August 6
Never to accept anything as true that I do not clearly and distinctly recognise to be so — and to admit into my judgement only what I no longer have any reason to doubt.
Discourse on the Method (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Never to accept anything as true that I do not clearly and distinctly recognise to be so — and to admit into my judgement only what I no longer have any reason to doubt.
You turned off the stove. You turned the knob to zero, saw it, even touched it once more. On the stairs the question comes anyway: are you certain? The memory is clear, but it no longer convinces you.
Doubt, it seems, doesn't stop on its own when it runs out of reasons. It can keep running like an engine that has forgotten why it was started. Then you are no longer checking the thing, but yourself.
Conversely, there are convictions that never had to get past a doubt. They were already there before you began to think about them: how money is talked about, who tends to be believed, what counts as reasonable. No reason to examine them occurs to you, because they have never presented themselves to you as something that could be examined. From the inside, that too feels like certainty.
So if you don't doubt something, there can be two very different reasons: either the matter has been settled, or no one ever asked about it. By the feeling alone, they can hardly be told apart.
You don't go back. On the way, you think of a sentence you said at lunchtime today without the slightest hesitation.
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