24 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



A most instructive example of Descartes's intuitions is that 

 which stands first in his system and which he accepts as the 

 type and standard of them all, self -consciousness. I may doubt 

 (says he) the existence of all the objects of my thoughts, feelings, 

 and desires. I may question whether the world of nature which 

 the senses reveal be not an illusion; whether the whole content 

 of the deductive sciences be not vitiated by lapses of memory; 

 whether all the joys and sorrows of life, all life's purposes and 

 ideals, be not wholly vain. But past and future aside I can- 

 not question the reality of my present experience as such. I 

 cannot doubt that such and such ideas, emotions, and impulses 

 are now within my mind. Indeed all that I know assuredly 

 with regard to my mind or rather, to speak strictly, myself 

 is just the fact that I have such an experience. So much is 

 clear and distinct. / think, therefore I am (or, I, as a thinking 

 being, exist), is not a deduction, nor is it in need of deductive sup- 

 port. It stands in its own strength. It would be true, though 

 all else were false. 



It has been observed, that so far as awareness of one's own 

 mental states is concerned, the principle of immediate certitude 

 is equally acknowledged by rationalists and by empiricists. In- 

 deed, the very example of an intuition which we have just taken 

 from Descartes turns out, when carefully examined, to be a 

 modified form of the doctrine of Protagoras, set forth (not as he 

 had done, as a lesson drawn from experience, but) as an intuition. 

 When one looks to see what meaning Descartes attributes to the /, 

 or myself, one discovers that it is simply that which is intuitively 

 known as thinking. And, if one further asks what a thinking 

 being is, he replies: "It is a thing that doubts, understands, 

 [conceives,] affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and 

 perceives." All these properties unite in his nature, as certainly 

 as he exists even though they should convey to him no truth 

 beyond their inherence in, and inseparability from, himself. Sup- 

 pose, for example, that the perceptions of sense are false. "Let 

 it be so. At all events it is certain that I seem to see light, hear 



