that '1'
had made it--that is, that the laws of my nature had spontaneously
evolved it; but that my _will_ made it would not follow. Now, when Des
Cartes afterwards adds that I cannot unmake the conception, he means
that I cannot get rid of it by an act of my will, which is true; but is
not the proposition required. That what some of the laws of my nature
have produced, other laws, or those same laws in other circumstances,
might not subsequently efface, he would have found it difficult to
establish."

Treating the existence of God as demonstrated from the _a priori_ idea
of perfection and infinity, and by the clearness of his idea of God's
existence, Des Cartes then proceeds to deal with the distinction between
body and soul. To prove this distinction was to him an easy matter.
The fundamental and essential attribute of substance must be extension,
because we can denude substance of every quality but that of extension;
this we cannot touch without at the same time affecting the substance..
The fundamental attribute of mind is thought; it is in the act of
thinking that the consciousness of existence is revealed; to be without
thought would be to be without consciousness.

Des Cartes has given us, among others, the axiom "That two substances
are really distinct when their ideas are complete, and no way imply each
other. The idea of extension is complete and distinct from the idea of
thought, which latter is also clear and distinct by itself. It follows,
therefore, that substance and mind are distinct in essence."

Des Cartes has, from the vagueness of some of his statements, subjected
himself to the charge of asserting the existence of innate ideas,
and the following quotations will speak for themselves on the
subject:--"When I said that the idea of God is innate in us, I never
meant more than this, that Nature has endowed us with a faculty by which
we may know God; but I have never either said or thought that such ideas
had an actual existence, or even that they were a species distinct from
the faculty of thinking.... Although the idea of God is so imprinted on
our minds, that every person has within him the faculty of knowing him,
it does not follow that there may not have been various individuals who
have passed through life without ever making this idea a distinct object
of apprehension; and, in truth, they who think they have an idea of a
plurality of Gods, have no idea of God whatever." This seems explicit
as ne