Conclusion of Book 3

I have distinguished, as two parts in the simple and indivisible being of the soul:

1. One part is purely passive

This is the mind or understanding.

2. One part is both passive and active

This is the will.

I have attributed to the mind 3 faculties, because it receives its modifications and its ideas from the author of nature in three ways.

1. Sense

This receives from God ideas confused with sensations—that is to say, sensible ideas, on the occasion of certain movements that take place in the organs of its senses at the presence of objects.

2. Imagination* and memory

This receives from God ideas confused with images, which make a kind of weak and languishing sensations that the mind receives only because of some traces that are produced or awakened in the brain by the course of the spirits.

3. Pure mind or Pure understanding

This is when it receives from God the ideas pure of truth without mixture of sensations and images: not by the union it has with the body, but by that it has with the Word or the wisdom of God; not because it is in the material and sensible world, but because it subsists in the immaterial and intelligible world; not to know changeable things, proper to the preservation of the life of the body, but to penetrate immutable truths, which preserve in us the life of the mind.

Book 1 and 2 showed that our senses and our imagination are very useful to us for knowing the relations that external bodies have with our own; that all the ideas that the mind receives through the body are all for the body; that it is impossible to discover any truth with evidence through the ideas of the senses and imagination; that these confused ideas serve only to attach us to our body and through our body to all sensible things, and that finally if we wish to avoid error, we must not attach ourselves to them.

I conclude likewise that it is morally impossible to know through the pure ideas of the mind the relations that bodies have with our own; that one must not reason according to these ideas to know whether an apple or a stone are good to eat; that one must taste them; and that although one can use one’s mind to know confusedly the relations of foreign bodies with our own, it is always safer to use one’s senses. I give another example; for one cannot too much imprint in the mind truths so essential and so necessary.

I wish to examine, for example, what is most advantageous for me: to be just or to be rich. If I open the eyes of the body, justice appears to me a chimera; I see no attractions in it. I see just people miserable, abandoned, persecuted, without defense and without consolation, for He who consoles and sustains them does not appear to my eyes. In a word, I do not see of what use justice and virtue can be. But if I consider riches with open eyes, I first see their brilliance and am dazzled by it. Power, greatness, pleasures, and all sensible goods accompany riches, and I cannot doubt that one must be rich to be happy. Likewise, if I use my ears, I hear that all men esteem riches, that one speaks only of the means of acquiring them, that one ceaselessly praises and honors those who possess them. This sense and all the others therefore tell me that one must be rich to be happy. If I close my eyes and ears, and interrogate my imagination, it will represent to me without ceasing what my eyes have seen, what they have read, and what my ears have heard to the advantage of riches. But it will represent these things to me in a quite different manner from my senses, for the imagination always increases the ideas of things that have relation to the body and that one loves. If I therefore let it do, it will soon lead me into an enchanted palace like those of which poets and romance writers make such magnificent descriptions, and there I will see beauties it is useless for me to describe, which will convince me that the god of riches who inhabits it is the only one capable of making me happy. This is what my body is capable of persuading me of, for it speaks only for itself, and it is necessary for its good that the imagination prostrate itself before the greatness and brilliance of riches.

But if I consider that the body is infinitely inferior to the mind, that it cannot be its master, that it cannot instruct it in truth nor produce light in it; and that in this view I retire into myself, and ask myself—or rather (since I am not my own, nor my master, nor my light) if I approach God, and that, in the silence of my senses and passions, I ask Him whether I should prefer riches to virtue or virtue to riches—I will hear a clear and distinct response of what I must do; an eternal response that has always been spoken, that is spoken, and that will always be spoken; a response that it is not necessary for me to explain, because everyone knows it, those who read this and those who do not read it; which is neither Greek, nor Latin, nor French, nor German, and which all nations conceive: a response finally that consoles the just in their poverty and that consoles sinners in the midst of their riches. I will hear this response and I will remain convinced of it. I will laugh at the visions of my imagination and the illusions of my senses. The inner man that is in me will mock the animal and earthly man I carry. Finally, the new man will grow and the old man will be destroyed, provided nevertheless that I always obey the voice of Him who speaks to me so clearly in the most secret of my reason, and who, having made Himself sensible to accommodate Himself to my weakness and corruption, and to give me life because He gave me death, still speaks to me in a very strong, very lively, and very familiar manner through my senses—I mean through the preaching of His Gospel. If I question Him on all metaphysical, natural, and purely philosophical questions, as well as on those concerning the regulation of morals, I will always have a faithful master who will never deceive me: not only will I be a Christian, but I will be a philosopher; I will think well and I will love good things; in a word, I will follow the path that leads to all the perfection of which I am capable, both by grace and by nature.

One must therefore conclude from all I have said that in order to make the best possible use of the faculties of our soul, of our senses, of our imagination, and of our mind, we must apply them only to the things for which they are given to us. We must carefully distinguish our sensations and our imaginations from our pure ideas, and judge according to our sensations and imaginations of the relations that external bodies have with our own, without using them to discover truths that they always confuse; and we must use the pure ideas of the mind to discover truths without using them to judge of the relations that external bodies have with our own, because these ideas never have enough extent to represent them perfectly to us.

It is impossible that men should know enough all the figures and all the movements of the small parts of their body and their blood, and of those of a certain fruit at a certain time of their illness, to know that there is a relation of suitability between this fruit and their body, and that if they eat it they will be cured. Thus our senses alone are more useful to the preservation of our health than the rules of experimental medicine, and experimental medicine than reasoned medicine. But reasoned medicine, which defers much to experience and still more to the senses, is the best, because all these things must be joined together.

One can therefore use one’s reason in all things, and this is the privilege it has over the senses and imagination, which are limited to sensible things; but one must use it with rule. For although it is the principal part of ourselves, it often happens that one is mistaken by letting it act too much, because it cannot act enough without becoming tired: I mean that it cannot know enough to judge well, and that nevertheless one wishes to judge.