How we can have clear and distinct notions of thinking substance and of corporeal substance, and also of God.
Thus we can easily have two clear and distinct notions or ideas, one of created thinking substance, and the other of corporeal substance, provided we are careful to distinguish all the attributes of thought from the attributes of extension. We can also have a clear and distinct idea of uncreated and independent thinking substance, that is of God. Here we must simply avoid supposing that the idea adequately represents everything which is to be found in God; and we must not invent any additional features, but concentrate only on what is really contained in the idea and on what we clearly perceive to belong to the nature of a supremely perfect being. And certainly no one can deny that we possess such an idea of God, unless he reckons that there is absolutely no knowledge of God to be found in the minds of men …
How thought and extension may be distinctly recognized as constituting the nature of mind and of body.
Thought and extension can be regarded as constituting the natures of intelligent substance and corporeal substance; they must then be considered as nothing else but thinking substance itself and extended substance itself – that is, as mind and body. In this way we will have a very clear and distinct understanding of them. Indeed, it is much easier for us to have an understanding of extended substance or thinking substance than it is for us to understand substance on its own, leaving out the fact that it thinks or is extended. For we have some difficulty in abstracting the notion of substance from the notions of thought and extension, since the distinction between these notions and the notion of substance itself is merely a conceptual distinction. A concept is not any more distinct because we include less in it; its distinctness simply depends on our carefully distinguishing what we do include in it from everything else …
The arguments that lead to the certain knowledge of the existence of material things.
Everyone is quite convinced of the existence of material things. But earlier on we cast doubt on this belief and counted it as one of the preconceived opinions of our childhood.4 So it is necessary for us to investigate next the arguments by which the existence of material things may be known with certainty. Now, all our sensations undoubtedly come to us from something that is distinct from our mind. For it is not in our power to make ourselves have one sensation rather than another; this is obviously dependent on the thing that is acting on our senses. Admittedly one can raise the question of whether this thing is God or something different from God. But we have sensory awareness of, or rather as a result of sensory stimulation we have a clear and distinct perception of, some kind of matter, which is extended in length, breadth and depth, and has various differently shaped and variously moving parts which give rise to our various sensations of colours, smells, pain and so on. And if God were himself immediately producing in our mind the idea of such extended matter, or even if he were causing the idea to be produced by something which lacked extension, shape and motion, there would be no way of avoiding the conclusion that he should be regarded as a deceiver. For we have a clear understanding of this matter as something that is quite different from God and from ourselves or our mind; and we appear to see clearly that the idea of it comes to us from things located outside ourselves which it wholly resembles. And we have already noted that it is quite inconsistent with the nature of God that he should be a deceiver. The unavoidable conclusion, then, is that there exists something extended in length, breadth and depth and possessing all the properties which we clearly perceive to belong to an extended thing. And it is this extended thing that we call ‘body’ or ‘matter’.
The basis for our knowledge that the human body is closely conjoined with the mind.
By the same token, the conclusion that there is a particular body that is more closely conjoined with our mind than any other body follows from our clear awareness that pain and other sensations come to us quite unexpectedly. The mind is aware that these sensations do not come from itself alone, and that they cannot belong to it simply in virtue of its being a thinking thing; instead, they can belong to it only in virtue of its being joined to something other than itself which is extended and movable, namely what we call the human body. But this is not the place for a detailed explanation of its nature.
Sensory perception does not show us what really exists in things, but merely shows us what is beneficial or harmful to man’s composite nature.
It will be enough, for the present, to note that sensory perceptions are related exclusively to this combination of the human body and mind.5 They normally tell us of the benefit or harm that external bodies may do to this combination, and do not, except occasionally and accidentally, show us what external bodies are like in themselves. If we bear this in mind we will easily lay aside the preconceived opinions acquired from the senses, and in this connection make use of the intellect alone, carefully attending to the ideas implanted in it by nature.
The nature of body consists not in weight, hardness, colour, or the like, but simply in extension.
If we do this, we shall perceive that the nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth. For as regards hardness, our sensation tells us no more than that the parts of a hard body resist the motion of our hands when they come into contact with them. If, whenever our hands moved in a given direction, all the bodies in that area were to move away at the same speed as that of our approaching hands, we should never have any sensation of hardness. And since it is quite unintelligible to suppose that, if bodies did move away in this fashion, they would thereby lose their bodily nature, it follows that this nature cannot consist in hardness. By the same reasoning it can be shown that weight, colour, and all other such qualities that are perceived by the senses as being in corporeal matter, can be removed from it, while the matter itself remains intact; it thus follows that its nature does not depend on any of these qualities …
The extension of the world is indefinite.
What is more we recognize that this world, that is, the whole universe of corporeal substance, has no limits to its extension. For no matter where we imagine the boundaries to be, there are always some indefinitely extended spaces beyond them, which we not only imagine but also perceive to be imaginable in a true fashion, that is, real. And it follows that these spaces contain corporeal substance which is indefinitely extended. For, as has already been shown very fully, the idea of the extension which we conceive to be in a given space is exactly the same as the idea of corporeal substance.
Similarly, the earth and the heavens are composed of one and the same matter; and there cannot be a plurality of worlds.
It can also easily be gathered from this that celestial matter is no different from terrestrial matter.6 And even if there were an infinite number of worlds, the matter of which they were composed would have to be identical; hence, there cannot in fact be a plurality of worlds, but only one. For we very clearly understand that the matter whose nature consists simply in its being an extended substance already occupies absolutely all the imaginable space in which the alleged additional worlds would have to be located; and we cannot find within us an idea of any other sort of matter.
All the variety in matter, all the diversity of its forms, depends on motion.
The matter existing in the entire universe is thus one and the same, and it is always recognized as matter simply in virtue of its being extended. All the properties which we clearly perceive in it are reducible to its divisibility and consequent mobility in respect of its parts, and its resulting capacity to be affected in all the ways which we perceive as being derivable from the movement of the parts. If the division into parts occurs simply in our thought, there is no resulting change; any variation in matter or diversity in its many forms depends on motion. This seems to have been widely recognized by the philosophers, since they have stated that nature is the principle of motion and rest.