The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
Self Cognition. To complete our outline of the process by which the mind achieves and exercises consciousness, we must also describe the mechanism which accounts for the aspect of human thought that differentiates it from the consciousness of plants or animals, i.e. self cognition.