I have already touched on questions concerning God and the human mind a few years ago in the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, published in French in 1637. But I was not intending to treat such matters thoroughly there, but merely offering a foretaste of them, so that I could learn from readers’ responses how they should subsequently be properly dealt with. For they seemed to me of such importance that I judged I should deal with them more than once; and I follow a path in their investigation that is so untrodden, and so remote from common experience, that I thought it would not be useful to expound it more fully in a work written in French for all to read, in case those of rather feeble intellect should think that they too should set out on that path.
Although, however, I had requested in that text that everyone who found something deserving of criticism in my writings should be so kind as to point it out to me,* no objection worthy of note was put forward with regard to my discussion of these matters, except for two, to which I shall briefly reply here, before embarking on a more thorough explanation of the same issues.
The first is that although the human mind, when it turns in on
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itself, does not perceive itself to be anything apart from a thinking thing, it does not follow that its nature or ‘essence’ consists purely in its being a thinking thing, ‘purely’, that is, in a sense that would exclude everything else that might perhaps be said to belong to its nature. To this objection I reply that at this point I did not wish to exclude these other things from the point of view of the actual truth of the matter (with which in fact I was not then concerned), but solely from the point of view of my own perception, so that my meaning was that I was aware of nothing at all that I knew to belong to my essence, except the fact that I was a thinking thing, or a thing possessing the faculty of thinking. However, in the present work I shall show how, from the fact that I know nothing else as belonging to my essence, it follows that nothing else in fact belongs to it.
The second objection is, that it does not follow from the fact that I have in myself the idea of a more perfect thing than myself, that the idea itself is more perfect than me. Still less does it follow that the thing represented by this idea exists. I answer that the term ‘idea’ here is ambiguous. It can be taken either in the material sense, as an operation of the understanding, in which case it cannot be said to be more perfect than myself, or objectively, for the thing represented by this operation; and this thing, even if it is not supposed to exist outside my understanding, can nonetheless be more perfect than me in virtue of its essence. How in fact it follows, from the mere fact that the idea of a more perfect thing is within me, that the thing itself actually exists, I shall show at length in the present work.
I have in fact also seen two quite long writings* in which, however, it is not so much my proofs as my conclusions that are attacked, by arguments borrowed from the stock of atheists’ commonplaces. And
since arguments of this kind can have no credibility for those who
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understand my proofs, and, besides, the judgements of many people are so perverse and feeble that they are convinced more readily by the opinions they first encounter, however false and repugnant to reason these are, than by a true and unshakeable refutation of these opinions that they encounter subsequently, I have no intention of responding to them here, since I should first have to set them out. I shall only remark in general that all the common objections to the existence of God that atheists so smugly put forward, always depend on one of two things: either they imagine human emotions in God, or they claim so much power and wisdom for our own minds, that we should try to decide and understand whatever God can or ought to do. So much is this the case that, as long as we simply remember that our minds have to be considered as finite, and God as incomprehensible and infinite, these arguments will never cause us any difficulty.
But now, since I have once and for all made trial of people’s responses, I will again tackle these same questions about God and the human mind, and at the same time deal with the foundations of the whole of first philosophy. But I shall do so in such a way that I must expect no popular approval, and no great crowds of readers. Indeed, I shall go so far as to say that I seek to be read by none, except those who will be able and willing to meditate seriously alongside me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses, and at the same time from all their preconceptions. Of these I well know already that there are very few. But as for those who do not trouble to grasp the chain and connection of my arguments, and who busy themselves in quibbling
over isolated propositions (and there are many people whose habit
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this is), they will derive very little benefit from reading this work; and although perhaps they will find frequent opportunities to carp, it is unlikely that they will be able to put forward any objection that causes real difficulty or deserves a reply.
But because I do not promise even the other kind of readers that I will satisfy them throughout on first reading, nor am I so arrogant as to be sure that I can foresee everything that will seem difficult to anybody, I shall first explain in these Meditations the particular thought-processes by the help of which I think I have attained the certain and evident knowledge of truth, so that I may test whether, perhaps, I can convince other people by the same arguments as I have convinced myself. Afterwards, however, I shall reply to the objections of several people outstanding for their intelligence and learning to whom these Meditations were sent for examination before publication. Their objections are so many and so various that I dare to hope that it will be difficult for anyone else to think of anything (anything significant, at least) that they have not already put forward. Hence I would very strongly urge my readers not to pass judgement upon these Meditations before they have taken the trouble to read through all these objections and my replies to them.