�������t¶��

The first and second parts of the twelfth section of the Inquiry are devoted to a condemnation of excessive scepticism, or Pyrrhonism, with which Hume couples a caricature of the Cartesian doubt; but, in the third part, a certain "mitigated scepticism" is recommended and adopted, under the title of "academical philosophy."

This methodical or theoretical Cartesian doubt, this philosophical doubt excogitated in a stove, is not the doubt, is not the scepticism, is not the incertitude, that I am talking about here.

It is the Cartesian doubt—the maxim that assent may properly be given to no propositions but such as are perfectly clear and distinct—which, becoming incarnate, so to speak, in the Englishmen, Anthony Collins, Toland, Tindal, Woolston, and in the wonderful Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, reached its final term in Hume.

This is the meaning of the Cartesian doubt, which is more comprehensive and more thorough than the Baconian.