Meditationes de prima philosophia

I will show how, from the fact that I recognize nothing else as belonging to my essence, it follows that nothing else actually belongs to it.

The second objection is this: from the fact that I have within me an idea of a thing more perfect than myself, it does not follow that the idea itself is more perfect than I am—and much less that what is represented by that idea actually exists.

But my response is that there is an ambiguity original: "aequivocationem" in the word "idea." It can be taken either materially original: "materialiter"; referring to the act of thinking itself as a mental process, as an operation of the intellect (in which sense it cannot be said to be more perfect than I am), or objectively original: "objective"; referring to the content or the "object" that the thought represents, as the thing represented by that operation. This thing, even if it is not assumed to exist outside the intellect, can still be more perfect than I am by reason of its essence. How exactly it follows—from the mere fact that an idea of a thing more perfect than myself is within me—that this thing truly exists, will be explained at length in the following pages.

I have also seen two other fairly long writings which attacked not so much my reasoning on these matters, but rather my conclusions, using arguments borrowed from the commonplaces original: "locis communibus"; standard rhetorical or philosophical arguments used in debate of atheists. And since arguments of that kind can have no force...