Metaphysical Disquisition

Doubt III. On the adventitious origin of Ideas, proved from those things which are lacking to the blind and the deaf: and on the single Idea of the Sun, which, held by sense, is expanded by reason. 109
Response. 110
Instance 1. That the objection made concerning the blind and the deaf remains unsolved. Nor is that which is intended legitimately concluded from only certain things proposed. 111
2. That the chief difficulty concerning the Idea of the Sun was ignored. That an Idea is properly an image. That some things are perceived through a true idea, others by force of consequence.* 113
Doubt IV. On the Idea of substance as not proper, and [known] through accidents and after the fashion of them: And on the idea of God taken from things, or from their perfections. 115
Response. 118
Instance 1. That it seems intellection cannot be separated from imagination; and that the image is the same, or is observed in both. 119
2. That it seems false that substance is perceived not by imagination, but by the intellect alone; and that the idea we have of it does not depend on those which we have of accidents. 121
3. By what reasoning the first men seem to have been able to have an Idea of God, if they did not have it innate; and how he might reason who thinks he has it innate. 123
4. That of God, since he is infinite, a true idea is not held. That the infinite is known by negation alone. Whence the expansion of the idea comes. That it is wrongly denied that God would be very small if he were not greater than he is understood by us. 126
Doubt V. On that saying, "Nothing is in the effect which is not in the cause," understanding it of the material cause. And, to what extent it can be true that there must be at least as much formal reality in the cause of an Idea as there is objective reality in the idea. 128
Response. 130
Instance 1. That the royal road, by which the existence of God is proved from the manifest effects in the universe, is not rightly abandoned so that it might be proved by the so-called objective reality of the idea. That the word "reality" is used improperly. 130

2. That an Idea with its objective reality seems to relate to itself as a shape impressed on wax to its representation of the seal; so that, just as the shape is representative and the seal representable, so the idea has objective reality, or the representation of the cause, and the cause itself formal reality, or representability. 132
3. That the difficulties were ignored: And to what extent it is true or not true that the effect pre-exists in the cause, so that a conclusion might be drawn concerning the objective reality of the idea. 134
Doubt VI. On the mind not having an idea of itself from itself (which does not seem able to understand itself any more than the eye can see itself) and having an idea neither of God, nor of Angels, nor especially of corporeal things. 137
Response. 138
Instance 1. That one must not trifle. That the difficulties were avoided. That every idea is an image: wherefore there is an image in the intellect no less than in the imaginative faculty. 140
2. That it was not proved that the same thing does not act upon itself; that it is undeservedly mocked, and the fault is turned back upon the teacher. In the turning of a top, the same thing does not act upon itself. 141
3. That nothing was accomplished when it was objected that the mind is said to be able to derive from itself the ideas of corporeal things: nor was a response given to the difficulty which had been proposed regarding that matter. 142
Doubt VII. On the Chief Demonstration for the existence of God from the preceding preparation; in imitation of which it might be established that there exist in reality infinite Worlds, of which an idea was held by the ancient Philosophers. 144
Response. 147
Instance 1. That Chief Demonstration is proposed in Syllogistic form; and its weakness is shown first generally and in various ways. 147
2. It is shown then specifically and in various ways in the major proposition of the Prosyllogism. 149
3. And similarly in the Minor, or the Assumption. 151