A collection of several philosophical writings

Letter 114.

...and to effectively stop all such guesses for the future, even in the weakest and most scrupulous people who suspect him. Furthermore, I could have included even more from his first volume of letters: namely, that he not only believed in the existence of God, but also in His specific Providence Providence: the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power, which he felt and acknowledged in the special inspiration and success he experienced in his philosophical studies. I am not surprised by this, since he began so piously in his youth, writing his first work on that excellent theme, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom A reference to Psalm 111:10 or Proverbs 9:10. I was informed of this in letters from Mr. Clerselier in Paris when he sent me a list original: "Catalogue" of the writings Descartes original: "Cartesius" had left behind. Learning this pleased me greatly, as it was the very same text upon which I first delivered a sermon original: "common-placed," referring to a scholarly or theological exercise common in universities in our college chapel.

Letter of Mr. Descartes. Volume 2, Letter 24.

But what delights me most is that both of us, though setting out from the same starting point original: "Lifts," likely referring to the starting barriers in a race or tournament and taking different paths—the one traveling the lower road of Democritism Democritism: the philosophy of Democritus, focusing on atoms and matter amid the thick dust of atoms and flying particles of matter, the other tracing a path over the high and airy hills of Platonism Platonism: the philosophy of Plato, emphasizing abstract forms and the spiritual in that thinner and more subtle region of immateriality—meet together at last (surely not without divine guidance) at the same goal. Specifically, we meet at the entrance of the Holy Bible, dedicating our joint labors to the use and glory of the Christian Church. We lay at its feet what we believe to be the truest and most acceptable philosophical interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis ever offered to the world since the loss of the ancient Jewish Cabala Cabala/Kabbalah: a traditional system of Jewish mysticism. This is not merely a rhetorical flourish on my part, but a frank admission—or rather, a serious boast—by Descartes himself. In a letter to a friend, he claims that he found his own philosophy to be wonderfully consistent with the text of Moses referring to the Torah, traditionally attributed to Moses, more so than any other interpretation. I have fully demonstrated this in my Defense of the Philosophic Cabala, achieving even more than Descartes could have, unless he had discovered the same "key" that I did.

Several considerations gathered together which completely prevent all imaginable objections against the idea that a spirit has extension.

12. Regarding my work The Immortality of the Soul, I will address only two points of dissatisfaction. Although these seem like major issues to some, they never seemed so to me, but I will now bring them into view. The first is that I have admitted a kind of extension Extension: in philosophy, the property of taking up space or having physical dimensions in the nature of a spirit; the second is that I have not granted perception to the "Spirit of Nature." As for the first point, I can justly defend original: "apologize," in the sense of a formal defense or apologia myself by noting that "necessity has no law." If critics consider the provable evidence for these two conclusions: 1. That there is an immaterial substance that is truly and specifically distinct from the body, and 2. That there is no real entity that does not take up space in some sense, it will be impossible for them not to conclude, as I have, that a spirit must also be "extended" in some way. Therefore, it is a poorly reasoned complaint that nitpicks the conclusion without examining the strength of the premises. I therefore appeal to any impartial reader to judge whether I have not mathematically demonstrated the truth of the first point in both my Antidote and my Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul.

And for the reader's fuller satisfaction, I shall now demonstrate the second point more precisely: namely, that neither the soul nor anything else can be "the whole" original: Totum [in]...