Chapter 27 Letter from Mr. Descartes to Mr. Clareser

Re-answer to the main object of the fifth group of M. Gassendi's rebuttal [January 12, 1646] gentlemen: You saw that I did not reply to a thick opinion written by the author of the fifth set of objections in answer to my reply, and you asked some of your friends to extract the strongest arguments from that book, and You sent me a summary of what they did, for which I am grateful to you.You are more concerned about my reputation in this than I am; for, I tell you the truth, I don't care very much whether I'm praised or disparaged by those who can be persuaded by such reasons as these.

The most learned of my acquaintances who read his books testified to me that they found nothing to attract their attention.I have come now exclusively to satisfy their wishes.I know that most people are more apt to pay attention to appearance than to reality, and to be more wrong in judgment than right;Nevertheless, the abstract you sent me pleased me, and I felt compelled not to answer it, not so much because I needed to defend myself, as to thank your friends for their hard work; for, I think Those who have taken the trouble to do this work should now judge, as I have done, that all objections contained in this book rest on nothing but a few misunderstood phrases, or a few false assumptions; for what they refer to All of these fall into this category, and, nonetheless, they are so painstaking that they even include a few rebuttals that I don't remember seeing before in that book.

① Refers to Gassendi’s rebuttal to Descartes’ Meditations after Descartes’s reply, and Gassendi’s refutation. Regarding the first meditation, they mention three objections, namely: first, I want people to be free from prejudices of all kinds, and I am asking for an impossibility; but other prejudices, which are more pernicious, have been adopted; and thirdly, that the method of general skepticism which I have proposed does not help to find any truth. The first of these is based on the failure of the author of the book to take into account that the word prejudice does not include all concepts in our minds (which I admit are impossible to break), but only the judgments we have made before and now All insights that are still trusted by us.Moreover, to judge, or not to judge, is an act of the will, and, as I have explained in due place, it is clearly within our power; What we have affirmed or denied before, it is enough to affirm or deny nothing except what we have re-examined, although we still retain their concepts in memory.Nevertheless, I have said that it is difficult for us to dismiss everything we believe to be true in this way, partly because there must be some reason for doubt before deciding to the main reason given in this meditation), partly also because, no matter how much we resolve to neither deny nor affirm anything, if we do not keep it firmly in mind, we will easily forget it later. it forgot.

The second objection is nothing but a patently false assumption; for, though I have said that we must even strive to deny what was formerly too certain, I have deliberately limited our ability to do so only when we are looking for more When we can thus negate everything that is more reliable, we obviously cannot have any harmful prejudices. The third objection, too, is nothing but nitpicking; for, it is true, doubt alone is not sufficient to establish any truth, but it is a useful means of preparing the mind for the establishment of truth later, and it is for this purpose that I just use this method.

To the second meditation, your friends point out six counterarguments.The first point is: when I said that I think so I exist, the author of the "Opinions" wanted me to set this major premise: whoever thinks exists, so I have already incorporated a prejudice.Thus he once again misuses the word prejudice.For, though we may add the name to the proposition when we accidentally say it, and believe it to be true, because we remember having judged it thus before; yet when we examine it, we cannot say that it is a prejudice because it appears so obvious to the intellect that it cannot be prevented from distrusting it, though it may be the first time in our lives that we think of it, so that it is not a prejudice.

But the greatest mistake here is that the author assumes that knowledge of particular propositions must be deduced from general ones in a logical syllogism order, which shows that he does not know in what way truth should be sought; for, In order to find truth, we always of course start from particular concepts in order to reach general concepts, although we can also go the other way, find general concepts, and then deduce other particular concepts from them.Thus, when we teach a child the principles of geometry, he cannot understand the general, if we do not point him to examples in special cases, such as subtracting an equal part from two equal quantities, and the remainder is also equal. ; or the whole is greater than the part.It is through neglect of this that our author has blundered so many false inferences, and with them he has enriched his book; , as if from these major premises I deduced the truths I have explained.

The second objection pointed out here by your friends is: in order to know that I think, one must know what thinking is; I don't know that, they say, because I negate everything.However, what I am negating are only prejudices, not some concepts like this.There is no such thing as affirmation or negation of some concepts like this being recognized. A third objection is: thinking cannot be without things, such as objects.The ambiguity of the word thinking must be avoided here.The word may refer to the "thing that thinks" or to the "action" of the thing; and I deny that the "thing that thinks" needs anything other than itself in order to exercise its action, although when When it examines material things, it can also include material things.

① "Things" (chose), the second edition of the French was mistaken for "cause" (cause). The fourth objection is: Although I have a thought of myself, I do not know whether this thought is a physical action or an atom in motion, rather than an immaterial entity.Here again the ambiguity of the word thinking arises.I can see nothing but an unfounded question which seems to be this: You conclude that you are a human being because you see in you everything you call a human being, and who With these things, you call whoever is a human being.But how do you know that you are not an elephant but a man for some other reason you cannot see?For, after the thinking substance asserts that it is intelligent, since it points out in itself all the properties of an intelligent substance, and after being unable to point out any properties belonging to bodies, one asks how it knows it Not an object, but an immaterial entity.

The fifth objection is similar: Although I cannot find extension in my mind, this does not mean that it has no extension, because my mind is not a yardstick for measuring the truth of things.The sixth objection also says: The distinction I make with my mind between thoughts and objects may be wrong.But it should be pointed out here that the ambiguity contained in the following statement: My thinking is not a ruler for measuring the truth of things.Because, if it is said that my mind should not be the yardstick by which others are judged, forced to believe something because I believe it to be true, then I totally agree.This is not the case here, however, for I have never wished to compel anyone to act on my authority; on the contrary, I have stated several times in various places that it is only to be believed if it is justified.Again, if the word thinking is applied to all kinds of activities of the soul without distinction, there may of course be several kinds of thinking from which nothing should be inferred as to the reality of things other than ourselves.But that's not the case here either.Here it is only a question of thoughts, which are clear and distinct perceptions and the judgments that follow them, which every man should make in his mind.Therefore, in the sense in which these words are to be understood here, I say that every man's thinking, that is to say, every man's perception or knowledge of a thing, should be the measure of that thing for him. The ruler of true or false, that is to say, all his judgments about the matter must agree with this perception if they are to be correct.This is the case even with respect to some truths of faith, before we decide to believe them, we ought to know what makes us believe them to be inspired by God; Things are right to act according to the judgment of more able men, but it is their perception that tells them that they are ignorant, and those whom they would like to act according to their judgment may not be so ignorant, otherwise they would act according to Their judgment and actions are wrong, and they act like robots or animals instead of people.Thus, to try to make judgments that do not correspond to the perception of things is the most absurd and excessive error that a philosopher cannot allow.Nevertheless, I do not see how our author can justify himself for falling into this error in most of his rebuttals.For, not wanting everyone to pay attention to their own perceptions, he thought we ought to believe whatever insights or oddities he pleased to give us, though we could not see them at all.

Regarding the third meditation, your friends pointed out: first, not all people experience the idea of ​​God in their hearts; second, if I had this idea, I would understand it; third, many people After reading my reasons, they didn’t believe it; fourth, from my knowledge that I am incomplete, it is impossible to draw the conclusion that God exists.However, if the word idea is understood as I have specifically indicated, regardless of the ambiguity given to it by some (who confine it to images of imaginary material things ), then the idea of ​​God cannot be denied, except by saying that we do not understand the meaning of the following statement: The most perfect thing we can comprehend, for that is what all men call God.To say in rebuttal that you don't understand the most common words that come out of people's mouths is going too far.Moreover, to claim to have no idea of ​​God, in what I mean by the word idea, is the most blasphemous confession one can make, for it is not merely that one cannot know God by natural principles, but That is to say, God cannot be known at all, either by faith or by any other means, since, if there were no ideas (that is, no perceptions) commensurate with the meaning of the word God, then God Existence is also nonsense, which is the same as saying a "nothing" exists. In this way, people will fall into the abyss of rebellion and extreme ignorance.

They go on to say: If I have the idea, I will understand it.This is groundless; for the word know implies a certain limit.A finite mind cannot understand an infinite God.However, this does not prevent the spirit from perceiving him, just as one cannot embrace a mountain, but one can touch it. They also say of my reasons: Many have read them, but have not been persuaded by them.It is also easy to refute, because there are others who understand these reasons and are satisfied.For it is better to trust one man, who has no intention of lying, to say that he has seen or understood something, than to trust a thousand other men, who deny it simply because they have not been able to see or understand it. .Likewise, with regard to the discovery of antipodal points, people would rather believe the reports of a few sailors who have circled the earth than the thousands of philosophers who do not believe that the earth is round.As for the principles of Euclidean geometry they mention here, it seems that these principles are so easy for anyone.I ask them to consider that, among those who are generally recognized as the most learned in scholastic philosophy, not one in a hundred understands these principles, while understanding Apollonius or Archimedes There is not one in ten thousand who make all the arguments, though their arguments are as obvious and as solid as those of Euclid. ①Apollonius, an ancient Greek geometer at the end of the third century BC. At last they say: From my knowledge that I am incomplete and cannot conclude that God exists, they prove nothing; for I do not infer directly from this alone without adding anything else.They were nothing more than a trick to remind me of the author who had the habit of taking my reasons out of context and making them seem incomplete. Of all the things they point out about the other three musings, I don't see anything that I haven't answered extensively elsewhere, such as their rebuttal: First, to prove the existence of God by certain concepts in our minds, Then I said, if I didn’t know the existence of God before, I couldn’t be sure about anything, I made the mistake of circular argument; second, the knowledge of God is not helpful to the knowledge of mathematical truth; third, God can be fraud.On these points see points 3 and 4 in my reply to the second set of objections and at the end of the second part of my reply to the fourth set of objections. ① "The third and fourth points", missing in the second French edition. But the paragraph they added at the end, I don't know if our author ever wrote it in his rebuttal, though it seems to be his words.They say: Many men of great intellect think clearly that the extension of mathematics which I have established as my principles of physics is but a figment of my imagination, which does not and cannot have any existence outside my mind sex, because it is nothing but an abstraction from objects; and therefore all my physics is a fantasy, a fiction, like all pure mathematics, while in the real physics of what God created , there must be a real, solid, non-imaginary substance.This is the best rebuttal of all rebuttals, and is the abbreviation of all the teachings of the men of intellect here mentioned.What we can comprehend and comprehend appears to them nothing but phantasms and figments of our minds, having no actual existence, so that there is nothing we can comprehend, comprehend or imagine, nothing we should regard as real Yes, that is to say, one must completely shut out reason, and be content to be monkeys and parrots rather than human beings, in order to qualify to be among the ranks of men of superior intellect.For if things that we can understand should be considered false just because we can understand them, then unless we accept as true what we do not understand, and make our theories out of them, like monkeys To imitate others like that without knowing why, to say something incomprehensible like a parrot, what else is left?However, here they combine my physics with pure mathematics, which is somewhat consoling to me, because I especially want my physics to be similar to pure mathematics. As for the two questions they added at the end, namely: If the soul is not material, how can it move the body, and how can it accept the appearance of corporeal things.These two questions are only here to give me the opportunity to inform our author when he, under the pretense of refuting me, asks me a bunch of such questions, the resolution of which is unnecessary to justify what I have written , and the most ignorant man can solve more problems in a quarter of an hour than the most learned man can solve in a lifetime, so his objection is unreasonable.That is why I can answer either of these questions without trouble.These two questions presuppose the explanation of the union between the soul and the body, and I haven't talked about this explanation yet.But I say to you that the whole difficulty involved in these two questions arises only from an assumption, which is false and which can never be proved.The false assumption is that if soul and body are two different entities, this prevents them from being able to interact with each other.For on the contrary, those who admit real accidents like heat, weight, and the like, do not doubt that these accidents can act on bodies; There is a greater difference between and one entity than between two entities. Moreover, now that I have my pen in hand, I will point out here two more ambiguities which I have found in this Opinion, since I feel that they may most easily surprise the less attentive reader. ; and I do this to prove to you that if I came across anything else here which I thought worthy of reply, I would not let it go. The first one is on page 63, there, because I said it in one place: When the soul doubts the existence of all material things, it recognizes itself only in the strict sense as an immaterial entity; By this word I do not mean total exclusion or negation, but withdrawal from the material, and I have said that, nevertheless, it is not certain that there is no corporeality in the soul; I don't know, but they treated me so unfairly that they tried to convince the readers that I only meant to exclude objects in the strict sense, thus contradicting my subsequent statement that I did not want to exclude objects. .They then accused me of assuming in the sixth meditation something that I had not proved before, saying that by doing so I had drawn a false inference.I will not reply to such things, because it is easy to recognize the falseness of the accusation, which is the usual thing in this whole book; and, if I do not know the character of the author, and do not believe that he is The first to fall into such a false belief, I suspect he did it on purpose. Another ambiguity is on page 84, where he wants to make distinction and extraction synonymous, although the two are very different, since to distinguish a substance from its accident requires both Considering the one, and the other, is a great help in knowing the substance; and if the substance is separated from its accidents only by abstraction, that is, if only the substance is considered without thinking of its accidents. nature, which prevents it from being well known, since only through the accidents can the substance be manifested. That, sir, is all that I think ought to be given in reply to this thick Opinion; for, though I may satisfy the author's friends better, if I refute all his objections one by one, I think but not enough to satisfy my friends, who would have reason to complain that I spend my time on such unnecessary things, and that would dominate anyone who would waste their time asking me silly questions My spare time is gone.However, I am very grateful for your concern.goodbye.