The Human Mind

We must now pass on to created substance, which we have divided into extended and thinking substance. By extended substance we understood matter or corporeal substance; by thinking substance we understood only human minds.

[Angels are a sub;ect for theology, not metaphysics. ]

Although Angels have also been created, yet, because they are not known by the natural light, they are not the concern of metaphysics.

For their essence and existence are known only through revelation, and so pertain solely to theology; and because theological knowledge is completely other than, or entirely different in kind from, natural knowledge, it should in no way be confused with it. So let nobody expect us to say anything about angels.

[The human mind does not derive from something else, but is created by God.

Yet we do not know when it is created. ] Let us then return to human minds, concerning which few things now remain to be said. Only I must remind you that we have said nothing about the time of the creation of the human mind because it is not sufficiently established at what time God creates it, because it can exist without body. This much is clear, that it does not derive from something else, for this applies only to things that are generated, namely, the modes of some substance. Substance itself cannot be generated, but can be created only by the Omnipotent, as we have sufficiently demonstrated in what has gone before. [In what sense the human soul is mortal. ] But to add something about its immortality, it is quite evident that we cannot say of any created thing that its nature implies that it cannot be destroyed by God’s power; for he who has the power to create a thing has also the power to destroy it. Furthermore, as we have sufficiently demonstrated, no created thing can exist even for a moment by its own nature, but is continuously created by God. [In what sense the human soul is immortal. ] Yet, although the matter stands so, we clearly and distinctly see that we have no idea by which we may conceive that substance is destroyed, in the way that we do have ideas of the corruption and generation of modes. For when we contemplate the structure of the human body, we clearly conceive that such a structure can be destroyed; but when we contemplate corporeal substance, we do not equally conceive that it can be reduced to nothing. Finally, a philosopher does not ask what God can do from the full extent ofhis power; he judges the nature of things from those laws that God has imparted to Appendix Containing Metaphysical Thoughts, Part 2, Chaptsr 12 209 them. So he judges to be fixed and sure what is inferred from those laws to be fixed and sure, while not denying that God can change those laws and all other things. Therefore we too do not enquire, when speaking of the soul, wha t God can do, but only what follows from the laws of Nature. [Its immortality is demonstrated. ] Now because it clearly follows from these laws that substance can be destroyed neither through itself nor through some other created substance-as we have abundantly demonstrated over and over again, unless I am mistaken - we are constrained to maintain from the laws ofNature that the mind is immortal. And if we look into the matter even more closely, we can demonstrate with the greatest certainty that it is immortal. For, as we have just demonstrated, the immortality of the soul clearly follows from the laws ofNature. Now those laws of Nature are God’s decrees revealed by the natural light, as is also clearly established from the preceding. Then again, we have also demonstrated that God’s decrees are immutable. From all this we clearly conclude that God has made known to men his immutable will concerning the duration of souls not only by revelation but also by the natural light. [God acts not against Nature but above Nature. How the Author interprets this. ] Nor does it matter if someone objects that God sometimes destroys those natural laws in order to perform miracles. For most of the wiser theologians concede that God never acts contrary to Nature, but above Nature. That is, as I understand it, God has also many laws of operating that he has not communicated to the human intellect; and if they had been communicated to the human intellect, they would be as natural as the rest. Hence it is quite clearly established that minds are immortal, nor do I see what remains to be said at this point about the human soul in general. Nor yet would anything remain to be said about its specific functioning, if the arguments of certain writers, trying to make out that they do not see and sense what in fact they do see and sense, did not call upon me to reply to them. [Why some think the will is not {ree. ] Some think they can show that the will is not free but is always determined by something else. And this they think because they understand by will something distinct from soul, something they look on as a substance whose nature consists solely in being indifferent. To remove all confusion, we shall first explicate the matter, and when this is done we shall easily expose the fallacies in their arguments. [What the will is. ] We have said that the human mind is a thinking thing. From this it follows that, merely from its own nature and considered only in itself, it can do something, to wit, think, that is, affirm and deny. Now these thoughts are either determined by things external to the mind or by the mind alone, because it is itself a substance from whose thinking essence many acts of thought can and must follow. Those acts ofthought that acknowledge no other cause of themselves than the human mind are called volitions. The human mind, insofar as it is conceived as a sufficient cause for producing such acts, is called the will. [There is will.] That the soul possesses such a power, although not determined by any external things, can most conveniently be explicated by the example of Buridan’s ass. For if we suppose that a man instead of an ass is placed in such a 210 Principles of Cartesian Philosophy state of equilibrium, he would have to be considered a most shameful ass, and not a thinking thing, if he were to perish of hunger and thirst. Again, the same conclusion is evident from the fact that, as we previously sa id, we even willed to doubt all things, and not merely to regard as doubtful but to reject as false those things that can be called into doubt. See Descartes’s Princip. Part I Art. 39. [The will is free.] It should further be noted that although the soul is determined by external things to affirm or deny something, it is nevertheless not so determined as if it were constrained by the external things, but always remains free. For no thing has the power to destroy its essence, and therefore what it affirms or denies, it always affirms or denies freely, as is well explained in the “Fourth Meditation.” So if anyone asks why the soul wills or does not will this or that, we reply that it is because the soul is a thinking thing, that is, a thing that of its own nature has the power to will and not will, to affirm and deny. For that is what it is to be a thinking thing. [The will should not be confused with appetite. ] Now that these matters have been thus explained, let us look at our opponents’ arguments. I. The first argument is as follows. “If the will can will what is contrary to the final pronouncement of the intellect, if it can want what is contrary to its good as prescribed by the final pronouncement of the intellect, then it will be able to want what is bad for it as such. But this latter is absurd; therefore so is the former.” From this argument one can clearly see that they do not understand what the will is. For they are confusing it with the appetite that the soul has when it has affirmed or denied something; and this they have learned from their Master, who defined the will as appetite for what is presented as good. 14 But we say that the will is the affirming that such-and-such is good, or the contrary, as we have already abundantly explained in our previous discussion concerning the cause of error, which we have shown to arise from the fact that the will extends more widely than the intellect. Now if the mind had not affirmed from its very freedom that such-and-such is good, it would not want anything. Therefore we reply to the argument by granting that the mind cannot will anything contrary to the final pronouncement of the intellect; that is, the mind cannot will anything insornr as it is supposed not to will it-for that is what is here supposed when the mind is said to have judged something to be bad for it, that is, not to have willed it. But we deny that it absolutely cannot have willed that which is bad for it, that is, cannot have judged it to be good; for that would be contrary to experience. We judge many things that are bad to be good, and on the other hand many things that are good to be bad. [The will is nothing other than the mind. ] 2. The second argument -or, if you prefer, the first, for so far there has been none- is as follows: “If the will is not determined to will by the final judgment of the practical intellect, it therefore will determine itself. But the will does not determine itself, because of itself and by its own nature it is undetermined.” From this they go on to argue as follows: “If the will is of itself and by its own nature uncommitted to willing and not willing, it 14 [Their “Master” IS, of course, ArIStotle see Rhetoric 1369al–4, De Anima 433a21-433b5.J Appendix Containing Metaphysical Thoughts, Part 2, Chaptsr 12 211 cannot be determined by itself to will. For that which determines must be as much determined as that which it determines is undetermined. But the will considered as determining itself is as much undetermined as is the same will considered as that which is to be determined. For our opponents suppose nothing in the determining will that is not likewise in the will that is either to be determined or that has been determined; nor indeed is it possible for anything to be here supposed. Therefore the will cannot be determined by itself to will. And if it cannot be determined by itself, it must be determined by something else.” These are the very words of Heereboord, Professor of Leiden, by which he clearly shows that by will he understands not the mind itself but something else outside the mind or in the mind, like a blank tablet, lacking any thought and capable of receiving any picture, or rather like a balance in a state of equilibrium, which can be pushed in either direction by any weight whatsoever, according to the determination of the additional weight. Or, finally, like something that neither he nor any other mortal can possibly grasp. Now we have just said- indeed, we clearly showed- that the will is nothing but the mind itself, which we call a thinking thing, that is, an affirming and denying thing. And so, when we look only to the nature of mind, we clearly infer that it has an equal power to affirm and to deny; for that, I say, is what it is to think. If therefore, from the fuct that the mind thinks, we infer that it has the power to affirm and deny, why do we seek extraneous causes for the doing of that which follows solely from the nature of the thing? But, you will say, the mind is not more determined to affirm than to deny, and so you will conclude that we must necessarily seek a cause by which it is determined. Against this, I argue that if the mind of itself and by its own nature were determined only to affirm (although it is impossible to conceive this as long as we conceive it to be a thinking thing), then of its own nature alone it could only affirm and never deny, however many causes may concur. But if it be determined neither to affirm nor deny, it will be able to do neither. And finally, if it has the power to do either, as we have just shown it to have, it will be able to do either from its own nature alone, unassisted by any other cause. This will be obvious to all those who consider a thinking thing as a thinking thing, that is, who do not separate the attribute of thought from the thinking thing. This is just what our opponents do, stripping the thinking thing of all thought and making it out to be like the prime matter of the Peripatetics. Therefore I reply to their argument as follows, addressing their major premise. If by the will they mean a thing deprived of all thought, we grant that the will is from its own nature undetermined. But we deny that the will is something deprived of all thought; on the contrary, we maintain that it is thought, that is, the power both to affirm and to deny; and surely this can mean nothing else than the sufficient cause for both operations. Furthermore, we also deny that if the will were undetermined (i.e., deprived of all thought), it could be determined by any extraneous cause other than God, through his infinite power of creation. For to seek to conceive a thinking thing that is without any thought is the same as to seek to conceive an extended thing that is without extension. 212 Principles of Cartesian Philosophy [Why philosophers have confused mind with corporeal things. ] Finally, to avoid having to review more arguments here, I merely point out that our opponents, in failing to understand the will and in having no clear and distinct conception of mind, have confused mind with corporeal things. This has arisen for this reason, that the words that they are accustomed to use in referring to corporeal things they have used to denote spiritual things, which they did not understand. For they have been accustomed to apply the word ‘undetermined’ to those bodies that are in equ ilibrium because they are impelled in opposite directions by equivalent and directly opposed external causes. So when they call the will undetermined, they appear to conceive it also as a body in a state of equilibrium. And because those bodies have nothing but what they have received from external causes (from which it follows that they must always be determined by an external cause), they think that the same thing follows in the case of the will. But we have already sufficiently explained how the matter stands, and so we here make an end. With regard to extended substance, too, we have already said enough, and besides these two substances we acknowledge no others. As for real accidents and other qualities, they have been disposed of, and there is no need to spend time refuting them. So here we lay down our pen. The End