ABSTRACT
An appraisal of Descartes is fundamentally an appraisal of our own times. To break completely with Descartes is to be a new kind of man. The student of Descartes finds much that is of great value in the contact he is bound to make with medieval philosophy. It is an interesting feature of Descartes' attempt to establish the real distinction of body and mind, that while he has examined his own nature insofar as he is conscious of himself, yet he believes that his conclusions are generally valid. In examining his own nature, Descartes claims to be thinking for all humanity. His experience of himself and his meditation upon that experience are taken as self-evidently typical and valid for the human race. A God is necessary to impose law on them from without. This conception, operative for instance in Newton's physics, determines Descartes' treatment of the relation of minds.
