The Nature of Ideas on Superphysics

What are Ideas?

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We do not perceive objects outside of us by themselves. We see the sun, the stars, and an infinity of objects outside us; and it is not likely that the soul leaves the body and goes, so to speak, to wander in the heavens to contemplate all these objects. It therefore does not see them by themselves; and the immediate object of our mind, when it sees the sun, for example, is not the sun, but something that is intimately united to our soul, and this is what I call an idea. Thus, by this word idea, I mean here nothing else than what is the immediate, or closest, object of the mind when it perceives some object.

Material objects do not send forth species resembling them

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The most common opinion is that of the Peripatetics.

They claim that:

external objects send forth species resembling them
these species are carried by the external senses to the common sense

They call these species impressed because objects imprint them on the external senses.

The Soul Has No Power to Produce Ideas. Cause of the Error into Which One Falls on This Subject

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The second opinion is that of those who believe that our souls have the power to produce the ideas of things they wish to think about, and that they are excited to produce them by the impressions that objects make on the body, although these impressions are not images resembling the objects that cause them. They claim that it is in this that man is made in the image of God, and that he participates in His power; that just as God created all things from nothing, and can annihilate them and create entirely new ones, so man can create and annihilate the ideas of all things he pleases. But one has great reason to distrust all these opinions that elevate man; they are ordinarily thoughts that come from his vain and proud depths, and which the Father of lights has not given.

Do we create our Ideas?

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We do not see objects through ideas created with us.

God does not produce them in us at every moment we need them.

The third opinion is that of those who claim that all ideas are created with us.

The Essence of Objects

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The mind sees neither the essence nor the existence of objects by considering its own perfections.

Only God sees them in this manner.

The fourth opinion is that the mind needs only itself to perceive objects; and that it can, by considering itself and its own perfections, discover all the things that are outside.

We see all things in God

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We have examined in the preceding chapters four different ways in which the mind can see external objects, which do not appear to us plausible.

There remains only the fifth, which alone seems conformable to reason, and the most suitable for making known the dependence that minds have on God in all their thoughts.

Four different ways of seeing things

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Four different ways of seeing things

In order to shorten and clarify the sentiment I have just established concerning the manner in which the mind perceives all the different objects of its knowledge, it is necessary that I distinguish in it four ways of knowing.

The Rules

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The intimate presence of the vague idea of being in general is the cause of all the disorderly abstractions of the mind and of most of the chimeras of ordinary philosophy, which prevent many philosophers from recognizing the solidity of the true principles of physics.

This clear, intimate, necessary presence of God—I mean of being without particular restriction, of infinite being, of being in general—to the human mind, acts upon it more strongly than the presence of all finite objects. It is impossible for it to entirely divest itself of this general idea of being, because it cannot subsist outside of God. Perhaps one might say that it can distance itself from it, because it can think of particular beings; but one would be mistaken; for when the mind considers some particular being, it is not so much that it distances itself from God as rather that it draws nearer—if one may speak thus—to some one of His perfections representative of that being, while distancing itself from all the others. Nevertheless, it distances itself from them in such a way that it does not entirely lose sight of them, and it is almost always in a position to go seek them out and draw near to them. They are always present to the mind, but the mind perceives them only in an inexplicable confusion, because of its smallness and the grandeur of the idea of being. One may well be some time without thinking of oneself; but it seems to me that one cannot subsist a moment without thinking of being; and at the very time one thinks one is thinking of nothing, one is necessarily full of the vague and general idea of being; but because things that are quite ordinary to us and that do not affect us do not awaken the mind with any force and do not oblige it to reflect upon them, this idea of being—however great, vast, real, and positive it may be—is so familiar to us and affects us so little that we almost believe we do not see it, that we do not reflect upon it, that we subsequently judge it to have little reality, and that it is formed only from the confused assemblage of all particular ideas; although, on the contrary, it is in it alone and through it alone that we apprehend all particular beings.

The Rules

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Last general cause of our errors

We have spoken thus far of errors for which some occasional cause can be assigned in the nature of the pure understanding, or of the mind considered as acting by itself; and in the nature of ideas, that is to say, in the manner in which the mind perceives external objects. It remains now only to explain a cause that may be called universal and general of all our errors, because one conceives no error that does not depend upon it in some way. This cause is that, since nothingness has no ideas to represent it, the mind is inclined to believe that things of which it has no idea do not exist.

Examples of Errors

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Examples of some errors in physics into which one falls, because one supposes that beings which differ in their nature, their qualities, their extension, their duration, and their proportion, are similar in all these things.

We have seen in the preceding chapter that men make a precipitate judgment when they judge that all beings are only of two kinds, minds or bodies. We shall show in those that follow that they not only make precipitate judgments, but that they make very false ones which are the principles of an infinite number of errors, when they judge that beings do not differ in their relations nor in their manners, because they have no idea of these differences.

Examples of Some Errors

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Examples of some errors of morality that depend on the same principle

This facility that the mind finds in imagining and supposing resemblances wherever it does not visibly recognize differences, also throws most men into very dangerous errors in moral matters. Here are some examples.

Conclusion of Book 3

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I have distinguished, as two parts in the simple and indivisible being of the soul:

One part is purely passive

This is the mind or understanding.

One part is both passive and active

This is the will.