Those Reasons of Doubt which by this Philosopher are admitted as _true_, were proposed by Me only as _Probable_, and I made use of them not that I may vend them as _new_, but partly that I may prepare the Minds of my Readers for the Consideration of Intellectual Things, wherein they seem’d to me very necessary; And partly that thereby I may shew how firm those Truths are, which hereafter I lay down, seeing they cannot be Weaken’d by these Metaphysical Doubts: So, that I never designed to gain any Honor by repeating them, but I think I could no more omit them, then a Writer in Physick can pass over the Description of a Disease, Whose Cure he intends to Teach. OBJECT. II. _Against the Second Meditation: Of the Nature of Mans Mind._ I _am a Thinking Thing_. ’Tis True; for because I _think_ or have a _Phantasme_ (whether I am _awake_ or _asleep_) it follows that _I am Thinking_, for _I Think_ and _I am Thinking_ signifie the same Thing. Because _I Think_, it follows That _I am_, for whatever _Thinks_ cannot be _Nothing_. But when he Adds, _That is_, _a Mind_, _a Soul_, _an Understanding_, _Reason_, I question his Argumentation; for it does not seem a Right Consequence to say, _I am a Thinking Thing_, therefore _I am a Thought_, neither, _I am an Understanding Thing_, therefore _I am the Understanding_. For in the same manner I may Conclude, _I am a Walking Thing_, therefore _I am the Walking it self_. Wherefore _D.Cartes_ Concludes that an _Understanding Thing_ and _Intellection_ (which is the _Act_ of an Understanding Thing) are the same; or at least that an _Understanding Thing_ and the _Intellect_ (which is the _Power_ of an Understanding Thing) are the same; And yet all Philosophers distinguish the _subject_ from its _Faculties_ and _Acts_, that is, from its _Properties_ and _Essence_, for the _Thing it self_ is one thing, and its _Essence_ is an other. It may be therefore that a _Thinking Thing_ is the _Subject_ of a _Mind_, _Reason_, or _Understanding_, and therefor it may be a _Corporeal Thing_, the Contrary Whereof is here _Assumed_ and not _Proved_; and yet this _Inference_ is the _Foundation_ of that Conclusion which _D.Cartes_ would Establish. [Sidenote: * _Places noted with this Asterick are the Passages of the foregoing Meditations here Objected against._] In the same Meditation, on, * _I know that I am, I ask, What I am Whom I Thus Know, Certainly the Knowledge of Me precisely so taken depends not on those Things of whose Existence I am yet Ignorant_. ’Tis Certain the Knowledge of this Proposition _I am_, depends on this, _I think_ as he hath rightly inform’d us; but from whence have we the knowledge of this Proposition, _I think_? certainly from hence only, that we cannot conceive any _Act_ without its _subject_, as _dancing_ without a _Dancer_, _knowledge_, without a _Knower_, _thought_ without a _thinker_.