he possible union with God through the exaltation of the human
self-consciousness. But this conception of God as the perfect self is so
much a prophecy of things to come, that more than a dozen centuries
elapsed before it was explicitly formulated by the post-Kantians. We
must follow its more gradual development in the philosophies of
Descartes and Kant.

[Sidenote: Descartes's Argument for the Independence of the Thinking
Self.]

Sect. 185. When at the close of the sixteenth century the Frenchman,
Rene Descartes, sought to construct philosophy anew and upon secure
foundations, he too selected as the initial certainty of thought the
thinker's knowledge of himself. This principle now received its classic
formulation in the proposition, _Cogito ergo sum_--"I think, hence I
am." The argument does not differ essentially from that of St.
Augustine, but it now finds a place in a systematic and critical
metaphysics. In that my thinking is certain of itself, says Descartes,
in that I know myself before I know aught else, my self can never be
dependent for its being upon anything else that I may come to know. A
thinking self, with its knowledge and its volition, is quite capable of
subsisting of itself. Such is, indeed, not the case with a finite self,
for all finitude is significant of limitation, and in recognizing my
limitations I postulate the infinite being or God. But the relation of
my self to a physical world is quite without necessity. Human nature,
with soul and body conjoined, is a combination of two substances,
neither of which is a necessary consequence of the other. As a result
of this combination the soul is to some extent affected by the body, and
the body is to some extent directed by the soul; but the body could
conceivably be an automaton, as the soul could conceivably be, and will
in another life become, a free spirit. The consequences of this dualism
for epistemology are very grave. If knowledge be the activity of a
self-subsistent thinking spirit, how can it reveal the nature of an
external world? The natural order is now literally "external." It is
true that the whole body of exact science, that mechanical system to
which Descartes attached so much importance, falls within the range of
the soul's own thinking. But what assurance is there that it refers to a
province of its own--a physical world in space? Descartes can only
suppose that "clear and distinct" ideas must be trusted as faithful
representation