SYNOPSIS OF THE SIX FOLLOWING
MEDITATIONS
1. IN THE First Meditation I expound the grounds on
which we may doubt in general of all things, and especially of material
objects, so long at least, as we have no other foundations for the
sciences than those we have hitherto possessed. Now, although the
utility of a doubt so general may not be manifest at first sight, it is
nevertheless of the greatest, since it delivers us from all prejudice,
and affords the easiest pathway by which the mind may withdraw itself
from the senses; and finally makes it impossible for us to doubt
wherever we afterward discover truth.
2. In the Second, the mind which, in the exercise
of the freedom peculiar to itself, supposes that no object is, of the
existence of which it has even the slightest doubt, finds that,
meanwhile, it must itself exist. And this point is likewise of the
highest moment, for the mind is thus enabled easily to distinguish what
pertains to itself, that is, to the intellectual nature, from what is to
be referred to the body. But since some, perhaps, will expect, at this
stage of our progress, a statement of the reasons which establish the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul, I think it proper here to make
such aware, that it was my aim to write nothing of which I could not
give exact demonstration, and that I therefore felt myself obliged to
adopt an order similar to that in use among the geometers, viz., to
premise all upon which the proposition in question depends, before
coming to any conclusion respecting it. Now, the first and chief
prerequisite for the knowledge of the immortality of the soul is our
being able to form the clearest possible conception (conceptus--concept)
of the soul itself, and such as shall be absolutely distinct from all
our notions of body; and how this is to be accomplished is there shown.
There is required, besides this, the assurance that all objects which we
clearly and distinctly think are true (really exist) in that very mode
in which we think them; and this could not be established previously to
the Fourth Meditation. Farther, it is necessary, for the same purpose,
that we possess a distinct conception of corporeal nature, which is
given partly in the Second and partly in the Fifth and Sixth
Meditations. And, finally, on these grounds, we are necessitated to
conclude, that all those objects which are clearly and distinctly
conceived to be diverse substances, as mind and body, are substances
really reciprocally distinct; and this inference is made in the Sixth
Meditation. The absolute distinction of mind and body is, besides,
confirmed in this Second Meditation, by showing that we cannot conceive
body unless as divisible; while, on the other hand, mind cannot be
conceived unless as indivisible. For we are not able to conceive the
half of a mind, as we can of any body, however small, so that the
natures of these two substances are to be held, not only as diverse, but
even in some measure as contraries. I have not, however, pursued this
discussion further in the present treatise, as well for the reason that
these considerations are sufficient to show that the destruction of the
mind does not follow from the corruption of the body, and thus to afford
to men the hope of a future life, as also because the premises from
which it is competent for us to infer the immortality of the soul,
involve an explication of the whole principles of Physics: in order to
establish, in the first place, that generally all substances, that is,
all things which can exist only in consequence of having been created by
God, are in their own nature incorruptible, and can never cease to be,
unless God himself, by refusing his concurrence to them, reduce them to
nothing; and, in the second place, that body, taken generally, is a
substance, and therefore can never perish, but that the human body, in
as far as it differs from other bodies, is constituted only by a certain
configuration of members, and by other accidents of this sort, while the
human mind is not made up of accidents, but is a pure substance. For
although all the accidents of the mind be changed-- although, for
example, it think certain things, will others, and perceive others, the
mind itself does not vary with these changes; while, on the contrary,
the human body is no longer the same if a change take place in the form
of any of its parts: from which it follows that the body may, indeed,
without difficulty perish, but that the mind is in its own nature
immortal.
