ion and the testimony of his own consciousness. Our modern Archimedes had indeed found his fulcrum, namely his own existence; but now he could not move the world, because he had thrown away his lever.Descartes, if he had been consistent, should have embraced universal skepticism, because his universal doubt left him no other choice: he had no way of retracing his course. He was like a mariner who scuttles his boat and swims to a rock in mid-ocean. The rock is the solitary fact of his own existence. True, he had found a solid point. But it is a lonely and desolate spot; and he is marooned on it forever, doomed to die of mental starvation, surrounded by an unbridgeable ocean of doubt.The Cartesian universal methodic doubt, therefore, is not a proper approach to the problem of human knowledge. It is in reality only a variation of universal skepticism, and as such it is absurd. We will have to make our approach in a different fashion.The necessary conclusion to be drawn from the above critical examination of universal skepticism is obvious:Complete doubt cannot be the proper approach to the problem of human knowledge. It would be fatal. Starting with complete doubt, we can no more reach a solution of the problem of human knowledge than a bird can fly with amputated wings.Another important conclusion is this:Any theory of knowledge which leads logically to universal skepticism is intrinsically false.Nothing could be plainer. There must be an essential flaw in a theory which, if consistently carried out to its logical conclusions, ends in the absurdity of skepticism....
