French philosophy could be placed and progressively built. Thus he rejected anything which appeared uncertain and decided to only accept apodeictic knowledge as truth. After invoking the possibility of an omnipotent deceiver to reject the external world, the information given to him from his senses, mathematics and logic, Descartes discovered at least one thing could be known apodictically. If he himself was doubting, then he had to exist. Thus Cogito Ergo Sum - I think, therefore I am - became the first principle of Cartesianism. Descartes then claimed that because he discovered the Cogito through perceiving it clearly and distinctly, anything he
Mr. Cogito which unequivocally identifies the character with the poet for the very first time in the oeuvre. It mentions his return to his homeland, and the other poems in the collection treat about various aspects of Mr. Cogito's being – imagination ("Mr. Cogito and the Imagination"), longevity ("Mr. Cogito and Longevity"), virtue ("Mr. Cogito on Virtue"), eschatological concepts ("Mr. Cogito's Eschatological Premonitions"), bloodshed ("Mr. Cogito Thinks about Blood"), a contact with Maria Rasputin ("Mr. Cogito and Maria Rasputin – an Attempt at Contact"), the need for precision ("Mr. Cogito on the Need for Precision), the notes from a house of the