By yesterdays Meditation I am cast into so great Doubts, that I shall never forget them, and yet I know not how to answer them, but being plunged on a suddain into a deep Gulf, I am so amazed that I can neither touch the bottome, nor swim at the top.
Nevertheless, I will endeavour once more, and try the way I set on yesterday, by removing from me whatever is in the least doubtful, as if I had certainly discover’d it to be altogether false, and will proceed till I find out some certainty, or if nothing else, yet at least this certainty, That there is nothing sure.
Archimedes required but a point which was firm, and immoveable that he might move the whole Earth, so in the perfect undertaking Great things may be expected, if I can discover but the least thing that is true and indisputable.
Wherefore I suppose all things I see are false, and believe that nothing of those things are really existent, which my deceitful memory represents to me; ’tis evident I have no senses, that a Body, Figure, Extension, Motion, Place, &c. are meer Fictions; what thing therefore is there that is true? perhaps only this, That there is nothing certain.
Doubts and Solutions.
But how know I that there is nothing distinct from all these things (which I have now reckon’d) of which I have no reason to doubt? Is there no God (or whatever other name I may call him) who has put these thoughts into me? Yet why should I think this? When I my self perhaps am the Author of them. Upon which Account, therefore must not I be something? ’tis but just now that I denied that I had any senses, or any Body. Hold a while—Am I so tied to a Body and senses that I cannot exist without them? But I have perswaded my self that there is nothing in the World, no Heaven, no Earth, no Souls, no Bodies; and then why not, that I my self am not? Yet surely if I could perswade my self any thing, I was.
But there is I know not what sort of Deceivour very powerful and very crafty, who always strives to deceive Me; without Doubt therefore I am, if he can decieve me; And let him Deceive me as much as he can, yet he can never make me not to Be, whilst I think that I am. Wherefore I may lay this down as a Principle, that whenever this sentence I am, I exist, is spoken or thought of by Me, ’tis necessarily True.
But I do not yet fully understand who I am that now necessarily exist, and I must hereafter take care, least I foolishly mistake some other thing for my self, and by that means be deceived in that thought, which I defend as the most certain and evident of all.
Wherefore I will again Recollect, what I believed my self to be heretofore, before I had set upon these Meditations, from which Notion I will withdraw whatever may be Disproved by the Foremention’d Reasons, that in the End, That only may Remain which is True and indisputable.