Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/238

222 by abstraction (p. 1). Owing to the combined influence of Stoicism and Christianity, however, these aspects of reality came to be regarded as absolute opposites. Descartes accepts without question this new view of the relation between matter and mind. The result of this dualistic standpoint is the doctrine of representative perception. "The self can know nothing but its own states, and only indirectly by an inference from them establish the existence of any other being. Ideas are regarded as the objects of mind and as exact copies of what exists outside mind" (p. 14). From this point of view, the sole immediate certainty is knowledge of our own existence. Clearly, then, the cogito ergo sum is not the really ultimate element in Descartes's system. It is "simply one consequence of the doctrine of representative perception which is itself a consequence of his dualistic starting point" (p. 14). Further, the cogito ergo sum does not prove the continued existence of the self beyond the present moment. Still less does it establish the existence of the self as a simple indivisible substance. "Descartes in so arguing really interprets his 'ultimate' principle in accordance with an assumed principle yet more ultimate, the principle namely which he states explicitly in his Principles 'that to nothing no affections or qualities belong.' Without proof he assumes thought to be a quality, and, therefore, in accordance with that principle, to imply a substance or self" (p. 50). Descartes is thus led to the theory of representative perception by his dualism, though his new and scientific view of the material world throws special difficulties in the way of such a doctrine (p. 15). His conception of spirit, though professedly based on immediate experience, is really derived from an interpretation of that experience in the light of certain scholastic principles (p. 115). His rationalism, the third element in his system, is a result of his mathematical studies.

The characteristic of the mathematical method, according to Descartes, is its certainty, and this certainty is due to the fact that mathematics starts with truths which are simple and self-evident. Since there can be but one method of attaining truth, philosophy must likewise begin with simple ultimate truths and deduce everything from them. Though deductive, however, the true method is not syllogistic. It is in Intuition, and not in the syllogism, that our knowledge develops. "Intuition is not a fitting together of premises but a dialectic. Given certain data, they produce out of themselves a further truth" (p. 34). Particular truths do not require to be deduced from universal axioms; like the latter they are themselves