Chapter 28 The sixth group refutes the work of many theologians and philosophers

Having carefully read your meditations and your replies to the preceding objections, we have several doubts in our minds which we would like you to resolve. The first is that the argument that we exist because we think does not seem very solid.For, in order for you to be sure that you are thinking, you should know in advance what is the quality of thinking and what is the quality of being; and since you are ignorant of these two things, how do you know that you think or that you exist?So you say I think, and you don't know what you're talking about; you say that's why I exist, and you don't understand what you're talking about, and you don't even know if you said something or thought something, because, in order to do , you have to realize that you know what you say, and you have to know that you know what you say, and so on and on and on, obviously you cannot know whether you are, or even if you are thinking.

① "The Nature of Being", the second French edition is "Your Being". The second difficulty is when you say: I think, therefore I exist.Can it be said that you are mistaken, that you do not think, that you are merely moved, and that what you ascribe to thought is nothing but a bodily movement?You claim to have proved that no bodily motion can properly be called by the name of thought, but no one has yet understood your reasoning.Because, do you think that you use your analysis method to divide your fine material movement to make you know and be able to make very careful, and you think it is quite sensible? We believe that our thinking is distributed in these objects Are there contradictions in the sexual movement?

① "What you attribute to thinking", the second French edition is "It is nothing else". The third puzzle is no different from the second; for, although some priests of the Church, like the Platonists, considered angels to be corporeal, and thus the Lateran Council defined angels to be drawable, and held that they had The same mind as the rational soul, which some priests of them think is passed from father to son, yet they all say that angels and souls have mind.This leads us to believe that their opinion is that thinking can be realized by bodily movements, or that the angels themselves are nothing but bodily movements, which are inseparable from thinking.

This can also be confirmed by the thinking of monkeys, dogs and other animals.In fact, dogs bark in their sleep as if they were chasing rabbits or thieves; they know very well that they are running when they are asleep, and they know that they are barking when they are dreaming, although we Both you and you admit that they are indistinguishable from objects. If you say dogs don't know they're running or thinking, except you can't prove what you're saying, maybe it's true that they can make the same judgments as we do, namely: When we are running or thinking, we do not know whether we are running or thinking.

Because you can't see what's the inner way they have in them, and they can't see what's your inner way.There were some great men in the past, and there are such great men today, who do not deny that animals are rational.Far from being convinced that all their operations can be adequately explained by mechanical means without attributing them to senses, souls, life, we, on the contrary, disregarding any objection one can make, insist that this It is completely impossible, even very absurd.Finally, if monkeys, dogs, and elephants are really like this in their actions, some will say that all human actions are like those of machines, and they will no longer be willing to admit that there are senses and reason in man. , because, if the feeble reason of animals is different from that of man, it is only more or less different, and qualitatively the same.

The fourth puzzle concerns the knowledge of an atheist who maintains that when he knows for sure that equal things are subtracted from equal things, the remaining things must also be equal, or that the sum of the three angles of a right triangle is equal to With two right angles, and 0, and such things, his knowledge is very sure, and even according to your laws, very evident; for when he thinks of these things he cannot help believing that it is very sure.What he holds to be so true that even if there were no God, or even as he imagined that there could be no God, these truths are as certain as the fact that there is a God.The fact that he denies that anyone can refute him on this point raises even the slightest doubt in him; for what can you refute him?If there is a God, can he lie to him?

He will tell you that God could not deceive him in this, even with all his power. From this doubt can arise the fifth difficulty.The difficulty lies in your complete denial of any deception by God.For if many theologians hold that those who go to hell, whether angels or men, are constantly deceived by the idea of ​​a fire which God has engraved on their feel a fire burning on them, though in fact there is no fire, so can't God deceive us in the same way, keep imposing on us, keep imprinting these false, deceitful words in our souls? The idea that we think we see very clearly and perceive through each of our senses something that does not exist outside of us, in fact there is no sky, no stars, no earth, we have no arms, no feet, no eyes, wait?In fact, if he does, he cannot be accused of injustice, and we have no reason to complain of him, for, being the sovereign of all things, he can do as he pleases, chiefly because he seems entitled to do so to depress The arrogance of men, to punish them for their sins, or for the crimes committed by their original ancestors, or for some other reason unknown to us.This also seems to be in line with those places in the Bible where it proves that man knows nothing, as the disciples say in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 2 ②: If someone thinks he knows something, according to what he should know, he still doesn’t know ③.In the eighth chapter of "Ecclesiastes", verse 17 says: I saw all the deeds of God, knowing that no one can find out what is done under the sun.No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find it out.Even though a wise man wants to know, he cannot find out.Yet the sage said these things for well-thought-out reasons rather than hastily and ill-thought-out reasons, as can be seen throughout the book, chiefly when he talks about what you think is The place of the immortal soul; for in the third chapter, verse nineteen, he says that as it happened to man, so happened to the beast.It's all the same.As one dies, so does that die.And so that you can't say it's just referring to the flesh, he goes on to say a little later that man is not stronger than beast.When talking about the human spirit itself, he said that who knows whether the human spirit ascends, that is, whether it is immortal, or whether the soul of the beast descends to the earth.That is, whether or not it rots.Don't say that he said in that place the personality of the unbeliever; otherwise he should have pointed out and refuted what he said before.

Nor think that you can justify yourself by deferring the interpretation of the Bible to the theologians; for, a Christian like you, you should be ready to answer and satisfy all who contradict you and say that you have something against the faith, especially It's when people say you're violating the principles you're trying to establish. ① "Disciple" refers to Paul. ②The words in the "Bible" are copied from the official version of the Chinese "New and Old Testament" of the "Bible Society". The same below. ③The first French version also has under this sentence: "I don't know how he should know." This sentence is not in the "Bible", nor is it in the second French version.

The sixth difficulty comes from the indifference or freedom of judgment.According to your theory, it is far from making free will nobler and more complete, but on the contrary, you put its incompleteness in indifference. The will is by no means indifferent to what is right, or must not be done.For, don't you see, when God made this world and no other world, or no world at all, you use these principles to completely destroy God's liberty, and it doesn't matter what you take away from God's liberty?Although it is due to belief that [leads us] to believe that God ever created one world or many worlds or not even one world, He is completely eternally indifferent.Who can doubt that God does not always see clearly what should be done and what should not be done in all things?Therefore it cannot be said that very clear knowledge of things and clear perception of them excludes the indifference of free will, which, if it does not correspond to the freedom of man, certainly does not correspond to the freedom of God, because The essence of things, even of numbers, is indivisible and abiding; so that indifference is no less contained in the freedom of God's free will than in man's free will.

The seventh problem is face.You said that all sensations occur on or through the surface.For we do not see why it cannot be part of the object perceived, or part of the air, or part of the vapour, or even the appearance of any of these; Accidents (whatever bodies or entities they belong to) can be separated from their subjects by the Almighty of God and exist without subjects, and such a thing does indeed exist in the Eucharist on the altar.Nevertheless, our Physicians have no reason to be troubled until they see whether you will prove all these things adequately in the Physics which you promised us; is able to present these things to us so plainly that we should accept them and discard what the ancients taught us.

Your answer to the fifth group raises the eighth difficulty.Indeed, how can a geometrical truth, or a metaphysical truth, as you say there, be permanent, eternal, and at the same time depend on God?For what kind of cause do they depend on God?How could he eliminate the nature of the triangle?Or how could he make it never true that two times four equals eight, or that a triangle doesn't have three corners?These truths, then, depend either only on the intellect, when it thinks; or depend on the existence of things themselves; or are independent.For it seems impossible that God could have caused any of these essences or truths to never have existed. Finally, the ninth difficulty is that you say that the senses should not be trusted, and the intellect is much more reliable than the senses, so we think this difficulty is very important.For how can it be done if the intellect itself has no other reliability than that of being transferred from a well-arranged sense?Do we not see, in fact, that it cannot correct the error of any one of our senses if it were not first rescued from it by another? For example, if a stick stuck in water appears to be broken due to the refraction of light, who will correct this error?Is it sensible?By no means, but tactile.The same goes for the other senses.Thus, if once all your senses are properly arranged, and they always report the same thing to us, you regard as reliable the greatest reliability which a man can naturally attain by means of the senses. Yes; if you place too much trust in the reasoning of your mind, you will surely often be mistaken; for our reason is often found to deceive us about things which it thinks beyond doubt. These are our main problems.To these few difficulties, please add some reliable rules and certain valid signs, so that we can surely realize by them that when we understand a thing to such a degree, we don't need anything else at all. , really one thing is so different from the other that they can exist apart, at least by God's omnipotence able to separate them, that is, in a word, please tell us how we can clearly, distinctly, reliably Know that the distinction made by our intellect is not based in our spirit, but in things themselves.For when I think of the immensity of God and not of his justice, or when we think of his existence and not of the Son or the Holy Spirit, do we not comprehend this existence fully without the other two members of the Trinity? , or does God himself exist?And this existence is something that a non-believer can deny its sanctity for as many reasons as you deny that an object has a spirit or a mind.In the same way that someone erroneously concludes that the Son and the Holy Spirit are essentially distinct from the Father, or that they can be separate from him, one would never concede to you that the mind, or rather the human spirit, is What is distinct from the body, though you clearly apprehend the one without the other, though you admit the one and deny the other—you may even admit that any abstraction of your mind is capable of doing so.But, of course, if you can adequately solve all these puzzles, you can be sure that nothing can disturb our theologians any more. ① "Although you admit the one and deny the other", the second French edition is missing.