Selections from René Descartes ‘Discourse on Method’ 1637

While I was trying to think everything had to be false

it had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something . . .

I am thinking, therefore I exist.

While I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world and no place for me to be in, I still couldn’t pretend that I didn’t exist.

This taught me that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is simply to think.

This me – this soul which makes me what I am – is entirely distinct from the body, and would still be what it is even if the body didn’t exist.

I reflected on the fact that I was doubting, and that consequently I wasn’t wholly perfect.

Where did I get my ability to think of something more perfect than I am?

This ability had to comefrom something that was in fact more perfect than me.

The idea had been put into meby God.

I was sure that God doesn’t have any of the properties that indicate imperfection.

I found that this idea of a perfect beingincluded existence.

I concluded that the existence of this perfect being, God,is at least as certain as any geometrical proof.

Whatever we conceive very clearly and distinctly is true,is assured only because God exists and is a perfect being, and because everything in us comes from him.

Our ideas or notions, being real things that get from God everything that is clear and distinct in them,must be true in every respectin which they are clear and distinct.

If we quite often have ideas containing some falsity . . .they are in us in this confused state only because we aren’t completely perfect.

If we didn’t know that everything real and true within uscomes from a perfect and infinite being . . . we would have no reason to be sure that they had the perfection of being true.

Selections from René DescartesDiscourse on Method compiled by Jason Beale 2012

Text taken fromwww.earlymoderntexts.com