MEDITATION II



MEDITATION II

THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN MIND, AND HOW IT IS

MORE EASILY KNOWN THAN THE BODY[1]

T

HE Meditation of yesterday has filled my mind with so many doubts that it is no longer in my power to forget them. Nor do I see any principle by which they can be resolved. I feel as if I have fallen suddenly into very deep water, and I am so disconcerted that I can neither find a firm bottom to stand on, nor can I swim up to the surface. Nevertheless, I will make an effort, and once again try the same path that I started on yesterday. That is, I will proceed by rejecting everything that admits of the slightest doubt, just as if I had discovered it to be absolutely false. I will continue in this way until I find something that is certain, or alternatively until I am certain that nothing is certain. Archimedes, in order to move the entire earth, demanded only one point that was firm and immovable. Similarly, I shall be entitled to the highest expectations, if I am fortunate enough to discover only one thing that is certain and indubitable.

Accordingly, I will suppose that everything that I see is false. I will believe that all of my memories are inaccurate. I will suppose that I possess no senses, and I will believe that body, shape, extension, motion, and place are merely fictions of my mind. What, then, can I accept as true? Perhaps only this: that absolutely nothing is certain.

Yet, how do I know that there is not something, apart from the objects I have just mentioned, of which it is impossible to have any doubt? Is there not a God, or some being (whatever I may call him), who puts these thoughts into my mind? But why suppose that, for it may be that I myself am capable of producing them? Well then, am I not at least something? But I previously denied that I possessed senses or a body. At this point I hesitate, for what follows from that? Am I so dependent on the body and the senses that I cannot exist without them? But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world – no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it not follow, therefore, I do not exist? Far from it. Obviously, I exist if I am convinced of something. But there is a being, supremely powerful and cunning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me. Doubtless, then, I exist if I am deceived. And let him deceive me all that he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think that I am something. So after considering matters very carefully, I conclude that this proposition I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I express it or conceive it in my mind.

But I do not yet know clearly what I am, although I am assured that I am. Therefore, I must not be careless, substituting some other object in place of what is properly this ‘I’ – a result that would distort the knowledge that is most certain and evident. So, I will now reconsider what I formerly believed myself to be, before I entered on my present train of thought. And I will remove from that previous viewpoint everything that is subject to the grounds for doubt that I have discovered. Everything that remains will thus be certain and indubitable.

What then did I formerly take myself to be? Undoubtedly I judged that I was a man. But what is a man? Shall I say a rational animal? Certainly not, for I would then have to inquire into what is meant by ‘animal’ and ‘rational’, and so from a single question, I would glide into others even more difficult. I do not now possess enough free time to justify wasting it with subtleties of this sort. I prefer instead to focus on the thoughts that sprang up naturally in my mind whenever I used to ask myself what I was. Well, in the first place I thought that I possessed a face, hands, arms, and all the limbs possessed by a corpse, and which I called by the name of body. I further believed that I was nourished, that I walked, that I perceived and thought; and these actions I attributed to the soul. But what the soul itself was I either did not bother to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtle, like wind, or flame, or ether spread through my solid parts. And concerning body, I did not even doubt of its nature, but thought I distinctly knew it, and I would have explained myself as follows: By a body I understand all that can be bordered by a certain shape; that can occupy a particular place, thereby excluding every other body; that can be perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell; that can be moved in different ways, not indeed by itself, but by something else which contacts it. For the power of self-movement I did not associate with the nature of a body; on the contrary, it was somewhat astonishing to me that this power existed in some bodies.

But what can I now say that I am, since I am supposing that there exists an extremely powerful, and (if I may say so) malicious being, whose entire efforts are directed toward deceiving me? Can I maintain that I possess any of those attributes that I recently thought belonged to the nature of body? After carefully considering them in my own mind, I find none of them that can properly be said to belong to me. To recount them were would be unnecessary and tedious. Let us then skip to the attributes of the soul. The first mentioned were the powers of nutrition and walking; but if I have no body, it follows that I am incapable either of walking or of being nourished. Perception is another attribute of the soul, but perception too is impossible without the body. Besides, I have often during sleep believed that I perceived objects which I later discovered I did not really perceive after all. Thinking is another attribute of the soul, and here I discover what properly does belong to myself. Thinking alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I think. For if it should even happen that I completely ceased to think, I would at the same time completely cease to exist. I now admit nothing unless it is necessarily true. I am therefore, strictly speaking, only a thinking thing – that is, a mind, intellect, or reason – words whose meaning has eluded me up to now. I am, however, a real thing, and really existent. But what thing? The answer is: a thinking thing

The question now arises: am I anything more? I will stimulate my imagination to attempt to answer this. Now it is clear that I am not the assemblage of parts called the human body. I am also not a thin and penetrating vapor diffused through all these parts – a wind, or flame, or breath, or any of all the things I can imagine. For I can suppose that none of those things exist, without altering my assurance that I exist.

But is it not possible that those very things which I suppose to be non-existent, because they are unknown to me, are actually what constitute the ‘I’ that I do know? This is a question that I cannot answer, for I can only judge of things that are known to me. I know that I exist; the question is what I am. One thing is perfectly certain: my knowledge of my existence, strictly speaking, does not depend on things whose existence is so far unknown to me. Consequently, it does not depend on anything I can imagine. Moreover, the term ‘imagination’ shows me my error; for I should be in error if I used my imagination to establish what I am. To imagine is nothing more than to form the image of a corporeal thing; but I already know that I exist, and at the same time that all those images, and in general all that relates to the nature of body, could merely be dreams or chimeras. Therefore it is just as unreasonable to say ‘I will stimulate my imagination in order to know more distinctly what I am’ as to say ‘I am now awake and perceiving something real, but because my perception is not sufficiently clear, I will go to sleep so that my dreams may give me truer and clearer perceptions’. Therefore, I know that my imagination cannot yield any knowledge of myself, and that the mind must be extremely careful to avoid that way of thinking, if it is to know its own nature as distinctly as possible.

But what, then, am I? A thing that thinks. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and also that imagines and perceives.

It is certainly no trivial result if all these properties really belong to my nature. But why should they not belong to it? Am I not that very being who now doubts almost everything; who nevertheless understands and conceives some things, who affirms one thing alone as true, and who denies the others; who desires to know more, and does not wish to be deceived; who imagines many things, sometimes even despite his will; and who is aware of things that appear to be perceived by the senses? Isn’t all of this as true as the fact that I exist, even though I might always be dreaming, and even if my creator is employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me? Can any one of these attributes be distinguished from my thought, or separated from myself? For it is so evident that it is I who doubt, I who understand, and I who desire, that I see no way of making this any more clear. And I am just as certainly the same being who imagines; for, although it may be (as I earlier supposed) that nothing I imagine is true, still the power of imagination does not cease to exist in me and to form part of my thoughts. Finally, I am the same being who perceives, that is, who is aware of certain objects as if by the organs of sense. For instance, I see light, hear a noise, and feel heat. But it will be said that these presentations are false, and that I am dreaming. Even so, it is certain that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot be false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving. In this sense of the term, it is nothing else than thinking. . . .

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[1]Public Domain. Original translation by John Veitch, LL.D. Major revisions by C. E. M. Dunlop.

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