Bodies Dispel the Dream

Bodies are much more clearly known to me than this puzzling ‘I’ that cannot be pictured in the imagination.

But I see that the trouble is that my mind likes to wander freely. It refuses to respect the boundaries that truth lays down. So I shall let it run free for a while, so that when I rein it in, it won’t be so resistant to being pulled back.

What are physical bodies?

This piece of wax, for example. It has just been taken from the honeycomb. It still tastes of honey and has the scent of the flowers from which the honey was gathered. Its colour, shape and size are plain to see.

But if I hold it near a fire:

• its taste and smell vanish
• its colour changes
• its shape is lost
• its size increases
• it becomes liquid and hot that you can hardly touch it

But is it still the same wax?

Of course it is, no-one denies this*.

The properties of the wax changed even if is the same wax.

It means that the wax is not:

• the sweetness of the honey
• the scent of the flowers
• the whiteness, shape, or sound

It was rather a body that recently presented itself to me in those ways but now appears differently.

But what exactly is this thing that I am now imagining?

It is now something that is extended, flexible and changeable.

What do ‘flexible’ and ‘changeable’ mean here?

I can imagine this wax changing from round to square, from square to triangular, and so on.

But that is not what changeability is.

The wax can flex and change in more ways that I can imagine.

• So it is not my imagination that makes me know that the wax is flexible and changeable.

What does ‘extended’ mean? Is the wax’s extension also unknown?

It:

• increases if the wax melts
• then increases again if it boils.

The wax can be extended in many more ways (with many more shapes) than I can imagine.

This means that the nature of this wax is not revealed by my imagination, but is perceived by the mind alone.

I see, touch, and picture this wax in my imagination only because it is perceived by the mind.

• It is the same wax I thought it to be from the start.

My perception of it seemed to come from:

• vision
• touch
• imagination

But this is not correct.

Rather, it is purely a perception by the mind alone.

• Initially, it was an imperfect and confused perception.
• But now, it is clear and distinct because I am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in.

I have realized how prone to error my mind is.

I use words to think all this out within myself. But those words can lead me astray.

When the wax is in front of us, we say that we see it.

• We do not say that we judge it to be there from its colour or shape.

This makes us think that knowledge of the wax comes from the eye rather than only from the mind’s perception.

But this is clearly wrong, as the following example shows.

I see men outside crossing the square.

• I say that I see them just as I say that I saw the wax.

But they might be robots in reality. But I judge that they are men.

Therefore, we really grasp solely by the mind’s faculty of judgment.

However, someone who wants to know more than the common crowd should be ashamed to base his doubts on ordinary ways of talking.

When did my perception of the wax’s nature become more perfect and clear?

Was it when I first looked at it and thought that I knew it through my senses?

Or is it now, after I have enquired more carefully into:

• the wax’s nature
• how it is known?

Was there anything in the wax that a lower animal couldn’t have?

If I remove the outward form of the wax and look into its true nature just as I would have taken off the clothes of the men outside, then my judgment might still have errors.

• But that judgement will lean closer to the human mind [than to the senses].

But what am I to say about this mind, or about myself? (So far, remember, I don’t admit that there is anything to me except a mind.) What, I ask, is this ‘I’ that seems to perceive the wax so clearly?

Surely, I am aware of my own self in a truer and more certain way than I am of the wax, and also in a much more distinct and evident way.

What leads me to think that the wax exists – namely, that I see it – leads much more obviously to the conclusion that I exist. What I see might not really be the wax; perhaps I don’t even have eyes with which to see anything.

But when I see or think I see (I am not here distinguishing the two), it is simply not possible that I who am now thinking am not something. Similarly, that I exist follows from the other bases for judging that the wax exists – that I touch it, that I imagine it, or any other basis, and similarly for my bases for judging that anything else exists outside me.

As I came to perceive the wax more distinctly by applying not just sight and touch but other considerations, all this too contributed to my knowing myself even more distinctly.

This is because whatever goes into my perception of the wax or of any other body must do even more to establish the nature of my own mind.

What comes to my mind from bodies, therefore, helps me to know my mind distinctly.

Yet all of that pales into insignificance when compared with what my mind contains within itself that enables me to know it distinctly.

We perceive bodies only by the faculty of understanding within us, and not by imagination or the senses.

We know them not because we see or touch them, but only because we conceive them through thought. And so they help me know my own mind.

The grip of old opinions is hard to shake off. I must pause and meditate for a while on this new knowledge of mine, fixing it more deeply in my memory.