Cogito, ergo sum “I am thinking, therefore I exist” appears in the CSMK translation of Descartes's correspondence in French (“, ”) to colleagues at CSMK III 247. The earliest known translation as "I am thinking, therefore I am" is from 1872 by Charles Porterfield Krauth. As put compactly by Prof. Krauth (1872), "That cannot doubt which does not think, and that cannot think which does not exist. I doubt, I think, I exist." The phrase "cogito, ergo sum" is not used in Descartes's "Meditations on First Philosophy" but the term "the "cogito"" is used to refer to an argument from it. In the
Cogito, ergo sum Translation needs a larger context to determine aspect. Following John Lyons (1982), Vladimir Žegarac notes, "The temptation to use the simple present is said to arise from the lack of progressive forms in Latin and French, and from a misinterpretation of the meaning of "cogito" as habitual or generic." (Cf. gnomic aspect.) Ann Banfield writes (also following Lyons), "In order for the statement on which Descartes's argument depends to represent certain knowledge, … its tense must be a true present—in English, a progressive, … not as 'I think' but as 'I am thinking, in conformity with the general translation of