Some have criticized Descartes for what they regard as a fallacy in his reasoning. He jumped, they claim, without any real warrant, from the idea of a thing as his premise to the actual existence of the thing as his conclusion, from the idea of veracity, so necessary in the consciousness of the doubter, to the substantial existence of a perfectly veracious being, as if, to use their time-worn analogy, the idea even of the very smallest sum of money would make the money itself materialize in somebody's pocket. But, whether or not Descartes fully understood his own thought, this criticism is very superficial, and it gets only a specious cogency from the same matter-of-fact history that we have already pushed aside. No idea, however clear, however necessary even to the consciousness of a doubter, of perfect truth could ever conjure into existence the unworldly, independently existing, spiritually and intellectually isolated God of the Middle Ages; and for that matter one might say, I think quite pertinently, that money not in the pocket is something less than real money, or--which comes to the same end--that the idea of money, if the pocket be indeed empty, must imply some sense of the emptiness as well as of the money; and with such an implication the idea taken for its full meaning is no such conjurer as Descartes' critics have chosen to imagine it. After [p.190] all the "mere" ideas, or the "mere" things in general, that appear in controversies, are only ingenious ways of packing the jury. An adequate idea--that is to say, an idea taken just for its full meaning, for what it denies as well as for what it affirms, for the complete universe of its discourse--does and must answer to existence; yes, and to substantial existence too. So, again, the God that Descartes by the doubter's idea of veracity proved to his time and to us, if not also as clearly to himself, can have been no mere substantial existence wholly outside the doubter's life and consciousness. In such case the universal doubting would indeed have been only the insincere verbal strategy of a conservative, the conceit of purely artful method, and the jump objected to would have been quite necessary. But Descartes' God answered to just the idea of truth which a universal doubter could honestly entertain; to truth realized only in and through doubt; a God, living in and with the seeking, struggling consciousness of the doubter.