartes himself was perhaps not 

 fully conscious. The fourth concerns itself with the means neces- 

 sary to insure accuracy and proof. 



Such being the genesis of Descartes' method, its aim was the 

 discovery of truth or vera cognitio — but not in such a way as to 

 make truth the slave of an utilitarian science, as Bacon conceived 

 its function to be. Descartes, practical as his researches in mathe- 

 matics have proved in their outcome, was a thorough rationalist 

 in his method. By this last term he understands " rules certain 

 and easy, such as to prevent anyone who shall have accurately 

 observed them from ever assuming what is false for what is true, 

 and by which, with no effort of mind uselessly consumed, but 

 always by degrees increasing science, a person will arrive at a 

 true knowledge of all those things which he will be capable of 

 knowing." (Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii: IV.) It is evi- 

 dent, then, that Descartes is seeking to discover the true method 

 of experience, which will enable him to attain that true knowl- 

 edge or vera cognitio that was alike the end of philosophical 

 thought and of scientific research. 



In the process of knowledge, he finds the basis of reality in 

 his own experience. The aim of the process is the discovery of 

 those elements in experience which are true. The method by 

 which such knowledge is obtained consists in the transformation 

 of what is originally an ontological element into an epistemolog- 

 ical factor by the application of certain standards or canons regu- 

 lative of the general experience-process. If carried out con- 

 sistently and on a large scale, such a method would go farther 

 than the Baconian organisation of science, and would give a ra- 

 tional account of the phenomena of the universe. It would com- 

 bine science and philosophy by making truth and meaning ulti- 

 mately the same thing, by showing the organic relation which 

 must exist between the zvhat and the zvh\. 



