.....
So the only possibility left was that the idea had been
put into me by ?something that truly was more perfect
than I was, ?something indeed having every perfection of
which I could have any idea, that is—to explain myself in
one word—by ?God. To this I added that since I knew of
some perfections that I didn’t myself have, I wasn’t the only
being that existed. . . .,and there had to be some other more
perfect being on which I depended and from which I had
acquired everything that I had. For if I had existed alone,
not depending on anything else, so that my meagre ration of
perfections had come from myself, then by that same line of
reasoning
?I could have derived from myself all the remaining
perfections that I knew I lacked,
and thus
?I could myself have been infinite, eternal, unchanging,
omniscient, omnipotent;
in short,
?I could have had all the perfections that I had been
able to discover in God.
For, according to the arguments I have just presented: in
order to know as much of God’s nature as my nature allows
me to know, all I needed was to consider, for each property
of which I had some idea, whether having it was a perfection
or not; and I was sure that God doesn’t have any of the
properties that indicate any imperfection, but that he does
have all the others. Thus I saw that God could not have
doubt, inconstancy, sadness and the like, since I myself
would have been very glad to be free from them, ·which
shows that they are imperfections·. Furthermore, I had
ideas of many perceptible bodies (even if I was dreaming, and
everything that I saw or imagined was false, I still couldn’t
deny that the ideas of bodies were in my mind). But since
I had already recognized very clearly in my own case that
intellectual nature is distinct from bodily nature, and as I
observed that
?if a thing is composed ·of simpler elements· in any
way, that shows that it is dependent on something
else,
and that
?dependence is obviously a defect,
I concluded that
?it couldn’t be a perfection in God to be composed of
these two natures—·the intellectual and the bodily·—
and consequently that he was not composed of them;
and also that if there were any bodies in the world, or any
intelligences or other natures that weren’t wholly perfect,
their being must depend on God’s power in such a way that
they couldn’t stay in existence for a single moment without
him.
After that, I wanted to seek other truths: I took up
the subject-matter of geometry, which I conceived of as ?a
continuous body, or ?a space indefinitely extended in length,
breadth and height or depth, and divisible into different parts
that can have various shapes and sizes, and can be moved
and swapped around in all sorts of way (geometers assume
that their subject-matter has all these properties). I went
through some of their simpler proofs, and noted that it’s
because we conceive them as evident [= ‘obviously true’] that
we all regard them as utterly certain. I noted also that these
demonstrations gave no assurance—none—of the existence
of their subject-matter. For example, I saw that given a
triangle its three angles of must equal two right angles; but I
saw nothing assuring me that there are any triangles in the
world. In contrast with that, when I returned to the scrutiny
of the idea I had of a perfect being, I found that
this idea of a perfect being included existence
in the same way as—or even more evidently than—
the idea of a triangle includes the equality of its three
angles to two right angles
or
the idea of a sphere includes the equidistance from the
centre of all the points on the surface.
Thus I concluded that the existence of this perfect being,
God, is at least as certain as any geometrical proof.
Why are many people convinced that there is some diffculty in knowing God, and even in knowing what their soul
is? It’s because they never raise their minds above things
that can be perceived by the senses: they are so used to
?thinking of things only in the way that is specially suited
to material things, namely by ?imagining ·or picturing· them,
that they regard as unintelligible ·or ?unthinkable· anything
that they can’t ?imagine. This shows up in the fact that even
the scholastic philosophers take it as a maxim that there is
nothing in the intellect that wasn’t previously in the senses;
·which leads people to find God and the soul problematic, because· it is certain that the ideas of God and of the soul have
never been ‘in the senses’! Trying to ?understand these ideas
through one’s ?imagination strikes me as being like trying
to ?hear sounds or smell odours through ?the use of one’s
eyes. ·Actually, trying-to-understand-through-imagination
is even more absurd than trying-to-hear-or-smell-with-theeyes, because· there is this difference: the sense of sight
gives us as much assurance of the reality of its objects as do
the senses of smell and hearing, whereas our imagination
and our senses could never assure us of anything without
the aid of our understanding.
Finally, if you are still not really convinced of the existence
of God and of your soul by the arguments I have presented, I
tell you this: everything else of which you may think you are
?more sure—such as your having a body, there being stars
and an earth, and the like—is ?less certain. For although
we have enough certainty for everyday practical purposes
about these things, so that it seems wild and irresponsible
to call them in question, nevertheless when it is a question
of metaphysical certainty we have to admit that there are
good reasons for not being entirely sure about them. We
need only observe that in sleep we may imagine that we have
a different body and see different stars and a different earth,
without any of these things being real. ·This is a reason for
having some uncertainty about the existence of our body,
the stars, and so on·, because: how do we know that the
mental states that come to us in dreams are any more false
than the others, seeing that they are often just as lively and
sharp? Let the best minds study this question as much as
they like, I don’t think they’ll be able to give any reason that
removes this doubt unless they presuppose the existence of
God. For, in the first place, what I took just now as a rule,
namely that whatever we conceive very vividly and clearly is
true, is assured only because ?God exists and ?is a perfect
being, and because ?everything in us comes from him. It
follows that our ideas or notions, being real things that get
from God everything that is vivid and clear in them, must be
true in every respect in which they are vivid and clear. So if
we quite often have ideas containing some falsity, this can
only be because there is something confused and shadowy
in them; for their confusion etc. is something they share
with nothingness, which means that they are in us in this
confused state only because we aren’t completely perfect.
And it is evident that it’s just as contradictory to suppose
that falsity or imperfection as such should come from God
as to suppose that truth or perfection should come from
nothingness. But if we didn’t know that everything real and
true within us comes from a perfect and infinite being, then,
however vivid and clear our ideas were, we would have no
reason to be sure that they had the perfection of being true.
