with the enunciation of this certainty, that, for our present purpose, it is best to institute a critical examination of his arguments. Descartes professed to have sounded the possibilities of doubt: he doubted the reports of the senses, the existence of external things, the validity of his most careful reasonings, even mathematical demonstrations. But he touched the rock of certainty in the assurance of his own existence. Cogito, ergo sum. He who should doubt his existence, would thereby prove it. Descartes set out to search for an Archimedean point, and he believed that he had found it.
This certainty of Descartes has been allowed with great unanimity. Not only does it seem impossible to move a step unless so much is granted; the most thorough scepticism seems unable to forbid the concession. “It is,” says Mr. Huxley (Hume, p. 55) “a clear result of the investigation started by Descartes, that there is one thing of which no doubt can be entertained, and that is the momentary consciousness we call a present thought or feeling.” Yet this certainty must be carefully examined, for the case may be regarded as crucial.
It is to be noticed that it is in the form of a judgment. It is the more important to point this out, for Mr. Huxley’s words, quoted above, are somewhat ambiguous. A momentary feeling has in itself neither certainty nor doubt. There must be two conscious elements brought into relation to each other, or, in short, there must be a judgment. Descartes had the present consciousness, and he attributed to it existence.
But was Descartes entitled to certainty in this judgment? He attributes Being to his thought, but what is Being? Has this category, thus attributed, been defined and made clear to the mind? It is requisite that it should be so defined, before it can with absolute certainty be affirmed of anything. But further, suppose it is clearly defined, is it applicable to the real? Being seems to be a vanishing line across time. Time devours its children as they are born. “There is no Being,” said Heraclitus, “all things are becoming.” May there not be some truth in this which we had not originally taken into account? The notion of Being, as applied to the actual, had
