Chapter 6 The Second Meditation On the Nature of the Spirit in Man, and the Easier Knowing of Spirits Than Bodies

My musings yesterday filled my mind with so many doubts that I could never forget them hereafter.But I could see no way of resolving them; it seemed to me that I had fallen into a very deep pool, and was so frightened that I could neither keep my feet on the bottom nor swim up to raise myself to the surface. . Nevertheless, I shall try to continue on the path I have embarked on yesterday, avoiding what I can imagine to be a little suspicious, as if I knew it was absolutely wrong.I'm going to keep going on this road until I come across something solid, or, if I can do nothing else, at least until I know for sure that there is nothing solid in the world.

Archimedes only asked for a fixed and reliable point to move the earth from its original position to another place.Likewise, if I am lucky enough to find that tube is a sure thing, then I have a right to great hopes.I therefore assumed that everything I saw was false; I persuaded myself that not a single thing existed which my memory, full of falsehoods, offered me.I think I have no senses whatsoever, and that body, shape, extension, motion, and place are but figments of my mind.So what can be considered real?Maybe there is nothing more than nothing reliable in the world. ① French second edition: "immovable".

But how do I know that besides what I have just judged to be unreliable, there is anything beyond which we cannot have the slightest doubt?Is there no God, or some other power, to put these thoughts in my heart?This is not necessarily the case; for perhaps I can generate these thoughts myself.So at least I, am I not something?But I have denied that I have senses and a body.Nevertheless, I hesitate, because what conclusions can be drawn from this?Am I so dependent on my body and senses that I can't do without them?But I have convinced myself that there is nothing in this world, no sky, no earth, no spirit, and no body; have I not also convinced myself that I do not exist?Absolutely not; if I've ever convinced myself of something, or merely thought of something, there can be no doubt that I exist.But there was a very powerful, very cunning liar, I don't know what, who was always trying to trick me with all his tricks.Therefore, if he deceives me, there can be no doubt that I exist; and he can deceive me as much as he pleases, and he will never make me nothing if I think of me as something.And so, after having considered all this well above, and having examined all things carefully, the conclusion must be drawn at last, and must be taken as certain, that the proposition that there is I, I exist, every time When I say it, or think it in my mind, the proposition must be true.

But I still don't quite know what I am who really knows I exist, so I must be careful in the future, not to take something else as me rashly, and at the same time not to think that I know everything better than I have before. are more reliable and more obvious mistakes in this cognition. It is for this reason that, before I have the above thoughts, I must first ①reconsider what I thought I was; rooted out from the old insights of the past, so that what remains happens to be entirely reliable and certain.So what did I think I was?No doubt, I thought I was alone.But what is a person?Am I talking about a rational animal?Of course not; for after that I must ask what is an animal and what is rational, and in this way we shall be drawn from the mere one into an infinite number of other more difficult and troublesome ones. The problem is up, and I don't want to waste the little time and leisure I have left obsessing over details like this.But here I am going to reflect further on those thoughts that were formerly born in me (thoughts that were only born out of my own nature when I was thinking about my existence), and I first regarded myself as a person with a face. , hand, arm, and such a whole machine of bone and flesh, as seen from a corpse, which I once called the body.Besides, I thought that I ate, walked, felt, thought, and I ascribed all my actions to the soul; Thinking about it, that's what I imagined it to be, something extremely thin and fine, like a gust of wind, a flame, or a very thin air, which penetrated and spread to the rougher parts of me inside.As for body, I never doubted its nature; for I thought I knew it very clearly, and if I were to explain it according to the concepts I then had, I would describe it thus: Bodies, I mean everything that can be defined by a shape; it can be contained somewhere, it can fill a space, and from there exclude every other body; it can be by touch, or by sight, or by hearing, Perceived, either by taste, or by smell; it can be moved in several ways, not ④ by itself, but by something outside it, by which it is touched and pressed, and thus moved .For such superiorities as the faculties of automaticity, feeling, and thinking, etc., I never before thought should be ascribed to the properties of bodies,5, but on the contrary, seeing such functions as appearing in certain bodies, I would rather very strange.

① French second edition: "Now first". ②French second edition: "How many impacts". ③ French second edition: "I". ④French second edition: "Actually not". ⑤ French second edition: "It has the ability to be automatic, but also has the ability to feel or think. I never thought it belonged to the nature of objects before." But now I assume that there is some extremely powerful, and if you may say so, extremely vicious and cunning person, who uses all his strength and tact to deceive me, then what am I?Can I be sure that I possess a little of what I have just ascribed to ②bodiness?I pondered further on this, I went over these things in my mind, and I didn't find any of them that I could say to be in my mind.I don't need to list them all.So let’s take those attributes of the soul as an example, and see if any of them are in my heart.

The first two are eating and walking; however, if I really have no body, I can neither walk nor eat.The other is sensation; but without a body there is no sensation, unless I thought I had felt many things in my dreams before, but when I woke up I realized that there was no sensation.The other is thinking.Now I feel that thinking is an attribute that belongs to me, only it cannot be separated from me.With me, I exist, which is reliable; but how long?I exist as long as I think; for if I stop③thinking, it is probable that I also stop③being at the same time.I now deny nothing that is not necessarily true; therefore, strictly speaking I am only a thinking thing, that is to say, a mind, an intellect, or a reason, names whose meaning was unknown to me before.Then I am a real thing, a real thing; but what kind of thing is it?I said: it is a thinking thing.or what?I'm going to use my imagination again to see if I'm something a little bit more, I'm not what people call a human body made up of limbs; I'm not a thin, pervasive, penetrating I am not the wind, nor the exhalation, nor the vapour, nor anything else I can invent and imagine, for I have assumed that none of these things exist, and, without altering this assumption, I feel that Doesn't prevent me from actually knowing that I'm a thing.

① French second edition: "a certain monster". ②French second edition: "I just said that it belongs to". ③French second edition: "Complete stop". But can it also be the same: those things which I assume do not exist because I do not know them are no different from what I know?I have no idea.I will not discuss this point now, I can only judge those things that I know: I have realized that I exist, and now I ask what is the self that has recognized that I exist.But it is very important that this conception and knowledge of myself depend, strictly speaking, neither on those things of which I do not yet know the existence, nor on any figment of the imagination or invention. Reliable.Moreover, the words fiction and imagination show that I am wrong; for if I imagine myself to be something, then in fact I am fictional, because imagination is nothing but the idea of ​​a physical thing. shape or image.Now that I know for sure that I exist, I know also that all those images, and in general everything that one ascribes to objects, are likely to be nothing more than dreams or fantasies.Secondly, I see clearly that if I say that I am going to engage my imagination in order to see more clearly who I am,2 this is the same as saying that I am now awake and I see something solid and real, but because I did not see enough of it that it was equally irrational that I should sleep on purpose so that my dreams would make it more real and more obvious to me.And thus I realize with certainty that what I can conceive imaginatively does not belong to my knowledge of myself; It is necessary to make it stop comprehending in this way, change the course, and take another path.

①Second French edition: "However, my knowledge of my existence does not depend, strictly speaking, upon those things of which I do not yet know their existence, and therefore does not depend upon any other thing which I can invent with my imagination. thing". ②French second edition: "What am I". So what am I?is a thinking thing.What is a thinking thing?That is to say, one is doubting, comprehending, affirming, denying, willing, unwilling, imagining, and feeling. Of course, if all these things belonged to my nature, it would not be less.But why are these things not part of my nature?Don't I just doubt almost everything, yet know and grasp certain things, confirm and affirm that only these things are true, deny everything else, would like and wish to know more, don't want to be deceived, and even sometimes can't help Imagine many things, like the one that feels many things through the medium of some organs of the body?Is there not one thing in all of this that is as true as that there is me, that I do exist, though I am always asleep, and though the one who made me exist tried to deceive me with all his might?Is there not one of these attributes that can be distinguished from my thinking, or from myself, so to speak?For it is so obvious, I am doubting, understanding, and hoping, that there is no need to add anything here to explain it.And of course I have the power to imagine; for even if it may happen (as I once assumed) that what I imagine is not real, the power of imagination is still real. In my heart, and made a part of my thinking.In short, I am that which feels, that is to say, which seems to receive and know things through the sense organs, for in fact I see light, hear sound, and feel heat.But someone will say to me: these phenomena are false, I am sleeping.Let it be so; but at least it seems to me that I see, I hear, I get hot, which is always true; really, this is what I call feeling in my mind, and in the right sense On, this is thinking.From here I started to see who I am a little more clearly than before.

① French second edition: "Technology". ② "Acceptance and recognition", the second French edition is: "Discovery". ③ French second edition: "I saw the light, I heard the voice, and I felt the heat". But ①I cannot but believe that ②those physical things whose image is made by my thinking, and which fall into the senses, know better than myself, who do not fall into the imagination, and do not know which part, It is indeed a very strange thing, though what I regard as doubtful, and which are outside me, should be known to me more clearly and more easily than what is true, certain, and of my own nature.But I saw what it was: my mind was wandering, and I could not confine myself within the correct limits of truth.Let us let him loose the rein once more, so that we can take the rein slowly and properly later, so that we can more easily control and control him.Let us begin by considering what we know best, what we believe to be most clearly understood4, that is, the objects we touch and see.I don't mean objects in general (because the notion of "general" is usually vague), but consider a particular object.Take a piece of wax just out of the hive:

It has not lost the sweetness of the honey it contains, and retains a little of the fragrance it plucks from the flowers; its color, shape, size, are distinct; it is hard, cool, and easy to touch⑤, If you tap it once, it makes a little noise.In short, everything that can make people clearly understand an object is here. But, as I speak, someone takes it to the fire: what remains is gone, the aroma is gone, its color has changed, its shape has changed, its size has increased, it It's liquid, it's hot, you can't touch it, and if you knock it, it doesn't make a sound anymore.Does the original wax continue to exist after this change has occurred?It must be admitted that it continues to exist; and no one can deny this.So what was it that I knew so clearly on this piece of wax before?Of course it cannot be what I feel on this wax through the medium of the senses, for everything pertaining to taste, smell, sight, touch, hearing is changed, but the original wax continues to exist.Maybe it's this thing I'm thinking of now, that is to say wax, not this sweetness of honey, nor this scent of flowers, nor this white color, nor this shape, nor this sound, Rather, it is merely a body which has just been represented under those forms and which is now represented under other forms.But what, exactly, was I imagining when I took it in this way?Let us ponder the matter over, and remove everything that is not wax, and see what remains.Of course, there are only things that are extended, flexible, and changeable.So what does it mean to be flexible and changeable?Am I imagining that this round piece of wax can become square and from square to triangular?Of course not, no, because I understand it as possible to accept countless changes like this, and I cannot use my imagination to recognize countless changes one by one, so the concept of wax I have cannot be used by imagination. function to do it.

①French second edition: "But I still feel". ②French second edition: "What falls on the senses, the senses themselves examine". ③French second edition: "Nevertheless, those things whose existence I find doubtful, which I do not know, which do not belong to me, are more It is actually strange to say that I know and understand better than myself, in a word. But I see how it is. My heart is a bohemian , it likes to run about, and can't bear to be chained within the bounds of truth yet. Then loosen its reins once more, give it all freedom, and allow it to observe what appears outside itself, so that we can see it again later. Take the rein slowly and properly, and let it stop to consider its nature and something in it, so that after this it will be more easily controlled and controlled by us." ④French second edition: "Now let us consider that which is generally considered to be the easiest to know, and is believed to be the most clearly known." ⑤ In the first edition of French, it is onletouche (people touch it), and in the second edition is maniable (available, handy).Here is the translation according to the faciletangitur in the Latin version. ⑥French second edition: "No one doubts, everyone concludes so." So what is this extension?Doesn't it also not recognize it?For it grows as the wax melts, grows still larger when the wax is completely melted, and grows still larger as the heat increases.I should not have grasped wax as it really is, if it had not occurred to me that wax is capable of accepting, by extension, more variety than I can imagine.So I must confess that I cannot even comprehend what this wax is with my imagination, only my reason can comprehend it.I mean this particular piece of wax, because as for the general wax, it's more obvious.What then is this wax which only the intellect or the spirit can comprehend?Of course it was the wax that I saw, that I touched, that I imagined, that I first knew.Note, however, that the perception of it, or the action by which we perceive it,4 is not seeing, nor touching, nor imagining, never, though it seemed so before, but merely seeing with the mind, This look can be partial and vague, as it was before, or clear and distinct, as it is now, according to how much or little I pay attention to what is in it or makes up it. ① French second edition: "Even this piece of wax we consider". ②French second edition: "Understand". ③ French second edition: "believe". ④ "Or we use the action of perception", the second edition of French is missing. But I cannot be too surprised when I consider how feeble my mind is, and how unconsciously it tends to be wrong.For even though I consider all this in my own mind without words, words limit me, and I almost let the words of common speech introduce errors; for if people bring us the original wax, we say we see that this is The wax, rather than we judge that it is the wax, because it has the same color and the same shape.From here, if I had not happened to watch passers-by in the street from a window, and when I saw them, I could not but say that I saw people, as I said I saw wax, then I would almost conclude that : People know wax with their eyes, not just with their spirit.But what did I see from the window?Nothing but hats and coats, and under the hats and coats may be some phantoms or some disguised people, moving only by springs.But I judged that these were real people, so that, by the judgment of my mind alone, I understood what I thought I saw with my eyes. ① "some ghosts or some pretended people", the second French version is "some artificial machines". ② "True", missing in the second French edition. If a person wants to improve his understanding to a level higher than that of ordinary people, he should consider it shameful to find fault with the forms and words of ordinary people's speech.Let me leave nothing else to consider: whether what I first saw, apprehended with the outer senses, or at least, as they say, with common sense, that is to say with the imagination, was better than my own. Now, after examining more precisely what it is and how it can be known, comprehend it more clearly and more fully.Of course, it would be ridiculous to even doubt this.For what is clear and distinct in this first perception, which cannot equally fall upon the worst animal senses?But when I separate the wax from its appearance, as from its clothing, I consider it naked, and though there may, of course, be some errors in my judgment, nonetheless, if no one I cannot grasp the spirit of it like this. But what shall I say about this spirit, that is to say about myself (for until now I have recognized nothing but that I am a spirit)?I said, what am I going to say about this me who seems to grasp the wax so distinctly?Do I not know myself more truly, more accurately, more clearly and distinctly?For if, because I see wax, it follows that there is wax, or that there is wax, then of course it is all the more obvious that I am, or that I am, because I see wax, since it may be that what I see is not really Wax; or maybe I don't even have eyes to see; But it is impossible that this thinking I is not something when I see, or when I think I see (which I no longer distinguish).In the same way, if I conclude that wax exists because I have touched it, the result is the same, that I exist; and if I conclude that it exists because my imagination leads me to believe it, I always come to the same conclusion.What I say here about wax applies also to everything outside me and outside me. ①French second edition: "Speech forms invented by ordinary people". ② French second edition: "More carefully". ③French second edition: "In this perception, what is different? Is there anything in the senses that does not seem to belong in the same way to the worst animals?" ④French second edition: "This seems to me, what is it?". Then, if my conception and understanding of wax seems to be clearer and clearer after it has been discovered not only by sight or touch, but also by many other reasons, then it should not be easier for me Do I know myself more clearly and clearly? ③Because all the reasons for knowing and apprehending the nature of wax or of other bodies ④ are more easily and more clearly ⑤proving the nature of my spirit.There are many other things in the mind than those which belong to bodies, which can help to clarify the nature of the mind, and those things are not worth mentioning. ① "was discovered", the second French version is: "make me clearer". ② "Concept and cognition", the second French edition is: "concept or perception". ③French second edition: "I must... admit that I now know myself". ④ French second edition: "No matter what other objects". ⑤ "Easier and more obvious", the second French version is: "better". However, I finally unknowingly returned to the place I originally wanted to return to; For, now that the matter is now known to me, we only apprehend objects by the intellectual faculties in us, not by the imagination, nor by the senses, really, and we do not see it, or we touch it. I do not know it, but only because we grasp it with our minds, so obviously I know nothing that is easier for me to know than my mind. However, as it is almost impossible to destroy an old opinion so quickly; then I had better stop here for a while, in order that, after so long a reflection, I should imprint this new insight deeply on my memory. . ① French second edition: "Because, since it has now become clear to me that objects in themselves are not known by being seen or touched, but only by being understood or by thought, Then I see clearly that nothing is easier for me to know than my spirit. But because it is not easy to break a habitual understanding so quickly".