Six metaphysical meditations /

Chapter 32: OBJECT. XI.

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About This Book

A sequence of six reflections subjects customary opinions to radical, systematic doubt to discover indubitable truths. The thinker discards sensory and speculative certainties via skeptical scenarios, arriving at a foundational assertion of self-awareness as a thinking substance. From clear and distinct perceptions the argument moves to proofs for a benevolent deity as guarantor of truth, and to arguments distinguishing immaterial mind from extended body, illustrated by analytic examples such as the wax experiment and the hypothesis of a deceiving intellect. The work progresses from methodological skepticism to metaphysical claims about knowledge, God, and the real distinction between mind and body.

OBJECT. XI.

* The whole stress of which Argument lyes thus; because I know it impossible for me to be of the same nature I am, viz, having the Idea of a God in me, unless really there were a God, A God (I say) that very same God, whose Idea I have in my mind.

Wherefore seeing ’tis not demonstrated that we have an Idea of God, and the Christian Religion commands us to believe that God is Inconceivable, that is, as I suppose, that we cannot have an Idea of Him, it follows, that the Existence of God is not demonstrated, much less the Creation.

ANSWER.

When God is said to be Inconceiveable ’tis understood of an Adequate full conception. But I am ’een tired with often repeating, how notwithstanding we may have an Idea of God. So that here is nothing brought that makes any thing against my demonstration.