Three Principles

I had long been aware

that in practical life one sometimes has to act on opinions

that one knows to be quite uncertain just as if they were

unquestionably •true (I remarked on this above). But now

that I wanted to devote myself solely to the search for truth,

I thought I needed to do the exact opposite—to reject as if

it were absolutely •false everything regarding which I could

imagine the least doubt, so as to see whether this left me

with anything entirely indubitable to believe. Thus,

•I chose to suppose that nothing was such as our

senses led us to imagine,

because our senses sometimes deceive us. Also,

•I rejected as unsound all the arguments I had previously

taken as demonstrative [= ‘absolutely rigorous’]

proofs,

because some men make mistakes in reasoning, even in the

simplest questions in geometry, and commit logical fallacies;

and I judged that I was as open to this as anyone else. Lastly,

•I decided to pretend that everything that had ever

entered my mind was no more true than the illusions

of my dreams,

because all the mental states we are in while awake can

also occur while we sleep ·and dream·, without having any

truth in them. But no sooner had I embarked on this project

than I noticed that while I was trying in this way to think

everything to be false it had to be the case that •I, who was

thinking this, was •something. And observing that this truth

I am thinking, therefore I exist

was so firm and sure that not even the most extravagant

suppositions of the sceptics could shake it, I decided that

I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of

the philosophy I was seeking. [This ‘first principle’ could be (1)

‘I exist’ or (2) the connection between ‘I am thinking’ and ‘I exist’—the

uncertainty in this version echoes that in Descartes’s French.]

Then I looked carefully into what I was. I saw that while I

could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world

and no place for me to be in, I still couldn’t pretend that I

didn’t exist. I saw on the contrary that from the mere fact

that I thought about doubting the truth of other things, it

followed quite evidently and certainly that I existed; whereas

if I had merely stopped thinking altogether [here = ‘stopped

being in any conscious mental state’], even if everything else I had

ever imagined had been true, I ·would have· had no reason to

believe that I existed. This taught me that I was a substance

whose whole essence or nature is simply to think [here = ‘to be

in conscious mental states’], and which doesn’t need any place, or

depend on any material thing, in order to exist. Accordingly

this me—this soul that makes me what I am—•is entirely

distinct from the body, •is easier to know than the body, and

•would still be just what it is even if the body didn’t exist.

After that I considered in general what is needed for a

proposition to be true and certain: I had just found one

that I knew was true and certain, I thought that I ought

also to know what this certainty consists in. I observed that

the proposition ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ has nothing

about it to assure me that I am speaking the truth ·when I

assert it· except that I see very clearly that in order to think

it is necessary to exist. This convinced me that I could take it

as a general rule that the things we conceive very vividly and

very clearly are all true; but ·this isn’t as powerfully simple

a rule as you might think, because· there is some difficulty

in telling which conceptions are really clear.

Next, I reflected on the fact that I was doubting, and that

consequently I wasn’t wholly perfect (for I saw clearly that it

is a greater perfection to know than to doubt). This led me

to the question:

Where did I get my ability to think of something more

perfect than I am?

and I drew the obvious conclusion that this ability had to

come from—·had to be caused by·—something that was in

fact more perfect than me. ·To explain why I reached that

conclusion, I should first explain why· I wasn’t exercised

about such questions as

Where did I get my ability to think of the heavens, the

earth, light, heat (and so on)?

It was because I saw nothing in those thoughts that seemed

to make them superior to me, ·i.e. more perfect than I am·;

and ·that opened the door to a pair of possible explanations

for my ability to have them·. (1) If the thoughts in question

were true, they could depend on—·i.e. come from·—some

perfection in my own nature. (2) If they weren’t true, I could

have derived them from •nothingness - meaning that they

could be in me because I had some •defect. But neither of

these explanations could hold for the idea of a being more

perfect than me. For it was obviously impossible (2) to get

this from nothingness; and I couldn’t have (1) derived it from

myself, because the proposition

(1) Something resulted from and depends on something

less perfect than it is

is just as contradictory as

(2) Something resulted from nothingness.

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.

[What follows starts with the word Car = ‘For’. Descartes seems to be

promising a reason for what he has just said, but the promise isn’t kept.]

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.

Rene Descartes