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Rene Descartes – M e d i t a t i o n s o n F i r s t P h i l o s o p h y (1639)

FIRST MEDITATION: O n w h a t c a n b e c a l l e d i n t o d o u b t

Some years ago I was struck by how many false things I had believed, and by how

doubtful was the structure of beliefs that I had based on them. I realized that if I wanted to

establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I needed – just once in my

life – to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations. It looked like

an enormous task, and I decided to wait until I was old enough to be sure that there was

nothing to be gained from putting it off any longer. I have now delayed it for so long that I

have no excuse for going on planning to do it rather than getting to work. So today I have set

all my worries aside and arranged for myself a clear stretch of free time. I am here quite

alone, and at last I will devote myself, sincerely and without holding back, to demolishing my

opinions.

I can do this without showing that all my beliefs are false, which is probably more

than I could ever manage. My reason tells me that as well as withholding assent from

propositions that are obviously false, I should also withhold it from ones that are not

completely certain and indubitable. So all I need, for the purpose of rejecting all my

opinions, is to find in each of them at least some reason for doubt. I can do this without

going through them one by one, which would take forever: once the foundations of a

building have been undermined, the rest collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for

the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested.

Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses.

But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust

completely those who have deceived us even once.

Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects that are very small or

distant, that doesn’t apply to my belief that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter

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dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. It seems to be quite

impossible to doubt beliefs like these, which come from the senses.

Another example: how can I doubt that these hands or this whole body are mine? To

doubt such things I would have to liken myself to brain-damaged madmen who are

convinced they are kings when really they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple

when they are naked, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass. Such people are insane,

and I would be thought equally mad if I modelled myself on them.

What a brilliant piece of reasoning! As if I were not a man who sleeps at night and

often has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do when awake – indeed

sometimes even more improbable ones. Often in my dreams I am convinced of just such

familiar events – that I am sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown – when in fact I am lying

undressed in bed! Yet right now my eyes are certainly wide open when I look at this piece of

paper; I shake my head and it isn’t asleep; when I rub one hand against the other, I do it

deliberately and know what I am doing. This wouldn’t all happen with such clarity to

someone asleep.

Indeed! As if I didn’t remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly

similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I realize that there is

never any reliable way of distinguishing being awake from being asleep.

This discovery makes me feel dizzy, which itself reinforces the notion that I may be

asleep! Suppose then that I am dreaming – it isn’t true that I, with my eyes open, am moving

my head and stretching out my hands. Suppose, indeed that I don’t even have hands or any

body at all.

Still, it has to be admitted that the visions that come in sleep are like paintings: they

must have been made as copies of real things; so at least these general kinds of things – eyes,

head, hands and the body as a whole – must be real and not imaginary. For even when

painters try to depict sirens and satyrs with the most extraordinary bodies, they simply

jumble up the limbs of different kinds of real animals, rather than inventing natures that are

entirely new. If they do succeed in thinking up something completely fictitious and unreal –

not remotely like anything ever seen before – at least the colors used in the picture must be

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real. Similarly, although these general kinds of things – eyes, head, hands and so on – could

be imaginary, there is no denying that certain even simpler and more universal kinds of

things are real. These are the elements out of which we make all our mental images of things

– the true and also the false ones.

These simpler and more universal kinds include body, and extension; the shape of

extended things; their quantity, size and number; the places things can be in, the time through

which they can last, and so on.

So it seems reasonable to conclude that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all other

sciences dealing with things that have complex structures are doubtful; while arithmetic,

geometry and other studies of the simplest and most general things – whether they really

exist in nature or not – contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake

or asleep, two plus three makes five, and a square has only four sides. It seems impossible to

suspect that such obvious truths might be false.

However, I have for many years been sure that there is an all-powerful God who

made me to be the sort of creature that I am. How do I know that he hasn’t brought it about

that there is no earth, no sky, nothing that takes up space, no shape, no size, no place, while

making sure that all these things appear to me to exist? Anyway, I sometimes think that

others go wrong even when they think they have the most perfect knowledge; so how do I

know that I myself don’t go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a

square? Well, you might say, God would not let me be deceived like that, because he is said

to be supremely good. But, I reply, if God’s goodness would stop him from letting me be

deceived all the time, you would expect it to stop him from allowing me to be deceived even

occasionally; yet clearly I sometimes am deceived.

Some people would deny the existence of such a powerful God rather than believe

that everything else is uncertain. Let us grant them – for purposes of argument – that there is

no God, and theology is fiction. On their view, then, I am a product of fate or chance or a

long chain of causes and effects. But the less powerful they make my original cause, the more

likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time – because deception and error

seem to be imperfections. Having no answer to these arguments, I am driven back to the

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position that doubts can properly be raised about any of my former beliefs. I don’t reach this

conclusion in a flippant or casual manner, but on the basis of powerful and well thought-out

reasons. So in future, if I want to discover any certainty, I must withhold my assent from

these former beliefs just as carefully as I withhold it from obvious falsehoods.

It isn’t enough merely to have noticed this, though; I must make an effort to

remember it. My old familiar opinions keep coming back, and against my will they capture

my belief. It is as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system as a result of long

occupation and the law of custom. It is true that these habitual opinions of mine are highly

probable; although they are in a sense doubtful, as I have shown, it is more reasonable to

believe than to deny them. But if I go on viewing them in that light I shall never get out of

the habit of confidently assenting to them. To conquer that habit, therefore, I had better

switch right around and pretend (for a while) that these former opinions of mine are utterly

false and imaginary. I shall do this until I have something to counter-balance the weight of

old opinion, and the distorting influence of habit no longer prevents me from judging

correctly. However far I go in my distrustful attitude, no actual harm will come of it, because

my project won’t affect how I act, but only how I go about acquiring knowledge.

So I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning demon has done all he can

to deceive me – rather than this being done by God, who is supremely good and the source

of truth. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external

things are merely dreams that the demon has contrived as traps for my judgment. I shall

consider myself as having no hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as having falsely

believed that I had all these things. I shall stubbornly persist in this train of thought; and

even if I can’t learn any truth, I shall at least do what I can do, which is to be on my guard

against accepting any falsehoods, so that the deceiver – however powerful and cunning he

may be – will be unable to affect me in the slightest. This will be hard work, though, and a

kind of laziness pulls me back into my old ways.

Like a prisoner who dreams that he is free, starts to suspect that it is merely a dream,

and wants to go on dreaming rather than waking up, so I am content to slide back into my

old opinions; I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may

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be followed by hard labor when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but

in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised.

SECOND MEDITATION: T h e n a t u r e o f t h e h u m a n m i n d , a n d h o w i t i s b e t t e r k n o w n t h a n t h e b o d y

Yesterday’s meditation raised doubts – ones that are too serious to be ignored –

which I can see no way of resolving. I feel like someone who is suddenly dropped into a

deep whirlpool that tumbles him around so that he can neither stand on the bottom nor

swim to the top. However, I shall force my way up, and try once more to carry out the

project that I started on yesterday. I will set aside anything that admits of the slightest doubt,

treating it as though I had found it to be outright false; and I will carry on like that until I

find something certain, or – at worst – until I become certain that there is no certainty.

Archimedes said that if he had one firm and immovable point he could lift the world ·with a

long enough lever·; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one little thing

that is solid and certain.

I will suppose, then, that everything I see is fictitious. I will believe that my memory

tells me nothing but lies. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are

illusions. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain!

Still, how do I know that there isn’t something – not on that list – about which there

is no room for even the slightest doubt? Isn’t there a God (call him what you will) who gives

me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the

author of these thoughts? But then doesn’t it follow that I am, at least, something? This is very

confusing, because I have just said that I have no senses and no body, and I am so bound up

with a body and with senses that one would think that I can’t exist without them. Now that I

have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world – no sky, no earth, no minds, no

bodies – does it follow that I don’t exist either? No it does not follow; for if I convinced myself

of something then I certainly existed.

But there is a supremely powerful and cunning deceiver who deliberately deceives me

all the time! Even then, if he is deceiving me I undoubtedly exist: let him deceive me all he

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can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something. So after

thoroughly thinking the matter through I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must

be true whenever I assert it or think it.

But this ‘I’ that must exist – I still don’t properly understand what it is; so I am at risk

of confusing it with something else, thereby falling into error in the very item of knowledge

that I maintain is the most certain and obvious of all. To get straight about what this ‘I’ is, I

shall go back and think some more about what I believed myself to be before I started this

meditation. I will eliminate from those beliefs anything that could be even slightly called into

question by the arguments I have been using, which will leave me with only beliefs about

myself that are certain and unshakeable.

Well, then, what did I think I was? A man. But what is a man? Shall I say ‘a rational

animal'? No; for then I should have to ask what an animal is, and what rationality is – each

question would lead me on to other still harder ones, and this would take more time than I

can spare. Let me focus instead on the beliefs that spontaneously and naturally came to me

whenever I thought about what I was. The first such belief was that I had a face, hands,

arms and the whole structure of bodily parts that corpses also have – I call it the body. The

next belief was that I ate and drank, that I moved about, and that I engaged in sense-

perception and thinking; these things, I thought, were done by the soul. If I gave any thought

to what this soul was like, I imagined it to be something thin and filmy – like a wind or fire

or ether – permeating my more solid parts. I was more sure about the body, though,

thinking that I knew exactly what sort of thing it was. If I had tried to put my conception of

the body into words, I would have said this: By a ‘body’ I understand whatever has a definite

shape and position, and can occupy a ·region of· space in such a way as to keep every other

body out of it; it can be perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste or smell, and can be moved

in various ways.

I would have added that a body can’t start up movements by itself, and can move

only through being moved by other things that bump into it. It seemed to me quite out of

character for a body to be able to initiate movements, or to able to sense and think, and I

was amazed that certain bodies – ·namely, human ones· – could do those things.

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But now that I am supposing there is a supremely powerful and malicious deceiver

who has set out to trick me in every way he can – now what shall I say that I am? Can I now

claim to have any of the features that I used to think belong to a body? When I think about

them really carefully, I find that they are all open to doubt: I shan’t waste time by showing

this about each of them separately. Now, what about the features that I attributed to the

soul? Nutrition or movement? Since now I am pretending that I don’t have a body, these are

mere fictions. Sense-perception? One needs a body in order to perceive; and, besides, when

dreaming I have seemed to perceive through the senses many things that I later realized I

had not perceived in that way. Thinking? At last I have discovered it – thought! This is the

one thing that can’t be separated from me. I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long?

For as long as I am thinking. But perhaps no longer than that; for it might be that if I stopped

thinking I would stop existing; and I have to treat that possibility as though it were actual,

because my present policy is to reject everything that isn’t necessarily true. Strictly speaking,

then, I am simply a thing that thinks – a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason, these

being words whose meaning I have only just come to know. Still, I am a real, existing thing.

What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing.

What else am I? I will use my imagination to see if I am anything more. I am not that

structure of limbs and organs that is called a human body; nor am I a thin vapor that

permeates the limbs – a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I imagine; for I have supposed all

these things to be nothing because I have supposed all bodies to be nothing. Even if I go on

supposing them to be nothing, I am still something. But these things that I suppose to be

nothing because they are unknown to me – might they not in fact be identical with the I of

which I am aware? I don’t know; and just now I shan’t discuss the matter, because I can

form opinions only about things that I know. I know that I exist, and I am asking: what is

this I that I know? My knowledge of it can’t depend on things of whose existence I am still

unaware; so it can’t depend on anything that I invent in my imagination. The word ‘invent’

points to what is wrong with relying on my imagination in this matter: if I used imagination

to show that I was something or other, that would be mere invention, mere story-telling; for

imagining is simply contemplating the shape or image of a bodily thing. That makes

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imagination suspect, for while I know for sure that I exist, I know that everything relating to

the nature of body – including imagination – could be mere dreams; so it would be silly for

me to say ‘I will use my imagination to get a clearer understanding of what I am’ – as silly,

indeed, as to say ‘I am now awake, and see some truth; but I shall deliberately fall asleep so

as to see even more, and more truly, in my dreams'! If my mind is to get a clear

understanding of its own nature, it had better not look to the imagination for it.

Well, then, what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts,

understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.

That is a long list of attributes for me to have – and it really is I who have them all.

Why should it not be? Isn’t it one and the same ‘I’ who now doubts almost everything,

understands some things, affirms this one thing – namely, that I exist and think, denies

everything else, wants to know more, refuses to be deceived, imagines many things

involuntarily, and is aware of others that seem to come from the senses? Isn’t all this just as

true as the fact that I exist, even if I am in a perpetual dream, and even if my creator is doing

his best to deceive me? These activities are all aspects of my thinking, and are all inseparable

from myself. The fact that it is I who doubt and understand and want is so obvious that I

can’t see how to make it any clearer. But the ‘I’ who imagines is also this same ‘I’. For even if

(as I am pretending) none of the things that I imagine really exist, I really do imagine them, and

this is part of my thinking. Lastly, it is also this same ‘I’ who senses, or is aware of bodily

things seemingly through the senses. Because I may be dreaming, I can’t say for sure that I

now see the flames, hear the wood crackling, and feel the heat of the fire; but I certainly seem

to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘sensing’ is strictly just

this seeming, and when ‘sensing’ is understood in this restricted sense of the word it too is

simply thinking.

All this is starting to give me a better understanding of what I am. But I still can’t

help thinking that bodies – of which I form mental images and which the senses investigate

– are much more clearly known to me than is this puzzling ‘I’ that can’t be pictured in the

imagination. It would be surprising if this were right, though; for it would be surprising if I

had a clearer grasp of things that I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me –

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·namely, bodies – than I have of what is true and known – namely my own self. But I see

what the trouble is: I keep drifting towards that error because my mind likes to wander

freely, refusing to respect the boundaries that truth lays down. Very well, then; I shall let it

run free for a while, so that when the time comes to rein it in it won’t be so resistant to being

pulled back.

Let us consider the things that people ordinarily think they understand best of all,

namely the bodies that we touch and see. I don’t mean bodies in general – for our general

thoughts are apt to be confused – but one particular body: this piece of wax, for example. It

has just been taken from the honeycomb; it still tastes of honey and has the scent of the

flowers from which the honey was gathered; its color, shape and size are plain to see; it is

hard, cold and can be handled easily; if you rap it with your knuckle it makes a sound. In

short, it has everything that seems to be needed for a body to be known perfectly clearly. But

as I speak these words I hold the wax near to the fire, and look! The taste and smell vanish,

the color changes, the shape is lost, the size increases; the wax becomes liquid and hot; you

can hardly touch it, and it no longer makes a sound when you strike it. But is it still the same

wax? Of course it is; no-one denies this. So what was it about the wax that I understood so

clearly? Evidently it was not any of the features that the senses told me of; for all of them –

brought to me through taste, smell, sight, touch or hearing – have now altered, yet it is still

the same wax.

Perhaps what I now think about the wax indicates what its nature was all along. If

that is right, then the wax was not the sweetness of the honey, the scent of the flowers, the

whiteness, the shape, or the sound, but was rather a body that recently presented itself to me

in those ways but now appears differently. But what exactly is this thing that I am now

imagining? Well, if we take away whatever doesn’t belong to the wax (that is, everything that

the wax could be without), what is left is merely something extended, flexible and changeable. What

do ‘flexible’ and ‘changeable’ mean here? I can imaginatively picture this piece of wax

changing from round to square, from square to triangular, and so on. But that isn’t what

changeability is. In knowing that the wax is changeable I understand that it can go through

endlessly many changes of that kind, far more than I can depict in my imagination; so it isn’t

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my imagination that gives me my grasp of the wax as flexible and changeable. Also, what

does ‘extended’ mean? Is the wax’s extension also unknown? It increases if the wax melts,

and increases again if it boils; the wax can be extended in many more ways (that is, with

many more shapes) than I will ever bring before my imagination. I am forced to conclude

that the nature of this piece of wax isn’t revealed by my imagination, but is perceived by the

mind alone. (I am speaking of this particular piece of wax; the point is even clearer with

regard to wax in general.) This wax that is perceived by the mind alone is, of course, the

same wax that I see, touch, and picture in my imagination – in short the same wax I thought

it to be from the start. But although my perception of it seemed to be a case of vision and

touch and imagination, it isn’t so and it never was. Rather, it is purely a perception by the

mind alone – formerly an imperfect and confused one, but now clear and distinct because I

am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in.

As I reach this conclusion I am amazed at how prone to error my mind is. For

although I am thinking all this out within myself, silently, I do it with the help of words, and

I am at risk of being led astray by them. When the wax is in front of us, we say that we see it,

not that we judge it to be there from its color or shape; and this might make me think that

knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees rather than from the perception of the

mind alone. But this is clearly wrong, as the following example shows. If I look out of the

window and see men crossing the square, as I have just done, I say that I see the men

themselves, just as I say that I see the wax; yet do I see any more than hats and coats that

could conceal robots? I judge that they are men.

Something that I thought I saw with my eyes, therefore, was really grasped solely by

my mind’s faculty of judgment. However, someone who wants to know more than the

common crowd should be ashamed to base his doubts on ordinary ways of talking. Let us

push ahead, then, and ask: When was my perception of the wax’s nature more perfect and

clear? Was it when I first looked at the wax, and thought I knew it through my senses? Or is

it now, after I have enquired more carefully into the wax’s nature and into how it is known?

It would be absurd to hesitate in answering the question; for what clarity and sharpness was

there in my earlier perception of the wax? Was there anything in it that a lower animal

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couldn’t have? But when I consider the wax apart from its outward forms – take its clothes

off, so to speak, and consider it naked – then although my judgment may still contain errors,

at least I am now having a perception of a sort that requires a human mind.

But what am I to say about this mind, or about myself? (So far, remember, I don’t

admit that there is anything to me except a mind.) What, I ask, is this ‘I’ that seems to

perceive the wax so clearly? Surely, I am aware of my own self in a truer and more certain

way than I am of the wax, and also in a much more distinct and evident way. What leads me

to think that the wax exists – namely, that I see it – leads much more obviously to the

conclusion that I exist. What I see might not really be the wax; perhaps I don’t even have

eyes with which to see anything. But when I see or think I see (I am not here distinguishing the

two), it is simply not possible that I who am now thinking am not something. Similarly, that I

exist follows from the other bases for judging that the wax exists – that I touch it, that I

imagine it, or any other basis, and similarly for my bases for judging that anything else exists

outside me. As I came to perceive the wax more distinctly by applying not just sight and

touch but other considerations, all this too contributed to my knowing myself even more

distinctly, because whatever goes into my perception of the wax or of any other body must

do even more to establish the nature of my own mind. What comes to my mind from

bodies, therefore, helps me to know my mind distinctly; yet all of that pales into

insignificance – it is hardly worth mentioning – when compared with what my mind contains

within itself that enables me to know it distinctly.

See! With no effort I have reached the place where I wanted to be! I now know that

even bodies are perceived not by the senses or by imagination but by the intellect alone, not

through their being touched or seen but through their being understood; and this helps me

to understand that I can perceive my own mind more easily and clearly than I can anything

else. Since the grip of old opinions is hard to shake off, however, I want to pause and

meditate for a while on this new knowledge of mine, fixing it more deeply in my memory.