https://youtube/watch?v=tVgOLWVYytM General thoughts are apt to be confused – but one particular body: a piece of wax, for example. It has just been taken from the honeycomb; it still tastes of honey and has the scent of the flowers from which the honey was gathered; its colour, shape and size are plain to see; it is hard, cold and can be handled easily; if you rap it with your knuckle it makes a sound. As to my ideas of bodies, so far as I can see they contain nothing that is so great or excellent that it couldn’t have originated in myself. For if I examine them thoroughly, one by one, as I did the idea of the wax yesterday, I realize that there must be at least as much reality or perfection in the cause as in the effect. And therefore, given that I am a thinking thing and have within me some idea of God, the cause of me – whatever it is – must itself be a thinking thing and must have the idea of all the perfections that I attribute to God. What is the cause of this cause of me? If it is the cause of its own existence, then it is God; for if it has the power of existing through its own strength, then undoubtedly it also has the power of actually possessing all the perfections of which it has an idea – that is, all the perfections that I conceive to be in God. If on the other hand it gets its existence from another cause, then the question arises all over again regarding this further cause: Does it get its existence from itself or from another cause away from what is true and good. That is the source of my error and sin. And although the right conception of this truth has cost me much close thinking, nevertheless at present I feel not only as assured of it as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it that without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know something. perfectly.] Like a prisoner who dreams that he is free, starts to suspect that it is merely a dream, and wants to go on dreaming rather than waking up, so I am content to slide back into my old opinions; I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised. idea of a supremely perfect and infinite being is, I say, true in the highest degree; for although one might imagine that such a being does not exist, it can’t be supposed that the idea of such a being represents something unreal in the way that the idea of cold perhaps does. The idea is, moreover, utterly clear and distinct. It does not matter that I don’t grasp the infinite. The - existence of God ever accepted for thinking that something could not be made by him is that there would be a contradiction in my perceiving it distinctly.) My damage in an intellectual way, like a sailor seeing that his ship needs repairs. And when the body needed food or drink I would intellectually understand this fact instead of (as I do) having confused sensations of hunger and thirst. These sensations are confused mental events that arise from the union – the intermingling, as it were – of the mind with the body as a whole without these faculties; but I can’t understand them without me, that is, without an intellectual substance for them to belong to. A faculty or capacity essentially involves acts, so it involves some thing that acts; so I see that I differ from my faculties as a thing differs from its properties. Of course there are other faculties – such as those of moving around. Creatures just as a healthy one is, and in each case it seems a contradiction to suppose that God has given him a nature that deceives him. A badly made clock conforms to the laws of its nature in telling the wrong time, just as a well made and accurate clock does; and we might look at the human body in the same way. We could see it as a kind of machine made up of bones, nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin in such a way that, even if there were no mind in it, it would still move exactly as it now does in all the cases where movement isn’t under the control of the will or, therefore, of the mind. If such a body suffers from dropsy, for example, and is affected by the dryness of the throat that normally produces in the mind a sensation of thirst, towards cheerfulness, sadness, anger and similar emotions. Outside myself, besides the extension, shapes and movements of bodies, I also had sensations of their hardness and heat, and of the other qualities that can be known by touch. In addition, I had sensations of light, colours, smells, tastes and sounds, and differences amongst these enabled me to sort out the sky, the earth, the seas and other bodies from one another. All I was immediately aware of in each case were my ideas, but it was reasonable for me to think that what I was perceiving through the senses were external bodies that caused the ideas. For I found that these ideas came to me quite without my consent: I couldn’t have that kind of idea of any object, even a great variety of colours, sounds, smells and tastes, as well as differences in heat, hardness and so on; from which I infer that the bodies that cause these sensory perceptions differ from one another in ways that correspond to the sensory by applying my mind’s eye to its five sides and the area they enclose. This imagining, I find, takes more mental effort than understanding does; and that is enough to show that imagination is different from pure. Something that I thought I saw with my eyes, therefore, was really grasped solely by my mind’s faculty of judgment. However, someone who wants to know more than its representative, might be possessed by its cause only representatively and not intrinsically. That would mean that the cause is itself an idea, because only ideas have representative reality. But that would be wrong. Although one idea may perhaps originate from another, there can’t be an infinite regress of such ideas; eventually one must come back to an idea whose cause isn’t an idea, and this cause must be a kind of archetype containing intrinsically all the reality or perfection that the idea contains only representatively. So the natural light makes it clear to me that my ideas are like pictures or images that can easily fall short of the perfection of the things from which they are taken, but which can’t exceed it. The longer and more carefully I examine all these points, the more clearly and distinctly I recognize their truth. But what is my conclusion to be? If I find that some idea who gives me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the author of these thoughts? But then doesn’t it follow that I am, at least, something? This is very confusing, because I have just said that I have no senses and no body, and I am so bound up with a body and with senses that one would think that I can’t exist without them. Now that I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world – no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies – does it follow that I don’t exist either? But I used also to believe that my ideas came from things outside that resembled them in all respects and occur within me
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 03:11:13 +0000