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 dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on.
But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once. Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. 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. 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. 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. I can do this without showing that all my beliefs are false, which is probably more than I could ever manage. I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote myself, sincerely and without holding back, to demolishing my opinions. So today I have set all my worries aside and arranged for myself a clear stretch of free time. 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. 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 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. 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.
Published by Cambridge University Press.įIRST MEDITATION: On what can be called into doubt Source: Meditations on First Philosophy in which are demonstrated the existence of GodĪnd the distinction between the human soul and the body, by René Descartes, translated by John Cottingham. The distinction between the human soul and the body In which are demonstrated the existence of God and Rene Descartes 1639 Meditations on First Philosophy Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
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