Belief, Doubt, Will, Thinking

At first glance, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the Meditations are complementary--the former expounds the Axiomatic Method, i. e. the derivation of compound propositions from a simple one, while the Method of Doubt in the latter supplies the Axiom.  So, the introduction in the later work of the Cogito as that ground of all Knowledge constitutes no conflict with the Rules, in which it does not appear.  However, the status of Doubt seems to shift significantly between the two projects.  For, while in the later, it is plainly a cogitation, at the end of Rule III,  Belief or non-Belief is "an action not of our intelligence, but of our will."  Now, in the Second Meditation, a thinking being is one which "doubts . . . affirms, denies, wills . . . ".  So, apparently a fundamental difference between the two works is the classification of Will, i. e. as a species of Thinking, or not.  Still, the later subsumption, i. e. of Will under Thinking, does not, in itself, repudiate the earlier insight that withholding Belief, and, hence, Doubting, is Volitional.  It just indicates that the more immediate result of the Second Meditation is 'I will, therefore I am, via 'I cannot disbelieve that I am disbelieving', and prior to its generalization into 'I think, therefore I am'.