But to observe a fact does not mean to set forth its nature clearly and distinctly. As the nature of the judgment has, until recent times, been almost universally misunderstood, how could it be possible rightly to understand its self-evidence? It is just here that even Descartes’ discernment fails him. How very closely the phenomenon occupied him a passage in the Meditations bears witness: “Cum hic dico me ita doctum esse a natura (he is speaking of the so-called external impressions) intelligo tantum _spontaneo quodam impetu_ me ferri ad hoc credendum _non lumine aliquo naturali_ mihi ostendi esse verum, quae duo multum discrepant. Nam quaecunque _lumine naturali_ mihi ostenduntur (ut quod ex eo quo dubitem sequatur me esse et similia) nullo modo dubia esse possunt quia nulla alia facultas esse potest, cui aeque fidam ac lumini isti, quaeque illa non vera esse possit docere; sed quantum ad impetus naturales jam saepe olim judicavi me ab illis in deteriorem partem fuisse impulsum cum de bono eligendo ageretur, nec video cur iisdem in ulla alia re magis fidam.”--(Medit. iii.). That Descartes did not mark the fact of self-evidence, that he did not observe the distinction between intuition and blind judgment certainly cannot be affirmed from the above. But, while separating the judgment as a class from the idea, he still leaves behind in the class of ideas the character of self-evidence which distinguishes the judgments of intuition. It consists, according to him, in a special mark of the perception, that is, of the idea lying at the root of the judgment. Descartes even goes so far as actually to call this act of perception a “cognoscere,” a “knowing.” A “knowing,” that is, and still not an act of judgment! These are rudimentary organs which after the progress made, owing to Descartes, in the doctrine of judgment, remind us of a stage of life in Psychology which has been surmounted; but with this distinction, in opposition to similar phenomena in the history of the development of the species, that these organs, in no way adapted, become in the highest degree troublesome, and render all Descartes’ further efforts for the theory of knowledge ineffective. He remains, to use Leibnitz’ phrase, “in the antechamber of truth” (cf. here note 28, towards the end). Only in this way does Descartes’ clara et distincta perceptio--concerning which term itself it is so difficult to gain a clear and distinct idea--in its curious dual nature become perfectly intelligible. The only means of overcoming this confusion is to seek that which distinguishes insight in opposition to other judgments as an inner quality belonging to the act of insight itself.