Six metaphysical meditations: $b Wherein it is proved that there is a God and that mans mind is really distinct from his bodyDescartes, René
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Six metaphysical meditations: $b Wherein it is proved that there is a God and that mans mind is really distinct from his body
Descartes, René
Descartes, René, 1596-1650; First philosophy; God -- Proof, Ontological; Knowledge, Theory of; Metaphysics; Methodology
And from hence it follows, that neither a _Thing_ can be made out of
_Nothing_, Neither a Thing which is _more Perfect_ (that is, Which has in
it self _more Reallity_) _proceed_ from That Which is _Less Perfect_.
And this is _Clearly_ True, not only in those _Effects_ whose _Actual_
or _Formal Reallity_ is Consider’d, But in Those _Ideas_ also, Whose
_Objective Reallity_ is only Respected; That is to say, for Example of
Illustration, it is not only impossible that a stone, Which _was not_,
should now begin _to Be_, unless it were produced by _something_, in
Which, Whatever goes to the Making a Stone, is either _Formally_ or
_Virtually_; neither can _heat_ be Produced in any Thing, which before
was _not hot_, but by a Thing which is at least of as equal a _degree_ of
_Perfection_ as _heat_ is; But also ’tis Impossible that I should have
an _Idea_ of Heat, or of a _Stone_, unless it were put into me by some
_Cause_, in which there is at Least as much _Reallity_, as I Conceive
there is in heat or a Stone. For tho that _Cause_ transfers none of its
own _Actual_ or _Formal Reality_ into my _Idea_, I must not from thence
conclude that ’tis _less real_; but I may think that the _nature_ of the
_Idea_ it self is such, that of it self it requires no other _formal
reality_, but what it has from my _thought_, of which ’tis a _mode_. But
that this Idea has _this_ or _that objective reallity_, rather then any
_other_, proceeds clearly from some _cause_, in which there ought to be
at least as much _formal reallity_, as there is of _objective reallity_
in the _Idea_ it self. For if we suppose any thing in the _Idea_, which
was not in its _cause_, it must of necessity have this from _nothing_;
but (tho it be a most _Imperfect manner_ of _existing_, by which the
thing is _objectively_ in the _Intellect_ by an _Idea_, yet) it is not
_altogether nothing_, and therefore cannot proceed from _nothing_.
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