Delphi Collected Works of René Descartes

by René Descartes

  Epistemon. As far as I am concerned I am a little more curious, and I should like you to explain to me certain particular difficulties which suggest themselves to me in each branch of knowledge, and principally in what concerns the secrets of the human arts, apparitions, illusions, and in a word all the wonderful effects attributed to magic. For I believe it to be useful to know all that, not in order to make use of the knowledge, but in order that one should not allow one’s judgment to be beguiled into admiration of an unknown thing.

  Eudoxus. I shall try to satisfy you in regard to both; and, in order to adopt an order which we may make use of to the end, I wish first of all, Polyander, to talk with you of all things that the world contains, considering them in themselves, on the understanding that Epistemon shall interrupt our talk as little as possible, because his observations would often force us to leave our subject. We shall finally consider all these things anew, though under another aspect, in so far as they are in relation with us, and as they may be termed true or false, good or evil; and it is here that Epistemon will find occasion to set forth all the difficulties which will remain to him from the preceding discourses.

  Polyander. Tell us, then, the order that you will follow in your explanations.

  Eudoxus. We must commence with the human soul because all our knowledge depends on it; and after having considered its nature and effects, we shall reach its author; and when we come to know who He is and how He has created all things in the world, we shall observe what is most certain regarding other creatures; and we shall inquire how our senses perceive things, and how our reflections become false or true. Then I shall place before your eyes the works of man upon corporeal objects, and after having struck wonder into you by the sight of machines the most powerful, and automata the most rare, visions the most specious, and tricks the most subtle that artifice can invent, I shall reveal to you secrets which are so simple that you will henceforward wonder at nothing in the works of our hands. After that I shall reach the works of nature, and, after having shown you the cause of all its changes, the diversity of its qualities, and the reason why the soul of plants and animals differs from ours, I shall place under your consideration the whole building up of sensible things. The phenomena of the heavens, and those certain conclusions which we may derive from them being observed, I shall pass on to most sane conjectures regarding what man cannot determine positively, in order to try to give an account of the relation sensible things bear to intellectual, and both to the Creator, of the immortality of the creatures, and of their state after the consummation of centuries. Then we shall come to the second part of this discourse in which we shall treat in detail of all the sciences, selecting in each that which is most solid, and we shall support a method whereby they may be carried on much further, and find of ourselves, with a mind of ordinary ability, what those most subtle can discover. After having thus prepared our minds for judging perfectly of the truth, we must also apply ourselves to the direction of our wills in respect of distinguishing good from evil, and observing the true difference between virtue and vice. That being done, I trust that your desire for knowledge will not be so violent, and that all that I shall have said to you will seem so well established that you will come to believe that a man with a healthy mind, had he been brought up in a desert and never received more than the light of nature to illumine him, could not if he carefully weighed all the same reasons, adopt an opinion different from ours. In order to begin this discourse we must inquire as to what is the first knowledge man arrives at, in what part of the soul it is to be found, and why it is so imperfect to begin with.

  Epistemon. All that seems to me to explain itself very clearly if we compare the imagination of children to a tabula rasa on which our ideas, which resemble portraits of each object taken from nature, should depict themselves. The senses, the inclinations, our masters and our intelligence, are the various painters who have the power of executing this work; and amongst them, those who are least adapted to succeed in it, i.e. the imperfect senses, blind instinct, and foolish nurses, are the first to mingle themselves with it. There finally comes the best of all, intelligence, and yet it is still requisite for it to have an apprenticeship of several years, and to follow the example of its masters for long, before daring to rectify a single one of their errors. In my opinion this is one of the principal causes of the difficulty we experience in attaining to true knowledge. For our senses really perceive that alone which is most coarse and common; our natural instinct is entirely corrupted; and as to our masters, although there may no doubt be very perfect ones found amongst them, they yet cannot force our minds to accept their reasoning before our understanding has examined it, for the accomplishment of this end pertains to it alone. But it is like a clever painter who might have been called upon to put the last touches on a bad picture sketched out by prentice hands, and who would probably have to employ all the rules of his art in correcting little by little first a trait here, then a trait there, and finally be required to add to it from his own hand all that was lacking, and who yet could not prevent great faults from remaining in it, because from the beginning the picture would have been badly conceived, the figures badly placed, and the proportions badly observed.

  Eudorus. Your comparison places perfectly under our eyes the first obstacle which stands in our way; but you do not show the means of which we must avail ourselves if we wish to avoid it. And according to me it is this, that just as your artist would have done much better, after having effaced by drawing over it a sponge all the features of the picture, to begin it entirely over again rather than lose his time in correcting it, so each one who has reached a certain term of years known as the age of knowledge, should set himself once for all to remove from his imagination all the inexact ideas which have hitherto succeeded in engraving themselves upon it, and seriously begin to form new ones, applying thereto all the strength of his intelligence with such zeal that if he does not bring them to perfection, the fault will not at least be laid on the weakness of the senses, or on the errors of nature.

  Epistemon. That would be an excellent remedy if we could easily employ it; but you are not ignorant that the opinions first received by our imagination remain so deeply imprinted there, that our will alone, if it did not employ the aid of certain strong reasons, could not arrive at effacing them.

  Eudoxus. It is certain of these reasons that I hope to teach you; and if you wish to derive some fruit from this our intercourse, you must give me your whole attention, and allow me to converse a little with Polyander in order that I may begin by upsetting all the knowledge he has hitherto acquired. And as it is not sufficient to satisfy him, and it cannot but be bad, I may compare it to a badly constructed edifice whose foundations are not solid. I know no better remedy than absolutely to rase it to the ground, in order to raise a new one in its stead. For I do not wish to be placed amongst the number of these insignificant artisans, who apply themselves only to the restoration of old works, because they feel themselves incapable of achieving new. We can, however, Polyander, while we are busy destroying this edifice, at the same time form the foundations which may serve our purpose, and prepare the best and most solid materials that are necessary in order to succeed in our task; provided you are in any degree willing to examine with me which of all the truths men can know, are those that are most certain and easy of knowledge.

  Polyander. Is there anyone who can doubt that sensible things (I mean thereby those that can be seen and touched) are much more certain than the others? As for me I should be very much astonished if you would show me as clearly some of those things that are said of God and our soul.

  Eudoxus. That, however, is what I hope to do, and it seems to me surprising that men are credulous enough to base their knowledge on the certitude of the senses, when there is no one who is unaware that they frequently deceive us, and that we have good reason for always mistrusting those that have once betrayed us.

  Polyander. I am well aware that the senses sometimes decei
ve us when they are ill affected, just as a sick person thinks that all food is bitter; when they are too far from the object this is also so, just as when we look at the stars they never appear to us as large as they really are: and in general when they do not act freely according to the constitution of their nature. But all their errors are easily known, and do not prevent my being now perfectly persuaded that I see you, that we walk in a garden, that the sun gives light, and, in a word, that all that my senses usually offer to me is true.

  Eudoxus. Since it is not sufficient for me to tell you that the senses deceive us in certain cases where you perceive it, in order to make you fear being deceived by them on other occasions when you are not aware of it, I shall go further and ask if you have ever seen a melancholic man of the nature of those who believe themselves to be vases, or who think some part of their body is of enormous size; they would swear that they see and touch that which they imagine they do. And it is true that any ordinary man would be indignant if anyone were to say to him that he could not have any more reason than they to be certain of his opinion, since it rests equally with theirs on what the senses and his imagination represent to him. But you cannot be annoyed if I ask you whether you are not like other men subject to sleep, and if you cannot think when you sleep that you see me, that you walk in this garden, that the sun gives light, in a word all these other things that you imagine yourself now to be certain of. Have you never heard in comedies this expression for astonishment, “Am I awake or asleep?” How can you be certain that your life is not a perpetual dream and that all that you imagine you learn by means of your senses is not as false now as it is when you sleep? More particularly as you have learned that you have been created by a superior Being to whom as omnipotent it would not have been more difficult to make us such as I have described, than such as you believe yourself to be Polyander. Certainly these are reasons sufficient to upset all the knowledge of Epistemon if he is contemplative enough to give his attention to it; as for me, I should fear becoming in some degree crazy, if, never having applied my mind to study, or accustomed myself to turn my mind away from the things of the senses, I was going to apply myself to meditations which, as far as I am concerned, a little exceed my capacities.

  Epistemon. I think it very dangerous to proceed too far in this mode of reasoning. General doubts of this kind lead us straight to the ignorance of Socrates, or the uncertainty of the Pyrrhonists, which resembles water so deep that one cannot find any footing-in it.

  Eudoxus. I confess that it is not without great danger that one ventures without a guide when one does not know the ford, and many have lost their way in doing so; but you have no reason to fear if you follow after me. It is such fears, indeed, that have prevented many learned men from attaining to the knowledge of a doctrine which is solid and certain enough to deserve the name of science; when, imagining that there was nothing on which they could rest their faith more firm and solid than the things that we perceive by the senses, they built on this foundation of sand rather than by digging down further finding a firm substratum of rock or clay. It is not here that we must stop. There is more; even if you did not wish further to examine the reasons which I have just stated, they would yet already in their principal effect have attained to the goal I wished to reach, so long as they had so affected your imagination as to place you on your guard against them. That is an indication to show you that your knowledge is not so infallible that you may not fear to see its foundations shattered since they make you doubt all; and consequently you are made to doubt your very knowledge itself, and this proves that I have accomplished my end, which was to upset your knowledge by showing you its uncertainty. From fear, however, that you may lack more courage and refuse to follow me further, I declare to you that those doubts which alarmed you to begin with, are like those phantoms and vain images which appear in the night by the uncertain glimmer of a feeble light. Fear pursues you if you flee, but if you approach and touch them, you will find nought but wind and shadow, and you will ever after be better able to meet whatever may arrive.

  Polyander. Convinced by your reasoning I desire then to set before myself all these difficulties in the strongest manner possible, and to apply myself to doubt whether I have not been dreaming all my life, and whether even all these ideas that I thought could only enter into my mind by the door of the senses, might not have been formed of themselves, just as similar ideas are formed when I sleep, or when I am certain that my eyes are shut, my ears closed, and, in a word, that none of my senses are in operation. In this way I shall be uncertain not only as to whether you are in the world, if a world exists, if there be a sun, but also whether I have eyes, ears, a body, even whether I talk with you, whether you address me, in short I shall doubt all things.

  Eudoxus. There you are, well prepared, and this is the very point I wished to bring you to; but this is the very moment for your giving your attention to the consequences which I wish to derive from your argument. You see very well that you can reasonably doubt all things, the knowledge of which comes to you by the senses alone; but can you doubt of your doubt and remain uncertain whether you doubt or not?

  Polyander. I confess that this astonishes me, and the little sagacity which a sufficiently small amount of common sense gives me brings it to pass that I do not without stupefaction find myself forced to confess that I know nothing with certainty, but that I doubt all things and am certain of nothing. But what conclusions do you wish to derive from this? I do not see to what use this universal astonishment can serve, nor by what reason a doubt of this kind can be a principle which is able to carry us very far. Quite on the contrary, you have made the end of this our converse relief from all our doubts, and the discovery of truths of which Epistemon, wise as he is, may very well have been ignorant.

  Eudoxus. Just give me your attention; I am going to conduct you further than you think. For it is really from this universal doubt which is like a fixed and unchangeable point, that I have resolved to derive the knowledge of God, of yourself, and of all that the world contains.

  Polyander. You certainly make great promises and provided you carry them out it would certainly be worth our while to grant what you ask for. Keep, then, your promises and we will keep those we made to you.

  Eudoxus. Since, then, you cannot deny that you doubt, and that it is on the other hand certain that you doubt, and so certain that you cannot even doubt of that, it is likewise true that you are, you who doubt; and that is so true that you can no longer doubt of it any more.

  Polyander. I agree with you, for if I did not exist I could not doubt.

  Eudoxus. You are, then, and you know that you are, and you know it because you doubt.

  Polyander. All that is very true.

  Eudoxus. But in order that you may not be turned aside from your plan, go on little by little, and as I have said to you, you will feel yourself drawn on further than you think. You are, and you know that you are, and you know that because you know that you doubt. But you, who doubt all and who cannot doubt of yourself, what are you?

  Polyander. The reply is not difficult and I see very well that you have chosen me in place of Epistemon so that I may respond to your questions. You had no mind to put any question to which it is not quite easy to reply. I shall then tell you that I am a man.

  Eudoxus. You pay no attention to my question, and the reply that you make to me, simple as it may appear to you, will bring us into a labyrinth of difficulties, if I try ever so little to press you. Were I for example to ask Epistemon himself what a man is, and were he to reply, as is done in the Schools, that a man is a rational animal; and if, in addition, in order to explain these two terms which are not less obscure than the first, he were to conduct us by ail the steps which are termed metaphysical, we should be dragged into a maze from which it would be impossible for us to emerge. As a matter of fact, from this question two others arise, the first is what is an animal? The second, what is reasonable! And further, if, to explain what an animal is he were to repl
y that it is a living thing possessed of sensations, that a living thing is an animate body, that a body is a corporeal substance, you see that the question, like the branches of a genealogical tree, would go on increasing and multiplying; and finally all these wonderful questions would finish in pure tautology, which would clear up nothing, and would leave us in our original ignorance.

  Epistemon. I am sorry to see that you despise this tree of Porphyry which has always excited the admiration of the learned, and I am vexed that you wish to show Polyander what be is by another method than the one which for so long has been admitted by the Schools. In fact until now no better means has been found, nor a means more calculated to teach us what we are, than that of placing in sequence under our eyes all the successive items which constitute the totality of our nature, so that by this means, by ascending and descending all the steps, we may be made aware of what we have in common with other beings, and of that in which we differ. That is the highest point to which our knowledge can attain.

  Eudoxus. I neither have nor should I ever have any intention of condemning the method employed in the Schools; it is to it that I am indebted for the little that I know, and it is of its assistance that I have availed myself, in order to become aware of the uncertainty of all that I have learned there. Therefore although my teachers taught me nothing that was certain, I yet owe to them my thanks for having been taught by them to acknowledge this; and I now owe them all the greater thanks in that the things they taught me were doubtful, than had they been more in conformity with reason: for in that latter case I might possibly have contented myself with the small amount of reason that I should have discovered there, and that would have rendered me less zealous in the search after truth. The admonition that I gave to Polyander serves less to dissipate the obscurity into which his reply cast you than to make him more attentive to my question. I return then to my subject, and in order that we may not digress further I ask him a second time what he is, he who can doubt all things and cannot doubt of himself.