Discourse on method, and Metaphysical meditations. [Translated by G.B. Rawlings]

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DESCARTES’S DISCOURSE
ON METHOD

ws FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES,
SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK.

DISCOURSE ON METHOD AND
METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.
By RENE DESCARTES.

THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE.
NEW YORK: 3 EAST 14TH STREET.

Plas he R oO
MAY 28 1975
j

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YERsiry yt yoro® >
——

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8
1837
K 36

BREIGS him
1G. 1.56 (i401)

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION - - - - - = (eV

DISCOURSE UPON THE METHOD OF RIGHTLY CON-

DUCTING THE REASON :— >
FIRST PART - - ~ = = s 2
SECOND PART - - - : ~ OFS
THIRD PART - - . . - 26
FOURTH PART - - sé = - 37
FIFTH PART : - = 3 3 Sag
SIXTH PART - - - . > 70

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS CONCERNING THE
FIRST PHILOSOPHY :—

TO THE DEAN AND DOCTORS OF THE SACRED

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY OF PARIS - = 95
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER - - =. ¥O3
SUMMARY OF THE MEDITATIONS - = - 108

FIRST MEDITATION :—OF THINGS THAT CAN BE
CALLED INTO QUESTION = = = a) 9

vi

CONTENTS.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS—continued.

SECOND MEDITATION :—OF THE NATURE OF THE
HUMAN MIND, AND THAT IT IS EASIER 10
KNOW THAN THE BODY - - -

THIRD MEDITATION :—OF GOD; THAT HE EXISTS

FOURTH MEDITATION :—OF THE TRUE AND THE

FALSE - - - - - -
FIFTH MEDITATION:—OF THE ESSENCE OF

MATERIAL THINGS, AND AGAIN OF GOD, THAT
HE EXISTS - = = - =

SIXTH MEDITATION :—OF THE EXISTENCE OF
MATERIAL THINGS, AND THE REAL DISTINC-
TION BETWEEN MAN’S MIND AND HIS BODY

PAGE

125
141

171

186

199

INTRODUCTION.

——++—

Four years after the death of the great sceptic
Montaigne—that is to say, in 1596—was born René
Descartes, the first exponent of methodical doubt,
and the first to use doubt, not to destroy, but to
and even from his earliest years gave evidence
of an unusually precocious and intelligent mind.
His father prophetically named hint his Philo-
sopher, because of his ceaseless questions as to the
why and how of things. On account of his
feeble health he was not allowed to begin any
serious study till his eighth year,—quite soon
enough in any case, one would think,—and more
care was given to his body than to his mind.
told an early death, though not destined to make
IEEE, the, caving is, was to, live long
enough to revolutionise philosophy and inaugurate
a new era of thought, and to equal, if not to

excel, his most _eminent contemporaries in
en. and science,

ST

Vill INTRODUCTION.

At the age of eight René Descartes was placed
at the newly-established college of La Fléche,
where, under the especial care of the Rector,
he enjoyed more latitude than was permitted to
his fellow-students, particularly in the matter of
lying in bed in the morning. The primary reason
for this, as for his other indulgences, was - the

good of his health, bt ee
through life, and: so far from being mere wasted ~

_ time, these moriing howrs—-S en ee ae n_slecp,
but in meditation—bore-fruit in ‘the works whi which
carried Descartes into the first rank of the world’s
thinkers. At-least,-such is the very reasonable
view of Baillet, the philosopher’s chief biographer.
Eight and a half years Descartes spent with the
Jesuits, studying languages, history, mathematics,
philosophy, and theology, and showing extra-
ordinary ability. Poetry and mathematics were
his favourite subjects. But these studies, wide
though they were, did not satisfy him, or give
him “a clear and sure knowledge of all that is
useful in life,” and after he had gone through the
whole course, and was entitled to rank among the
learned, he found that he had gained little except
a growing knowledge of his own ignorance. So
he tells us in that unique piece of autobiography,
the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting

INTRODUCTION. 1X

the Reason, in the First Part of which he reviews
the subjects which occupied his attention at La
Fleche, their effect upon his mind, the reasons
which led him to renounce letters as soon as he
had finished with preceptors and tutors, and his
intention of gathering knowledge at first hand only.

“ ... Resolving to seek only that knowledge

which I could find within myself, or in the great
book of the world, I employed the remainder
of my youth in travelling, in observing courts
and armies, in associating with persons of divers
tempers and conditions, in gathering various ex-
periences, in testing myself under such conditions
as fortune offered me, and, above all, in reflecting
upon the things which came before me in such
wise that I might draw some profit from them.
For it seemed to me that I could meet with
much more truth in the reasoning which cach
man makes concerning his own affairs, and whose
immediate consequences would soon punish him
for any errors of judgment, than in those made
by a scholar in his study concerning speculations
which produce no effect and lead him to no result,
except, perhaps, that he will extract from them
so much the more vanity as they are removed
from common sense, because he shall have had
to employ so much the more wit and artifice in

x INTRODUCTION.

making them probable. And I always had a great
desire to learn to distinguish the true from the
false, in order to see clearly as regards my actions
Aone to walk in this life with assurance.”

~ He left La Fléche in 1612, and in the following
year he went to Paris and spent the good time that
a young man of seventeen, fresh from college and a
country home, would be expected to enjoy on the
occasion of his first visit to the capital. But he did
not thus indulge himself for long. In Father Mer-
senne, whose acquaintance he had made at La
Fléche, and Mydorge, the celebrated mathema-
tician, he found companions better suited to his
taste than the gay and thoughtless, and, his mind
newly stimulated by intercourse with these two
friends, he abandoned amusements and for two
years devoted himself entirely to mathematical
study.

In 1617 his desire to travel and observe his
fellow-men led him to join the army of Prince
Maurice of Nassau, as a volunteer, and at his own
expense, in accordance with a custom then pre-
valent among the young nobles of France. The
Prince’s force was then at Breda, where Descartes
remained for two years, during which time he saw
no active service. Instead, he applied himself to
study.

Ot te eat a A Noe

INTRODUCTION, xi

On quitting the Prince’s service he entered that
of the Duke of Bavaria, travelled for a time in
Germany, and then settled down in winter quarters
at Neuberg. It is to this period, a very moment-
ous period in his life, that the Second Part of the
Discourse refers. As he relates there, he was shut
up in a warm room, with no distractions or diver-
sions, and perfectly free to commune with himself.
He made full use of circumstances so favourable
to meditation, by preparing his mind for inquiry,
that is to say, by clearing it from all prejudice
and other impediments to free and independent
thought. He saw that as we are accustomed from

our earliest days to be led by our appetites and
our preceptors, whichtare-olfen—appased, it-is_well-

nigh impossible that_our judgments canbe as
pure and solid as if we had used our own

reason alone, and _had_been_ guided by mn
else. He therefore concluded that t
do better than sep erieelt otal tae opinions he
had held hitherto, i held hitherto, in order to-replace_them

better ones, or by the same_modified- by reason.
He believed that he could conduct his life better

thus than by building on old foundations, that is,
on. principles accepted without examination. His

v\

aim was “ to seek the true method for attaining to

‘the knowledge of all the things of which his mind

=

re
xii, | \\X@>" INTRODUCTION.

{ kK 3\&

was sbi ” and to guide him in this search, he
formulated four t tules, 1 which, simple as they may
appear, | are _really the—foundation—of—his great
Method. Then he took certain precautions lest
the process of discarding old opinions should
vitiate action or lead to irresolution. All this
is told in the Second and Third Parts of the
Discourse.

It was at Neuberg, also, that Descartes made
his discovery of the possibility of solving geo-
metrical problems by means of algcbra. On his
own admission, it intensely excited him, for he
saw no end to its consequences. To quote from
the epitaph written by his friend, the Ambassador
Chanut, for the tomb erected over his grave in
the cemetery at Stockholm,—“comparing the
mysteries of nature with the laws of mathe-
matics, he dared to hope that the 2. both

could be unlocked \ with the same key.”

It was on the roth of November, 1619, that
the discovery was made, and the making of
it was attended by three visions or dreams. Two
were warnings to him Qe =
third, ac ing sate own _ interpretation,
signified , appeared
to him therein, wished to show him the treasures

of all the sciences. In consequence of these

|

INTRODUCTION, xiii

visions Descartes vowed a pilgrimage to the
shrine of Our Lady of Loretto, to ask her help
in his future work, and he duly performed his

eee eee

vow.

Since opinions differ as to Descartes’s real
attitude towards religion, it may be well to observe} \
here that original and independent as he was in ©
other matters, he made a reservation in the case of
theology. ipprehending that revealed truths are
above our

~ submit them to his feeble reasonings, eA that af
in order to examine them successfully he would D
need extraordinary help from heaven and to be pv
more than man.

At that period the cloud of scientific heterodoxy
had not yet wholly risen from the sea, and it is not

EE

inconsistent with Descartes’s resolve to accept
nothing at second hand and without examination
that he should except the truths of revelation. He
ad been educated by the Jesuit Fathers, and even

‘Nv when he first formulated his system o it is

conceivable -have
9) eated religious truths as outside the sphere~of

inquiry. In these days nothing is considered out-
side the sphere of inquiry, but it was not so then,
and though Descartes himself brought in the new
order, it does not follow that he carried out his

XIV INTRODUCTION.

principle to its fullest extent. The pioneer of a new
principle seldom sees all its effects. We cannot,
therefore, hastily accuse Descartes of religious
scepticism, and although we know that in time he
came to find his convictions at variance with the
theology of the day, no one can dogmatise as to
when and to what extent he saw that they were
incompatible. Nor, in a short sketch like the

present, can the-arguments of those who believe
Descartes a sceptic, and those who, on the contrary,

gard him as orthodox, be adequately set forth.

In any case, however, we learn from the Discourse
that the philosopher’s provisional moral included
the rule to remain constant to the religion in which

the grace of Caused him to j ted

£ from _his_ youth up, and thi t to his
dying day, and professed athelicism all his
life. "a adi

At is unnecessary to follow in detail Descartes’s
career for the next few years. We need only
notice that in 1620 he served in the Duke of
Bavaria’s army in Bohemia, and in the following
year under the Comte de Bucquoy in Hungary.
On the death of the latter, Descartes left the army
and travelled in Germany, Holland, and Italy, and
in the course of these wanderings paid two short
visits to his home. On one of these visits he received

INTRODUCTION. XV

from his father his share of his maternal inherit-
ance (his mother died when he was an infant),
which he subsequently sold. He then took up
his residence in Paris, where he remained for
three years, applying himself to science, includ-
ing the polishing of lenses and the study of optics.
But Paris life was not favourable to philosophic
retirement, and he was continually disturbed by
friends, and by admirers whom his reputation as
a mathematician was already attracting. He
attempted to evade them by secretly leaving the
house where he was staying and taking apart-
ments elsewhere. But his efforts to hide himself
were unsuccessful, he was hunted out of his retreat,
and finding the hopelessness of seeking peaceful
solitude, he betook himself to the siege of Rochelle,
then in progress, as he was interested in the military
engineering there displayed. On arriving at the
scene of action he offered his services as volunteer,
but returned to Paris as soon as the king had
entered Rochelle.

Several reasons combined to induce him to quit
Paris for a more secluded retreat. Besides the
inevitable hindrances he there encountered to the
study to which he had dedicated himself, and the
impossibility of prosecuting his inquiries amid the
distractions of social life, he found the warm climate

Xvi INTRODUCTION.

uncongenial. The exhortations of Cardinal Bérulle
to make good use of his abilities also helped to
strengthen his determination to withdraw himself
from the world. It is believed, however, that
Descartes’s real motive was his disinclination to
embroil himself with the Church. The Church, as
represented by Rome and the Inquisition, did not

encourage new ideas. For instatice, the theory of
A ne cavIN aiotion “had but scents eee aa
down on himself the persecution of the Inquisition.

Descartes probably foresaw that conventional
Catholicism and his scientific convictions would
sometimes point him in opposite or apparently
opposite directions, and, whether from respect for

ecclesiastical prejudices or fear of ecclesiastical
coercion, thought it wiser to seek some country
where he might be free to pursue his studies
regardless of consequences. Yet even in Protes-
,tant Holland he failed to find the liberty he had
_ho eas
So Descartes laid his plans. He appointed
Father Mersenne his Paris correspondent and agent,
placed his business affairs in the hands of the
Abbé Picot, bade farewell to his friends—save one
or two of the most intimate—by letter, and without
giving them time to hinder him by regrets or

!

Le

INTRODUCTION, xvii

dissuasions, left Paris at the latter end of 1628.
Whither he went at first is not known, but it is
supposed to have been some retired spot in the
north of France whose climate should help to
prepare him for the severer weather of Holland.
For it was to Holland that he was bound, drawn
thither partly by the fact that he was acquainted
with no one living there, though, had it not been
for some other considerations, his inclination would
have led him to Italy.

In 1629 he took up his abode at Amsterdam,
but throughout his sojourn in Holland he was
continually moving from place to place, spending
a few months here, and a few months there,
always, however, keeping in view his great object,
the prosecution of his studies, and therefore
shunning society. He took elaborate precautions
against discovery. For instance, his letters were
not to be forwarded to him direct, and those he
wrote were dated from some place other than that
where he happened to be. His self-imposed exile
from home and friends in order to apply himself
wholly to his work shows how thoroughly earnest

. he was in his purpose, for although he subordinated

everything to his work, he was neither hermit nor

misanthrope. As he says in a letter to Chanut,

“ Although I shun the multitude because of all the
b

XVill INTRODUCTION.

impertinences and importunities one meets with,
I always hold that the greatest pleasure in life is
the enjoyment of conversation with those whom
we esteem.” And the aim of his philosophy was
the good of the human species. His difficulty in
avoiding his friends, also, testifies that he had a
certain measure of popularity among them.

Of his life in Holland his correspondence gives
us such information as we possess, but the
personal, as distinguished from the scientific value
of these letters is somewhat discounted by the
fact that they were written with a view to pub-
lication.

For twenty years Descartes dwelt in Holland,
though, as we have said, he did not attach himself
to any one place. He went to Denmark in 1634,
visited France in 1644, 1647, and 1648, and in 1649
he journeyed to Sweden. At one time he

contemplated coming to England, but although -

Baillet believes that he carried out this intention,
there is no proof that he did so, nor is the journey
referred to in any of his letters.

During his residence in Holland he wrote or
completed nearly all his extant compositions, he
made friends, conducted controversies, carried on
an extensive correspondence, and studied meta-
physics, optics, chemistry, medicine, anatomy,

boot e a POMERAT Aree

INTRODUCTION. Xix

—botany, and astronomy. In all his studies he

|
|
|

preferred (as we should expect) observation and
experiment to reading. In aid of his botanical
inquiries he grew specimen plants in his garden.
To further his physiological research he attended
at slaughter-houses, and had parts of animals sent
home for him to examine at leisure. He also
practised vivisection, but though he held that all
animals, including man, are merely automata, and
that the lower animals differ from man in having
no rational soul, he never went to the lengths that
some of his adherents did, and assert that animals
had no feeling and therefore might be vivisected
without compunction.

But he did not carry out his rule of solitude
quite as rigorously as his protestations in favour
of retirement would lead us to suppose. He made
many friends among the Dutch philosophers and
other celebrities, he frequently visited the French
Ambassador at the Hague, and became on
intimate terms with members of the courts of the
Prince of Orange and of the ex-King of Poland.
For some years, also, there lived with him
M. Ville-Bressieux, a doctor, mathematician, and
chemist, who had conceived such an affection for
Descartes that he left his native France to join
the philosopher in Holland. Descartes returned

xX INTRODUCTION.

his affection, and they dwelt and worked together,
particularly at optics. Ville-Bressieux was a clever
man and made some original inventions, but he
always declared his great indebtedness to his
friend’s instruction. Descartes is known to have
been very jealous of his own originality, and to
have seldom acknowledged any merit in other
people’s achievements, but in this instance quite
the reverse was the case, and the sincere and
grateful compliments paid by Ville-Bressieux to
the philosopher were equally sincerely and
generously reciprocated,

It is said that Descartes frequently astonished
his friend by the surprising things he could show
him for his entertainment, the most wonderful
being a display of soldiers, who seemed to enter,
pass through, and quit the room in which they
were. This he did by means of a mirror, and some
concealed toy soldiers which he magnified to natural
Size.

In 1633 Descartes finished his Treatise on the
World, or On Light,a work embodying an epitome
of his physics, and was about to arrange for its pub-
lication when he heard that Galileo, who some years
before had provoked the Inquisition by his theory
of the earth’s motion, had been cast into prison and
forced to abjure his doctrine. Now, in the Wordd,

INTRODUCTION. Xxi

Descartes had taken this theory of Galileo’s as
an important assumption, and on it his chain of
reasoning depended. On learning Galileo’s fate,
therefore, Descartes kept back his treatise, for
although, he says, he believed the reasons it con-
tained were “founded _on very certain and ounded on very certain and very

_levident demonstrations, yet Lwould not for_any- y-

thing in the world maintain _them—against_the -

authority of the Church.” He adds that his desire
to live a peaceful and retired life made him more
pleased to be sccure from the fear of contracting
undesired acquaintances by means of his writings,
than sorry to have wasted time and pains in com-
posing the World. This a little makes us wonder
why he troubled to write it. But it is at least
possible that fear of a fate like to Galileo’s was as
responsible for his suppression of the work, as
either respect for the Church or love of peace. In
a subsequent letter to Mersenne on this subject he
says that as he firmly believes the infallibility of the
Church, and at the same time doubted none of his
own reasons, he had no fear that one truth would
be contrary to the other. Nor did he find anything
in his philosophy which did not agree better with
theology or religion than did the vulgar. Never-
theless, the Wor/d was not published till after his
death. .

A
/\
a ii

Jy

Xxii INTRODUCTION.

Later on, however, Descartes reconsidered his
determination not to publish any of his writings,
and in 1637 appeared the Descourse on the Method of
Rightly Conducting the Reason, and of seeking Truth
in the Sciences, with treatises on _Dioptrics, teors,
and Geometry, intended as essays in this method.
Descartés had at first intended that the work
should be published anonymously in Paris, and as
a matter of fact no author’s name appears on its
title-page. But Mersenne, whose help he asked
in making the necessary arrangements, not only
obtained a privilege from Louis XIII. entitling the
writer of the Dzscourse to publish where and what
he chose, but disclosed the secret of its authorship
to several friends and frustrated, unwittingly per-
haps, his design of anonymity. The book was
eventually published at Leyden.

Descartes was very anxious to know what effect
his work produced on the minds of the learned,
and to this end sent copies to certain of the
most prominent French scholars, that they might
give their opinion of it, and asked for criticisms
from all quarters. The Dzscourse does not seem
to have excited much remark, except as regards
the theory of the circulation of the blood, which
is set forth in the Fifth Part. But to various
points in the Zssays objections were plentiful, the

INTRODUCTION. XXili

most important being those of Ciermans, a Louvain
Jesuit, and the French mathematicians Morin,
Fermat, and Roberval. After replying to some
of these objections, Descartes announced his inten-
tion of giving up mathematics, that is (to use his
own words), abstract geometry, and questions which
merely test ingenuity, saying that he had devoted
himself to a study for which all his life, how-
ever long, would not suffice, and he would there-
fore do wrong to waste time on what was useless
to his purpose, such as the problems which
his friends were so fond of submitting for his
solution.

By this time the teaching of Descartes had
attracted wide attention, and his adherents formed
a large body. One of the earliest to embrace his
teaching was Reneri, with whom he had become
acquainted on his first arrival in Amsterdam, and
who, on being appointed Professor of Philosophy
in the new University of Utrecht in 1634, used his
position to propagate the Cartesian doctrines. He
died five years later, however, and at his funeral
an oration was spoken in the name of the Univer-
sity, which, says Baillet, was no less the panegyric
of the living Descartes than the funeral eulogy of
‘the dead Reneri. It praised Reneri chiefly for

his courage indi ing authority i f

XXiV INTRODUCTION.

philosophy, so as to walk freely in that liberty
to seek out truth which God has bestowed on
human reason,—in which, of course, he showed
himself the faithful reflector of Descartes’s great
method.

The magistrates joined the University in thus
publicly acknowledging the Cartesian teaching,
by ordering the oration to be printed and cir-
culated by their authority, in memory of the
dead, and in honour of Descartes and the new
philosophy.

But notwithstanding that the University of
Utrecht was officially Cartesian, certain of its
members remained obstinately conservative, and
headed by Gisbert Voét, professor of theology, who
in 1641 was made Rector, a party of theologians
was formed which attacked the new philosophy
(including the theory of the circulation of the
blood) as pernicious to the Protestant religion and
the peace of the States-General. They were viru-
lent against his doctrines and abusive to Descartes
himself, and they succeeded in goading the Utrecht
magistrates, despite their public expression of ap-
proval of Descartes’s work, into summoning that
daring revolutionist before them as a fugitive and
criminal, and later, into forbidding the sale of his
books. But before they could procure the public

INTRODUCTION. XXV

burning of his works at the hands of the hangman,
as they wished, Descartes appealed in self-defence
to the French Ambassador, by whose influence an
order was issued by the States-General which put
an end for the time to the active hostilities of his

enemies. The feud blazed for four years, but

neither this’nor a a

Leyden philosophers hindered the progress of the

In 1641 Descartes published his A/etaphysical
Meditations. As in the case of his Dzscourse and
Essays, he. solicited objections and criticisms,
and this time he received replies from Caterus,
Hobbes, Arnauld, Gassendi, and others of lesser
note. To all these criticisms he replied, but by
none would he allow himself to be convinced of
error,

His next published work, Zhe Principles of
Philosophy, dedicated to the Princess Elizabeth of
Bohemia, appeared at Amsterdam in 1644, and
twice in that year he journeyed to Paris on private
business, These visits were but short, however, and
returning to Holland, he applied himself diligently
to anatomical study. An attack by the theologians
of Leyden was made against him three years later,
and again he had to seek protection from the
Government. He also carried on an extensive

XXVi INTRODUCTION.

correspondence with the Princess Elizabeth, his
warm friend and eager pupil. The Princess after-
wards became Abbess of Hervorden in Westphalia,
where she established an academy of philosophy,
to which men and women of every sect were
admitted, and which took rank as one of the first
schools of Cartesianism.

Another royal and learned lady now entered
into the philosopher’s life. At this time Queen
Christina sat on the Swedish throne, and Chanut,
Descartes’s friend, dwelt at her capital as Resident
and afterwards as Ambassador of France. The
queen was young, clever, and studious, and it was
Chanut’s wish to make Descartes known to her.
He brought the philosopher to her notice by re-
ferring to him some questions concerning love and
hate, in the discussion of which her majesty was
interested. The Queen was attracted by Descartes’s
reply, which took the form of a dissertation on
love, questioned Chanut about him, and sent him,
through Chanut, an assurance of her esteem.

Once more private affairs called Descartes to
France, and here he was offered, and accepted, a
pension of 3000 livres, in acknowledgment of his
achievements and the utility of his philosophy and
research to the human race, and in aid of his
experiments. But this did not hinder his return

INTRODUCTION. XXVili

to Holland, where he continued his preparations
for the writing of a treatise on J/an, which he had
_ been contemplating for many years. It was not
long, however, before he received from the French
court a promise of office and an increased pension,
conditional on his return to his own country. The
: proposal met with his approval, and he went again
to Paris, but only to find that the disturbances of
the Fronde had thrust the claims of philosophy
into oblivion. Perceiving that he was not wanted
in Paris to be of any use, but only as a species of
curiosity “like an elephant or panther,” as he
says, he returned to Holland after three months.
There he received another royal invitation, but
this time from Queen Christina, who had begun a
course of his philosophy and desired his personal
instruction. To this end she sent an admiral and
a ship to bring him to Stockholm.

As soon as he had put his affairs in order,
Descartes departed for Sweden, and reached Stock-
holm in October, 1649. The Queen received him
cordially, and Chanut’s house was opened to him.
So earnest was Christina in her pursuit of philo-
sophy that she fixed her hour for study at five
o'clock in the morning, in the palace library, and
at this unseasonable hour, and in the severe

-~northern winter, Descartes the indolent, the lie-

———— P

=

XXVili INTRODUCTION.

abed, had to attend her two or three times a weck.
She also held several conferences with him late at
night on the subject of an Academy of Sciences
which she desired to establish, and at this time, too,
an additional tax on his strength was made by the
illness of Chanut, whom Descartes watched over
with assiduous care. It is not surprising that these
changes in his habits and the exposure to a new
and exceptionally trying climate induced illness,
Within less than five months of his landing in
Sweden, Descartes was dead.

He died on the 11th of February, 1650, at the
age of fifty-four, and was buried in Stockholm,
but sixteen years later his remains were removed
to his own country and re-interred in the church of
Ste. Genevieve in Paris.

As a man of science, as a mathematician, but
especially as a philosopher, Descartes stands alone.
In science and mathematics he anticipated several

later discoveries, such as the vibration theory of

colour, and in philosophy, by his _u i-
cal doubt as a philosophic instrument, he opened

a new era in the history of thought.

Of Descartes’s writings the earliest extant is a
little Zveatise on Music, written when he was at
Breda, but not published till after his death. His
first recorded composition, a 7vreatise on Fencing,

:

INTRODUCTION. xxix

was written just after he left ae and is known
to us only by name.

The Discourse on the Method of Rightly Con-
ducting the Reason was his first published work,
and appeared, in French, in 1637, at Leyden. It
tells us how Descartes prepared his thought to
interrogate the universe; how he bade it ignore
all beaten tracks, and all sign-posts, and strike
out the most direct path, following the sun of
reason so far as it was permitted to see it. He
sent it forth naked, untrammelled by antique
garments woven by tradition, unhindered by the
cumbersome cloak of prejudice, unshackled by
authority. Thus, neither distracted nor impeded,
it was to approach the great problems. And
this was the famous J7e/hod. The chapters on
Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry, which follow the
Discourse, and which were intended as examples
of the use of the Method, are-now out of dat
A Latin edition of the Dzscourse and Essays
(omitting the Geometry) was made by Etienne
de Courcelles and revised by Descartes, and
published at Amsterdam in 1644 under the title
Specimina Philosophie.

The Metaphystcal Meditations were Gira pub-
lished in Latin, in Paris, 1641, and it is said that
Descartes used frequently to boast that they

XXX INTRODUCTION.

contained important truths which had never before
been examined, and formed the entrance to the
true philosophy, whose principal object was to
show the difference between mind and _ body.
They were intended as an explanation of the
metaphysics of the Déscourse. A French rendering
was made by the Duc de Luynes, and having been
revised by Descartes, took rank as an original, and
was issued in 1647. In the second Latin edition
(Amsterdam, 1642) Descartes altered the title
and substituted “distinction between soul and
body” for “immortality of the soul.”

The Principles of Philosophy appeared at
Amsterdam in 1644, and a French version by
Picot was issued in Paris three years later. It
was designed as a substitute for two suppressed
works, the 7reatise on the World, or On Light, and
the Philosophical Course, and explained the general
phenomena of nature. Descartes had planned to
treat other subjects, such as man, medicine,
mechanics, etc., in the same way, but he did not
live to accomplish more than the treatise on
Man.

Descartes’s final publication was the TZreatise
on the Passions of the Soul (Paris, 1649), a little
work which he wrote to show the action of
body and soul (or mind) upon each other, and

|

INTRODUCTION. XXXi

the parts played by both with respect to the

passions.
The present translation of the Discourse is based

| onthe French text of 1637; and of the Aedztations,

on the French text of 1661, a reprint of the edition

of 1647.
G. B. R.

DisCOURSE

UPON THE METHOD OF RIGHTLY CONDUCTING
THE REASON AND THE RESEARCH OF
TRUTH IN THE SCIENCES.

[f this discourse appear too long to be read all at one
time, tt may be divided into six parts. In the first
will be found divers considerations touching the
sciences; in the second, the principal rules of the
method that the Author has sought out; tn the
third, some of the moral rules which he has deduced
by this method; in the fourth, the reasons by which
he proves the existence of God and of the human
soul, which are the foundations of his metaphysics ;
tn the fifth, the order of the questions which he has
investigated concerning physics, and particularly the
explanation of the movements of the heart, and of
some other difficulties which pertain to medicine;
then, also, the difference between our soul and that
of animals; and tn the last, some matters which
he believes requisite for a deeper inquiry into nature
than he has made, and the reasons which have led
him to write.

4 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

FIRST PART.

Good sense is better distributed than anything
in the world; for each thinks himself so well pro-
vided therewith, that as a rule even those who are
the most difficult to satisfy with regard to every-
thing else, do not desire more of it than they
already have. This does not show that every one
deceives himself; it testifies rather to the fact that
~the_power of judging well and_of distinguishing
the true from the false, which is properly that
which we call good sense, or reason, is naturally
equal in all men. And thus the diversity of our
opinions is not because some are more reasonable
than others, but only because we conduct our
thought by different ways, and do not all con-
sider the same things. For it is not sufficient
that the understanding be good—the thing is to
apply it well. The greatest minds are capable of?
the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues, u
and those who proceed but slowly can advance
much further, if they follow the rigat road, than +!
those who hasten in the wrong direction.

For my own part, I have never presumed that
my understanding was in any way more perfect
than that of most people: indeed, I have often

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 3

wished that my thought were as quick, or my
imagination as exact and vivid, or my memory
as comprehensive or as ready, as those of others.
And I know no qualities but these which make
for the perfection of the mind, for inasmuch as
reason or sense is the only thing which renders us
-human and distinguishes us from animals, I would
believe that it is quite complete in every individual,
and follow herein the common opinion of the
philosophers, who say that there are variations
only as regards accidentals, and not between the
forms and natures of individuals.

But I shall not be afraid to say that I think I
have been very fortunate since my youth in having
come upon various ways which have led me to
considerations and maxims from which I have con-
structed a method by which, it seems to me, I
have the means of gradually augmenting my
knowledge, and. of raising it little by little to the
- highest point to which the mediocrity of my under-
standing and the short duration of my life may
permit of its attaining. For I have already gathered
such fruits therefrom, that although with regard
to the judgments I make by myself I always
endeavour to incline to the side of distrust rather
than of presumption, and although when I observe
with a philosopher’s eye the various actions and

4 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

undertakings of men there are hardly any of them
which do not seem to me vain and useless, I
do not cease to derive extreme satisfaction from
the progress that I believe I have already made
in the research of truth, and to conceive such
hopes for the future, that if among the occupations
of men, as men, there is any which is substantially
good and important, I dare believe it is this that
I have chosen.

At the same time it is possible that I deceive
myself, and perhaps what I take for gold and
diamonds is only a little copper and glass. I
know how liable we are to be mistaken in that
which concerns ourselves, and also how we should
suspect our friends’ judgments when they are in
our favour. But I shall be very glad to show in
this discourse the paths I have followed, and to

represent my life therein as in a picture, so that
every one may judge of it, and that learning from
the general talk people’s opinions concerning it,
I may find it a new means of instructing myself,
which I can add to those I am accustomed to
employ.

Thus it is not my intention to teach here the
method which each man ought to follow for the
right guidance of his reason, but only to show in
what_manner_I_ have tried to conduct _ my own.

b)
a te

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 5

Those who have to do with the giving of precepts
should esteem themselves cleverer than those to
whom the precepts are given, and if these are in
any way defective, they are to blame for it. But
since I propose this writing only as a history, or,
if you like it better, as a fable, in the which, among
many examples that may be imitated, will be
found perhaps as many others which people will be
right in not following, I_hope that it will be useful
to some, without being hurtful to any, and that_all
will be pleased with my frankness,

I have been nourished on letters from my
infancy, and because people persuaded me_that
by their means a man could acquire a clear and
certain knowledge of-all- that is useful in life, I had
a great desire to become acquainted with them.
But as soon as I had finished all the course of
study at the termination of which a man is usually
received into the ranks of the learned, I entirely
altered my opinion, for I found myself hampered
by so many doubts and errors that it seemed that
I reaped no benefit from my effort to instruct my-
self, except that I discovered more and more my
own ignorance. And yet I was in one of the most
celebrated schools in Europe, where I thought
learned men would be found if such existed any-
where: I learned there all that the others learned,

6 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

and even, being dissatisfied with what we were
taught, I went through all the books I could get
hold of which treated of those sciences which are
esteemed the most curious and most rare: more-
over, I knew the opinions that the others formed
concerning me, and I did not see that they held me
inferior to my fellow-students, although there were
already some among them destined to take the
places of our masters: and finally, our age seemed
to me as flourishing, and as fertile in intelligent
minds, as any which had preceded it. This is
what made me take the liberty of judging all the
rest by myself, and of believing that there was no
doctrine in the world such as I had formerly been
led to hope.

At the same time I did not cease to esteem the
studies with which they occupy themselves in the
schools. I knew that the languages which are
acquired there are necessary to the understanding
of ancient books; that the graceful turns of stories
quicken the mind; that the memorable actions
of history elevate it, and when read with dis-
cretion assist in forming the judgment; that
the reading of all the good books is like a
conversation with the worthiest men of past times,
their authors, and a studied conversation, too, in
which they reveal to us only the best of their

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 7

thought; that eloquence has incomparable power
and beauty; that poetry has very charming
refinements and sweetnesses; that mathematics
have very subtle inventions which can be of great
service, whether in satisfying the curious or in
facilitating men’s arts and diminishing their
labours; that the writings which treat of morals
contain much information and many virtuous
precepts which are very useful; that theology

teaches the way to heaven; that philosophy ..,,

affords the means_of speaking with probability of
everything, and of gaining the admiration of the

less learned; that jurisprudence, medicine, and
other sciences bring honours and riches to those
who cultivate them; and finally, that it is well to
have examined them all, even the most super-
stitious and false, in order to know their just value
and to guard against being deceived by them.

But I thought I had already given enough time
to languages, and even to the perusal of ancient
books, and to their histories and fables. For to
converse with those of other ages is almost the
-same as to travel. It is good to know something
of the manners of different peoples that we may
judge soundly of our own, and that we may not
think all which is contrary to our customs
ridiculous and opposed to reason, as those who

8 DISCOURSE ON METIIOD.

have seen nothing are accustomed to do; but
when a man spends too much time in travelling he
ends by becoming a stranger in his own country,
and when he is too curious concerning things done
in times past, he generally remains very ignorant
of those practised at the present day. Besides
which, fables make many things to be imagined as
possible which are not so; and even the most
faithful (histories, even if they neither alter nor
augment the value of things in order to make
them more worthy of being read, at least almost
always omit from them the lower and less glorious
circumstances, so that the remainder does not
appear as it really is, and those who regulate their
ways by the examples they draw therefrom are
liable to fall into the extravagances of the knights-

errant of our romances and to conceive designs

which surpass their ability.

I greatly esteemed eloquence, and I loved
poetry, but I conceived that both were gifts of
the mind rather than the fruits of study. Those
whose reasoning is the strongest, and who best
direct their thoughts so as to render them clear
and intelligible, can always best persuade people
of that which they put forward, even though they
may speak only low Breton, and have never
learned anything of rhetoric; and those whose

DISCOURSE ON METIIOD. 9

inventions are the most agreeable, and who can
express them with the most grace and charm,
will not fail to be the best poets, although the
poetic art be unknown to them.

Above all, I took pleasure in mathematics,
because of the certainty and evidence of their
reasons, but I did not yet remark their true use;
and thinking that they served the mechanical
-arts alone, I was_ surprised that since their
foundations were so firm and solid, nothing more
lofty had been built upon them. So, on the other
hand, I compared the writings of ancient pagans who
treated of morals to very superb and magnificent
palaces built only on sand and mud, for they
highly exalted the virtues and made them appear
estimable above all existing things, but they did
not sufficiently teach how to know them, and
often that which they call by so fine a name
is only insensibility, or pride, or despair, or
parricide.

I reviewed our theology, and claimed as much as

any to attain to heaven, but having learned as a '

very sure thing that the way to it is as open to
the most ignorant as to the most learned, and
that the revealed truths which lead thither are
beyond our intelligence, I did not dare submit
them to my feeble reasonings, and I thought

a

fe) DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

that to undertake to examine them, and to succeed
therein, I_should want some extraordinary assist-
ance from above, and need to be more than man.
Of (philosophy, I will say nothing, except that
seeing that it has been cultivated by the most
excellent minds which have lived for many
centuries, and that nevertheless no truth is to be
found therein which is not disputed, and which
consequently is not doubtful, I had not sufficient
presumption to hope to fare better than other
people; and that considering how many different
opinions touching one matter can be upheld by
learned men, while only one among them can be

true, I accounted as false all which was. ming

probable. \~" :

Then as to the other sciences. Fonisteehis as
they borrowed their principles from philosophy,
I judged that nothing solid could have been built
on foundations so unstable, and neither the honour
nor the profit which they promise was sufficient to
induce me to acquire them, for I did not feel
obliged, thank God, to make a profession of
science in order to increase my means, and
although I did not pretend to play the cynic and
to despise glory, I nevertheless set little store by
that which I could never hope to gain save by
false titles. And finally, as regards false doctrines,

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. I!

I considered that I already knew too well what
they were worth, to be liable to be taken in by
them, whether by the promises of an alchemist,
the predictions of an astrologer, the impositions
of a magician, or the artifices or brag of those who
profess to know more than they do. :

This is why, as soon as I was old enough to
quit the authority of my preceptors, I entirely
gave up the study of letters, and resolving to seek
only that knowledge which could be found within
myself, or rather in the great book of the world, I
employed the remainder of my youth in travelling,
in observing courts and armies, in associating with
persons of divers tempers and conditions, in gather-
ing various experiences, in testing myself under
such conditions as fortune offered me, and above
all in reflecting upon the things which came before

me in such wise that I might draw some profit

from them. For it seemed to me that I could
meet with much more truth in the reasoning which
each man made touching the things which con-
cerned himself, and whose immediate consequences
would soon punish him for any errors of judg-
ment, than in those made by a scholar in his study,
concerning speculations which produce no effect
and lead him to no result, except, perhaps, that
he will extract from them so much the more

Se

12 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

vanity as they are removed from common sense,
because he shall have had to employ so much the
more wit and artifice in making them probable.
And I always had a great desire to learn to dis-
tinguish the true from the false, in order to see
clearly as regards my actions and to walk in this
life with assurance.

It is true that as long as I only considered the
manners of other men, I found hardly any of them
which I could regard as convincing, and I remarked
almost as much diversity among them as I had
done before among the opinions of the _philo-
sophers. The greatest profit, therefore, which I
derived from them, was that seeing many things
which do not cease to be commonly accepted and
approved by other great peoples, although to us
they appear very extraordinary and ridiculous, I
learned not to believe too firmly anything of which
I had been persuaded merely by example and
custom, and thus little by little I shook off many
errors which can obscure our natural light and
make us less capable of understanding reason.
But after employing some years in thus studying
the book of the world, and in trying to acquire
some experience, I one day made a resolve to
study myself in the same way, and to use all the
power of my mind in selecting the paths which I

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 13

ought to follow. And in this, it appears to me,
I succeeded much better than if I had never left
either my country or my books.

SECOND PART.

I was then in Germany, whither I had been
called by the wars still in progress there, and as
I was returning to the army after the coronation
of the Emperor, the beginning of winter detained
me in a quarter where, finding no intercourse to
attract me, and having, fortunately, no cares or
passions besides to trouble me, I remained all day
shut up alone in a sitting-room where I had per-
fect leisure to commune with my thoughts. One
of the first of these thoughts was that it occurred
to me_to consider that there is frequently less
perfection in works made up of many parts, and
wrought by the hand of many masters, than_in
those upon which one alone has laboured. Thus we
see that buildings undertaken and finished by one
architect are as a rule more beautiful and better
ordered than those that many have attempted
to adapt by making use of old walls built for
other purposes. Thus, also, the ancient cities which,

14 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

having been at first merely straggling villages,
have become in course of time great towns, are
ordinarily so badly proportioned in comparison
with the regular order of those which an engineer
traces at his fancy on a plain, that although in
considering each building separately we often find
in them as much art, or more, as in those of
others, yet at the same time, to sce how they are
arranged, here a large one and there a small, and
how crooked and irregular they make the streets,
we should say that hazard, rather than the will
of men using reason, has disposed them thus.
And if we consider that nevertheless there have
been in all times certain officers charged with the
care of the buildings of private persons, to make
them serve for the public ornament, we shall know
well that in working upon the productions of
others it is not easy to make out of them any-
thing very finished. I also considered that the
peoples who were at one time half savage, and
who, having been but gradually civilised, have
made their laws only in measure as the incon-
venience of crimes and quarrels has obliged them
to it, cannot have so good a polity as those who,
from the time when they first assembled together,
have observed the constitutions of some prudent
legislator. Thus it is very certain that the estate

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 15

of the true religion, whose ordinances have been
made by God alone, must be governed incom-
parably better than any other. And to speak of
human things, I believe that if Sparta was formerly
very flourishing, it was not because of the excel-
lence of each of its laws individually, seeing that
many were very strange and contrary to good
morals, but because that having been invented by
one man alone, they all had the same object in
view. I reflected also that the sciences of books,
at any rate those whose reasons were only prob-
able, and had no demonstrations, being composed
and built up little by little of the opinions of many
different persons, do not approach so near to the
truth as the simple reasonings made by one man
of good sense concerning the things which come
under his notice. And then again, I considered
that as we have all been children before becoming
men, and for a long time had to be governed by
our appetites and by our preceptors, which were
often at variance, and as neither, perhaps, always
gave us the best counsel, it is almost impossible
that our judgments are so pure or so solid as
they would have been if we had. had the perfect
use of our reason from the time of our birth and
had never been guided by anything else.

- It is true that we do not see all the houses of a

RAD IEATAAR ALY ARN gy

16 DISCOURSE ON METHOD,

town demolished solely that they may be rebuilt
in some other style, and to make the streets more
beautiful, but we do see that many individuals pull
down theirs in order to build them up again, and
sometimes, even, that they are forced to it when the
houses are in danger of falling of is nae and
when the foundations are insecure4 By this ex-
ample I persuaded myself that it would be very
improbable that a private person would design to
reform a state by changing the whole from its
foundations, and by overthrowing it in order to set
it up again; or even to reform the body of the
sciences, or the order established in the schools for
teaching them; but that as regarded the opinions
that I had received into my belief, I could not
do better than attempt, on a good opportunity, to
remove them therefrom in order to replace them
afterwards either by better ones or by the same
after I had brought them up to the level of reason,
And I firmly believed that by this means I should
succeed in conducting my life better than if I
merely built on old foundations, or relied only on
principles of which I had allowed myself to be
persuaded in my youth, without having ever con-
sidered whether they were tue as although I
noticed various difficulties in fhis, they neverthe-
less were not without remedy, or to be compared —

DISCOURSE ON METHOD, 17

with those which are encountered in the reforma-
tion of the smallest matters concerning the public.
These great bodies are too hard to raise, when
once thrown down, or even to secure when
shaken, and their fall cannot but be very heavy,
any,—since the mere fact of their diversity is
enough to make it certain that many of them
have some,—custom, without doubt, has greatly .
softened them, and has even checked them or in- >
sensibly corrected a number of them, which could
not so well be compassed by prudence; and in
short, they are almost always more endurable than
their alteration would be, just as the high roads
which wind about among mountains gradually
become so connected and so convenient through
being frequented, that it is much better to follow
them than to attempt to go more directly by
clambering up rocks and descending to the bottom
of precipices.

This is why I could in nowise approve those
blundering and restless persons who, being called
neither» by birth nor fortune to the manage-
ment of public affairs, are always devising some
new reformation. And if I thought that this
writing contained the least thing which could

make me suspected of this folly, I should be very
2

18 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

sorry to permit its publication. My design never
extends further than the endeavour to reform my
own thoughts, and to build on ground which is
wholly mine. If, since my work has pleased me, I
here show you its plan, it is not because I wish, to
counsel any one to imitate it. Those to whom
God has allotted more of His grace would perhaps
have loftier designs, but I much fear that this one
is already but too hard for many. Even _the
resolve to free oneself from all opinions formerly
accepted and believed is not an example which
every man ought to follow, and the world is almost
solely made up of two classes of minds for whom
it is by no means expedient,—to wit, of those who,
thinking themselves cleverer than they are, cannot
refrain from precipitating their judgments, and
have not patience enough to conduct all their
thoughts methodically, so that if they once took
the liberty of doubting the principles they have
received, and of escaping from the beaten track,
they would never be able to keep to the path they
ought to follow in order to proceed more directly,
and would remain astray all their life; and_those
who, having sufficient reason or modesty to judge
that they are less capable of distinguishing the
true from the false than others by whom they
might be instructed, ought much rather to content

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 19

themselves with following the opinions of those
others than seek better for themselves.

For my own part, doubtless I should have been
among these latter, if I had never had but one
master, or if I had not known the differences
which have existed in all times among the
opinions of the most learned. But having learned
while I was at the college that nothing so strange
and so incredible can be imagined that it has not
been put forward by one or another of the philo-
sophers; and having noticed since then, while
travelling, that all those whose sentiments are
most contrary to ours are not on that account
either barbarians or savages, but that many em-
ploy as much reason as we, or more; and having
considered how the same man, with the same
mind, being reared from infancy by French people
or by Germans, becomes different from what he
would be if he had always lived among Chinese or
cannibals; and how even to the fashion of our
clothes the same thing which has pleased us these
ten years, and perhaps will please us again before
another ten are out, now appears strange and
ridiculous,—so that_it is much rather custom and
example which persuade us, than any certain
knowledge, , though as regards the truths which
are difficult to discover the majority of voices is

— a

I

20 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

not a proof which is_of any value, because it is
much more likely that one man alone would meet
with them than a whole nation,—I could not pick
out any one whose opinions seemed to me worthy
to be preferred to those of others, and I was, as it
were, obliged to undertake to guide myself.

But, like a man who walks alone and in darkness,
I resolved to go so slowly, and to use so much
circumspection in everything, that if I did not
advance speedily, at least I should keep from
falling. I would not even have desired to begin
by entirely rejecting any of the opinions which
had formerly been able to slip into my belief
without being introduced there by reason, had I
not first spent much time in projecting the work
which I was to undertake, and in seeking the true
method of arriving at a knowledge of everything
of which my understanding should be capable.

When I was younger, I had devoted a little
study to logic, among philosophical matters, and
to geometrical analysis and to algebra, among
mathematical matters, — three arts or sciences
which, it seemed, ought to be able to contribute
something to my design. But on examining them
I noticed that the syllogisms of logic and the
greater part of the rest of its teachings serve
rather for explaining to other people the things

DISCOURSE: ON METHOD. 21

we already know, or even, like the art of Lully,
for speaking without judgment. of things we
know not, than for instructing us of them. And
although they indeed contain many very true
and very good precepts, there are always so
many others mingled therewith that it is almost
as difficult to separate them as to extract a Diana
or a Minerva from a block of marble not yet
rough hewn. Then, as to the analysis of the
ancients and the algebra of the moderns, besides
that they extend only to extremely abstract
matters and appear to have no other use, the
first is always so restricted to the consideration of

figsures that it cannot exercise the understanding
without greatly fatiguing the imagination, and in
the other one is so bound down to certain rules
and ciphers that it has been made a confused and
obscure art which embarrasses the mind, instead
of a science which cultivates it. This made me
think that some other method must be sought,
which, while combining the advantages of these
three, should be free from their defects. And as
a multitude of laws often furnishes excuses for
vice, so that a state is much better governed when
it has but few, and those few strictly observed, so~:
in place of the great number of precepts of which
logic is composed, I believed that I should find the

22 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

following four sufficient, provided that I made a
firm and constant resolve not once to omit to
observe them.

k The first was, never_to_accept anything as truc —

when I did not recognise it clearly to be so, that
is to say, to carefully avoid precipitation and
prejudice, and to include in my opinions nothing

«beyond that which should present itself so clearly
and so distinctly to my mind that I might have no
occasion to doubt it.

JL. The second was, to divide each of the_difficulties
which I should examine into as many portions as
were possible, and as should be required for its
better solution.

TL.The third was, to conduct my thoughts in order,

by beginning with the simplest objects, and those

most easy to know, so as to mount little by little,

as if by steps, to the most complex knowledge,

oand even assuming an order_among those which
do not naturally precede one another.

TV And the last was, to make everywhere enumera-
tions so complete, and surveys so wide, that. I
should be sure of omitting nothing.
<The long chains of perfectly simple and easy
reasons which geometers are accustomed to
employ in order to arrive at their most difficult
demonstrations, had given me reason to believe that

a

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 23

all things which can fall under the knowledge of
man succeed each other in the same way, and that

. . . 7
, provided only we abstain from receiving as true _,

any opinions which are not true, and always
observe the necessary order in deducing one from
the other, there can be none so remote that they Pf
may not be reached, or so hidden that they may
not be discovered. “ And I was not put to much
trouble to find out which it was necessary to begin
with, for I knew already that it was with the
simplest and most easily known; and considering
that of all those who have heretofore sought truth
in the sciences it is the mathematicians alone who
have been able to find demonstrations, that is to —
say, clear and certain reasons, I did not doubt
that I must start with the same things that they
have considered, although I hoped for no other
profit from them than that they would accustom
my mind to feed on truths and not to content
itself with false reasons. But I did not therefore
design to try to learn all those particular sciences
which bear the general name of mathematics: and
seeing that although their objects were different,

only the various relations or proportions found

_ therein, I thought it would be better worth while

if I merely examined these proportions in general,

24 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

supposing them only in subjects which would

serve to render the knowledge of them more easy to
me, and even, also, without in any wise restrict-
ing them thereto, in order to be the better able to
apply them subsequently to every other subject
to which they should be suitable. Then, having
remarked that in order to know them I. should
sometimes need to consider each separately, I had
to suppose them in lines, because I found nothing
more simple, or which I could more distinctly
represent to my imagination and to my senses;
but to retain them, or to comprehend many of
them together, it was necessary that I should
express them by certain ciphers as short as pos-
sible, and in this way I should borrow all the best
in geometrical analysis, and in algebra, and correct
all the faults of the one by means of the other.

For I indeed venture to affirm, that the exact |
observation of the one or two precepts that I had
chosen gave me such facility in unravelling the
questions comprehended by these two sciences,
that in the two or three months which I spent in
examining them,—beginning with the simplest and
most general, and each truth that I discovered
being a guide which afterwards helped me to find
others,—not only did I at last come to many which
I. had formerly accounted too difficult, but

DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

apparently also towards being able to determine,
even in those of which I was ignorant, by what
means, and to what extent, it was possible to solve
them. In this I shall not perhaps appear to you
very vain, if you consider that as there is but one
truth concerning each thing, whosoever finds it

knows as much of that thing as it is possible to
know, and that, for example, a child instructed in
arithmetic, having made an addition according to
its rules, can be certain of having found all which
the human mind is capable of finding, respecting
the sum under consideration. For in brief, the
method which teaches how to follow the true
order, and to .enumerate—exactly every circum-
stance relating to that which is being sought,
contains everything which gives certainty to the
rules of arithmetic.

But what satisfied me most with this method,
was that by it I was assured of always using
my reason, if not perfectly, at least to the best
of my power; besides which; I felt in prac-
tising it that my mind was accustoming itself
little by little to conceive its objects more precisely
and more distinctly; and not having subordinated
it to any particular matter, I resolved to apply it
as usefully to the difficulties of other sciences. as
I had done to those of algebra. Not that I

26 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

therefore dared to undertake to examine forthwith
all those which should present themselves, for that
would even have been contrary to the order it
prescribed; but having observed that their
principles must all be borrowed from philosophy,
in which I as yet found none which were certain, I
thought that it was before all things necessary to
try to establish some therein, and that since this is
the most important thing in the world, and the one
wherein precipitation and prejudice are most to be
feared, I ought not to undertake to achieve this
until I had attained a riper age than I had reached
at that time, for I was then twenty-three years old,
and if I had not first spent a long time in
preparing myself for it,—as much in eradicating
from my mind all the ill opinions that I had
formerly received of it, as in making numerous
experiments concerning the subject of my
reasonings, and in continually practising the
method which I had prescribed for myself in order
that I might be strengthened in it more and more.

THIRD PART,

And finally, as it is not sufficient, before
beginning to rebuild one’s dwelling-house, merely

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 27

%

to throw it down and to furnish materials and
architects, or to study architecture, and to have
carefully traced the plan of it besides, it is also
necessary to be provided with some other wherein
to lodge conveniently while the work is in
progress. Thus, in order that I might not remain
undecided in my actions, while reason obliged me
to be so in my opinions, and that I might not
thenceforth cease to live as happily as possible,
I provisionally made myself a moral, consisting
merely of three or four maxims, which I will

gladly impart to you.

my country, keeping always to the religion in
which, by the grace of God, I had been instructed
from my childhood; and in everything else

governing myself according to the most moderate

opinions, and those furthest removed from excess,
which were commonly received in practice by the
most intelligent among whom I should have to
live. For beginning thenceforward to count my

own opinions as nothing, because I wished to
submit them all to investigation, I was sure that I
could not do better than follow those of the most
sensible persons. And although there were
perhaps as many sensible persons among the
Persians, or the Chinese, as among us, it seemed

yo

*

wy

rs The first was, to obey the laws and customs of «

28 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

to me more profitable to govern myself according
to those with whom I was to dwell; and that in
order to know what their opinions really were, I
ought to observe what they practised rather than
what they said, not only because that in the
corruption of our morals there are few people who
will say all that they believe, but also because
many do not know what they believe; for the
action of the thought by which a man_believes a
thing being different from that by which he knows
that he believes it, they are often the one without
the other. And among many opinions equally
accepted, I chose only the most moderate, as much
because these are always the most convenient for
practice, and probably the best,—all excess being
bad, as a rule,—as in order to keep nearer the
true way, in case I failed, than if, having chosen
one extreme, it should be the other which ought to
be followed. And I specially put among the
extremes all the resolves by which a man curtails
anything of his liberty,—not that I disapproved
the laws which, to remedy the variableness of
feeble minds, requires a man who has some good
design, or even (where the security of commerce is
concerned) a merely indifferent one, to face oaths
and contracts to oblige him to persevere therein, —-
but because I did not see anything in the world

|
: DISCOURSE ON METIIOD. 29
|

which remained always in the same state; and
‘because, for my own part, I thought that I should
‘greatly sin against good sense, if, because I
approved a thing then, I was obliged to accept it
as good ever after, when it would perhaps have
ceased to be so, or when I had ceased to esteem
it such.

). My second maxim was, to be as firm and as
resolute in my actions as I could, and to follow

they were very certain. In this I acted as travel-
lers who find themselves astray in some forest
should do, for they ought not to wander about,
turning now to one side and now to another, still
less to remain in one place, but walk as straight
as they can in one direction, and not change it
for trivial reasons, although it were chance alone
which determined their choice to begin with; for
by this means, if they do not go precisely where
they desire, at least they arrive in time at some
place where they will probably fare better than in
the middle of the forest. And as the actions of
life seldom permit of any delay, it is a very certain
truth, that when it is not in our power to discern

the most truthful opinions, we ought to follow the Y «

most probable. And even though we remark no

30 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

more probability in these than in those, we ought
nevertheless to decide upon some, and then no
longer consider them doubtful, in so far as they
correspond to practice, but as very true and cer-
tain, because the reason which has made us decide
upon them is so. And this was able henceforward
to deliver me from all the regret and remorse
which generally agitate the consciences of those
feeble and wavering minds which inconstantly
allow themselves to proceed to practise as good
things which they afterwards judge to be bad.

~\» My third maxim was, always to endeavour to
conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change
my desires rather than the order of the world, and
generally accustom myself to believe that nothing

| is so entirely within our power_as our thoughts; so

that after having done our best concerning the
things exterior to ourselves, all that is wanting
for our success is absolutely impossible to us.
— This alone seemed sufficient to keep me from de-
siring in the future anything which I was not able
to acquire, and thus to render me contented; for
since our will naturally inclines to desire-only the
things which our understanding represents to it
as in some way possible, it is certain that if we
consider all the good things which are outside us
as equally beyond our power, we shall have no

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 31

more regret at the lack of those which appear due
to our birth, than at not possessing the kingdom

-of China or Mexico; and that, making a virtue

of necessity, as they say, we shall no more wish

to be well, when ill, or free, when in prison, than

we desire now to have bodies as incorruptible as
diamonds, or wings to fly like birds. But I con-
fess that long practice and much thinking are
necessary to accustom us to regard everything
from this standpoint, and I believe that it is
principally this wherein lay the secret of those
philosophers who. aforetime were able to avoid
dominion and fortune, and in spite of miseries
and poverty, to contest felicity with their gods.
For, ceaselessly occupying themselves in contem-
plating the good things prescribed for them by
nature, they so completely persuaded themselves

that nothing was in their power but their: thoughts,

that that alone was sufficient to keep them from
any affection for other things, and of their thoughts
they disposed so absolutely, that they had reason
to esteem themselves more rich, more powerful,
more free, and more happy than any other men,
who, without this philosophy, however favoured
by nature and by fortune never thus dispose of
everything as they will.

Finally, for the conclusion of this moral, I be-

Pr «eb

ILBES,

32 DISCOURSE ON METIIOD.

thought me to review the various occupations of
men in this life, in order to try to make choice
of the best; and though I desire to say nothing
about those of others, I believed I could not do
better than continue in my own, that is, in
employing all my life in cultivating my reason,
and advancing as far as I could in the knowledge
of truth according to the method I had laid down
for myself. I had experienced such deep content
since beginning to use this method that I did
not believe it possible in this life to obtain
any sweeter or more innocent, and discovering
every day by its means truths which seemed to
me important, and commonly ignored by other
men, the satisfaction I derived from it so filled
my mind that none of the others touched me.
"Besides which, the three foregoing maxims were
founded solely on my design to contrive to instruct =
myself: for God having given to every man light G
wherewith to tell the true from the false, I would —
not have believed that I ought for one single
moment to content myself with the opinions of
others, had I not proposed to employ my_own .
judgment in examining them when the time came;
and I would not have known how to rid myself
of scruples in following them, had I not hoped
thereby not to lose any occasion of finding better,

if there were any; nor, finally, would I have known
how to limit my desires or to be content, had I not
* followed a road which I thought would certainly
lead me to the acquisition of all the knowledge
of which I was capable, and so to the acquisition

of all the truly good things which would ever be -

within my reach; seeing that as our will inclines
neither to pursue nor to avoid anything, except
according as our understanding represents it as
good or bad, it is sufficient to judge well in order
to do well, and to judge the best one can, to do
also the best one can—that is, to acquire all the
virtues and at the same time all the other good
things that can be acquired; and when one is
certain of that, one cannot fail to be content, ©
After having thus assured myself of these
maxims, and having set them apart, with the
truths of the faith, which have always been the
same in my belief, I judged that as regarded the
rest of my opinions I might freely set about rid-

ding myself of them. And as I hoped to be able,
to succeed in them better by conversing with men, |
than by remaining for any length of time shut up |

in the room where all these thoughts came to me,

the winter was hardly over when I again set out

to travel, and throughout the nine years following

I did nothing but ramble hither and thither about
3

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. Ae

34 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

the world, endeavouring to be a spectator rather
than an actor in the various plays in progress
there; and reflecting particularly on that in each
matter which could render it suspected, and give
us occasion to mistrust ourselves, I meanwhile
eradicated from my mind all the errors which
had formerly been able to slip into it. Not that
I imitated the sceptics, who doubt only inorder
to > doubt, and affect to be always uncertain, for,
on the contrary, my only purpose was to assure
- myself, and to reject shifting earth and sand in
order to find rock or clay. In this, methinks, I
succeeded sufficiently well, inasmuch as in trying
to discover the falsity or uncertainty of the pro-
positions I examined—not by weak conjecture but
by clear and assured reasonings—I met with none
so doubtful that I did not draw some certain con-
clusion from it, even were it only that it contained
nothing certain. { And as in pulling down an old
house a man usually preserves the materials in
order to use them to build a new one, so in
destroying all my opinions which I believed to
be ill-founded, I made divers observations and
gained many experiences which have helped me
since to establish many opinions which are most
certain. Moreover, I continued to practise the
‘method I had laid down for myself, for besides

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 35

that I wanted to conduct all my thoughts in
general according to its rules, I reserved from
time to time certain hours which I spent in test-
ing mathematical difficulties, and even, also, some
others which I could render almost similar to
those of mathematics by detaching them. from all.
other~scientific-principles which I did not consider
sufficiently firm, as you will see I have done in
many which are explained in this volume.t And
thus, without appearing to live differently from
those who, having no other employment than the
spending of a peaceful and innocent life, make it
their’ study to separate pleasures from vices, and
who, to enjoy their leisure without tiring of it,
avail themselves of every diversion which is honest,
I did not cease to prosecute my design, and to
profit by the knowledge of truth more, perhaps,
than if I had only read books or frequented the
company of men of letters.

Yet these nine years slipped away before I had
touched upon the difficulties which are generally
disputed among the learned, or had begun to seek
the foundations of any philosophy more certain
than the vulgar. And the example of many
excellent minds who had the foregoing design,
and who seemed to me to have failed therein,

1 See Introduction, pp. xxi., xxii.

36 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

made me imagine it so difficult that I would not
yet perhaps so soon have dared to undertake it,
had I not discovered that it was already put about
that I had succeeded in it. I cannot say on what
this opinion was founded, and if I contributed
anything to it by my discourses, it must have
been by confessing that of which I was ignorant
more ingenuously than those who have studied a
little are wont to do, and perhaps, also, by exhibit-
” ing my reasons for doubting so many things that
' others held as certain, rather than boasting of
having found any doctrine.- But being sufficiently
upright not to wish to be taken for anything but
what I am, I thought it necessary that I should
try by every mcans to render myself worthy of my
reputation, and it is just eight years since this
desire made me resolve to remove myself from all
the places where I might have acquaintances, and
to retire here to a country where the long duration
of the war has established such order, that the sole
purpose of the armies here met with seems to be
the more secure enjoyment by the people of the
fruits of peace; and where among the multitude of
a great and very active people who are more care-
ful of their own affairs than curious about other
persons’, and without lacking any of the conveni-
ences of the most frequented towns, I have been

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 37

able to live as solitarily and as retired as in the

loneliest deserts.

FOURTH PART.

I do not know whether I ought to discuss with
you the earlier of my meditations, for they are so
metaphysical and so out of the common that per-
haps they would not be to every one’s taste ; and
yet, in order that it may be judged whether the
bases I have taken are sufficiently firm, I am in
some measure constrained to speak of them. I
had remarked for long that, in conduct, it is some-
times necessary to follow opinions known to be
very uncertain, just as if they were indubitable, as
has been said above: but then, because I desired
to devote myself only to the research of truth, I
thought it necessary to do exactly the contrary,
and reject as absolutely false all in which I could
conceive the least doubt, in order to see if after-
wards there did not remain in my belief something
which was entirely indubitable. Thus, because our
senses sometimes deceive us, I wanted to suppose
that nothing is such as they make us imagine it;

and because some men err in reasoning, even
touching the: ‘simplest matters of geometry, and

38 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

make paralogisms, and judging that I was as
liable to fail as any other, I rejected as false all
the reasons which I had formerly accepted as
demonstrations; and finally, considering that all
the thoughts which we have when awake, can come
to us also when we sleep, without any of them
then being true, I resolved to feign that everything
which had ever entered into my mind was no more
true than the illusions of my dreams. But imme-
diately afterwards I observed, pe while I thus
desired eee to be false, I, who thought,
2; sot : am remarking
‘that this truth, 7 think, therefore I am, was so firm
and so assured that all the most extravagant sup-
positions of the sceptics were unable to shake it,
I judged that I could unhesitatingly accept it as
the first principle of the philasophy.I was seeking.
Then, examining attentively what I was, and
seeing that I could feign that I had no body, and
that there was no world or any place where I was,
but that nevertheless I-could not feign that I did
not-exist, and that, on the contrary, from the fact
g fo) th_of other
things, it followed very evidently that I was; while
if I had only ceased to think, although all else
which I had previously imagined had been true, I

had no reason to believe that I might have been, ©

ee

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 30

therefore I knew that I was a substance whose

essence is only to think, and which, in
order to be, has no need of any place, and de-
pends on no material thing; so that this I, that is
to say, the soul_by which Jam _what Iam, is
entirely distinct from the body, and even easier
to know than the body, and although the body
were not, the soul would not cease to be all that
iis.

After that I considered generally what is _re-
“quisite to make a proposition true and certain;
for since I had just found one which I knew to be
so, I thought that I ought also to know in what
this certainty consisted. And having remarked
that there is nothing at all in this, Z ¢thznk, there-
fore I am, which assures me that I speak the
truth, except that I see very clearly that in_order
to think it is necessary to exist, I judged that I
might take it as a general rule, Pe

swhich we conceive ver ry_disti .

“are_all true, and that there is sae only in

secing plainly which things they are that we con-
ceive distinctly.
After this, and oe upon the vas that I

Sane ee ee

was a greater perfection tl than to doubt), I bethought

terete aT eR

-

’

Bay te

alivn
pens

4O DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

myself to find out from whence I had learned to
think of something more perfect than 1; and I

knew for certain that it must be from some nature

which was in reality more perfect. For as regards
the thoughts I had of many other things outside
myself, as of the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a
thousand more, I was not so much at a loss to
know whence they came, because, remarking
nothing in them which seemed to make them
superior to me, I could believe that if they
were true, they were dependencies of my nature,
inasmuch as it had some perfection, and if they
were not true, that I derived them from nothing—
that is to say, that they were in me because I had
some defect. But it could not be the same with
ei ing mor
for to derive it from nothing was manifestly impos-
sible ; and since it is no less repugnant to me that
the more perfect should follow and depend on the
less perfect, than that out of nothing should pro-
ceed something, I could not derive it from myself;
so that it remained that it had been put in me
by a nature truly more perfect than I, which had
in itself all perfections of which I could have any
idea; that is, to explain myself in one word, God.
To which I added that since J knew some perfec-

tions which I did not possess, I was not the only

—

. hie DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 4l

being which existed (I shall here use freely, if you
please, the expressions of the school), but that
there must of necessity be some other being more
perfect, on whom I depended, and from whom >
had acquired all that I possess-d; for if I had
been alone and independent of all other, so that I
had of myself all this little whercby I participated
in the perfect Being, for the same reason I should
have been able to have of myself all the surplus
which I believed that I lacked, and thus be infinite,
eternal, immutable, all-knowing, almighty, and, in
fine, have all the perfections which I could observe
in God. For, following the reasons that I have
just given, in order to know the nature of God as
well as my nature is able to know it, I had only to
consider all the things which I have some idea of
possessing, whether to possess them were perfec-
tion or not, and I was sure that none of those
which marked some imperfection were in Him,
but that all the others were. For I saw_that
doubt, inconstancy, sadness, and similar things,
could not be-in Him, seeing that I myself would
have been very glad to be free from them. Then,
besides, I had ideas of many sensible and corporeal
things; for if I supposed that I was dreaming, and
that all things I saw or imagined were false, I never-
theless could not deny that the ideas of them were

7

indeed in my thought; but because I had already

42 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

very clearly recognised in myself that the intelli-
gent nature is distinct from the corporeal, and,
considering that all composition implies depend-
ence, and that dependence is manifestly a defect,
I judged thereby that it could be no perfection in
God to be composed of these two natures, and that
in consequence He was not so composed; but that
if there were any bodies in existence, or even any
intelligences or other natures which were not
wholly perfect, their being must depend on His
power in such wise that without Him they could
not subsist one single moment?

After that I desired to seek other truths, and
proposing to myself the object of study of the
geometers, which I conceived as a continuous
body, or a space indefinitely extended in length,
breadth, and height or depth, divisible into divers
parts, which could have divers shapes and sizes,
and be moved or transposed in all manner of ways,
I went over some of their simplest demonstrations;
and having observed that the great certainty which
every one attributes to them is founded only on the
fact that they are clearly conceived, according to
the rule I have just stated, I noticed also that
there was nothing whatever in these demonstra-
tions which assured me of. the existence of their

a

®
DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 43

ybject,—thus, for example, I could plainly see that,
upposing a triangle, its three angles must be
qual to two right angles, but but for all that I did not
ec anything which assured me that any, triangle
xists, —while that returning to the examination of
he idea which I had of a perfect Being, I found }
hat existence was comprised therein in the same.
vay that it is comprised in the idea of a triangle
hat its three angles are equal to two right angles,
yr in the idea of a sphere that all its parts are
qually distant from its centre, or even yet more
learly, and that in consequence it is at least as.
ertain that God, who is this perfect Being, is,.or.
xists, as any geometrical demonstration can he.

- But that which leads many to persuade them-
ete aieeincs is difficulty in knowing Him, and
ven also in knowing what their soul is, is that

hey never raise their minds above things_.of the.
enses,.and that they are so accustomed to con-
ider nothing except by imagining it,—which is.a
node of thinking specially applicable to material
hings,—that all which is not_imaginable seems.to
hem unintelligible. This is sufficiently shown by

he maxim which the philosophers hold in the
chools,—that there is nothing in. the understandings.

hich has not first been in the senses, where,
levertheless, it is certain that ideas of God and

Ar wc}. Fe 6 tata

AMINE A AST. SO) Yon OF MaRS
i

44 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

of the soul have never been, and it seems to me_
that those who desire to understand them with
their imagination, do exactly as if they wished to
use their eyes in order to hear sounds or smell
odours, except that there is still this difference,—
that the sense of sight does not less assure us of
the truth of its objects than does the sense of
smell or of hearing, while neither-our_imagination
nor _our_senses_can_ever_assure_us_of_anything if.

Finally, if there are yet any who are not suffi- |
ciently persuaded of the existence of God and of
their soul by the reasons I have brought forward,
I would have them know that all other things of
which perhaps they think themselves more sure,—
as of their having a body, and the existence of
stars, and an earth, and similar things,—are less
certain. For although a man have such a ae
assurance of these things that it appears to him >
extravagant to doubt them, yet, when a_meta-—
physical certainty is concerned it_cannot_reason-
ably_be denied that to have noticed that a sleepingl |
man can in the same way imagine that he ‘has |
another body, and see many other stars, and
another earth, without that any of them exist,
would. be an adequate.reason_for not being—per-
fectly sure of it. For whence do we know that the

|

DISCOURSE ON METIIOD. 45

thoughts which come in dreams are any falscr
than the others, seeing that they are often no less ©
vivid and positive? And let the best minds study
that as much as they please, I do not believe they
can give any reason sufficient to remove this doubt,
unless they presuppose the existence of God, / For
in the first place, even that which I have already
taken as a rule, to wit, that the things which we
conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all
true, is certain only because God is or exists, and
because He is a perfect Being, and all which is in
us comes from Him; whence it follows that our
ideas or notions, being real things, and coming
from God, inasmuch as they are clear and distinct,
cannot therefore be other than true.“ So that if
we frequently have ideas which contain false-
hood, they can be only such as include something
confused and obscure, because in that they parti-
cipate in the nothing (éan¢)—that is to say, they
are thus confused in us only because we are not
all-perfect. And ‘it is evident that it is no less
repugnant to us that falsehood or imperfection,
being such, should proceed from God, as that truth
or perfection should proceed from nothing. But
unless we knew that all which is in us of the real

d the true comes from a perfect and infinite
=m however clear and distinct our ideas might be,

46 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

we should have no reason which assured us that
they had the perfection of being true.

Then, after the knowledge of God and of the
soul has rendered us certain of this rule, it is very
easy to recognise that the dreams we imagine
when asleep, ought in nowise to make us doubt the
truth of the thoughts we have when awake. For if
it happened that even while sleeping we had some
very distinct idea, as, for example, that a geometer
invented some new demonstration, the fact of our
sleeping would not prevent its being true; and as to
the most ordinary error of our dreams, which is
that they represent various objects to us in the
same way that our outward senses do, it matters
not that it gives us occasion to distrust the truth
of such ideas, because the senses also can deceive
us just as often without our sleeping,—as when
those who have the jaundice see everything yellow,
or as the stars or other very remote bodies appear
to us much smaller than they are. For in short,

whether we—wake or whether-we-sleep, we ought

evidence of our reason. And it should be notice

that I say of our reason, and not of our imagina

tion, or our senses; for although we see the su
very clearly, we ought not therefore to judge thi
it is only of the size we see: and we can inde

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 47

imagine a lion’s head on a goat’s body without
therefore being obliged to conclude that a chimera
exists, for reason does not instruct us that that
which we see or imagine in this way is true ;\but
it does instruct_us that all our ideas or notions
ought to have some fi foundation of truth, for it would
bor be. ‘possible that God, who is all-perfect and
all-t true, had put them into us otherwise ; and be-
cause our reasonings are never so clear or so perfect
during sleep as during waking, although sometimes
our imagination may be then equally or more

:

vivid and positive, it also instructs us that as

our thoughts cannot always be true, since we are
not all-perfect, such truth as they have must in-
fallibly be met with in those which we have when
awake, rather than in our dreams,

FIFTH PART.

I should be very glad to go further and to show
here the whole chain of other truths which I
have deduced from these first; but because for
this end I should have to speak of many things
which are matters of controversy among the
ned, with whom I have no desire to em-
il myself, I think I shall do better to refrain,

48 , DISCOURSE ON METHOD,

and merely say generally that they exist, so
as to leave wiser heads to judge whether it were
profitable that the public should be more
particularly informed of them. I have always
remained firm in my resolve to assume no other
principle but that which I have just used to
demonstrate the existence of God and of the soul,
and to receive as true_nothing which did not seem
to me clearer and more certain than the demonstra-
tions of the geometers had done before; and yet
I dare affirm that not only have I found within a
short time the means of satisfying myself with
regard to all the principal difficulties which are
usually treated of in philosophy, but also that I
have remarked certain laws which God has so
established in nature, and of which he has
implanted such notions in our souls, that after
having duly reflected on them, we cannot doubt
that they are exactly observed in all which is or,
which happens in the world. Then in considering
the consequence of these laws, methinks I have
discovered many truths more useful and more
important than all that I had learned before or
ever hoped to learn. eas

But because I have tried to explain © heir

principles in a treatise! which several considera-
1 The Treatise on Light, or On the World,

6"

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. AQ

‘tions prevent me from publishing, I do ‘not: know
how to make them better known except by here
‘stating summarily what that treatise contains. I
had planned to include in it all that I thought I
knew before I began to write, touching the nature
of material things; but just as painters, who are
unable to represent correctly on the flat surface of
a picture all the different sides of a solid body,
sclect one of the principal sides which they set in
the light, leaving the rest in shadow, and ‘unseen
by the spectator, so I, fearing that I should not
be .able to put into my discourse all that was
in my mind, undertook there only to’ set forth
very fully what I understood of light, and to
‘treat; in connection with this subject, of the
sun and the fixed stars, because almost all light
proceeds from them; of the heavens, because they
transmit it; of planets, comets, and the earth,
‘because they reflect it;)and especially of ‘all the
bodies which are on the earth, because they are
coloured, or transparent, or luminous; and finally
of man, because he is the spectator thereof; and so
as to shade all these things a little, and to be able
to state more freely what I believed of them, without
being obliged either to follow or to refute the
opinions accepted by the learned, I resolved to leave
all the present world to their disputes, and to say
4

50 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

only what would happen in a new world, if God were
to create somewhere in imaginary space enough
matter to compose it, and put the different parts of
this matter in various motion and without order,
so that He composed thereof a chaos as confused
as any the poets can picture, and afterwards Ient
only His ordinary co-operation to nature and let
her act according to the laws which He has
established. Thus, in the first place, I described
this matter, and tried to represent it so that
nothing in the world, it seems to me, is clearer or
more intelligible, except what has been said
already about God and the soul; for I even —
expressly assumed that it contained none of the
forms or qualities about which they dispute in the
schools, nor, in general, anything the knowledge of |
which is not so natural to our souls that we cannot
even feign ignorance of it. Moreover, 1 showed ~
what were the laws of nature; and basing my
reasons on no principle but the infinite perfections
of God, I tried to demonstrate all those concerning
which a man may have any doubt, and to show
that they are such, that, even though God had
created many worlds, there could be none where
they failed to be observed. Then I showed how,
following these laws, the greater part of the matter
- of this chaos had to dispose and arrange itself in a

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 51

certain way which made it like to our firmament ;
how, moreover, some of its parts had to compose
an earth, and some planets and comets, and others
a sun, and fixed stars; and here, enlarging on
the subject of light, I explained at great length
the light that ought to be in the sun and the
stars, and how from thence it traverses instan-
taneously the immense spaces of the heavens, and
how it is reflected from the planets and comets to
the earth. I also added thereto many things
concerning the substance, situation, movements
and all the various qualities of these heavens and
stars, so that I thought I said enough about them
to show that there is nothing to be observed in the
heavens and stars of this world which would not,
or at any rate could not, appear likewise in those
of the world that I described. From that I came
to speak of the earth in particular; how, although
I had expressly assumed that God had put no
gravity in the matter which composed it, neverthe-
less all its parts tended exactly towards its centre ;
how, water and air being on the surface, the
disposition of the heavens and the stars, and
especially of the moon, must cause a flux and
reflux therein, like in all its circumstances to that
which is seen in our seas; and also a certain
course of water as well as of air, from East to

s

52 DISCOURSE ON METIIOD.

West, such as is also remarked in the tropics);
how the mountains, seas, fountains, and ‘rivers
could naturally be formed there, and the metals
come into the mines, and the plants grow. in the

fields, and generally how all the bodies which are
~ called mixed or composite could be generated there.
And because that after the stars I knew nothing in
the world, except fire, which produces light, I
studied, among other things, to make all that per-
tains to the nature of fire clearly understood; how
it is made, how nourished ; how it sometimes has
heat without light, and sometimes light without

heat; how it can introduce colours and various —

other qualities into different bodies; how it melts
some and hardens others; how it can consume
them almost entirely, or convert them into cinders

and smoke ; and. finally, how of these cinders, by ~

the very violence of its action, it forms glass; for
this transmutation of cinders into glass appearing
to me as wonderful as any which occurs in nature,
I took especial pleasure in describing it.

At the same time I did not intend to infer from
all these things’ that this world had been created

in the way that 1 had sketched out, for it is much ©
more likely that God made it from the beginning ©

such as it was to be. But it is certain, and this
opinicn is commonly accepted by. theologians,

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 53

that the action. by. which He now maintains the
world is the same as that by which He created it:
so that even if He had not -given it. in the
_ beginning’; any. form but chaos, provided that
Diaving, establichednatucal laws He lent it his
co-operation in acting as it is accustomed, v
may believe, without slighting the miracle of inc
creation, that by that alone all purely material
things would have been able in time to become
such as we now perceive them; and their nature
is much easier to understand when we thus see
them gradually come into being, than when we
merely consider them as ready. made..

From the description of inanimate bodies ad
of plants, I passed to that of animals, especially
of men. But because I had not yet enough
acquaintance with men to speak of them in the
same way as of the rest—that is, by demonstrating
effects by causes, and showing from what origins
and in what manner nature:should produce them,
I contented mysclf with supposing that God had
formed the. body of a_man, exactly like. one of
ours, both in the exterior shape of the limbs and
in the interior conformation.of the organs, without
composing him of any matter other than that I
had described, and without putting in him, at the
beginning, a reasonable soul, or anything to serve

ee

‘
®
a

54 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

as an animate or sensitive soul, except that He
excited in his heart one of these fires without
light which I had already explained, and which I
conceived to be of the same nature as that which
kindles hay when it is shut up before it is dry, or
which makes new wines boil when they are left to
ferment on the stalk. For examining the functions
which cou!d consequently be in this body, I found

them precisely those_which canbe in_us. without

our thinking of them, and therefore without our
soul—that is to say, this distinct part of our body
whose nature, we have said above, is only to think—
contributing to them, and which-are.the.same_as
those. wherein we may say that the irrational
animals resemble us, without, therefore, being-able
to.find-.any-which, dependent on thought, -are
the only functions which belong to us as..men.
But after having assumed that God created a
rational soul and joined it to this body in the way
that I have described, I found them all there.

~—~But in order that it may be seen how I treated

this matter, I will here set forth the explanation
of the movement of the heart and the arteries, so
that as it is the first and most general which we
observe in animals, it may be easily judged there-
from what ought to be thought of all the others.

And in order that there may be less difficulty in

|

.
.

——————— eee

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 58

understanding what I am going to say, I desire
that those who are not versed in anatomy will
take the trouble, before reading this, to have
dissected before them the heart of some large
animal which has lungs, for it is in all respects
sufficiently like to that of man, and that they
expose the two chambers or cavities which are
therein: first, that on the right side, to which
correspond two very large ducts, to wit, the hollow
vein, which is the principal receptacle of the blood,
and like the trunk of a tree, of which all the other
veins of the body are the branches; and the
misnamed arterial vein, for it is really an artery
which, having its origin in the heart, divides, after
emerging therefrom, into numerous branches
which spread throughout the lungs: then that on
the left side, to which in the same way correspond
two ducts which are as large or larger than the
preceding, to wit, the venous artery, which is also
misnamed, since it is only a vein which comes
from the lungs, where it is divided into many
branches, interlaced with those ot the arterial vein
and the passage called the windpipe, by which
enters the air of respiration; and the great
artery, which, emerging from the heart, sends its
branches throughout the body. I would also like
carefully pointed out to them the eleven little

56 DISCOURSE: ON METIIOD;

valves, which, like so many little doors, open and
close the four openings which are in the two
cavities: to :wit,- three at the entrance to the
hollow vein, where they are so disposed that they
can in no way hinder the blood..it contains from
running into the right cavity of the heart, and at
the same time exactly prevent its going out of it;
three at the entrance to the arterial vein, which, being
disposed quite contrarily, permit the blood to pass
from this cavity into the lungs, but not that which
is in the lungs to return there; and two others at
the entrance to the venous artery, which allow the
blood, from the: lungs to enter the left cavity of
the heart, but stops its return; and three at the
entrance to;the great artery, which permit it to
leave the heart, but’ prevent its returning. And it
is unnecessary to seek any other reason for the
number of these valves, except that the opening of
the venous artery, being oval; from its locality;
can be conveniently closed with two, ,while: the
others, being round, ‘can be closed better with
three. Again, I would. have them consider that
the great artery and the arterial vein are of:a
much harder and firmer substance than the venous
artery. andthe: hollow vein; that these last
become wider béfore: entering the heart, and are
there like two sacs, called the auricles of the heart,

i
'
| DISCOURSE: ON: METIIOD. 57

composed of a flesh similar to that of the’ heart ;
that there is always more heat in the heart than in
any other part of the body, and lastly, that this
heat, if it enter some drop of blood in the cavities,
is capable ofmaking it distend and dilate, as <all
liquids generally do-when allowed to fall drop by
drop into some very hot vessel.
~ Now, afterthat;:I have no need to'say anything
“else to explain the movement of the heart, except
that when its cavities are not full of blood, some of
necessity runs from the hollow vein ‘into the right,
and from the venous artery into the ‘left cavity,
inasmuch as these two vesscls are always full and
their openings, which ‘are’ directed towards the
heart, cannot then be obstructed. But immedi-
ately two drops of blood have thus entered, one
into each cavity, these drops—which must be very
large, because the openings ‘through which’ they
enter are very large, and the vessels whencé they
come very full of blood—are tarefied and dilate
because of the heat they there’ encounter,’ by
means of. which, inflating: the- whole ‘heart, they
push and close the five little doors at the openings
of the two vessels whence they’ come,‘thus pre-
venting. any more blood from flowing into the
heart, and continuing to rarefy themselves more
and more, they push and open the six other little

58 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

doors which are at the entrances of the two other
vessels by which they go out, by this means
inflating all the branches of the arterial vein and
of the great artery almost at the same instant as
the heart, which immediately after subsides, as do
also these arteries, because the blood which has
entered cools, and their six little doors close, and
the five of the hollow vein and venous artery
reopen, and give passage to two other drops of
blood, which make the heart and arteries dilate
over again as before. And because the blood
which thus enters the heart passes by the two
sacs called the auricles, their movement is contrary
to the heart’s, and when it distends they subside.
Further, in order that those who do not know the
force of mathematical demonstrations and are
not accustomed to distinguish true reasons from
probable ones, may not venture to deny this
without investigating it, I wish to inform them
that the movement I have just explained comes
as necessarily from the particular disposition of
the organs which can be secn in the heart by the
eye, and from the heat which can be felt with the
fingers, and from the nature of the blood which
can be known by experiments, as does that of a
clock from the force, the situation, and the shape
of its balance and its wheels.

— al

aA

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 59

But if it be asked how it is that the blood in the
veins is not exhausted in running thus continually
|

into the heart, and that the arteries are not over-

! charged with it, since all that which passes through
the heart flows through them, I need only advance
in reply what has been written already by an
English physician (Herveus,..De.motu cordis), to
whom we must give the praise of having broken
‘the ice in this matter, and of being the first to
teach that there are numerous little passages at
the extremities of the arteries, by which the blood
received from the heart enters into the little
branches of the veins, whence it flows over again
into the heart, so that its course is only a perpetual
circulation. This he proves extremely well, by the
ordinary experience of the surgeons, who, having
tied the arm fairly tightly above the place where
)the vein is opened, make the blood flow out of it
more abundantly than if it had not been tied ;
while if, on the contrary, they tied it below,
between the hand and the opening, or if they tied
it very tightly above, just the opposite would
happen. For it is plain that the moderately tight
ligature, though able to prevent the blood already
in the arm from returning towards the heart
through the veins, does not therefore prevent it
continually running in afresh through the arteries,

60 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

because they are situated below .the veins, and
their coats being harder, are less easy .to’ press,
and the blood which comes’: by them, from the
heart tends-to ‘pass to the hand more forcibly
than. ‘to return, from; thence by the veins to the
heart; and- since this blood’ comes: from -the arm |
by an opening in one of the veins, there must |

necessarily be some. passages below the bond—
that.is, towards the extremities. of the’ arm, by
a¥hich it can enter the veins from the arteries. .He
also. proves well what he:says about the: course of
the blood, by certain, little valves so disposed in
various places along the veins, that. they do not —
permit it to pass by them from the middle of the
body. to the extremities, but only to return from )
the extremities to the heart ; and proves it, more- |
over, by the experiment which shows that all'the
blood in the body can leave jit in a very little time —

by one artery when it-is opened, even though it be
very tightly bound near the heart, and.cut between
it and the ligature, so that there would. be no
reason to imagine that the blood which issued
from it came from anywhere else. ieee jal

But there are many other things nies teste
that the true:cause of this movement of the blood
is what I have said: for, in the nrst place, the
difference between the blood. which comes. from

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 61

the veins and that. which comes from the. arteries,
is solely because that, having been rarefied and_as
it were distilled in passing. through the heart, it is
warmer and quicker and more lively immediately
after leaving it, that,is; when in the arteries; than
it.is a little before, entering it, that is, when in the
veins; and if care 1s observed it will be found
that this difference.only appears plainly .near. the
heart, and not. so much. in the parts mere remote -
from it. Then the hardness of the. substances of
which the arterial vein. and the, great.artery: are
composed : shows ‘plainly, that the ‘blood: beats
against them. with. more ‘force ‘than against. the
veins. And why should. the.,left cavity .of the
heart and the great .artery.be ampler:and larger
than the, right cavity and the arterial vein, were
it not that the blood of the venous artery, having
been. only in the: lungs. since. passing out of the
heart, is more subtle, and rarefies itself. more com-
pletely and easily than that. which comes imme-
diately from the hollow vein? And what can
doctors discover by testing the pulse, if they do
not know that according as the blood changes its
nature it can be rarefied by the heat of the heart
more or less vigorously and more or less quickly
than before?,, And if we inquire how this heat
communicates itself to the other members, must it

62 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

not be acknowledged that it is by means of the
blood, which, passing through the heart, is again
warmed there and spreads thence all over the
body; so that if blood be taken from any part,
heat is taken by the same means, and although the
heart were as ardent as a red-hot iron, it would not
suffice to warm the feet and the hands to the extent
it does, if it did not continually send new blood to
them. Then that shows us also that the true pur-
pose of respiration is to bring enough fresh air into
the lungs to make the blood which comes into them
from the right cavity of the heart, where it has
been rarefied and as if changed into vapours, to
condense and be converted once more into blood
before falling back into the left cavity, without
which it would not fitly serve to feed the fire which
is there. This is confirmed when we see that
animals which have no lungs have also but one
cavity in the heart, and that unborn children,
which cannot use them, have an opening by which
the blood runs from the hollow vein into the left
cavity of the heart, and a duct by which it comes
from the arterial vein into the great artery without
passing by the lung. Then how does digestion
proceed in the stomach, if the heart does not send
heat thither by the arteries, and with it some of
the most fluid parts of the biood, which aid in

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 63

dissolving the food there? And is it not easy to
recognise the process which converts the juice of
this food into blood, if we consider that it is dis-
tilled, in passing and repassing through the heart,
perhaps more than a hundred or two hundred
times a day? And what else do we need to ex-
plain nutrition, and the production of the various
thumours of the body, except that the force with
which the blood in rarefying itself passes from the
heart towards the extremities of the arteries, makes
some of its parts to stop among those of the
ymembers where they are, and there take the place
of some others which they drive out, and that
according to the situation or the shape or the
smallness of the pores that they meet with, some,
rather than others, tend to flow into certain places,
just as every one may have noticed in the case of
isicves, which, being variously pierced, serve to
separate different grains? Ana lastly, what is
‘most ee in all this is the generation of
| irits, which are like a very subtle wind,
or rather a very pure and very lively flame, which,
continually mounting in great abundance from the
heart to the brain, flows from thence through the
nerves in the muscles, and gives motion to all the
members; and we need not imagine any other
cause which makes those parts of the blood which,

64 DISCOURSE ON METHOD,

being the most agitated and penetrating, are the

fittest, ‘to compose these spirits, to flow towards
the brain rather. than elsewhere, except that the
arteries which carry them thence are those which
come more directly from the heart than the rest;
and that according to the rules of mechanics, which
are the same as those of nature, when many things
tend to move together towards the same part
where there is not enough room for all, as when
the parts. of the :blood which come from the
left cavity of the heart tend towards: the brain,
the’ weaker’ and-less agitated must be: turned
aside b
alone.

the stronger, which. thus-proceed: there

ad sufficiently explained all these things in
the treatise which at one time I thought of pub-
lishing.- And then I showed there what the fabric

of the nerves and muscles of the human. body
must be in order to make the animal spirits within

them have strength to move their members, as
when we see that heads, a little while after being
cut off, still move and bite the earth, although they
are no longer animated; what changes must take
place in the brain to. cause waking, and sleep, and
dreams; how light, sounds, odours, tastes, heat,
and all other qualities observed in exterior objects
can impress their different ideas through the inter-

#]

,

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 65

vention of the senses; how hunger, thirst, and
the other inward passions can also do the like;
what must be understood by common sense, by
| which these ideas are received, by memory,
which preserves them, and by the fancy which can
_diversely change them and compose new ones of
them, and by the same means, distributing the
animal spirits in the muscles, make the members
of this body to move in as many different fashions,
and as appropriately to the objects presented to
its senses, and to its inward passions, as our
members can move without the agency of the will.
This will appear in nowise strange to those who,
knowing how many different] automata, or moving.
machines, man’s industry can fashion out of but
very few pieces compared with the great number

of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and all
the other parts of the body of every animal, will
consider this body as a machine which, having
been made by the hands of God, is incomparably
better ordered and has of itself motions more.
wonderful than any which men can invent. And
I here specially paused to show that if there were
achines which had the organs and the exterior
hape of a monkey, or some other irrational /|
nimal, we should have no means of recognising
hat they were not in all respects ot the same

5

66 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

nature as these animals; while if there were any

which resembled our own bodies, and could imitate
our actions as far as should be morally possible, —
we should always have two very certain means of ~
recognising that, nevertheless, they were not real
men. / The first is, that they could never make

use of words, or of other signs of the kind, as
we do to declare our thoughts to each other; for
it is easy to conceive that a machine could be
made so that it uttered words, and even uttered
some which were appropriate to corporal actions
which should cause some change in its organs, as,
for instance, if it were touched in some part so that
it demanded what you wish to say to it; or in
another, so that it cried out that you hurt it, and
so on; but it is not conceivable that it would
arrange them variously, so as to respond to the
meaning of everything that should be said in its q
presence, as the most stupid men are able to do.
And the second is, that although they might do —
many things as well as any of us, or perhaps better,
they would infallibly be wanting in others, by
which we should see that they did not act by
knowledge, but merely after the disposition of their —
organs: for while reason_is_auniversal instrument,
applicable in every sort of circumstance, these
organs have need of some particular arrangement

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 67

for each particular action; so that it is morally
_ impossible that there could be a sufficient variety
_ of them in one machine to make it act upon every
occasion of life in the same way as our reason
makes us act. And by these two means we can
also know the difference between men and beasts;
| for it is a remarkable thing that there are no men
| so doltish and stupid, not excepting even the insane,
| that they are incapable of arranging together
_ different words and composing thereof a discourse
by which they make their thoughts understood;
| while on the contrary, no other animal, however
perfect and excellent it may be born, does the
‘like. This is not because they lack the organs, for
/ we see that pies and parrots can utter words as
| well as we, and yet cannot speak like us, that is to
| say, showing that they are thinking of what they are
saying; while men who, being born deaf and dumb,
| are deprived of organs which others use for speech,
} as much as or more than animals are, are accus-
| tomed to invent signs by which they make them-
| selves understood by those who, being generally
| with them, have leisure to learn thei: language.
And this shows not only that animals.have-less

teason_than_men, but that they have none at all,

| for we see that very little is needed to know how

| to speak ; and since we remark inequality among

68 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

animals of the same species as well as between
men, and since some are easier to train than
others, it is not credible that a monkey or parrot,
if it were one of the most perfect of its kind, would
not equal in that one of the stupidest of children,
or at least a child of dull intellect, were their soul
not of a nature wholly different from ours. And
we should not confound words with the natural
movements which testify to the passions and can
be imitated by machines as well as by animals, or
think, like some of the ancients, that beasts speak,
although we do not understand their language;
for if it were true, since they have many organs
corresponding to ours, they could as well make
themselves understood by us as by their fellows.
It is also a very remarkable thing, that, although
there are many animals which exhibit more in-
dustry than we in some of their actions, we
observe, nevertheless, that in many others they
exhibit none at all, so that what they do better than
we does not prove that they have more intelli-
gence,—for at this rate they would have more than
any of us,and would be better in everything else,—
but rather that they have none, and that it is nature
acting in them according to the arrangement of
their organs ; just as we see that a clock, which is
composed only of wheels and springs, can count

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 69
| .

_ the hours and measure time more accurately than
we with all our wisdom.

_ After that I described the reasonable—soul, and

| showed that it can innowise_be drawn from the

| Power of matter, like the other things of which ;
had spoken, but..must.-be.specially..createds a

_ how it 1s not sufficient that it be lodged in ne
_ human body like a pilot in his boat, except per-

haps to animate its members, but that it must be
_ joined and united more closely with it, in order to
have in addition sentiments and appetites like
ours, and thus to compose a real man. I also
enlarged somewhat on the subject of the soul,
_ because it is one of the most important; for after
_ the error of those who deny God,—which I think
| I have sufficiently refuted above,—there is none
_ more likely to divert weak minds from the narrow
path of virtue than that of imagining that the soul
of beasts is of the same nature as ours, and that
consequently we have nothing more to fear or to
hope, after this life, than have flies and ants: while
_ on the other hand, when we know how they differ,
we more clearly understand the reasons which
prove that ours is of a nature entirely inde-
pendent of the body, and consequently not
liable to die with the body; and then, inasmuch
as we see no other causes which destroy it,

7O DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

we are naturally disposed to judge thereby that

as

SIXTH PART.

It is now three years since I reached the end of
the treatise which contained all these things, and
began to revise it in order to put it into the hands
of a printer, when I learned that certain persons to
whom I defer, and whose authority over my actions
is hardly less than that of my own reason over my
thoughts, had disapproved an opinion of physics
published a little while before by some one else!;
and though I will not say that I held this opinion,
before they censured it I had noticed nothing in it
which I could imagine prejudicial either to religion
or to the state, and which, consequently, might
prevent me from writing it, had reason persuaded
me to it; and that made me fear that there might
in like manner be some among my opinions in
which 1 was mistaken, notwithstanding the great
care I had always taken to receive no new ones
into my belief concerning which I had not had
very certain demonstrations, and to write no-
thing which might turn to any one’s disadvantage.

1 The theory of the earth’s motion. See Introduction, p. xx.

RL
DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 71

_ This was sufficient to constrain me to change the
resolve I had made to publish them; for although
| the reasons for which I had first made this resolve
_ were very strong, my inclination, which has always
led me to hate the business of bookmaking, im-
mediately led me to find as many others for
excusing myself from it; and these reasons on
one side and the other are such that not only
have I some interest in stating them, but it may
_ be also that the public has some interest in know-
ing them.

* I have never made much account of the things
which come from my mind, and while I have
gathered no fruits from the method I employ,
except that I have satisfied myself concerning
certain difficulties belonging to the speculative
sciences, and also that I have tried to govern my
morals by the reasons which it teaches me, I have
not felt obliged to write anything about it. For
regarding matters of morals, each has so much in
his mind that one could find as many reformers as
heads, if it were permitted to others, as it is to
those whom God has set up as rulers over His
peoples, or to whom He has given sufficient grace
and zeal to be prophets, to undertake to change
anything; and although my speculations greatly
pleased me, I believed that others also had

Sec

72 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

speculations which perhaps pleased them more.

But as soon as I had acquired some general

notions..concerning..physics, and when, beginning

to test them in divers difficult particulars, I re-

marked whither they might lead, and how they

differed from the principles in present use, I

believed that I could not keep them concealed

without greatly sinning against the law which

obliges us to procure as much as lieth in us the

~general.good_ of all._men, for they have shown me
that_it_is possible.to..arrive..at knowledge} which is

very useful in life, and that instead of the specu-

lative philosophy which is taught in the schools,

- (fa practical ‘philosophy may be found, by means of
which, knowing the power and the action of fire,

water, air, stars, heavens, and all the other bodies

which environ us, as distinctly as we know the —

various trades and crafts of our artisans, we might .

in the same way be able to put them to all the :

3

uses to which they are proper, and thus make our-
selves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature.
This is to be desired, not only for the invention of
an infinitude of artifices which would allow us to
enjoy without trouble the fruits of the earth and
all its commodities, but principally for the con-
servation of health, which is without doubt the
first good, and the foundation of all the other

>

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 73

'_depends_so.greatlyon.the..temperament.and.dis-
position of the bodilyorgans, that if it be possible

to find some means of making men generally wiser

and cleverer than they are, I believe that it is in /

| medicine that it must be looked for. It is true
‘that the physics now in use contain few things
whose utility is so remarkable; but without any
intention of despising them, I am sure there is no
one, even of those who make them their profession,
who does not acknowledge that all which is known
of them is almost nothing in comparison with what
remains to be known; and that we could free
ourselves from an infinity of ills, of the body as
well as of the mind, and even, perhaps, from the
weakening which comes with age, if we had an
adequate knowledge of their causes, and of all the
remedies with which nature has provided us. N ow)

must infallibly lead to it, if one were not hindered |
from following it by the brevity ot life or for want |
of experiments, I judged that there was no better
remedy against these two obstacles than to com-

i

search for so indispensable a science, and having ¥ ~

municate faithfully to the public all of the little I | ,
had found, and to urge people of intelligence to “c:enr«

: good things of this life: for eventhe mind- Wie ¥

having designed to spend my whole life in the }?ii"9*

come across a way which seemed to me such as|-_.)

74 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

| try to proceed further by contributing, each accord-
; ing to his inclination and power, to the necessary
experiments, and by making known to the public
» all the things they should learn, so that, the last
| beginning where the preceding had left off, and

:

thus joining the life and the labours of many, we
might all together advance much further than each
' individuai by himself could do.

I remarked also, with regard to experiments,
that the further a man is advanced in knowledge,
so much the more are they necessary. For to
begin with, jt is.better..to..use__only the ex-

periments which present themselves to the_senses, —
and which_.cannot_remain_unknown_to.us, if we —

reflect on them even ever so little, than to seek
others rarer and more elaborate, for the reason
that these rarer ones often deceive, when the
causes of the commoner are yet unknown, and
that the circumstances on which they depend
are almost always so special and so minute that
it is very difficult to observe them. But the

; order that I have observed here has been as

follows: first, I have tried tg find generally the

principles or first causes of all which js or can
bein the world, without taking anything into

consideration for this purpose except that God
' has created it, and drawing them only from

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 75

certain germs of truth which are naturally im-
planted in our souls) Then I examined what
_ primary and most ordinary effects can be deduced
| from these causes; and it appears to me that
I have thereby found heavens, stars, an earth,
and even on the earth water, air, fire, minerals,
and certain others of the commonest things and
the most simple, and consequently the most
easy to know. Then when I desired to proceed
to those which are more particular, so many
difficult ones presented themselves that I did
not believe it possible for the human mind to
distinguish the forms or species of bodies which
are on the earth, from an infinity of others
which could be there if such had been God’s
will; or, consequently, to bring them down
to our use, except by anticipating the causes
through the effects, and making use of many
particular experiments. Following this, and run-
ning my mind over all the objects which had
ever presented themselves to my senses, I in-
jdeed venture to affirm that Lsemarked nothing
among...them..whichL.could..not..quite..suitably
explain.by. the _principles...which..Lhad_found.
But I must also acknowledge that the power
of nature is so wide and so vast, and these J
principles so simple and so generous, that I

-=*- —-~ewr~

=

76 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

noticed even more specially, that there was hardly
any_particular_ effect which I did not recognise.at
first _sight to be deducible from them in many

different. ways; and that my greatest difficulty
generally is to find in which of these ways it
depends on them; for I know no other means
of doing that than to seek again some experi-
ments which are such that their result is not the
same if it has to be explained by one of these
ways as when it has to be explained by another.
Besides, it seems to me that I am sufficiently
advanced to see plainly enough what standpoint
one ought to take for carrying out the majority
of the experiments which can serve this purpose ;
but I also see that they are of such a nature, and
so numerous, that neither my hands nor my income,
though they were a thousand times more than
they are, can suffice for them all: so that in
measure as I shall henceforward have the means
of carrying them out, so I shall advance in the
knowledge of nature. I resolved to make this
known in the treatise I had written, and to
show so clearly the benefit that the public might
receive from it that I should oblige all those
who desire the general good of men, that is to
say, all those who are virtuous in deed and
not in pretence or in opinion only, to communicate

DISCOURSE ON METHOD, 77

to me such experiments as they had already
made, as well as to aid me in the research of
those yet to be carried out.

But since that time I have had other reasons
which have led me to change my mind, and believe
that I ought indeed to continue to write all the
things which I judged of importance, in measure
as I discovered their truth, and to use therein the
same care as if I wished to have them printed; as
much in order that I might have the more occasion
to examine them well—for undoubtedly we always
give more attention to that which we believe must
be seen by many than that which we do only for
ourselves (and often things which seemed to me
true when I first conceived them, have appeared
false when I wished to set them down on paper)—
as that I might lose no occasion of benefiting the
public, if I am capable of doing so, and that if my
writings are worth anything, those who shall have
them after my death may use them as shall be
most appropriate. But I believed, also, that I ought
in nowise to consent to their publication during
my life, so that neither the opposition and con-
troversies to which perhaps they would be subject,
nor even such reputation as they might win me,
should cause me to waste the time that I proposed
to employ in self-instruction. For although it is

78 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

true that each man is bound to procure the good
of others as much as lieth in him, and that,
strictly speaking, to be useful to no one is to be
worthless, yet it is also true that our care ought to
extend beyond the present time, and that it is well to
omit things which might bring perhaps little profit
to the living, when it is proposed to undertake
others which shall bring greater profit to posterity!
For indeed I much wish it to be known, that the
little I have learned up to now is almost nothing
in comparison with that of which I am ignorant,
and which I do not despair of being able to learn;
for it is almost the same with those who little by
little discover truth in the sciences, as with those
who, beginning to grow rich, have less difficulty in
making great acquisitions than they formerly had,
when poorer,,in making others much smaller. Or
they can be compared to the heads of an army,
whose forces are accustomed to grow in proportion
to their victories, and who need more generalship
to maintain themselves after losing a battle, than
in taking towns and provinces after gaining one.
For to try to vanquish all the difficulties and
errors which hinder us from attaining to the know-
ledge of truth, is truly to give battle; and to accept
some false opinion touching a matter somewhat
general and important is to lose the day: much

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 79

—

more address is needed afterwards to reinstate
oneself as before, than is necessary to make great

. . . um
progress when one already has assured principles.

For my own part, if I have heretofore found some
truths in the sciences (and I hope that the things
contained in this volume will show that I have
found some), I can say that they are onlysequenceées
and dependents. of five-or-six~prineipal..difficulties

which I have surmounted, and which I count as so’

many battles in which the victory has been on my
side. I shall not fear, even, to say that I think I
have to gain but two or three others of the same
kind in order to entirely achieve the purpose of my
designs, and that my age is not so advanced that,
in the ordinary course of nature, I may not yet be
able to have sufficient leisure to attain this end.
"But because I have hope of being able to employ
it well, I feel the more obliged to husband the
time that remains to me, and I should undoubtedly
have many occasions of wasting it, if | made known
the foundations of my physics. For although they
are nearly all so evident that they have only to
be heard to be believed, and although there are
none of them which I do not think myself able

to demonstrate, at the same time, hecause it is.

impossible for them to bein.harmony with all the

various opinions of other men, I foresee that I

NB

$0, DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

should be often turned aside by the opposition to
which they would give rise."

"It may be said that this opposition would be
useful in showing me my faults as well as in
making whatever good there might be in my
work better understood, and that since many can
see more than one, others who begin from now
to make use ot it might also aid me with their
inventions. But though I am aware that I am
extremely liable to fail, and although I_hardly
ever put trust in the first. thoughts.that come.to
me, yet my experience of the objections which
might be made to me prevents my hoping for any
profit from them; for I have already often tested
the opinions of those whom I counted as my
friends, as well as of some others to whom I
thought I was indifferent, and even also of some
whose malignity and envy I knew would try to
discover that which affection hid from my friends;
but it has rarely happened that they have offered
me any objection which I had not in some measure
foreseen, so long as it were not too remote from
my subject; so that I met with hardly any censor
of my opinions who did not seem to me either
less strict or less equitable than myself. More-
over, I had never observed that the disputes
carried on in the schools led to the discovery of

DISCOURSE ON METHOD, 8I

any truth which was not known before, for while
each struggles to prevail they exert themselves
much more in justifying probability..than_in.weigh-
ing the reasons.on one.side.and.the other; and
those who have been for a long time good
advocates are not on that account the better%
judges subsequently.

~As to the benefit which others might receive
from the communication of my thoughts, it also
could not be very great, more especially as I had
not yet conducted them so far but that many
things needed to be added thereto before putting
them into practice. And I think I may say,
without vanity, that if there is any one who is
capable of this, it should be I rather than another;
not that there may not be in the world many
minds incomparably better than mine; but because
“a man cannot so well conceive a thing, and make
it his own, when he learns it from another, as when
he finds it out for himself."-This is so true in this
present matter, that although I have often’ ex-
plained some of my opinions to persons of very
great intelligence, who while I was speaking
appeared to comprehend them perfectly, I have
}noticed that they have almost always changed
Hthem in such a manner that I could no longer
own them as mine: Whereupon I Bers

82 DISCOURSE ON METHOD,

this opportunity to beg those who shall come
after us never to belNeve that the things which
they are told come from me, unless I have divulged
them myself: and I am in nowise astonished at
the extravagances attributed to all the old philo-
sophers whose writings have not come down to us,
nor do I on that account judge that their thoughts
were so very unreasonable, seeing that these philo-
sophers were the greatest minds of their time, but
only that we have misrepresented them. } For we
see also that it has hardly ever happened that they
have been surpassed by any of their disciples ; and
I am: sure that the most devoted of those who
now follow Aristotle would esteem themselves
fortunate if they had as much acquaintance with
nature as he, even though it were on condition
that they never had more. They are like the ivy,
which never mounts higher than the trees which
support it, and which even descends again after
having arrived at their summit; for it seems to
me that they also descend again, that is to say,
render themselves in some way less wise than if
they abstained from study, who, not content with
knowing all that is intelligibly explained in their
author, wish in addition to find the solution of
many difficulties of which he says nothing and
of which perhaps he has never thought. " Vet their

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 83

- method of philosophising is very convenient for
those who have but mediocre minds; for the
obscurity of the distinctions and principles which
they employ enables them to speak of all things
as boldly as if they had knowledge of them, and
sustain all that they say against the more subtle
and skilful, without there being any means of con-
vincing them ; ‘in which they seem to me like a
blind man, ois in order that he may fight one
who sees on equal terms, would cause him to enter
the depths of some very dark cave: and I may

ate

oy that. th pre people have interest in my abstain-|

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5

admitted acai into ‘the c cave whither they have |
descended to fight. , * But even the best minds have F
no occasion to desire to become acquainted with |
them ; for if they wish to speak about everything
and to acquire the reputation of being learned,
they would attain to it more easily by contenting |
themselves withprobability, which can be found
without much difficulty in all sorts of matters,
than by searching for the truth, which only reveals
itself little by little in some, and when it is a
question of speaking of other matters obliges a

84 DISCOURSE ON METHOD,

man to confess frankly that he is ignorant of them./
‘But if they prefer an acquaintance with a little
truth to the vanity of appearing to be ignorant of
nothing, which without doubt is far more desirable,
and if they wish to follow a plan similar to mine,
there is no need for me to say to them any more
than I have already said in this discourse. © For if
they are capable of advancing further than I have
done, with much greater reason will they be
capable also of finding for themselves all which I
believe I have found; seeing that as I have never
.examined anything but by this method, it is
~ certain that that which yet remains for me to dis-
cover is of itself more difficult and obscure than
that which I have been enabled to encounter
hitherto, and they would have much less pleasure
in learning it of me than of themselves: besides
which, the habit that they will acquire of seeking
easythings first. and passing little by_little by
degrees to others more difficult, will serve them
more than all my instructions can do.” * for me,
I am persuaded that if from my youth I had been
taught all the truths whose demonstrations I have
since sought out, and if I had had no difficulty in
learning them, I should perhaps never have known
any others, and that at any rate I should never have
acquired the habit and facility which I believe I

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 85

have of finding new ones, in measure as I apply
myself to searching them out. And in a word,
if there is any work in the world which could not
be so well finished by any, other, as by him who
began it, it is this at which [ am labouring.

As regards the experiments which can serve
this purpose, it is true that one man alone would
not be able to make them all; but neither would
he be able usefully to employ any other hands
than his own, except those of artisans, or such
people as he could pay, and whom the hope of
gain—which is of great efficacy—would lead to
perform more accurately all the things that he pre-
scribed to them. For voluntary workers, who
through curiosity or desire to learn may offer
themselves to help him, besides giving, as a rule,
more promise than performance, and only making
fine propositions of which none ever succeed,
would certainly be paid by the explanation of
difficulties, or at any rate by compliments and
useless conversations, which would cost him the
loss of time, however little he devoted to them.
And as for the experiments which others have
already made, even if thegewould communicate
them to him (which = who call them

secrets never will do), they are composed for the

most part of so many circumstances, or super-

86 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

fluous ingredients, that it would be very difficult
for him to disentangle the truth from among them;
besides which he will find them nearly all so badly
set forth, or even so inaccurate, because those who
have made them have struggled toumake them
appear conformable to their principles, that if there
were any which might be useful to him, they would
not repay him for the time that he must employ
in selecting them. So that if there were any one in
the world who was known for certain to be capable
of finding the greatest things, and the most useful
to the public that can be, and if for this reason
others endeavoured by every means to aid him in
achieving his designs, I do not see that they could
do anything for him but furnish funds for the
experiments of which he would stand in need, and
prevent his being deprived of his leisure by any
person’s importunity. But besides that I do not
presume so far as to wish to promise anything
extraordinary, or feed on thoughts so vain as to
imagine that the public should greatly interest
itself in my plans, I have not so base a mind as
to accept any favour which I might not be
considered to have ited

All these conside ns together were the cause
that, for three years, I would not divulge the
treatise which I had in hand, and even resolved

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 87

that as long as I lived I would set forth no other
treatise which was as general, or from which the
bases of my physics could be understood; but
there have since been two other reasonswhich
have obliged me to add here some special essays,
and to render to the public some account of my
actions and of my plans. The first is, that if I
failed therein, many who knew my _ former
intention of having certain writings printed, might
imagine that the causes for which I abstained
therefrom would be more to my disadvantage |
than they are. For though I like not an excess \
of glory, or even, if I dare say so, though I hate it,
inasmuch as I consider it destructive of repose
(which I value above all things), yet, also, I have
never tried to conceal my actions as if they were
crimes, nor have I taken many precautions to
remain unknown, because I thought I should do
myself wrong, as well as because it would have
given me a sort of disquietude which, again, would
hinder the perfect peace of mind which I sought,
and because, having always remained indifferent as
to whether I was known or unknown, I have been
unable to avoid acquiring some sort of reputation,
I have thought that I ought at least to do my
best to avoid having a bad one. One other reason
which has constrained me to write this is, that

88 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

seeing more and more every day the delay which
my plan of instructing myself suffers, because of
an infinity of experiments of which I have need,
and which it is impossible for me to make without
the aid of others, although I do not flatter
myself so much as to hope that the public may
share my interests, yet, also, I will not be so
untrue to myself as to give cause to those who
shall survive me some day to reproach me that I
could have left them many much better things
than I shall have done, if I had not too much
neglected to make them understand in what they
might be able to contribute to my designs.

* I also reflected that it was easy for me to choose
certain matters which, without being open to great
controversy, or obliging me to deciare more of my
principles than I desired, would not fail to show
clearly enough what I could do, or could not do,
in the sciences. * I cannot say whether I have
succeeded in this, and I do not wish to anticipate
any one’s opinions in speaking of my own writings;
‘put I shall be very glad if people will examine
them, and in order that they may have more
opportunity of doing so, I pray all those who shall
have any objections to make to them to take the
trouble to send them to my bookseller, being
advised by whom I shall try at the same time

ethan peor eematetartitag

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 89

to add my replies to them: and by this means
the readers, seeing both together, will judge more
easily of the truth; for I do not promise ever to
make long responses to these objections, but only
to acknowledge my faults very frankly, if I recog-
nise them, or, if I cannot perceive them, to state
simply what I believe requisite for the defence of
the things I have written, without setting forth any
new matter in addition to them, so as not to end-
lessly entangle the one in the other.

But if some of those of which I have spoken at
the beginning of the Dzopftrics and the Meteors
should begin by giving offence, because I call
them suppositions, and because I do not appear
anxious to prove them, let the reader have the
patience to read the whole attentively, and I hope
that he will be satisfied with it; for it seems to me
that the reasons there succeed each other in such
a manner that as the last are demonstrated by the
first, which are their causes, so these first are recip-
rocally demonstrated by the last, which are their
effects. Nor should it be imagined that I there
commit the error known to logicians as acircle; for,
as experience renders the majority of these effects
very certain, the causes from which I deduce them
serve not so much to prove them as to explain them,
but, on the contrary, it is they which are proved by

lan

90 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

them. And I have called them suppositions only
that it may be known that I think I can deduce
them from the first truths which I have explained
above, but that I have expressly wished not to do
so, to prevent certain minds (which imagine that
they know in a day all that another has thought in
twenty years, as soon as he has told them but two
or three words of it, and which are so much the
more liable to fail, and less capable of the truth, as
they are the more penetrating and quick) from
taking occasion therefrom to build some extrava-
gant philosophy upon what they believe to be
my principles, and attribute its faults to me. / As
for the opinions which are entirely my own, I do
not apologise for them as new, especially as I am
certain that if the reasons for them be well con-
sidered, they will be found so simple, and so con-
formable to common sense, that they will appear
less extraordinary and less strange than any others
which can be held on the same subjects. Nor do |
I boast of being the first inventor of any, but that
I have never accepted them, either because others
have said them or because others have not said _|
them, but only because reason has persuaded me
of them.

But if the workmen cannot so soon execute the
invention which is explained in the Dzoptrics, I do |

DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 91

not think that it can therefore be said that it is
bad ; for, seeing that skill and practice are neces-
sary to make and adjust the machines I have
described, so that nothing may be wanting, I
would be no less astonished if they managed it at
the first attempt than if a man were able to play
the lute excellently merely because he had been
given the correct tablature. And if I write in
French, which is the language of my country,
rather than in Latin, which is that of my pre-
ceptors, it is because I hope that those who use
only their pure natural reason will judge my
opinions better than those who merely believe
ancient books; and because I am sure that those
who join good sense to scholarship, whom alone I
wish to have as my judges, will not be so partial
to Latin as to refuse to hear my reasons because I
express them in the vulgar tongue.

Moreover, I will not speak here in detail of the
progress in the sciences which I hope to make in
the future, or. engage myself to the public. by any
promise which I am not sure of fulfilling. I will
only say that I have resolved to employ the time
remaining to me to live, in simply trying to
acquire some knowledge of nature which shall be
such that there may be drawn from it more
certain rules for medicine than those which we

\
J

92 DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

have possessed up to the present; and that my
inclination is so averse from all other sorts of
design, especially from such as can be useful to
some only by injuring others, that if any occasion
obliged me to employ them 1 do not believe I
should be able to succeed in them. And also,
I hereby declare that I am well aware that I am
unable to make myself renowned among men, but,
also, I have no desire to be so; and I shall
always hold myself more obliged to those by
whose favour I enjoy my leisure undisturbed,
than I should be to any who offered me the
most honourable employments in the world.

END OF THE DISCOURSE ON METHOD.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

.
*
‘
,
«

; 4 — 4
«)%, ae: 4

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS
CONCERNING THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY,

To the Dean and Doctors of the Sacred Faculty
of Theology of Paris.

Szrs

The reason which leads me to present this
work to you is so appropriate, and when you know
its purpose I am sure that you also will have
so good a one for taking zt under your protection,
that I think I cannot better commend it to you
than by telling you in a few words what I ave
here proposed to do.

I have always deemed the two questions of God
and of the soul the chief among those matters
which ought to be demonstrated by reasons of
philosophy rather than of theology; for although
zt zs enough for us who are faithful to believe,
through the Faith, that there 7s a God, and that
the human soul does not die with the body, tt
certainly does not seem possible that we can ever
persuade infidels to any religion, or even to any

96 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

moral virtue, if we do not first prove these two
things to them by natural reason; especially since
(as frequently in this life greater rewards are
offered for vices than for virtues) few would
prefer the right to the profitable, were they not
restrained either by the fear of God, or by the
expectation of another life; and although it be
absolutely true that we must believe that there
7s a God, because it ts thus taught in the Holy
- Scriptures, and further, that we must believe the
Holy Scriptures because they come from God (the
reason for which ts that faith being a gift of God,
the same God who gives us grace to believe the
other things can also give us grace to believe that
He exists), we nevertheless cannot offer this to
znfidels, who would be able to imagine that we
thereby committed the fault which logictans call
a circle. And indeed, I have observed that you,
Sirs, with all the theologians, are not only sure
that the existence of God can be proved by natural
reason, but also that we infer from Holy Scripture
that the knowledge of Him ts much clearer than
our knowledge of many created things; in fact,
that zt 7s so easy that those who have it not are
guilty, as appears by these words tn WISDOM,
Chap. xitt., where it zs said that their ignorance
is not pardonable; for if their mind had pene-

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 97

trated so deeply into worldly knowledge, how is it
possible that they have not thereby more easily
recognised the sovereign Lord? And [in the
epistle| to the Romans, Chap. 2. tt is said that
they are without excuse. <Agazn, in the same place,
Jrom these words, that which is known of God
is manifest in them, ze seem to be warned that
all that can be known of God can be shown by
reasons which need be drawn from nowhere but
Jrom ourselves, and from the simple consideration
of the nature of our spirit.

This is why I believed that tt would not be
contrary to the duty of a philosopher if I showed
here how, and in what way, without going further
than ourselves, we can know God more easily and
certainly than we know the things of the world.
And as regards the soul, although many have
believed that it ts not easy to know its nature,
and some have even dared to say that human
reasons convince us that it will die with the
body; and that there was but one Faith which
taught us the contrary; nevertheless, tnasmuch as
the Lateran Counctl held under Leo X., in the
eighth session, condemns them, and expressly orders
Christian philosophers to reply to thetr argu-
ments, and to use all the powzr of their minds to

make known the truth, I have tndeed ventured to
7

98 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

undertake it in this writing. Moreover, knowing
that the principal reason which makes many im-
pious persons not to wish to believe that there ts
a God, and that the human soul ts distinct from
the body, ts that they say that up to the present
no one has been able to demonstrate these two
things,—although I am not of their opinion, but,
on the contrary, hold that the greater part of the
reasons brought forward by so many great persons
touching these two questions are so many demon-
strations when plainly understood, and that it ts
almost iuipossible to invent new ones,—I believe
that nothing more useful can be done in philosophy
than to carefully seek out these last and dispose
them in so clear and exact an order that it may
be incontestable henceforth before all the world
that they are veritab.e demonstrations. And
finally, inasmuch as many persons have desired
me to do this, who are aware that 1 have cul-
tivated a certain method of solving all sorts of
difficulties in the sciences, a method which verily
zs not new, there being nothing more ancient than
truth, but which they know « have employed very
happily on other occasions, I thought tt was also
my Auty to put tt to the test in a matter of such
zuportance.

Now 1 have worked my hardest to include in this

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 99

treatise all that I have been able to discover by
means of this method.. Not that I have collected
here all the different reasons which might be ad-
duced as proofs for so great a subject, for I have
never believed that to be necessary, except when
_ none of them are certain, but I have only treated
the first and principal ones tn such a manner that
L indeed venture to offer them as very evident and
very certain demonstrations; and moreover, I will
affirm that they are such that I do not think there
is any way by which the human mind can discover
better, for the tmportance of the subject, and the
glory of God, to which all this ts related, constrains
me to speak here of myself rather more freely than I
am accustomed to do. Yet, whatever certainty and
evidence I find in my reasons, I cannot persuade
myself that every one 7s capable of understanding
them. But as in geometry there are many which
have been left to us by Archimedes, Apollonius,
Pappus, and numerous others, which are accepted by
every one as very certain and very evident, because
they contain nothing which zs not very easy to know
when considered by ztself, and because everywhere
the things which follow have an exact connection
with those that go before, and depend on them,
yet, because they are rather long and demand the
whole attention, they are not comprehended and

4

100 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

understood except by a very few. In the same way,
although I consider that those which I use here
equal, or even surpass, the demonstrations of geo-
metry in certainty and evidence, I apprehend, never-
theless, that they cannot be adequately understood
by many, because they are thus somewhat long, and
depend on each other, as well as for the chief reason
that they require a mind entirely free from all
\ prejudice, which can easily cut itself off from com-
munication with the senses. And to tel the truth,
there are not so many minds in the world so adapted
to speculations of metaphysics as to those of geometry.
And moreover, there ts still this difference, that in
geometry,as each starts with the opinion that nothing
zs advanced there of which we have not a certain
demonstration, those who are not perfectly versed
therein sin much more frequently in approving false
demonstrations, to make believe that they understand
them, than in refuting the true. It ts not so in
philosophy, where, as each believes that everything it
includes ts problematical, few persons devote them-
selves ‘to the research of truth; and, moreover,
wishing to acquire a reputation for great intellect,
they study nothing but how to arrogantly combat the
most obvious truths
This ts why, Sirs, whatever force my reasons may
possess, because they belong to philosophy I do not hope

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. IOI

| that they will have much effect on people's minds,
unless you take them under your protection. But
your company being held in so great esteem, and the
name of Sorbonne having such authority that people
have never so much deferred to the judgment of any.
other body, not only in matters of faith (next to-the
sacred Councils) but in matters of human philosophy
also, and as every one believes .it impossible to find
elsewhere more solidity and knowledge, or more
prudence and integrity in the giving of judgment,
I do not doubt, tf you deign to pay so much attention
to thts writing as to wish in the first place to correct
it (for knowing not only my infirmity but also my
zgnorance, I should not dare be sure that there were
no ervors in tt), then to add the things which it
lacks, to contplete those which are imperfect, and to
give yourselves the trouble of offering a more ample
explanation to those who want one, or at any rate to
advise me thereof that I may work at tt, and finally
(after that the reasons by which I prove that there is
a God, and that the human soul differs from the
body, shall have been carried up to the point of
clearness and evidence, whither I am sure they can be
onducted, where they must be accounted very exact
emonstrations), tf you deign to authorise them by
our approbation and render public testimony to
heir truth and certainty, I do not doubt, I say, that

102 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

after this, all errors and false opinions will be soon
effaced from the minds of men. For the truth will
make all the learned and men of understanding to
subscribe to your judgment and authority; the
atheists, who are generally more arrogant than
learned and judicious, to throw off thetr spirit of
contradiction, or may be they themselves will uphold
the reasons which they will see accepted as demonstra-
tions by all persons of tutelligence, for fear of appear-

ing not tounderstand them; and finally, tt will make
all others yield easily to so much testimony, and there

will no longer be any one who dares to doubt the

extstence of God, and the real and true distinction —

between the human soul and the body.

It is for you, now, to judge of the fruit which
shall spring from this belief, were it once well
established, who see the disorders which the doubt
of it produces ; but it would ill become me to recom-
mend further the cause of God and of religion to
those who have always been its firmest upholders.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 103

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

I IIAVE already touched upon these two questions
of God and of the human soul, in the French dis-
course which I published in the year 1637, upon
the method of rightly conducting the reason and
seeking truth in the sciences—not with the ‘inten-
tion of treating them exhaustively, but merely in
passing, in order to learn by the judgment that
should be passed upon them, in what way I ought
to treat them subsequently For they have always
seemed to me to be of such importance, that I
thought it proper to speak ot them more than
once. And the path which I take to explain
them is so little trodden, and so far from the
common road, that I did not believe it would be
useful to indicate it in French, and in a treatise
which could be read by every one, for fear that
feeble minds would believe that it was permissible
for them also to attempt it.

Now having begged, in this Discourse on Method,
all those who should find in my writings anything
worthy of censure, to do me the favour of inform-

104 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

ing me thcreof, I have been offered no noticeable
objections except two things concerning what I
said on these two heads, to which I wish to reply
here in a few words before undertaking their more
exact explanation. The first is, that it does not
follow, because the human mind, in reflecting on
itself, knows itself to be nothing else but a thing
which thinks, that its nature, or essence, is only to
think, in such a way that this word “only” ex-
cludes all other things which perhaps could also
be said to belong to the nature of the soul. To
which objection I reply that it was not my inten-
tion in that place to exclude them according to
the order of the truth of the thing (with which I
was not then dealing), but only according to the
order of my thought; so that what I meant was,
that I perceived nothing which I knew to belong
to my essence, except that I was a thing which
thinks, or a thing which has in itself the faculty of
thinking. Now I shall show presently how, from
the fact that 1 know no other thing which belongs
to my essence, it also follows that there is nothing
which really belongs to it.

The second is, that it does not follow, because I
have in me the idea of a thing more perfect than I,
that this idea is more perfect than I, and much
less that that which this idea represents, exists.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 105

But I reply that in this word zdea there is
something equivocal; for it can be taken either
_ materially, for an operation of my understanding,
and in this sense it cannot be said to be more
perfect than I; or objectively, for the thing which
is represented by this operation, the which, al-
though it is not supposed to exist outside my
understanding, can nevertheless be more perfect
than I, according to its essence. Now in the
course of this treatise I shall show more fully
how, merely because I have in me the idea of a
thing more perfect than I, it follows that this thing
truly exists. Moreover, I have also seen two other
writings, fully dealing with this matter, but which
did not combat my reasons so much as my con-
clusions, and this by arguments drawn from the
commonplaces of the atheists. But because these
kinds of arguments cannot make any impression
on the minds of those who shall well understand
my reasons, and because many persons’ judgments
are so feeble, and so little reasonable, that they allow
themselves to be persuaded more often by their
first opinions of a thing, however false and remote
from reason, than by one solid and true, though
subsequently understood refutation of their theories,
I do not wish to reply to them here, for fear of
being obliged to quote them first. I will merely

106 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

state gencrally, that all that atheists say to impugn
the existence of God always depends either on
their imagining human affections to be in God, or
in their attributing to our minds so much force
and wisdom that we indeed have the presumption
to wish to determine and comprehend what God
can and ought to do: so that all that they tell us
will offer us no difficulty, provided only that we
remember that we ought to consider our minds
as finite and limited things, and God as a Being
infinite and incomprehensible.

Now after having sufficiently recognised the
sentiments of men, I undertake over again the
treatise of God, and of the human soul, and at
the same time to lay the foundations of the first
philosophy; but without expecting for it. any
praise from the vulgar, or hoping that my book
will be seen by many. On the contrary, I should
never counsel any to read it, except those who
wish, with me, to meditate seriously, and who shall
be able to cut off their minds from communication
with their senses, and deliver them entirely from
all kinds of prejudices,—whom I know too well to
be in very small number. But for those who,
without troubling much about the order and con-
nection of my reasons, shall amuse themselves by
carping at each part, as many do,—those, I say,

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 107

will not draw much profit from the perusal of this
treatise: and although, may be, they find in many
places occasion to cavil, they will scarcely be able
to make any pressing objections, or any which will
be worthy of reply. And inasmuch as I do not
promise the others to satisfy them at once, or
presume so far as to believe I can foresee all that
may be able to cause difficulty to any, I shall first
set forth in these meditations the same thoughts
by which I persuade myself of having arrived at a
certain and evident knowledge of the truth, in’
order to sce if by the same reasons which have
persuaded me, I may also be able to persuade
others ; and after that I shall reply to the objec-
tions which have been made to me by persons of
mind and doctrine, to whom 1 sent my medita-
tions to be examined before committing them to
the press; for they have made me so many and
such different ones, that I truly venture to promise
myself that it will be difficult for another to pro-
pose any of consequence which have not been
touched upon. For this reason I pray those who
shall desire to read these meditations, to form no
judgment of them until they have first taken the
trouble to read all the objections, and the replies
I have made to them.

108 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

SUMMARY OF THE SIX FOLLOWING
MEDITATIONS.

IN the first, I put forward the reasons for which
we can doubt generally of everything, and par-
ticularly of material things, at least as long as we
possess no other foundations for the sciences than
those we have had hitherto. For although the
utility of a doubt so general may not appear at
first sight, at the same time it is very great, in that
it delivers us from every kind of prejudice, and
prepares us a very easy way of accustoming the
mind to detach itself from the senses, and,
finally, makes it impossible that we can have any
further doubt of the things which we shall subse-
quently discover to be true.

In the second, the mind, which, using its own
liberty, assumes that all things of the existence of
which it has the least doubt are not, recognises
that, nevertheless, it is absolutely impossible that
it does not exist itself. This also is of very great
use, inasmuch as by this means it easily dis-
tinguishes between things which belong to itself,

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 109

that is, to the intellectual nature, and those which
belong to the body. But because it may happen
that some will expect of me in this place reasons
for proving the immortality of the soul, I consider
it my duty to inform them here that, having
endeavoured throughout this treatise to write
nothing of which I had not very exact demonstra-
tions, I perceived that I was obliged to follow an
order similar to that used by geometers, which is,
to first put forward all the things from which
depend the proposition which is sought, before
concluding anything from it.

Now, the first and principal thing required in
order to have a true knowledge of the immortality
of the soul, is to form a clear and exact conception
of the soul, entirely distinct from all the concep-
tions we can have of the body, which has been
done in this place. Besides that, it is requisite to
know that all the things which we conceive clearly
and distinctly are true, in the manner that we
conceive them, and this could not be proved before
the fourth Meditation. Moreover, it is necessary
to have a distinct conception of the corporeal
nature, which forms part of the second, and part
of the fifth and sixth Meditations. And finally,
we should conclude from all this that the things
we conceive clearly and distinctly to be of divers

1,

I1O METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

substances, in the way that we conceive the mind
and the body, are indeed substances really distinct
from one another, And it is this which is con-
cluded in the sixth Meditation. This is again
confirmed in the same Meditation, from the fact
that we conceive no body but as divisible, while —
the mind, or the soul of man, can be conceived
only as indivisible; for truly we cannot conceive
the moiety of a soul, as we can of the smallest of
all bodies, so that we recognise that their natures
are not only diverse, but even in a manner con-
trary. Now, I have not treated this matter more
deeply in this writing, because that is sufficient to
show clearly that the death of the soul does not
follow on the corruption of the body, and thus to
sive to men the hope of a second life after death,
as well as because the premises from which the
immortality of the soul may be deduced depend on
the explanation of all physics; in the first place,
in order for us to know that all substances gener-
ally, that is to say, all things which cannot exist
without being created by God, are in their nature —
incorruptible, and that they can never cease to be, ~
if God Himself, in denying them His co-operation,
does not reduce them to nothing; and then to
observe that the body taken in general is a sub-
stance, and for this reason does not perish, but

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. ELI

that the human body, inasmuch as it differs from
other bodies, is composed merely of a certain
configuration of members, and similar accidentals,
while the human soul is not thus composed of any

accidentals, but is a pure substance. For although ,
all its accidentals change,—for example, although
it conceives certain things, wishes some, feels
others, and so on, the soul nevertheless does not
become anything else, while the human body
_ becomes another thing, from the mere fact that
the form ot some of its parts are changed; whence
it follows that the human body can easily perish,
but that the spirit, or the soul of man (between
which I make no distinction), is in its nature
immortal.

In the third Meditation, it seems to me that I
have explained at sufficient length the principal
argument which I use to prove the existence of
God. But yet, because I did not wish to employ
in this place any comparisons derived from cor-

)poreal things, in order to withdraw as much as I
can the minds of my readers from the habit and
commerce of the senses, perhaps there remain
many obscurities (which, as I hope, are entirely
elucidated in the responses that I have made to
the objections which have been since put before
|me)—as this, among others,—How the idea of a

112 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

Being supremely perfect, which is in us, contains
so much objective’ reality, that is to say, partici-
pates by representation in so many degrees of
being and of perfection, that it must come from a |
supremely perfect cause. This I have made clear
in these responses by the analogy of a very in-
genious and artificial machine, the idea of which
occurs to the mind of some workman; for as the
objective artifice of this idea must have some
cause, that is to say, either the workman’s know-
ledge, or that of some other from whom he has
received the idea, so, in the same way, it is im-
possible that the idea of God, which is in us, has
not God Himself for its cause. |

The fourth proves that all things that we con-
ceive very clearly and distinctly are true, and at
the same time explains in what the nature of
error or falsehood consists, which it is necessary to
know, as well for the confirmation of the preced-
ing truths as for the better understanding of those
that follow. But, however, it is to be observed,
that I do not here treat at all of sin, that is, of the
error which is committed in the pursuit of good
and evil, but only of that which happens in the
judgment, and the discernment of the true and the

1 The term odjective, as here and subsequently used by Descartes,
is nearly equivalent to the modern sz/jecizve.

ah

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 1 Be

false; and that I do not intend to speak of the
things which belong to faith, or to the conduct of
life, but only of those which concern the speculative
truths, and which can be known by the sole aid of
natural light. ‘

The fifth, besides explaining the corporeal nature
in general, again demonstrates the existence of
God by a new reason, in which, nevertheless, some
difficulties may be encountered; but their solution
will be seen in the responses to the objections
which have been made to me. And moreover, I
show in what way it is true that the certainty
even of geometrical demonstrations depends on
the knowledge of God.

Finally, in the sixth, I distinguish the action of
the understanding from that of the imagination,
and the marks of this distinction are there described.
I show that the soul of man is really distinct from
the body, and yet so strictly conjoined and united
therewith, that they compose but one thing; all the
errors which proceed from the senses are there
explained, with the means of avoiding them; and
finally, I bring forward all the reasons from which
we can conclude the existence of material things,—
not that I judge them very useful to prove what
they do prove, to wit, that there is a world, that men
have bodies, and similar things which have never

8

II4 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

been doubted by any man ot good sense, but
because that in considering them more closely we
come to recognise that they are neither so frm nor
so evident as those which conduct us to the know-
ledge of God and of our soul; so that these are the
most certain, and the most evident, which can fall
under the cognisance of the human mind. And as
this is all that I have purposed to prove in these six
Meditations, I omit here many other questions
of which, also, I have spoken in passing, in this
treatise.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 115

MEDITATIONS CONCERNING THE
: PIRST PHILOSOPHY:

IN WHICH ARE DEMONSTRATED THE EXISTENCE
OF GOD, AND THE REAL DISTINCTION
BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE BODY OF
MAN.

FIRST MEDITATION.

OF THINGS THAT CAN BE CALLED INTO
QUESTION.

IT was some time ago that I first perceived that
from my earliest years I have received as true
a number of opinions which are false, and that
what I have since based upon opinions so ill-
assured can be but very doubtful and uncertain.

And thenceforth I _judged_that I_must_seriously

undertake, for once in my life, to rid me of all the

ST

opinions that_I had formerly ‘received. into. my

~_———

belief, and begin all over again from the founda-
tions, if I wished to establish something firm and

. particular, which would be an infinite labour, but

116 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

‘constant in the sciences, But this undertaking —

appearing to me very great, I waited until I had
attained so ripe an age that I could hope to reach
no other afterwards in which I should be more
fitted to execute it, which has made me delay so
long, that henceforward I should believe that I did
wrong if I continued to employ in deliberation |

ital Se:

such time as remains to me to act.

To-day, therefore, when in accordance with this
design I have delivered my mind of every sort of
care, so that, happily, I do not feel agitated by any —
passions, and have procured a sure repose in |
peaceful solitude, I shall apply myself seriously and ~
freely to the general overthrow of my old opinions,
And for this end it will not be necessary to show
that they are all false, in which perhaps I should
never succeed; but inasmuch as reason already |
persuades me that I should restrain myself from —
giving credence to things which are not certain
and indubitable, no less carefully than to those
which manifestly appear to me false, it will be
sufficient for me to reject them all, if I can find in ©
any some reason to doubt. And for that purpose
there will be no need for me to examine each in

because the destruction of the foundations neces-
sarily carries with it all the rest of the edific

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 117

shall attack first the principles on which all my
_ former opinions were built.

All that I have accepted up to the present_as
most true and assured, I have apprehended from
the senses, or by the senses. Now I have some-
times proved these senses to be deceivers, and it is
prudent never to rely entirely on things which
have once deceived us.

But, perhaps, although the senses deceive us
sometimes, as to things hardly perceptible, and
_very remote, many other things may yet be
met with, which we cannot reasonably doubt,
although we know them by means of the senses,—
for example, that I am here, seated by the fire,
clothed in a dressing-gown, having this paper in
my hands, and other things of that nature. And
how is it that I cannot deny that these hands and
this body are mine, unless, perhaps, I compare
myself to certain madmen, whose brain is so dis-
turbed and obscured by black bilious vapours,
that they are always certain that they are kings,
when they are very poor, that they are clothed in
gold and purple, when they are quite naked, or who
imagine that they are pitchers, or that they have
a glass body? How now! These are mad, and
I should be no less extravagant than they if I
governed myself by their examples.

i

11]

ij
ii

118s METAPIIYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

Yet I have to consider here that I am a man,
and in consequence that I am accustomed to sleep,

| and to represent to myself in my dreams the same

things as do these madmen when they are awake, ©
or sometimes things less probable. How many
.times have I dreamed at night that I was in this
| place, that I was dressed, and by the fire, although
‘I was undressed and in bed? It indeed appears
to me at present that it is not with sleeping eyes
that I behold this paper, that this head which I
shake is not dull, that it_is deliberately and with
purpose that I extend this hand, and that I feel it;

that which happens in sleep does not seem so clear

or so distinct_as all this. But in thinking if over

carefully I remember having often been deceived
while sleeping by similar illusions, and in dwelling
on this thought, I see so plainly that there are no
certain indications by which we can exactly dis-
tinguish waking from sleeping, that I am quite
surprised, and my astonishment is such that it is
almost able to persuade me that I sleep.

Let us suppose now, therefore, that we are aslecp,
and that all these particulars,—to wit, that we
open our eyes, shake our head, extend our hands,
and things of the kind, are only false illusions, and
let us think that perhaps our hands, or our whole
body, are not such as we see them. Yet at any

\

METAPIHYSfCAL MEDITATIONS. 119

rate we must acknowledge that the things which
are represented to us in sleep are like pictures and
paintings WEN-CET Ee Tormed onl gs, which can be formed only after the like-
ness of something. real and true; and that thus
at least these general things, namely eyes, a head,
hands, and a whole body, are not imaginary, but
real and constant. For it is true that painters,
even when they study with the most artifice to
represent sirens and satyrs by bizarre and extra-
ordinary figures, cannot give them entirely new
forms and natures, but only a certain medley and
| mixture of the members of different animals;
or if, perhaps, their imagination is extravagant
enough to invent something so new that the like
was never seen, so that their work represents a
thing purely imaginary and absolutely false, at any
rate the colours of which they compose it must
certainly be true.

And by the same reason, although these general
things,—to wit, a body, eyes, head, hands, and
| things of the kind, might be imaginary, yet we
have to own that there are at least some other
things yet more simple and universal, which are
| true and existent, of the mixture of which, neither
_more nor less than of that of some actual
colours, are formed all those images of things
which reside in our thought, whether true and

120 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

real, or feigned and fantastic. Of this kind of
thing is the corporeal nature in gencral and its
extension, together with the form of extended
things, their quantity or size, and their number,
and also the place where they are, the time which
measures their duration, and similar things.

That perhaps is why we shall not draw a wrong

_ conclusion from this, if we say that physics,

| astronomy, medicine, and all other sciences which

depend on the consideration of composite bodies,
are very doubtful and uncertain, but that arith-
metic, geometry, and other sciences of that kind,
which treat only of very simple and general things,

_ without regarding whether they are in nature, or

whether they are not, contain something certain

and indubitable; for whether I wake or sleep, two

and three added together will “always make the
number of five, and the square will never have
more than four sides, nor does it seem possible
that truths so clear and so obvious can be sus-
pected of any falsehood or uncertainty.

Yet for a long while I have had in my mind
one certain opinion,—that there is a God who can
do all things and by whom I have been made
and created such as I am. Now how do I know
whether He has not so wrought that there be no
earth, no heavens, no cxtended body, no shape,

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 12I

no size, no place? And how, nevertheless, have I
the consciousness of all these things, and how do
they all seem to me to exist no otherwise than
as I see them? And in the same way, as I judge
sometimes that others deceive themselves in the
things that they think that they know best, how
do I know whether He has not made me so that
I, also, deceive myself every time I add two and
three, or number the sides of a square, or judge
of something yet more easy, if anything easier than
that can be imagined? But perhaps God has not
wished me to be deceived in this way, for He
is called supremely good. Yet if it is contrary
to His goodness to have made me so that I might
always deceive myself, it also would appear to be
contrary to it to permit me to deceive myself
sometimes, and nevertheless I cannot doubt that
He does permit it.

Perhaps there will be persons who would prefer
to deny the existence of a God so powerful, rather
than believe that all the other things are uncertain,
but for the present let us not resist them, and let
us suppose in their favour that all which is here
said of a God is a fable; nevertheless, in whatever
way they imagine that I have arrived at the estate
and to the being that I have attained to, whether
they attribute it to some destiny or fatality,

¥22 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

whether they refer it to chance, whether they
would have it be by a continuous sequence and
connection of things, or in some other manner,
since to fail and to be deceived is an imperfection,
the less puissant will be the author to whom they
shall assign my origin, the more probable it is
that I am so imperfect that I always deceive
myself. To which arguments I have nothing
certain to answer, but, after all, I am constrained
to acknowledge that there is nothing in all I once
believed to be true, which I cannot in some
way doubt, and that not through lack of considera-
tion, or through frivolity, but for very strong and
matured reasons, so that henceforth I ought to
prevent myselt from giving credence to it [viz, to
that which I once believed] no less carefully than
to that which should be manifestly false, if I wish
to find something certain and assured in the
sciences.

But it is not enough to have made these
remarks; it is necessary, moreover, that I take
care to remember them: for still these old and
conventional opinions often come into my thought,
the long and familiar use they have had from me
giving them the right to occupy my mind in spite
of myself, and to render themselves almost mis-
tresses of my credence; and I shall never break

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 52

we

myself of deferring to them, and putting confidence
in them, so long as I shall consider them such as
they are in reality, that is, in some way doubtful,
as I have just shown, and yet very probable, so
that one has much more reason to believe than
to deny them. This is why I think I shall not do
amiss, if, adopting with deliberate purpose a con-
trary sentiment, I deceive myself, and feign for a
while that all these opinions~are entirely false
and imaginary, until, having finally balanced
my old and my new prejudices so that they
cannot make my mind incline to one side rather
than to the other, my judgment henceforth may
be no longer dominated by bad habits, and
turned from the right way which can conduct it
to the knowledge of truth. For I am sure that in
the meantime there can be neither danger nor
error in this path, and that I cannot at present
concede too much to my distrust, since it is now
not a question of acting, but only of meditating
and taking cognisance.

I shall assume, therefore, that not God, who is
very good, and the sovereign source of truth, but
a certain evil genius, no less crafty and deceitful
than potent, has employed all his power in
deceiving me.I shall suppose that the sky, the
air, the earth, colours; figures, sounds, and _ all

124 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

other exterior things are only illusions and dreams,
which he uses as snares for my credulity. I shall
consider myself as having no hands, eyes, flesh,
blood, nor any senses, but as believing falsely
that I possess all these things; to this notion I
shall remain obstinately attached, and if it is
not in my power to arrive by this means at the
knowledge of any truth, at least I shall be able to
suspend my judgment. This is why I shall take
great care not to receive any falsehood into my
belief, and so well shall I prepare my mind for the
tricks of this great deceiver, that however powerful
and crafty he be, he shall never be able to impose
upon -me.

But this plan is troublesome and laborious, and
a certain indolence draws me imperceptibly into
the way of my ordinary life. And just asa slave,
who in his sleep enjoys an imaginary liberty, fears
to wake as soon as he begins to suspect that his
liberty is but a dream, and acquiesces in these |
agreeable illusions in order that he may be all the
longer imposed upon by them, so of myself I fall
back insensibly into my former opinions, and dread
to awake from this drowsiness, for fear that the
troublesome lucubrations which must succeed to |
the tranquillity of my repose, instead of bringing |
me light and insight in the knowledge of truth,

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 125

should be insufficient to illumine all the dark places
of the difficulties which have just been raised.

SECOND MEDITATION.

OF THE NATURE OF TIIE HUMAN MIND, AND
TIIAT IT IS EASIER TO KNOW THAN THE
BODY.

Yesterday’s Meditation has filled my mind with
so many doubts that henceforth it is no longer in
my power to forget them, and yct I do not see
how I shall be able to solve them; and ijust as if
I had suddenly fallen into very deep water, I am
so taken aback that I can ncither find foothold at
the bottom, nor swim to kecp mysclf at the top. I
‘shall make an cffort, nevertheless, and follow again
|

away from me all in which I shall be able to
imagine the least doubt, just as if I knew it to be
absolutely false, and I shall continue to follow this
path, until I have met with something that is
certain ; or at least, if I can do nothing clse, until
I have learned for gcertain that nothing in the world
is certain. Archimedes, to draw the terrestrial
globe from its placc, and transport it elsewhere,

126 METAPITYSICAL NIEDIZAGIONS:

asked no more than one firm and immovable point : |
in the same way, I shall have the right to conccive
hich hopes, if Tam happy cnouch to find but one |
certain and indubitable thing.

I assume, therefore, that cverything that I sce
is false; I persuade mysclf that of all the things
which my memory, stored with dreams, represents
to me, none have cver cxisted; I suppose that I
have no sense; I believe that body, shape, exten-
sion, motion, and place are only fictions of my
mind.’ AVhat, then, shall ~ be “estcenmeaamenme °?
Nothing, perhaps, but that nothing in the world
iS certain:

But how do I know that there is not some other
thing, different from these that I have just pro-
nounced uncertain, of which there cannot be the
slightest doubt? Is thgre not a God, or some
other power which puts these thoughts into my
mind ?- Not necessarily; for it may be that I am
capable of producing them mysclf I, at least, |
then, am I not something? Dut I have already
denied that I had any senses or any body; never-
theless I hesitate, for what follows? Am I so
dependent on the body and on the senses that I
cannot exist without them? But I persuaded
mysclf that there was nothing in the whole world,

no sky, no earth, no spirits, no bodies; did !

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. E27

not therefore also persuade myself that I did not
exist? Far from it; beyond doubt I existed if I
persuaded myself, or even if I only thought some-
thing. But there is an unknown deceiver, very
powerful and very cunning, who employs all
his energy in continually deceiving me; therefore
there is no doubt that I enist, if he deceives me;

let him deceive me as much as he will, he will
never be able to make me to be nothing, so long
as I shall think I am something. So having
pondered that well, and examined everything
carefully, it must after all be concluded and held
as unquestionable that this proposition—/ am, J
exist—is necessarily true, every time that I pro-
nounce it, or conceive it in my mind.

But I do not yet know quite clearly what I am,
~ J], who am certain that I am: so that henceforth I
must take careful heed not to imprudently mistake
some other thing for myself, so as not to err in
this knowledge, which I maintain to be more
certain and evident than all which I have had
formerly.

This is why I shall now consider entirely anew
what I belicved myself to be before I entered
upon these last thoughts, and from my _ old
opinions I shall lop off all which can be in the

slightest degree opposed to the reasons I have

st

128 METAPITYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

already alleged, so that there may remain just that
which is perfectly certain and indubitable, and that
alone. What, then, have I believed myself to be
hitherto? Without doubt, I thought I was a
man; but what is a man? Shall I say that it
is a rational animal? No indced, for I should
afterwards have to find out what an animal is, and
what rational is, and thus from one single question
I should be launched, without knowing it, into an
infinity of others more difficult and complex, and
I would not misuse the little time and leisure
remaining to me, by employing it in unravelling
difficultics of the kind. But I will here dwell
rather on the consideration of the thoughts which
heretofore took rise of themscives in my mind,
and with which my nature alone inspired me,
when I applied myself to the contemplation of
my being. I considered mysclf first as having a
face, hands, arms, and all the mechanism of flesh
and bones, such as it appears in a corpse, which |
designated “body.” Moreover, I reflected that I
nourished mysclf, that I walked, felt, and thought,
and I connected all these actions with the soul;
but I did not stop to think what this soul was;
or rather, if I did so, I imagined it something
extremely rare and subtle, as a wind, a flame, or a
very volatile air insinuated and diffused through-

NEPA PILYSICA Ls MEDITATIONS. 1S9

out my more matcrial parts. As to what the body
was, in nowise did I doubt of its nature, but I
thought I knew it very distinctly; and if I had
wished to explain it according tu the notions I
then had of it, I would have described it in this
way. By the body I understand all which can be
limited by some figure, which can be contained in
some place, and occupy a space in such a manner
that all other bodics are excluded therefrom ;
which is sensible cither to touch, or sight, or hear-
ing, or taste, or smell; which can be moved in
many ways, not indccd by itself, but by something
extraneous which comes into contact with it,
and from which it receives the impression; for I
do not be:icve at all that the power of moving of
oneself, or of fecling, or of thinking, belongs to
the nature of the body; on the contrary, I was
astonished, rather, to sce that in some bodies
facultics of the kind were to be met with.

But I, what am I, now that I assume that there
is a certain genius who is extremely powerful, and,
if I dare say so, malicious and crafty, who uses
all his power and industry to deceive me? Can
I be sure that I have the Icast of all those things
that I have just said belonged to the nature of
the body? I pause to consider that attentively;
1 revolve all these things in my mind, and I find

; Y

i 30 MEAP WSCA NSE SIs

none of them which I can say are in me There
is no needfor me to ‘siay? to ‘enuimerate roiem.
Let us pass, therefore, to the attributes of the
soul, and see if there are any which may be in me.
The first attributes are [the faculties of] feeding
- “but if itis. tesa |
have no body, it is also truce that I can neither walk

mysclf and of walking

nor feed. Another is sensibility, but neither can
we feel without the body ;* “besides” 2 have, at
times thought I felt many things during sleep,
which on waking I have discovered that I had
not really felt. Another is thought, and here I
find that thought is an attribute which belongs to
me; it alone cannot be separated from me. J am,
I exts/,—that is certain, but for how long? As
long as I think; for, perhaps, if I entirely ceased to
think, I should at the same time entirely cease to
be. I now admit nothing which is not ‘of necessity
truc; therefore, strictiy speaking, I am only a
thing which thinks, that is to say, a mind, an
understanding, or a reason, terms whose significa-
tion was formerly unknown to me Now I am
a real thing, and truly existent, but what thing?
I have said it,—a thing which thinks. What
more? I will exert my imagination, to see if I
am not something more yet. I am not this

collection of members which is called the human

METAPITYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 131

body; I am not a volatile and penetrating air
diffused through these members; I am not a
wind, a breath, a vapour, or any of the things
which I can feign and imagine myself, since
I have assumed all that to be nothing, and
since without changing this assumption I find
that I do not cease to be certain that I am some-
thing.

But perhaps it is true that these very things
which I suppose not to exist, because they are
unknown to me, are not in realigditicvent from
myself, whom [ know? I cannot say; I do not
now dispute it; I cannot give my opinion except
on things which are known to me: I know that I
exist, and I am secking what I am—I, whom I
know to be. Now it is very certain that the
knowledge of my being, thus taken exactly, does
not depend on the things whose existence is not
yet known to me; consequently, it does not
depend on any of those that I can feign by
my imagination. And even these terms “feign”
and “imagination” warn me of my error. Tor I
snould feign indeed if I imagined myself to be
somcthing, since to imagine is nothing else than
to contemplate the figure or image of a material
thing: now L already know for certain that I am,

and that at the same time it may be that all these

Tg 2 NEE AD MWSICAL AMEDD EEARIO NS:

images, and gencrally all the things which are
connected with the bodily nature, are only
dreams or chimeras. J*ollowing which, I sce
clearly, that I have as little reason in’ saying, |
will excite my imagination in order to know more
exactly what I am, as if I said, I am now awake,
and perceive something real and veritable, but
because I do not yet perccive it plainly enough,
I will send mysclf to sleep expressly in order that
my dreams may represent it to me with even
\more truth and evidence. And therefore I know
clearly that nothing which I can comprehend by
means of the imagination belongs to this know-
ledge that I have concerning myself, and that
there is need to call off and deflect the mind from
this mode of conception, in order ,that it may
more exactly know its nature.

But what, then, am 1?) A thing which thinks.
What is a thing which thinks? It isa thing
which doubts. understands, conceives, affirms,
denies, wills, wills not, which also imagines, and
‘feels Certainly it is no small matter, if all these
things belong to my nature. But why should they
not belong to it? Am I not that which now
doubts of almost everything, which nevertheless
understands and conccives certain things, which
asserts and affirms these alone to be-true, and

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 133

denies the rest, which wishes | and desires to know

more of them, , which will not. be deceived, which
imagines n many things, sometimes even despite the
fact that I may have them, and which also feels
many things, as by means of the bodily organs?
Is there nothing of all this which is as true as it
is certain that I am and that I exist, even if I
were always to sleep, and he who has given me
being were to exert all his ingenuity to impose
upon me? Is there, besides, any of these attributes
which can be distinguished from my thought, or
which can be said to be separated from myself?
For it is so self-evident that it is I who doubt,
understand, and desire, that there is no need to
add here anything to explain it. And I certainly
have also the power of imagining, for although it
might happen (as I have supposed before) that the
things which I imagine are not true, nevertheless
this power of imagination does not cease to be
really in me, and makes part of my thought. In
short, Iam the same thing which feels, that is to
say, which perceives certain things, as by the
medium of the senses, since I indeed see light,
hear sound, feel heat. But I shall be told that
these appearances are false, and that I sleep. Be
it so; yet at least it is very certain that it seems
to me that I see light, hear sound, and feel heat;

134 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

jthat cannot be false; and this is properly that in
[ae which is called eae and feeling is precisely
‘nothing else than thought. From which I begin
| to know what I am with a little more clearness
and distinctness than before.

But nevertheless, it still seems to me, and I
cannot prevent myself from believing, that_the
corporeal things, whose images are formed by
thought, which fall under the senses, and which
the senses themselves examine, are much more.
distinctly known than this I know not what part
of myself which does not fall under the imagina-
tion; although in reality it is very strange to say
that I may know and understand more distinctly
things whose existence appears to me doubtful,
which are unknown to me, and which do not
belong to me, than those of the truth of which I
am persuaded, which are known to me, and which

~ypbelong to my own nature, and in a word, myself.
But I see plainly what it is——my mind is a
vagabond which likes to wander, and which cannot
yet suffer to be confined within the exact limits of
truth. Let us once again, then, slip its bridle, and
giving it every sort of liberty, permit it to consider
the objects which appear to it outwardly, so that
afterwards, when we come gently and pertinently
to restrain it, and to make it pause at the con-

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS, 135

sideration of its being and of the things it finds in
itself, it may let itself be more easily ruled and
led.

Let us now consider, therefore, the things vul-
garly esteemed to be the easiest of all to know,
and which are also believed to be those which are
known most distinctly—ze., the bodies which we
touch and -see,—not, indeed, bodies in general, for
these general notions are ordinarily a little more
confused,—but let us consider one of them in
particular. Let us take, for example, this piece
of wax: it has just been freshly brought from the
hive; it has not yet lost the softness of the honey
it once contained ; it still keeps something of the
fragrance of the flowers from which it has been
collected; its colour, shape, size, are obvious; it is
hard, cold, plastic, and if you strike it, it will make
some sound, In brief, all the things which can
distinctly indicate a body are to be found in this.

But see,—while I speak we put it near the fire ;
what savour remains to it is exhaled, the fragrance
escapes, its colour changes, its shape is lost, its
bulk increases, it becomes liquid, it grows warm,
we can scarcely manipulate it, and when we strike
it, it no longer gives any sound. Does the same
wax remain after this change? We must admit
that it does remain, no one doubts it or judges

136 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

otherwise. What, then, did we recognise in this
piece of wax with such distinctness? Certainly it
can be nothing of what I have observed in it by
the medium of the senses, since all the things
which come under taste, smell, sight, touch, and
hearing are changed, and yet the same wax re-
mains. Perhaps it was what I now think; to wit,
that this wax was neither the sweetness of honey,
nor the agreeable fragrance of flowers, nor the
whiteness, nor the shape, nor the sound, but only
a body which a little while ago appeared to me
sensible under these forms, and which now makes
itself sensible under others. But what, strictly
speaking, do I imagine, when [| conceive it in this
way? Let us consider it attentively, and dis-
carding all the things which do not belong to the
wax, see what remains. In truth, there remains
nothing but something extended, flexible, and
mutable. Now what is “flexible” and “mutable”? .
Does it not mean that I may imagine that this -
wax, being round, is capable of becoming square,
and of passing from a square to a triangular shape?

No, certainly it is not that, since I conceive it
capable of receiving an infinity of similar changes,

and yet I cannot cover this infinity by my imagina-
tion, and consequently this conception of the wax
is not the of the faculty of my imagination. |

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 137

What, now, is this extension? Is it not also
unknown? For it becomes greater when the wax
melts, greater again when it boils, and greater still
as the heat increases; and I should not con-
ceive clearly and truthfully what the wax is, if I
did not consider that this piece which we arecon- —_,
templating is capable of receiving, as regards exten-
sion, more variety than I have ever imagined of it. ’

It must therefore be agreed that_I cannot even -

comprehend by the imagination what this piece of, | \
wax is, and that it is only my sai eens iff

which can comprehend it. I say this morsel off

wax in particular, for as regards wax in general it
is yet more evident. But what is this morsel of
wax which cannot be comprehended except by
the understanding or by the mind? Certainly it
is the same that I see, and touch, and imagine; in
‘short, it is the same that I believed it to be to begin
with. Now what is to be especially noticed here,
is that its perception is not a seeing, nor a touch-
ing, nor an imagining, and never has been so,
although it appeared so before, but only an inspec-
tion of the mind, which may be imperfect and
confused, as it was before, or very clear and distinct,
as it is now, according as my attention is directed
more or less to the things which are in it and of
which it is composed.

138 METAPILYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

Yet I cannot wonder enough when I consider
how weak my mind is, and how insensibly inclined
towards error. For although I consider all that
within myself without speaking, nevertheless words
impede me, and I am almost deceived by the terms
of ordinary language, for we say that we see
the same wax, if it is present, and not that we
judge it to be the same because it has the same
colour and shape; whence I would almost conclude
that the wax is known by the sight of the eyes, and
not by the perception of the mindalone. But when
I look from the window and see men passing in the
street, I do not fail to say at the sight of them
that I see some men, just as I say that I see some
wax, and yct what do I see from the window,
except hats and cloaks which might cover arti-
ficial machines which moved only by springs?
But I judge that these are men; and thus I com-
prehend by the mere power of judging which
resides in my mind, what I believe I see with
my eyes.

A man who endeavours to raise his knowledge
above the common should be ashamed to derive
occasions for doubt from forms of speech invented
by the vulgar; I prefer to pass further, and to
consider whether I conceived with more evidence
and perfection what the wax was, when I first

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 139

perceived it, and when I believed I knew it by
means of the exterior senses, or at least by common
sense, as they call it,—that is to say, by the imagin-
ative faculty,—than I do now, after having more
carefully examined what it is, and in what way it
can be known. Certainly it would be ridiculous to
call that into question. For what was there in the
first perception which was distinct? What was
there which did not seem able in the same way
to fall under the sense of the smallest of animals?
But when I distinguish between the wax and its
exterior forms, and consider it quite naked, just as
if I had taken off its clothes, it is certain that
although some error may occur in my judgment,
I nevertheless cannot perceive it in this way with-
out a human mind.

~ But, finally, what am I to say of this mind, that
is, of myself,—for up till now I admit myself to be
mind oniy? What then? I who apparently con-
ceive this piece of wax with such exactitude and
clearness, do I not know myself, not only with more
truth and certainty, but also with more exactitude
and clearness? For if I judge that the wax is or
exists because I see it, it certainly follows yet more
evidently that because I see it, I am or exist my-
self; for it is possible that this that I see is not
indeed the wax, it is also possible even that I have

140 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

not eyes to see anything, but it is not possible that
when I see or (which is same to me) when I think
I see, I who think am not something. So that if
I judge that the wax exists, because I touch it, the
same result will follow again, to wit, that I am, and
if I judge it because my imagination or whatever
other cause it may be persuades me, I shall
always conclude the same thing. And what I
have remarked here of the wax can apply to all
the other things which are exterior to me, and
which occur outside myself. And moreover, if the
notion or perception of the wax has appeared
more exact and distinct after not only sight or
touch, but many other causes have rendered it
more manifest to me, with how much more evi-
dence, distinctness, and exactitude must it be
confessed that I at present know myself? For all
the reasons which are employed in the knowledge
and conception of the nature of wax, or of some
other body, prove much better the nature of my
mind, and there are yet so many others in the
mind itself which can help to throw light on its
nature, that such as depend on the body, as these
do, are hardly worth taking into account,

But after all, here I am, unconsciously returned
to where I wanted to be; for since it is at
present plain to me that even bodies are not

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. I4!I

properly known by the senses, or by the imagina-

tive faculty, but by the understanding alone, and

that they are not known from being seen or
touched, but only from being understood, or
clearly comprehended by the thought, I see
plainly that there is nothing more easy for me
to know than my mind. But because it is
difficult to rid myself thus precipitately of an
opinion to which I have been for so long accus-
tomed, it will be well if I pause here a while, in
order that by the length of my meditation I may
impress this new knowledge more deeply in my
memory.

THIRD MEDITATION.
OF GOD; THAT HE EXISTS.

I shall now shut my eyes, stop my ears, avert
all my senses, even efface from my thought all
~ images of corporeal things, or at least, since that
can hardly be done, I shall account them as vain
and false; and thus, communing only with myself,
and considering my innermost parts, I shall try to
become, little by little, better acquainted and more
familiar with myself» I am a thing which thinks,
that is to say, which doubts, affirms, denies, which

142 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

knows a few things, and is ignorant of many more,
which loves, hates, wills, wills not, which also
imagines, and feels. For, as I have remarked
before, although the things which I feel and
imagine may perhaps be nothing at all outside
me and in themselves, I am nevertheless assured
that these modes of thought which I call sensa-
tions and imaginations, in that they are only
modes of thought, certainly reside within me and
are all to be met with thered And in the little
that I have just said, I believe I have set down
all that I truly know, or at least all that up to
the present I have observed that I knew.

Now, to try to extend my knowledge further, I
shall use circumspection, and carefully consider
whether I shall not be able again to discover
within me other things which I have not as yet
perceived. Iam certain that Iam a thing which
thinks; but do I not, therefore, know also what -
is requisite to make me certain of anything?
Certainly in this first knowledge there is nothing
which assures me of the truth except the clear and
distinct perception of what I say, which indeed
would not be sufficient to assure me that what I say
is true, if it could ever happen that a thing which I
conceived thus clearly and distinctly were false ,
and so it seems to me that already I can establish,

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 143

as a general rule, that all the things which we
conceive very clearly and very distinctly, are true. =

Notwithstanding, I have received and admitted
plain, which, nevertheless, I have afterwards re-
cognised to be doubtful and uncertain. What,
then, were these things? They were the earth,

the heavens, the stars, and everything else that I
perceived by _the medium of _my senses. Now
what is it that I conceived clearly and distinctly
in them? Certainly, nothing except that the
ideas or thoughts of all these things presented
themselves to my mind. And still at present |

But there was yet another thing which I made
sure of, and which, because I was accustomed to
believe it, I thought I perceived very clearly,
although in truth I did not perceive it,—to wit,
that there were things outside me whence these
ideas proceeded, and which they - resembled
perfectly,—and it was there that I deluded myself;
or if perhaps I judged in accordance with the
truth, it was no cognizance that I possessed which
caused the truth of my judgment.

_ But when I considered something very simple
and very easy concerning arithmetic and
geometry,—for example, that two and_ three

144 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

added together make five, and similar things—
did I not conceive them at least sufficiently clearly
to be sure that they were true? Certainly, if I
have since judged that these things might be
doubted, it has been for no other reason than
because it came into my mind that perhaps some
God had been able to give me such a nature that
I might deceive myself even touching the things
which seemed to me the most manifest. For
every time that my preconceived opinion of the
sovereign power of a God presents itself to my
thought, I am constrained to acknowledge that it
is easy for Him, if He will, to work so that I
deceive myself, even in the things that I believe
I know with very great clearness; and on the
other hand, every time I turn to the things which I
think I conceive very clearly, I am in such a
manner persuaded by them that I let myself
declaim these words :—Deceive me who may, this,
nevertheless, he can never do,—cause me to be
nothing so long as I shall think I am something, or
make it true some day that I have never been,
since it is true now that I am, or that two and
three together might make either more or less
than five, or similar things which I see clearly
cannot be otherwise than as I conceive them. .
And certainly, since I have no reason to believe

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 145

that there is some God who is a deceiver, and
since, even, I have not yet considered those which
prove that there is a God, the reason for doubt
which depends only on this opinion is very subtle,
and, so to speak, metaphysical. But in order to
be able to remove it entirely, I must inquire
whether there is a God, as soon as occasion shall

present itself, and if I find that a God exists, we

must also inquire whether He can be a deceiver

ee
eHow
re +

for without the knowledge of these two truths P~

do not see that I can ever be certain of anything,
And so that I may have opportunity to examine
this without interrupting the order of meditation
which I have proposed to myself,—which is to pass
by degrees from the notions which I shall find
primarily in my mind, to those that I shall be able
to find there afterwards,—I must here divide all my
thoughts into certain kinds, and consider to which
of these kinds truth or error properly belongs.
Among my thoughts, some are like the images
of things, and it is to these alone that the name of
idea is properly applied, as when I represent to
myself a man, or a chimera, or the heavens, or an
angel, or God Himself. Others, again, have also
some other forms; for when I will, when I fear,
when I affirm or deny, I indeed conceive some
thing as the subject of the action of my mind, but
10

146 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

by this action I also add something else to the
idea which I have of that thing; and of this kind
of thoughts some are called wills, or affections, and
others judgments.

Now, concerning ideas,—if we consider them
only in themselves} and do not connect them with
any other thing, they cannot, properly speaking,
be false, for whether I imagine a goat or a chimera,
it is none the less true that I imagine the one than
that I imagine the other.

Nor must we fear, either, that we might encounter
falsity in the affections or will, for although I might
desire bad things, or even things which never were,
for all that it is none the less true that I desire
them.

Thus there remain only my judgments, and in
these I ought to take particular care not to deceive
myself. For the principal and the commonest
error which can occur in my judgments consists in
my judging that the ideas which are in me are like
or conformable to things which are outside me- for
certainly, if I considered the ideas only as certain
modes or forms of my thought, without desiring to
connect them with any exterior thing, they would
hardly have the power to give me any occasion
to err.

Now, among these ideas, some appear to me to

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 147

be born with me, others to be foreign and to come
from without, and others to be made and invented
by myself. For as I have the faculty of conceiving
that which is generally called a thing, or a truth,
or a thought, it seems to me that I do not derive it
from anywhere but my own nature; but if I now
hear any sound, if I see the sun, if I feel heat, up
to the present I have judged that these sensations
proceed from certain things which exist outside
me; and finally, it seems to me that sirens, hypo-
eriffs, and similar chimeras are fictions and inven-
tions of my mind. But it also may be that I can
persuade myself that all these ideas are of the kind
that I call foreign, and which come from without,
or that they are all born with me, or that they have
all been made by me, for I have not yet clearly
discovered their true origin. And what I here
have chiefly to do, is to consider, with regard to
those which seem to me to come from certain
objects outside me, what are the reasons which
oblige me to believe that they are like to those
objects.

The first of these reasons is that it seems to me
that that is taught me by nature; and the second
is that I experience in myself that these ideas do
not depend on my will, for they often present
themselves to me in spite of myself, just as at this

148 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

moment, whether I will it or will it not, I feel heat;
and for that reason I am persuaded that this
sensation or this idea of heat is produced in me by |
a thing different from myself, namely, by the heat
of the fire by which I am sitting. And I see
nothing which seems to me more reasonable than
to judge that this foreign thing instils and imprints
in me its resemblance rather than any other thing.
Now I must see if these reasons are sufficiently
strong and convincing. When I say that it seems
to me that that is taught by nature, I merely
mean by this word nature a certain inclination
which leads me to believe it, and not a natural
light which makes me know it is true. Now there
is a great difference between these two ways of
speaking, for I cannot call into question anything
which natural light shows me to be true, in
the same way that it has already shown me
that because I doubted, I could conclude that I
existed ; seeing that I have not in myself any other
faculty or power of distinguishing the true from the
false which can teach me that what this light shows
me as true is not true, and on which I can so much
depend. But as regards the inclinations which also
seem to be natural to me, I have often remarked
that when it has been a question of choosing
between the virtues and the vices, they have led me

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 149

no less towards the evil than towards the good,
which is why I need no longer follow them in
matters concerning the true and the false.

And as for the other reason,—which is that these
ideas must come from elsewhere, since they do
not depend on my will,—I find it no more
convincing. For in the same manner that the
inclinations of which I spoke just now are in me,
notwithstanding that they do not always agree
with my will, so it may be that there is within me
some faculty or power fitted to produce these ideas
without the aid. of any exterior things, although it
may as yet be unknown to me: for hitherto,
indeed, it has always seemed that when I sleep,
they form themselves in me thus without the aid
of the objects they represent. And _ finally,
although I may agree that they are caused by
these objects, it does not necessarily follow that
they ought to resemble them. On the co contrary,
I have often remarked in many cases a great
difference between the object and its idea. For
example, I find within me two quite different ideas
of the sun: the one takes its origin from the
senses, and should be placed in the category of
those which I have said above come from without,
by which it seems to me extremely small; the
other is taken from the reasonings of astronomy,

150 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

that is to say, from certain notions born with me,
or, finally, is formed by myself in some way or
other, by which it seems to me many times larger
than all the earth. Certainly these two ideas
which I conceive of the sun cannot both resemble

the same sun, and reason leads me to_believe that

that which comes directly from its appearance is
that which is most different from it, All this

makes me well aware that up to the present it
has not been by a certain and deliberate judgment,
but only by a blind and hasty impulse that I
have believed that there were things outside me,
and different from my being, which by the organs
of my senses, or by some other means, send into
me their ideas or images and impress their
appearances upon me.

But there is another way of ascertaining whether,
among the things of which I have ideas within me,
there are any which exist outside myself. That is
to say, if these ideas are taken only as certain modes
of thought, I do not recognise any difference or
inequality among them, and all appear to me to
proceed from me in the same way; but considering
them as images, of which one represents one thing
and another represents another thing, it is evident
that they are very different from each other. For
those, indeed, which represent substances to me

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. I51I

are without doubt something more, and contain in
themselves (so to speak) more objective reality,
that is to say, participate by appearance in more
degrees of being or of perfection, than “those
which represent to me merely modes or acci-
dents. Moreover, the idea by which I conceive of
a sovereign God, eternal, infinite, immutable, all-
knowing, all-powerful, and universal creator of all
things which are outside Himself,—that idea,

I say, certainly contains more_objective_reali pe-pest
than those by which finite substances are repre-

sented to me. ao
Now, natural light makes it manifest that

there ought to be at least _as_much_reality-in the

efficient and total cause as in its effect, for whence
can the effect derive its_reality, except from its...
cause?_ And how could this cause communicate Pe,
reality to the effect, if it had not reality itself?
And thence it follows, not only that a nonentity
cannot produce an entity, but also that that which

is more perfect, that is to say, which contains in V**
Puro fH

ys (FO

itself more reality, cannot be a consequence and ‘ op te
a dependence of the less perfect; and this truth ae
is not only clear and evident as regards the effects
having that reality which philosophers call actual
or formal, but also as regards the ideas in which
we consider merely the reality which they call

i523 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

objective. For example, the stone which has
never existed not only cannot now begin to be,
unless it is produced by a thing which possesses
in itself, formally or eminently,! all which enters
into the composition of a stone, that is to say,
which contains in itself the same things as those
which are in the stone, or others which are more
excellent; and heat cannot be produced in a sub-
ject which before was without heat, except by a
thing which is of an order, or a degree, or a
kind as perfect as the heat, and so with other
things. But again, besides that, the idea of heat,
or of the stone, cannot be in me, if it has not been
put there by some_cause which has at least as
much reality as I conceive to be in the heat or the

stone, for although the cause does not convey to
my idea anything of its actual or formal realit

it should not on that account be-Tmagined that
this cause ought to be less real, but we should know
that every idea being a work of the mind, its
nature is such that it does not demand for itself

any other formal reality than that which it receives
and borrows from the thought or from the mind,

1? A term invented by Descartes. If perfection is contained by a
cause and its effect in an equal degree, that perfection is contained
in the cause formally ; but if the cause contains a higher perfection
than appears in the effect, it contains it eminen/ly.

-

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 153

_of which it is only a mode, that is to say, a manner
or way of thinking. Now, in order that an idea
may contain such and such an_ objective reality
rather than another, it ought without doubt to
have that reality from some cause in which there
occurs at least as much of formal reality as this
idea itself contains of objective reality, for if we

suppose that there is something in an idea not met, -¢
with in Samagan it iellows Their, that it
derives it from nothing. But however imperfect
the mode of existence by which a thing objectively
or by representation exists in the understanding
through its idea, it nevertheless certainly cannot
be said that this mode and manner of being is

nothing, or, consequently, that this idea derives

o>)
its origin from nothing. Nor ought I to imagine
that, the reality which I consider_in my ideas
being only objective it is unnecessary for the same
reality to be formally or actually in the causes of
these ideas, but that it is sufficient for it to be in
them objectively; for in the same way that this
manner of objective being belongs to the ideas in
their own essential nature, so also the manner _or
mode of formal being belongs to the causes of
these ideas (at least to the first and principal) in
their own essential nature. And although it may
happen that one idea gives birth to another idca,

rent CO
o the

ee HK

Acre

y soQQ
prem ce
C@rcae

“” wht

So
teak

154 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

that nevertheless cannot continue ad infinitum,
but a primary idea r idea must ultimately be arrived at,
whose ‘cause may be as_a_pattern_or_original in
which is contained, formally and indeed, all_the
reality or perfection which is met with in these
that natural light makes me p!ainly aware that
ideas are in me like pictures or images, which can
in truth easily fall away from the perfection of the
things from which they have been derived, but
which can never contain anything greater or more
perfect.

And the more lengthily and carefully I examine
all these things, so much the more clearly and
distinctly I know them to be true. But what
shall I conclude from all this? I conclude that
if the reality or objective perfection of some one >
of my ideas is such that I may clearly know
that this same reality or perfection is not in me ~
either formally or eminently, and that consequently
I cannot myself be its cause, it necessarily follows
that I am not alone in the world, but that there is
yet some other thing which exists and which is the
cause of this idea; while that if there occurs in me

no such idea, I shall have no argument which can
convince me and make me certain of the existence
of any other thing than mvself, for I have sought

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 155

them most carefully, and up to the present I have
‘been able to find none. y

“Now among all these ideas which are in me,
Bacides the one which represents me to myself, in
which there cannot be any difficulty, there is another
which represents to me a God; others, corporeal and
inanimate things; others, angels; others, animals;
and lastly, those which represent to me men like
myself. But as regards the ideas which represent
to me other men, or animals, or angels, I easily
conceive that they may be formed by a mingling
and composition of other ideas which I have of
corporeal things and of God, although, except
myself, there were no other men in the world, nor
any animals, nor any angels. And as regards the
ideas of corporeal things, I recognise in them
nothing so great or so excellent that it seems it
could not emanate from myself; for if I consider
them more closely, and examine them in the
same way that I examined yesterday the idea of
the wax, I find that there is but very little in them
\which I conceive clearly and distinctly; that is to
say, size or extension in length, breadth, and
depth, the shape which results from the limitation
of this extension, the position which diversely
shaped bodies keep among themselves with regard
to one another, and motion, or the change of this

156 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

position, to which may be added substance, dura-
tion, and number. As for other things, such as
light, colours, sounds, odours, tastes, heat, cold, and
other qualities which are manifested upon contact,
they occur in my thought with so much obscurity
and confusion that I am ignorant even whether
they are true or false, that is to say, whether the
ideas which I conceive of these qualities are indeed
the ideas of some real things, or whether they
represent to me merely chimerical beings which
cannot exist. For although I have remarked
above that it is only in one’s judgments that true
and formal falsity can be met with, there can
nevertheless be found a certain material falsity in
ideas, that_is to say, when they represent what is
nothing as if it were something. For example,
the ideas that I have of heat and cold are so
obscure and indistinct, that they cannot teach me
whether cold is only absence of heat, or heat an
absence of cold, or whether both are real qualities,
or whether they are not; and more especially as,

ideas being like images, there can be none of them ;

which does not seem to represent something to us,

if it is true to say that cold is nothing but a_

deprivation of heat, the idea which represents cold

to me as something real and positive will not in- ;
appropriately be termed false, and so with others. —

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 157

But to tell the truth, there is no need for me to
attribute them to any other author but myself; for
if they are false, that is to say, if they represent
things which are not, natural light shows me
that they proceed from nothing, that is to say, that
‘they are in me only because there is something
lacking in my nature, since that nature is not all
perfect; and if these ideas are true, yet because
they present to me so little reality that 1 cannot
even distinguish the thing represented from the
non-existent, I do not see why I could not be the
author of them.

As for the clear and distinct ideas which I have
of corporeal things, there are some which, it seems

to me, might possibly have been derived from the
idea which I have of myself, such as those which
I have of substance, duration, number, and similar
things. For when I think that a stone is a sub-
stance, or a thing which of itself is capable of
existing, and that I myself also am a substance,
although I indeed conceive that I am a thing
which thinks, and without extension, and that the
stone, on the contrary, is a thing which has exten-
sion and does not think, and that thus between
these two conceptions a notable difference is to
be met with, they seem nevertheless to agree in
this point,—that they both represent substances.

158 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

In the same way, when I reflect that I exist now,
and that I recollect besides having existed before,
and that I conceive many divers thoughts of which
I know the number, then I acquire in myself the
ideas of duration and of number, which afterwards
I can apply to every other thing that I will. -

As regards other qualities of which the ideas of
corporeal things are composed, namely, extension,
shape, position, and motion, it is true that they are
not formally in me, since I am only a thing which
thinks; but because these are only certain modes
of substance, and because I myself am a sub-
stance, it seems that they can be contained in
me eminently.

There remains, therefore, the single idea of God,
in which I have to consider if there is anything

which could not have come from myself. By the
word God I mean a substance infinite, eternal,
immutable, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, —

and by which myself, and all other things which |
exist (if it is true that there are other things which~
exist), have been created and produced. Now ©
these advantages are so great and so eminent, that —
the more attentively I consider them, the less I
am persuaded that the idea that I have of them
could derive its origin from me alone. And, in
consequence, it must necessarily be concluded from

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 159

all this that I have already said, that God exists.
For although t the idea of substance is in me, even
because I am a s “substance, I. should not, never-
theless, have the idea. of an infinite substance, I
who am a finite being, if it had not been put in me
by some substance truly infinite.

And I ought not to imagine that I do not con-
ceive the infinite by a positive idéa, but only by
the negation of that which is finite, in the same
way that I understand rest and darkness by the
negation of ‘motion and light; since, on the con-
trary, I plainly see that more reality is encountered
in the infinite substance than in the finite sub-
stance, _and, therefore, that I somehow have in me
the notion of the infinite before that of the finite,
that is to say, the notion of God before the notion
of myself; for how would it be possible for me to
know that I doubt, and that I desire, that is, that
something is wanting in me, and that I am notall
perfect, if I had not within me the idea of a being
more perfect than mine, by comparison with which
being I should know the defects of my nature?

And it cannot be said that this idea of God may
be materially false, and, consequently, that I can
derive it from nothing, that is to say, that it can
be in me because I am defective, as I have already
said with regard to the ideas of heat and cold, and

160 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

similar things; for, on the contrary, this idea being
very clear and very distinct, and containing in
itself more objective reality than any other, there
is no idea which of itself is more true, or which
can be less suspected of error and falsity.

This idea, I say, of a being sovereignly perfect
and infinite is very true; for although perhaps it
might be feigned that such a being does not exist,
nevertheless it cannot be feigned that the idea of ©
him does not represent to me anything real, as I
have already said of the idea of cold. It is also
very clear and distinct, since all that my mind
conceives clearly and distinctly of the real and
the true, and which contains in itself some per-
fection, is contained and enclosed entirely in this
idea. And this does not cease to be true, although
I comprehend not the infinite, and though there is
in God an infinity of things which I cannot com-_
prehend, and to which, may be, even my thought
can in nowise attain; for it belongs to the nature
of the infinite that I, who am finite and limited, —
cannot comprehend it, and it suffices that I under-_
stand that well, and that I judge that all the
things which I conceive clearly, and in which ~
I know there is some perfection, and perhaps —
also an infinity of other things of which I am~
ignorant, are in God, formally or eminently. in

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 161

order that the idea which I have of Him may be
the most true, the most clear, and the most distinct
of all which are in my mind.

But also it may be that I am something more
than I imagine, and that all the perfections which
I attribute to the nature of a God are in some
manner in me potentially, although they do not
yet come forward or reveal themselves through
actions. Indeed, I already experience that my
knowledge increases and perfects itself little by
little, and I see nothing which can prevent its
thus increasing more and more up to infinity,
nor, also, since it is thus increased and perfected,
why I could not acquire by its means all the
other perfections of the divine nature, nor, finally,
why the power which I have of acquiring these
perfections, if it be true that it is now within me,
should not be sufficient to produce the ideas of
them. Yet in considering it a little more closely,
I recognise that that cannot be; for, in the first
place, although it were true that my knowledge
attained every day to new degrees of perfection,
and that there were many things in my nature
potentially, which are not yet there actually,
nevertheless all these advantages do not belong to
the idea that I have of the Divinity, and do not in

any way approximate to this idea, in which there is
II

162 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

nothing which_is el otential, but which

contains everything indeed. And is
not this also an infallible and very certain argument
for imperfection in my knowledge, that it grows
little by little and increases by degrees? Besides,
although my knowledge increases more and more,
nevertheless I do not fail to perceive that it
cannot be actually infinite, since it will never
arrive at such a high degree of perfection that
it will not be capable of attaining to a yet greater
growth. But I conceive God to be actually
infinite in so high a degree, that nothing can
be added to His sovereign perfection. And
finally, I can easily understand that the objective
being of an idea cannot be produced by a being
which exists only potentially, which, to speak
correctly, would be a nonentity, but only by a
formal or actual being.

And I certainly see nothing in all that I have
just said, which is not very easily recognised
through natural light by all who will give it careful
consideration; but when I relax my attention
somewhat, my mind, finding itself clouded, and
blinded, as it were, by the images of sensible
things, does not easily recollect the reason_why

my idea of a being more_perfec n_my own

should necessarily have been put in me by a
ee Sg

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 163

being who is indeed more perfect than I. This

is why I wish to pass on, and consider whether
I myself, who have this idea of God, could exist
if there were no God. And I ask, from whom

should I derive my existence? Perhaps from

myself, or from my parents, or from some other

causes less perfect than God; for nothing can be
imagined which is more perfect than He, or even
equal to Him.

Now if I were independent of every other, and if

I myself were the author of my being, I should

not doubt anything, I should conceive no desires,
and, in short, no perfection would be wanting in
me, for I should have given myself all those per-
fections of which I have any idea within me, and
thus I should be God. And I ought not to
imagine that the things which are lacking in me

-are perhaps more difficult to acquire than those of

which I am alréady in possession, for, on the con-

‘trary, it is very certain that it would be far more
‘difficult for me, that is to say, a thing or a sub-

stance which thinks, to proceed from a nonentity,
than it would be for me to acquire the understanding
and the knowledge of many things of which Iam
ignorant, and which are merely accidents of this
substance; and certainly, if I had given myself
these things I have just spoken of, that is to say,

164 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

if I myself were the author of my being, at least
I would not have denied myself things which can
be had more easily, as an infinity of knowledge of
which my nature finds itself destitute can be: I
would not even have denied myself any of the things
which I see are contained in the idea of God,
because there is none of them which seems to me
more difficult to cause or acquire; and if there were
any one of them which was more difficult, certainly
it would appear to me such (supposing that I had
from myself all the other things I possess) because
in that I should see the limitation of my power.
And although I might be able to suppose that
I may always have been as I am now, I cannot, for
all that, evade the force of this argument, and do
not cease to be aware that it is necessary that God
be the author of my being: for all the time of my
life can be divided into an infinity of parts, each
of which in nowise depends on the rest, and thus
it does not follow that because I existed a little
while ago, I ought to exist now, unless at this
moment some cause produces me, and creates me,

so to speak, over again, that is to say, conserves me_—

Indeed, it is very clear and most evident (to
all those who will give attentive consideration to
the nature of time) that a substance, in order to
‘be conserved every moment of its duration, re-

ee

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 165

quires the same power and the same action which
would be necessary to produce it and create it
entirely afresh, supposing it did not exist already.
So that this is a thing which natural light shows
us clearly,—that conservation and creation differ
only in regard to our mode of thought, and not
in actuality,

Therefore I have only to interrogate myseif
and consult with myself, in order to see whether
I have within me any power and virtue by means
of which I can cause that I who exist now, may
exist again a moment after. For since I am.
nothing but a thing which thinks, or at least,
sirice up to the present it is precisely that par-
ticular part of myself which alone is concerned,
if such a power resided within me, certainly I
ought at least to think it and be aware of it,
but I feel nothing of the kind in me, and thence
I know for certain that I depend on some being
different from myself.

But it may be that that being on whom I
depend is not God, and that I am produced by
my parents, or by some other cause less perfect
than He? Far from it, that cannot be. For, as
I have already said above, it is very evident that
there ought to be at least as much reality in the
cause as in its effect, and therefore, since I am

166 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

a thing which thinks, and which has within itself
some idea of God, whatever be the ultimate cause
of my existence, it must of necessity be acknow-
ledged that this cause is also a thing which thinks,
and that it has in itself the idea of all the perfec-
tions which I attribute to God. Then one may
begin to inquire all over again whether this cause
derives its origin and its existence from itself, or
from some other thing. For if it derive it from
itself, it follows from the reasons that I have
adduced above, that this cause is God, since that,
having the virtue of being and existing by itself,
it ought also, without doubt, to have the power
of possessing actually all the perfections of which
it has the ideas within it, that is to say, all those
that I conceive to be in God. For if it derives
its existence from some cause cther than itself,
we shall ask again, for the same reason, whether
this second cause is caused by itself, or otherwise,
until by degrees we finally arrive at an ultimate
cause, which will be found to be God. And therein
it is very manifest that there can be no pro-
gression to the infinite, seeing that it is not so
much the cause which formerly produced me,
which is concerned here, as that which conserves ~
me in the present.
Nor can we feign that many causes together

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 1607

may have concurred in sharing my _ production,
and that from one of them I have received the
idea of one of the perfections which I attribute
to God, and from another the idea of some other,
so that all these are indeed to be found in some
part of the universe, but do not occur conjoined
and gathered together in one Being alone,
which is God. For, on the contrary, the unity,
the simplicity, or the inseparability of all the
things which are in God is one of the principal
perfections which I conceive to be in Him; and
certainly the idea of this unity of all God’s
perfections could not have been put in me by
any cause which has not also given me the ideas
of all the other perfections. For this cause could
not have been able to make me comprehend all these
perfections joined together and inseparable, with-
out having made me at the same time to know
in some measure what they are, and in some
way to recognise each one of them.

_ Finally, as regards my parents, from whom it
appears that I derive my birth, although all that
I have ever been able to believe of them be true,
that nevertheless does not make it to be they:
who conserve me, nor even that it is they who.
have made and produced me in so far as I am
a thing which thinks, there being no connection

168 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

between the natural process by which I have
been accustomed to believe that I was begotten,
and the production of such a substance. But,
at the most, what they have contributed to my
being is that they have put certain tendencies
into the matter in which I have hitherto judged
that I (that is to say, my mind, which alone I
am now taking as myself) am contained, and
therefore there cannot be any difficulty here with
regard to them, but it must necessarily be con-
cluded that from the mere fact that I exist, and
that the idea of a sovereignly perfect being (that
is to say, of God) is in me, the existence of God
is very evidently demonstrated.

It only remains for me now to examine in what
way I have acquired this idea. For I have not
received it through the senses, and it was never
offered to me against my expectation, like the
ideas of ‘sensible things, when these things present
themselves, or appear to present themselves, to
my exterior organs of sense. Neither is it a
pure production or fiction of my mind, for it is
not in my power to diminish it or to add anything
to it; and consequently there is nothing more for
me to say, except that this idea was born and
produced with me at the time I was created, in
the same way as the idea of myself.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 169

_ And truly it ought not to be considered strange
that God, in creating me, has put into me this idea,
to be as the mark of the workman imprinted on
his work. Nor is it necessary for this mark to
‘be something different from the work itself. But
‘from the fact alone that God created me, it is
most credible that He in some way produced me
in His image and likeness, and that I conceive this
likeness (in which the idea of God is contained) by
the same faculty as that by which I conceive my-
self; that is, when-I reflect on myself I am not only
aware that I am an imperfect thing, incomplete
and dependent on something else, which ceaselessly
strains and aspires towards something better and
greater than itself, but I also recognise at the same
time that he on whom I depend possesses in him-
self all those great things towards which I aspire,
and of which I find the ideas within me,—not
indefinitely, and merely potentially, but that He
enjoys them indeed, actually and infinitely, and
thus that He is God. And all the force of the
argument of which I have here made use in order
to prove the existence of God, consists in this:—
That I recognise that it would not be possible for
my nature to be such as it is, that is to say,
for me to have the idea of a God within me, if God
did not truly exist,—this same God, I say, of whom

170 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

the idea is within me, that is, who possesses all
those high perfections of which our mind can
indeed have some slight idea, without, however,
the power to comprehend them; who is subject to
no defects, and who has nothing which evidences
any imperfection. Whence it is sufficiently plain
that He cannot be a deceiver, since natural light
teaches us that deceit necessarily depends on some
defect.

But before I examine that more carefully, and
pass to the consideration of other truths which may
be gathered from it, it seems to me very appro-
priate that I should pause a while to contemplate
this all-perfect God, to ponder at leisure His mar-
vellous attributes, to consider, to admire, and to
adore the incomparable beauty of this great light,
at least so far as the strength of my mind, which ~
stands in some measure dazzled before it, may
allow mie.

For as we learn by faith that the sovereign
felicity of the other life consists solely in this con- —
templation of the Divine Majesty, so let us make
trial from henceforth whether a like meditation,
although incomparably less perfect, will make us
enjoy the greatest contentment that we are capable
of feeling in this life.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 171

“FOURTH MEDITATION.
OF THE TRUE AND THE FALSE.

I have so accustomed myself during the past
| few days to detach my mind from the senses, and
I have so accurately observed that concerning
corporeal substances we know but very little,
that concerning the human mind we know very
much more, and that concerning God Himself we
know yet more still, that it will now be easy for me
to turn my thought from the consideration of
sensible or imaginable things, in order to carry
it towards those which, being freed from all
matter, are purely intellectual.

And certainly the idea that I have of the human
mind, in so far as it isa thing which thinks, and
which has no extension in length, breadth, and
depth, and which participates in nothing which
belongs to the body, is incomparably more distinct
than the idea of any corporeal thing; and when I
consider that I doubt, that is to say, that I am an
incomplete and dependent thing, the idea of a
complete and independent being, that is to say, of
God, presents itself to my mind with so much dis-
tinctness and clearness, and from the mere fact
that this idea is in me, or that I am, or exist,—l,

172 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

who possess this idea,—I so surely conclude the
existence of God, and that my existence depends
entirely on Him every moment of my life, that I
do not think the human mind can be cognisant of
anything with more evidence and certainty. And
already it seems to_me that I discover a road which
shall lead us from this contemplation of the true
God God (in whom all the treasures of knowledge and
wisdom are contained) to the knowledge of other
things in the universe. Pier tr oe
For, in the first place, I recognise that it is
impossible that He ever deceives me,-since in all
fraud < and deccit there is some sort of imperfection
to be met with: and although it seems that it is a
mark of subtilty, or of power, to be able to deceive,
yet to wish to deceive testifies without doubt to
feebleness or malice. And therefore deceit cannot —
be met with in God
And then I am aware by my own experience —
that there is within me a_certain faculty of judging,
or of discerning the true from the false, which
without doubt I have received from God, as well
as all the other things which are within me and
possessed by me; and since it is impossible that
He should wish to deceive me, it is also certain
that He has not made this faculty such that I can
ever fail, when I make use of it in the proper way.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 173

_And there would remain no doubt on that point,
it seems, if we could not draw from it this
_inference,—that thus, therefore, I can never deceive
'myself; for if all that is within me comes from
God, and if He has not put in me any faculty of
failure, it appears that I ought never to delude
myself, Thus it is true that, when I regard myself

merely as coming from God, and when I turn

| myself entirely towards Him, I do not_discover
within me any cause of error or of falsity; but
| immediately after returning to myself, experience
| makes me aware that I nevertheless am subject to
| an infinity of errors. And on coming to seek the
cause of these errors, I notice that not only is there
| present to my thought a real and positive idea of
| God, or of a sovereignly perfect being, but also,
| so to speak, a certain negative idea of the nothing,
| that is to say, that which is infinitely remote from
| every kind of perfection, and that I am as a centre
| between God and nothing, that is, placed in such
| wise midway between the sovereign Being and
| the_non-being, that truly there does not occur in
| me anything which is able to lead me into error,
insomuch as a sovereign Being has produced me;
but that if I consider myself as participating in
| some way in the nothing or non-being, that is to
say, insomuch as I am not myself the sovereign

174 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

being, and that many things are lacking to me,
I find myself exposed to an infinity of deficiencies,
so that I ought not to be surprised if I do deceive
myself.

In this way I know that_error, being what it is,
uss Sis not something real hides depends _ on God, but
par ee “only a defect ; and therefore that in order to fail I

have no necd of a faculty given to me from God
for that particular purpose, but that it may
happen that I deceive myself because the power
which God has given me to discern the true from
the false is not infinite in me.

I am not quite satisfied yet, however, for error is
not a pure negation, that is to say, it is not a
simple deficiency or lack of some perfection which
is nothing to do with me, but it is the deprivation |
or want of some knowledge which it seems I ought
.to possess. Now in considering the nature of God, ©
it does not appear possible that He should have
put in me any faculty which is not, perfect of its”
_kind, that is to say, a faculty lacking some—

perfection which it ought to have; for if it is true

that the more expert the artificer, the more perfect
and finished the works which come from his hands,

what thing can have been produced by ‘this
sovereign creator of the universe, which is not
perfect and complete in all its parts? And

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 175

certainly there is no doubt that God could have
created me so that I might never deceive myself; it
is also certain that He always wills what_is
best ; is it then a better thing for me to be able to
deceive myself than not to be able to do so?

When I consider that attentively, the first thing
that occurs to my mind is that I ought not to be
surprised if I am not capable of understanding
why God does what He does; and that His
existence must not be doubted because, may be I
see by experience many other things which exist,
vithout being able to comprehend for what reason,
r in what way, God has made them; for knowing
lready that my nature is extremely feeble and
imited, and that God’s, on the contrary, is
mmense, incomprehensible, and infinite, I no
onger have any difficulty in recognising that_there
s an infinity of things in His power, whose causes
re beyond the reach of my mind: and this_one_
eason alone is sufficient to persuade me _ that
the kind of causes which we are accustomed to call
nal is of no use in physical or natural matt st
or it does not seem to me that I can without
ashness seek out and undertake to discover the

penetrable purposes of God.
Again, it occurs to me that we ought not to
onsider one single creature separately when

176 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

inquiring whether the works of God are perfect,
but generally all the creatures together ; for the |
same thing which might, perhaps, with some sort of
reason, appear very imperfect if it were all alone in|
the world, would not fail to be very perfect when |
considered as forming part of the whole universe : |
and although, since I formed the design of
doubting everything, I have not yet known any- |
thing for certain, except my own existence and |
God’s, yet, also, since I have recognised the infinite
power of God, I cannot deny that He may have
produced many other things, or at least that He
could have produced them, so that, I exist and am
put into the world as forming part of the |
universality of every being Sa
Hdinguled by this Tees more closely at my-_
self, and to consider what my errors are (which
alone testify that there. is imperfection within
me), I find that they depend on the concurrence
of two causes, namely, the faculty of knowing,

which is within_me, and the faculty | of choice or
a Ce ee

free will, that is to say, of my understandin
together with my will. For by the understanding
alone I neither affirm nor deny anything, but.
I merely conceive the ideas of things which
may affirm or deny. For in considering the

understanding thus exactly, it may be said tha

os

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. iff

there is never any error in it, provided that the
word error is taken in its proper signification.
And although, perhaps, there may be an infinity
of things in the world of which I have no idea
in my understanding, it cannot therefore be said
that my understanding is deprived of these ideas,
as of something which is due to its nature, but
only that it has them not, because indeed there
is no reason which can prove that God ought to

have given me_a_ greater _and wider faculty of
cnowing than He has given_me; and however

kilful and wise a workman I picture Him, I!
ought not on that account to think that He
ught to have put into each of His works all
the perfections which He is able to put into
ome. Nor can I complain that God has not
iven me a free will, or a sufficiently ample and
erfect will, since I indeed experience it to be
je ample_and so extensive that it has no limits.
nd what seems to me here very remarkable,
that of all the other things which are in me
lere is none so perfect and so great that I may
Jot recognise plainly that it might be yet greater
d more perfect. For, for example, if I consider
e faculty of conception which is in me, I find
is of a very small extent and greatly limited,

id then I represent to myself the idea of another
12

178 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

faculty much amplcr, and even infinite, and from
the mere fact that I can represent the idea of it
to myself, I know without difficulty that this
greater faculty belongs to the nature of God. In
the same way, if I examine the memory, or the
imagination, or any other faculty which is in me,
I find none which is not very small and narrow,
and which in God is not immense and infinite.
It_is only the will, or the mere liberty of freey
choice, which I feel to be so great within me

that I cannot conceive the idea of any other will

ampler_and_more_extensive; so that it is the
will, principally, which makes me aware that I

bear the image and likeness of God. For although —
the will be incomparably greater in God than
in me, whether because of the knowledge and
power which are joined to it and make it firmer |,
and more efficacious, or whether because of its
object, seeing that it reaches and extends infinitely
to many, things, it yet does not seem to me greater,
if I consider it formally and exactly in itself. For

~~ np- waeS= wa ca

will consists only in our being able to do this o
that, or not to do it (that is, affirm or deny, follov
or avoid a certain thing), or, rather, it consist
only in this,—that in order to affirm or deny, pur
sue or avoid the things which the_understandin
proposes to us, we act in such a way that wed

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 179
Pe. rene (90. wil

not feel constrained to it nal force. For

in order for me to be free, it is not necessary for
me to be indifferent as to whether I choose the
one or the other of the two opposites, but rather,
the more that I incline towards the one, whether
I know evidently that the good and the true are
to be found in it, or whether God thus disposes
the inmost part of my thought, the more freely
I choose and embrace it; and certainly the divine

grace and natural Paniledes, so far from diminish-
ing my liberty, rather increase and strengthen it,
so that the indifference that 1 feel when I am
not disposed towards one side rather than another

by the weight of some reason, is the lowest degree

of liberty, and shows a deficiency in knowledge
rather than_a_perfection in the will. For if I

lways knew clearly what is true and what is
ood, I should never have any difficulty in resolving
vhat judgment and choice I ought to make, and
hus I should be entirely free without ever being
eecrent.!

From all this I perceive that it is not the power
o will, which I have received from God, which is
he cause of _my errors, for it is very wide and
ery perfect of its kind; neither is it the power of
‘}inderstanding or conceiving which causes them;
r conceiving nothing but by mcans of this power

«

180 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

of conception given to me by God, without doubt

all that I conceive, I conceive as it must be,
and it is not possible that I deceive myself therein.
Whence, then, do my errors spring? Merely
from the fact that the will being much ampler

and more extended than the soderstanding, do ~

being itself indifferent to these, it is very ce
led astray, and chooses the false for the true, and
evil for good. In this way I deceive myself, and
sin.

For example, while examining during these last
few days whether anything really existed in the
world, and knowing that from the fact that I
examined this question it plainly followed that I
existed myself, I could not prevent myself from
judging that a thing which I conceived so clearly
was true. Not that I found myself forced to that
conclusion by any external cause, but only because

a great _clearness which was in my-understanding

was followed by a great inclination in my will,

and I am inclined to believe with all the more
liberty, that I find myself to have less indifference,

On the contrary, at present I not only know that

I exist, insomuch as I am something which thinks,
but a certain idea of the corporeal nature also-

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 181

presents itself to my mind, which makes me doubt
whether the nature which thinks, which is in me,
or rather which is I myself, is different from this
corporeal nature, or whether the two are not but
the same thing. And here I assume that I do
not yet know any reason which can persuade me
of one opinion rather than the other: whence it
follows that I am entirely indifferent as to whether
I deny it, or affirm it, or even abstain from giving
any judgment upon it.

And this indifference not only extends to the
things of which the understanding has no know-
ledge, but also, as a rule, to all those which it does.
not perceive perfectly clearly at the moment when
the will deliberates upon them; for however prob-
able the conjectures which render me inclined to
judge some one thing, the mere knowledge that

they are only conjectures and not certain
and indubitable reasons, is sufficient to give

me occasion of judging the contrary. This
I have sufficiently experienced these last few days,
when I have assumed as false all that I have
formerly held to be quite true, only because I
have noticed that it might in some way be
doubted. ;

For if I abstain from giving my judgment ona
thing when I do not conceive it with sufficient

182 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

clearness and distinctness, it is evident that I do
well, and that I am not deceived. But if I resolve
to deny it, or affirm it, then I do not make the use
I should of my free will, and if I affirm what is
not true, it is evident that I deceive myself; even
although I judge according to the truth, it is only
by chance that that happens, and I fail all the
same, and misuse my free will. For natural light
teaches us that the knowledge of the: understand-
ing ought always to precede the determination
of the will. And it is in this misuse of the free
will th that is is found the deprivation which constitutes
the body of error. The deprivation, I say, occurs
in the operation, in so far as it proceeds from me;

but it is not in the which J have received

from God, nor even in the operation in so far as

)

it depends on Him, for I certainly have no reason |
to murmur because God has not given me a wider |
intelligence or a brighter natural light than He
has given me, since it belongs to the nature of
a finite understanding not to under many.
things, and to the nature of a created under-
standing to be finite. But because, though He has
never owed me anything, He has nevertheless
given me such small perfections as are in me, I
“have every reason to render Him thanks, so far from
conceiving sentiments so wrong as to imagine

j
{

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 183

that IIc has taken from me, or unjustly withheld,
such other perfections as He has not given me.
Nor have I any cause to complain that He has

given me a will more ample than my understanding,

‘since, as the will consists only in one single thing,

and as indivisible, it seems that its nature is such
that nothing can be taken away from it without
destroying it; and certainly, the more extended it
is, the more I have to thank the goodness of Him
who has given it me.

Nor, finally, ought I to murmur because God
concurs with me in forming the actions of this
will, that is to say, the judgments in which I
deceive myself, because these actions are entirely
true, and absolutely good, in so far as they depend
on God, and there is in some way more perfection
in my nature, because I am able to form them,

than if I were not able to form them. And the

deprivation in which alone consists the formal
cause of error and of sin, has no need of the
concurrence of God, because it is not a thing, or

-a being, and because if we connect it with God as

its cause, it ought not to be called deprivation,
but only negation, according to the signification
which is given to these words in the school. For
indeed it is not an imperfection in God, that He
has given me the liberty of giving my judgment

184 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

or withholding it, on certain things of which He.
has not put a clear and distinct knowledge into
my understanding, but without doubt it is an
imperfection in me that I do not use this liberty
well, and that I rashly give my judgment—on
things which I conceive only with obscurity and |
confusion. de

Nevertheless I sce that it were easy for God to
work so that I might never deceive myself,
although I remained free, and of a _ limited
knowledge; for example, if He had given my
understanding a clear and distinct intelligence of
all the things on which I ought ever to deliberate,
or if only He had so deeply engraven in my
memory the resolution never to judge anything
without conceiving it clearly and distinctly, that I
could never forget it. And I plainly see that in
so far as I consider myself alone, just as if there
were only myself in the world, I should have been
much more perfect than I am, if God had created
me so that I might never fail. But I cannot on
that account deny that it is in some way a greater
perfection in the universe that some of its parts
are not exempt from defects, and that others are.
than if they were all alike.

And I have no right to complain that God,
having put me into the world, has not willed

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 185

to set me among the noblest and most perfect
things: I have even cause for content, in that if
He has not given me the perfection of never
failing, by the first means that I have set forth
above,—namely, that which depends on a clear
and evident knowledge of all the things on which
I can deliberate——He has at least left in my

eras or ree eae eee
power the other means, namely, that of holding
firmly the resolve never to give my judgment

on things whose truth is not clearly known to

me; for although I experience in myself the
weakness of being unable to attach my mind
continually to the same thought, yet, by attentive
meditation frequently repeated, I can impress it
so firmly in my memory that I never fail to
recollect it every time I have need of it, and thus

acquire the habit of never failing. And seeing
that that is what constitutes man’s greatest_and
principal perfection, I deem that I have gained
not a little to-day by this meditation, in having
discovered the cause of error and_falsity.

And certainly there can be no other causes of
error but the one I have just explained. For it
cannot be that I deceive myself every time I so

confine my will within the limits of my knowledge,

that it makes no judgment except on things clearly
and distinctly represented to it by the understanding;

186 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

because every clear and distinct coneegelgaeeeckdll
out doubt something, and thus cannot derive
its origin from nothin but must necessarily
have God Tor Tis author, -God, I say, who, being
sovercignly perfect, cannot be the cause of any
crror: and consequently it must be concluded that
such a conception or such a judgment is true.

For the rest, I have not only learned to-day what
I have to avoid in order to fail no more, but also
what I ought to do in order to arrive at the know-
ledge of truth. For certainly I shall arrive at it if
I allow my attention to dwell long enough on
all the things that I conceive perfectly, and if I
separate them from other things which I conceive
only with confusion and obscurity, to which, from
this time forward, I shall take careful heed.

FIFTH MEDITATION.

OF THE ESSENCE OF MATERIAL THINGS, AND
AGAIN OF GOD, THAT HE EXISTS.

There remain to me many other things to
examine concerning the attributes of God, and
touching my own nature, that is to say, the nature
of my mind ; but another time, perhaps, I will take

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. I 87

up this inquiry. For the present (after having
noticed what it is necessiry to do or to avoid in
order to arrive at the knowledge of truth) what I
chiefly have to do is to try and emerge from the
doubts into which I have fallen during these past
days, and rid myself of them all, and see
whether we cannot know something certain touch-
ing material things.

But before I examine whether any things of the
kind exist outside myself, 1 ought to consider the
ideas of them, so far as they are in my thought,
and see which of these ideas are distinct and which
are confused.

In the first place, I distinctly imagine the
quantity which philosophers commonly call con-
tinued quantity, or the extension in length, breadth,
and depth which is in this quantity, or rather, in
the thing to which it is attributed. Again, I can
enumerate many different parts of it, and attribute
to each part all kinds of sizes, shapes, positions,
and motions; and finally, I can assign to each
motion all sorts of durations. And I not only
know these things with distinctness, when I thus
consider them generally, but also, however little I
apply my attention to them, I come to recognise
an infinity of particulars concerning numbers,
shapes, motions, and similar things, the truth of

188 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

which manifests itself so evidently, and agrees so
well with my nature, that when I begin to discover
these things, it does not seem to me that I appre-
hend anything fresh, but rather that I call to
remembrance something I already knew before,
that is to say, that I perceive things which were
already in my mind, although I had not as yet
directed my thought towards them.

And what I find most important here, is that I
discover in myself an infinity of ideas of certain
things which cannot be estimated as pure non-
entities, notwithstanding that they may perhaps
have no existence outside my thought, and which
are not feigned by me, although I am free to think
them, or not to think them, but which have their _
true and immutable natures. As, for example,
when I imagine a triangle, although perhaps no
such figure exists or ever has existed in any part
of the world except my thought, there nevertheless
does not fail ‘to be a certain nature’or form or
essence _ determined by this figure, which ig im-
mutable and eternal, which I, have not invented,
and which inno way depends on my mind, as is
shown by the fact that one can demonstrate divers
properties of this triangle——for example, that its
three angles are equal to two right angles, that the
greatest angle is sustained by the greatest side,

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 189

and similar things, which, whether I will or no, I
now recognise very clearly and very evidently to
be in it, although I did not think of them before
in any way, when I imagined a triangle for the
first time ; and thus it cannot be said that I have
feigned and invented them.

And I cannot object here that perhaps this idea
of the triangle has entered my mind by the
medium of my senses, through my having some-
times seen bodies of a triangular shape; for I can
form in my mind an infinity of other figures
concerning which there cannot be the least
suspicion that they have ever fallen under my
senses, and nevertheless I do not fail to be able
to demonstrate divers. properties concerning their
nature, as well as concerning the nature of the
triangle, which certainly ought all to be true, since
I conceive them clearly, and thus they are some-
thing, and not a pure nonentity. For it is very
evident that all which is true is something, truth
being one with existence, and I have already
amply demonstrated above that all the things
which I know clearly and distinctly are true.
And although I had not demonstrated it, yet the
nature of my mind is such that I cannot prevent
myself from esteeming them true, so long as I
conceive them clearly and distinctly; and I

a —te

190 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

recollect that even when I was yet very strongly
attached to the objects of the senses, I
considered as among the number of the most
constant truths those which I conceived clearly
and distinctly as regards shapes, numbers, and the
other things which belong to arithmetic and
geometry.

And now, if from the mere fact that I can extract
from my thought the idea of something, it follows
that all which I recognise clearly and distinctly as
belonging to this thing belongs to it indeed, can I
not draw therefrom an argument, and a demonstra-
tive proof of the existence of God? It is certain
that I do not find the idea of Him, that is to say,
the idea of a being sovereignly perfect, any less in
me than the idea of some figure or some number ;
and I do not recognise that an actual and eternal
existence belongs to His nature less clearly and
distinctly than I recognise that all that I can
demonstrate of some figure or of some number
belongs truly to the nature of this figure or this
number; and thus although all that I have concluded
in the preceding meditations were untrue, the
existence of God should pass in my mind for at
least as certain as I have hitherto esteemed the
truths of mathematics to be, which regard only
numbers and figures, although, indeed, that does

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. IQ!

not at first seem entirely manifest, but seems to
have some appearance of sophistry. For being
accustomed, as regards everything else, to draw a

distinction between existence and essence, I easily
persuade myself that existence can_be separated

from the essence of God, and that thus God can be

conceived as not actually existing. But_never-
theless, when I think of it more attentively, it is
manifest that existence can no more be separated
from the essence of God, than the size of its three
angles equal to two right angles can be separated
from the essence of a rectilinear triangle, or the
idea of a valley from the idea of a mountain; so
that it is no less repugnant to conceive a God (that
is to say, a sovereign perfect being) who lacks
existence (that is to say, to whom some per‘’ection
is wanting) than to conceive a mountain which has
no valley.

But although, indeed, I can no more conceive
a God without existence than I can conceive a
mountain without a valley, yet, as from the mere
fact that I conceive a mountain with a valley, it
does not follow that there is any mountain in the
world; so, also, although I conceive God as
existing, it does not seem to follow, on that

account, that God exists; for my thought imposes
no necessity on_ things, and as it rests but with

os las
ure |

es ><

192 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

myself to imagine a winged horse, although there
be no horse which has wings, I should thus
perhaps be able to attribute existence to God,
although there were no God existing.

Far from it: it is here that there is a sophism,
masked by the probability of this objection; for
because I cannot conceive a mountain without a
valley, it dces not follow that there. is any moun-
tain in the world, or any valley, but merely that
the mountain and the valley, whether they exist
or whether they do not exist, are inseparable the
one from the other; whereas from this alone—
that I cannot conceive God except as existing—
it follows that existence is inseparable from Him,
and thus that He truly exists. Not that my
thought could make that to be, or that it imposes
any necessity on things; but, on the contrary,
the necessity which is in the thing itself, that is to’
say, the necessity of the existence of God, causes
me to have this thought, for I am not at liberty
to conceive a God without existence, that is to.
say, a sovereignly perfect being without a sovereign —
perfection, as I am at liberty to imagine a horse —
with wings, or without them.

And here it ought not to be said that in truth it”
is necessary that I acknowledge that God exists,
after having supposed Him to possess all sorts of

:

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 193

perfections, since existence is one of them, but that
my first_supposition was not necessary, any more
than it is necessary to think that all four-sided
figures can be inscribed in the circle; but
supposing I have this thought, I am constrained
to acknowledge that the rhombus, since it is a
four-sided figure, can be inscribed there, and thus
I shall be constrained to acknowledge a falsity.
That, I say, ought not to be alleged ; for although
it is not a necessity that I ever fall into any
thought of God, nevertheless, every time that I
ee es te premier and sovertien being,
and to select, so to speak, the idea of him from my
mind’s treasure, it is_a necessity y that I attribute
to ‘him every sort of perfection, although I may~
not come to enumerate them all, and to fix my
attention on each of them in { particular. And this

necessity is sufficient (so soon as I come to recog-
nise that existence is a perfection) to make me

plainly conclude that this premier and sovereign
being exists, in the same way that it is not neces-
sary for me ever to imagine any triangle; but
every time I wish to consider a rectilinear figure
composed only of three angles, it is absolutely
necessary that I attribute to it all the things
which serve to show that its three angles are not
greater than two right angles, although perhaps
13

194 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

I do not at the moment consider that fact in parti-
cular. But when I examine what figures are
capable of being inscribed in the circle, it is in
nowise necessary that I think that all four-sided
figures are included in them; on the contrary, I
cannot even feign that that is so, as long as I shall
desire to receive into my thought nothing but
what I shall be able to conceive clearly and dis-
tinctly. And consequently there is a great differ-
ence between the false suppositions, like this one,
and the true ideas which are born with me, of
which the premier and principal is that of God.

For I indeed recognise in many ways that
this idea is not something feigned or invented,
depending only on my thought, but that it is
the image of a true and immutable nature; in
the first place, because I cannot conceive any
other thing than God alone, to whose essence
existence belongs of necessity, and in the second,
because it is not possible for me to conceive two’
or more Gods such as He, and assuming that
there is one such who now exists, I see clearly
that it is necessary that He must have existed
before all eternity, and that He will be eternally
in the future; and finally, because I conceive
many other things in God which I can in no-
wise change or diminish.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 195

For the rest, whatever proof and argument I
make use of, I must always come back to this
point,—that it is only the things which I conceive
clearly and distinctly which have the power of
entirely persuading me.\ And although among the
things that I conceive in this manner there may
indeed be some manifestly known to every one, and
some also which reveal themselves only to those
who consider them more-closely, yet after they are

once discovered they are esteemed _no less certain
than the others. As, for example, although in

every rectilinear triangle it does not at first appear
that the square of the base is equal to the squares of
the two other sides so plainly as it does that thisg
base is opposite to the greatest angle, nevertheless,
as soon as that has once been recognised, we are
as fully persuaded of the truth of the one as of
the other. And certainly as regards God; if my
mind were not prepossessed by old prejudices,
there would not be anything which I recognised
sooner or more easily than Him. For is there
anything which is of itself more clear and mani-
fest than the thought that there is a God, that is
to say, a sovereign and perfect being, in the idea
of whom alone necessary or eternal existence is
comprised, and who, therefore, exists ?

And although to conceive this truth plainly I

y 196 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.
af
. .~ needed great mental application, yet at present I
aes

,{ not only rely on it no less surely than on all
which appears to me most certain, but, in addition,
gf I remark that the certainty of all other things
a depends on it so absolutely, that without this

knowledge it is impossible ever to be able to

Yo
:

know anything perfectly.

For although my nature is such that as soon
as I comprehend something very clearly and very
distinctly, I cannot prevent myself from believing
it to be true; yet because this nature of mine is
also such that I cannot keep my mind continually
attached to the same thing, and recollect having often

Judged a thing to be true, when I cease to consider
,the reasons which obliged me to judge it to
_be so, it may then happen that other reasons
_ present themselves to me which would easily make

me inion if I were ignorant that a

_ existed, and thus I should never have a true and
certain knowledge of anything at all, but only vague
' and uncertain opinions.

As, for example, when I consider the nature of
the rectilinear triangle, I know for certain—I who
am a little versed in geometry—that its three
angles are equal to two right angles, and it is
impossible for me not to believe it, so leng as I

apply my thought to its demonstration, but as

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 197

soon as I turn away from it, although I may
remember having clearly comprehended it, yet
it can easily happen that I doubt its truth, if I
am ignorant that a God exists; for I can persuade
myself that I have been made by nature in such
a way that I can easily deceive myself even in
the things which I believe I understand with the
most clearness and certainty, seeing, chiefly, that I
remember often having reckoned many things as
true and certain, which other reasons have after-
wards led me to judge absolutely false.

But after having recogni hat there is a God,
because at the same time I have also recognised

that everything depends on Him, and that—He,

is not_a deceiver, and consequently have judged
that all which I conceive clearly and distinctly

cannot fail to be true; although I no longer
think of the reasons by which I have judged
that to be true, provided only that I- recollect
having clearly and distinctly comprehended it, no
contrary reason can be brought forward which
may ever make me call it into question; and
thus I have ‘a true and certain knowledge of
it. And this same knowledge extends also to
every other thing which I remember having
demonstrated before, as well as to the truths of
geometry, and similar things: for what objection

198 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

can be brought forward to oblige me to call them
into question? That my nature is such that I
am very liable to be mistaken? But I already
know that I cannot deceive myself in judgments
the reasons for which I know clearly. That I
have at times esteemed many things as true and
certain which I have afterwards seen to be false?
But I did not perceive any of these things either
clearly or distinctly, and not then knowing that

rule by which I assu thy: I

was led to believe them by_reasons which I
have since recognised to be_less_strong than I
imagined them at the time. What more, then,
shall any one be able to object? That I sleep,
perhaps (as I myself have objected above), or
that all the thoughts which I now have are no
more true than the dreams which we imagine
when asleep? But even if I were asleep, all
which presents itself to my mind with evidence
is absolutely true.

And thus I recognise very clearly that the

certainty and the reality of all knowledge depends

only on the knowledge of od, so that

before I knew Him, I could not know anything
else perfectly. And now that I do know Him,
I have the means of acquiring perfect knowledge
concerning an infinity of things, not only those

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS, 199

which are in Him, but those also which belong
to the corporeal nature, in so far as geometers
can use it as the object of their demonstrations,
which have nothing at all to do with its existence.

SIXTH MEDITATION.

OF THE EXISTENCE OF MATERIAL THINGS, AND
THE REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN’S
MIND AND HIS BODY.

It only remains for me now to examine whether
any material things exist; and certainly I already
know that at least material things can exist, in
so far as they are considered as the object of
geometrical demonstrations, seeing that by this
means J] conceive them very clearly and very
distinctly. For there is no doubt at all that
God has the power of producing everything that
I am capable of conceiving distinctly, and I have
never judged it impossible for Him to cause
any thing, as by that alone I found contradic-
tion in the power of perfect conception. More-
over, the faculty of imagining which is within
me, and which I see by experience I make use
of when I apply myself to the consideration of

200 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

material things, is capable of persuading me of
their existence, for when I consider attentively
what imagination is, I find it is only a certain
application of the faculty which perceives, to the
body which is intimately present to it, and thus
which exists.

And to make that plainer, I first remark the
difference between imagination and pure intellec-
tion, or conception. For example, when I imagine
a triangle, I not only conceive that it is a figure
composed of three lines, but, at the same time, I
behold these three lines as present by the force and
inward application of my mind, and it is properly
this which I call imagination. While if I wish to
think of a chiliogon, I indeed conceive truly that
it is a figure composed of a thousand sides, as
easily as I conceive that a triangle is a figure com-
posed of three sides only, but I cannot imagine the
thousand sides of a chiliogon as I can the three
sides of a triangle, or, so to speak, regard them as
present with my mind’s eye. And although, ac-
cording to my usual custom of always making use
of my imagination when I think of corporeal things,
it happens that in conceiving a chiliogon I con-
fusedly represent to myself some figure, yet it is
very evident that this figure is not a chiliogon,
since it in no way differs from that which I should

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 201

represent to myself if I thought of a myriogon, or
some other many-sided figure, and in no way helps
to discover the properties which make the differ-
ence between the chiliogon and other polygons.
But if it is a question of considering a pentagon, it
is very true that I am able to conceive its shape as
well as that of a chiliogon, without the aid of my
imagination, but I can also imagine it by directing
the attention of my mind to each of its five sides,
and to the area or space which they enclose. Thus
I know clearly that I have need of a particularly
intense application of mind in order to imagine, of
which I do not make use to conceive or to under-
‘stand; and this particular application of mind

: oe shows the difference between the imagina-
t

ion and intellection, or pure conception.

Besides that, I observe that this virtue of
imagination which is in me, inasmuch as it differs
from the power of conception, is by no means
necessary to my nature or to my essence, that is to
say, to the essence of my mind, for even if I had
it not, it is beyond doubt that I should always
remain the same as I am now: whence it seems
that we may conclude that it depends on some-
thing different from my mind. And I easily con-
ceive that if some body exists with which my
mind is so conjoined and united that it can set

202 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

itself to consider it whenever it pleases, it is
possible that by this means it imagines corporeal
things; so that this mode of thought differs only
from pure intellection in that the mind in con-
ceiving turns in some way towards itself, and
considers some one of the ideas which it has
within it; while in imagining it turns towards the
body and considers therein something conformable
to the idea which it has formed itself, or which it has
received by the senses. I easily conceive, I say,
that the imagination can be caused thus, if it
is true that bodies exist, and because I cannot
come across any other way of explaining it,
I therefore conjecture that there probably are
bodies, but it is only probability, and although I
examine everything carefully, I nevertheless find
that from this distinct idea of the corporeal nature
which I have in my imagination, I can draw no
argument from which I necessarily conclude the
existence of any body.

Now I am accustomed to imagine many other
things besides this corporeal nature which is the
object of geometry; for example, colours, sounds,
tastes, pain, and other similar things, though
less distinctly: and seeing that I perceive these
things far better through the senses, by the medium
of which and of the memory they appear to have

|

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS, 203

reached my imagination, I believe that to examine
them more conveniently it is pertinent for me to
examine at the same time what it is to feel, and

see whether, from the ideas that I receive in my — my

mind by this mode of thought which I call sensa-

tion, I shall not be able to extract some certain
proof of the existence of corporeal things. a

And, in the first place, I shall recall to my
memory what are the things which I have formerly
held as true, having received them through the
senses, and on what foundations my belief is based;
then I shall examine the reasons which have since
obliged me to call them into question; and finally I
shall consider what I ought now to believe of them.

Firstly, then, I have felt that I have a head,
hands, feet, and all the other members which make
up the body which I am going to consider as a
part of myself, or perhaps as the whole as well.
Moreover, I have felt that this body was placed
among many others, from which it was capable of
recejving various conveniences and inconveniences,
and I remarked the conveniences by a certain
feeling of pleasure or gratification, and the incon-

_ veniences by a feeling of pain. And besides this

pleasure and _pain, I also felt in myself hunger,
thirst, and other like appetites, and also certain

corporeal inclinations towards joy, sadness, anger,

204 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

and similar passions. And outwardly, besides the
extension, shapes, and motions of bodies, I ob-
served in them hardness, heat, and all the other
qualities which come under the touch; and again,
I observed in them light, colours, odours, tastes,
and sounds, whose variety gave me the means of
distinguishing the sky, the earth, the sea, and all
other bodies from each other.

And certainly, considering the ideas of all these
qualities which presented themselves to my thought,
and which alone I felt accurately and immediately,
it was not without reason that I believed I was:

conscious of things entirely different from my

thought, to wit, bodies whence these ideas pro-

“ceeded ; for I experienced _ that they presented
themselves to it without _my consent—being re-

, quired, so that I could not be conscious of any

| ‘object, whatever my will to do so, if it was not

_Present to the organ of one of my senses, and it
was in nowise in my power not to feel it when it
was thus present. )

And because the ideas which I received by the
senses were much more vivid, more positive, and
even in their way more distinct than any of those
which I could feign of myself by meditation, or
which I found imprinted in my memory, it seemed
that they could not proceed from my mind, so that

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 205

it was necessary for them to have been caused-in
me by some other things. And having no know-
ledge of these things, except that given me by
these same ideas, nothing else could occur to me
except that the things were similar to se ideas
And also Fete I recollected that I ae made
use of my senses rather than of my reason, and
because I recognised that the ideas which I formed
of myself were not so positive as those which I
received through the senses, and were even for the
most part frequently composed of parts of these, I
feasily persuaded myself that I had no idea in my
‘mind which had not first passed_ through my —
Se
It was not without reason, either, that I believed
that this body (which by a certain particular right
I call mine) belonged to me more properly and
more strictly than any other; for truly I could
never be separated from it as from other bodies,
in it and through it I felt all my appetites and all
my affections, and finally, I was inspired with
sensations of pleasure and of pain in its parts, and
not in the parts of any other bodies which are
distinct from it.
But when I came to examine re sadness of
the mind ensues from this I know not what sen-

,

206 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,
Co

“sation of pain, and why joy springs from the
“sensation of pleasure, or why this I know not |

what emotion of the stomach, which I call hunger,
makes us desire to eat, and dryness of the throat |
makes us desire to drink, and so on with the rest, |
I could render_no reason for these things, except
that_nature taught-me in that way; for certainly
there is no affinity or connection (at least none |
that I can understand) between this emotion of the
stomach and the desire to eat, any more than be- .
tween the sensation of the thing which causes |
pain and the thought adness which ensues |
upon this sensation. And, in the same way, it |
seemed to me that I had learned from nature all
the other things which T judged touching the |
objects of my senses, because I remarked that the |
judgments which I was accustomed to make on
these objects formed themselves in me before I
had leisure to weigh them and consider any reasons |
which might oblige me to make them. |
But, subsequently, many experiences have little
by little destroyed all the credence which I gave |
to my senses ; for many times I have observed that |

‘towers which from afar off looked to me to be |

round, appeared on a nearer view to be square;
that colossi elevated on the highest summits of |
these towers seemed to me little statues when |

;
1

AW
METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 207

I looked at them from below: and thus, on num-
berless other occasions, I have found error in the
judgments founded _on_the_external senses, and
not on the external senses alone, but even on the
internal, For what is there more intimate or more
inward than pain? And yet in past days I have
learned of persons who have had legs and arms
amputated that it sometimes seemed to them that
they still felt pain in the parts which they no longer
possessed. This gives me reason to think that thus
I cannot be entirely ass of having pain in any
of my members, although I may feel pain there.
And to these reasons for doubt I have since
added two more which are very general. The
first is, I have never, when awake, believed that I
felt anything which I could not also sometimes
believe I felt when asleep: and as I do not believe

proceed from any objects outside myself, I did not
see why I ought to have this belief touching those
which it seems to me that I feel when awake.
And the second is, that not yet knowing, or rather
feigning not to know the author of my being, I
saw nothing against my having been so made by
nature, that I might deceive myself even in things
which appear to me most true.

And as for the reasons which had hitherto per-

208 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

suaded me of the truth of sensible things, I had |
not much difficulty in replying to them. For as |
nature appeared to lead me to many things from
which reason deterred me, I did not believe that I
ought to place very much reliance on its teachings.
And although the ideas which I receive through |
the senses do not depend upon my will at all, I
did not think that I ought on that account to con-
clude that they proceeded from things different from
myself, since perhaps some faculty is to be met
with in me (though unknown to me hitherto)
which is their cause and which produces them.

But now that I begin to know myself better,
and to discover more clearly the author of my |
origin, in truth I do not think that I ought rashly
to admit all the things that the senses appear to |
teach us, nor yet do I consider that I should call |
them into question as a matter of course.

And in the first place, because I know that all
the things which I conceive clearly and distinctly
can be produced by God such as I conceive them |
to be, it suffices that I can distinctly and clearly
conceive one thing without another, in order to be
certain that one is distinct or different from
another, because they can be placed apart, at
least by the omnipotence of God; and by
whatever power this separation is made they must

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 209

be adjudged to be different: and thus even from the
fact that I know with certainty that I exist, and
that nevertheless I do not notice that anything
else necessarily belongs to my nature or to my
essence, except that I am a thing which thinks,
I conclude indeed that my essence consists in this
alone,—that I am a thing which thinks, or a
substance whose essence or nature is only to think.
And although perhaps, or rather for certain (as
I shall say presently), I have a body to which I
am very straitly conjoined, nevertheless, because
on the one hand I havea clear and distinct idea |
of myself, inasmuch as I am only a thing which
thinks, and not extended, and on the other I have
a distinct idea of the body, inasmuch as it is only
an extended and non-thinking thing, it is certain
that I, that is to say my mind, by which I am
what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my
body and can be or exist without it.

Moreover, I find in myself divers faculties of
thinking, each of which has its own particular
mode. For example, I find in me the faculties of
imagining and feeling, without which I can indeed
clearly and distinctly conceive myself an entity, but
not, reciprocally, them without me, that is to say,
without an intelligent substance to which they are
attached or to which they belong. For in the

14

210 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS,

notion that we have of these faculties or (to use
the school terms) in their formal concept, they

contain _some-sart_of intellectian; whence I per-_

ceive that the m me, as modes
are different from things.

I recognise also some other faculties, as those
of changing place, of taking various situations,
and similar things which gannot be conceived,
any more than the preceding, without some
substance to which they are attached, and
consequently, cannot exist without it, But it

is very evident that these_faculties, if it is

true that they exist, ought to belong to some

corporeal _or-—extended bode yee

intelligent substance, since in their clear and)
distinct conception some sort of extension _i

indeed contained, but no intelligence at_all.
Moreover, I cannot doubt that there is in

me a certain passive faculty of feeling, that is to

say, of receiving and recognising the ideas of ©

sensible things; but Jt would be useless to me, |

and I could in no Way capisy ee not

also within me, or in some other thing, an activ

Sitchin’ me

faculty capable of forming and producing these

ideas. Now this active faculty cannot be in me,
inasmuch as Iam only a thing which_thinks,

seeing that it does not presuppose my thought.

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS, 2II

and also that these ideas are often represented to
me without any help at all from myself, and even
against my will; therefore it must necessarily be
in.some | Eibpanen: different from me, in which all

the reality which is objectively in the ideas
produced _by this—faculty is contained formally
or eminently (as I have remarked above), and
this substance must be either a body, that is to
say, a corporeal nature, in which is contained
formally and indeed all which is objectively and
by representation in these ideas, or it is God
Himself, or some other creature more noble than
the body, in which the body itself is contained
eminently.

But God not being a deceiver, it is very manifest
that He does not send me these ideas immediately
from Himself, or by the medium of some creature

in which their reality is contained only eminently
and not formally. For having given me no
faculty of knowing that that is so, but, on the
contrary, a very great inclination to believe that
they proceed from corporeal things, I do not see
how we could acquit Him of deceit, if these
ideas indeed came from elsewhere, or were
produced by causes other than corporeal things ;
and thus we must conclude that there are
corporeal things existing. Yet perhaps they are

212 . METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

not altogether such as we perceive them by the
_ senses, for there are many things which render
the perception of the senses very obscure and
' confused; but at least it must be acknowledged
that everything which I ercei in
them clearly and distinctly,—that is, everything,
generally speaking, with which speculative geometry
is concerned,—is really met with in them.

But as regards other things, which are either
only particular,—for example, that the sun is of
such a size and such a shape, and so on,—or are
conceived less clearly and less distinctly, such as
light, sound, pain, and similar things, it is certain
that although they may be very doubtful and
uncertain, yet from the mere fact that God is not
a deceiver, and consequently has not permitted
that there can be any falsity in my opinions
without giving me also some faculty of correcting
it, I think I may surely conclude that I have
within me the means of knowing them with
certainty.

And firstly, there is not the least doubt that all
that nature teaches me contains some truth. For
by nature considered in general I now mean
nothing but God Himself, or the order and
disposition which He has established in created
things; and by my nature in particular I mean

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 213

merely the constitution or assembly of everything
that God has given me.

And there is nothing that this nature teaches me
more expressly or more palpably than that I have
a body which is ill-disposed when I feel pain,
which needs to eat and drink when I feel hunger
and thirst, and so on. And thus I ought in no-
wise to doubt that there is some truth in this.

Nature also teaches me by these feelings of
pain, hunger, thirst, etc, that I am not only
lodged in my body like a pilot in his boat, but
also that Iam so blended and intermixed there-
with, and so very narrowly conjoined to it, that I
am but one with it. For were this not so, when
my body is wounded, I should not on that account
feel any pain, I who am only a thing which thinks,
but I should perceive the wound merely by the
understanding, as a pilot perceives by sight if
anything in his vessel gets broken. And when
my body needs to drink or to eat, I should know
merely that alone, without being warned of it by
confused feelings of hunger and thirst: For in
truth all these sensations of hunger, thirst, pain,
etc., are only certain confused modes of thought,
which spring from and depend on the union of the
mind. with the body, and as if on the blending of
the two,

214 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

Besides this, nature teaches me that many other
bodies exist around mine, some of which I have
to pursue, and some of which I have to avoid.
And certainly, because I am sensible of different
sorts of colours, odours, tastes, sounds, heat, hard-
ness, etc., I indeed conclude that in the bodies
whence all these divers perceptions of the senses
proceed, there are some variations which corre-
spond to them, although perhaps these variations
do not really resemble them ; and from the fact
that among these divers perceptions of the senses
some are agreeable to me and others disagreeable,
there is no doubt that my body (or rather my
entire self, inasmuch as I am made up of body
and soul) can receive divers conveniences and
inconveniences from the other bodies about it.

But there are many other things whic
ently nature has taught me, which nevertheless
I have not truly learned from her, but which

| have introduced themselves into my mind by a
J™eertain custome I have of judging things without
a By, due consideration, and thus it may easily happen
') that they contain some falsity, as, for example,
\” my opinion that all space in which there is
nothing which moves, and makes an impression

on my senses, is empty; that in a body which

is warm, there is something resembling the idea

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 215

of heat which is in me; that in a black or a white
body there is the same whiteness or blackness
which I am sensible of ; that in a bitter or sweet
body there is the same taste or the same savour,
and thus with others; that stars, towers, and all
other remote bodies are of the same shape and
size as they appear to our eyes from afar, etc.

But in order that there be nothing in this which
I do not conceive distinctly, I ought to define
precisely what I really understand when I say
that nature teaches me something. For here I
use the word nature in a more restricted sense
than when I call it an assemblage or a con-
stitution of all the things which God has given
me, seeing that this assemblage or constitution
comprehends many things which belong to the
mind alone, of which I do not intend to speak
here in speaking of nature,—for example, my notion

of this truth, that what has been once done can

no longer not have been done, and an infinity of
similar things-which-T know by the the natural light
without the aid ot the body,—and because it also
comprehends many others which belong ‘to the
body alone, and which also are not here included
in the term nature, such as the quality which the
body has of being heavy, and many like things,
I am not speaking of these either, but only of the

216 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

things which God has given me, as_ being com-
posed of mind and body. For this nature indeed
teaches me to avoid things which cause in me
the sensation of pain, and to incline towards
those which give me some sensation of pleasure,
but_I do not see that it also teaches me that from
these various perceptions of the senses we ought

ever to conclude anything concerning things which
are outside us, unless the mind has carefully and
maturely examined them; for it seems to me that
it is to the mind alone, and by no means to the
united mind and body, that it appertains to know
the truth of these things.

Thus, although a star might make no more im-
pression on my eye than the flame of a candle,
nevertheless there is no real or natural faculty in
me which leads me to believe that it is not greater
than this flame, but I have judged it to be so,
from my earliest years, without any reasonable
foundation. And although in approaching the
flame I feel heat, and even on approaching a little
too near I feel pain, there is nevertheless no reason
which can persuade me that in the flame there is
anything which is like this heat, any more than like
this pain, but I merely haye reason to believe that
there is something in it, whatever it may be, which
excites in me these sensations of heat or pain.

eg ees

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. ZH?

In the same way, too, although there may be
spaces in which I find nothing which excites and
stirs my senses, 1 ought not therefore to con-
clude that these spaces contain no bodies ; but I see
that in this, as well as in many other similar things,
I am accustomed to pervert and confuse the order

of nature; because these sensations or perceptions
of the senses having bee in_me_only to indi-

cate to my mind what things are suitable or
hurtful to the composition of which it is part, and
up to that point being clear and distinct enough, I_

use them, nevertheless, as if if they were ver in
rules by which I aS eae a
Pamnistanding. they can hon me Herbie hie
is not very obscure and confused.

But I have now already sufficiently examined
how, notwithstanding the sovereign goodness of
God, it happens that there is error in the judgments
which I make in this way. Only here again a
difficulty presents itself, touching the things which
nature teaches me ought to be followed or avoided,
and also concerning the inward sentiments which
nature has placed within me; for it seems I have
sometimes noticed error in them, and thus that
I am directly deceived by my nature; as, for

example, the agreeable taste of some food in which
14*

218 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

poison has been mixed might invite me to take
this poison, and thus deceive me. It is neverthe-
less true that herein nature may be excused, for
it only leads me to desire the meat in which an
agreeable taste is met with, and not to desire the
poison, which is unknown to it, so that I cannot
conclude from this anything except that my nature
does not entirely and universally know everything,
—at which there is certainly no occasion to
wonder, since man, being of a finite nature, can
have also a knowledge of but limited perfection.
But we also deceive ourselves very frequently
even in the things to which we are directly led by
nature, as in the case of sick persons, when they
desire to eat or to drink that which may hurt
them. Here, perhaps, it will be said that the
reason that they deceive themselves is that their
nature is corrupted, but that does not remove the
difficulty, for a sick man is no less the creature of
God than a man in perfect health, and thus it is
as opposed to God’s goodness that the one should
have a deceitful and defective nature as that the
other should have it. And as a clock, made up of
wheels and balance, observes the laws of nature
no less exactly when it is ill-made and does not
accurately show the hours, as when it entirely
satisfies the workman’s desire, so also, if I con-

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 219

sider the human body as a machine so built up
and composed of nerves, muscles, veins, blood, and

‘skin, that although there were no mind in it, it

would still continue to move in all the same ways
as it does at present when it does not move by the
direction of man’s will, nor, consequently, by the
aid of the mind, but only by the disposition of its
organs, I easily recognise that it would be as
natural to this body, being, for example, dropsical,
to suffer the dryness of the throat which usually
conveys to the mind the feeling of thirst, and to be
disposed by this dryness to move its nerves and
other parts in the manner requisite for drinking,

and thus to augment the disease and injure itself,

as itis for it when it is well to be led by a similar
dryness of throat to drink for its benefit. And
although, as regards the use to which a clock has
been destined by him who fashioned it, I might
say that it revolts against its nature when it does
not accurately mark the time, and although in the
same way, considering the machine of the human
body as having been formed by God to have in
itself all the movements which are usually in it, I
have reason to think that it pee the
ees 2 nature when its throat is dry and when
to drink is harmful to its conservation, I never-

theless recognise that this latter way of explaining

220 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

nature is very different from the former, for this
one is only a certain exterior denomination de-
pending entirely on my thought, which compares
a sick man and an ill-made clock, with my idea
of a healthy man and a well-made clock, and signi-
fying nothing which is really in the thing of which
it is stated, while that by the other I understand
something really found in things, and thus not
without some truth.

But certainly, although as regards a dropsical
body it is only an exterior denomination when
we say that its nature is corrupt when, without
having need to drink, it yet has a dry and parched
throat, still, with regard to the whole compound,
that is to say, of the mind or soul united to the
body, it is not a pure denomination, but a veritable
error of nature, that it is thirsty when it is very
injurious to drink ; and thus it still remains for us
to examine why the goodness of God does not
prevent the nature of man, taken in this manner,
from being faulty and deceitful.

To begin this examination, therefore, I remark,
in the first place, that there is a great difference
between mind and body, in that this body, from its
nature, is always divisible, while the mind is en-
tirely indivisible. For, indeed, when I consider it,

that is to say, when I consider myself, inasmuch as

|
.
|
|

|

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 221

I am only a thing which thinks, I cannot dis-
tinguish in myself any parts, but I recognise and
very clearly conceive that I am an absolute and
entire entity. And although the whole mind

appears united to the whole body, yet when a
_ foot or an arm or some other part comes to be
_ separated from it, I plainly recognise that, never-

theless, nothing has been taken from my mind;
and the faculties of willing, of feeling, of per-
ceiving, etc. cannot properly be called its
parts, for it is the same mind which exerts itself
whoily to will, and wholly to feel and to perceive,
etc. But it is quite the contrary in corporeal or ex-
tended things, for I cannot imagine any, however
small, which I do not easily divide by my thought,
or which my mind does not easily separate into
many parts, and which, consequently, I may not
know to be divisible. This would be enough to

teach me that the mind or soul of man is entirely
different from the body, if I had not ey learnt

it from elsewhere.

‘I also observe that the mind does not directly
receive the impression from every part of the body,
but only from the brain, or perhaps even from one
of the smallest parts of the brain,—to wit,
Sbetowhich exercises the faculty ‘called common
sense, which, every time it is disposed in the same

ies

222 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

way, makes the mind feel the same thing, although, .
nevertheless, the other parts of the body may be
diversely disposed, as testified by an infinity of
experiments which it is not necessary to recall here.

Besides that, I remark that the nature of the
body is such that none of its parts can be moved
by another part a little removed from it, if it
cannot be moved in the same way by each of the
intermediate parts, although this more remote part
may not act. As, for example, in the extended
cord A BC D, if we come to pull and move the’
last part D, the first part A will not be moved in
any other way than it could be if we also drew
one of the middle parts B or C, and if the last,
D, meanwhile remained motionless. And in the
same way, when I feel pain in my foot, physics
teach me that this sensation is communicated by
means of the nerves disposed in the foot, which,
extending like cords from thence to the brain,
when they are drawn in the foot also draw at the

aaa ck >

same time that part of the brain whence they come,
and to to which they join, and there excite a certain
movement which nature has instituted to make
the mind feel the pain _as if this_pain were in the

foot; but because these nerves must pass by the leg,
the thigh, the loins, the back, and the neck in order
to reach from the foot to the brain, it may happen

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 223

that although indeed their extremities in the foot
are not moved, but only some of their parts which
pass by the loins or by the neck, nevertheless
the same movement is excited in the brain which
could be excited there by a wound received in the
foot; consequently it will be necessary for the mind
to feel in the foot the same pain as if a wound
were there; and the same must be judged of
all the other perceptions of our senses.

Finally, I note that, since each of the movements
which take place in the part of the brain from
which the mind directly receives the impression,
can make it sensible of but one feeling, we can
wish or imagine nothing better than that this
movement may make the mind to feel, among all
the sensations which it is capable of exciting, that
which is most proper and most generally useful to
the conservation of the human body when it is in
full health. Now experience makes us aware that
all the feelings which nature has given us are such
as I have just said, and thus there is nothing in
them which does not show the power and the
goodness of God.

Thus, for example, when the nerves which are in
the foot are strongly moved beyond the ordinary,
their movement, passing by the marrow of the
spine of the back up to the brain, makes there an

224 ‘METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

impression in the mind which causes it to feel
something, to wit, a pain, as being in the foot, by
which the mind is warned and excited to do its
utmost to drive away the cause thereof as very
dangerous and hurtful to the foot.

It is true that God could dispose the nature of
man in such a way that this same movement in
the brain made the mind feel something else; for
example, that it felt itself, in so far as it is in the
brain, or in so far as it is in the foot, or in so far as
it is in some other part between the foot and the
brain, or, in briet, any other thing whatsoever ; but
nothing of all that would have so well contributed
to the conservation of the body as that which it

really makes it feel.

‘In the same way, when we have need to drink,
there springs from this need a certain dryness in
the throat which excites its nerves, and by their
means the interior parts of the brain, and this
movement makes the mind feel the sensation of
thirst because, on that occasion, there is nothing
more useful to us than to know that we have need
to drink for the conservation of our health, and so
with the rest.

From this it is entirely manifest that notwith-
standing the sovereign goodness of God, the
nature of man, insomuch as it is composed of

ee eS Se ee

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 225

mind and body, cannot help being sometimes
faulty and deceitful. For if there is any cause
which excites—not in the foot, but in some one of
the parts of the nerve which extends from the foot
to the brain, or even in the brain—the same
movement which is ordinarily made when the
foot is ill-disposed, the pain will be felt as if it
were in the foot, and naturally the sense will be
deceived; because the one same movement in the
brain being able to cause but the one same feeling
in the mind, and this feeling being much oftener
excited by a cause which wounds the foot than
by- another which is elsewhere, it is much more
reasonable that it should always convey to the
mind the pain of the foot rather than that of any
other part. And if it sometimes happens that the
dryness of the throat does not arise as usual from
the fact that drink is necessary for the health of
the body, but from some wholly contrary cause,
as in the case of those who are dropsical, yet it is
much better that it should deceive in this instance
than that, on the contrary, it should always deceive
when the body is well-disposed, and so with the
rest.

And certainly I find this consideration most
useful, not only for recognising all the errors to
which my nature is liable, but also for avoiding

226 METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS.

them, or correcting them more easily, For
knowing that all my senses usually indicate to
me the true rather than the false, touching the
things which concern the convenience or incon- |
venience of the body, and being able almost i
always to employ many of them for examining |
one thing, and, besides that, being able to make
use of my memory, to connect and join the present
pieces of knowledge with older ones, and of my
understanding, which has already discovered all
the causes of my errors, henceforth I should no
longer fear any falsity occurring in the things
which are most usually represented to me by my
senses. And I ought to reject all the doubts of
these past days as hyperbolical and ridiculous,
particularly that general uncertainty as to sleep,
which I could not distinguish from waking ; for I
now discover a very notable difference between

them, in that our memory can never connect and
join our dacamas eee one another and with the :
eee |_to_us when awake. And
indeed, if, when I am awake, any one were suddenly
to appear to me, and disappear in the same way,
as do the images I see when asleep, so that I could |

not remark either whence he came or whither he |
went, it would not be without reason that I should

|
|
:
:

> wax

METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS. 227

esteem him a spectre or a phantom formed in my

brain, and like to those formed there when I sleep,
rather than areal man. But when I perceive things
of which I know distinctly the place whence they
come and where they are, and the time at which
they appear to me, and when, without any
interruption, I can connect the sensation I [ have
of them with the rest of my life, am entirely
assured that I perceive them while awake and not
when asleep. And I ought in nowise to doubt the
truth of those things if, after having summoned all
my senses, my memory, and my understanding for
the purpose of examining them, none of these
convey to me anything repugnant to what is
conveyed to me by the others. For from the fact
that God is not a deceiver, it necessarily follows
that I am not deceived therein.

But because the necessity of circumstances often
obliges us to come to a decision before we have
had leisure to examine them thus carefully, it
must be confessed that human life is very often
liable to fail in particular instances, and, in con-
clusion, we are bound to recognise the infirmity
and weakness of our nature.

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