Now we come for the first time properly speaking to the philosophy of the new world and begin with Descartes. With him we enter upon a philosophy that stands on its own feet, a philosophy which knows that it comes independently from reason, and that self-consciousness is an essential moment of the true. Here we can say that we are at home, and, as sailors after a long voyage upon stormy seas, we can cry ‘land’.… In this new period, the [fundamental] principle is thought, thinking that proceeds from itself.…1