Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/46

Rh and with God, is carried over into reality by means of a clarified and reformed statement of Descartes’s proof that any mind is necessarily certain of its own existence; personal existence, in its “distinct” idea (to use Cartesian language), being shown to imply the contrasted and complemental existence of others, and, further, the existence of God, as the ultimate standard involved in the entire round of self-definition by self-correlation.

In fact, my point is that the entire proof of our being free lies in showing that, mortals though we are, and subject in one aspect of our existence to the broken and tentative cognition called experience, we still do originate judgments, and judgments that are necessarily true, holding in perpetumn; we do cognise principles a priori, that is, spontaneously, and not because we are so “framed” by some other being, or so impelled “from elsewhere,” that we cannot do otherwise. Thus the entire warranty for Personal Idealism comes down, finally, to the affirmative settlement of the bottom question in epistemology: Do we, or do we not, set forth truths a priori? — and, at the foundation, what truths? If we do, and if at the basis of all of them lies the act of self-definition by self-correlation with others, then we are indeed free, our being is rationally self-active, and the entire system of Personal Idealism follows, in this high rational sense of the expression. If we do not, or if we only