The Method, Meditations and Philosophy of Descartes (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ...if there were any bodies in the world, or even any intelligences, or other natures that were not wholly perfect, their existence depended on his power in such a way that they could not subsist without him for a single moment. I was disposed straightway to search for other truths; and when I had represented to myself the object of the geometers, which I conceived to be a continuous body, or a space indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and height or depth, divisible into divers parts which admit of different figures and sizes, and of being moved or transposed in all manner of ways (for all this the geometers suppose to be in the object they contemplate), I went over some of their simplest demonstrations. And, in the first place, I observed, that the great certitude which by common consent is accorded to these demonstrations, is founded solely upon this, that they are clearly conceived in accordance with the rules I have already laid down. In the next place, I perceived that there was nothing at all in these demonstrations which could assure me of the existence of their object; thus, for example, supposing a triangle to be given, I distinctly perceived that its three angles were necessarily equal to two right angles, .tmt-I did not on that account perceive anythingjwhjch_could "assure me that any triangle existed; while, on the contrary, recurring to the examination of the idea of a Perfect Being, I found that the existeJICg-Of the Being was comprisecT m the idea in the same way that the equality of its three angles to two right angles is comprised in ther idea of a triangle, or as in the idea of a"sphere, the equidistance of all points on its surface from the center, or even still more clearly; and that consequently it is at...