Self-reflection focus on the beatific vision after death. The 13th century pope Innocent III wrote about the essential misery of earthly existence in his ""On the misery of the human condition"" – a view that was disputed by, for example, Giannozzo Manetti in his treatise ""On human dignity."" A famous quote of Shakespeare's Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117), expressing the contrast of human physical beauty, intellectual faculty, and ephemeral nature: René Descartes famously and succinctly proposed: "Cogito ergo sum" (French: ""Je pense donc je suis""; English: ""I think, therefore I am""). The Enlightenment was driven by a renewed conviction, that, in the
Mr. Cogito human personality. The third, "Pan Cogito a perła" ("Mr. Cogito And A Pearl") – an unrhymed narrative of a pearl stuck in Mr. Cogito's shoe, treated as a metaphor of having to face life's adversities. The next poems – "Pan Cogito myśli o powrocie do rodzinnego miasta" ("Mr. Cogito Considers Returning to His Native Town"), "Pan Cogito rozmyśla o cierpieniu" ("Mr. Cogito Meditates on Suffering") and "Przepaść Pana Cogito" ("The Abyss of Mr. Cogito") depict Mr. Cogito confronting various existential dilemmas. Existential problems are a presence throughout the collection, appearing in the following texts: "Pan Cogito a myśl czysta" ("Mr.