COGITO ERGO SUM
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Stn,—This splendid phrase is always credited to Descartes, yet in the second volume of Augustine's City of God, book 10, chap. 26, Augustine expresses the same thought in almost the same words. Writing of abstract thought, he says : " I err, therefore I am," and continues in subsequent words to amplify
the phrase. The Oxford editor of St. Augustine remarks that this is the same thought as the one expressed by Descartes a thousand years later. It is, therefore, plain that we owe this thought in the first instance not to the master of all modern scepticism, but to the father of Catholic orthodoxy.
I venture to mention this fact because, in all the books of philosophy that I have read, the credit for this great thought is given entirely to Descartes. T. H. Huxley did this, and last week I noticed that the Archbishop of York followed the great scientist, and in speaking of Descartes did not refer to the Saint. The editor of the volume referred to mentions that the Hindoo thinker has approached the subject in another manner. The Hindoo seer, writing long before Augustine, says, I am, therefore I think," whic t one may possibly con- sider is characteristic of the Indian method of approach to the same subject.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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