ABSTRACT
Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, and the spirit of Cartesianism—that which principally distinguishes it from the scholasticism which it displaced—may be compendiously stated as follows:
It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal doubt; whereas scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals.
It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism had rested on the testimony of sages and of the Catholic Church.
The multiform argumentation of the middle ages is replaced by a single thread of inference depending often upon inconspicuous premisses.
Scholasticism had its mysteries of faith, but undertook to explain all created things. But there are many facts which Cartesianism not only does not explain, but renders absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that “God makes them so” is to be regarded as an explanation.
