Ethical Handbook

** 2

Extension—which we can in no way erase from our minds without it existing—must necessarily, according to the mind of Descartes original: Cartesius; referring to René Descartes, whose mechanical philosophy Henry More initially admired but later critiqued., be corporeal. Although we have only lightly touched upon this opinion in the present work, we have nonetheless refuted it extensively and solidly in our first and second letters to Descartes.

And certainly, even from this one argument that now occurs to me, taken from the motion of the Earth, it will be clear to anyone whose intellect is neither slow nor occupied by great prejudices, that this necessity of existing belongs not indeed to the extended matter of the World, but to some other immaterial Extension. For there are no Speculations in the whole of Philosophy (not even Mathematics itself excepted) of which I am more certain in mind and knowledge than this one which I now propose. That the Body of the Earth, in its annual circuit, describes a certain Elliptical ring at fixed semi-diameters distant from the Sun on all sides, is admitted by all Philosophers of better repute. Now, since no Figure can be described except in some Extension, and this description does not occur in the external matter of the World—such as the Vortex original: Vortex; in Cartesian physics, these are huge swirling pools of subtle matter that carry the planets around the sun. by which the Earth is carried (for it does not pass through the parts of the Vortex, but is carried around with the Vortex itself at a certain distance from the Sun)—it plainly follows that there is an Exten-