Six metaphysical meditations: $b Wherein it is proved that there is a God and that mans mind is really distinct from his body — Descartes — John Shaqi
Six metaphysical meditations: $b Wherein it is proved that there is a God and that mans mind is really distinct from his body
Descartes · en
One thing there is worthy my Consideration, which is, that I find in my
self innumerable _Ideas_ of certain things, which tho perhaps they _exist
no where without_ Me, yet they cannot Be said to be _Nothing_; and tho
they are _Thought_ upon by me at my _will_ and _pleasure_, yet they are
not _made_ by _Me_, but have their own _True_ and _Immutable Natures_.
As when, for example, * I _Imagine_ a _Triangle_, tho perhaps such a
_Figure Exists no where_ out of my _Thoughts_, nor ever _will Exist_,
yet the _Nature_ thereof is _determinate_, and its _Essence_ or Form is
_Immutable_ and _Eternal_, which is neither _made_ by me, nor _depends_
on my mind, as appears for that many _properties_ may be _demonstrated_
of this Triangle, _viz._ That its three Angles are equal to two right
ones, that to its Greatest Angle the Greatest side is subtended, and such
like, which I now _clearly_ know whether _I will or not_, tho before _I_
never thought on them, when I _imagine_ a Triangle, and consequently they
could not be invented by Me. And ’tis nothing to the purpose for me to
say, that perhaps this _Idea_ of a Triangle came to me by the Organs of
_sense_, because I have sometimes seen bodies of a _Triangular Shape_;
for I can think of Innumerable other _Figures_, which I cannot suspect
to have come in through my _senses_, and yet I can _Demonstrate_ various
_properties_ of them, as well as of a _Triangle_, which certainly are all
_true_, seeing I know them _clearly_, and therefore they are _something_,
and not a meer _Nothing_, for ’tis Evident that _what is true is
something_.
And now I have sufficiently Demonstrated, that _what I clearly perceive,
is True_; And tho I had _not demonstrated_ it, yet such is the _Nature_
of my _Mind_, that I could not but give my _Assent_ to what I _so_
perceive, at least, as long as I _so_ perceive it; and I remember
(heretofore when I most of all relied on _sensible Objects_) that I held
those _Truths_ for the most _certain_ which I _evidently_ perceived,
such as are concerning _Figures_, _Numbers_, with other parts of
_Arithmetick_, and _Geometry_, as also whatever relates to _pure_ and
_abstracted Mathematicks_.