Such elaboration is necessary to the production of so simple an expression as _I think_; and here we see how much reason there is to distinguish between the thing itself and the form, and how inconsiderately they act who confound things so different. Thus, from want of due analysis, they take in philosophy immense strides from one order to another, confound ideas and entangle matters. 185. To completely illustrate this matter, we will examine the relations of existence to thought; a very easy examination, if we bear in mind the observation just made. It is certain that we conceive existence before thought: nothing can think without existing: existence is an indispensable condition to thought: to think and not to exist is a manifest contradiction. But what is first offered to our mind is not existence, but thought, and this not in the abstract, but determinate, experimental, or as the expression now is, empyrical. The idea of existence is general, includes all beings, and consciousness cannot commence with it. At one time we obtain this idea by abstraction; at another, it is a form pre-existing in our mind, not the first that occurs to us, or to speak more exactly, not the last point to be attained when we follow back the thread of our cognitions in order to discover their starting-point. This consciousness, when made objective, and when the conception which it offers is analyzed, presents to us the idea of existence as contained in itself. Hence we infer that the _therefore I exist_ is not, strictly speaking, a consequence of the _I think_, but the intuition of the idea of existence in that of thought. There are here two propositions _per se notæ_, as the scholastics say: the one general, _the thinking is existing_; the other particular, _I thinking am existing_. The first belongs to the purely ideal order, and is intrinsically evident, independently of all particular consciousness; the second participates of the two orders, the real and the ideal; the real, in so far as it includes the particular fact of consciousness; the ideal, in so far as it includes a combination of the general idea of existence with the particular fact; since thus only is the union of the predicate with the subject conceivable. 186. It will now be very easy to solve all the questions discussed in the schools. First question. Does the principle _I think_ depend on another? We answer with a distinction. If by this principle is meant the simple fact of consciousness, it evidently does not. For our understanding there is nothing prior to ourselves; whatever we know so far forth as known by us, supposes our consciousness; if we suppress it, we destroy every thing, and although we attempt to destroy every thing, it still remains indestructible, since it depends on nothing, presupposes nothing. If by the principle _I think_ is meant a proposition, it can only have proceeded from reasoning or analysis, and so cannot be the fundamental principle of our cognitions.