Page:Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason, and seeking truth in the sciences - Descartes (trans. Veitch).djvu/31

 of this principle secures to the Cartesian Method, in each and all of its precepts, perfect unity But this requires illustration, and, in its development, will be found the proof of the principle.

With a view to the illustration of the statement we must refer, in the first instance, to what has been said concerning the nature of Method in general. Method in science seeks a more perfect, because more determinate, knowledge than is passively afforded in the spontaneous and disorderly presentations of sense and self-consciousness. The mind, in proceeding methodically, asserts the superiority of its activity to its passivity, in that what is presented is, by an act of will, arrested for examination by the faculties of knowledge. Philosophical Method in general is thus, as has been said, the manifestation of the cognitive activity in accordance with certain rules. This activity is the condition of philosophical or scientific knowledge.

But if activity of mind be the condition of philosophical knowledge, it is manifest that the most perfect activity will best secure this knowledge, that is, the end of Method. Or since man is capable of knowledge, only in so far as he possesses certain faculties of knowledge; and as man only actually knows, in so far as he exerts these faculties, it is manifest that man will better or