The Essence Of Material Things

What are God’s attributes?

What is the nature of my mind?

I find in myself countless ideas of things that are not nothing, even if they do not exist outside me.

Such ideas have their own true and immutable natures, which are not under my control.

Even if there are not and never were any triangles outside my thought, still, when I imagine a triangle I am constrained in how I do this, because there is a determinate nature or essence or form of triangle that is eternal, unchanging, and independent of my mind.

The triangle has properties not invented by me, such as:

• its three angles equal 180 degrees
• its longest side is opposite its greatest angle
• etc

These lead to this conclusion: The fact that I have an idea of x which has a property that I perceive means that x really does have that property.

I can use this to prove God’s existence.

I have an idea of God. just as I have ideas of shapes and numbers.

Thus, the existence of God is as certain as the truths of mathematics are.

It is self-contradictory to think of highlands in a world where there are no lowlands. So it is self-contradictory to think of a perfect God as lacking the perfection of existence.

This is objected by saying that I tie God to existence just as a river is tied to riverbanks. The world has riverbanks and it is possible to have a world without rivers.

So why must existence have a God?

I can imagine a winged horse even if it does not exist in reality. Likewise, I can imagine God existing in my thought even if no God exists. But this is false reasoning.

I simply mean that God and existence are inseparable, just as river and riverbanks – whether or not there are any in reality – are inseparable.

But I do not mean that existence led to the idea of God. Rather, it is the idea of God that led to existence. Since God and existence are inseparable, it follows that God really exists. I am unable to think of an existence without a God.

A person can object that since God has all the perfections, and since existence is one of those perfections, then God is not an essential part of existence.

This objection is incompetent.

Whenever I think of God, I necessarily attribute to him all kinds of perfections that I can remember.

Existence is a perfection. This is enought to cause me to infer the existence of God just as it is not necessary that I should ever imagine any triangle, but whenever I am desirous of considering a rectilinear figure composed of only three angles, it is absolutely necessary to attribute those properties to it from which it is correctly inferred that its three angles are not greater than two right angles, although perhaps I may not then advert to this relation in particular.

But when I consider what figures are capable of being inscribed in the circle, it is by no means necessary to hold that all quadrilateral figures are of this number; on the contrary, I cannot even imagine such to be the case, so long as I shall be unwilling to accept in thought aught that I do not clearly and distinctly conceive; and consequently there is a vast difference between false suppositions, as is the one in question, and the true ideas that were born with me, the first and chief of which is the idea of God.

This idea is not just from me. It is an idea which representats a true and immutable nature. This is because:

1. I can conceive no other being, except God, to whose essence existence [necessarily] pertains
2. It is impossible to conceive two or more gods of this kind

If a second God exists, then he must have existed from all eternity.

Only the things I clearly conceive can have the power of completely persuading me.

Some objects are obvious to everyone. Other objects are only discovered after careful investigation. After they are once discovered, the latter are not esteemed less certain than the former.

For example, it is not immediately obvious that the square of the base of a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the other two sides. But after this is realized, we are firmly persuaded of its truth.

Likewise, it is not immediately obvious that God exists. This is because of the continual presence of sensible objects. But after I realize that God exists, it is easy for me to see it as the truth. <!– I should know nothing sooner or more easily then the fact of his being.

For is there any truth more clear than the existence of a Supreme Being, or of God, seeing it is to his essence alone that [necessary and eternal] existence pertains? –>

The certitude of all other truths absolutely depend on it that without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything perfectly.

For although I am of such a nature as to be unable, while I possess a very clear and distinct apprehension of a matter, to resist the conviction of its truth,

yet because my constitution is also such as to incapacitate me from keeping my mind continually fixed on the same object and as I frequently recollect a past judgment without at the same time being able to recall the grounds of it, it may happen meanwhile that other reasons are presented to me which would readily cause me to change my opinion, if I did not know that God existed.

I only have vague and vacillating opinions, not true and certain knowledge.

For example, geometry teaches that a triangle has 3 angles totaling 180 degrees. I might forget this fact when my memory fails and call it as false.

I have discovered that:

• God exists
• all things depend on him
• he is no deceiver
• what I clearly and distinctly perceive is necessarily true

although I no longer attend to the grounds of a judgment, no opposite reason can be alleged sufficient to lead me to doubt of its truth, provided only I remember that 1 once possessed a clear and distinct comprehension of it.

My knowledge of it thus becomes true and certain.

This same knowledge extends likewise to whatever I remember to have formerly demonstrated, as the truths of geometry and the like for what can be alleged against them to lead me to doubt of them ?

Thus, the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends strictly on my awareness of the true God.