(A) My life is constantly thrown headlong into transcendent thing, and passes wholly outside me.

(B) I am thinking of the Cartesian cogito, wanting to finish this work, feeling the coolness of the paper under my hand, and perceiving the trees of the boulevard through the window.

(C) This book, once begun, is not a certain set of ideas, it constitutes for me an open situation, for which I could not possibly provide any complex formula, and in which I struggle blindly on until, miraculously, thoughts and words become organized by themselves.

(D) The cogito is either this though which took shape three centuries ago in the mind of Descartes, or the meaning of the books he has left for us, or else an eternal truth which emerges from them, but in any case, is a cultural being of which it is to say that my thought strains towards it rather than that it embraces it, as my body, in a familiar surrounding, finds its orientation and makes its way among objets without my needing to have them expressly in mind.