And yet it was as a self-evident or immediate truth that the 'Cogito, ergo sum,' of Descartes, the maxim on which may be said to hinge the whole interest of Modern Philosophy, was first stated by its author. The man who calls this a syllogism, must know little more about a syllogism than that the word 'Ergo' occurs in it. Where shall we look for the middle term? And a middle term is a much more essential point of a syllogism than the word 'Ergo.' If we try to justify the name, by calling the combination of ideas in Descartes an 'immediate' syllogism, this superfluous variety of syllogism is a mere name for an utterly unmediated synthesis of distinct terms of thought. That being so, the synthesis of being with our ideas, as stated in the maxim of immediate knowledge, has no more and no less claim to the title of syllogism than the axiom of Descartes has. From Hotho's 'Dissertation on the Cartesian Philosophy' (published 1826), I borrow the quotation in which Descartes himself distinctly declares that the maxim 'Cogito, ergo sum,' is no syllogism. The passages are Respons. ad II Object.: De Methodo IV: Ep. I. 118. From the first passage I quote the words more immediately to the point. Descartes says: 'That we are thinking beings is "_prima quaedam notio quae ex nullo syllogismo concluditur_"' (a certain primary notion, which is deduced from no syllogism); and goes on: _'neque cum quis dicit; Ego cogito, ergo sum sive existo, existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit.'_ (Nor, when one says, I think, therefore I am or exist, does he deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism.) Descartes knew what it implied in a syllogism, and so he adds that, in order to make the maxim admit of a deduction by syllogism, we should have to add the major premiss: _'Illud omne quod cogitat, est sive existit.'_ (Everything which thinks, is or exists.) Of course, he remarks, this major premiss itself has to be deduced from the original statement. The language of Descartes on the maxim that the 'I' which _thinks_ must also at the same time _be,_ his saying that this connexion is given and implied in the simple perception of consciousness,--that this connexion is the absolute first, the principle, the most certain and evident of all things, so that no scepticism can be conceived so monstrous as not to admit it:--all this language is so vivid and distinct, that the modern statements of Jacobi and others on this immediate connexion can only pass for needless repetitions.