it wouldbe downright contradictory to suppose that he is a deceiver

If I restrainmy will so that I form opinions only on what the intellectvividly and clearly reveals, I cannot possibly go wrong

a perception of my intellect

It is a misuse ofmy free will to have an opinion in such cases

themere fact that I found all my previous beliefs to be somewhatopen to doubt was enough to switch me from confidentlybelieving them to supposing them to be wholly false

I should never have to spend time thinking about what tobelieve or do

I can easily see that my faculty of understandingis finite, to put it mildly; and I immediately conceive of amuch greater •understanding—indeed, of a supremely greatand infinite one; and the fact that I can form such an ideashows me that God actually has such an understanding

I can give noreason why God ought to have given me more ideas thanhe did

Only a very rash man would think he could discover whatGod’s impenetrable purposes are

Now, the positivereality that I have been given by the supreme being containsnothing that could lead me astray in my beliefs

hat someoneis able to deceive others may be a sign of his skill or power,but his wanting to deceive them is a sign of his malice orweakness; and those are not to be found in God

Now, when I consider the factthat I have doubts—which means that I am incomplete anddependent—that leads to my having a vivid and clear idea ofa being who is independent and complete, that is, an idea ofGod

I understand that I am a thing that•is incomplete and •dependent on something else, and that•aspires without limit to ever greater and better things; but Ialso understand at the same time that he on whom I dependhas within him all those greater things

So I have to ask myself whether I have the power to bringit about that I, who now exist, will still exist a minute fromnow. For since I am nothing but a thinking thing—or anywaythat is the only part of me that I am now concerned with—ifI had such a power I would undoubtedly be aware of it

bring a thing intoexistence is also needed to •keep it in existence at each mo

Perhaps I have always existed as I do now.Then wouldn’t it follow that there need be no cause for myexistence?

a being more perfect than God, or even one as perfect, isunthinkable

If one concentrates carefully, all this is quite evident bythe natural light. But when I relax my concentration, and mymental vision is blurred by the images of things I perceiveby the senses

strictly speaking potential being is nothing; what ittakes to cause the representative being of an idea is actualbeing

First, though it is true thatmy knowledge is increasing, and that I have many poten-tialities that are not yet actual, this is all quite irrelevant tothe idea of God, which contains absolutely nothing that ispotential.

Whenever I know that I doubt something or want something,I understand that I lack something and am therefore notwholly perfect

I understand a substance that is infinite,eternal, unchangeable, independent, supremely intelligent,supremely powerful, which created myself and anything elsethat may exist. The more carefully I concentrate on theseattributes, the less possible it seems that any of them couldhave originated from me alone. So this whole discussionimplies that God necessarily exists.

For example, I think that astone is a substance, or is a thing capable of existing indepen-dently, and I also think that I am a substance.

obscure way that I don’t even know whether they are trueor false

As to my ideas of bodies, so far as I can see they containnothing that is so great or excellent that it couldn’t haveoriginated in myself

So the natural light makes itclear to me that my ideas are like pictures or images that caneasily •fall short of the perfection of the things from whichthey are taken, but which can’t •exceed it

Thus, for example, althoughGod is obviously not himself hot, he can cause something tobe hot because he contains heat not straightforwardly but ina higher form·

though they seemopposed to my will, come from within me; ·which providesevidence that I can cause things that my will does not cause

ight now, for example, I have a feeling ofwarmth, whether I want to or not, and that leads me to thinkthat this sensation or idea of heat comes from somethingother than myself, namely the heat of a fire by which I amsitting.

Among my ideas, some seem to be •innate, some to be•caused from the outside, and others to have been •inventedby me

the reason fordoubt based purely on this supposition of a deceiving Godis a very slight and theoretical one

Indeed, Ibelieved this for so long that I wrongly came to think that Iperceived it clearly

stillsensory perception and imagination themselves, consideredsimply as mental events, certainly do occur in me

I will now shut my eyes, block my ears, cut off all mysenses

because those arguments imply that there really isa world, and that men have bodies and so on (no sane personhas ever seriously doubted these things), but •because inconsidering these arguments we come to realise that theyare not as solid or as transparent as the ones that lead usto knowledge of our minds and of God

so our idea of God must haveGod himself as its cause

wanting to draw my readers’ souls awayfrom the senses as far as possible, I didn’t want there touse any comparison taken from bodily things

we need to recognise that body, takenin the general sense, is a substance that also never perishes.But a human body, considered as separate from other bodies,is constituted simply by a certain configuration of organs andother accidents

irst because these argumentsare enough to show that the decay of the body does not implythe destruction of the mind, and are hence enough to givemortals the hope of an after-life

Forwe cannot conceive of half of a mind, while we can alwaysconceive of half of a body, however small; and this leads usto recognise that the natures of mind and body are not onlydifferent but in a way opposite

all the things that we vividly and clearlyconceive of as different substances (as we do in the case ofmind and body) are in fact substances that are really distinctone from the other

But since some people may expect arguments for theimmortality of the soul in this place, I think they should bewarned here that I have tried not to put down anything thatI could not precisely demonstrate

the mind—using its own freedom—supposes the non-existence of all the things about whoseexistence there can be even the slightest doubt, and becomesaware that it is impossible that it should not itself exist atthis time

So first of all in the Meditations I will set out thevery thoughts that have led me to what I think is certainand evident knowledge of the truth, so that I can find outwhether I can convince others by the same arguments thathave convinced me

I wouldnot urge anyone to read this book except those who are ableand willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdrawtheir minds from the senses and from all preconceivedopinions

So, providedwe remember that our minds must be regarded as finite,while God is infinite and beyond our comprehension, suchobjections will not cause us any difficulty

all the objections commonly tossed around by atheists toattack the existence of God depend either on •attributinghuman feelings to God or on •arrogantly claiming such powerand wisdom for our own minds that we can set out to grasp

he judgement of many people is so silly and weak that theyaccept an opinion the first time they encounter it,

’Idea’ can be taken a materially, as an operation of theintellect, which cannot be said to be more perfect than me;or it can be taken b objectively

From the fact that the human mind, when directedtowards itself, does not perceive itself to be anythingbut a thinking thing, it does not follow that its natureor essence consists only in its being a thinking thing,where the word ’only’ excludes everything else thatcould be said to belong to the nature of the sou

because then weakerintellects might think they should set out on the same path

everyone else will confidently go along with so manydeclarations of assent, so that there will be no-one left inthe world who dares to call in question either the existenceof God or the real distinctness of the human soul from thehuman body

your authority will induce the atheists—whousually have smatterings of knowledge rather than intelli-gence or learning

so clear that theyare fit to be regarded as very exact demonstrations,you may be willing to declare as much, and make apublic statement to that effect

Hence, whatever the quality of my arguments may be,because they have to do with philosophy I don’t expect theywill have much effect on people’s minds unless you grant meyour patronage

they require amind that is completely free from preconceived opinions andcan easily detach itself from involvement with the senses

In geometry there are manywritings left by Archimedes, Apollonius, Pappus and othersthat are accepted by everyone as evident and certain becauseeach step in them is easily seen to be true when consideredon its own,

Now, I completely disagree with this; I think that almost allthe arguments that great men have put forward on these twoquestions (when properly understood) are demonstrations,and that it would be almost impossible to discover anynew ones

Christian philosophers to reply to their arguments and touse all the powers of their intellect to establish the truth, Ihave not hesitated to undertake that task in this work.

And in the same place, in the words ’that whichmay be known of God is manifest in them’, we seem to betold that everything that can be known of God can be shownby reasons that have no other source but our own mind

But this argumentcannot be put to unbelievers, because they would think it tobe (as the logicians say) circular

but in the case of unbelievers,it seems that there is no religion—and hardly any moralvirtue—that they can be persuaded to adopt until these twotruths are proved to them by natural reason

I have always thought that two topics—namely God andthe soul—are prime examples of subjects where demonstra-tive proofs ought to be given with the aid of philosophy ratherthan theology