Chapter 26 The Author's Reply to the Fifth Group of Objections ① Mr. Descartes to Mr. Gassendi Ⅱ

1. I have fully explained what the idea of ​​nothing we have, how we share nothing, called this idea the anti-idea, and said it says nothing except that we are not a supreme being, that we lack a lot ; and yet you find fault here and there where there is no question. When you say that some of God's works are not quite done, you make up something that I have never said anywhere and never thought.I have only said that certain things may seem incomplete if they are not regarded as parts of the whole universe, but as separate things quite apart from the whole universe. Everything you then say about final causes should be about efficient causes; thus, from this praiseworthy use in every part of plants, animals, etc., to praise the hand of God that made them , it is quite right to recognize and celebrate the artisan through his work, rather than guessing for what purpose he created everything.While morality often permits speculation, and it is sometimes a pious thing to consider what we can guess what God's purpose for the governance of the universe is, in physics everything rests on solid ground. It is of course inappropriate to use guesswork.Do not assert that some ends are easier to discover than others; for all these are equally hidden in the impenetrable abyss of his wisdom.Nor should you assert that no one else can understand other causes; for there is no cause which is not far more easily known than that of God's purpose; The examples in question—not so difficult that I don't know anyone who can confidently understand them.Finally, since you ask me so honestly: from the time your spirit was infiltrated into your body until now, with your eyes closed, your ears plugged, and without using any of your senses, do you think your spirit is And what ideas would the spirit itself have?I answer you also honestly and sincerely (provided we assume that the body neither hinders nor helps it to think and contemplate): I have no doubt that it will have ideas as it does now. , if not much clearer and purer; for the senses thwart it in many ways, and do not help it at all to grasp the ideas.In fact, if it were not for the fact that all men are generally too much occupied with bodily things, there would be nothing to prevent them from equally recognizing these ideas in their minds.

Two, you're here and there wrongly treating fallibility as a positive imperfection, which is nothing but (mainly about God) a denial of the greater perfection that exists in creation.Nor does it fit to compare the citizens of a country with the parts of the universe; for the badness of some citizens is a certainty for the country; but men are fallible, that is, It is said that human beings do not have all kinds of perfection, which is good with the universe, and it is not the same.However, it is better to compare two kinds of people: one wants a man's body to be full of eyes so that he appears more beautiful (since there is nothing more beautiful to him than eyes), and another thinks that in There should be no infallible creations in the world, that is, no perfect creations.

Besides, what you then assume is totally wrong, that God doomed us to be bad creations, that he endowed us with some imperfections and things like that.Likewise, it is not true to say that the faculty of judgment which God has given to man is hesitant, vague, and inadequate for the little things which he commits to man to judge. 3. Do you want me to tell you in a few words what the will can achieve beyond the limits of reason?That is, in a word, to get to everything where we can err.Thus, when you judge the mind to be a thin body, yes, you may well perceive that it is a mind, that is to say, a thinking thing, and also that a thin body is an extended thing. ; but you certainly do not realize that the thinking and the extended are one and the same, but only that you wish to believe so, because you have believed so before, and you cannot easily shake off your opinion. , and unwilling to break your preconceptions.So when you judge that an apple that happens to be poisonous will be good food for you, yes, you do get the sense that its smell, its color, and even its taste are good, but you don't get that The apple would be good for you if you took it as food; but you would have it so, so you judged it so.Therefore, though I admit that we are unwilling to anything which we somehow fail to grasp, I deny that our understanding has the same range as our willing; for it is certain that we can understand from the same There is much in the world to desire, of which we know little; and when we judge improperly, we do not therefore desire wrongly, but perhaps we desire something bad.And although one may say that we perceive nothing wrongly, but only when we judge that we grasp something more than we actually do, we are said to have grasped wrongly.

Although what you go on to deny about the indifference of the will itself is quite clear, I don't want you to prove it, because it is something everyone should feel and experience for himself without reasoning.If, in your role, you seem to be unaware of the ways in which the mind acts within itself, because of the natural incompatibility between the body and the mind, that is certainly not a big deal.Do not be free, then, if you will; and as for me, I shall enjoy my freedom, for not only do I feel it in my heart, but I also see that since you attack it systematically, Instead of refuting it with valid, tenable reasons, you simply deny it.Perhaps I will find more trust in the hearts of other people to confirm what I experience, and each of them can also testify in their own hearts, rather than you, because you deny it for no other reason. , but only because maybe you have never experienced it.Nevertheless, it is not difficult to judge in your own words what you yourself have sometimes felt: because you deny that we can prevent ourselves from falling into error, because you will not let the will reach anything that is not prescribed by reason, in that Where you agree that we can hold back and tell us not to persist, this shows that absolutely nothing can be done without this freedom which the will possesses to tend here or there without waiting for reason to prescribe, and this The rule of reason is that you don't want to admit it.For if reason once ordered the will to make a wrong judgment, I ask you, who ordered it to do so when it first took care not to persist in error?If it is itself, then it can tend to something without reason determining it, but this you denied not long ago, and is still a bone of contention; if it is determined by reason, then It is not it that is to be noticed.It sometimes happens, however, that as it formerly tended to be wrong, reason suggested it to it, and it so happens that it now tends to be right, because reason suggested it to it.But I still want to know more about the nature of what you understand as error, and how you think error is the object of reason.For, to me, who understand error as a mere lack of rightness, I find it a nuisance that the intellect adopts error under the form or appearance of rightness, but this is necessary, if in case it prescribes The will to adopt the wrong word.

4. Regarding the results of these contemplations, I seem to have explained almost everything in the preface. I think you have read this preface.To those who do not take the trouble to understand the order and connection of my reasons, but want to find fault and argue here and there, this is of little fruit.As for the method of telling us that we can distinguish what we actually understand clearly from what we only think we understand clearly, I have already said, though I think I have pointed out rigorously enough, that for those I dare not hope that those who do not take the trouble to get rid of prejudices, but who complain that I have pointed out that the methods of doing so are too long and too rigid, will be easily understood.

1. You quote me a few words here and then go on to say that this is all I have to say about the question you asked.I therefore deem it necessary to tell the reader that you have not paid enough attention to the contextual connection of what I have written; for I think the connection is such that in order to prove each question, everything that precedes it and this A big part of the stuff after the question is helpful.So whatever you quote me on can't be faithful if you don't also quote everything I write about other things. As for your saying that apart from God, it seems to me that it is difficult for me to see to establish anything immutable and eternal, if the question is one that exists, or simply if I establish something so unchanging that its Transgender itself doesn't depend on God, then you have a point.But the poets say that although Jupiter made and arranged destiny, since it was established by him, he himself cannot change it.In the same way, although I think that the nature of things and these mathematical truths that people can know are dependent on God, I also think that because God wills and He has arranged them this way, they are unchanging and eternal. .So it doesn't matter whether you think it's hard or easy; to me, it's just good.The universals which you go on to object to the dialectics do not concern me at all, because I understand them quite differently from them.But with respect to those essences which we know well, such as those of triangles or other geometric shapes, I will make it easy for you to admit that the ideas of those essences in us are not abstracted from the ideas of individual things; For here you are prompted to say they are false only because they do not accord with your apprehension of the nature of things.Even shortly afterwards you said that the objects of pure mathematics, such as points, lines, surfaces, and inseparable things composed of points, lines, and surfaces, cannot have any existence outside the intellect, from which it must follow that the world There has never been any triangle in the world, nor has there been anything of the nature of a triangle, or of any other geometric shape, as we perceive it, so that the essence of things is not abstracted from anything that exists.But you say they are fake.Yes, as you mean, because you think that's the way things are, that things don't correspond to their nature.But if you also do not hold that all geometry is false, you cannot deny that many truths have been proved from it, which, since they never change and remain the same, they are called immutable, Eternal, it is not without reason.

① Jupiter is the highest god in Roman mythology, equivalent to Zeus in Greek mythology. ② Refers to the scholastic philosophers. But the nature of things may not correspond to your conception of the nature of things, or even to the conception of Democritus and Epicurus as established and composed of atoms; It is only an external appellation, which does not cause any change in the nature of things.Nevertheless, one cannot doubt that these views correspond to the nature of real things, made and constructed by the real God: not because there are entities in the world that are long but not wide, or broad but not thick. ; but because the shapes of geometry are not to be regarded as entities, but only as names under which entities are contained.I do not, however, agree with what is generally supposed, that the ideas of these shapes have always rested on the senses; for, though there can be no doubt that there are shapes in the world as the geometers think, yet I deny that there are any There are any such shapes around, unless they are so small that our senses make no impression of them, for they are generally composed of straight lines, and I do not think that any part of the lines which our senses touch is really straight.

At the same time, when we look through a magnifying glass at lines which appear to us to be the most straight, we see that their parts are entirely irregular and curved as if they were ripples.Thus when we first find a triangular shape drawn on paper in our infancy, this shape does not tell us like a triangle should understand geometry, because the shape is no more represented than it is with a bad pencil. A complete picture of the better.But since the true idea of ​​a triangle is already in us, and our minds can grasp it more easily than a simpler or more complex shape of a drawn triangle, we do not, therefore, see the complex shape. Appreciate the shape itself, but apprehend the true triangle.It is the same as when we look at a piece of paper on which lines are drawn to represent a person's face, it does not excite in us the idea of ​​the lines as strongly as it does the idea of ​​a person.This would not be the case if a face was known to us elsewhere, if we were accustomed to think of the face instead of its lines, and often when we moved away from these lines, we You can't even tell the distance between the lines.In the same way, of course, we can never know triangles in the way we see them drawn on paper, unless our minds get the idea of ​​triangles from elsewhere.

2. I can’t see here what kind of thing you want existence to belong to, and I can’t see why it can’t be said to be a characteristic like “omnipotence”. If you use the word characteristic, according to It should actually be taken here in the sense that it refers to various attributes or to anything that can be attributed to a thing.What's more, necessary existence is really a property in the narrowest sense in God, because it is only suitable for God himself, and it is only in God that it becomes a part of essence.This is why the existence of the triangle should not be compared with the existence of God, because in God there is obviously another essential relationship that is not found in the triangle; Between East and West, as I put the sum of the triangles of a triangle equal to two right angles between those properties of a triangle, I am not guilty of what logicians call a "stealing argument".It is also wrong to say that essence and existence, whether in God or in the triangle, can be understood separately, because God is his existence, and the triangle is not its own existence.I do not, however, deny that possible existence is a perfection in the idea of ​​the triangle, as necessary existence is a perfection in the idea of ​​God, for this makes the idea more complete than we suppose it could be produced. The concept of all the monsters in the game is more complete.You have thus not at all weakened the force of my argument, while you have been abusing this sophistry by saying it is very easily settled.As to what you said next, I have answered fully;

You are grossly mistaken when you say that proving the existence of God is not the same as proving that the sum of the triangles of all right triangles is equal to two right angles; The proof of existence is much simpler and more obvious than the proof that the sum of the triangles of a right triangle is equal to two right angles.I will not say anything about the rest, because when you say that I have not explained many things further, and that my proofs are not convincing, I think it will make more sense to say that about you and your proofs. more appropriate. ①A logical error, that is, taking an unproven judgment as the basis for proving a thesis.

3. As to what you say here of Diagoras, Theodora, Pythagoras, and many others, I have the skeptics against you.Skeptics doubt even the arguments of geometry, and I don't think they would if they had really known God; Prove that one thing is more obvious than the other, and those who are sufficiently acquainted with both the one and the other, can see that the one is first recognized than the other, and is more One thing is more obvious and more reliable. 1. Heretofore I have refuted your denial that material things can exist so far as they are regarded as objects of pure mathematics.As for the understanding of a thousand-sided shape, it is far from true to say that it is vague, because people can point out many things from it very clearly and distinctly, but if they only know it vaguely, or like you In other words, if you only know its name, it will never be the case.What is certain, however, is that although we cannot imagine it very clearly, we can comprehend it very clearly, completely, and at once.It is therefore evident that the function of the understanding differs from the function of the imagination not only in that it is more or less, but rather in that the two modes of operation are quite different. For, in the understanding, the mind uses only itself, but in the imagination it needs to consider some bodily form; and though the figures of geometry are entirely bodily, do not think that the ideas by which we apprehend them The same is true when they fall beyond imagination.Finally, the ideas of God, angels, human souls, etc., are corporeal or almost corporeal, abstracted from the image of man and other things of a very simple, very slight, and very imperceptible nature. Come out, meat!Only you can think of this.For whoever represents God or even the spirit of man in this way is trying to imagine the absolutely unimaginable, is merely imagining a bodily idea and mistakenly affixing the name of God or the name of spirit to It; for in the idea of ​​the mind there is no content but a single thought and all its attributes, and none of these attributes is corporeal. 2. You here clearly show that you rely only on prejudices and never get rid of them, because you do not want to suspect that there is even the slightest possibility of falsity in things that we have never paid any attention to; therefore you say that when we are in When looking at a tower at close quarters and almost touching it with my hand, we are sure that it is square if it appears square to me; and we cannot doubt that we are awake when in fact we are awake. Still dreaming, and other things like that; For you have not the slightest reason to believe that you have been examining and observing with considerable care all that may possibly lead you to be mistaken; and it may not be unseemly to point out that you have sometimes been mistaken about such things as are true and reliable. .But you return to what I said when you say that at least we cannot doubt that things appear to us as they are; same.Here, though, the question is the truth of what is outside of us, and I don't see that you're saying the shred of truth in that. 3. Regarding some of the things you have attacked so many times and are still futilely talking about in this place, I will ignore them here. Insisting on what has been very evidently proved; and, when I exclude objects from my essence, say that I only intend to speak of gross, salient objects, though my project is to exclude all objects , however subtle it may be, thin, and the like; for what is there to reply to what is said and said without sound grounds, unless it is flatly denied?But I still want to say by the way that I would like to know on what basis you say that I prefer to speak of gross bodies rather than fine ones.You say it is because I have said that I have a body to which I am united, and that I, that is, my spirit, must be distinct from my body, where I admit that I I don't see why the words can't be said of both fine, imperceptible objects and gross, conspicuous objects; and I don't believe that anyone but you thinks so.Again, even before we know whether there is wind, fire, steam, air, and any other bodies in the world, however thin they may be, I have made it clear in the second meditation that the mind can be regarded as But whether it is in fact different from a body, I said there, is not the place to discuss that question.Since this question is left to the sixth Meditation, I have discussed it a great deal in the sixth, and there I have settled the question by very strong and genuine arguments.But on the contrary, you confuse the question of how the mind can be apprehended with what it actually is, which only shows that you don't understand any of these things clearly. 4. Here you ask: How can I think that the image or idea of ​​a body (which has extension) can be received into me (I have no extension)?My answer is that no bodily image can be received into the mind, and no apprehension or pure understanding of things, whether bodily or mental, is made of any bodily image. ; as for the imagination, it can only be bodily.It is true that, in order to make an imagination, an image of a real object is required, to which the mind is united, rather than the image being received into the mind.It is not difficult to refute what you say about the idea of ​​the sun, that a man who is blind from birth is made of his knowledge of heat alone; for though the blind man has no idea of ​​the sun as a bright, , but he still has a clear and clear concept of something hot.You're comparing me to this blind man without reason.Firstly because the knowledge of a thinking thing extends farther than the knowledge of a warming thing, and it is even wider than our knowledge of anything else, as I have pointed out elsewhere. and secondly because no one can prove that the idea of ​​the sun which the blind man made did not include everything that is known about the sun, except that the man with the organ of sight knows its shape in addition. and its light.But for you, not only do you not know more about the spirit than I do, but you don't see all that I saw there; On the one hand, I can only be called myopic or short-sighted at best, like everyone else.Again, I did not go on to say that the mind is not extended in order to explain what it is and to make its nature known, but only to show that those who think it is extended are mistaken.Even so, if there are some who are willing to say that Buzephale is a piece of music, it is not in vain or unreasonable for others to deny it.To tell the truth, in what you say here to prove that the mind has extension, you say that it is due to its use of the body, and the body has extension.I don't think your reasoning is any better than if you say Bucephale neighs, so that it makes some sounds that can be related to music, and you conclude that therefore Bucephale is a music so reasoning is better.For although the mind unites the whole body, this does not mean that it extends over the whole body, for extension is not a property of mind; it is only of thought.It does not apprehend extension with the image of extension within it, although it conceives extension by incorporating itself into the image of corporeality with extension, as I said before.Therefore, although the spirit has the power and performance to drive the body, it does not necessarily belong to the category of objects, it is not something in the nature of objects. ① Gassendi said in his "Refutation": "If anyone only knows that Bucephale is not a fly, does he have a clear and clear idea of ​​Bucephale?" Fly, Latin is musca; flute Karl probably mistook musca for musica (music). 5. What you say here about the union of mind and body is analogous to those earlier objections.You have not objected at all to my reasons, but only advanced those conclusions which seemed to you to doubt me, although the facts of these doubts came to you only because you wanted to judge something that cannot be imagined in its nature. Let them be examined by imagination.So when you want to compare here the mixture made of body and spirit with the mixture of two bodies mixed together, it is enough for me to answer that no comparison of these things should be made. , because they are two completely different things, don't imagine that the mind can be divided into parts, although it comprehends each part in the body, because who told you that whatever the mind comprehends must actually be in the mind?If so, when it apprehends the size of the universe, it must have that size in itself, and then it is not only extended, but larger than the world. 6. There is nothing contrary to me in what you say here, and there is nothing more to be said about it.From this the reader can see that, however lengthy your words may be, it is impossible to conclude with certainty the force of your reasoning. The spirit and the flesh have been debated until now, and since many things are reasonable, the spirit does not follow its feelings.But now, having lifted the mask, I recognized that I was speaking to Monsieur Gassendi, a man who excelled both in the perfection of his character and the frankness of his heart, and in the profundity and depth of his learning. is very respectable, and my friendship with him will always be precious; and I promise, as he can know himself, that I will always look for opportunities to acquire it as far as possible.So if, in my reply to his refutation, I use the usual liberty for philosophers, I beg him not to think it bad, as on my part, I am sure I have not seen What does it not please me very much; and what pleases me most is that a man of extraordinary ability should not be able to produce a single argument that is sufficient in a long and carefully considered speech. Destroyed and overthrew my reasons, and he did not at all refute my conclusions, which would not have been easy for me to defend.