ing scepticism which I am now going to
discuss, that it is doubt? It is doubt, yes, but it is much more than
doubt. Doubt is commonly something very cold, of very little vitalizing
force, and above all something rather artificial, especially since
Descartes degraded it to the function of a method. The conflict between
reason and life is something more than a doubt. For doubt is easily
resolved into a comic element.

The methodical doubt of Descartes is a comic doubt, a doubt purely
theoretical and provisional--that is to say, the doubt of a man who acts
as if he doubted without really doubting. And because it was a
stove-excogitated doubt, the man who deduced that he existed from the
fact that he thought did not approve of "those turbulent
(_brouillonnes_) and restless persons who, being called neither by birth
nor by fortune to the management of public affairs, are perpetually
devising some new reformation," and he was pained by the suspicion that
there might be something of this kind in his own writings. No, he,
Descartes, proposed only to "reform his own thoughts and to build upon
ground that was wholly his." And he resolved not to accept anything as
true when he did not recognize it clearly to be so, and to make a clean
sweep of all prejudices and received ideas, to the end that he might
construct his intellectual habitation anew. But "as it is not enough,
before beginning to rebuild one's dwelling-house, to pull it down and to
furnish materials and architects, or to study architecture oneself ...
but it is also necessary to be provided with some other wherein to lodge
conveniently while the work is in progress," he framed for himself a
provisional ethic--_une morale de provision_--the first law of which was
to observe the customs of his country and to keep always to the religion
in which, by the grace of God, he had been instructed from his infancy,
governing himself in all things according to the most moderate opinions.
Yes, exactly, a provisional religion and even a provisional God! And he
chose the most moderate opinions "because these are always the most
convenient for practice." But it is best to proceed no further.

This methodical or theoretical Cartesian doubt, this philosophical doubt
excogitated in a stove, is not the doubt, is not the scepticism, is not
the incertitude, that I am talking about here. No! This other doubt is a
passionate doubt, it is the eternal conflict between reason and feeling,
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