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I find it hard to see that you disdain Porphyry’s tree, which has always excited the admiration of scholars.

I am sorry that you wish to show Polyandre what he is by a different path than the one that has long been accepted in the schools.

Until now, no better or more suitable means has been found there to teach us what we are than by successively laying before our eyes all the degrees that constitute the totality of our nature, so that, by this method, by ascending and descending through all the degrees, we may recognize what we have in common with other beings, and what sets us apart. This is the highest point our science can attain.

I have never had, nor will ever have, the intention to criticize the method used in the schools; I owe to it the little I know, and it is with its help that I came to recognize the uncertainty of all that I learned there.

Thus, although my teachers taught me nothing certain, I nonetheless owe them thanks for having taught me to recognize that; and I owe them even greater thanks because the things they taught me are doubtful, than if they had been more consistent with reason; for, in that case, I might have been satisfied with the little reason I found in them, and that would have made me less active in the pursuit of truth. The warning I gave to Polyandre was less to dispel the obscurity in which his answer plunged you, than to make him more attentive to my questions.

I therefore return to my subject, and, so as not to stray from it any longer, I ask him once again what he is, he who can doubt all things and yet cannot doubt himself.

I thought I had satisfied you by saying that I was a man, but I now see that I miscalculated. I see clearly that this answer does not satisfy you, and, to be honest, I admit that it no longer satisfies me either, especially since you have shown me the confusion and uncertainty into which it could lead us, if we tried to clarify and understand it.

Wwhatever Epistemon may say, I see a great deal of obscurity in all those metaphysical degrees. If one says, for example, that a body is a corporeal substance, without saying what a corporeal substance is, those two words tell us nothing more than the word body.

Likewise, if one says that what lives is an animated body, without first explaining what body is and what animated means, and if one proceeds this way with all other metaphysical degrees, this is merely to utter words, perhaps even in a certain order, but it is to say nothing; for it means nothing that can be conceived and form in our mind a clear and distinct idea.

Even when, in answer to your question, I said that I was a man, I was not thinking of all the scholastic entities I was unaware of, of which I had never heard, and which, in my view, exist only in the imagination of those who invented them; rather, I was speaking of things we see, touch, feel, experience within ourselves—in short, things known as well by the simplest man as by the greatest philosopher in the world—that is, that I am a certain whole composed of two arms, two legs, a head, and all the parts that constitute what is called the human body, and who, furthermore, eats, walks, feels, and thinks.

I already saw from your answer that you had not fully grasped my question, and that you were responding to more than I had asked. But since among the things you doubt you have already included the arms, legs, head, and all the other parts that make up the human body machine, I did not at all intend to question you about all those things, whose existence you are not certain of.

Tell me, then, what you are specifically inasmuch as you doubt. It is on this sole point, the only one you can know with certainty, that I wanted to question you.

I now see that I was mistaken in my answer, and that I went further than I should have, because I had not properly understood your meaning.

This will make me more cautious in the future and at the same time makes me admire the precision of your method, by which you lead us gradually through simple and easy paths to the knowledge of the things you wish to teach us. Nonetheless, I have reason to call the error I made a fortunate one, since, thanks to it, I now clearly understand that what I am as a doubter is in no way what I call my body.

I do not even know that I have a body, for you have shown me that I can doubt it. I add to that that I cannot even absolutely deny that I have a body. However, while leaving all these suppositions intact, that does not prevent me from being certain that I exist.

On the contrary, they further confirm me in this certainty: that I exist, and that I am not a body; otherwise, in doubting my body, I would be doubting myself as well—which I cannot do; for I am entirely convinced that I exist, and so thoroughly convinced, that I cannot doubt it at all.

That is perfectly expressed, and you acquit yourself so well that I could not have said it better myself. I now see clearly that it is enough to leave you entirely to yourself—provided, of course, that I continue to guide your path. Indeed, I believe that to discover even the most difficult truths, all one needs—so long as one is properly guided—is common sense, as it is commonly called.

As I see you well endowed with it, as I had hoped, all I need do now is show you the path you must henceforth follow. So continue, then, to deduce from yourself the consequences that flow from this first principle.

This principle seems so fruitful to me, and so many things present themselves to me at once, that I believe I would need a great deal of effort to organize them.

This single suggestion you gave me—to examine who I am, I who doubt, and not to confuse myself with what I previously believed myself to be—has cast such a light into my mind and has at once so dispersed the darkness, that by the light of this torch I now see more clearly within myself what cannot be seen with the eyes, and I am more convinced that I possess what cannot be touched than I ever was of possessing a body.

That fervor pleases me immensely, although it may displease Epistemon, who, until you rid him of his error and lay before his eyes some part of the things you claim to be contained in this principle, will always believe—or at least fear—that the torch offered to you is like those fires which extinguish and vanish as soon as one approaches, and that thus you will fall back into your former darkness—that is, your old ignorance. And indeed, it would be a marvel if you, who have never studied nor opened the books of the philosophers, were to become wise all at once at so little cost. So we should not be surprised that Epistemon judges the matter this way.

Yes, I admit it, I took this for mere enthusiasm, and I believed that Polyander, who has never reflected on the great truths taught by philosophy, was so carried away by the discovery of even the least of them that he could not help but express it through outbursts of joy. But those who, like you, have walked this path for a long time and have spent much oil and labor reading and rereading the writings of the ancients, and disentangling and explaining the most perplexing parts of the philosophers, are no more amazed by such enthusiasm than they are by the vain hope that often seizes beginners in mathematics—when they have barely stepped across the threshold of the temple. No sooner have these novices been shown the line and the circle, and taught what a straight line and a curved line are, than they believe they are ready to find the quadrature of the circle and the duplication of the cube. But we have so often refuted the opinions of the Pyrrhonians, and they themselves have gained so little from this method of philosophizing, that they wandered all their lives and could never escape the doubts they introduced into philosophy. They seem to have worked only to learn how to doubt. Therefore, with Polyander’s permission, I shall doubt whether he can draw anything better from it.

I see well that you address yourself to Polyander in order to spare me, yet your jests evidently attack me. But let us hear Polyander, and afterward we shall see who among us laughs last.

I will gladly do so; indeed, I fear this dispute might heat up between you two, and that if you take things up from too high a point, I will end up understanding nothing. That way, I would lose the benefit I hope to gain by returning to my early studies. So I ask Epistemon to allow me to nourish this hope for as long as Eudoxe pleases to lead me by the hand along the path he has set me on.

You have already clearly recognized, by considering yourself simply as one who doubts, that you are not a body, and that as such you find in yourself none of the parts that make up the human machine—that is, you have neither arms, nor legs, nor head, nor eyes, nor ears, nor any organ that could serve any sense whatsoever. But see if in the same way you cannot also reject all the things you previously included in the description you once gave of what you thought man was. For, as you wisely noted, it was a fortunate mistake when you exceeded the bounds of my question. Thanks to that error, in fact, you can come to know what you are by setting aside and rejecting everything that you clearly see does not belong to you, and by admitting only what is so necessarily part of you that you are as certain of it as you are of your existence and of your doubt.

I thank you for putting me back on track; I already no longer knew where I was. I first said that I was a whole composed of arms, legs, a head, and all the parts that make up the human body, and further that I walk, eat, feel, and think. But in order to consider myself simply as I know I am, I had to reject all those parts or members that make up the human machine—that is, I had to consider myself without arms, without legs, without a head, in a word, without a body. Now, it is true that what in me doubts is not what we call our body; therefore, it is also true that I, insofar as I doubt, do not eat or walk, for neither of those two things can be done without the body. More than that, I cannot even affirm that I, insofar as I doubt, am capable of sensing. Just as the feet are used for walking, so the eyes are used for seeing, and the ears for hearing. But since I have none of these organs, because I have no body, I cannot say that I sense. Furthermore, I have previously, in dreams, believed I sensed many things that I was not actually sensing—and since I have resolved to admit here only that which is so true that I cannot doubt it, I cannot say that I am something that senses—that is, that sees with eyes or hears with ears. It could indeed happen that I believed I was sensing, even though none of those things were actually occurring.

I must stop you here to encourage you and to help you examine what sound reason can achieve.

In all of this, is there anything that is not precise, that is not legitimately concluded or well deduced from what came before? And all of it has been said and done without logic, without rule, without argumentation formulas, using only the light of reason and a sound mind, which, acting alone and by itself, is less exposed to error than when it anxiously seeks to follow a thousand different paths that art and human laziness have devised, more to corrupt it than to perfect it. Even Epistemon seems here to share our view; indeed, by remaining silent, he implies that he approves of what we have said. So continue, Polyander, and show him how far good sense can go, and at the same time what consequences can be drawn from our principle.

Of all the attributes I had assigned myself, only one remains to be examined: thought. And I see that it is the only one I cannot separate from myself. For if it is true that I doubt—which I cannot doubt—it is equally true that I think. For what is doubting, if not a certain way of thinking? And indeed, if I did not think, I could not know whether I doubt, or whether I exist. Yet I do exist, and I know that I exist, and I know it because I doubt—that is to say, because I think. What’s more, it could well be that if I were to cease thinking, I would at the same time cease to be. Thus, the only thing I cannot separate from myself, the only thing I know for certain to be me, and which I can now affirm without fear of being mistaken, is this one thing: I am a thinking being.