Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

TRUTH AND THE CRITIC'S ART 151
the property z. Let x denote I, let y denote thinking, let
z denote being, drop the hypothetical form, and you have
Descartes's Cogito, ergo sum; Je pense, donc je suis; I
think, therefore I amn. Enough of hints. The suggested
type of analysis is evidently applicable on every handto the Sermon on the Mount, to the Republic of Plato, to
Darwin's Origin of Species, to the League of Nations
Covenant, to Marxian Socialism, to the Soviet Constitution of Russia, to the Constitution of the German Republic, to the Einstein Doctrine of Relativity, to the Bryanistic Ethics of Prohibition-to all manner of doctrinistic contentions of wise men, knaves, fanatics and fools.
The type of criticism I am here advocating and urging as supremely important shapes itself, as you see, very
simply. Confronted by a doctrine in any department
of thought, Criticism demands answers to these questions:
What is assumed-what are the postulates? What are
the undefined, or variable, terms? What are the theorems
or proved propositions and what the defined, or constant,
terms? How have the theorems been deduced, and the
defined terms defined? What meanings have been assigned to the variable terms, and how? Upon these questions, criticism, if it is to be criticism of Thought, is bound
to insist-there is no alternative. Such criticism is a civilizing agency-the guardian of the principles of freedom.
Without it, the world becomes a wilderness of error and
lust-the garden of the Devil.
Easy to ask, the questions are, in general, not easy
to answer, and the difficulty of answering rightly is usually
greatest just where it is most important to compel an
answer-in the case, that is, of amorphous, emotioncharged "dynamic" doctrines that pretend to aim at enlightenment but really aim at victory and win it by ap