Chapter 2 Volume 1 Doubt - 1

I thought I was now acquainted with a considerable part of the world around me; and it took a great deal of effort and painstaking effort to acquire this understanding.I believe only in the unanimous statements of my senses, in the abiding experience; all that I have seen I have touched, all that I have touched I have analyzed; many times have I repeated my observation, and I have compared phenomena with each other; only after I have seen a precise connection between them, only after I have been able to explain and infer one from the other, only after I have predicted I felt at ease when the result was found to be in line with my prediction.I am therefore now as sure of the correctness of this part of my knowledge as I am of my own existence; Dare to seek life and happiness at any time.

But what am I?What is my mission? Superfluous question! Having finished my teaching on this subject long ago, it would take a great deal of time to repeat everything I have heard, learned and believed in detail on this subject. I vaguely remember acquiring this knowledge, but how on earth did I acquire it? I was driven by a burning desire to learn, toiled through uncertainty, doubt, and contradiction. of it?Have I assented to a belief presented to me before an inner voice called out to me unquestionably and irresistibly, "It is exactly so, as real as your being and being"? ?Have I repeatedly tested, clarified and compared this possibility?No, I can't recall any such cases.The teachings were given to me before I sought them; the answers were given to me before I asked the questions.I listen, because I cannot help listening; what is taught to me remains in my memory, as if by chance; I neither examine nor participate in opinions, but let everything be in my heart occupy their place.

How, then, can I convince myself that I do possess knowledge of such objects of thought? If I knew and believed only what I perceived, if I only really knew what I had experienced, I could not really say that I knew anything about my calling; The kind of stuff other people claim to know; the only fact I'm really sure of is that I've heard other people say one thing or another about these objects. Therefore, in the past, I have always done it myself and carefully studied those things that are not important, and relied on the honesty and prudence of others in those things that are most important.I believe in other people's concern for what is most important to human beings, and I believe in their seriousness and meticulousness which I could never find in myself.I think they are indescribably taller than myself.

But whatever truth they know, where can they get it but from their own thinking?Since I am human as they are, why should I not discover the same truths by the same thinking?How I have underestimated and despised myself in the past! I hope that this will not happen again in the future. From now on, I will start to exercise my rights and grasp the dignity that belongs to me.All help from others should be cast aside.I'm going to explore it myself.If I have selfish desires for the research results and a preference for certain conclusions, then I will forget them, discard them, and prevent them from having any influence on the direction of my thinking.I will work with rigor and conscientiousness, and I will be honest and frank in acknowledging all the results I have obtained.Whatever I find to be true, whatever it may be, I embrace with joy.I want to know.I know with a certainty that this ground will sustain me while I tread upon it, and that this fire will burn me as I approach it; with the same certainty I will now, Know what I am and what I will be.If we cannot know this, I must at least know that it is impossible for us to know.Even the result of such an inquiry, if I find it to be true, I am willing to obey. ——I am in a hurry to solve my subject.

I catch the ever-flowing, rushing nature and let it stay for a moment; I stare intently at this present moment and think about it repeatedly.I think about this nature, and my thinking ability has been developed by means of it so far, and it has been cultivated in order to draw valid conclusions in the natural field. I am surrounded by objects that I feel I must see as self-existing, separate wholes: I see plants, I see trees, I see animals.I think that every object has attributes and characteristics by which I distinguish objects from one another; this plant has this form, another plant has another form; this tree has this shape of leaves, another tree has leaves of another shape.

Every object has its certain number of properties, neither more nor less.Is an object this or that?A person who knows the object well enough can answer firmly yes or no to any such question, and therefore has no room for any hesitation as to the existence or non-existence of such properties.Everything that exists is either something or not; either it has color or it doesn't; it either has a color or it doesn't; Is tasteless; or is touchable, or is not touchable, and so on, ad infinitum. Every object has any of these properties to some extent.If there is a scale for measuring a certain property, and I can use it, I can find a certain measure of that property, and the property does not exceed or fall short of this measure.I measure the height of this tree, the height is certain, it will never be higher or lower than the real tree.I saw that the leaves of this bare tree were green, a perfectly definite green, never darker or lighter, more vivid or duller than it actually was, though I cannot exactly measure and describe it. this nature.I glimpsed the plant: it was at a definite stage of development between germination and maturity, never nearer or further from it.Everything that exists is absolutely certain, it is what it is and never is otherwise.

This is not to say that I cannot conceive of something moving between two opposite properties.I do conceive of indeterminate objects, and most of my thoughts are conceived as such.I imagine a general tree.Does the tree bear fruit or not?With leaves or without leaves?If it has, how many? What kind of tree does it belong to?how big is itand so on.All these questions remain unanswered, and in this respect my mind is also uncertain, for I am not really thinking of a particular tree, but of trees in general.However, just because this tree is indeterminate, I deny the actual existence of this tree.

Of all the properties that real things may have in general, all real things possess a definite number of attributes, and since such real things must actually exist, each of these properties has a definite measure, although I don't think that I can exhaust all the properties of an object, nor can I measure these properties by any scale. Nature, however, moves swiftly in her eternal transformation, and while I speak of the moment I observe, it disappears, and everything changes; before I can grasp the moment, Everything is different again.Things are not always as they were, nor as I grasp them now; they become so.

Why, then, and on what grounds do things become exactly as they are?Why does nature, out of the infinite variety of determinations she can adopt, at this very moment adopt exactly the determination it actually adopts and not others? This is because their previous determinations were precisely their previous determinations, and not any other possible determinations; and because the present determinations arose precisely from these previous determinations, and not from any other possible determinations. of.For example, if something was slightly different from the past at a previous moment, then something will be different from the present moment at the present moment.What causes everything to be exactly as it was in the previous instant?This is because, at the moment before this moment, everything was as it was at that moment.And this previous moment depends on the previous moment, so going back to infinity.In the same way nature will be determined at a later moment as it will be, because nature at the present moment has been determined as it is now.If something is slightly different at the present moment from what it is now, then there must be something that will be different from the future at a later moment.At the moment after this later moment, all will be as it will be, because at that later moment, all will be as it will be; What happens in an instant, determines the next instant, and it is pushed down like this, even to infinity.

Nature is continually advancing through an infinite series of possible determinations; the succession of these determinations is by no means random, but strictly regular.What exists in nature must exist as it exists, and it can never be otherwise.I enter into a continuous chain of phenomena in which each link depends on the previous and determines the next; Starting from the links, all possible states of the universe can be discovered just by thinking.If I explain this link clearly and find out the reason that can only make this link come true, I can go back to the past; if I deduce this link and find out the inevitable result of this link, I can be pushed down to the future.I see the whole in each part, because only through the whole is each part a part, but through the whole the part must also be a part.

So what exactly is it that I just discovered?If I review all my propositions, I find the spirit of them as follows: Every change must first be presupposed with some kind of being, by which and through which it takes place; To every state another state must be presupposed, to every existence another existence must be conceived, and nothing must be supposed to arise from nothing.