educated at a Jesuit college
in France; lived in Paris in 1613-18; at the siege of La
Rochelle in 1628; in retirement in Holland in 1629-49;
defending his philosophical ideas; his first famous work,
"Discours de la Methode," published in Leyden in 1637;
published "Meditations of Philosophy" in 1641; a treatise on
the passion of love in 1649; other works published after his
death; famous as a mathematician as well as philosopher, his
geometry being still standard in Europe.

OF MATERIAL THINGS AND OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD[25]

Several questions remain for consideration respecting the attributes
of God and my own nature or mind. I will, however, on some other
occasion perhaps resume the investigation of these. Meanwhile, as I
have discovered what must be done and what avoided to arrive at the
knowledge of truth, what I have chiefly to do is to essay to emerge
from the state of doubt in which I have for some time been, and to
discover whether anything can be known with certainty regarding
material objects. But before considering whether such objects as I
conceive exist without me, I must examine their ideas in so far as
these are to be found in my consciousness, and discover which of them
are distinct and which confused.

[Footnote 25: From the "Meditations," translated by John Veitch.]

In the first place, I distinctly imagine that quantity which the
philosophers commonly call continuous, or the extension in length,
breadth, and depth that is in this quantity, or rather in the object
to which it is attributed. Further, I can enumerate in it many diverse
parts, and attribute to each of these all sorts of sizes, figures,
situations, and local motions; and, in fine, I can assign to each of
these motions all degrees of duration. And I not only distinctly know
these things when I thus consider them in general; but besides, by a
little attention, I discover innumerable particulars respecting
figures, numbers, motion, and the like, which are so evidently true,
and so accordant with my nature, that when I now discover them I do
not so much appear to learn anything new as to call to remembrance
what I before knew, or for the first time to remark what was before in
my mind, but to which I had not hitherto directed my attention. And
what I here find of most importance is, that I discover in my mind
innumerable ideas of certain objects, which can not be esteemed pure
negations, alth