_____________________________________________________
RENE DESCARTES
MEDITATIONS ON FIRST
PHILOSOPHY
IN WHICH THE EXISTENCE OF
GOD AND THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
ARE DEMONSTRATED(1)
Translated by Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, BC, Canada
_____________________________________________________
TRANSLATOR’S
NOTE
This translation is based upon the
first Latin edition of Descartes’ Mediations (1641), omitting the Objections
and Replies included in that text. I have incorporated most of the relatively
few corrections made to that text in the second Latin edition (1642), none of
which is particularly important, other than the title page. I have also
inserted a number of additions made to the Latin text in the first French
edition (1647), which was supervised by Descartes, who approved of the result.
These additions from the French edition, which are indicated by square
brackets, are inserted here only where they help to clarify the meaning of the
original Latin. Other changes in the French text I have ignored.
I have provided some endnotes for the
reader who might require assistance with Descartes’ argument. These are not
intended to provide a through or satisfactory commentary, but merely occasional
guidance.
Students, teachers, and members of the
general public may download and distribute this text without permission and
without charge. They may also freely edit the text to suit their purposes. All
commercial use without the permission of the translator is, however, prohibited.
Please contact Ian Johnston for details.
This translation was posted on the web
in 2012. A published book of this translation (2013) is available from
Broadview Press.
An RTF format of this translation
(compatible with Word and Open Office) is available at the following site: Meditations [RTF]
Contents
sYNOPSIS OF THE SIX FOLLOWING MEDITATIONS
fIRST
mEDITATION
cONCERNING THOSE THINGS WHICH CAN BE CALLED IN DOUBT
SECOND
mEDITATION
cONCERNING THE nATURE OF THE hUMAN mIND AND THE FACT THAT IT IS EASIER TO KNOW
THAN THE BODY
tHIRD
mEDITATION
cONCERNING GOD AND THE FACT THAT HE EXISTS
FOURTH
MEDITATION
cONCERNING TRUTH AND FALSITY
FIFTH
MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE ESSENCE OF MATERIAL THINGS AND, ONCE
AGAIN, CONCERNING THE FACT THAT GOD EXISTS
Sixth
meditation
Concerning the exitence of material things and the real distinction between
mind and body
MEDITATIONS
ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY
[LETTER
TO THE SORBONNE](2)
To the very learned and most illustrious
Dean and Doctors
of the Sacred Faculty of Theology
in Paris
The reason urging me to offer you this treatise is
compelling, and I believe that, once you understand the organizing principle of
what I have undertaken, you will have an equally just reason for taking the
work under your protection. Such is my confidence, in fact, that I can find no
better way of recommending it to you than by outlining briefly what I set out to
do in it.
Of those questions which ought to be resolved with
the help of philosophy rather than of theology, I have always thought that the
two most important concerned God and the soul. For although among those of us
who believe, faith is sufficient to accept that the human soul does not perish
with the body and that God exists, it really does not seem at all possible to
convince non-believers about any religion and perhaps about any moral virtue,
as well, unless one first establishes the truth of those two questions for them
by natural reason. And since this life frequently offers greater rewards for
vice than for virtue, few people would prefer what is right to what is
convenient, if they did not fear God and were not anticipating a life
hereafter. It is indubitably true that we must believe in the existence of God,
because that is what we are taught by the Holy Scriptures, and that, on the
other hand, we must believe the Holy Scriptures because they come from God, for
since faith is a gift from God, obviously the same Being who gives us grace to
believe other things can also give us grace to believe in His own existence.
However, we cannot make this argument to non-believers, for they would claim
that such reasoning is circular. And, indeed, I have observed not only
that all of you, as well as other theologians, affirm that the existence of God
can be proved by natural reason, but also that it can be inferred from sacred
Scripture, that we can acquire knowledge of Him [much] more readily than of
many created things, and that, in fact, it is so utterly easy that those who
lack such knowledge are themselves to blame, as we can see from these words in
Wisdom 13: And these men ought not to be forgiven, for if they could
know so much that they were able to assess the things of this world, why did
they not find the Lord of these things more easily? And Romans,
Chapter 1, states that such men have no excuse. And,
once again, in the same place, the following words What is known of God
is manifest in them appear to be advising us that everything which can
be known about God can be revealed by reasons we do not derive from anywhere
other than our own minds. Thus, I did not think it would be inappropriate for
me to explore how that might be done and by what road God might be known more
easily and more certainly than worldly matters.
As far as the soul is concerned, many people have
judged that its nature cannot be investigated easily, and some have even dared
to claim that human reasoning has convinced them that the soul dies at the same
time as the body and that faith alone can maintain the opposite. However, since
the Lateran Council, in its eighth session, held under Pope Leo X, condemns
those who make such claims and expressly commands Christian philosophers to
refute their arguments and to use their full abilities to demonstrate
the truth, I have not hesitated to take on this task as well.(3)
Furthermore, I know that several impious people are
unwilling to believe that God exists and that the human mind is distinct from
the body, for no other reason than, as they allege, no one has been able to
prove the truth of these two claims up to now. I in no way agree with these
people but, by contrast, believe that almost all [the reasons] great men have
brought forward in support of these two questions, once they are sufficiently
understood, have the force of demonstrations, and I am convinced that it is
virtually impossible to offer any arguments that have not been previously set
out by other people. Nevertheless, I consider that there can be no more useful
task facing philosophy than to seek out diligently, once and for all, the best
of all these arguments and to set them down so accurately and clearly that
everyone from now on will accept them as sure proofs. Finally, since I was
urgently requested to carry out this work by several people who knew that I had
cultivated a certain method for resolving some difficulties in the sciences—not
a new method, to be sure, because there is nothing more ancient than the truth,
but one which they had often seen me use, and not without success, in other
areas—I thought it was my duty to make some sort of attempt at it in this
matter.
Whatever I have been able to offer is all contained
in this treatise. Not that I have tried to gather together here all the various
arguments which one could adduce to serve as demonstrations of the same points,
for this did not seem to be worth the effort, except where there was no one
proof which was sufficiently certain. Instead, I have described in detail only
the first and most important ones in such a way that I now venture to publish
them as very certain and very clear demonstrations. Furthermore, I will add
that these proofs are also such that I do not believe there is any road open to
the human mind by which it is possible for people ever to come up with better
ones. For the urgency of the subject and the glory of God, to which everything
here relates, compel me to speak here of my own work somewhat more freely than
I usually do. However, although I believe these arguments are clear and
certain, that still does not convince me that they are well suited to
everyone’s understanding. In geometry there are many works written by
Archimedes, Apollonius, Pappus, and others that everyone has accepted on the
basis of their clarity and certainty, because, in fact, their arguments contain
nothing which, examined in and of itself, is not very easy to understand and
because none of the stages lacks an accurate and coherent link
with what has gone before.(4) Nevertheless, because these works are rather
long and demand an assiduously attentive reader, they are understood by
relatively few people. And so, although I believe that the clarity and
certainty of the demonstrations I use here are equal to, or even better than,
those in geometric [proofs], I still fear that there are not many people who
can grasp them sufficiently, partly because they, too, are somewhat long and
some depend on others, and, most importantly, because they demand a mind that
is entirely free of prejudice and that can easily detach itself from its
association with the senses. Besides, we will certainly not find more people in
the world well equipped for metaphysics than for geometry. However, there is an
additional difference. In geometry, everyone is convinced that, as a rule,
nothing is written down which has not been clearly proven, and so unskilled
readers more frequently make the mistake of approving what is false, because
they wish to look as if they understand it, than of refuting what is true. But
in philosophy, by contrast, people believe that there is nothing which cannot
be disputed on one side or the other, and therefore few of them investigate the
truth, while the vast majority, eager to acquire a reputation for genius,
boldly assail the most important truths.
Hence, because my arguments, whatever their quality,
are exploring philosophical issues, I do not expect to achieve very much with
them, unless you assist me with your patronage and protection. Your faculty is
held in such high esteem in everyone’s mind, and the name Sorbonne carries such
great authority, that, after the sacred councils, there has never been a
society in whom people have placed more trust, and not merely in matters of
faith, for in human philosophy, too, everyone believes that it is impossible to
find anywhere else more perspicuity and solidity, more integrity and wisdom in
rendering judgments than among you. Thus, if you deigned to consider this work
sufficiently worth the effort and, first of all, were to correct it—for being
aware not only of my humanity but also, above all, of my ignorance, I do not
claim that there are no errors in it—and, second, were to add what is lacking,
perfect what is insufficiently complete, and illustrate what requires further
explanation—if you were to do this on your own or at least give me your advice,
so that then I could do it—and, finally, once those arguments in the work proving
that God exists and that the mind is different from the body have been
established and made as clear as I believe they can be, so that they must be
truly accepted as extremely accurate proofs, if you were willing to confirm and
publicly endorse them, then, if all this happens, I have no doubt that all the
errors which have ever existed concerning these two questions will soon be
erased from human minds. For truth itself will quickly see to it that other
intellectuals and scholars subscribe to your judgment. And your authority will
lead the atheists, who tend to be superficial thinkers rather than
people with natural acuity or learning, to set aside their spirit of
contradiction and perhaps even to take up arms themselves in support of
arguments which they know are considered established truths by all those
endowed with real intelligence, in order to avoid appearing as if they do not
understand them. And finally all the others will quickly accept the
evidence of so many testimonials, and there will no longer be anyone in the
world who ventures to call into doubt either that God exists or that the human
soul is truly distinct from the body. Given your extraordinary wisdom, you
yourselves are able to judge better than anyone else how useful this might be.
However, it would not be appropriate for me here to commend further the cause
of God and religion to those who have always been the greatest support of the
Catholic Church.
I have previously touched briefly on questions of God
and the human mind in my Discourse on the Method of Reasoning Correctly
and Investigating Truth in the Sciences, published in French in the year
1637. In that work, to be sure, my purpose was not to treat them thoroughly but
only to consider them generally and to learn from the judgments of my readers
how I ought to address them later on. For these questions seemed to me so
important that I judged they should be dealt with more than once. And the road
I follow in explaining them is so seldom trodden and so remote from the usual
path, that I did not think it would be helpful to explain it at length in
French and in a discourse which anyone anywhere might read, in case it
encouraged those with weaker minds to believe that they, too, should set out
along the same route.
However, in that earlier work I asked all those who
came across something they considered objectionable in my writings to do me the
favour of advising me what that was. Where my remarks on these questions of God
and the soul were concerned, they found nothing worth objecting to, except for
two things. These comments I will respond to briefly here, before I undertake a
more detailed discussion of these matters.
The first objection is as follows: from the fact that
the human mind reflecting on itself does not perceive itself to be anything
other than a thinking thing, it does not follow that its nature or essence
consists merely in its being a thing that thinks, in the sense that this
word merely excludes everything else which one might perhaps
be able to claim pertains to the nature of the soul. To this objection I reply
that in that argument I did not wish to exclude those other attributes in a
sequence of thoughts leading to the truth of the matter (which was not really
my concern at that time) but only in a sequence following my own perceptions.
Thus, what I meant was that I had no distinct awareness of anything which I
knew belonged to my essence, other than the fact that I was a thinking thing,
or a thing possessing in itself the faculty of thinking. In what follows,
however, I will show how from the fact that I know nothing else pertains to my
essence, it also follows that there is, in fact, nothing else belonging to it.
The second objection is that from the fact that I
have within me the idea of something more perfect than myself, it does not
follow that the idea itself is more perfect than I am and, even less, that what
is represented by this idea exists. However, my answer to this objection is
that here an ambiguity lies concealed in the word idea. For it can
be understood materially, as an operation of my intellect, in which sense it
cannot be said that it is more perfect than me, or it can be understood
objectively, as the thing represented by that operation. Even if we do not
assume that this thing exists outside my intellect, it can still be more
perfect than I am because of its essence. How it follows merely from the fact
that there is within me the idea of something more perfect than myself that
this thing truly exists, I will explain in detail in what follows.
In addition to these objections, I have seen two
fairly lengthy works, but they were less concerned to attack my reasoning about
these matters than my conclusions, using arguments borrowed from sources common
among atheists. But arguments like theirs can have no effect on those who
understand my reasoning, and the judgments of many people are so perverse and
feeble, that they are persuaded by opinions they have earlier adopted, no
matter how false and remote from reason they may be, rather than by a true and
firm refutation of these opinions which they hear about later on. And so I am
unwilling to respond to those criticisms here, because I wish to avoid having
to begin by stating them. I will only make the general point that everything atheists
commonly toss out to attack the existence of God always depends upon the fact
that we attribute human feelings to God or else attribute so much strength and
wisdom to our own minds, that we attempt to determine and understand what God
can and ought to do. But we will have no difficulty with this type of
objection, provided only that we remember to think of our minds as finite
things and of God as beyond our comprehension and infinite.
However, now that I have in one way or another taken
a preliminary test of people’s opinions, I am here addressing once more the
same two questions concerning God and the human mind and at the same time
dealing fully with the basic principles of First Philosophy, but not in a way
that leads me to expect any praise from the general public or from many
readers. In fact, I would even advise people not to read this treatise, unless
they are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, to detach their minds
from their senses, and at the same time to remove all preconceived notions from
their thinking. I know well enough that one finds relatively few readers like
that. And as for those who do not take the trouble to understand the order and
the connections in my arguments and who are keen to chatter on only about
individual conclusi0ns, as many habitually do, such people will not harvest
much fruit by reading this treatise. Although they may perhaps find in many
parts an occasion to quibble, it will still not be easy for them to make a
significant objection or any which merits a reply.
And because I am also not committing myself to
satisfying other people in all points immediately and am not arrogant enough to
believe that I can foresee everything that will seem difficult to anyone, I
will first of all set down in the Meditations the very
thoughts with whose help I reached, so it seems to me, a certain and manifest
knowledge of the truth, in order to discover whether, using the same arguments
which convinced me, I may perhaps be able to persuade others as well. Then,
after that, I will reply to the objections of several people of exceptional
intelligence and learning to whom I sent these Meditations for
their perusal, before I submitted them to the printer. For they have made so
many and such varied objections, that I venture to hope it will not be easy for
other criticisms—at least ones of any importance—to arise in anyone’s mind
which these people have not already touched on. And so I also urge those who
read the Meditations not to render judgment on it before they
have taken the trouble to read all the objections and my replies
to them.(5)
SYNOPSIS
OF THE SIX FOLLOWING MEDITATIONS
In the First Meditation I set down the reasons which
enable us to place everything in doubt, especially material things, at least so
long as we do not have foundations for the sciences different from those we
have had up to now. Although at first glance the usefulness of such a
widespread doubt is not apparent, it is, in fact, very great, because it frees
us from all prejudices, sets down the easiest route by which we can detach our
minds from our senses, and finally makes it impossible for us to doubt anymore
those things which we later discover to be true.
In the Second Meditation, the mind, using its own
unique freedom, assumes that all those things about whose existence it can
entertain the least doubt do not exist and recognizes that during this time it
is impossible that it itself does not exist. And that is also extremely useful,
because in this way the mind can easily differentiate between those things
pertaining to it, that is, to its intellectual nature, and those pertaining to
the body. However, since at this point some people may perhaps expect an
argument [proving] the immortality of the soul, I think I should warn them here
that I have tried to avoid writing anything which I could not accurately
demonstrate and that, therefore, I was unable to follow any sequence of
reasoning other than the one used by geometers. That means I start by setting
down everything on which the proposition we are looking into depends, before I
reach any conclusions about it. Now, the first and most important prerequisite
for understanding the immortality of the soul is to form a conception of the
soul that is as clear as possible, one entirely distinct from every conception
[we have] of the body. And that I have done in this section. After that, it is
essential also for us to know that all those things we understand clearly and
distinctly are true in a way which matches precisely how we think of them. This
I was unable to prove before the Fourth Meditation. We also need to have a
distinct conception of corporeal nature. I deal with that point partly in this
Second Meditation and partly in the Fifth and Sixth Meditations, as well. And
from these we necessarily infer that all those things we conceive clearly and
distinctly as different substances, in the same way we think of the mind and
the body, are, in fact, truly different substances, distinct from one another,
a conclusion I have drawn in the Sixth Meditation. This conclusion is also
confirmed in the same meditation from the fact that we cannot think of the body
as anything other than something divisible, and, by contrast, [cannot think of]
the mind as anything other than something indivisible. For we cannot conceive
of half a mind, in the same way we can with a body, no matter how small. Hence,
we realize that their natures are not only different but even, in some
respects, opposites. However, I have not pursued the matter any further in this
treatise, both because these points are enough to show that the annihilation of
the mind does not follow from the corruption of the body and that we mortals
thus ought to entertain hopes of another life and also because the premises on
the basis of which we can infer the immortality of the mind depend upon an
explanation of all the principles of physics. For that, first of all, we would
have to know that all substances without exception—or those things which, in
order to exist, must be created by God—are by their very nature incorruptible
and can never cease to exist, unless God, by denying them his concurrence,
reduces them to nothing, and then, second, we would have to understand that a body, considered generally, is a substance and thus it, too, never
dies.(6) But the human
body, to the extent that it differs from other bodies, consists merely of a
certain arrangement of parts, with other similar accidental properties; whereas,
the human mind is not made up of any accidental properties in
this way, but is a pure substance.(7) For even if all the accidental properties of
the mind were changed, if, for example, it were to think of different things or
have different desires and perceptions, and so on, that would not mean it had
turned into a different mind. But the human body becomes something different
from the mere fact that the shape of some of its parts has changed. From this
it follows that the [human] body does, in fact, perish very
easily, but that the mind, thanks to its nature, is immortal.(8)
In the Third Meditation I have set out what seems to
me a sufficiently detailed account of my main argument to demonstrate the
existence of God. However, in order to lead the minds of the readers as far as
possible from the senses, in this section I was unwilling to use any
comparisons drawn from corporeal things, and thus many obscurities may still
remain. But these, I hope, have later been entirely removed in the replies [I
have made] to the objections. For instance, among all the others, there is the
issue of how the idea of a supremely perfect being, which is present within us,
could have so much objective reality, that it is impossible for it not to
originate from a supremely perfect cause. This is illustrated [in the replies]
by the comparison with a wholly perfect machine, the idea of which exists in
the mind of some craftsman. For just as the objective ingenuity of this idea
must have some cause, that is, the technical skill of this craftsman or of
someone else from whom he got the idea, so the idea of God,
which is in us, cannot have any cause other than God Himself.(9)
In the Fourth Meditation, I establish that all the
things which we perceive clearly and distinctly are true, and at the same time
I explain what constitutes the nature of falsity, things that we have to know
both to confirm what has gone before and to understand what still remains.
(However, in the meantime I must observe that in this part I do not deal in any
way with sin, that is, with errors committed in pursuit of good and evil, but
only with those which are relevant to judgments of what is true and false. Nor
do I consider matters relevant to our faith or to the conduct of our lives, but
merely those speculative truths we can know only with the
assistance of our natural light).(10)
In the Fifth Meditation, I offer a general
explanation of corporeal nature and, in addition, also demonstrate the
existence of God in a new argument, in which, however, several difficulties
may, once again, arise. These I have resolved later in my replies to the
objections. And finally, I point out in what sense it is true that the
certainty of geometrical demonstrations depends upon a knowledge of God.
Finally, in the Sixth Meditation, I differentiate
between the understanding and the imagination and describe the principles of
this distinction. I establish that the mind is truly distinct from the body,
and I point out how, in spite of that, it is so closely joined to the body that
they form, as it were, a single thing. I review all the errors which
customarily arise through the senses and explain the ways in which such errors
can be avoided. And then finally, I set down all the reasons which enable us to
infer the existence of material things. Not that I believe that these are
particularly useful because they demonstrate the truth of what they prove, for
example, that there is truly is a world, that human beings have bodies, and
things like that, which no one of sound mind ever seriously doubted, but rather
because, when we examine these reasons, we see that they are neither as firm or
as evident as those by which we arrive at a knowledge of our own minds and of
God, so that the latter are the most certain and most evident of all things
which can be known by the human intellect. The proof of this one point was the
goal I set out to attain in these Mediations. For that reason I am
not reviewing here various [other] questions I have also dealt with as they arise
[in this treatise].
FIRST
MEDITATION
CONCERNING THOSE THINGS WHICH CAN BE CALLED INTO DOUBT
It is now several years since I noticed how from the
time of my early youth I had accepted many false claims as true, how everything
I had later constructed on top of those [falsehoods] was doubtful, and thus how
at some point in my life I needed to tear everything down completely and begin
again from the most basic foundations, if I wished to establish something firm
and lasting in the sciences. But this seemed an immense undertaking, and I kept
waiting, until I would be old enough and sufficiently mature to know that no
later period of my life would come [in which I was] better equipped to
undertake this disciplined enquiry. This reason made me delay for so long, that
I would now be at fault if, by [further] deliberation, I used up the time which
still remains to carry out that project. And so today, when I have conveniently
rid my mind of all worries and have managed to find myself secure leisure in
solitary withdrawal, I will at last find the time here for an earnest and
unfettered general demolition of my [former] opinions.
Now, for this task it will not be necessary to show
that every opinion I hold is false, something which I might well be incapable
of ever carrying out. But since reason now convinces me that I should withhold
my assent from opinions which are not entirely certain and indubitable, no less
than from those which are plainly false, then, if I uncover any reason for
doubt in each of them, that will be enough to reject them all. For that I will
not need to run through them separately, a task that would take forever, because
once the foundations are destroyed, whatever is built above them will collapse
on its own. Thus, I shall at once assault the very principles upon which all my
earlier beliefs rested.
Up to this point, what I have accepted as very true I
have derived either from the senses or through the senses. However, sometimes I
have discovered that these are mistaken, and it is prudent never to place one’s
entire trust in things which have deceived us even once.
However, although from time to time the senses
deceive us about miniscule things or those further away, it could well be that
there are still many others matters about which we cannot entertain the
slightest doubt, even though we derive [our knowledge] of them from sense
experience, for example, the fact that I am now here, seated by the fire,
wearing a winter robe, holding this paper in my hands, and so on. And, in fact,
how could I deny that these very hands and this whole body are mine, unless
perhaps I were to compare myself with certain insane people whose cerebellums
are so troubled by the stubborn vapours of black bile that they constantly
claim that they are kings, when, in fact, they are very poor, or that they are
dressed in purple, when they are nude, or that they have earthenware heads, or
are complete pumpkins, or made of glass? But these people are mad, and I myself
would appear no less demented, if I took something from them and applied it to
myself as an example.
That is outstanding reasoning—as if I were not a
person who in the night habitually sleeps and experiences in my dreams all the
same things as these [mad] people do when wide awake, sometimes even less
probable ones. How often have I had an experience like this: while sleeping at
night, I am convinced that I am here, dressed in a robe and seated by the fire,
when, in fact, I am lying between the covers with my clothes off! At the
moment, my eyes are certainly wide awake and I am looking at this piece of
paper, this head which I am moving is not asleep, and I am aware of this hand
as I move it consciously and purposefully. None of what happens while I am
asleep is so distinct. Yes, of course—as if I do not recall other times when I,
too, have been deceived by similar thoughts in my sleep. As
I reflect on this matter carefully, it becomes completely clear to
me that there are no certain indicators which ever enable us to differentiate
between being awake and being asleep, so much so that I am astounded, and this
confused state itself almost convinces me that I may be sleeping.
So then, let us suppose that I am asleep and that
these particular details—that my eyes are open, that I am moving my head, that
I am stretching out my hand—are not true and that perhaps I do not even have
hands like these or a whole body like this. We must, of course, still concede
that the things we see while asleep are like painted images which could only
have been made as representations of real things. And so these general
things—these eyes, this head, this hand, and this entire body—at least are not
imaginary things but really do exist. For even when painters themselves take
great care to form sirens and satyrs with the most unusual shapes, they cannot,
in fact, give them natures which are entirely new. Instead, they simply mix up
the limbs of various animals or, if they happen to come up with something so
new that nothing at all like it has been seen before and thus [what they have
made] is completely fictitious and false, nonetheless, at least the colours
which make up the picture certainly have to be real. For similar reasons,
although these general things—eyes, head, hand, and so on—could also be
imaginary, still we are at least forced to concede the reality of certain even
simpler and more universal objects, out of which, just as with real colours,
all those images of things that are in our thoughts, whether true or false, are
formed.
To this class [of things], corporeal nature appears,
in general, to belong, as well as its extension, the shape of extended things,
their quantity or their size and number, the place where they exist, the time
which measures how long they last, and things like that.
Thus, from these facts perhaps we are not reaching an
erroneous conclusion [by claiming] that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all
the other disciplines which rely upon a consideration of composite objects are
indeed doubtful, but that arithmetic, geometry, and the other [sciences] like
them, which deal with only the simplest and most general matters and have
little concern whether or not they exist in the nature of things, contain
something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and
three always add up to five, a square does not have more than four sides, and
it does not seem possible that such manifest truths could ever
arouse the suspicion that they are false.(11)
Nevertheless, a certain opinion has for a long time
been fixed in my mind—that there is an all-powerful God who created me and
[made me] just as I am. But how do I know He has not arranged things so that
there is no earth at all, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no magnitude, no
place, and yet seen to it that all these things appear to me to exist just as
they do now? Besides, given that I sometimes judge that other people make
mistakes with the things about which they believe they have the most perfect
knowledge, might I not in the same way be wrong every time I add two and three
together, or count the sides of a square, or do something simpler, if that can
be imagined? Perhaps God is unwilling to deceive me in this way, for He is said
to be supremely good. But if it is contrary to the goodness of God to have
created me in such a way that I am always deceived, it would also seem foreign
to His goodness to allow me to be occasionally deceived. The latter claim, however,
is not one that I can make.
Perhaps there may really be some people who prefer to
deny [the existence of] such a powerful God, rather than to believe that all
other things are uncertain. But let us not seek to refute these people, and
[let us concede] that everything [I have said] here about God is a fiction. No
matter how they assume I reached where I am now, whether by fate, or chance, or
a continuous series of events, or in some other way, given that being deceived
and making mistakes would seem to be something of an imperfection, the less
power they attribute to the author of my being, the greater the probability
that I will be so imperfect that I will always be deceived. To these arguments
I really do not have a reply. Instead, I am finally compelled to admit that
there is nothing in the beliefs which I formerly held to be true about which
one cannot raise doubts. And this is not a reckless or frivolous opinion, but
the product of strong and well-considered reasoning. And therefore, if I desire
to discover something certain, in future I should also withhold my assent from
those former opinions of mine, no less than [I do] from opinions which are
obviously false.
But it is not sufficient to have called attention to
this point. I must [also] be careful to remember it. For these habitual
opinions constantly recur, and I have made use of them for so long and they are
so familiar that they have, as it were, acquired the right to seize hold of my
belief and subjugate it, even against my wishes, and I will never give up the
habit of deferring to and relying on them, so long as I continue to assume that
they are what they truly are, that is, opinions which are to some extent
doubtful, as I have already pointed out, but still very probable, so that it is
much more reasonable to believe them than to deny them. For that reason, I will
not go wrong, in my view, if I deliberately turn my inclination into its
complete opposite and deceive myself, [by assuming] for a certain period that
these earlier opinions are entirely false and imaginary, until I have, as it
were, finally brought the weight of both my [old and my new] prejudices into an
equal balance, so that corrupting habits will no longer twist my judgment away
from the correct perception of things. For I know that doing this will not, for
the time being, lead to danger or error and that it is impossible for me to
indulge in excessive distrust, since I am not at this point
concerned with actions, but only with knowledge.(12)
Therefore, I will assume that it is not God, who is
supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some malicious demon, at once
omnipotent and supremely cunning, who has been using all the energy he
possesses to deceive me. I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colours, shapes,
sounds, and all other external things are nothing but the illusions of my
dreams with which this spirit has set traps for my credulity. I will think of
myself as if I had no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, and
yet as if I still falsely believed I had all these things. I shall continue to
concentrate resolutely on this meditation, and if, in doing so, I am, in fact,
unable to learn anything true, I will at least do what is in my power and with
a resolute mind take care not to agree to what is false or to enable the
deceiver to impose anything on me, no matter how powerful and cunning [he may
be]. But this task is onerous, and a certain idleness brings me back to my
customary way of life. I am not unlike a prisoner who in his sleep may happen
to enjoy an imaginary liberty and who, when he later begins to suspect that he
is asleep, fears to wake up and willingly cooperates with the pleasing
illusions [in order to prolong them]. In this way, I unconsciously slip back
into my old opinions and am afraid of waking up, in case from now on I would
have to spend the period of challenging wakefulness that follows this peaceful
relaxation not in the light, but in the inextricable darkness of the
difficulties I have just raised.
SECOND
MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN MIND AND THE FACT THAT IT IS EASIER TO KNOW
THAN THE BODY
Yesterday’s meditation threw me into so many doubts
that I can no longer forget them or even see how they might be resolved. Just
as if I had suddenly fallen into a deep eddying current, I am hurled into such
confusion that I am unable to set my feet on the bottom or swim to the surface.
However, I will struggle along and try once again [to follow] the same path I
started on yesterday, that is, I will reject everything which admits of the
slightest doubt, just as if I had discovered it was completely false, and I
will proceed further in this way, until I find something certain, or at least,
if I do nothing else, until I know for certain that there is nothing certain.
In order to shift the entire earth from its location, Archimedes asked for
nothing but a fixed and immovable point. So I, too, ought to hope for great
things if I can discover something, no matter how small, which is certain and
immovable.
Therefore, I assume that everything I see is false. I
believe that none of those things my lying memory represents has ever existed,
that I have no senses at all, and that body, shape, extension,
motion, and location are chimeras.(13) What, then, will be true? Perhaps this one
thing: there is nothing certain.
But how do I know there is not something different
from all these things I have just listed, about which one could not entertain
the slightest momentary doubt? Is there not some God, by whatever name I call
him, who places these very thoughts inside me? But why would I think this,
since I myself could perhaps have produced them? So am I then not at least
something? But I have already denied that I have senses and a body. Still, I am
puzzled, for what follows from this? Am I so bound up with my body and my
senses that I cannot exist without them? But I have convinced myself that there
is nothing at all in the universe—no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. So
then, is it the case that I, too, do not exist? No, not at all: if I persuaded
myself of something, then I certainly existed. But there is some kind of
deceiver, supremely powerful and supremely cunning, who is constantly and intentionally
deceiving me. But then, if he is deceiving me, there is no doubt that I, too,
for that very reason exist. Let him trick me as much as he can, he will never
succeed in making me nothing, as long as I am aware that I am something. And
so, after thinking all these things through in great detail, I must finally
settle on this proposition: the statement I am, I exist is
necessarily true every time I say it or conceive of it in my mind.
But I do not yet understand enough about what
this I is, which now necessarily exists. Thus, I must be
careful I do not perhaps unconsciously substitute something else in place of
this I and in that way make a mistake even in the conception
which I assert is the most certain and most evident of all. For that reason, I
will now reconsider what I once believed myself to be, before I fell into this
[present] way of thinking. Then I will remove from that whatever could in the
slightest way be weakened by the reasoning I have [just] brought to bear, so
that, in doing this, by the end I will be left only with what is absolutely
certain and immovable.
What then did I believe I was before? Naturally, I
thought I was a human being. But what is a human being? Shall I say a rational
animal? No. For then I would have to ask what an animal is
and what rational means, and thus from a single question I
would fall into several greater difficulties. And at the moment I do not have
so much leisure time, that I wish to squander it with subtleties of this sort.
Instead I would prefer here to attend to what used to come into my mind quite
naturally and spontaneously in earlier days every time I thought about what I
was. The first thought, of course, was that I had a face, hands, arms, and this
entire mechanism of limbs, the kind one sees on a corpse, and this I designated
by the name body. Then it occurred to me that I was nourished and
that I walked, felt, and thought. These actions I assigned to the soul.
But I did not reflect on what this soul might be, or else I
imagined it as some kind of attenuated substance, like wind, or fire, or
aether, spread all through my denser parts. However, I had no doubts at all
about my body—I thought I had a clear knowledge of its nature. Perhaps if I had
attempted to describe it using the mental conception I used to hold, I would
have explained it as follows: By a body I understand
everything that is appropriately bound together in a certain form and confined
to a place; it fills a certain space in such a way as to exclude from that
space every other body; it can be perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or
smell, and can also be moved in various ways, not, indeed, by itself, but by
something else which makes contact with it. For I judged that possessing the
power of self-movement, like the ability to perceive things or to think, did
not pertain at all to the nature of body. Quite the opposite in fact, so that
when I found out that faculties rather similar to these were present in certain
bodies, I was astonished.
But what [am I] now, when I assume that there is some
extremely powerful and, if I may be permitted to speak like this, malignant and
deceiving being who is deliberately using all his power to trick me? Can I
affirm that I possess even the least of all those things which I have just
described as pertaining to the nature of body? I direct my attention [to this],
think [about it], and turn [the question] over in my mind. Nothing comes to me.
It is tedious and useless to go over the same things once again. What, then, of
those things I used to attribute to the soul, like nourishment or walking? But
given that now I do not possess a body, these are nothing but imaginary
figments. What about sense perception? This, too, surely does not occur without
the body. And in sleep I have apparently sensed many objects which I later
noticed I had not [truly] perceived. What about thinking? Here I discover
something: thinking does exist. This is the only thing which cannot be detached
from me. I am, I exist—that is certain. But for how long? Surely
for as long as I am thinking. For it could perhaps be the case that, if I were
to abandon thinking altogether, then in that moment I would completely cease to
be. At this point I am not agreeing to anything except what is
necessarily true. Therefore, strictly speaking, I am merely a thinking thing,
that is, a mind or spirit, or understanding, or reason—words whose significance
I did not realize before. However, I am something real, and I truly exist. But what kind of thing? As I have said, a thing that
thinks.(14)
And what else besides? I will let my imagination
roam. I am not that interconnection of limbs we call a human body. Nor am I
even some attenuated air which filters through those limbs—wind, or fire, or
vapour, or breath, or anything I picture to myself. For I have assumed those
things were nothing. Let this assumption hold. Nonetheless, I am still something.
Perhaps it could be the case that these very things which I assume are nothing,
because they are unknown to me, are truly no different from that I which
I do recognize. I am not sure, and I will not dispute this point right now. I
can render judgment only on those things which are known to me: I know that I
exist. I am asking what this I is—the thing I know. It is very
certain that knowledge of this I, precisely defined like this, does
not depend on things whose existence I as yet know nothing about and therefore
on any of those things I conjure up in my imagination. And this phrase conjure
up warns me of my mistake, for I would truly be conjuring something up
if I imagined myself to be something, since imagining is nothing other than
contemplating the form or the image of a physical thing. But now I know for
certain that I exist and, at the same time, that it is possible for all those
images and, in general, whatever relates to the nature of body to be nothing
but dreams [or chimeras]. Having noticed this, it seems no less foolish for me
to say “I will let my imagination work, so that I may recognize more clearly
what I am” than if I were to state, “Now I am indeed awake, and I see some
truth, but because I do yet not see it with sufficient clarity, I will quite
deliberately go to sleep, so that in my dreams I will get a truer and more
distinct picture of it.” Therefore, I realize that none of those things which I
can understand with the aid of my imagination is pertinent to this idea I
possess about myself and that I must be extremely careful to summon my mind
back from such things, so that it may perceive its own nature on its own with
the utmost clarity.
But what then am I? A thinking thing. What is this?
It is surely something that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing,
is unwilling, and also imagines and perceives.
This is certainly not an insubstantial list, if all
[these] things belong to me. But why should they not? Surely I am the same I
who now doubts almost everything, yet understands some things, who affirms that
this one thing is true, denies all the rest, desires to know more, does not
wish to be deceived, imagines many things, even against its will, and also
notices many things which seem to come from the senses? Even if I am always
asleep and even if the one who created me is also doing all he can to deceive
me, what is there among all these things which is not just as true as the fact
that I exist? Is there something there that I could say is separate from me?
For it is so evident that I am the one who doubts, understands, and wills, that
I cannot think of anything which might explain the matter more clearly. But
obviously it is the same I that imagines, for although it may well be case, as
I have earlier assumed, that nothing I directly imagine is true, nevertheless,
the power of imagining really exists and forms part of my thinking. Finally, it
is the same I that feels, or notices corporeal things, apparently through the
senses: for example, I now see light, hear noise, and feel heat. But these are
false, for I am asleep. Still, I certainly seem to see, hear, and grow warm—and
this cannot be false. Strictly speaking, this is what in me is called sense
perception and, taken in this precise meaning, it is nothing other than
thinking.
From these thoughts, I begin to understand somewhat
better what I am. However, it still appears that I cannot prevent myself from
thinking that corporeal things, whose images are formed by thought and which
the senses themselves investigate, are much more distinctly known than that
obscure part of me, the I, which is not something I can imagine,
even though it is really strange that I have a clearer sense of those things
whose existence I know is doubtful, unknown, and alien to me than I do of
something which is true and known, in a word, of my own self. But I realize
what the matter is. My mind loves to wander and is not yet allowing itself to
be confined within the limits of the truth. All right, then, let us at this
point for once give it completely free rein, so that a little later on, when
the time comes to pull back, it will consent to be controlled more easily.
Let us consider those things we commonly believe we
understand most distinctly of all, that is, the bodies we touch and see—not,
indeed, bodies in general, for those general perceptions tend to be somewhat
more confusing, but rather one body in particular. For example, let us take
this [piece of] wax. It was collected from the hive very recently and has not
yet lost all the sweetness of its honey. It [still] retains some of the scent
of the flowers from which it was gathered. Its colour, shape, and size are
evident. It is hard, cold, and easy to handle. If you strike it with your
finger, it will give off a sound. In short, everything we require to be able to
recognize a body as distinctly as possible appears to be present. But watch.
While I am speaking, I bring the wax over to the fire. What is left of its
taste is removed, its smell disappears, its colour changes, its shape is
destroyed, its size increases, it turns to liquid, and it gets hot. I can
hardly touch it. And now, if you strike it, it emits no sound. After [these
changes], is what remains the same wax? We must concede that it is. No one
denies this; no one thinks otherwise. What then was in [this piece of wax] that
I understood so distinctly? Certainly nothing I apprehended with my senses,
since all [those things] associated with taste, odour, vision, touch, and sound
have now changed. [But] the wax remains.
Perhaps what I now think is as follows: the wax
itself was not really that sweetness of honey, that fragrance of flowers, that
white colour, or that shape and sound, but a body which a little earlier
appeared perceptible to me in those forms, but which is now [perceptible] in
different ones. But what exactly is it that I am imagining in this way? Let us
consider that point and, by removing those things which do not belong to the
wax, see what is left over. It is clear that nothing [remains], other than
something extended, flexible, and changeable. But what, in fact, do flexible and changeable mean?
Do these words mean that I imagine that this wax can change from a round shape
to a square one or from [something square] to something triangular? No, that is
not it at all. For I understand that the wax has the capacity for innumerable
changes of this kind, and yet I am not able to run through these innumerable
changes by using my imagination. Therefore, this conception [I have of the wax]
is not produced by the faculty of imagination. What about extension? Is not the
extension of the wax also unknown? For it becomes greater when the wax melts,
greater [still] when it boils, and once again [even] greater, if the heat is
increased. And I would not be judging correctly what wax is if I did not believe
that it could also be extended in various other ways, more than I could ever
grasp in my imagination. Therefore, I am forced to admit that my imagination
has no idea at all what this wax is and that I perceive it only with my mind. I
am talking about this [piece of] wax in particular, for the
point is even clearer about wax in general.(15) But what is this wax which can be perceived
only by the mind? It must be the same as the wax I see, touch, and imagine—in
short, the same wax I thought it was from the beginning. But we should note
that the perception of it is not a matter of sight, or touch, or imagination,
and never was, even though that seemed to be the case earlier, but simply of
mental inspection, which could be either imperfect and confused as it was
before, or clear and distinct as it is now, depending on the lesser or greater
degree of attention I bring to bear on those things out of which the wax is
composed.
However, now I am amazed at how my mind is [weak and]
prone to error. For although I am considering these things silently within
myself, without speaking aloud, I still get stuck on the words themselves and
am almost deceived by the very nature of the way we speak. For if the wax is
there [in front of us], we say that we see the wax itself, not that we judge it
to be there from the colour or shape. From that I could immediately conclude
that I recognized the wax thanks to the vision in my eyes, and not simply by
mental inspection, unless by chance I happen at that moment to glance out of
the window at people crossing the street, for in normal speech I also say I see
the people themselves, just as I do with the wax. But what am I really seeing
other than hats and coats, which could be concealing automatons underneath?
However, I judge that they are people. And thus what I thought I was seeing
with my eyes I understand only with my faculty of judgment, which is in my
mind.
But someone who wishes [to elevate] his knowledge
above the common level should be ashamed to have looked for uncertainty in the
forms of speech which ordinary people use, and so we should move on to consider
next whether my perception of what wax is was more perfect and more evident
when I first perceived it and believed I knew it by my external senses, or at
least by my so-called common sense, in other words, by the power of
imagination, or whether it is more perfect now, after I have investigated
more carefully both what wax is and how it can be known.(16) To entertain doubts about this matter would
certainly be silly. For in my first perception of the wax what was distinct?
What did I notice there that any animal might not be capable of capturing? But
when I distinguish the wax from its external forms and look at it as something
naked, as if I had stripped off its clothing, even though there could still be
some error in my judgment, it is certain that I could not perceive it in this
way without a human mind.
But what am I to say about this mind itself, in other
words, about myself? For up to this point I am not admitting there is anything
in me except mind. What, I say, is the I that seems to
perceive this wax so distinctly? Do I not know myself not only much more truly
and certainly, but also much more distinctly and clearly than I know the wax?
For if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see it, then from the
very fact that I see the wax it certainly follows much more clearly that I
myself also exist. For it could be that what I see is not really wax. It could
be the case that I do not have eyes at all with which to see anything. But when
I see or think I see (at the moment I am not differentiating between these
two), it is completely impossible that I, the one doing the thinking, am not
something. For similar reasons, if I judge that the wax exists from the fact
that I am touching it, the same conclusion follows once again, namely, that I
exist. The result is clearly the same if [my judgment rests] on the fact that I
imagine the wax or on any other reason at all. But these observations I have
made about the wax can be applied to all other things located outside of me.
Furthermore, if my perception of the wax seemed more distinct after it was
drawn to my attention, not merely by sight or touch, but by several [other]
causes, I must concede that I now understand myself much more distinctly, since
all of those same reasons capable of assisting my perception either of the wax
or of any other body whatsoever are even better proofs of the nature of my mind!
However, over and above this, there are so many other things in the mind itself
which can provide a more distinct conception of its [nature] that it hardly
seems worthwhile to review those features of corporeal things which might
contribute to it.
And behold—I have all on my own finally returned to
the place where I wanted to be. For since I am now aware that bodies themselves
are not properly perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but
only by the intellect, and are not perceived because they are touched or seen,
but only because they are understood, I realize this obvious point: there is
nothing I can perceive more easily or more clearly than my own mind. But
because it is impossible to rid oneself so quickly of an opinion one has long
been accustomed to hold, I would like to pause here, in order to impress this
new knowledge more deeply on my memory with a prolonged meditation.
THIRD
MEDITATION
CONCERNING GOD AND THE FACT THAT HE EXISTS
In these few words, I have reviewed everything I
truly know, or at least [everything] that, up to this point, I was aware I
knew. Now I will look around more diligently, in case there are perhaps other
things in me that I have not yet considered. I am certain that I am a thinking
thing. But if that is the case, do I not then also know what is required for me
to be certain about something? There is, to be sure, nothing in this first
knowledge other than a certain clear and distinct perception of what I am
affirming, and obviously this would not be enough for me to be certain about
the truth of the matter, if it could ever happen that something I perceived
just as clearly and distinctly was false. And so it seems to me that now I can
propose the following general rule: all those things I perceive very clearly
and very distinctly are true.
However, before now I have accepted as totally
certain and evident many things that I have later discovered to be doubtful.
What, then, were these things? [They were], of course, the earth, the sky, the
stars, and all the other things I used to grasp with my senses. But what did I
clearly perceive in them? Obviously I was observing in my mind ideas or
thoughts of such things. And even now I do not deny that those ideas exist
within me. However, there was something else which I held to be true and which,
because I was in the habit of believing it, I also thought I perceived clearly,
although I really was not perceiving it at all, namely, that certain things
existed outside of me from which those ideas proceeded and which were like them
in every way. And here was where I went wrong, or if I was judging truthfully,
that certainly had nothing to do with the strength of my perception.
What [then was] true? When I was thinking about
something very simple and easy in arithmetic or geometry—for example, that two
and three added together make five, and things of that sort—was I not
recognizing these with sufficient clarity at least to affirm that they were
true? Later on, to be sure, I did judge that such things could be doubted, but
the only reason I did so was that it crossed my mind that some God could
perhaps have placed within me a certain kind of nature, so that I deceived
myself even about those things which appeared most obvious. And every time this
preconceived opinion about the supreme power of God occurs to me, I cannot but
confess that if He wished, it would be easy for Him to see to it that I go
astray, even in those matters which I think I see as clearly as possible with
my mind’s eye. But whenever I turn my attention to those very things which I
think I perceive with great clarity, I am so completely persuaded by them, that
I spontaneously burst out with the following words: Let whoever can deceive me,
do so; he will still never succeed in making me nothing, not while I think I am
something, or in making it true someday that I never existed, since it is true
that I exist now, or perhaps even in making two and three, when added together,
more or less than five, or anything like that, in which I clearly recognize a
manifest contradiction. And since I have no reason to think that some God
exists who is a deceiver and since, up to this point, I do not know enough to
state whether there is a God at all, it is clear that the reason for any doubt
which rests on this opinion alone is very tenuous and, if I may say so,
metaphysical. However, to remove even that doubt, as soon as the occasion
presents itself, I ought to examine whether God exists and, if He does, whether
He can be a deceiver. For as long as this point remains obscure, it seems to me that I can never be completely certain about anything else.(17)
But now an orderly arrangement would seem to require
that I first divide all of my thoughts into certain kinds and look into which
of these [kinds], strictly speaking, contain truth or error. Some of my
thoughts are, so to speak, images of things, and for these alone the name idea is
appropriate, for example, when I think of a man, or a chimera, or the sky, or
an angel, or God. But other thoughts, in addition to these, possess certain
other forms. For example, when I will, when I fear, when I affirm, and when I
deny, I always apprehend something as the object of my thinking, but in my
thought I also grasp something more than the representation of that thing. In
this [group of thoughts], some are called volitions or feelings, and others
judgments.
Now, where ideas are concerned, if I consider these
only in and of themselves and do not refer them to anything else, they cannot,
strictly speaking, be false. For whether I imagine a goat or a chimera, it is
no less true that I imagine one than it is that I imagine the other. And we
also need have no fear of error in willing or in feeling, for although I can
desire something evil or even things which have never existed, that still does
not make the fact that I desire them untrue. And thus, all that remains are
judgments, in which I must take care not to be deceived. But the most important
and most frequent error I can discover in judgments consists of the fact that I
judge the ideas within me are similar to or conform to certain things located
outside myself. For obviously, if I considered ideas themselves only as certain
modes of my thinking, without referring them to anything else, they would
hardly furnish me any material for making a mistake.
Of these ideas, some, it seems to me, are innate,
others come from outside, and still others I have myself made up. For the fact
that I understand what a thing is, what truth is, and what thinking is I seem
to possess from no source other than my own nature. But if I now hear a noise,
see the sun, or feel heat, I have up to now judged that [these sensations] come
from certain things placed outside of me. And, finally, sirens,
hippogriffs, and such like are things I myself dream up.(18) But I could also perhaps believe that all
[these ideas] come from outside, or else are all innate, or else are all made
up, for I have not yet clearly perceived their true origin.
However, the most important point I have to explore
here concerns those ideas which I think of as being derived from objects
existing outside me: What reason leads me to suppose that these ideas are
similar to those objects? It certainly seems that I am taught to think this way
by nature. Furthermore, I know by experience that these [ideas] do not depend
on my will and therefore not on me myself, for they often present themselves to
me even against my will. For example, whether I will it or not, I now feel
heat, and thus I believe that the feeling or the idea of heat reaches me from
some object apart from me, that is, from [the heat] of the fire I am sitting
beside. And nothing is more obvious than my judgment that this object is
sending its own likeness into me rather than something else.
I will now see whether these reasons are sufficiently
strong. When I say here that I have been taught to think this way by nature, I
understand only that I have been carried by a certain spontaneous impulse to
believe it, not that some natural light has revealed its truth to me. There is
an important difference between these two things. For whatever natural light
reveals to me—for example, that from the fact that I am doubting, it follows
that I exist, and things like that—cannot admit of any possible doubt, because there
cannot be another faculty [in me] as trustworthy as natural light, one which
could teach me that the ideas [derived from natural light] are not true. But
where natural impulses are concerned, in the past, when there was an issue of
choosing the good thing to do, I often judged that such impulses were pushing
me in the direction of something worse, and I do not see why I should place
more trust in them in any other matters.
Moreover, although those ideas do not depend on my
will, it is not therefore the case that they must come from objects located
outside of me. For just as those impulses I have been talking about above are
within me and yet seem to be different from my will, so perhaps there is also
some other faculty in me, one I do not yet understand sufficiently, which
produces those ideas, in the same way they have always appeared to be formed in
me up to now while I sleep, without the help of any external objects [which
they represent].
Finally, even if these ideas did come from things
different from me, it does not therefore follow that they have to be like those
things. Quite the contrary, for in numerous cases I seem to have often observed
a great difference [between the object and the idea]. So, for example, I find
in my mind two different ideas of the sun. One, which is apparently derived
from the senses and should certainly be included among what I consider ideas
coming from outside, makes the sun appear very small to me. However, the other,
which is derived from astronomical reasoning, that is, elicited by certain
notions innate in me or else produced by me in some other manner, makes the sun
appear many times larger than the earth. Clearly, these two [ideas] cannot both
resemble the sun which exists outside of me, and reason convinces [me] that the
one which seems to have emanated most immediately from the sun itself is the
least like it.
All these points offer me sufficient proof that
previously, when I believed that certain things existed apart from me that
conveyed ideas or images of themselves, whether by my organs of sense or by
some other means, my judgment was not based on anything certain but only on
some blind impulse.
However, it crosses my mind that there is still
another way of exploring whether certain things of which I have ideas within me
exist outside of me. To the extent that those ideas are [considered] merely
certain ways of thinking, of course, I do not recognize any inequality among
them, and they all appear to proceed from me in the same way. But to the extent
that one idea represents one thing, while another idea represents something
else, it is clear that they are very different from each other. For undoubtedly
those that represent substances to me and contain in themselves more objective
reality, so to speak, are something more than those that simply represent modes
or accidents. And, once again, that idea thanks to which I am aware of a
supreme God—eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, the Creator of all
things that exist outside of Him—certainly has more objective reality in it than those ideas through which finite substances are
represented.(19)
Now, it is surely evident by natural light that there
must be at least as much [reality] in the efficient and total cause as there is
in the effect of this cause. For from where, I would like to know, can the
effect receive its reality if not from its cause? And how can the cause provide
this reality to the effect, unless the cause also possesses it? But from this
it follows that something cannot be made from nothing and also that what is
more perfect, that is, contains more reality in itself, cannot be produced from
what is less perfect. This is obviously true not only of those effects whose
reality is [what the philosophers call] actual or formal, but also of those ideas in which we consider only [what they call] objective
reality.(20) For example, some stone which has not existed
yet cannot now begin to exist, unless it is produced by something which has in
it, either formally or eminently, everything that goes into the stone, and heat
cannot be brought into an object which was not warm previously, except by
something which is of an order at least as perfect as heat, and so on with all
the other examples. But beyond this, even the idea of heat or of the stone
cannot exist within me, unless it is placed in me by some cause containing at
least as much reality as I understand to be in the heat or in the stone. For
although that cause does not transfer anything of its own reality, either
actual or formal, into my idea, one should not therefore assume that [this
cause] must be less real. Instead, [we should consider] that the nature of the
idea itself is such that it requires from itself no formal reality other than
what it derives from my own thinking, of which it is a mode [that is, a way or
style of thinking]. But for the idea to possess this objective reality rather
than another, it must surely obtain it from some cause in which there is at
least as much formal reality as the objective reality contained in the idea
itself. For if we assume that something can be discovered in the idea which was
not present in its cause, then it must have obtained this from nothing. But no
matter how imperfect the mode of being may be by which a thing is objectively
present in the understanding through its idea, that mode is certainly not nothing, and therefore [this idea] cannot come from nothing.(21)
And although the reality which I am considering in my
ideas is only objective, I must not imagine that it is not necessary
for the same reality to exist formally in the causes of those ideas but that it
is sufficient if [the reality] in them is objective, as well. For just as that
mode of existing objectively belongs to ideas by their very nature, so the mode
of existing formally belongs to the causes of [these] ideas, at least to the
first and most important causes, by their nature. And although it may well be
possible for one idea to be born from another, still this regress cannot
continue on ad infinitum, for we must finally come to some first
[idea], whose cause is, as it were, the archetype [or original idea], which
formally contains the entire reality that exists only objectively in the idea.
And thus natural light makes it clear to me that ideas exist within me as
certain images that can, in fact, easily fall short of the perfection of the
things from which they were derived but that cannot contain anything greater or
more perfect than those things do.
And the more time and care I take examining these
things, the more clearly and distinctly I recognize their truth. But what am I
finally to conclude from them? It is clear that if the objective reality of any
of my ideas is so great that I am certain that the same reality is not in me
either formally or eminently and that therefore I myself cannot be the cause of
that idea, it necessarily follows that I am not alone in the world but
that some other thing also exists which is the cause of that idea.(22) But if I do not find any such idea within me,
then I will obviously have no argument that confirms for me the existence of
anything beyond myself. For I have been searching very diligently and have not
been able to find any other argument up to now.
But of these ideas of mine, apart from the one which
reveals my own self to me, about which there can be no difficulty, there is
another [that represents] God [to me], and there are others which represent
corporeal and inanimate things, as well as others representing angels, animals,
and finally other men who resemble me.
As far as concerns those ideas which display other
human beings or animals or angels, I understand readily enough that I could
have put these together from ideas I have of myself, of corporeal things, and
of God, even though, apart from me, there might be no people or animals or
angels in the world.
Where the ideas of corporeal things are concerned, I
see nothing in them so great that it seems as if it could not have originated
within me. For if I inspect these ideas thoroughly and examine them
individually in the same way I did yesterday with the idea of the wax, I notice
that there are only a very few things I perceive in them clearly and
distinctly, for example, magnitude or extension in length, breadth, and depth;
shape, which emerges from the limits of that extension; position, which
different forms derive from their relation to each other; and motion or a
change of location. To these one can add substance, duration, and number.
However, with the other things, like light, colours, sounds, odours, tastes,
heat, cold, and other tactile qualities, my thoughts of them involve so much
confusion and obscurity, that I still do not know whether they are true or
false, in other words, whether the ideas I have of these [qualities] are ideas
of things or of non-things. For although I observed a little earlier that
falsehood or, strictly speaking, formal falsehood could occur only in
judgments, nonetheless there is, in fact, a certain other material falsehood in
ideas, when they represent a non-thing as if it were a thing. Thus, for
example, ideas which I have of heat and cold are so unclear and indistinct that
I am not able to learn from them whether cold is merely a lack of heat, or heat
a lack of cold, or whether both of these are real qualities, or whether neither
[of them is]. And because there can be no ideas which are not, as it were,
ideas of things, if it is indeed true that cold is nothing other than a lack of
heat, the idea which represents cold to me as if it were something positive and
real will not improperly be called false, and that will also hold for all other
ideas [like this].
To such ideas I obviously do not have to assign any
author other than myself, for, if they are, in fact, false, that is, if they
represent things which do not exist, my natural light informs me that they
proceed from nothing, in other words, that they are in me only because there is
something lacking in my nature, which is not wholly perfect. If, on the other
hand, they are true, given that the reality they present to me is so small that
I cannot distinguish the object from something which does not exist, then I do
not see why I could not have come up with them myself.
As for those details which are clear and distinct in
my ideas of corporeal things, some of them, it seems to me, I surely could have
borrowed from the idea of myself, namely, substance, duration, number, and
other things like that. For when I think that a stone is a substance, or
something equipped to exist on its own and that I, too, am a substance, even
though I conceive of myself as a thinking and non-extended thing and of the
stone as an extended thing which does not think, so that there is the greatest
difference between the two conceptions, they both still seem to fit the
category of substance. In the same way, when I perceive that I now
exist and also remember that I have existed for some time earlier and when I
have various thoughts whose number I recognize, I acquire ideas of duration and number,
which I can then transfer to any other things I choose. As for all the other
qualities from which I put together my ideas of corporeal things, that is,
extension, shape, location, and motion, they are, it is true, not formally
contained in me, since I am nothing other than a thinking thing, but because
they are merely certain modes of a substance and I, too, am a
substance, it seems that they could be contained in me eminently.(23)
And so the only thing remaining is the idea of God. I
must consider whether there is anything in this idea for which I myself could
not have been the origin. By the name God I understand a
certain infinite, [eternal, immutable,] independent, supremely intelligent, and
supremely powerful substance by which I myself was created, along with
everything else that exists, if, [in fact], anything else does exist. All of
these [properties] are clearly [so great] that the more diligently I focus on
them, the less it seems that I could have brought them into being by myself
alone. And thus, from what I have said earlier, I logically have to conclude
that God necessarily exists.
For although the idea of a substance is, indeed, in
me by the very fact that I am a substance, that still does not mean [that I
possess] the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite, unless it
originates in some other substance which is truly infinite.
And I should not think that my perception of the
infinite comes, not from a true idea, but merely from a negation of the finite,
in [same] way I perceive rest and darkness by a negation of motion and light.
For, on the contrary, I understand clearly that there is more reality in an
infinite substance than in a finite one and that therefore my perception of the
infinite is somehow in me before my perception of the finite, in other words,
my perception of God comes before my perception of myself. For how would I know
that I am doubting or desiring, or, in other words, that something is lacking
in me and that I am not entirely perfect, unless some idea of a
perfect being was in me and I recognized my defects by a comparison?(24)
And one cannot claim that this idea of God might well
be materially false and thus could have come from nothing, the way I observed a
little earlier with the ideas of heat and cold and things like that. Quite the
reverse: for [this idea] is extremely clear and distinct and contains more
objective reality than any other, and thus no idea will be found which is more
inherently true and in which there is less suspicion of falsehood. This idea, I
say, of a supremely perfect and infinite being is utterly true, for although it
may well be possible to imagine that such a being does not exist, it is still
impossible to imagine that the idea of Him does not reveal anything real to me,
in the way I talked above about the idea of cold. This idea of a perfect Being
is also entirely clear and distinct, for whatever I see clearly and distinctly
which is real and true and which introduces some perfection is totally
contained within [this idea]. The fact that I cannot comprehend the infinite or
that there are innumerable other things in God that I do not understand or even
perhaps have any way of contacting in my thoughts—all this is irrelevant. For
something finite, like myself, cannot comprehend the nature of the infinite,
and it is sufficient that I understand this very point and judge that all
things which I perceive clearly and which I know convey some perfection, as
well as innumerable others perhaps which I know nothing about, are in God,
either formally or eminently, so that the idea I have of Him is the truest,
clearest, and most distinct of all the ideas within me.
But perhaps I am something more than I myself
understand, and all those perfections which I attribute to God are potentially
in me somehow, even though they are not yet evident and are not manifesting
themselves in action. For I already know by experience that my knowledge is
gradually increasing, and I do not see anything which could prevent it from
increasing more and more to infinity. Nor do I even know of any reasons why,
with my knowledge augmented in this way, I could not, with its help, acquire
all the other perfections of God or, finally, why, if the power [to acquire]
those perfections is already in me, it would not be sufficient to produce the
idea of those perfections.
And yet none of these things is possible. For, in the
first place, although it is true that my knowledge is gradually increasing and
that there are potentially many things within me which have not yet been
realized, still none of these is relevant to the idea of God, in which, of
course, nothing at all exists potentially. For the very fact that my knowledge
is increasing little by little is the most certain argument for its
imperfection. Beyond that, even if my knowledge is always growing more and
more, nonetheless, that does not convince me that it will ever be truly
infinite, since it can never reach a stage where it is not capable of
increasing any further. But I judge that God is actually infinite, so that
nothing can possibly be added to His perfection. And lastly, I perceive that
the objective existence of an idea cannot be produced from a being that is
merely potential, which, strictly speaking, is nothing, but only from something
which actually or formally exists.
Obviously there is nothing in all these thoughts that
is not evident to the natural light in anyone who reflects carefully [on the
matter]. But when I pay less attention and when images of sensible things
obscure the vision in my mind, I do not so readily remember why the idea of a
being more perfect than myself must necessarily proceed from some entity that
is truly more perfect than me. Therefore, I would like to enquire further
whether I, who possess this idea [of God], could exist if such a being did not
exist.
If that were the case, then from whom would I derive
my existence? Clearly from myself or from my parents or from some other source
less perfect than God. For we cannot think of or imagine anything more perfect
than God or even anything equally perfect.
However, if I originated from myself, then I would
not doubt or hope, and I would lack nothing at all, for I would have given
myself all the perfections of which I have any idea within me, and thus I
myself would be God. I must not assume that those things which I lack could
well be more difficult to acquire than those now within me. On the contrary, it
clearly would have been much more difficult for me—that is, a thinking thing or
substance—to emerge from nothing than to acquire a knowledge of the many things
about which I am ignorant, for knowing such things is merely an accident of
that thinking substance. And surely if I had obtained from myself that greater
perfection [of being the author of my own existence], then I could hardly have
denied myself the perfections which are easier to acquire, or, indeed, any of
those I perceive contained in the idea of God, since, it seems to me, none of
them is more difficult to produce. But if there were some perfections more
difficult to acquire, they would certainly appear more difficult to me, too,
if, indeed, everything else I possessed was derived from myself, because from
them I would learn by experience that my power was limited.
And I will not escape the force of these arguments by
assuming that I might perhaps have always been the way I am now, as if it
followed from that assumption that I would not have to seek out any author for
my own existence. For since the entire period of my life can be divided into
innumerable parts, each individual one of which is in no way dependent on the
others, therefore, just because I existed a little while ago, it does not
follow that I must exist now, unless at this very moment some cause is, at it
were, creating me once again, in other words, preserving me. For it is clear to
anyone who directs attention to the nature of time that, in order for the
existence of anything at all to be preserved in each particular moment it
lasts, that thing surely needs the same force and action which would be
necessary to create it anew, assuming it did not yet exist. Thus, one of the
things natural light reveals is that preservation and creation are different
only in the ways we think of them.
Consequently, I now ought to ask myself whether I
have any power which enables me to bring it about that I, who am now existing,
will also exist a little later on, for since I am nothing other than a thinking
thing—or at least since my precise concern at the moment is only with that part
of me which is a thinking thing—if such a power is in me, I would undoubtedly
be conscious of it. But I experience nothing [of that sort], and from this fact
alone I recognize with the utmost clarity that I depend upon some being
different from myself.
But perhaps that being is not God, and I have been
produced by my parents or by some other causes less perfect than God. But [that
is impossible]. As I have already said before, it is clear that there must be
at least as much [reality] in the cause as in the effect and that thus, since I
am a thinking thing and have a certain idea of God within me, whatever I
finally designate as my own cause, I must concede that it is also a thinking substance
containing the idea of all the perfections I attribute to God. It is possible
once again to ask whether that cause originates from itself or from something
else. If it comes from itself, then, given what I have said, it is obvious that
the cause itself is God. For clearly, if it derives its power of existing from
itself, it also undoubtedly has the power of actually possessing all the
perfections whose idea it contains within itself, that is, all those that I
think of as existing in God. But if it is produced from some other cause, then
I ask once again in the same way whether this cause comes from itself or from
some other cause, until I finally reach a final cause, which will be God.
For it is clear enough that this questioning cannot
produce an infinite regress, particularly because the issue I am dealing with
here is a matter not only of the cause which once produced me but also—and most
importantly—of the cause which preserves me at the present time.
And I cannot assume that perhaps a number of partial
causes came together to produce me and that from one of them I received the
idea of one of the perfections I attribute to God and from another the idea of
another perfection, so that all those perfections are indeed found somewhere in
the universe, but they are not all joined together in a single being who is
God. Quite the contrary, [for] the unity and simplicity—or the inseparability
of all those things present in God—is one of the principal perfections which I
recognize in Him. And surely the idea of this unity of all His perfections
could not have been placed in me by any cause from which I did not acquire
ideas of the other perfections as well, for no single cause could have made it
possible for me to understand that those perfections were joined together and
inseparable, unless at the same time it enabled me to recognize what those
perfections were.
And finally, as far as my parents are concerned, even
if everything I have ever believed about them is true, it is still perfectly
clear that they are not the ones who preserve me and that, to the extent that I
am a thinking thing, there is no way they could have even made me. Instead they
merely produced certain arrangements in the material substance which, as I have
judged the matter, contains me—that is, contains my mind, for that is all I
assume I am at the moment. And thus in this discussion there can be no
difficulties with my parents. Given all this, however, from the mere fact that
I exist and that the idea of a supremely perfect being, or God, is within me I
must conclude that I have provided an extremely clear proof that God does,
indeed, exist.
All that is left now is to examine how I have
received that idea from God. For I have not derived it from the senses, and it
has never come to me unexpectedly, as habitually occurs with the ideas of
things I perceive with the senses, when those ideas of external substances
impinge, or seem to impinge, on my sense organs. Nor is it something I just
made up, for I am completely unable to remove anything from it or add anything
to it. Thus, all that remains is that the idea is innate in me, just as the
idea of myself is also innate in me.
And obviously it is not strange that God, when He
created me, placed that idea within me, so that it would be, as it were, the
mark of the master craftsman impressed in his own work, not that it is at all
necessary for this mark to be different from the work itself. But from this one
fact that God created me it is highly credible that He made me in some way in
His image and likeness and that I perceive this likeness, which contains the
idea of God, by the same faculty with which I perceive myself. In other words,
when I turn my mind’s eye onto myself, I not only understand that I am an
incomplete thing, dependent on something else, and one that aspires
[constantly] to greater and better things without limit, but at the same time I
also realize that the one I depend on contains within Himself all those greater
things [to which I aspire], not merely indefinitely and potentially, but
actually and infinitely, and thus that He is God. The entire force of my
argument rests on the fact that I recognize I could not possibly exist with the
sort of nature I possess, namely, having the idea of God within me, unless God
truly existed as well—that God, I say, whose idea is in me, in other words, one
having all those perfections which I do not understand but which I am somehow
capable of contacting in my thoughts, and who is entirely free of any defect.
These reasons are enough to show that He cannot be a deceiver, for natural
light clearly demonstrates that every fraud and deception depends upon some
defect.
But before I examine this matter more carefully and
at the same time look into other truths I could derive from it, I wish to pause
here for a while to contemplate God himself, to ponder His attributes, and to
consider, admire, and adore the beauty of His immense light, to the extent that
the eyes of my darkened intellect can bear it. For just as we believe through
faith that the supreme happiness of our life hereafter consists only in this
contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we know from experience that the same
[contemplation] now, though far less perfect, is the greatest joy we are
capable of in this life.
FOURTH
MEDITATION
CONCERNING TRUTH AND FALSITY
In these last few days, I have grown accustomed to
detaching my mind from my senses, and I have clearly noticed that, in fact, I
perceive very little with any certainty about corporeal things and that I know
a great deal more about the human mind and even more about God. As a result, I
now have no difficulty directing my thoughts away from things I [perceive with
the senses or] imagine and onto those purely intellectual matters divorced from
all material substance. And clearly the idea I have of the human mind, to the
extent that it is a thinking thing that has no extension in length, breadth,
and depth and possesses nothing else which the body has, is much more distinct
than my idea of any corporeal substance. Now, when I direct my attention to the
fact that I have doubts, in other words, that [I am] something incomplete and
dependent, the really clear and distinct idea of an independent and complete
being, that is, of God, presents itself to me. From this one fact that there is
an idea like this in me or else because of the fact that I, who possess this
idea, exist, I draw the clear conclusion that God also exists and that my
entire existence depends on Him every single moment [of my life]. Thus, I
believe that the human intellect can know nothing with greater clarity and
greater certainty. And now it seems to me I see a way by which I can go from
this contemplation of the true God, in whom all the treasures of science and
wisdom are hidden, to an understanding of everything else.
First of all, I recognize that it is impossible that
God would ever deceive me, for in everything false or deceptive one discovers
some sort of imperfection. And although it may appear that the ability to
deceive is evidence of a certain acuity or power, the wish to deceive
undoubtedly demonstrates either malice or mental weakness and is therefore not
found in God.
Then, I know from experience that there is in me a
certain faculty of judgment, which I certainly received from God, like all the
other things within me. Since He is unwilling to deceive me, He obviously did
not give me the kind of faculty that could ever lead me into error, if I used
it correctly.
There would remain no doubt about this, if it did not
seem to lead to the conclusion that I could never make mistakes. For if
whatever is within me I have from God and if He did not give me any power to
commit errors, it would appear that I could never make a mistake. Now, it is
true that as long as I am thinking only about God and directing myself totally
to Him, I detect no reason for errors or falsity. But after a while, when I
turn back to myself, I know by experience that I am still subject to
innumerable errors. When I seek out their cause, I notice that I can picture
not only a certain real and positive [idea] of God, or of a supremely perfect
being, but also, so to speak, a certain negative idea of nothingness, or of
something removed as far as possible from every perfection, and [I recognize]
that I am, as it were, something intermediate between God and nothingness, that
is, I am situated between a supreme being and non-being in such a way that,
insofar as I was created by a supreme being, there is, in fact, nothing in me
which would deceive me or lead me into error, but insofar as I also
participate, to a certain extent, in nothingness or non-being—in other words,
given that I myself am not a supreme being—I lack a great many things.
Therefore, it is not strange that I am deceived. From this I understand that
error, to the extent that it is error, is not something real which depends on
God, but is merely a defect. Thus, for me to fall into error, it is not
necessary that I have been given a specific power to do this by God. Instead, I
happen to make mistakes because the power I have of judging what is true [and
what is false], which I do have from God, is not infinite within me.
However, this is not yet entirely satisfactory, for
error is not pure negation, but rather the privation or lack of a certain
knowledge that somehow ought to be within me. But to anyone who thinks about
the nature of God, it does not seem possible that He would place within me any
power that is not a perfect example of its kind or that lacks some perfection
it ought to have. For [if it is true] that the greater the skill of the
craftsman, the more perfect the works he produces, what could the supreme maker
of all things create which was not perfect in all its parts? And there is no
doubt that God could have created me in such a way that I was never deceived, and,
similarly, there is no doubt that He always wills what is best. So then, is it
better for me to make mistakes or not to make them?
As I weigh these matters more attentively, it occurs
to me, first, that I should not find it strange if I do not understand the
reasons for some of the things God does, and thus I should not entertain doubts
about His existence just because I happen to learn from experience about
certain other things and do not grasp why or how He has created them. For given
the fact that I already know my nature is extremely infirm and limited and
that, by contrast, the nature of God is immense, incomprehensible, and
infinite, I understand sufficiently well that He is capable of innumerable
things about whose causes I am ignorant. For that reason alone, I believe that
the entire class of causes we are in the habit of searching out as final
causes is completely useless in matters of physics, for I do not think
I am capable of investigating the final purposes of God without
appearing foolhardy.(25)
It also occurs to me that, whenever we look into
whether the works of God are perfect, we should not examine one particular
creature by itself, but rather the universal totality of things. For something
which may well appear very imperfect, and not unjustly so, if it is by itself,
is utterly perfect [if we think of it] as part of the [entire] universe. And
although, given my wish to doubt everything, I have up to now recognized
nothing as certain, other than the existence of myself and God, nonetheless,
since I have observed the immense power of God, I cannot deny that He may have
created many other things or at least is capable of creating them
and therefore that I may occupy a place in a universe of things.(26)
After that, by examining myself more closely and
looking into the nature of my errors (the only things testifying to some
imperfection in me), I observe that they proceed from two causes working
together simultaneously, namely, from the faculty of knowing, which I possess,
and from the faculty of choosing, or from my freedom to choose, in other words
from both the intellect and the will together. For through my intellect alone I
[do not affirm or deny anything, but] simply grasp the ideas of things about
which I can make a judgment, and, if I consider my intellect in precisely this
way, I find nothing there which is, strictly speaking, an error. For although
countless things may well exist of which I have no idea at all within me, I
still should not assert that I am deprived of them, in the proper sense of that
word, [as if that knowledge were something my understanding was entitled to
thanks to its nature]. I can only make the negative claim that I do not have
them, for obviously I can produce no reason which enables me to prove that God
ought to have given me a greater power of understanding than He has provided.
And although I know that a craftsman is an expert, still I do not assume that
he must therefore place in each of his works all the perfections he is capable
of placing in some. Moreover, I certainly cannot complain that I have received
from God a will or a freedom to choose that is insufficiently ample and
perfect. For I clearly know from experience that my will is not circumscribed
by any limits. And what seems to me particularly worthy of notice is the fact
that, apart from my will, there is nothing in me so perfect or so great that I
do not recognize that it could be still more perfect or even greater. For, to
consider an example: if I think about the power of understanding, I see at once
that in me it is very small and extremely limited. At the same time, I form an
idea of another understanding which is much greater, even totally great and
infinite, and from the mere fact that I can form this idea, I see that it
pertains to the nature of God. By the same reasoning, if I examine my faculty
of memory or of imagination or any other faculty, I find none at all which I do
not recognize as tenuous and confined in me and immense in God. It is only my
will or my freedom to choose which I experience as so great in me that I do not
apprehend the idea of anything greater. Thus, through my will, more than
through anything else, I understand that I bear a certain image of and
resemblance to God. For although the will is incomparably greater in God than
in myself, because the knowledge and power linked to it make it much stronger
and more efficacious and because, with respect to its object, His will extends
to more things, nonetheless, if I think of the will formally and precisely in
and of itself, His does not appear greater than mine. For the power of will
consists only in the ability to do or not to do [something] (that is, to affirm
or to deny, to follow or to avoid) or rather in this one thing alone, that
whether we affirm or deny, follow or avoid [something] which our understanding
has set before us, we act in such a way that we do not feel that any external
force is determining what we do. For to be free, I do not have to be inclined
in two [different] directions. On the contrary, the more I am inclined to
one—whether that is because I understand that the principle of the true and the
good are manifestly in it or because that is the way God has arranged the inner
core of my thinking—the more freely I choose it. Clearly divine grace and
natural knowledge never diminish liberty, but rather increase and strengthen
it. However, the indifference I experience when there is no reason urging me to
one side more than to the other is the lowest degree of liberty. It does not
demonstrate any perfection in [the will], but rather a defect in my
understanding or else a certain negation. For if I always clearly perceived
what is true and good, I would never need to deliberate about what I ought to
be judging or choosing, and thus, although I would be entirely free, I could
never be indifferent.
For these reasons, however, I perceive that the power
of willing, which I have from God, considered in itself, is not the source of
my errors. For it is extremely spacious and a perfect example of its kind. And
the source is not my power of understanding. For when I understand something, I
undoubtedly do so correctly, since my [power of] understanding comes from God,
and thus it is impossible for it to deceive me. So from where do my errors
arise? Surely from the single fact that my will ranges more widely than my
intellect, and I do not keep it within the same limits but extend it even to
those things which I do not understand. Since the will does not discriminate
among these things, it easily turns away from the true and the good, and, in
this way, I make mistakes and transgress.
For example, in the past few days, when I was
examining whether anything in the world existed and I observed that, from the
very fact that I was exploring this [question], it clearly followed that I
existed, I was not able [to prevent myself] from judging that what I understood
so clearly was true, not because I was forced to that conclusion by any
external force, but because a great light in my understanding was followed by a
great inclination in my will, and thus the less I was indifferent to the issue,
the more spontaneous and free was my belief. However, now not only do I know
that I exist, to the extent I am a thinking thing, but also, beyond that, a
certain idea of corporeal nature has revealed itself to me, and, as it so
happens, I am in doubt whether the thinking nature which is within me, or
rather, which I myself am, is something different from that corporeal nature or
whether both of them are the same, and I assume that up to this point no reason
has offered itself to my understanding which might convince me of one rather
than the other. From this single fact it is clear that I am indifferent as to
which of the two I should affirm or deny, or whether I should even make any
judgment in the matter.
Furthermore, this indifference extends not merely to
those things about which the understanding knows nothing at all, but also, in
general, to everything which it does not recognize with sufficient clarity at
the time when the will is deliberating about them. For, however probable the
conjectures [may be] which draw me in one direction, the mere knowledge that they
are only conjectures and not certain and indubitable reasons is enough to urge
me to assent to the opposite view. In the past few days I have learned this
well enough by experience, once I assumed that all those things I had
previously accepted as absolutely true were utterly false, because of the
single fact that I discovered they could in some way be doubted.
But when I do not perceive that something is true
with sufficient clarity and distinctness, if, in fact, I abstain from rendering
judgment, I am obviously acting correctly and am not deceived. But if at that
time I affirm or deny, [then] I am not using my freedom to choose properly. And
if I change my mind [and affirm] something false, then, of course I will be
deceived. However, if I embrace the alternative, then I may, indeed, hit upon
the truth by chance, but that would not free me from blame, since natural light
makes it clear that a perception of the understanding must always precede a
determination of the will. And it is in this incorrect use of the freedom of
the will that one finds the privation which constitutes the nature of error.
Privation, I say, inheres in this act of the will, to the extent that it
proceeds from me, but not in the faculty I have received from God, nor even in
the act, insofar as it depends upon Him.
For I have no cause to complain at all about the fact
that God has not given me a greater power of understanding or a more powerful
natural light than He has, because it is in the nature of a finite intellect
not to understand many things and it is in the nature of a created intellect to
be finite. Instead, I should thank Him, who has never owed me anything, for His
generosity, rather than thinking that He has deprived me of something He did
not provide or else has taken it away.
And I also have no reason to complain on the ground
that He gave me a will more extensive than my understanding. For since the will
consists of only a single thing and is, so to speak, indivisible, it does not
seem that its nature is such that anything could be removed [without destroying
it]. And, of course, the more extensive my will, the more I ought to show
gratitude to the one who gave it to me.
And finally I also ought not to complain because God
concurs with me in bringing out those acts of will or those judgments in which
I am deceived. For those actions are true and good in every way, to the extent
that they depend on God, and in a certain way there is more perfection in me
because I am capable of eliciting these actions than if I were not. But
privation, in which one finds the only formal reason for falsity and failure,
has no need of God’s concurrence, because it is not a thing, and if one links
it to Him as its cause, one should not call it privation but merely negation.
For obviously it is not an imperfection in God that He has given me freedom to
assent or not to assent to certain things, when He has not placed a clear and
distinct perception of them in my understanding. However, it is undoubtedly an
imperfection in me that I do not use that liberty well and that I bring my
judgment to bear on things which I do not properly understand. Nonetheless, I
see that God could easily have created me so that I never made mistakes, even
though I remained free and had a limited understanding. For example, He could
have placed in my intellect a clear and distinct perception of everything about
which I would ever deliberate, or He could have impressed on my memory that I
should never make judgments about things which I did not understand clearly and
distinctly, and done that so firmly that it would be impossible for me ever to
forget. And I readily understand that, if God had made me that way, insofar as
I have an idea of this totality, I would have been more perfect than I am now.
But I cannot therefore deny that there may somehow be more perfection in this
whole universe of things because some of its parts are not immune to errors and
others are, than if all things were entirely alike. And I have no right to
complain just because the part God wanted me to play in the universe is not the
most important and most perfect of all.
Besides, even if I am unable to avoid errors in the
first way [mentioned above], which depends upon a clear perception of all those
things about which I need to deliberate, I can still use that other [method],
which requires me only to remember to abstain from rendering judgment every
time the truth of something is not evident. For although experience teaches me
that I have a weakness which renders me incapable of keeping [my mind] always
focused on one and the same thought, I can still see to it that by attentive
and frequently repeated mediation I remember that fact every time the occasion
demands. In this way I will acquire the habit of not making mistakes.
Since the greatest and preeminent perfection of human
beings consists in this ability to avoid mistakes, I think that with the
discovery in today’s meditation of the cause of error and falsity I have gained
a not inconsiderable gift. Clearly that cause can be nothing other than what I
have identified. For as long as I keep my will restrained when I deliver
judgments, so that it extends itself only to those things which reveal
themselves clearly and distinctly to my understanding, I will surely be
incapable of making mistakes, because every clear and distinct perception is
undoubtedly something [real]. Therefore, it cannot exist from nothing but
necessarily has God as its author—God, I say, that supremely perfect being, who
would contradict His nature if He were deceitful. And thus, [such a perception]
is unquestionably true. I have learned today not only what I must avoid in
order to ensure that I am never deceived, but also at the same time what I must
do in order to reach the truth. For I will assuredly reach that if I only pay
sufficient attention to all the things I understand perfectly and distinguish
these from all the other things which I apprehend confusedly and obscurely. In
future, I will pay careful attention to this matter.
FIFTH
MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE ESSENCE OF MATERIAL THINGS, AND, ONCE AGAIN,
CONCERNING THE FACT THAT GOD EXISTS
Many other [issues] concerning the attributes of God
are still left for me to examine, [as well as] many things about myself, that
is, about the nature of my mind. However, I will perhaps return to those at
another time. Now (after I have taken note of what I must avoid and what I must
do to arrive at the truth) nothing seems to be more pressing than for me to
attempt to emerge from the doubts into which I have fallen in the last few days
and to see whether I can know anything certain about material things.
But before I look into whether any such substances
exist outside of me, I ought to consider the ideas of them, insofar as they are
in my thinking, and see which of them are distinct and which confused.
For example, I distinctly imagine quantity, which
philosophers commonly refer to as continuous, that is, the extent of the
length, breadth and depth in this quantity, or rather in the object being
quantified. I enumerate the various parts of the object, and assign to those
parts all sorts of sizes, shapes, locations, and local movements, and to those
movements all sorts of durations.
And in this way I not only clearly observe and
acquire knowledge of those things when I examine them in general, but later, by
devoting my attention to them, I also perceive innumerable particular details
about their shapes, number, motion, and so on, whose truth is so evident and so
well suited to my nature, that when I discover them for the first time, it does
not seem as if I am learning anything new so much as remembering what I already
used to know about them before, or else noticing for the first time things
which were truly within me earlier, although I had not previously directed my
mental gaze on them.
And here I believe that the most important issue for
me to consider is that I find within me countless ideas of certain things
which, even if they perhaps do not exist outside of me at all, still cannot be
called nothing. Although in a certain sense I can think of them whenever I
wish, still I do not create them. They have their own true and immutable
natures. For example, when I imagine a triangle whose particular shape perhaps
does not exist and has never existed outside my thinking, it nevertheless has,
in fact, a certain determinate nature or essence or form which is immutable and
eternal, which I did not produce, and which does not depend upon my mind, as is
clear enough from the fact that I can demonstrate the various properties of
that triangle, namely, that the sum of its three angles is equal to two right
angles, that its longest side subtends its largest angle, and so on. These
properties I now recognize clearly whether I wish to or not, although earlier,
when I imagined the triangle [for the first time], I was not thinking of them
at all and therefore did not invent them.
In this case it is irrelevant if I tell [myself] that
perhaps this idea of a triangle came to me from external things through my
sense organs, on the ground that I have certainly now and then seen objects
possessing a triangular shape. For I am able to think up countless other shapes
about which there can be no suspicion that they ever flowed into me through my
senses, and yet [I can] demonstrate various properties about them, no less than
I can about the triangle, all of which are manifestly true, since I clearly
conceive of them, and thus they are something and not pure nothingness. For it
is evident that everything which is true is something, and I have already shown
in great detail [above] that all those things I clearly conceive are true.
Besides, even if I had not proved this, the nature of my mind is certainly such
that I cannot refuse to assent to them, at least for as long as I am perceiving
them clearly. And I remember that, even in those earlier days, when I was
attracted as strongly as possible to objects of sense experience, I always
maintained that the most certain things of all were those kinds of truth which
I recognized clearly as shapes, numbers, or other things pertinent to
arithmetic or geometry or to pure and abstract mathematics generally.
But if from the mere fact that I can draw the idea of
some object from my thinking it now follows that all things which I perceive
clearly and distinctly as pertaining to that object really do belong to it, can
I not also derive from this an argument which proves that God exists? For
clearly I find the idea of Him, that is, of a supremely perfect being, within
me just as much as I do the idea of some shape or number. I know that [actual
and] eternal existence belongs to His nature just as clearly and distinctly as
[I know] that what I prove about some shape or number also belongs to the
nature of that shape or number. And therefore, even if all the things I have
meditated on in the preceding days were not true, for me the existence of God
ought to have at least the same degree of certainty as [I have recognized] up
to this point in the truths of mathematics.
At first glance, however, this argument does not look
entirely logical but [appears to] contain some sort of sophistry. For, since in
all other matters I have been accustomed to distinguish existence from essence,
I can easily persuade myself that [existence] can also be separated from the
essence of God and thus that I [can] think of God as not actually existing.
However, when I think about this more carefully, it becomes clear that one can
no more separate existence from the essence of God, than one can separate the
fact that the sum of the three angles in a triangle is equal to two right
angles from the essence of a triangle or the idea of a valley from the idea of
a mountain. Thus, it is no less contradictory to think of a God (that is, of a
supremely perfect being) who lacks existence (that is, who lacks a certain
perfection) than it is to think of a mountain without a valley.
Nonetheless, although I cannot conceive of God other
than as something with existence, any more than I can of a mountain without a
valley, the truth is that just because I think of a mountain with a valley, it
does not therefore follow that there is any mountain in the world. In the same
way, just because I think of God as having existence, it does not seem to
follow that God therefore exists. For my thinking imposes no necessity on
things, and in the same way as I can imagine a horse with wings, even though no
horse has wings, so I could perhaps attribute existence to God, even though no
God exists.
But this [objection] conceals a fallacy. For from the
fact that I cannot think of a mountain without a valley, it does not follow
that a mountain and valley exist anywhere, but merely that the mountain and
valley, whether they exist or not, cannot be separated from each other.
However, from the fact that I cannot think of God without existence, it does
follow that existence is inseparable from God, and thus that He truly does
exist. Not that my thought brings this about or imposes any necessity on
anything, but rather, by contrast, because the necessity of the thing itself,
that is, of the existence of God, determines that I must think this way. For I
am not free to think of God without existence (that is, of a supremely perfect
being lacking a supreme perfection) in the same way that I am free to imagine a
horse with wings or without them.
Nor should anyone claim here that it is, in fact,
necessary for me to admit that God exists, once I have assumed that He has
every perfection, since existence is one of these, but that my first assumption
was unnecessary, just as it is unnecessary for me to claim that all
quadrilaterals [can] be inscribed in a circle. For supposing I believed this, I
would have to concede that a rhombus [could] be inscribed in a circle, an assertion
which is, however, clearly false. For although it may not be necessary for me
ever to entertain any thought of God, nevertheless, whenever I do happen to
think of a first and supreme being, and, as it were, to derive an idea of Him
from the storehouse of my mind, I have to attribute to Him all perfections,
even though I do not enumerate them all at that time or attend to each one of
them individually. And this necessity is obviously sufficient to make me
conclude correctly, once I have recognized that existence is a perfection, that
a first and supreme being exists. In the same way, it is not necessary that I
ever imagine any triangle, but every time I wish to consider a rectilinear
figure with only three angles, I have to attribute to it those [properties]
from which I correctly infer that its three angles are no greater than two
right angles, although at that time I may not notice this. But when I think
about which figures [are capable of being] inscribed in a circle, it is not at
all necessary that I believe every quadrilateral is included in their number.
On the contrary, I cannot even imagine anything like that, as long as I do not
wish to admit anything unless I understand it clearly and distinctly. Thus,
there is a great difference between false assumptions of this kind and the true
ideas born within me, of which the first and most important is the idea of God.
For, in fact, I understand in many ways that this [idea] is not something made
up which depends upon my thought but [is] the image of a true and immutable
nature: first, because I cannot think of any other thing to whose essence
existence [necessarily] pertains, other than God alone; second, because I am
unable to conceive of two or more Gods of this sort and because, given that I
have already assumed that one God exists, I see clearly that it is necessary
that He has previously existed from [all] eternity and will continue [to exist]
for all eternity; and finally because I perceive many other things in God, none
of which I can remove or change.
But, in fact, no matter what reasoning I finally use
by way of proof, I always come back to the point that the only things I find
entirely persuasive are those I perceive clearly and distinctly. And although
among the things I perceive in this way, some are obvious to everyone, while
others reveal themselves only to those who look into them more closely and
investigate more diligently, nonetheless once the latter have been discovered,
they are considered no less certain than the former. For example, even though
in a right-angled triangle it is not so readily apparent that the square of the
base is equal to the squares of the [other two] sides, as [it is that] the base
subtends the greatest angle, nonetheless, after we have recognized this for the
first time, we are no less certain of its truth [than we are of the other]. But
where God is concerned, if I were not overwhelmed with prejudices and if images
of sensible things were not laying siege to my thinking from every quarter,
there is certainly nothing I would recognize sooner or more easily than Him.
For what is more inherently evident than that there is a supreme being, in
other words, that God exists, for existence [necessarily and eternally] belongs
to His essence alone?
And although it required careful reflection on my
part to perceive this [truth], nonetheless I am now not only as sure about it
as I am about all the other things which seem [to me] most certain, but also,
beyond that, I see that the certainty of everything else is so dependent on this
very truth that without it nothing could ever be perfectly known.
For although my nature is such that, as long as I
perceive something really clearly and distinctly, I am unable to deny that it
is true, nevertheless, because I am also by nature incapable of always fixing
my mental gaze on the same thing in order to perceive it clearly, [and because]
my memory may often return to a judgment I have previously made at a time when
I am not paying full attention to the reasons why I made such a judgment, other
arguments can present themselves which, if I knew nothing about God, might
easily drive me to abandon that opinion. Thus, I would never have any true and
certain knowledge, but merely vague and changeable opinions. For example, when
I consider the nature of a triangle, it is, in fact, very evident to me, given
that I am well versed in the principles of geometry, that its three angles are
equal to two right angles, and, as long as I focus on the proof of this fact,
it is impossible for me not to believe that it is true. But as soon as I turn
my mental gaze away from that, although I still remember I perceived it very
clearly, it could still easily happen that I doubt whether it is true, if, in
fact, I had no knowledge of God. For I can convince myself that nature created
me in such a way that I am sometimes deceived by those things I think I
perceive as clearly as possible, especially when I remember that I have often
considered many things true and certain that I later judged to be false, once
other reasons had persuaded me.
However, after I perceived that God exists, because
at the same time I also realized that all other things depend on Him and that
He is not a deceiver, I therefore concluded that everything I perceive clearly
and distinctly is necessarily true. Thus, even if I am not fully attending to
the reasons why I have judged that something is true, if I only remember that I
have perceived it clearly and distinctly, no opposing argument can present
itself that would force me to have doubts. Instead, I possess true and certain
knowledge about it—and not just about that, but about all other matters which I
remember having demonstrated at any time, for example, [about the truths] of
geometry and the like. For what argument could I now bring against them? What
about the fact that I am created in such a manner that I often make mistakes?
But now I know that I cannot be deceived about those things which I understand
clearly. What about the fact that I used to consider many other things true and
certain which I later discovered to be false? But I was not perceiving any of
these [things] clearly and distinctly, and, in my ignorance of this rule [for
confirming] the truth, I happened to believe them for other reasons which I
later discovered to be less firm. What then will I say? Perhaps I am dreaming
(an objection I recently made to myself), or else everything I am now thinking
is no more true than what happens when I am asleep? But even this does not
change anything: for surely even though I am asleep, if what is in my intellect
is clear, then it is absolutely true.
In this way I fully recognize that all certainty and
truth in science depend only on a knowledge of the true God, so much so that,
before I knew Him, I could have no perfect knowledge of anything else. But now
I am able to understand innumerable things completely and clearly, about both
God Himself and other intellectual matters, as well as about all those things
in corporeal nature that are objects of study in pure mathematics.
SIXTH
MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE EXISTENCE OF MATERIAL THINGS AND THE REAL
DISTINCTION BETWEEN MIND AND BODY
It remains for me to examine whether material things
exist. At the moment, I do, in fact, know that they can exist, at least to the
extent that they are objects of pure mathematics, since I perceive them clearly
and distinctly. For there is no doubt that God is capable of producing
everything which I am capable of perceiving in this way, and I have never
judged that there is anything He cannot create, except in those cases where
there might be a contradiction in my clear perception of it. Moreover, from my
faculty of imagination, which I have learned by experience I use when I turn my
attention to material substances, it seems to follow that they exist. For when
I consider carefully what the imagination is, it seems nothing other than a
certain application of my cognitive faculty to an object which is immediately
present to it and which therefore exists.
In order to clarify this matter fully, I will first
examine the difference between imagination and pure intellection. For example,
when I imagine a triangle, not only do I understand that it is a shape composed
of three lines, but at the same time I also see those three lines as if they
were, so to speak, present to my mind’s eye. This is what I call imagining.
However, if I wish to think about a chiliagon, even though I understand that it
is a figure consisting of one thousand sides just as well as I understand that
a triangle is a figure consisting of three sides, I do not imagine those
thousand sides in the same way, nor do I see [them], as it were, in front of
me. And although, thanks to my habit of always imagining something whenever I
think of a corporeal substance, it may happen that [in thinking of a chiliagon]
I create for myself a confused picture of some shape, nevertheless, it is
obviously not a chiliagon, because it is no different from the
shape I would also picture to myself if I were thinking of a myriagon or of any
other figure with many sides.(27) And that shape is no help at all in recognizing
those properties which distinguish the chiliagon from other polygons. However,
if it is a question of a pentagon, I can certainly understand its shape just as
[well as] I can the shape of a chiliagon, without the assistance of my
imagination, but, of course, I can also imagine the pentagon by applying my
mind’s eye to its five sides and to the area they contain. From this I clearly
recognize that, in order to imagine things, I need a certain special mental
effort that I do not use to understand them, and this new mental effort reveals
clearly the difference between imagination and pure understanding.
Furthermore, I notice that this power of imagining,
which exists within me, insofar as it differs from the power of understanding,
is not a necessary part of my own essence, that is, of my mind. For even if I
did not have it, I would still undoubtedly remain the same person I am now.
From this it would seem to follow that my imagination depends upon something
different from [my mind]. I understand easily enough that if a certain body
exists to which my mind is joined in such a way that whenever my mind so
wishes, it can direct itself, so to speak, to examining it, then it would be
possible, thanks to this particular body, for me to imagine
corporeal things.(28) Thus, the only difference between this mode of
thinking and pure understanding would be that the mind, while it is
understanding, in some way turns its attention onto itself and considers one of
the ideas present in itself, but when it is imagining, it turns its attention
to the body and sees something in it which conforms to an idea which it has
either conceived by itself or perceived with the senses. I readily understand,
I say, that the imagination could be formed in this way, if the body exists,
and because no other equally convenient way of explaining it comes to mind, I
infer from this that the body probably exists—but only probably—and although I
am looking into everything carefully, I still do not yet see how from this
distinct idea of corporeal nature which I find in my imagination I can derive
any argument which necessarily concludes that anything corporeal exists.
However, I am in the habit of imagining many things
apart from the corporeal nature which is the object of study in pure
mathematics, such as colours, sounds, smells, pain, and things like that,
although not so distinctly. And since I perceive these better with my senses,
through which, with the help of my memory, they appear to have reached my
imagination, then in order to deal with them in a more appropriate manner, I
ought to consider the senses at the same time as well and see whether those
things which I perceive by this method of thinking, which I call sensation,
will enable me to establish some credible argument to prove the existence of
corporeal things.
First of all, I will review in my mind the things
that I previously believed to be true, because I perceived them with my senses,
along with the reasons for those beliefs. Then I will also assess the reasons
why I later called them into doubt. And finally I will consider what I ought to
believe about them now.
To begin with, then, I sensed that I had a head,
hands, feet, and other limbs making up that body which I looked on as if it
were a part of me or perhaps even my totality. I sensed that this body moved
around among many other bodies which could affect it in different ways, either
agreeably or disagreeably. I judged which ones were agreeable by a certain
feeling of pleasure and which ones were disagreeable by a feeling of pain.
Apart from pain and pleasure, I also felt inside me sensations of hunger,
thirst, and other appetites of this kind, as well as certain physical
inclinations towards joy, sadness, anger, and other similar emotions. And
outside myself, besides the extension, shapes, and motions of bodies, I also
had sensations in them of hardness, heat, and other tactile qualities and,
beyond that, of light, colours, smells, tastes, and sounds. From the variety of
these, I distinguished sky, land, sea, and other bodies, one after another. And
because of the ideas of all those qualities which presented themselves to my
thinking and which I kept sensing as merely my own personal and immediate
ideas, I reasonably believed that I was perceiving certain objects entirely
different from my thinking, that is, bodies from which these ideas proceeded.
For experience taught me that these ideas reached me without my consent, so
that I was unable to sense any object, even if I wanted to, unless it was
present to my organs of sense, and I was unable not to sense it when it was
present. And since the ideas I perceived with my senses were much more vivid
and expressive and even, in their own way, more distinct than any of those which
I myself intentionally and deliberately shaped by meditation or which I noticed
impressed on my memory, it did not seem possible that they could have proceeded
from myself. Thus, the only conclusion left was that they had come from some
other things. Because I had no conception of these objects other than what I
derived from those ideas themselves, the only thought my mind could entertain
was that [the objects] were similar to [the ideas they produced]. And since I
also remembered that earlier I had used my senses rather than my reason and
realized that the ideas which I myself formed were not as expressive as those
which I perceived with my senses and that most of the former were composed of
parts of the latter, I easily convinced myself that I had nothing at all in my
intellect which I had not previously had in my senses. I also maintained, not
without reason, that this body, which, by some special right, I called my own,
belonged to me more than any other object, for I could never separate myself
from it, as I could from other [bodies], I felt every appetite and emotion in
it and because of it, and finally, I noticed pain and the titillation of
pleasure in its parts, but not in any objects placed outside it. But why a
certain strange sadness of spirit follows a sensation of pain and a certain joy
follows from a sensation of [pleasurable] titillation, or why some sort of
twitching in the stomach, which I call hunger, is urging me to eat food, while
the dryness of my throat [is urging me] to drink, and so on—for that I had no
logical explanation, other than that these were things I had learned from
nature. For there is clearly no relationship (at least, none I can understand)
between that twitching [in the stomach] and the desire to consume food, or
between the sensation of something causing pain and the awareness of sorrow
arising from that feeling. But it seemed to me that all the other judgments I
made about objects of sense experience I had learned from nature. For I had
convinced myself that that was how things happened, before I thought about any
arguments which might prove it.
However, many later experiences have gradually
weakened the entire faith I used to have in the senses. For now and then towers
which seemed round from a distance appeared square from near at hand, immense
statues standing on the tower summits did not seem large when I viewed them
from the ground, and in countless other cases like these I discovered that my
judgments were deceived in matters dealing with external senses. And not just with
external [senses], but also with internal ones as well. For what could be more
internal than pain? And yet I heard that people whose legs or arms had been cut
off sometimes still seemed to feel pain in the part of their body which they
lacked. Thus, even though I were to feel pain in one of my limbs, I did not
think I could be completely certain that it was the limb which caused my pain.
To these reasons for doubting sense experience, I recently added two extremely
general ones. First, there was nothing I ever thought I was sensing while awake
that I could not also think I was sensing now and then while asleep, and since
I do not believe that those things I appear to sense in my sleep come to me
from objects placed outside me, I did not see why I should give more credit to
those I appear to sense when I am awake. Second, because I was still
ignorant—or at least was assuming I was ignorant—of the author of my being,
there seemed to be nothing to prevent nature from constituting me in such a way
that I would make mistakes, even in those matters which seemed to me most true.
And as far as concerns the reasons which had previously convinced me of the
truth of what I apprehended with my senses, I had no difficulty answering them.
For since nature seemed to push me to accept many things which my reason
opposed, I believed I should not place much trust in those things nature
taught. And although perceptions of the senses did not depend upon my will, I
did not believe that was reason enough for me to conclude that they must come
from things different from myself, because there could well be some other
faculty in me, even one I did not yet know, which produced them.
But now that I am starting to gain a better
understanding of myself and of the author of my being, I do not, in fact,
believe that I should rashly accept all those things I appear to
possess from my senses, but, at the same time, [I do not think] I should call
everything into doubt.
First, since I know that all those things I
understand clearly and distinctly could have been created by God in a way that
matches my conception of them, the fact that I can clearly and distinctly
understand one thing apart from something else is sufficient to convince me
that the two of them are different, because they can be separated from each
other, at least by God. The power by which this [separation] takes place is
irrelevant to my judgment that they are distinct. And therefore, given the mere
fact that I know I exist and that, at the moment, I look upon my nature or essence
as absolutely nothing other than that I am a thinking thing, I reasonably
conclude that my essence consists of this single fact: I am a thinking thing.
And although I may well possess (or rather, as I will state later, although I
certainly do possess) a body which is very closely joined to me, nonetheless,
because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar
as I am merely a thinking thing, without extension, and, on the other hand, [I
have] a distinct idea of body, insofar as it is merely an extended thing which
does not think, it is certain that my mind is completely distinct from my body
and can exist without it.
Moreover, I discover in myself faculties for certain
special forms of thinking, namely, the faculties of imagining and feeling. I
can conceive of myself clearly and distinctly as a complete being without
these, but I cannot do the reverse and think of these faculties without me,
that is, without an intelligent substance to which they belong. For the formal
conception of them includes some act of intellection by which I perceive that
they are different from me, just as [shapes, movement, and the other] modes [or
accidents of bodies are different] from the object [to which they belong]. I
also recognize certain other faculties [in me], like changing position,
assuming various postures, and so on, which certainly cannot be conceived, any
more than those previously mentioned, apart from some substance to which they
belong, and therefore they, too, cannot exist without it. However, it is
evident that these [faculties], if indeed they [truly] exist, must belong to
some corporeal or extended substance, and not to any intelligent substance,
since the clear and distinct conception of them obviously contains some [form
of] extension, but no intellectual activity whatsoever. Now, it is, in fact,
true that I do have a certain passive faculty of perception, that is, of
receiving and recognizing ideas of sensible things. But I would be unable to
use this power unless some active faculty existed, as well, either in me or in some other substance capable of producing or forming these ideas.(29) But this [active faculty] clearly cannot exist
within me, because it presupposes no intellectual activity at all and because,
without my cooperation and often even against my will, it produces those ideas.
Therefore I am left to conclude that it exists in some substance different from
me that must contain, either formally or eminently, all the reality objectively
present in the ideas produced by that faculty (as I have just observed above).
This substance is either a body, that is, something with a corporeal nature
which obviously contains formally everything objectively present in the ideas,
or it must be God, or some other creature nobler than the body, one that
contains [those same things] eminently. But since God is not a deceiver, it is
very evident that He does not transmit these ideas to me from Himself directly
or even through the intervention of some other creature in which their
objective reality is contained, not formally but only eminently. For since He
has given me no faculty whatsoever for recognizing such a source, but by
contrast, has endowed me with a powerful tendency to believe that these ideas
are sent out from corporeal things, I do not see how it would be possible not
to think of Him as a deceiver, if these [ideas] were sent from any source other
than corporeal things. And therefore corporeal things exist. However, perhaps
they do not all exist precisely in the ways I grasp them with my senses, since
what I comprehend with my senses is very obscure and confused in many things.
But at least [I should accept as true] all those things in them which I
understand clearly and distinctly, that is, generally speaking,
everything which is included as an object in pure mathematics.(30)
But as far as concerns other material things which
are either merely particular, like that the sun is of such and such a magnitude
and shape, and so on, or less clearly understood, like light, sound, pain, and
things like that, although these may be extremely doubtful and uncertain,
nonetheless, because of the very fact that God is not a deceiver and thus it is
impossible for there to be any falsity in my opinions which I cannot correct
with another faculty God has given me, I have the sure hope that I can reach
the truth even in these matters. And clearly there is no doubt that all those
things I learn from nature contain some truth. For by the termnature,
generally speaking, I understand nothing other than either God himself or the
coordinated structure of created things established by God, and by the
term my nature, in particular, nothing other than the combination
of all those things I have been endowed with by God.
However, there is nothing that nature teaches me more
emphatically than the fact that I have a body, which does badly when I feel
pain, which needs food or drink when I suffer from hunger or thirst, and so on.
And therefore I should not doubt that there is some truth in this.
For through these feelings of pain, hunger, thirst,
and so on, nature teaches me that I am not only present in my body in the same
way a sailor is present onboard a ship, but also that I am bound up very
closely and, so to speak, mixed in with it, so that my body and
I form a certain unity.(31) For if that were not the case, then when my
body was injured, I, who am merely a thinking thing, would not feel any pain
because of it; instead, I would perceive the wound purely with my intellect,
just as a sailor notices with his eyes if something is broken on his ship. And
when my body needed food or drink, I would understand that clearly and not have
confused feelings of hunger and thirst. For those sensations of thirst, hunger,
pain, and so on are really nothing other than certain confused ways of
thinking, which arise from the union and, as it were, the mixture of the mind
with the body.
Moreover, nature also teaches me that various other
bodies exist around my own and that I should pursue some of these and stay away
from others. And certainly from the fact that I sense a wide diversity of
colours, sounds, odours, tastes, heat, hardness, and similar things, I
reasonably conclude that in the bodies from which these different sense
perceptions come there are certain variations which correspond to these
perceptions, even if they are perhaps not like them. And given the fact that I
find some of these sense perceptions pleasant and others unpleasant, it is
entirely certain that my body, or rather my totality, since I am composed of
body and mind, can be affected by various agreeable and disagreeable bodies
surrounding it.
However, many other things which I seemed to have
learned from nature I have not really received from her, but rather from a
certain habit I have of accepting careless judgments [about things]. And thus
it could easily be the case that these judgments are false—for example, [the
opinion I have] that all space in which nothing at all happens to stimulate my
senses is a vacuum, that in a warm substance there is something completely
similar to the idea of heat which is in me, that in a white or green
[substance] there is the same whiteness or greenness which I sense, that in
[something] bitter or sweet there is the same taste I sense, and so on, that
stars and towers and anything else some distance away have bodies with the same
size and shape as the ones they present to my senses, and things of that sort.
But in order to ensure that what I perceive in this matter is sufficiently
distinct, I should define more accurately what it is precisely that I mean when
I say I have learned something from nature. For here I am taking the word nature in
a more restricted sense than the combination of all those things which
have been bestowed on me by God. For this combination contains many things
which pertain only to the mind, such as the fact that I perceive what has been
done cannot be undone, and all the other things I grasp by my natural light
[without the help of the body]. Such things are not under discussion here. This
combination also refers to many things which concern only the body, like its
tendency to move downward, and so on, which I am also not dealing with [here].
Instead, I am considering only those things which God has given
me as a combination of mind and body.32
And so nature, in this sense, certainly teaches me to
avoid those things which bring a sensation of pain and to pursue those which
[bring] a sensation of pleasure, and such like, but, beyond that, it is not
clear that with those sense perceptions nature teaches us that we can conclude
anything about things placed outside of us without a previous examination by
the understanding, because to know the truth about them seems to belong only to
the mind and not to that combination [of body and mind]. And so, although a
star does not make an impression on my eyes any greater than the flame of a
small candle, nonetheless, that fact does not incline me, in any real or
positive way, to believe that the star is not larger [than the flame], but from
the time of my youth I have made this judgment without any reason [to support
it]. And although I feel heat when I come near the fire, and even pain if I get
too close to it, that is really no reason to believe that there is something in
the fire similar to that heat I feel any more than there is something similar
to the pain. The only thing [I can conclude] is that there is something in the
fire, whatever it might be, which brings out in us those sensations of heat or
pain. So, too, although in some space there is nothing which stimulates my
senses, it does not therefore follow that the space contains no substances. But
I see that in these and in a great many other matters, I have grown accustomed
to undermine the order of nature, because, of course, these sense perceptions
are, strictly speaking, given to me by nature merely to indicate to my mind
which things are agreeable or disagreeable to that combination of which it is a
part, and for that purpose they are sufficiently clear and distinct. But then I
use them as if they were dependable rules for immediately recognizing the
essence of bodies placed outside me. However, about such bodies they reveal
nothing except what is confusing and obscure.
In an earlier section, I have already examined
sufficiently why my judgments happen to be defective, in spite of the goodness
of God. However, a new difficulty crops up here concerning those very things
which nature reveals to me as objects I should seek out or avoid and also
concerning the internal sensations, in which I appear to have discovered
errors: for example, when someone, deceived by the pleasant taste of a certain
food, eats a poison hidden within it [and thus makes a mistake]. Of course, in
this situation, the person’s nature urges him only to eat food which has a
pleasant taste and not the poison, of which he has no knowledge at all. And
from this, the only conclusion I can draw is that my nature does not know
everything. There is nothing astonishing about that, because a human being is a
finite substance and thus is capable of only limited perfection.
However, we are not infrequently wrong even in those
things which nature urges [us to seek]. For example, sick people are eager for
drink or food which will harm them soon afterwards. One could perhaps claim
that such people make mistakes because their nature has been corrupted. But
this does not remove the difficulty, for a sick person is no less a true
creature of God than a healthy one, and thus it seems no less contradictory
that God has given the person a deceitful nature. And just as a clock made out of
wheels and weights observes all the laws of nature with the same accuracy when
it is badly made and does not indicate the hours correctly as it does when it
completely satisfies the wishes of the person who made it, in the same way, if
I look on the human body as some kind of machine composed of bones, nerves,
muscles, veins, blood, and skin, as if no mind existed in it, the body would
still have all the same motions it now has in those movements that are not
under the control of the will and that, therefore, do not proceed from the mind
[but merely from the disposition of its organs]. I can readily acknowledge, for
example, that in the case of a body sick with dropsy, it would be quite natural
for it to suffer from a parched throat, which usually conveys a sensation of
thirst to the mind, and for its nerves and other parts also to move in such a
way that it takes a drink and thus aggravates the illness. And when nothing
like this is harming the body, it is equally natural for it to be stimulated by
a similar dryness in the throat and to take a drink to benefit itself. Now,
when I consider the intended purpose of the clock, I could say that, since it
does not indicate the time correctly, it is deviating from its own nature, and,
in the same way, when I think of the machine of the human body as something
formed for the motions which usually take place in it, I might believe that it,
too, is deviating from its own nature, if its throat is dry when a drink does
not benefit its own preservation. However, I am fully aware that this second
meaning of the word nature is very different from the first.
For it is merely a term that depends on my own thought, a designation with
which I compare a sick person and a badly constructed clock with the idea of a
healthy person and a properly constructed clock, and thus, the term is
extrinsic to these objects. But by that [other use of the term nature]
I understand something that is really found in things and that
therefore contains a certain measure of the truth.(33)
Now, when I consider a body suffering from dropsy,
even though I say that its nature has been corrupted, because it has a dry
throat and yet does not need to drink, clearly the word nature is
merely an extraneous term. However, when I consider the composite, that is, the
mind united with such a body, I am not dealing with what is simply a term but
with a true error of nature, because this composite is thirsty when drinking
will do it harm. And thus I still have to enquire here why the goodness of God
does not prevent its nature, taken in this sense, from being deceitful.
At this point, then, my initial
observation is that there is a great difference between the mind and the body,
given that the body is, by its very nature, always divisible, whereas the mind
is completely indivisible. For, in fact, when I think of [my mind], that is,
when I think of myself, to the extent that I am only a thinking thing, I cannot
distinguish any parts within me. Instead, I understand that I am something
completely individual and unified. And although my entire mind seems to be
united with my entire body, nonetheless, I know that if a foot or arm or any
other part of the body is sliced off, that loss will not take anything from my
mind. And I cannot call the faculties of willing, feeling, understanding, and
so on parts of the mind because it is the same single mind that wishes, feels,
and understands. By contrast, I cannot think of any corporeal or extended
substance that my thought is not capable of dividing easily into parts. From
this very fact, I understand that the substance is divisible. This point alone
would be enough to teach me that the mind is completely different from the
body, if I did not already know that well enough from other sources.
Furthermore, I notice that the mind is
not immediately affected by all parts of the body, but only by the brain, or
perhaps even by just one small part of it, namely, the one in which our common
sense is said to exist. Whenever this part is arranged in the same
particular way, it delivers the same perception to the mind, even though the
other parts of the body may be arranged quite differently at the time. This
point has been demonstrated in countless experiments, which I
need not review here.(34)
In addition, I notice that the nature
of my body is such that no part of it can be moved by any other part some
distance away which cannot also be moved in the same manner by any other part
lying between them, even though the more distant part does nothing. So, for
example, in a rope ABCD [which is taut throughout], if I pull on part D at the
end, then the movement of the first part, A, will be no different than it would
be if I pulled at one of the intermediate points, B or C, while the last part,
D, remained motionless. And for a similar reason, when I feel pain in my foot,
physics teaches me that this sensation occurs thanks to nerves spread
throughout the foot. These nerves stretch from there to the brain, like cords,
and when they are pulled in my foot, they also pull the inner parts of the
brain, where they originate, and stimulate in them a certain motion which
nature has established to influence the mind with a sense of pain apparently
present in the foot. However, since these nerves have to pass through the
tibia, the thigh, the loins, the back, and the neck in order to reach the brain
from the foot, it can happen that, even if that portion of the nerves which is
in the foot is not affected, but only one of the intermediate portions, the
motion created in the brain is exactly the same as the one created there by an
injured foot. As a result, the mind will necessarily feel the identical pain.
And we should assume that the same is true with any other sensation whatsoever.
Finally, I notice that, since each of
those motions created in that part of the brain which immediately affects the
mind introduces into it only one particular sensation, we can, given this fact,
come up with no better explanation than that this sensation, out of all the
ones which could be introduced, is the one which serves to protect human health
as effectively and frequently as possible [when a person is completely
healthy]. But experience testifies to the fact that all sensations nature has
given us are like this, and thus we can discover nothing at all in them which
does not bear witness to the power and benevolence of God. Thus, for example,
when the nerves in the foot are moved violently and more than usual, their
motion, passing through the medulla of the spinal cord to the inner core of the
brain, gives a signal there to the mind which makes it feel something—that is,
it feels as if there is a pain in the foot. And that stimulates [the mind] to
do everything it can to remove the cause of the pain as something injurious to
the foot. Of course, God could have constituted the nature of human beings in
such a way that this same motion in the brain communicated something else to
the mind, for example, a sense of its own movements, either in the brain, or in
the foot, or in any of the places in between—in short, of anything you wish.
But nothing else would have served so well for the preservation of the body. In
the same way, when we need a drink, a certain dryness arises in the throat
which moves its nerves and, with their assistance, the inner parts of the
brain. And this motion incites in the mind a sensation of thirst, because in
this whole situation nothing is more useful for us to know than that we need a
drink to preserve our health. The same is true for the other sensations.
From this it is clearly evident that, notwithstanding
the immense goodness of God, human nature, given that it is composed of mind
and body, cannot be anything other than something that occasionally deceives
us. For if some cause, not in the foot, but in some other part through which
the nerves stretch between the foot and the brain, or even in the brain itself,
stimulates exactly the same motion as that which is normally aroused when a
foot is injured, then pain will be felt as if it were in the foot, and the
sensation will naturally be deceiving. Since that same motion in the brain is
never capable of transmitting to the mind anything other than the identical
sensation and since [the sensation] is habitually aroused much more frequently
from an injury in the foot than from anything else in another place, it is
quite reasonable that it should always transmit to the mind a pain in the foot
rather than a pain in any other part of the body. And if sometimes dryness in
the throat does not arise, as it usually does, from the fact that a drink is
necessary for the health of the body, but from some different cause, as occurs
in a patient suffering from dropsy, it is much better that it should deceive us
in a case like that than if it were, by contrast, always deceiving us when the
body is quite healthy. The same holds true with the other sensations.
This reflection is the greatest help, for it enables
me not only to detect all the errors to which my nature is prone, but also to
correct or to avoid them easily. For since I know that, in matters concerning
what is beneficial to the body, all my senses show [me] what is true much more
frequently than they deceive me, and since I can almost always use several of
them to examine the same matter and, in addition, [can use] my memory, which
connects present events with earlier ones, as well as my understanding, which
has now ascertained all the causes of my errors, I should no longer fear that
those things which present themselves to me every day through my senses are
false. And I ought to dismiss all those exaggerated doubts of the past few days
as ridiculous, particularly that most important [doubt] about sleep, which I
did not distinguish from being awake. For now I notice a significant
distinction between the two of them, given that our memory never links our
dreams to all the other actions of our lives, as it [usually] does with those
things which take place when we are awake. For clearly, if someone suddenly
appears to me when I am awake and then immediately afterwards disappears, as
happens in my dreams, so that I have no idea where he came from or where he
went, I would, not unreasonably, judge that I had seen some apparition or
phantom created in my brain [similar to the ones created when I am asleep],
rather than a real person. But when certain things occur and I notice
distinctly the place from which they came, where they are, and when they
appeared to me, and when I can, without any interruption, link my perception of
them to the rest of my life as a totality, then I am completely certain that
this is taking place while I am awake and not in my sleep. And I should not
have the slightest doubt about the truth of these perceptions if, after I have
called upon all my senses, my memory, and my understanding to examine them, I
find nothing in any of them which contradicts any of the others. For since God
is not a deceiver, it must follow that in such cases I am not deceived. But
because, in dealing with what we need to do, we cannot always take the time for
such a scrupulous examination, we must concede that human life is often prone
to error concerning particular things and that we need to acknowledge the
frailty of our nature.
(1) Descartes was clearly
dissatisfied with this subtitle, for in the second Latin edition, published a
year after the first, the subtitle was changed to “In which the existence of
God and the difference between the human soul and body are demonstrated,” a
title which more accurately reflects the content of his argument. The original
title page also includes (at the bottom) the phrase “With the Official Sanction
and Approval of the Scholars” (Cum Privilegio, et Approbatione Doctorum),
an odd addition, since the Meditations
opens with a plea to the Sorbonne to grant him such a favour. Evidently, the
learned doctors of the Sorbonne never gave the work their official approval.
The title page of the first French edition follows the second Latin edition and
adds “And the objections made against these Meditations by various very
scholarly people, with the author’s responses.” The Latin and French editions
spell the author’s name Des Cartes or Des-Cartes. [Back to Text]
(2) This heading does not appear in Descartes’
text. [Back
to Text]
(3) The Fifth Council of the Lateran, an ecumenical
gathering of Catholic Church officials, lasted from 1512 to 1517. Leo X
(1475-1521) was elected pope after the Council had already been convened, and
he continued it. [Back
to Text]
(4) Archimedes (c. 287 BC to c. 212 BC) was a Greek
mathematician and astronomer, famous for his mechanical inventions. Apollonius
(c. 262 BC to c. 190 BC) was a Greek mathematician and astronomer who wrote on
conic sections. Pappus (c.290 AD to c. 350 AD) was a famous Greek mathematician
who wrote extensively on mathematical subjects. [Back to Text]
(5) The first Latin
edition of the Meditations contained six sets of Objections
and Replies, and over the years other sets appeared. None of these is included
in this volume. At this point in the first edition, there is an Index listing
the contents of the book. The index was dropped in the second edition. At the
end of the Index there is a short list of emendations to the printed
text. [Back to Text]
(6) The Concurrence
of God is a Catholic term which refers to the cooperation of God in the actions
of all natural beings. This cooperation is an essential part of such actions
(for without God’s concurrence the living creature cannot exist), but it is not
the only factor, since living creatures do have freedom to choose how to
act. [Back to Text]
(7) Accidental
properties or accidents (accidentia)
are characteristics that are not essential to the definition or understanding
of what something essentially is. They can be removed from the substance
without destroying its identity. [Back to Text]
(8) In the French edition (1647), Descartes makes an
interesting addition here, in which he indicates that for him the words soul (anima)
and mind (mens) refer to the same thing—“l’esprit,
ou l’âme de l’homme (ce que je ne distingue point) . . .” (“the human
mind, or the human soul, for I make no distinction between them”). In this
translation, unlike some others, mens is always translated as
mind and anima as soul. The
word animus, I have translated as mind or spirit. [Back to Text]
(9) This issue of the relationship of an idea in my
mind to the reality of the source of that idea, a key part of Descartes’
argument, is dealt with in detail in the Third Meditation. [Back to Text]
(10) Natural light, a concept Descartes uses
throughout the Meditations, refers to
a natural inner awareness which reveals the truth or falsity of a thought,
without involving anything external. The best example of something our natural
light tells us is true is a mathematical axiom, like the statement, “Things
equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” A colloquial definition might
propose that our natural light reveals a truth that is rationally
self-evident. [Back
to Text]
(11) Physics, astronomy, and medicine all deal with
composite objects, that is, with objects made up of parts, and we cannot be
sure such objects are real, for they may be fantastic imaginary creations, like
sirens and satyrs, put together from smaller real objects. However,
mathematical concepts, like a square or an equation, do not raise such doubts,
and mathematicians are not concerned about whether or not such concepts are a
part of nature. [Back
to Text]
(12) This image of the balance means that he will
balance his old prejudices (opinions which he has held for a long time and will
not abandon because they are probably true) and his new prejudices (his
recently adopted view that these earlier ideas are all false or at least
subject to doubt). Descartes claims that he will not get into error or danger
by doing this, because he is engaging in a thought experiment in search of
knowledge rather than acting upon an opinion which may contradict orthodox
belief. Descartes was all too aware of what had happened to Galileo, who in
1633 had been put on trial, found guilty, and punished by the Church for his
written opinions about astronomy. [Back to Text]
(13) A chimera is a fabulous monster with the head of
a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. The word is often used
to mean something illusory. [Back
to Text]
(14) Descartes is famously associated with
quotation cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore
I am). While that sentence is a summary of his argument here, he never uses
that particular wording in the Meditations.
As he points out, the famous Latin quotation should be translated: I am
thinking; therefore, I am, since I have no guarantee of existence when I am
not thinking. [Back
to Text]
(15) This well known example is meant to illustrate
that we can have no certain knowledge of a physical object with our senses,
because these merely give us sensations of an object’s attributes, which can
change. And the imagination cannot provide us certain knowledge of the object
because it cannot picture all the different changes an object might undergo.
Thus, certain knowledge can come only from the understanding. [Back to Text]
(16) The term common sense refers to
a faculty which, in traditional views of the mind, coordinated impressions from
the various sense organs and communicated them to the mind. [Back to Text]
(17) This paragraph clarifies somewhat Descartes’
idea of perceiving something “clearly and distinctly” (a much discussed and
crucial element in his argument). It seems to mean perceiving something with
the certainty one experiences when dealing with mathematical truths. The only
possible doubt one can have about such perceptions is that God might be
deceiving him. [Back
to Text]
(18) The sirens were two legendary sisters whose
magical singing lured sailors to their deaths. A hippogriff is a fabulous creature
of myth. [Back
to Text]
(19) As mentioned in an earlier note, an accident is
a property of a substance which is not a necessary part of the essence of that
substance (like the colour of something, for example). An accident can be
removed or changed, and the essential nature of the substance will remain the
same. The phrase objective reality refers, not to objects, but
to ideas. All ideas have objective reality, but, according to Descartes, an
idea of a substance has more objective reality than an idea of some accidental
property of that substance (e.g., the idea of a rock has more objective reality
than the idea of the colour or texture of the rock). The idea of God has more
objective reality than the idea of physical things, because God has a higher
degree of reality (objects are finite, whereas God is infinite). The amount of
objective reality in an idea thus depends upon the degree of reality in what
the idea represents. This notion of different degrees of reality in ideas can
perhaps be illustrated (somewhat) by the different degrees of reality we might
ascribe to an old house, a picture of that house, and a dream about the picture
of the house. These ideas all exist (i.e. are real) but, if we consider their
content, some (we might say) contain more reality than others. Note that at
this stage of the argument, Descartes has not yet established that God or
objects outside himself exist. He has ideas of these things in him, but no
certainty about whether these ideas represent anything real in the world
outside himself. [Back
to Text]
(20) An idea in my mind has objective reality (it
exists). Therefore, the cause of that idea must contain an equal or higher
degree of reality. If that were not the case, then the idea would contradict
the principle that nothing can come of nothing. Formal reality, which objects
in the world possess (if they exist), is a higher degree of reality than the
objective reality of ideas. And eminent reality, the highest level of all, is a
characteristic of God (if He exists) and other higher beings (if there are
any). Perhaps this analogy (suggested by Andrew Latus) may help somewhat: if
you are listening to music on a CD, the sounds you perceive have objective reality
(they are in your mind); the CD has formal reality (as an
object); the musical composition in the mind of the composer has a higher level
(i.e., eminent) reality. [Back to Text]
(21) Any idea I have is real (i.e., it exists) simply
because I think it. My thinking confers formal reality on the idea. But the
fact that I think of one thing rather than another (i.e., that my idea has a
certain content) requires a source which has at least as much reality as or
more reality than the content of the idea inside me. The objective reality of
the idea must therefore have some formal cause (the subject of the next
paragraph), and no idea can contain anything which was not present in its
cause. [Back
to Text]
(22) The key notion here is that an idea of something
much greater than myself cannot come from me but must come from something
outside my mind (and therefore that “something” must exist, and I am not alone
in the world). Descartes in the following paragraphs is exploring whether any
of his ideas of things falls into the category of ideas that must have come
from outside him. He is attempting to deal with the problem of whether there is
anything real outside of his own mind, because so far the only certainty he has
is that he exists. [Back
to Text]
(23) Eminent reality derives from the very principles
of my being and is thus a higher level than the objective reality of ideas or
the formal reality of objects. The claim here seems to be that because these
attributes of objects are merely accidents, or modes of being (rather than
having the formal reality of objects), they could exist in me potentially,
simply because I am a substance. And therefore they could have come from within
me and thus cannot confirm the existence of anything outside me. Hence, all my
ideas of objects outside my mind could be self-generated and cannot demonstrate
with any certainty the existence of those objects in the world. [Back to Text]
(24) As Descartes has mentioned above in the “Preface
to the Reader,” this proof of God’s existence raised some important objections:
“from the fact that I have within me the idea of something more perfect than
myself, it does not follow . . . that what is represented by this idea exists.”
As he tells us, Descartes copes with this objection by offering (in his
Replies) the analogy of the idea of a perfect machine. The persuasiveness of
the analogy depends upon how one interprets it. As John Cottingham has observed,
if one saw that a normal child had drawn a remarkably original and accurate
design for a complex new machine, one could reasonably assume that the idea had
come from somewhere else (not from within the mind of the child), but if the
child’s drawing was simply a square box with the words “big new machine” inside
it, one would make no such conclusion. Those interested in pursuing the
argument here should look at the First Objection and the Reply. [Back to Text ]
(25) Final causes are explanations which involve the
purpose of something, in answer to the question: Why (i.e., for what purpose)
was this thing created? Hence, they involve moral issues. Final causes
(sometimes called first causes) are thus different from efficient (or secondary)
causes, which seek to answer the question: How (i.e., by what step-by-step
process) was this thing created? Modern science begins with the effort
(energetically promoted by Descartes, Galileo, and Bacon, among others) to
shift attention away from final causes onto efficient causes. [Back to Text]
(26) At this point in the argument Descartes has not
yet established that anything outside his mind exists (other than God). Hence,
God may have created a world of things, since He has the power
to do that. However, the existence of such things is still merely a
possibility. [Back
to Text]
(27) A myriagon is a polygon with 10,000 sides. [Back to Text]
(28) Imagining something seems different from
thinking of something, for the former requires a special effort and I could
exist without the imagination (i.e., my mind would stay the same). Therefore,
the imagination must be in some body outside my mind. However, the mind would
still have to be connected somehow to this body, so that it could examine the
contents of the imagination, whenever it wished to do so. [Back to Text]
(29) Note that when Descartes uses the phrase “in me”
or “in myself” he means “in my mind,” for up to this point his entire sense of
himself is that he is nothing but a thinking thing. Hence, something in his
body is not part of “me.” [Back
to Text]
(30) Descartes here, as part of his consideration of
whether or not bodies exist, is exploring where his sense perceptions might
come from. Since he is merely a thinking thing, these perceptions must come
from somewhere else (not from him, because his mind has no control over them
and because such perceptions do not involve thinking). These perceptions (i.e.,
the ideas they produce in his mind) are objectively real. Hence, their source
must be something with a higher degree of reality, either some formal reality
(as in corporeal objects) or some eminent reality (as in God or some power more
real than physical objects). But since God is not a deceiver, He cannot be the
source of these ideas (which can be deceptive). And since God has provided
Descartes no way of determining any “higher” source for the ideas, they must
come from physical objects, and thus such objects must exist. Therefore he can
trust what he perceives clearly and distinctly in them. [Back to Text]
(31) This famous metaphor of the sailor on the ship
(in the French the pilot [pilote] on the ship) highlights the most
serious logical problem in Descartes’ theory of the division of the mind and
the body: How do the mind and body interact? If there is nothing physical about
my mind and nothing non-physical about my body, then how do I explain the fact
that the two of them interact all the time? This is still the most important
and vexing problem in biology. Descartes tried (elsewhere) to resolve the
problem by locating a place where they interacted. He chose the pineal gland,
because he could see no other use for it. [Back to Text]
(32) This distinction is between nature as an
all-inclusive term meaning everything created by God and the more restricted
sense of nature as the interaction of the body and the mind. Descartes is not
interested here in pure intellection (which is entirely mental) or in physical
properties of things (which are entirely corporeal), but rather in the
connections between physical objects, sense perceptions, and mental states in
the “mixture” of mind and body. [Back to Text]
(33) The human body without the mind and the clock
are purely mechanical objects, and therefore they are entirely ruled by the
laws of physics. They cannot truly deviate from their own nature (they have no
choice about how they act). Hence, Descartes’ use of the word nature in
this sense is extraneous or irrelevant and is, as he points out, merely a label
which enables him to make a comparison between the two. But when he talks about
the composite (the combination of body and mind), there is an element of choice
involved, and choosing to do something harmful is truly a mistake and therefore
a deviation from its nature. [Back
to Text]
(34) In a tradition
that goes back to Aristotle, the common sense (sensus
communis) was a faculty which coordinated the sensations gathered from the
five senses and communicated them to the mind. It is thus an important way of
addressing the key issue of how the physical body interacts with the
non-physical mind. [Back to Text]