But how know I that there is nothing _distinct_ from all these things (which I have now reckon’d) of which I have no reason to _doubt_? Is there no _God_ (or whatever other name I may call him) who has put these thoughts into me? Yet why should I think this? When I my self perhaps am the _Author_ of them. Upon which Account, therefore must not I be something? ’tis but just now that I denied that I had any _senses_, or any _Body_. Hold a while—Am I so tied to a _Body_ and _senses_ that I cannot _exist_ without them? But I have perswaded my self that there is nothing in the World, no Heaven, no Earth, no Souls, no Bodies; and then why not, that I _my self am not_? Yet surely if _I_ could perswade my self any thing, _I was_. But there is _I_ know not what sort of _Deceivour_ very _powerful_ and very _crafty_, who always strives to _deceive_ Me; without Doubt therefore _I am_, if he can _decieve me_; And let him _Deceive_ me as much as he can, yet he can never make me _not to Be_, whilst _I think that I am_. Wherefore _I_ may lay this down as a _Principle, that whenever this sentence I am, I exist, is spoken or thought of by Me, ’tis necessarily True_. But _I_ do not yet fully understand _who I am_ that now necessarily _exist_, and _I_ must hereafter take care, least _I_ foolishly _mistake_ some other thing _for my self_, and by that means be _deceived_ in that thought, which _I_ defend as the most _certain_ and _evident_ of all. Wherefore _I_ will again Recollect, what _I_ believed _my self to be_ heretofore, before _I_ had set upon these Meditations, from which _Notion I_ will withdraw whatever may be _Disproved_ by the _Foremention’d Reasons_, that in the End, _That_ only may Remain which is _True_ and _indisputable_. What therefore have I heretofore thought my self? _A Man._ But what is a man? Shall I answer, a _Rational Animal_? By no means; because afterwards it may be asked, what an _Animal_ is? and what _Rational_ is? And so from one _question_ I may fall into greater _Difficulties_; neither at present have I so much time as to spend it about such Niceties. But I shall rather here Consider, what heretofore represented it self to my thoughts _freely_, and _naturally_, whenever I set my self to understand _What I my self was_. And the first thing I find Representing it self is, that I have _Face_, _Hands_, _Arms_, and this whole _frame_ of _parts_ which is seen in my _Body_, and which I call my _Body_. The next thing represented to me was, that I was _nourish’d_, could _walk_, had _senses_, and could _Think_; which functions I attributed to my _Soul_. Yet what this _soul_ of mine was, I did not fully conceive; or else supposed it a small thing like _wind_, or _fire_, or _aire_, infused through my _stronger parts_.