Here we have a cogito of emergence without our having been given the cogito of a being withdrawn into itself; the more or less sombre cogito of a being who first plays at making itself a “Dutch stove,” like Descartes, a sort of chimerical home, in a corner of a boat. The child has just discovered that she is herself, in an explosion toward the outside, which is a reaction, perhaps, to certain concentrations in a corner of her being. For the recess in the boat is also a corner of being.
