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[478R]
1
Table
of Chapters
of the Fifth Volume
on Metaphysics
Preface to the Atheists.
2
The method of guiding one’s mind
3
properly in the search for metaphysical
truths.
Rules for guiding one’s mind properly in what we understand of faith,
whether human or divine.
[479L] In what manner one must guide oneself the belief in miracles.
On metaphysics.
Chapter 1. That there exists one God.
Demonstration 1.
Chapter 2. Demonstration of the existence of God using the techniques of the
geometricians
4
.
Chapter 3. The existence of God proven in another manner.
Demonstration 2.
Chapter 4. Demonstration of the existence of God using the techniques of the
geometricians.
Chapter 5. Response to some [479R] objections
5
which one could form
against the preceding demonstrations.
Chapter 6. In what sense we ought to understand that God exists by his own
power, and that he is positively his own cause.
Chapter 7. What immutable order is, [and] that God must necessarily
conform to it.
Demonstration of immutable order using the techniques of the geometricians.
Chapter 8. Of the attributes of God, and that He is immutable.
Demonstration of the immutability [480L] of God using the techniques of the
geometricians.
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Chapter 9. That God is not at all corporeal even though He is immense, and
that his substance is found throughout the world and infinitely beyond.
Demonstration, using the techniques of the geometricians, that God is not
corporeal.
Chapter 10. In what manner on ought to understand that God is wise, just,
merciful, patient, and what must be understood when one says that He can be
offended
6
.
Demonstration that God is essentially just.
Chapter 11. That true power [480R] resides only with God.
Demonstration, using the techniques of the geometricians, that God cannot
transmit true power to his creatures.
Chapter 12. That by reason alone one cannot know with certain
proof
7
whether God is the Creator of the material and perceptible world.
Demonstration, using the techniques of the geometricians, that the existence
of bodies is not obviously proven by reason alone.
Chapter 13. That, with faith as a given, [481L] one demonstrates precisely
the existence of bodies.
Chapter 14. That creation is possible, [and] why certain Philosophers
believed that the world was uncreated
8
.
Chapter 15. Why God was not able to create the eternal
9
world.
Chapter 16. God, who does all He wishes to do for Himself, was not able to
find anything in the production of pure creatures that persuaded Him to create
them. 2
nd
: [481R] That reason demonstrates that it was necessary that a divine
person have united himself to God’s work.
Demonstration, using the techniques of the geometricians, that God had an
infinite design in the creation of the world.
Another demonstration that it was necessary that a divine person have united
himself to God’s work.
Chapter 17: Responses to different reflections that are for the most part taken
from the 2
nd
Volume of Philosophical Reflections by Mr. Arnaud
10
.
Chapter 18: That God never forms a design without regard [482L] for the
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means of executing it.
Chapter 19: That God’s providence in the first shaping of matter necessarily
encloses an infinite wisdom. Why He acted by particular will
11
, and that He
formed the world all at once.
Chapter 20: Continuation of the same subject of God’s infinite wisdom in the
arrangement of bodies, and in the combinations of the physical and the moral,
and of the natural and the supernatural.
Chapter 21: That one would not be able to understand that God can transmit
no real power to his creations. 2
nd
: That simultaneous support
12
is something
unintelligible.
Chapter 22: Responses to some objections concerning the efficacy of
secondary causation, taken from the books of Mr. Arnaud.
Chapter 23: 1. Where universal and general causation are explained.
2. What it is to act by laws, or by general or particular will.
3. That there are four kinds
13
of occasional causation.
4. What a miracle it is to take this word in all [483L] its philosophical rigor.
Chapter 24: 1
st
: That God executes his providential designs by general laws,
and by the simplest means. 2
nd
: In what manner it must be understood that this
manner of acting is arbitrary to Him, and that He acts by particular wills as the
order demands it.
Chapter 25: Continuation of the proofs that demonstrate that God executes
his designs in a manner that conveys the nature of his attributes, that is by
general laws, etc.
[483R] Demonstration, using the techniques of the geometricians, that the
manners in which God acts must convey the nature of his attributes.
Chapter 26: Different opinions concerning Providence.
CHapter 27: What one ought to believe about Providence.
Chapter 28: Response to all the strongest claims
14
in the 1
st
Volume of the
Philosophical Reflections of Mr. Arnaud.
Chapter 29: Response to an objection of the author, [who is] of the mind of
Mr. Arnaud, to P. Malebranche
15
concerning Providence.
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1
Page 478 of the PDF document, the manuscript page on the right-hand side of the screen.
(L indicates the left-hand.) This is not as elegant as recto-verso, but hopefully it will help
everyone keep track of where we are in the book.
2
For ease of reading, I’m leaving out the page number markings. You can still see them in
the transcription and the modernized French version.
3
Esprit is a multivalent word, often rendered in English as as “spirit.” Here I’m using mind
since the context is philosophy and metaphysics; however, given the work’s theological
strain, once we get to this section of the text it may be clear whether or not spirit is more
suitable in context. http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/academie9/esprit
4
“à la façon de” is usually rendered “in the style of.” But since this seems to be referring to
a proof, I’ve used the more precise (if somewhat clunkier) “using the techniques of”
throughout the Table Contents, for the sake of clarity.
5
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/difficulté B2
6
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/offensé 1C
7
avec la dernière évidence is a fixed phrase, literally “with the last [piece of] evidence” but
with the sense of absolute certainty, absolute proof.
8
From the Latin increatus, “never created,” “not made,” i.e. not the result of a divine act of
creation.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext
%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dincreatus
and http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/incréé
9
de toute éternité — another fixed phrase. Religious origin; it appears in liturgical texts,
possibly a rendering of the Latin in saecula saeculorum or a similar formula. Variously
translated as “world without end” or “since time immemorial,” though in this sentence it
seems it’s being used adjectivally so I went with simply “eternal.
10
Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694), theologian and philosopher. His Réflexions philosophiques
et théologiques sur le nouveau système de la nature et de la grâce were published in
1685-86. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arnauld/
11
The concept of “general will” (and by contrast “particular will” or individual volition) was
made famous by Rousseau and 18th-c philosophers; famously, the phrase volonté générale
appears in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. But these ideas are rooted
in the 17th c.
Rousseau was also a great synthesizer who was deeply engaged in a dialog with his
contemporaries and with the writers of the past, such as the theorists of Natural Law,
Hobbes and Grotius. Like "the body politic", "the general will" was a term of art and was not
invented by Rousseau, though admittedly Rousseau did not always go out of his way to
explicitly acknowledge his debt to the jurists and theologians who influenced him. Prior to
Rousseau, the phrase "general will" referred explicitly to the general (as opposed to the
particular) will or volition (as it is sometimes translated) of the Deity. It occurs in the
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theological writings of Malebranche,
[10]
who had picked it up from Pascal, and in the
writings of Malebranche's pupil, Montesquieu,
[11]
who contrasted volonté particulière and
volonté générale in a secular sense in his most celebrated chapter (Chapter XI) of De
L'Esprit des Lois (1748).
[12]
In his Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau explicitly
credits Diderot's Encyclopédie article "Droit Naturel" as the source of "the luminous concept"
of the general will, of which he maintains his own thoughts are simply a development.
Montesquieu, Diderot, and Rousseau's innovation was to use the term in a secular rather
than theological sense.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_will
12
This is tricky. Concours has a range of meanings; this is only best guess for the moment,
but the meaning should be clear in the context of the chapter. http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/
concours
13
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/#FouCau
14
Literally, “all that is of the strongest” — I take this to mean the strongest arguments in
Arnaud’s text. But this is just a guess until we get to that chapter!
15
Nicolas Malebranche, 1638-1715. Priest and rationalist philosopher; intellectual rival of
Arnauld. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/malebranche/
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
1
Philosophical Essay
Book 3
On
Metaphysics
Preface
To the Atheists
As our soul is that which is of the noblest and best in us, if our interest is dear
to us, the greatest of our cares must be to search for its perfection, since it is in
this that our sovereign good consists.
And as we know nothing as well as we know Godas much because nothing
exists without Him as because we can doubt everything[8L] although we
have no clear or distinct idea [of what God is], it follows that it is only the
knowledge of God upon which our sovereign good and all our perfection
depend.
[Treatise on the nature and grace of God] For that matter, as nothing could exist
without God, there is nothing in nature that is not comprised of God. We do not
need to look outside of ourselves to convince ourselves of this truth; there is
nothing more shapeless than our mind
1
if we separate it from God. For what is a
mind without intelligence and without reason, without movement and without
love? Yet it is God’s wisdom that is the universal reason of our minds. It is the
love by which God loves Himself that gives the soul all the [8R] movement that
it has toward goodness. The mind cannot know truth except through the natural
and necessary union with truth itself; it cannot be capable of reason except by
means of reason. Finally, there cannot exist, in a sense, an intelligent mind
unless
2
its own substance is illuminated, penetrated, perfected by the light of
God Himself.
1
Here I render esprit as “mind” rather than “spirit” (the word encompasses both
meanings), since the author here is focusing on reason and intelligence.
2
The MS reading is ambiguous because of the irregular spacing: it could be que par
ce que (“but by that which”) or que parce que (“but because,” i.e. “unless”). The
latter seems syntactically more straightforward, and one finds par ce que for parce
que throughout the ms.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
2
[The foolish person says God is not in his heart
3
] If the atheists who say in their
hearts that there is no God were to consult that light that illuminates all those
who are not blinded by their own passions, they would see that they blind
themselves in the midst of the brightest lights: for they would not know how to
combat divinity without thinking about it, and they would not know how to
think about it without having an idea of it. And after [9L] having attentively
considered how immense the perfections that it [i.e. divinity] represents, they
would be compelled to avow that they would not know how to grasp it except
from a very perfect being; or, to put it better, that this infinitely perfect being
who made all things is nearer to us than [to] the very things that He made, since
it is in Him that we have life, movement, and being.
[See decor. principis ar. 1.4
4
] [By the idea of the perfect being, we understand nothing of
Him that is distinct; He is Himself His idea, nothing can represent Him] In fact, after
having made a review of the diverse ideas that are within ourselves, and since we
find there one of an all-powerful, all-knowing and extremely perfect being, we
must judge easilybecause we perceive [it] within this ideathat [9R] God
(who is that all-perfect being) is or exists. For even though we have distinct
ideas of several other things, we remark nothing in them that assures us of the
existence of their object, rather than that we perceive in this [existence] not only
a possible existence but even [one that is] absolutely necessary and eternal. And
just as, from what we see, it is necessarily contained in the idea that we have of a
triangle that [the sum of] its three angles be equal to [the sum of] two right
angles, even so from this alone we perceive that necessary and eternal existence
is contained in the idea that we have of an all-perfect being. We must conclude
that this all-perfect being [10L] is or exists.
This proof of the existence of God is so beautiful, so strong and so convincing
that atheists would not know how to attack it with their eyes open, nor to
consider it attentively without giving in to it.
3
This marginal note is in Latin. The transcription shows where these marginal notes
fall relative to the rest of the paragraph, but for the sake of easier reading I’ve
moved all the marginalia to the top of the paragraph in the modernized version and
the translation.
4
I haven’t (yet!) figured out what text this refers to.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
3
But it is morally impossible that minds of flesh and blood, which can only
know what makes itself felt, could ever be convinced by this kind of reasoning.
They reject as ghosts anything that does not represent itself as some kind of
figure
5
, and not being accustomed to metaphysical and abstract truths, they are
extremely prone to believe that we are plotting to seduce them [10R] while in
fact we are working only to enlighten them. They regard with defiance and with
a kind of horror ideas that have nothing agreeable and sensible
6
, they who judge
things only by the impression they make on their imagination. Thus their love of
rest and happiness soon delivers them from a view that troubles them in their
pleasures, that humiliates their pride and that prescribes strict limits to all their
delights.
Therefore one must not wait for these abstract proofs of divinity to ever
convince the atheists. The human animal does not understand the things that
belong to God ; these men of flesh and blood [11L] find nothing in these things
that can touch them, these things have nothing that flatters their senses, the sole
object of their indulgence.
Only those who taste the sweetness of the mind and who work ceaselessly to
weaken the union that they have with perceptible thingsin a word, only those
whose heart is purifiedare able to see this wisdom that is hidden from the eyes
of all those who follow the appeal of their passions.
Know nonetheless, atheists, that you are inexcusable, smothering the
knowledge of the true God in your hearts ; for not wanting to understand the
invisible grandeurs of God by means of the visible things that He has created,
not wanting any other [11R] God than one that presents himself as coarse and
earthly in your eyes is to extinguish all reason, to take pleasure in overturning
good sense; in sum, it is delirium and frenzy.
5
In context: Atheists refuse to believe in anything that they cannot perceive in a
physical form. But given this text’s preoccupations with mathematics, it’s worth
noting that figure also can have the sense of a mathematical figure or number.
6
In context this seems as if it should read, “They regard with defiance and horror
ideas that are nothing but agreeable and sensible.” I wonder if a word is missing,
e.g. Ils regardent . . . les idées qui n’ont rien QUE d’agréable . . .
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
4
[Minutius Felix
7
] If there was a God, you say, we would know it; we would
know that it is for that reason that we believe [in] Him, because we feel Him
although we do not see Him. For in His works and in all the movements of
nature we see His virtue present when He sends us thunder, or lightning, or
beautiful weather. And do not find it at all strange, atheists
8
, if you do not see
God in the manner that you would wish to.
[12L] All is stirred and moved by the winds, and nevertheless you do not see
it [the wind]. Even the sun, which makes all visible, is as if invisible ; its rays
dazzle us, and if we stop to contemplate it, it will make us lose our sight. And
will you be able to sustain the gaze of He who lights the sun and who is the
source of light? What, you want to see God with your eyes of flesh, and you
cannot see only that soul that makes you speak and animates you?
Answer me, atheists: why do you move the limbs of your body with such
ease? You will say that it is because we have within ourselves a principle [12R]
of all these movements: “I want to.” And this is true, in a sense; but if I press you
to make me understand this principle, you will not hesitate to tell me that it is
your will. There you are, then, certain of something that you have never seen
and that has never fallen within your senses ; if you have seen it, tell us what
color it is, and what its form
9
is. Therefore it is without reason, man of flesh and
7
Marcus Minucius Felix (d. ca. 250) was an early Christian apologist, author of the
treatise Octavius. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Minucius-Felix
The alternate spelling of Minutius seems to have been current in the period our
author was writing (as a very quick reference, here’s an English translation from
1703 that spells his name with a T:
https://books.google.com/books?id=YhZlAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP9&lpg=PP9&dq=minutiu
s+felix&source=bl&ots=kW5q5KiEJC&sig=xu3mUYcIc-
mcboahYYYUOgd5ZAc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4pa7ltIvcAhWMGXwKHY18AQY
Q6AEIVDAP - v=onepage&q&f=false)
8
The MS has, here and at a few other points in this chapter, hatees where athees is
clearly meant. They would be pronounced exactly the same way, though, and there
are several other instances of this kind of homophonic switching (e.g. ce for se).
This, in addition to the absence of punctuation, suggests to me that this MS (or the
original of which it is a fair copy) was taken down by dictation. Is that something
the Team has thought of / may or may not be relevant?
(Hatées is a real wordperfect passive participle of hâter, “to hasten,”
feminine pluralbut it definitely doesn’t fit here contextually.)
9
Figure again (see note 5).
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
5
blood, that you do not want to recognize the invisible God who inhabits an
inaccessible light, because you cannot see him in some kind of form. You have
even less reason to smother the knowledge of Him in your minds because you
[13L] cannot understand it. [Minutius Felix] Don’t you know that the author of
nature has no limits, that He has neither end nor beginning, that He gives
eternity to Himself as he gives the principle to all things, that before the world
He was Himself His own occupation because He was fully self-sufficient
10
? He
is not seen at all because He is beyond the senses; He cannot be understood
because He is beyond understanding; He is immense, infinite, known only to
Himself because our mind is too small to conceive of Him, and we never
understand Him better than when calling
11
Him incomprehensible. Whoever
imagines that he wholly knows His grandeur [13R] diminishes it, and he who
does not diminish it at all cannot know it. Do not inform yourselves of His name;
His name is that which is
12
. We seek words when something can be divided, but
God, being single, cannot be divided. If you call Him Father, you soon enough
conceive of a father in your own way; if you call Him King, the same thing ;
remove all aspect of the terrestrial from these names, and you will have found
what He is.
How pitiable therefore are your pretensions, atheists, when you say that you
want to understand the God of the universe and that your heart, devoid of
intelligence, is filled with darkness; you have strayed from the right path. You
have all [14L] become useless; you make no use of your mind except to deceive
yourselves and to distance yourselves from the way of truth.
You believe that a state cannot be governed except by the wisdom of a
prince, that a household cannot survive without the guidance of a father
13
, that a
vessel needs a pilot to navigate successfully ; and when you see this kingdom in
10
Or, more precisely but at the risk of sounding affectedly antiquated, “sufficient
unto himself.”
11
The MS reading of quand l’appelant is an awkward construction. I suspect this
may be another case of a sneaky homophone, as qu’en appelant would sound the
same but make more sense syntactically.
12
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.” Exodus 3:14 (King James Version)
13
More precisely, père de famille = paterfamilias, not merely a father but the head
of a household.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
6
order, this house maintaining itself, this vessel avoiding the reefs and arriving in
port, you conclude without hesitation that there is a higher reason and mind that
presides over it. And yet, blind as you are, you do not want to draw the same
conclusion about [14R] the world. Is it not of you that it is said, they have eyes
and do not see, they have ears and do not hear
14
? In fact, isn’t it necessary to
make an effort over one’s reason, to blind oneself in the midst of the light and to
fight against one’s own feelings, in order not to give oneself over to the brilliant
15
testimonies of divinity that all of nature gives us?
One must have neither eyes nor feelings to imagine that all this great
machine
16
was made by an assemblage of atoms and not by the wisdom of God.
For is there nothing clearer, when we come to consider the heavens and consider
all of nature, [15L] than that there is some excellent mind that encompassed all
these things, that guides them and governs them by His providence? Consider
the sky with all its expanse, that regularity with which the Earth turns on its
axis; or if you prefer, the swiftness of the sky, whether it is all sown with stars or
whether it is illuminated by the sun, you will see the divine wisdom shining in
this swaying and movement.
Consider the most noble and most beautiful light of any part of the universe.
It is not without reason that it finds itself reunited in certain spheres
17
that pour
it out ceaselessly and never run dry, [and] that these spheres are at such a just
and regulated distance from the [15R] Earth that they seem to be always
moving, without this movement (real or apparent) finding any obstacle to stop it.
14
“And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.
And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no
bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?
Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not
remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets
full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven
among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they
said, Seven. And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?” Mark
8:16-21 (KJV)
15
The MS reads eclants, which is not a word I can find in current or historical French
dictionaries. I propose an emendation of éclatants (“dazzling,” “brilliant”).
16
i.e. the cosmos
17
i.e. stars
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
7
What shall I say of that star
18
whose course determines the years, and of that
inconstant planet
19
that makes the months with its death and with its birth? Shall
I speak of that vicissitude
20
of darkness and light that produces another one for
work and rest?
It is up to
21
the astrologers
22
to enter into the discourse of the stars whose
virtues and influences they know, and to teach us which ones rule the grains and
the harvests [16L], [and] of the navigations and winds that make up the science
of the pilot and the laborer
23
. It is enough merely to arrange all these marvels
and give them this order that they maintain ; it must have required a divine mind
and an extraordinary wisdom. Oh
24
, who could doubt it, since it requires as
much to understand them
25
?
Descend lower and consider the uses of the air. It carries light and the stars’
influences to us; it attends to those clouds that make the earth fertile and our
harvests abundant; it carries sound to our ears and colors to our eyes; it makes
our breath and the [16R] mouvement of our lungs, the strength and the
liveliness of the flame. See then how this air and this light unite with the organs
18
The sun.
19
The moon.
20
My proposed emendation for MS’s vivissitude
21
MS has the beginning of this sentence twice, the first as a fragment hanging off
the end of the previous paragraph (omitted from translation, but you can see it in
the transcription and modernized version).
22
Up until at least the 16th century, astrologue meantastronomer” as well as
“astrologer”; indeed, the two disciplines were not wholly separated. By the late
17th c the distinction had grown clearer, and given the context here about the
“influence” of the stars, “astrologer” is probably the apter choice. But it is worth
remembering that in the early modern period astrology was still considered a
science.
23
The logic (if not the syntax) of this sentence is as follows: The astrologers teach
us about the stars that govern harvests (useful for laborers) and about winds and
navigation (useful for seafarers).
24
MS reads he, but it is surprising to find this colloquial interjection (not unlike
“hey”) in such a formal text. It could be a homophone for et, in which case “AND
who could doubt . . .”
25
i.e. to understand these natural phenomena also requires “a divine mind and
extraordinary wisdom.”
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
8
of the human body, for without the human eye light is but darkness, and without
light the human eye is but blindness.
In the instant that one lights a torch or that the sun rises, it pours out its light
from every side, and we find ourselves struck by a thousand pleasant colors that
make us distinguish the variety of objects, without contributing ourselves in any
way to all these marvels. Doesn’t this require infinite wisdom, to create this
distribution of colors with each blink of the eye?
[17L] Can you consider, atheists, all these dependencies that exist between
these parts of the universe, without being struck by that wisdom that linked
them so well to one another?
Who is it that taught the air, the winds, that they must contribute to making
the earth fertile? Why does the sun provide its heat and light, the sea its mists,
the air its dew and coolness for that purpose? How does the earth draw from her
sterile and wilted bosom so many plants that are so admirable in their virtues
and production, so many excellent trees and exquisite fruits? Why is it that these
fruits are capable of changing themselves into sustenance for [17R] animals and
saving their lives? How do hunger and thirst teach them [the animals], at just
the right moment, that it is time to take the foods that are destined to nourish
them? How do taste and satiety teach them, on the other hand, that they have
taken enough for the good of that nature, and this by a law that cannot be
broken except by the illnesses that trouble the natural economy of their
temperament?
What would be the purpose of all these fruits of the earth if there weren’t
animals to feed on them, and what would these animals do without the fruits of
the earth?
Why is it that in the places where no grain grows, nature makes coconuts
grow, those marvelous trees whose marrow is bread, the juice within them wine,
and the hairs that cover their leaves cotton for making clothes?
Why is it that on El Hierro
26
, where there is no spring or river to give water
to the inhabitants, there is a tree
27
that is perpetually covered with a mist that
26
L’île de Fer (“Iron Island”) is the French name of El Hierro, the smallest of the
Canary Islands.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
9
distills the water of its branches, God forming a marvelous spring in the air
when the earth refuses to give one, so that all the men and beasts who inhabit
this island find there an abundance with which to quench their thirst?
[18R] Whatever you do, atheists, you would not know how to avoid
recognizing in all this admirable series of connections an infinite wisdom, and
you would not know how to say, without renouncing what light yet remains to
you, that all this had been done without design and that chance was its source
and origin.
Although the diversity of weather and seasons that always marches with
equal step does not speak of its author or publish its praises, springtime was
necessary for producing flowers, summer for ripening fruits and harvests,
autumn to gently complete this work, but [19L] winter was no less [necessary]
for nature’s rest and relief. This order continues always, without becoming
confused or losing its way
28
, for so many centuries; it would soon have changed
if Fortune were mistress of the world.
For that matter, what wisdom to have tempered winter and summer with
autumn and spring, with so much [dant
29
] and aptness that we pass
imperceptibly from the heat of one to the chill of the other without experiencing
the severity of the two opposites!
What more shall I say of all the animals that each have their different
defenses? These are armed with horns, those with teeth and stingers, [19R]
others with talons and claws; some have no weapon but speed; but all of them
together have obtained from nature either agility or strength or industry.
27
The garoé, or “fountain tree,” was attested on El Hierro beginning in the 15th
century. See Gioda, A., Z. Hernández, E. Gonzáles, and R. Espejo. "Fountain Trees
in the Canary Islands: Legend and Reality." Advances in Horticultural Science 9, no.
3 (1995): 112-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42881349.
28
I read se troubler, se perdre for MS ce . . . ce.
29
I can’t figure out the MS reading here; it would be something with a similar sense
to justesse (aptness, suitability, sound judgment), but dant is not a word I can find
in any dictionary, and I can’t think of a homophone that makes sense in context.
Perhaps missing a syllable? (See note 15 on éclant / éclatant.)
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
Above all, the form of man avows a God for his author: this upright statue,
this raised face where all the senses are located, as well as
30
in the sovereign
abode and the eyes up high
31
as if standing guard, we would never have done
[this] if we want to talk about everything
32
.
[The heavens narrate the glory of God
33
] Therefore what are you waiting for,
atheists, to recognize Him whose glory is announced by heaven and earth? Are
you waiting for God to always make new miracles, which [20L] would render
them useless by continuing them, so that he would make your eyes as
accustomed to them as they are to the course of the sun and all the other marvels
of nature? Is it not enough that you see that we cannot fight against divinity
without showing by prodigious confusions that we have our blood turned
around
34
, that we no longer defend ourselves but by presumption and a brutal
stubbornness?
[Extravagance of atheism] There is nothing more monstrous than that
indifference in which atheists live with regard to their ultimate end. For what
cause of joy do we find in awaiting no more than miseries without [other]
possibility? What cause of vanity to see oneself in impenetrable obscurity? What
consolation to await only nothingness [20R] for the end of all these
35
actions?
This rest that atheists anticipate is an incomprehensible series of connections and
a supernatural lethargy, the extravagance of which must be made to be felt
30
The MS ainsi quand (“thus when”) is extraordinarily difficult to make sense of,
unless a verb is missing. I read another homophone here, qu’en instead of quand,
i.e. the senses are located in the face as well as in the mind (“sovereign abode” =
the head). (Ainsi que = as well as, together with.)
31
Another possibility: the idiom au plus haut point, meaning “intensely,” but the last
word is missing.
32
This syntax is also a bit hard to untangle but I think the sense is, “Let’s be
honest, we would never be such attractive creatures if God hadn’t designed us.”
33
Marginal note in Latin.
34
Renversé can also mean “spilled,” but that does not seem to be the sense here,
given the context of confusion/tumult.
35
Or, “all one’s actions” (perhaps more logical) if we can read MS ces as ses.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
before finishing this preface; “for here is how men reason when they choose to
live in this ignorance of what they are and without seeking an explanation
36
.”
[The Pensées of Mr. Pascal, page 8
37
] “I do not know who put me in this world,
they [the atheists] say, nor what the world is nor what I myself am; I am in a
terrible ignorance of all things, I do not know what my body is, what my senses
are, what my soul is, and even that part of me [21L] that thinks of what I say
and that reflects upon everything and upon itself does not know itself anymore
than the rest.
“I see these terrifying spaces of the universe that encloses me, and I find
myself attached to a corner of this vast expanse without knowing why I have
been placed in this location rather than another, nor why this little time that has
been given me to live was assigned at this point rather than another in all the
eternity that preceded me and of all that which follows me.
“I see only infinities on every side that engulf me like an atom and like a
shadow that lasts only an instant without returning; all that I know is that I
[21R] must die soon, but what I am most ignorant of is that same death that I
will not know how to avoid.
“As I do not know where I come from, neither do I know where I am going,
and I know only that in leaving this world I will fall forever either into
nothingness or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of these
two conditions I must partake of eternally.
“Here is my state, full of misery, of weakness, of darkness; and of all this I
conclude that I must pass all the days of my life without dreaming of what might
36
Or: “enlightenment.”
37
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician and philosopher, one of
the most influential of the 17th century. The Pensées (Thoughts) was a collection of
his writings and fragments, published posthumously in 1670.
Beginning with the end of the previous paragraph in quotation marks, and
continuing through the rest of this preface, the text is quoted directly from Pascal
(except marginalia). I have provided my own translation here.
I looked up a contemporary edition of the Pensées, and in the second edition of
1670, the passage quoted here does indeed begin on page 8.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Qa5DAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP79&dq=pascal+pensee
s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-lLXkpYvcAhVrl1QKHZN1DNsQ6AEIJzAA -
v=onepage&q&f=false
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
happen to me, and that I have only to follow my inclinations without reflection
and without worry [22L] while doing all I must to fall into eternal unhappiness,
in case what is said about it is true. Perhaps I could find some explanation in my
doubts, but I do not want to take the trouble or take a step to find them; and in
treating disdainfully those who work at this concern, I want to go without
foresight and without fear to attempt such a great event, and to let myself be led
softly toward death in the uncertainty of the eternity of my future condition.”
[Here is Mr. Pascal on the discourse of the indifference of atheists
38
, from which this was
taken] “In truth, it is to the glory of religion to have as enemies such
unreasonable men, and their opposition to it poses so [22R] little danger that it
serves, on the contrary, to establish the principal truths that it teaches us. For
Christian faith goes principally to establish these two things: the corruption of
nature and the redemption of Jesus Christ. So if they do not serve to
demonstrate the truth of redemption by the sanctity of their behavior, at least
they serve admirably to demonstrate the corruption of nature by such unnatural
sentiments.”
38
Ch. 1 of the Pensées, Contre l’indifférence des athées (“Against the Indifference of
the Atheists”).
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
1
[23R]
The Method
Of properly guiding one’s
mind in the search
for metaphysical truths
What we will say in this method will show us not only the rules that must be
followed in the resolution of metaphysical questions, but also the use that we
must make of the knowledge that we have acquired through physics
1
.
Method is what we generally call the art of properly arranging a sequence of
several thoughts, either to discover the truth when we do not know it, or to
prove it to others once we have discovered it.
[24L] There are two kinds of methods: one to discover the truth, which we
call analysis or method of resolution, which we can also call method of discovery
2
; the
other to make [the truth] understood to others once we have found it, which we
call synthesis or method of composition, which we may also call method of doctrine.
These two methods differ only as much as the path one takes climbing from a
valley onto a mountain does from the [path] one takes descending from the
mountain into the valley; or as differ the two means one can employ for proving
that a person is descended from Saint Louis, [24R] one of which is to show that
this person has such a one for a father who was the son of such a one, and that
one of such a one, and so on up to Saint Louis, and the other is to start with
Saint Louis and show that he had such children, and these children [had] others,
descending to the person in question. And this example is much more apt in this
encounter since it is certain that to find an unknown genealogy one must make
use of analysis, that is, ascending from the son to the father rather than to
explain it after having found it. The most ordinary manner is to start with the
trunk
3
to show its descendants, which is what we call [25L] synthesis. [St.
1
This may mean the specific discipline of physics, or—perhaps more likely given the wide-
ranging examples the author provides—a broader category of natural sciences.
2
Given the context here, I’m taking invention in the sense of the Latin inventio (still in use in the
17th c), that is, a finding or discovery, rather than a wholly new creation (the modern English
sense of “invention”).
3
i.e. of the family tree?
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
2
Matthew did genealogy descending by synthesis, Math. 1] [St. Luke did the genealogy of
Jesus Christ by analysis, Luke 3]
And that is what we do in the sciences. The most ordinary manner is to make
use of analysis to find some truth ; afterward we make use of the other method to
explain what we have found. This is what we can say in general about analysis
and synthesis.
Let us return to the rules that we have proposed to give ourselves to make
some progress in metaphysics.
As there have been some philosophers who have made a profession of
doubting everything and who have pretended that everything was equally
obscure and uncertain, the first thing that [25R] we must have in sight is to find
a truth so certain that it does not allow for any other and of which we could not
doubt any supposition we might make.
We ordinarily propose two truths that we esteem first among all. The first is
this one: it is impossible that something is and is not at the same time. [It is
impossible for something to be and not to be simultaneously.
4
]
The second: “I think, therefore I am.”
5
For the first, I do not think it ought to be accepted as a first principle, even
though, by the way, it is very certain. For not to say that it is of no use, since it
does not assure us of the existence of anything, we have only to examine it,
[26L] at the very least, to be persuaded that it supposes a principle of which one
must first assure oneself. For before exposing this truth as a first principleit is
impossible that something is and is not at the same time—it was necessary to
make a distinction between being and not being, and for this one must assure
oneself of whether something exists, which is not at all demonstrated by this so-
called principle. Therefore it cannot pass for the first of all the truths that does
not allow any [other].
[“I think, therefore I am” is the first of all truths.] Therefore it is “I think,
therefore I am” what we must take as the first and most certain of all truths; for
4
Marginal note is in Latin. The reference here is to the law of non-contradiction, a principle
of metaphysical thought going back to Aristotle: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-
noncontradiction/
5
René Descartes (1596-1650), Discourse on the Method, 1637.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
3
there is no one who can be unaware of whether he thinks or whether he [26R]
does not think, since if he does not think he is not capable of knowing nor even
of not knowing anything, nor having what he who lives and who thinks that he
is capable not only of a form of knowledge but even of ignorance.
6
And when
they do not remain in agreement, if they think, they believe that they keep
themselves from falling into error, but in fact they do fall [in error]; and by their
error they are convinced by thoughts, it not being possible to act except as he
who does not think he falls into error.
Therefore, just as it is not only true but also certain that we think, there are
also several true and certain things, with which there is [27L] more foolishness
than wisdom not to remain in agreement.
Reflection 1
One must not imagine that when we say “I think, therefore I am,” that
“therefore I am” is a conclusion enclosed within some principle from which it is
drawn; for as thought makes itself known from the moment it is born within me,
I perceive that I am at first glance without the help of any reasoning. [Thus “I
think, therefore I am” is the first truth that the mind knows, upon which depends the
following: Everyone who thinks must exist, the truths part [illegible
7
] known before the
general ones.]
Reflection 2
It is not necessary for me to know what my thought is to be assured of my
existence; it is enough that I have an internal [27R] feeling of what happens
within me.
So that the objection that one could make me on these terms is a very bad
one.
In order for you to know that you think, and for you to be able to conclude
from there that you are, you must know what it is to think and what it is to be;
and not yet knowing one nor the other, how can you be certain that you are,
6
This is terribly difficult to make sense of, even with the emendation of qui to qu’il. I wonder if
a word is missing or mis-transcribed? Or I might be missing something in the construction.
7
I cannot decipher this word in the MS.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
4
since in saying “I think” you do now know what you say, and since you know it
just as little in saying “therefore I am”?
[med. prem
8
.] Just as, to find this truth that I have called the first and the most
certain [28L] of all, I have made use of the method of Mr. Descarteswhich is
to doubt all things and to make a review of my former opinionsI have
convinced myself that I have not made any use of my mind, and that if, among
everything I have received in my beliefs, something had been found that was
true, it was not at all true in my view, since I had no knowledge of it and since I
did not yet know how to distinguish the true from the false.
By the means of this method I learned that if I had been in error, it was
because I had deferred too much to my senses. And [28R] in fact, if I believed in
the past that a star was no bigger than a candle’s flame, that the sun was no more
than two feet in diameter, it was because I consulted my eyes; now that I know
and that I have experienced that they [my eyes] are deceivers, it is prudent of
me to trust in them no longer, especially in such an important matter as
metaphysics.
Therefore I will seek another means to assure myself of the knowledge of the
truth, and lifting myself up from underneath my senses I will consult the ideas of
things that are presented to my mind, and I will follow without fail this maxim,
[29L] which is to admit nothing into my belief except that of which I can
conceive very clearly and distinctly.
The attention to clear ideas is a rule so fertile that by its means I begin to
discover two truths that make up the foundation of all forms of knowledge. I
discover that there is a God, the idea I have of Him is more than that which one
who thinks in me is different than my body
9
; for I conceive clearly that existence
is necessarily appropriate to this infinitely perfect being of which I have an idea,
and that the idea that I have of the expanse
10
does not in any manner represent
to me the thought that I am assured of having.
8
I am not sure what med. stands for in this context; I want to think that med. prem is an
abbreviation for méthode première, which makes sense in context, though I have not elsewhere
seen med. as an abbreviation for méthode.
9
This is extremely difficult to parse; I wonder if a word is missing, as the sentence structure
feels incomplete.
10
i.e. the universe
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
5
Next, to render the [29R] knowledge of truth very familiar to me, I will
exercise my understanding in some forms of knowledge that have clear ideas as
their object. I will apply myself, for example, to geometry, after which I will be
able to move on to the knowledge of algebra, and it is in that study where I will
lift my mind above my senses and, making it [my mind] accustomed to
contemplating truths that are purely intelligible and without the mingling of any
body, I will render it capable of developing the most complex questions.
[Numbering numbers
11
are those which are present to the mind, and the numbers are the
characters
12
or rather the things to which numbers are applied.] Above all, I will take
care that the characters, to which my mind attaches the numbering numbers
whose relationships it considers, are not at all [30L] what my mind
contemplates; for it often happens that we discover the properties of a number
without thinking about these characters. For that matter, what relationship is
there between [the number] two thousand and these two letters, for example a a,
that I can make use of to indicate this number?
I will stay for a long time to contemplate the idea of an infinitely perfect
being, and I will take care to attribute to Him nothing of all that I experience
within myself.
Here are the principle articles upon which I will meditate for a long time,
because they are the foundations of all of metaphysics and of morality.
[30R]
1
God being an infinitely perfect being, He cannot determine to act but for an
infinite end; nothing that is finite can determine Him to do something; He
cannot operate except for Himself.
One must try to convince oneself of this principle and to have it always
present in the mind.
2
11
This term and concept comes from Plotinus, Enneads VI “On Numbers”
12
I’m retaining the cognate of the French caractère, which may mean a numeral, a letter (as
appears at the end of this paragraph), or other sign or figure.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
6
God, having known the works He has made for all eternity, does not know
them except within Himself; and as there are some that are more perfect than
others, there is as a result something in Him that represents them. [31L] Just as
He cannot help loving more that which is more perfect, He will for example love
that which represents my soul to Him more than that which represents my body.
[I will explain this more throughout, but first it is necessary to meditate on what is said
in general.] The relationships of these different perfections that encounter each
other in the ideas of God are what I will call “immutable order.
3
[All this will be explained more throughout, but first it is necessary to meditate on what
is said here in general.
13
] God cannot want to render any of his creatures
14
unhappy, that is, to make him suffer pain, unless he has deserved it; and if we
experience that we are unhappy, it is necessary that we have deserved it.
Nothing is more important than to meditate upon this article.
[31R] I could still relate some other maxims as certain as the preceding ones,
but that will lead us too far away; I will try to meditate upon them another time.
Before engaging myself to examine some question, the first thing that I will
do is to conceive neatly and distinctly what it is that I have to examine.
For I will avoid that defect that I had before I knew how to rule the
movements of my mind, which led me to resolve that which presented itself
before having considered it according to the signs that could let me know what I
was searching for.
[32L] I will take care above all not to persist in wanting to understand
everything that is related to the infinite.
Just as there are certain things that cannot be proved directly, for the
moment I will content myself to suppose them true. And if from this supposition
I draw consequences conforming to right reason, I will hold this thing to be true;
13
This marginal note is repeated twice on the same page, almost verbatim. Is this a comment
the author wishes to include in the next draft, perhaps? (Note the first person “I” in the first
of these.)
14
Or: “creations”
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
7
if I draw something out that is not consistent with it and that we call per
reduxionem absurdum in school
15
, I will hold it to be false.
I will spare the capacity of my mind in the resolution of the difficulties that I
could have, especially in the examination of compound questions; and [32R] the
best means that I know for this is to divide each difficulty into as many parts as
possible, and to make an exact count of all the manner in which something can
be done. Afterward I will write them down to relieve my memory and in order to
not divide my mind with the trouble that it would take to retain them, as I will
know something useless to my question. I will put it aside, and examining with
exactitude all the parts of the thing in question, I will be able to resolve it and
arrive by this means to that which I will have set myself to find. [This is called
abbreviating ideas.]
[33L] If I want to know, for example, the effective cause of the feelings I
experience within myself, I will first make an exact division of everything that
can be the cause of these feelings, and I will say that all the causes of my feelings
are reduced either to bodies or to myself, or else to some mind other than myself.
After having written this division, I will begin to examine whether bodies can
produce these feelings, and seeing first that bodies have no relationship with me
(I who am a thinking being) and that, for that matter, they have no power of
their own, I will conclude that bodies can do me [33R] neither good nor harm.
Thus I will put aside this part of my division and I will come to the second, and
after having well considered and having perceived that I suffer pain despite
myself, this will convince me that it is not my soul that is the cause.
There remains only the final part of my division, that is, that it must be a
mind
16
that is the cause of everything that I experience of pleasure, of pain. And
as pleasure makes me happy and pain unhappy, I will begin by discovering that
what causes my pleasure or my pain is that [34L] same thing that can reward me
and overcome me with pleasure if I do good, and punish me if I do harm. I will
conclude from all this that there is a mind above me, and that it deserves my
15
More commonly phrased as reductio ad absurdum. (I was curious how common this alternate
phrasing was, so I googled it, both as is and with the standard spelling of reductionem—and
found no results!)
16
In the context of this paragraph, “spirit” would also be apt as a translation of esprit.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
8
adorations, and it is that mind that I will call my God and the cause not only of
all my feelings but yet of everything that happens in the universe. These
considerations will have revealed to me the cause of my feelings and will at the
same time have furnished me with a very short but convincing proof of the
existence of God.
When I have discovered a clear and evident truth, I will try to affirm it for
myself and to render it familiar to myself [34R] by my frequent reflections. I will
resolve as much as I can the difficulties that seem to fight against it, but if I
should encounter one that I cannot illuminate, whether for reason of its
obscurity or because of certain things that must be known and that I do not
know, I will not abandon the truth for this when I am certain of having found it.
[35L]
Rules for properly
guiding one’s mind in
what we understand of
faith, whether human or
divine
All the rules that I have proposed until now have to do with knowledge that
is founded on the evidence of reason; but before finishing this method, I must
offer some other rules to properly guide myself in the knowledge of events
whose certainty is based upon authority.
There are two general paths that make me believe that something is true. The
first is the knowledge that I draw from [35R] clear ideas that the light of every
intelligence encloses, and that is what we are in the habit of calling to know by
reason; we also call this knowledge science.
The other path is the authority of persons worthy of being believed, who
assure us that such a thing is so, although we know nothing of it ourselves : this
is called faith. But as this authority is of two kindsthat of God and that of
manI also recognize two kinds of faith: divine faith and human faith.
Human faith is by its nature subject to error, because every man is a liar;
[36L] and whoever can assure that something is truthful will himself be
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
9
deceived. Nevertheless there are things that I do not know except by a human
faith, which I must hold as certain and also doubtless as if I had demonstrations
of them, as that which I know by a constant revelation of so many people that it
is impossible that they could have conspired together to assure that very thing if
it were not true. Thus although I was not in the army of Monsieur de
Luxembourg, I must hold it as assured that it defeated the Dutch [36R] army.
17
If I compare these two general paths that make me believe that something is
soreason and faithit is certain that faith always supposes some reason;
otherwise we would not be able to bring ourselves to believe that which is above
reason, if reason itself did not persuade that there are things that we do well to
believe in although we are not capable of comprehending what is true.
[When miracles push me to believe some truth, these miracles are called “motifs of
credibility.”] With regard to divine faithfor reason teaches me that God, being
truth itself, cannot deceive me in what He reveals to me of nature [37L] and its
mysteriesfrom which it seems that I am obligated to captivate my
understanding to obey Jesus Christ, I know it not without reason, but with
knowledge of cause. And because it is a reasonable action to captivate oneself in
this way under the authority of God when He has given me sufficient proof,
such as the miracles and other prodigious events that obligate me to believe that
He is the same one who revealed to mankind the truths that I must believe. In
fact, to consider things exactly, what I see by evidence or by the faithful report
of [37R] my senses is never opposed to what divine faith teaches me. For
example, my senses clearly show me the roundness and the whiteness of the
Eucharist, but my senses do not teach me at all whether it is substance of the
bread that makes my eyes perceive roundness and whiteness in it. Thus faith is
not at all opposed to the evidence of our senses, since it tells me that it is not at
all the substance of the bread, which is no longer there, having been changed
into the body of Jesus Christ by the mystery of transubstantiation, and that I no
longer see there [38L] anything but the forms and appearances of bread that
remain although the substance is no longer there.
17
My best guess is that this refers to the Battle of Saint-Denis in 1678, where the Duke of
Luxembourg defeated the army of William III of Orange.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
10
[The Art of Thinking
18
, page 448] Likewise my reason makes me see that a single
body is not in different places at one time, nor two bodies occupying the same
space, but this must be understood from the natural condition of bodies, because
it would be a defect of reason to imagine that my mind, being finite, could not
understand it as far as extends the power of God, who is infinite. Thus while the
heretics, to destroy the mystery of the Eucharist, oppose these so-called
impossibilities that they draw from reason, in this they distance themselves
visibly from [38R] reason in pretending to be able to understand in their minds
the infinite expanse of God’s power.
I will pose as a certain and indubitable maxim, as concerns contingent truths
(that is, those that can be and not be, like the king’s victory won against the
English and Dutch fleets
19
), that I will first examine their possibility, but without
this possibility moving me to believe them.
Nevertheless it would be ridiculous to demand geometric proofs for similar
facts.
That which will determine me to believe in contingent proofs will be the
circumstances that [39L] accompany them, both internal and external.
I call internal circumstances those that belong to the fact itself, and external
those that relate to the people who attest the said fact. If all these circumstances
are such that it never (or very rarely) happens that similar circumstances be
accompanied by falsehoods, my mind will naturally bear itself to believe what is
true, especially in the conduct of a life that asks for no greater certainty than this
moral certainty, and that must also content itself in several encounters with the
greatest probability.
[39R] If, on the contrary, these circumstances are not such, and if they often
find themselves among falsehoods, I will be wary of these facts. One asks, for
example, whether Constantine was baptized by Pope Sylvester in Rome. The
cardinal Baronius
20
believes this story, which he assures is truthful ; the cardinal
18
Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, La logique, ou l’art de penser (also known as Logique de Port-
Royal), 1662.
19
I am guessing from context that this refers to another battle in the Franco-Dutch war? But
it could also be another contemporary event.
20
Cesare Baronio (1538-1607), an Italian cardinal and historian of the early Church; author of
the Annales Ecclesiastici, published in twelve volumes beginning in 1588.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
11
Du Perron
21
, the Jesuit father Peteau
22
and the father Morin de l’Oratoire
23
believe it false. If I stopped at possibility alone, I would not have the right to
reject it, because this story contains nothing that is impossible. But if I
remember the rule that I have just proposed, which is to consider the
circumstances of either of [40L] Constantine’s baptisms and which of them bear
more of the mark of truth, we will find that these are the latter. For on the one
hand there is no great cause to rest it upon the witness of a writer as fabulous as
the author of the Acts of Saint Sylvester, who is the only ancient source who
spoke of Constantine’s baptism in Rome; and on the other hand, there is no
indication that a man as skilled as Eusebius
24
would have dared to lie in
reporting something as famous as the baptism of the first Emperor who set the
Church free and who must have been known all over the world at the time he
was writing, since [40R] it was only four or five years aver the death of this
Emperor.
I will observe, in addition, that when a sufficiently well-attested fact is
combatted by obvious contradictions with other stories, I will observe, I say,
that in order to place this fact under the cover of falsehood it is sufficient for me
to be able to give possible solutions; and I will not take the trouble to search for
positive reasons, since I will often attempt impossible things.
We would not know, for example, how to harmonize what is reported in the
Book of Kings of the years of the reigns of different [41L] kings of Judah and of
Israel except by giving to some of these kings two beginnings of a reign, one of
the living and the other after the death of his father, so that if one asks me what
proof we have that such a king reigned some time with his father, I will avow
that I have no positive proof, but it is enough that it is something that is possible,
and that happened often enough in other contexts to have the right to assume it
as a circumstance necessary to reconcile these fairly certain histories.
21
Jacques Davy Du Perron (1556-1618).
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6538816b.texteImage
22
I’m still searching for this guy!
23
Jean Morin (1591-1659), scholar and theologian.
24
Eusebius of Caesarea, author of The Life of Constantine the Great (4th c).
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
12
This is why nothing is more ridiculous than the efforts of some dissolute men
[41R] of this last century to prove that Saint Peter was never in Rome. They
would not know how to deny that this truth was attested by all the ecclesiastical
authors: by Saint Irenaeus, by Tertullian, authors who flourished around the
second century. And nevertheless they imagine being able to destroy [this truth]
by conjecture, as for example [by claiming] that Saint Paul does not mention
Saint Peter in his Roman epistles. And when we reply to them that Saint Peter
could have been away from Rome at the timebecause we do not pretend that
he was so rooted there [42L] that he didn’t often leave to go preach the gospel in
other placesthey reply that that is said gratuitously and without proof, which
is insolent, because the fact that they dispute is one of the more assured truths of
the history of the Church. It is up to those who fight to make them see that they
contain oppositions with [their] writing, and it will be enough to those who
support them to resolve these so-called oppositions.
[42R]
In what manner
one must guide oneself in
the belief in
miracles
[The word “miracle” means everything that is extraordinary and surprising, and that
which does not occur as the result of the communication of movements.] There are people
who accept every kind of miracle into their belief without examining their
circumstances. They believe them only for this reason: that all things are possible
for God, and that if we could doubt one thing, we would have reason to doubt it
all.
Others, on the contrary, imagine foolishly that there is a force of mind in
doubting all miracles, without having other reasons [43L] except that we have
often encountered things that are not found to be truthful and that have no cause
to be believed more than any other.
Translation © Ariane Helou, July 2018
13
Since I am assured that God does not do all that he is capable of, I will take
good care not to believe that such a miracle has occurred, because all things are
possible for God.
Nevertheless I will take good care to reject them, as some people do, because
false ones are sometimes found among them; for it is certain that the miracles
that are found to be false were not believed except by [43R] common rumor,
without tracing them back to their origins, and if we had taken the trouble to
examine all the circumstances of these facts, we would not have believed them so
easily.
Therefore when I read in some history of some miraculous event, I will
consider the quality of the historian: if he is worthy of being believed, if he was
witness to the event that he describes, or if he learned of it from people who saw
it. The circumstances, in conjunction with the trustworthiness of the author, will
persuade me to believe in these miraculous events.
Thus I believe those [miracles] that Saint Augustine describes in his
Confessions or in The City [44L] of God, which he says occurred before his eyes or
which he attests he was well informed of by the very people to whom these
things happened, like [the story of] the blind man healed in Milan in the
presence of all the populace by touching the relics of Saint Gervasius and Saint
Protasius, of which he says in Book 22 of The City of God, chapter 8: “The miracle
that was done in Milan when I was there, when a blind man was given sight,
was able to become known to many and, both because that city is large and
because the Emperor was then there, and this deed [44R] was accomplished by
with a huge population as witness coming toward the bodies of the martyrs
Gervasius and Protasius.”
25
Of a woman healed in Africa by flowers that had
touched the relics of Saint Stephen, as he attests in the same place.
Suppose that these things occurred as Saint Augustine reports them. There is
no reasonable person who ought not believe in the invocation of the saints, for
God would not work miracles to authorize a superstition; and just as it is not
credible that a judicious man like Saint Augustine would have wanted to lie
about [45L] such public things, it is common sense to believe in these miracles,
and consequently [to believe] that it is permitted to invoke the saints.
25
Direct citation from Augustine, in Latin.
[47R]
Chapter 1
That God Exists
Demonstration
I
Since previously I did not know what it was to enter into oneself to [48L]
hear there the voice of truth, according to which I must judge of all thing all
this[?]
1
my eyes which govern my decisions, I judged according to what I felt
and not according to what I perceived, for I feel with pleasure and I perceive
with pain.
2
(why the majority of men find no solidity in metaphysics
3
)
Now I will close my eyes; I will stop my ears; in a word, I will erase from my
thoughts all images of bodily things in order to more easily contemplate purely
conceptual
4
ideas.
After having assured myself that I am something [48R] that thinks
5
, if I want
to extend my knowledge I must known what is required to make me certain of
the truths that I want to seek.
I have discovered only two paths that will guide me directly to the truth.
The first is to reason over clear ideas only.
The second, not to attribute [anything] to any object except that which I will
clearly perceive as enclosed within the idea that represents it to me; thus I can
6
establish as a general rule that everything that I will perceive as very clearly
1
The word tentatively transcribed as “tout” is difficult to read in the manuscript it looks
like it may have been written over, or compressed with another word. I am open to other
readings. The syntax of this sentence is a bit awkward, in part because I’m not sure how
this unclear word fits in.
2
Or: difficulty, trouble.
3
Marginal note.
4
A bit tricky to render in English; idées intelligibles (i.e. understandable, comprehendible)
seems to be deployed in opposition to things that can be perceived with the senses.
5
A reference to the Cartesian cogito?
6
Je puis = alternative form of je peux.
[49L] and very distinctly enclosed within the idea of an object, I could attribute
to it without fear of being in error.
But as in this axiom that there is nothing that stops and that naturally applies
7
my spirit, I must consider it once and for all, and even with a bit of constancy
and firmness, to recognize the truth of it with evidence.
I can assure, without fear of falling into terror
8
, that the whole is larger than
its part[s]; however, this is nothing more than a conclusion drawn from this
principle: that we [49R] can affirm from one object that what we perceive
clearly is enclosed in the idea that represents it, if the conclusion is therefore
evident and certain. The principle that cannot by proved by any other is without
a doubt the most certain, so to speak, of all the axioms.
[One?
9
] remembers therefore that I did not hesitate on the conclusion and
that I doubted the principle from which it was drawn, if it wasn’t for the fact
that the ideas in all parts are sensible and that I see, so to speak, with my eyes
that the whole is greater than its part[s], but that I do not see with the eyes the
truth of the first axiom [50L] of all forms of knowledge.
I can therefore draw from the establishment of the two preceding axioms an
argument and a demonstrative proof of the existence of God. It is certain that I
have within myself the idea of an infinitely perfect being (I am not yet defining
what this idea is); for how would it be possible that I could know what I doubt
and what I desire, that is, that I am lacking something and that I am not entirely
perfect, if I didn’t have within myself any idea of a being more perfect than my
own, by comparison with which I could [50R] know the defects of my own
nature? And how would I be able to respond so promptly, if I didn’t have any
idea of an infinitely perfect being, when asked if this being is round or square?
Without doubt this question would be as obscure to me as any that could be
made on these terms if there is a [blictri?]
10
, that is, such an object without
knowing what it is. Then, therefore, since I know that I have defects and that I
7
Strange usage; the verb appliquer usually takes an indirect object, which is missing from
this sentence.
8
I.e. without fear of going to hell. (The writer seems to be asserting his truthfulness, and/or
defending himself against charges of blasphemy.)
9
This sentence seems to be missing a pronoun; “Souvient” is third person singular.
only know it by the comparison that I make between myself and an infinitely
perfect nature, I must conclude with confidence that I grasp the idea of it [i.e. of
the infinitely perfect being] as well as [I do] of several [51L] geometrical figures
of which I can demonstrate the properties; and as I perceive no less clearly and
distinctly that an actual and eternal existence belongs to the nature of the
infinitely perfect being that I perceive, that all that I can demonstrate with some
number truthfully belongs to the nature of this figure or this number, it follows
that the existence of God must, in my view, be understood to be
11
as fully certain
as all the truths that belong to geometry and algebra.
10
This word is difficult to read in the manuscript. This is what the letters look like to me, but
as far as I know this is not a French word! It could be two words compressed together, but I
haven’t been able to figure it out yet.
11
Passer pour = “pass for,” but in English “passing” indicates a performance, or that
someone’s identity does not align with how they are perceived; I don’t detect that sense of
ambiguity from the writer.
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[Chapter 1, continued]
[51L] This reasoning seems to have some appearance of sophistry, [51R]
especially with regard to those who do not understand it well. For just as they
are able to think about plenty of things that do not exist
1
, since creatures
2
can be
perceived
3
without being, they distinguish
4
the existence of things from their
essence ; thus they easily persuade themselves that the existence of God can be
separated from His essence, and that one can conceive of Him without His
existing. Nevertheless, when I think about it with more attention, I find,
obviously, that the existence of God can no more be separated from His essence
than from the essence of a right triangle the size of its three angles equivalent to
two right angles [52L], or even [that] the idea of a valley [could be separated]
from the idea of a mountain, in the sense that there is no less repugnance in
conceiving of a God (that is, an infinitely perfect being) that lacks existence
(that is, that lacks a certain perfection) than in conceiving of a mountain that has
no valley.
5
There is certainly no infinitely perfect being like simple beings; these do not
contain all perfections, I can perceive them even if they do not exist. But we can
perceive the infinite being only within Himself, for there is nothing finite that
could represent [52R] the infinite; therefore we cannot perceive God if He does
not exist
6
, we cannot perceive the essence of an infinitely perfect being without
perceiving its existence, we cannot perceive it simply as a possible being ;
nothing contains
7
it, and if I think about it it must be so.
Although I could not conceive of a God without existence any more than of a
mountain without a valley, nonetheless just as from this alone I perceive a
mountain with a valley, it does not follow that there is also such a mountain in
the world ; although I conceive of God as existing, it does not follow, it seems to
me, that God exists. For [53L] my thought does not place any necessity in
opposition to things
8
; and just as it is up to me to imagine a winged horse,
although there exists none that has wings, I could perhaps attribute existence to
God, although there is no God that exists.
There is sophistry hidden under the appearance of this objection (which is
Ch 1 Translation 6.25.18 - 6/25/18, 1:10 PM / 2
not very difficult to discover) that I cannot conceive of a mountain without a
valley. I do not want to conclude that there exists in the world a mountain and a
valley, but only that the mountain and the valley—whether they exist or not—
are inseparable [53R] from each other. Instead of only this, that I cannot
conceive of the infinite by the finite, it follows that, thinking about the infinite, it
must exist since there is only it [i.e. the infinite] that could be the object of my
thought ; and that way I am convinced that my spirit cannot give it being,
although it could conceive of a horse with or without wings.
Nonetheless, here is what one could still object to on my part, since you say
that nothing finite can represent the infinite. You say that it is God Himself,
present to your soul, who is this infinite, so you suppose, without thinking about
it, that God exists before having proved it.
[54L] Who does not see that this objection has no solidity and that it is coarse
sophistry? For is it not proving that God exists, in my opinion, since I would not
be able to think of Him if He did not exist? Therefore if I think of something, I
have the idea of it; if I conceive of it (for all these terms signify the same thing) it
must necessarily exist, since nothing finite can represent the infinite.
If all men were capable of serious attention, it would not be necessary to take
the detour that I took in this demonstration to convince them of the existence of
God; one would only have to propose it simply, like this.
[54R] When I think about God, I think about an infinitely perfect being; yet
there is nothing in me that could represent this infinitely perfect being, therefore
it must be Himself who makes himself known to me immediately.
Nevertheless, I do not pretend to have done something useless in raising
myself little by little to the knowledge
9
of God by the axioms that I have
presented as the principles of all forms of knowledge; for by this means I
persuaded myself that of all truths, that of the existence of God was the most
certain, and that if I did not comprehend it [55L] before, it was because I
deferred too much to my senses and because I wanted to see everything through
bodily images.
I remark that the knowledge of God is so necessary to one who wishes to
Ch 1 Translation 6.25.18 - 6/25/18, 1:10 PM / 3
assure himself of something that, without it, it is impossible to ever be able to
know anything perfectly.
For as I am still of such a nature that as soon as I comprehend something
very clearly and very distinctly, I cannot prevent myself from believing it to be
true, nevertheless, because I am also of such a nature that I cannot have my
spirit continually [55R] attached to just one thing—and that I often remember
having judged something to be true when I stop paying attention to the reasons
that required me to judge it—it can happen in such a way during that time that
other reasons present themselves to me, which would make me easily change my
mind if I did not know that God exists. And thus I would never have a certain
form of knowledge of anything, and all my knowledge could only be vague and
inconstant.
[This is the proposition of Book I of the explication of the books of Euclid
10
] Just as,
for example, when I consider a triangle I know that I can inscribe a small
triangle on its base [56L] whose sides will be shorter than those of the large one,
but which make a larger angle, and it is not possible for me to not believe the
truth of this while I apply my mind to this demonstration. But as soon as I turn
away from it, although I remember having clearly comprehended it, nevertheless
it could easily happen that I doubt its truth if I do not know that God exists; for
I can persuade myself to have been made in such a way by my nature that I
could easily be mistaken even in the things that I believe I understand with the
highest evidence and with certitude, especially since [56R] I remember having
often considered many things as true and certain which, later on, other reasons
brought me to judge them as absolutely false.
But after having recognized that there is a God and that He is not at all a
deceiver, and that following this I judged that everything that I conceive of
clearly and distinctly cannot not be true, although I no longer think of the
reasons why I judged that this is truthful for [veux
11
] that I remember having
clearly and distinctly comprehended it, no opposing reason could be presented
to me that would make me [57L] ever revoke [what I perceive] in doubt. Thus I
have a true and certain form of knowledge, and this form of knowledge extends
Ch 1 Translation 6.25.18 - 6/25/18, 1:10 PM / 4
to all the other things that I remember having previously demonstrated, for what
one would object to on my part to require me to doubt [my knowledge] will be
that my nature is subject to be mistaken. But I already know that I cannot but be
mistaken in the judgments for which I clearly know the reasons, given that
12
I
previously believed many things to be true and certain which I later recognized
to be false ; but I had known neither clearly nor distinctly any of these things,
and not yet knowing that [57R] rule by which I assure myself of truth, I
believed them, these things, for reasons which I have since known to be not as
evident as I was myself
13
.
Thus I am confirmed in my first thought that the certainty of the truth of
every form of knowledge depends upon the only knowledge of the true God,
such that before I knew Him I could know nothing perfectly; but now that I
know Him I have the means of acquiring a perfect form of knowledge [58L]
touching upon an infinity of things.
Ch 1 Translation 6.25.18 - 6/25/18, 1:10 PM / 5
1
qui ne sont point = “that are not at all”. I am translating the form of être here as “exist” to
be clearer in English.
2
Or: “creations”
3
The word in French, vues, means “seen”, but it seems paradoxical to be able to “see”
something that does not exist. The Dictionnaire du moyen français indicates that voir (“to
see”) in the context of spirituality means “To be in a contemplative state and to perceive by
the eyes of the spirit, God and aspects of faith”; it may also mean to understand the nature
of something, or to imagine. Here and in the following paragraph I render voir in this
metaphysical sense as “perceive.” http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/dmf/voir
4
An archaic idiom, distinguer d’avec = “to distinguish from”; it’s a little strange that the
phrase is broken up here.
5
In other words: the definition of a right triangle is that its angles add up to 180 degrees
(equivalent to two right angles of 90 degrees). And since a mountain is, by definition, a high
area of land, it is impossible to conceive of without a corresponding low land (valley), since
its height must be defined in relation to another ground level.
6
This is a bit of an interpolation on my part. The syntax of this phrase as written (l’on ne
peut donc voir Dieu qu’il n’existe) is very awkward, and I can’t make sense of it; it seems to
me that a word is missing. I’m taking the sans of the next clause as a clue to parallel
structure, but I could be wrong about this.
7
Or: “comprehend,” “understand.
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/academie9/comprendre
8
The sense seems to be, “I can imagine things even if I have seen no evidence for them in
the real world.” For this sense of opposer, http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/dmf/opposer
(definition B1).
9
I translate connaissance as “knowledge” and science as “form of knowledge.
10
Marginal note. The annotator is referring to Book I of Euclid’s Elements.
11
I am not sure what this word is doing in the sentence. Most frequently veux is the first
person singular present indicative of vouloir (= “I want”) but that doesn’t fit here
syntactically. It could be an alternative spelling of voeux (“vows”), but that doesn’t fit either.
It could also be a scribal error.
12
This is an interpolation; sera ce is very awkward syntax (perhaps another case of a
missing word?).
13
Or: “as I was to myself”
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
1
[58L]
Chapter 2
Demonstration of the existence of God
using the techniques of the geometers
1
The manner of demonstrating is double: one is done by analysis, and the
other by synthesis.
Analysis shows the true path by which one thing has been methodically
invented, and reveals how effects depend upon causes; just as if I want to
understand the craftsmanship of a watch, the first thing that I [58R] must do is
to understand its effects. Then I must demonstrate it piece by piece, and I will
infallibly discover what gives it movement. This technique of knowing things is
called analysis. Or instead of this watch being demonstrated after its principal
parts have been made known, I could remark on them while assembling them
one after the other, how the spring gives movement to the barrels, etc.; and that
is what is called synthesis.
Demonstration by analysis is not suitable to convince stubborn or inattentive
readers. [59L] For if, without paying close attention, we let escape the slightest
thing that it [the demonstration] proposes, the evidence and the necessity of the
conclusion will not appear at all. This is why we do not make use of these kinds
of demonstrations in teaching, but [use] synthesis instead, which makes use of a
long sequence of definitions, postulates
2
, and axioms that we link with each
other, so that if we deny some consequence, it reveals that it is contained in its
antecedents; and by this means we compel even the stubbornest to yield. It is by
this sort of demonstration that I [59R] will demonstrate the existence of God.
Definitions
1
In my first pass at the Table of Contents, I rendered geometres as “geometricians.” However, I
think “geometers” is much smoother as well as accurate, and will be using that from now on.
2
Demande generally means “question” or “demand,” but the demandes presented in this text are
statements rather than questions. Although I have not yet found evidence of this usage in
historical dictionaries, I am translating demande here as “postulate” (as in a premise or
assumption for a philosophical or mathematical proof), since this seems to make the most
sense in context.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
2
1. By this word, God, I understand an infinitely perfect being.
2. Here I take the word idea to mean that which is the immediate object of my
thought.
3. To have the idea or knowledge of something is to know what it includes
and what it excludes.
4. Something is said to have no relationship with something else when it does
not contain it in any manner; thus the finite has no relationship with the infinite,
a line has no relationship with a surface
3
, etc.
[60L] Postulates
1. The finite cannot represent the infinite.
2. Existence is perfection; being is better than not being.
3. Ideas to which we can neither add nor take away are not the product of my
mind.
4. There is nobody who does not respond promptly when asked if God is
narrow, round, square, etc., and who does not provide without hesitation the
attributes that belong to the infinitely perfect being.
Axioms
1. One must never reason [60R] except about clear and distinct ideas [and
that which we conceive clearly is true
4
].
2. Without fear of being in error, one must attribute to something everything
that is represented to us by its idea, or if you prefer, everything that we clearly
conceive is included within this idea.
3. One must never abandon a clearly conceived truth because one cannot
resolve some difficulties that seem to oppose it.
Demonstration
To know what the infinitely perfect being includes or excludes is to perceive
something of the infinite, according to Definition 3.
3
Or (perhaps more accurate in the context of geometry?) a plane.
4
Marginal note; by the placement on the page it seems like it may be meant as an addition to
the sentence rather than a separate commentary.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
3
[61L] Now then, I know what the infinitely perfect being includes or
excludes, according to Postulate 4.
Therefore I perceive something of the infinite.
Now then, nothing finite can represent the infinite, according to Definition 4
and the first postulate.
Therefore since I perceive the infinite, the infinite (that is, God) exists, and
that is what it was necessary to prove.
Another Demonstration
I must hold as true everything that I conceive clearly and distinctly,
according to the second part of Axiom 1.
Now then, I conceive [61R] clearly and distinctly that the modalities of my
soul cannot represent the infinite, according to Definition 4 and the first
postulate. Therefore the modalities of my soul are not at all the object of my
thought when I perceive the infinite; therefore this object is God Himself, and
consequently He exists.
Corollary
The idea of God, as I defined it in Definition 2, is God Himself. There is no
other idea of God than His Word
5
. Indeed we see God through an idea, but it is
an idea that is consubstantial* with him, an idea that includes all his substance.
For [62L] we cannot seeas has been demonstratedthe universal being, the
infinite being, in a being that has been created finite; in a word, in something
that does not enclose it. [*That is, of the same substance as God and eternal.
6
]
Reflection 1
[Between metap. page 46
7
] Now that I am assured of the existence of God by the
idea that I have of Him, I will be quite careful not to say, as do the common
5
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1 (KJV)
6
Marginal gloss; the asterisks are in the ms.
7
Marginal note; perhaps a reference to another text on metaphysics, but it’s not clear which
one.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
4
crowd, that we have no knowledge of this infinitely perfect being. I would say
only that in this life we do not see Him except very confusedly and as if from
afar; that we do not see Him at all [62R] as He truly is, because although we see
the infinite or the being without restriction, we do not see Him except in a very
imperfect manner; we do not see Him at all as a simple
8
being, although He is
composed, so to speak, of an infinity of different perfections; in a word, we see
Him as the universal reason of minds, which illuminates our intelligences
according to the measure of light that is now necessary for them to conduct
themselves.
Reflection 2
Two things come together in the perception that I have [63L] of God: the
impression that this infinitely perfect being makes in my mind and which I call
perception or modality, and the presence of the infinite. And this is what I perceive:
in the past, when I conducted myself by my senses and judged the reality of
ideas by the vivid feelings they impressed upon my mind, I believed that there
was more substance
9
in a cubic foot of ice than in a cubic foot of air. I also
believed, by the same reason, that the infinite, or the being in general, had less
reality than the idea of such an object that touched me in a very strong manner.
But as I have [63R] recognized that I was in error in attributing more reality to
a cubic foot of ice than to one of air, so too I was no less in error in attributing
more reality to the point of the needle that pricks me than to the idea of the
infinitely perfect being who makes Himself almost not felt. Thus I confirm
myself more and more in that beautiful maxim that one must not judge things by
the feelings that we have about them, but by the light of reason in contemplating
their ideas.
8
I think here simple does not mean simplistic, but rather unified, holistic, or integral (i.e.
composed of or containing just one thing as opposed to many).
9
The word in French is matière, which may be translated as “matter.” However, the argument
that the author is making here is not that there is more matter in a cubic foot of ice than of air;
his point is not about the mass of the object (this is not a physics example), but of the fact that
a cubic foot of air is still a cubic foot of something, that has substance and property although
we cannot see it or touch it. This is all connected to his core argument about the fallibility of
the senses in perceiving the natural world and the existence of the divine.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
5
Reflection 2
If by proving things a priori
10
we understand that we prove them [64L] by the
idea that we have of them, it is certain that the existence of God demonstrates
itself in this manner. But if a priori we understand that we demonstrate things by
their cause, God having having none
11
, this sort of demonstration is impossible.
Reflection 4
This is the difference between the demonstration of the existence of God that
I related above, and that which the Cartesians
12
usually give: that the one of
which I have made use proves in an invincible manner that the idea that all men
have of God is God Himself, present in their souls; on the other hand, the
philosophers I am speaking of suppose [64R] that this idea is a modality of their
soul, which cannot be conceived. Thus all demonstrations that are founded upon
this so-called idea are pure sophistry.
Reflection 5
As the word idea is quite equivocal, and signifies sometimes generally all that
is the immediate object of our mind, and sometimes that which represents to the
mind the beings that are not at all intelligible to themselves (for example, the
idea of bodies
13
), the author of The Search After Truth
14
has assured in different
parts of his book that we have no idea at all of God in this sense: that He [65L]
cannot be represented at all by a particular being. And in other parts he has said
10
Latin, “from the earlier”: a philosophical argument based on prior knowledge or deductive
reasoning. Contrast with a posteriori (“from the latter”), based on empirical evidence (invoked
in Reflection 6).
11
i.e. God has no cause because God is the cause and originator of everything in the cosmos.
12
Adherents of the philosophical system of René Descartes; Pierre Malebranche and Antoine
Arnauld were among them. At the core of the Cartesian understanding of the world was its
division into three separate ontological categories: matter, mind, and God.
13
The author does not elaborate, but based on the previous paragraph, I take it to mean the
Cartesian ontological category of the body as opposed to the mind or God.
14
Pierre Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité. Où l’on traite de la Nature de l’Esprit de l’homme, et
de l’usage qu’il en doit faire pour éviter l’erreur dans les Sciences. Six books, published in two volumes
1674-75. Translated into English as The Search After Truth (Thomas Taylor; London, 1700).
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
6
that we have the idea of God, but as he explained the manner in which we must
understand these expressions, it is without grounds that Mr. Arnauld blames
him for having contradicted himself and having explained himself obscurely on
this topic. See The Search After Truth, Chapter 1 of the second part of Book 3, and
Book 4 Chapter 11.
Reflection 6
I have not undertaken to prove the existence of God a posteriori
15
or by its
effects, such as by the creation of the world; for the existence of God is more
certain than the existence of the world. Thus the consequence would have been
clearer than the principle; vid. the Preface for this effect.
[65R]
Chapter 3
The existence of God proven
in another manner
Demonstration 2
Now that I am assured that I would not be able to think about God if He
were not present in my mind, I want to pass beyond this and consider whether I
myself, who have this knowledge, could exist if the case were that there were no
God at all.
I can only have my existence from myself, or rather from my parents
16
, or
rather from some other causes less perfect than God, for one cannot [66L]
imagine anything more perfect than or even equal to Him.
So if I were independent of everything else and if I were myself the author of
my being, I would doubt nothing, I would conceive no desire at all, and in the
end I would lack no perfection, for I would have given to myself all those of
which I have some idea within me, and thus I would be God.
15
See above, note 10.
16
In French parents may mean mother and father, but it can also refer more generally to
forebears and/or extended family.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
7
Perhaps I have always been as I am now.
Although I could suppose it, I would not know how to avoid the force of this
reasoning for this, [66R] and I cannot prevent myself from knowing that it is
necessary that God should be the author of my existence. For all the time of my
life can be divided into an infinity of parts that do not depend on each other at
all, and that have no necessary connection. Thus from what I had been a little
before, it does not follow that I must now be, if it is not the case that in this
moment some cause produces me and creates me, so to speak, anew; that is,
preserves me, since preservation is nothing but a continuous creation. In fact,
this is something quite clear and quite [67L] evident to all those who consider
the nature of time: that a substance, to be preserved in all the moments that it
lasts, needs the same power and the same force that would be necessary to
produce it if did not yet exist, so that creation and preservation differ only by
our manner of conceiving [of them].
Therefore I have only to interrogate myself and consult with myself to see if I
have in me some force by which I could make simply myself who now am. I
persevere in being a moment late, for since I am nothing but a thing that thinks
and who perceives myself [67R] with regard to what happens within me, if I had
such a power I ought at the very least to think it and have knowledge of it. But I
feel none within me, and because of that I know, obviously, that I depend upon
some being that is different from me.
But perhaps that being upon which I depend is not God, and perhaps I am
produced either by my parents or by some other cause less perfect than Him;
and that cause of which I hold my origin or my existence, does it maintain itself
from itself or from some other [cause]? If it holds itself of itself, it [68L] follows,
by the reasons that I have alleged above, that this cause is God, since, having the
virtue of being and existing by itself, it must also have the power to actually
possess all the perfections of which it has the ideas within itself, that is, all those
which I conceive of as being within God. That if it holds its existence from some
other cause than itself, I will ask anew, by the same reason of this second cause,
if it is by itself or by another, until
17
, degree by degree, we finally arrive at a final
cause that will reveal itself to be God.
17
The ms. reads ius a ce que, which I read as a scribal error for jusqu’à ce que.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
8
It is most certain that in this there can be no progress at all toward the
infinite, that is, that one cannot say that I had been produced by another cause,
and that cause by another, etc.
For by this means one could avoid the force of my reasoning, but as here it is
a question of what actually preserves me, it would be ridiculous to want to climb
back up toward the infinite and have recourse to a linkage of causes.
Therefore since I do not recognize any power in myself to preserve myself,
and since I experience that I am being worked upon despite myselfwhich
could not happen to me if I [69L] preserved myselfit is absolutely necessary
that there be one superior cause that holds its origin only from itself, and that is
what I call God or the infinitely perfect being.
Chapter 4
Demonstration of the existence
of God in the manner
of the geometers
Definitions
1 I take here the word creation for the action by which I had been produced.
2 By that of preservation, the continuation of this action.
[69R] To be the true cause of some effect is to have a relationship or a
necessary connection with this effect.
Postulates
1 We are not the cause [of] what happens to us despite ourselves.
2 As the moments of our life have no necessary connections among
themselves, it does not follow that what I am now I must be a moment later.
3 There is nothing of all that exists about which we cannot say why it exists,
and what cause makes it [70L] survive.
4 One who thinks is above one who does not think.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
9
5 One who is less perfect than another would not know how to act upon him;
thus he cannot be regarded as his good. Consequently we can regard the one
who acts within us as our good.
6 The one who acts within us is the same one who preserves us.
Demonstration
Since I sense that I exist, I can ask what cause makes me exist, according to
Postulate 3.
[70R] Now after having thoroughly searched for this cause within me, I was
unable to discover it.
Therefore it must be that it is outside of myself.
The cause that acts within me is that which preserves me, according to
Postulate 6.
Now then, I do not act within myself.
Therefore it is not I who makes myself survive or who preserves myself.
I prove that the lesser acts within me as a true cause of the kind in question
here: it is to have a necessary connection with everything that produces itself,
according to Definition 3.
Now then, there is no necessary [71L] connection at all between me and
what produces itself within me; thus I am not the cause.
Sometimes I experience sorrow, joy, sadness, and that despite myself;
therefore there is no necessary connection between my feelings and I who feel
them. Therefore I am not their cause, according to the first postulate.
Of all the other things that could act within me, I know none but bodies (and
I still do not know if there are any) and some mind.
Now suppose that there are bodies: they cannot act within me, therefore they
cannot preserve me.
[71R] That which acts within me must be called my good, the cause of my
happiness, etc. according to Postulate 5.
Now the bodies (supposing that they exist) cannot be called my good,
therefore they cannot act within me.
The bodies are not as perfect as I who think, according to Postulate 4.
Translation © Ariane Helou, August 2018
Therefore they are not my good; then, therefore, as it is neither myself nor the
bodies who produce what I experience and what I feel, we contribute nothing at
all to my preservation. Therefore it must be God, that is, that being who has the
force to preserve Himself, from whom I hold my existence [72L] and my
preservation. Therefore without Him I could not exist, and I would not be, and
that is what it was necessary to demonstrate.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
1
[72L]
Chapter 5
Response to some difficulties
that could be formed
against the preceding demonstrations
I said that I knew the infinitely perfect being clearly, and from that I
concluded that He existed. But if I know the infinite being clearly, then what
would be the meaning of this maxim, received from everybody: that the infinite
[72R] as infinite is unknown? Moreover, when I think of a chiliagon, I do not
know this chiliagon distinctly because I cannot distinctly represent to myself its
thousand sides.
1
How is it that I woulddistinctly and not confusedly
conceive of the infinite being as infinite since I cannot see, clearly and as if with
my own eyes, the infinite perfections of which He is composed?
As this difficulty often presents itself to my mind and even prevents me from
thoroughly comprehending the demonstrations of the existence of the infinitely
perfect being, [73L] it is necessary that I pause for a moment to clarify it.
This is why I will say here, first of all, that the infinite as infinite is not at all
truly comprehended
2
. And to thoroughly understand what it is to comprehend
1
A chiliagon is a polygon with one thousand sides. When viewed in its entirety, a chiliagon on a sheet
of paper would not appear to be different from a circle (the thousand sides are so small that we cannot
see them without enlarging the image to an extreme degree); yet it is in fact a polygon and not a circle.
Descartes, for example, used the chiliagon as a thought experiment to distinguish between imagination
and intellectual conception in Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation VI (originally published in
Latin as Meditationes de prima philosophia in 1641; French translation Méditationstaphysiques in 1647).
2
Descartes, again. A bit of serendipitous googling showed that this sentence is verbatim Descartes,
from his response to the first set of objections to his Meditations (i.e. criticisms of other philosophers
and Descartes’s rebuttals, published with the first editions of the work). “C’est pourquoy ie diray icy
premierement que l’infiny, entant qu’infini, n’est point à la vérité compris, mais que neantmoins il est entendu
...” René Descartes, Les Meditation metaphysiques, Paris: Jean Gamusat and Pierre Le Petit, 1647, p. 143
(emphasis mine). I don’t know exactly how extensively the author cites Descartesthat would be a
research project separate from the translationbut if I identify any other citations from other texts I
will note them.
I’d also like to point out that Descartes, in the above quotation, makes a distinction between
the verbs comprendre (comprehend or grasp) and entendre (understand), which is slightly different from
their usage in modern French. In this chapter, and with the translation going forward, I will
distinguish between these two in English as well.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
2
something, I will remind myself of Reflection 2 in Chapter 2, where I proved
that two things encounter each other in my mind when I perceive the infinite
being: the impression that this infinity
3
makes within me, or rather this capacity
of my understanding that receives this infinitely perfect being, and the being
itself that is perceived. So as my soul is finite, it does not have enough expanse
[73R] to embrace all the perfections of this infinite object; that is why I cannot
comprehend it. This means that the perception I have of the infinite is finite. It is
in this sense that the infinite as infinite is not at all comprehended; but
nevertheless it is known, according to Definition 3 in Chapter 2. For I
comprehend clearly that the infinitely perfect being is such that one cannot
encounter limits there at all
4
; and that is what I will call conceiving of [or]
knowing the infinite. And all the same, when I cast my eyes on the sea, I do not
let it be said that I see it, since my sight [74L] does not reach all of its parts and
does not measure its vast expanse. In fact, when I look at it only from a distance,
as if I wanted to embrace all of it with my eyes, I see it only confusedly, just as I
can only confusedly imagine a chiliagon when I try to imagine all its sides
together. But when my sight pauses on one part of the sea, then only this vision
is very clear and very distinct, just as my imagination of a chiliagon is when it
extends only to one or two of its sides. Thus I avow that God cannot [74R] be
understood by the human mind in this sense: that [the mind] does not have
enough capacity to contain this immense idea, and even that [this idea] cannot
be distinctly understood by those who try to embrace it entirely whole and all at
once, in which sense we say that the knowledge of God is within us under a kind
of confusion, and as if under an obscure image.
5
3
I’m translating infini as a noun here for clarity, because it is being used as a substantive adjective.
4
This phrase du tout point is archaic; a 1764 French-English dictionary defines it as “utterly”
(https://books.google.com/books?id=zk5gAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT338&lpg=PT338&dq="du+tout+point"&
source=bl&ots=Hs_8nxS4_s&sig=f8J_AAhReJ4zr-6EqwOMZX8Vh-
E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwikhYbW_KvdAhVpCjQIHZUADWYQ6AEwA3oECAcQAQ -
v=onepage&q="du tout point"&f=false) but that didn’t fit the sense of the sentence. I’m choosing to
read it as a scribal error for point du tout (“not at all”), an exceedingly common adverbial phrase both
then and now.
5
This language is largely borrowed from the Descartes text cited above (this comes in the next
paragraph). “Mais tout ainsi que lors que nous iettons les yeux sur la mer, on ne laisse pas de dire que
nous la voyons, quoy que nostre veuë n’en atteigne pas toutes les parties, & n’en mesure pas la vaste
étenduë:Et devray lors que nous la regardons que de loin, comme si nous la voulions embrasser toute
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
3
But when I want to consider each of these perfections attentively and to
apply all the strength of my mind toward putting all the phantoms of my
imagination at a distancenot at all with the aim to comprehend them [75L]
but rather to admire them and know how much they are beyond all
comprehension in the way that I understand itI find in this infinite being
incomparably more things that can be clearly and distinctly known, and with
more facility than I find in any things that have been created.
6
It seems that in my first demonstration I should not have concluded anything
else, except to posit that we understand by this word God an infinitely perfect
being. This being must be within the apprehension of understanding, and not be
[understood] in fact, if we do not remain in agreement that there is [75R] in fact
something that is infinitely perfect.
Because most people are so accustomed to distinguish existence from essence
in all things, they no longer take enough care as it pertains to the essence of God
rather than to that of other thingsand also because they do not distinguish
carefully enough the things that pertain to the true and immutable essence of
something from those that are only attributed to it by the fiction of
understandingalthough they perceive clearly that existence pertains to the
essence of God, they do not always conclude [76L] from this that God exists,
because we do not reflect upon this: that His essence is immutable, [and] that
since the infinite cannot be represented by the finite, it is impossible that this
idea be manufactured by the mind.
Thus, to thoroughly clarify myself with regard to this difficulty, I will make a
distinction between possible and necessary existence, and I will remark that possible
existence is contained within the idea of all things that I conceive of clearly and
auec les yeux, nous ne la voyons que confusément ; Comme aussi n’imaginons nous que confusément
vn Chiliogone, lors que nous tâchons d’imaginer tous ses costez ensemble ; mais lors que nostre veuë
s’arreste sur vne partie de la mer seulement, cette vision alors peut estre fort claire & fort distincte,
comme aussi l’imagination d’vn Chiliogone, lors qu’elle s’étend seulement sur vn où deux de ses costez.
De mesme i’auoüe auec tous les Theologiens, que Dieu ne peut estre compris par l’esprit humain ; &
mesme qu’il ne peut-estre distinctement connu par ceux qui tâchent de l’embrasser tout entier, & tout à
la fois par la pensée, & qui le regardent comme de loin ; auquel sens Saint Thomas a dit au lieu cy-
deuant cité, que la connoissance de Dieu est en nous sous vne image obscure[.]” Descartes, Méditations,
pp. 144-45.
6
This whole paragraph is cited almost verbatim from Descartes, p. 145 (immediately following the
previous citation).
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
4
distinctly, but that necessary existence is only contained within the sole idea of
God. For I do not doubt at all that those who attentively consider [76R] this
difference that exists between the idea of God and all the other ideas perceive
very well that we only ever conceive of other things as existing. Nevertheless, it
does not follow from this that [these other things] exist, but only that they can
exist, because we do not conceive that actual existence is necessarily joined with
all their properties. Thus I would reason very badly if I were to say that I must
attribute to something what I clearly conceive is enclosed within the idea that
represents it. Well, I clearly conceive of necessary existence enclosed within the
idea of [77L] an infinitely perfect body; thus an infinitely perfect body exists. If I
were to make such an argument, one would have reason to reply to me that it
would not conclude with the actual existence of an infinitely perfect body, but
only that, supposing there were such a body, it would have its existence because
of itself. The reason for this is that the idea of an infinitely perfect body is a
fiction of the mind or a constructed idea, and which consequently can be false or
contradictory, as in fact it is; for one cannot conceive clearly of an infinitely
perfect body, a being particular and finite as its body is, without being conceived
of [77R] as universal and infinite.
But the idea of God or of the being in general, of the being without
restrictionthat is, who exists absolutely and who depends upon nothing
7
is
not at all a fiction of the mind; it is not at all a constructed idea that encloses
some contradiction. There is nothing simpler, although it comprises everything
that is and everything that could be.
8
One must take care that the ideas that do not contain true and immutable
natures, but only those feigned and constructed by the mind, can be divided by
the mind itself: not only by an abstraction [78L] or restriction of thought, but by
a clear and distinct idea, an operation such that the things that the mind cannot
divide in this way without a doubt have not in any way been made or
constructed by it. For example, when I represent to myself a winged horse, or a
7
Or “nobody.”
8
Much of the language in the preceding paragraph is borrowed from Descartes, pp. 148-49.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
5
lion that actually exists, or if you like an infinitely perfect body,
9
I easily
conceive that I can also represent to myself, on the contrary, a horse that has no
wings, a lion, an infinitely perfect body that does not exist at all; these things
therefore have no true and immutable natures at all. [78R] For I conceive [well]
enough that they have been made by my own mind, which has joined together
all corporeal perfections; in fact, in examining the idea of the body, I do not see
within it any force by which it produces or preserves itself. Therefore I have
reason to conclude that necessary existence, which is the only thing in question
here, belongs as little to the nature of the body (however perfect it may be) as
the lack of a valley belongs to the nature of a mountain, or as having [the sum
of] three angles be greater than [the sum of] two right angles belongs to the
nature of a triangle.
[79L] How could I forbid myself to use circular logic
10
* when I say that I am
not assured that the things I conceive of clearly and distinctly are true except for
the reason that
11
God exists or is, and that I am not assured that God exists
except for the reason that it is one of the things that I conceive of clearly. It
seems that before assuring myself of the existence of God I ought to have been
assured that all the things that I conceive of clearly and distinctly are all true;
thus I would have avoided this circular logic. I am assured that the things that I
conceive of clearly are true because [79R] God exists; I am certain that God
exists because I conceive of him clearly. [*When two uncertain
12
things serve as proof
for each other, they form a sophism that is called circular logic.]
To clear away the misgivings that I might have of having fallen into this
sophism that the dialecticians
13
call “circular logic,” I have only to consider that
when I said that I could know nothing without the knowledge of God, I was
9
Descartes, p. 149. The author uses his own example of the infinitely perfect body; Descartes’s third
item in this list of representable objects is a triangle inscribed within a square.
10
Literally, “to commit a circle.
11
À cause que is an archaic variant of parce que, current in the 17th century. Normally can be translated
simply as “because” but the structure of this sentence requires a little more elaboration to make sense
in English.
12
The marginal gloss here is written with two colors of ink, with “incertaines” apparently added after
the rest of the phrase, and broken up in order to fit.
13
Those who study dialectic, or structured forms of reasoning and logic (i.e. philosophers). Not to be
confused with those who study dialects (i.e. linguists)!
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
6
speaking about the form of knowledge of these conclusions, the memory of
which can return to my mind when I am no longer thinking of the reasons from
which I derived them. As, for example, having demonstrated that if we add a line
to another that has been divided equally, the [80L] square of the line composed
of the two plus the square of the one that has been added is equal to double the
square of the half of the line and of the square of the one composed of that half
and the added onehaving demonstrated, I say, this theorem, I can stop
thinking about the reasons or propositions from which I deduced my
demonstration.
14
And at that time, God being able to place in my mind reasons
entirely opposed to those I had shortly before, I could doubt and not be assured
of my demonstration, if I was not certain that God is not a deceiver. Thus when
I said that it was necessary to have knowledge [80R] of God to be assured of the
things that I conceive of clearly, I understood it only from those [things] of
which we are assured by reason, and not by any others, that we conceive of very
clearly and from a simple perspective how all notions are in common between
those and this one: “I think, therefore I am.” For I do not draw the conclusion of
my existence from my thought on the strength of some syllogism, but as a thing
known of itself. I see it by a simple inspection of the mind, as it seems that if I
deduced it from a syllogism I would have first had to know this greater one:
“Everything that thinks is or exists.” But on the contrary, it is taught to me
[81L] by what I sense within myself, because it cannot be that I think if I do not
exist. And thus I confirm myself more strongly in my first feeling: that all that I
conceive of clearly and distinctly is true and that this notion does not need to be
by any other, since all forms of knowledge depend upon it, the very knowledge
that I have of God.
I know that there are atheists who know clearly and distinctly that the angles
opposite to the summit are equal
15
, yet nevertheless they are very far from
believing in the existence of God, since they deny Him entirely. What am I
14
The author seems to be mis-remembering this theorem, since what he is describing does not actually
work mathematically. The important part, however, is his main point: that once a theorem has been
established, it does not need to be re-proven every time it is used.
15
That is, in an isosceles triangle, which has at least two sides of equal length, the angles that these two
sides form with the base (which is opposite from the angle the author calls the “summit”) will be equal
to each other.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
7
saying? They think that they give demonstrations that [81R] the existence of
God is impossible, because, they say, if God existed there would be a sovereign
being, that is, an infinite one; well, that which is infinite in every aspect of
perfection excludes everything else there is, not only every sort of being and of
good, but also every sort of non-being
16
and of evil. And yet there are multiple
beings, just as there are multiple non-beings and multiple evils. An atheist can
know clearly that the angles opposite to the summit are equal ; I would not know
how to deny it. But I maintain and I uphold that the knowledge he has of this is
not a true knowledge, because any science
17
that can be rendered doubtful
should not be called by the name of “science”; and [82L] since I am speaking of
an atheist, it cannot be certain that he is not at all deceived in the things that
seem very evident to him, as I have shown above. And although this doubt does
not come into his mind at all, it could come to him nevertheless if he examines it
or if it is proposed to him by another, and he will never be out of the danger of
having [doubt] if he does not recognize a god
18
.
Although he forces himself to demonstrate that there is no God at all, since
these demonstrations are false he can always be made to know their falseness,
and thus he can be made to change opinion, which is not very [82R] difficult if
for every reason he only offers that the infinite, in all aspect of perfection,
excludes every other sort of being.
For first of all if we ask him where he learned that this exclusion of all beings
pertains to the nature of the infinitely perfect being, he could not reply with
anything solid as far as by the name of the infinite. I do not understand what
excludes the existence of these finite things, since there would be contradiction
in these terms; for he who says “infinite” says “an infinite power.” Then what
would be the use of this power if it was only imaginary and if it could not create
anything?
16
By “non-being” the author does not mean something that does not exist, but rather something that is
not alive, or that does not follow the Cartesian definition of thinking-and-being. (In the author’s
understanding these non êtres do in fact exist, as the following sentence makes clear).
17
Or, as elsewhere in this translation, “form of knowledge.”
18
Although elsewhere I follow the convention of capitalizing the name of the deity, I do not do so here
because of the peculiar construction un dieu. The implication seems to be that the atheist does not
recognize any god of any religion.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
8
[83L] From what I experience in having within myself some power to think,
I conceive easily that such a power can be within another, and even greater than
within myself; but although I think that this [power] increases itself toward
infinity, I would not therefore fear that my own [power] would become lesser
and that it must be excluded (so to speak) in this way, provided that I suppose
that there is nothing within me that is not subject to the will of God and does not
depend upon it. I can conceive of it
19
as entirely infinite, without any exclusion
of created things.
[Spinoza’s impiety.] The preceding article gives me occasion to examine the
[83R] demonstration that Spinoza carried out on the existence of God
20
, and to
reveal the poison of impiety that is veiled under his equivocal words about God,
being, he says, an absolutely infinite being, infinite in every aspect in nature, to
whom pertains everything that expresses some being and everything that
excludes all negation of being, of modes, etc. God being this being, such as he
just defined it, must necessarily exist. Thus God is, according to him, nothing
other than this whole assemblage of bodies that constitutes the universe. God is
all that we are, all that exists: the trees, the rocks, the sea, etc., because [84L] as
all these things exist, and as existence is a perfection, they must be attributed to
God, and He is all of this.
Therefore I will remark that Spinoza errs in confusing the existence of such
and such a being with the infinite perfections that are suited to God. The
existence of a particular being is a perfection, but it is not perfection except with
regard to this being, since it is nothing other than the being itself. It is a finite
perfection that cannot be suited in any manner to the infinitely perfect being; for
if all that is and does not mark any negation of being [84R] is a perfection, then
it is true to say that pain and sadness are perfections, and real perfections worth
of Godwhich one could not think without renouncing common sense. God is
the infinitely perfect being, all of whose perfections are infinite, but He is not the
19
From the context “it” seems to be the power of the subject to think. However, the word for power,
puissance, is feminine; the pronoun here is masculine, and thus may be referring to something else. It
may simply be a scribal error but I have left it as “it” to retain the sense of ambiguity in the original.
20
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Amsterdam: 1677. The most relevant section is Part 1: On God. For a
summary of Spinoza’s argument, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/ - GodNatu
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
9
being perfected in every aspect: that is, he does not enclose all bodies within
themselves and all that is in the world as making his essence and all his
perfection; he contains only the essences of things in an infinitely perfect manner
and one that surpasses [85L] the intelligence of all finite minds.
[[arsi 2 cj] of Meditation 3]
21
How would it be possible for me to know that I
doubt, that I desire, etc., that I am not entirely perfect, if I didn’t have within
myself any idea of a being more perfect than my own? That is how Mr.
Descartes proves that all men have the idea of God; it is also of the same
reasoning that I use to convince myself that I truly have the idea of God, and
that [this idea] is not comprised of a simple negation of perfection that I
experience within myself.
[85R] But one could say to me, rightly, that it does not always follow that
because we desire, that which we desire should be more perfect than we are; for
when we desire bread, that bread we wish for is not, all in all, more perfect than
this hunger that we feel.
All this reasoning that is very obscure, which consequently I should not
mention much, does not prove anything against what I have advanced; for with
regard to someone who desires bread, I do not infer that the bread is more
perfect than he is, [86L] but only that he who needs bread is less perfect than
when he does not need it.
If all men had the idea of God, not one would be found who lived in
ignorance of this infinitely perfect being. And yet how many savages, how many
other people doubt His existence? I do not pretend that the preceding
demonstrations [will] convince every kind of person; they are personal
demonstrations, which only make themselves felt [86R] to those who make use
of their reason. For those who do not exercise [reason] at all are similar to those
who have none at all, and they must be ranked among children who live without
reflection and who seem capable of nothing but brute actions. And just as we
must not conclude that it is not natural for reasonable people to seek the means
to protect themselves from the injuries of the air, because there are savages who
21
The start of this note is extremely hard to make out. I’m fairly certain that medi is short for
“Meditation,” and that this is a reference to Descartes’s Meditations III (especially given that Descartes
is named in this paragraph). However, the top line is very challenging; I’m not entirely confident that
the third character is an “s”, but that’s my best guess!
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
make no effort to do so, we must also not infer from the abasement of their
stupid and brutish mind if someone does not perceive what is more present to
him than all the things that they see;
22
we should not infer, I say, that men do not
have the idea of God.
[The objection of Mr. Arnauld.] For those who need faith to believe in the
existence of God, either they know God before believing in him by faith, or else
their faith is human and does not merit this name. Thus they have no reason to
believe what they believe: for if they believe it by faith, they must be assured that
He has revealed His existence; and if they are assured of this revelation, they
know it. Therefore before believing it, if they are not assured of the divine
revelation, their faith is entirely vain. [87R] The demonstration of the existence
of God that P.M.
23
invented contains so much confusion and encloses so many
mysteries that it is impossible to convince anyone that God exists by taking the
route that this philosopher
24
took; for he says that the idea that we have of God
is His Word. Therefore one must have prior knowledge of the mystery of the
Trinity.
25
He supposes that one does not see a creature within itself at all, but
that we only see it by the sight of certain perfections that are in God, which
represent it or would be part of it. Thus
26
to prove to an atheist that there is a
God, it would be necessary to first have proven all these insanities to him.
22
The French goes back and forth between a plural and a singular subject. For the sake of accurately
reflecting the original in this first pass translation, I have retained this inconsistency.
23
My guess is that this is an abbreviation for Père [Father] Malebranche. Nicolas Malebranche was a
priest and a major Cartesian thinker of the period, referenced already in this text, and one who was
often intellectually at odds with Antoine Arnauld, whose argument is cited here.
24
The MS reads phē, which is clearly an abbreviation for something (the macron indicates letters
elided; we see it often with more commonly used words such as comme and pour). My first thought was
that it was a word that begins phe… but the only thing I could come up with that fits syntactically and
contextually was phénomène. (The word was in use in the 17th century, typically referring to
phenomena of the natural world; in modern French it can refer to a person, particularly one with
bizarre or orthodox views, but I have not yet found this usage attested before 1900.) I think it’s most
likely an abbreviation for philosophe, with the middle letters elided and the last remaining. I’ve never
seen this particular abbreviation before but it certainly makes sense in context.
25
The Trinity is one of the central mysteries of Christian faith: the idea that God is consubstantial in
three aspects, the Father (God the Creator), the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. The last of
these is the one implicated in the author’s argument here. The Word of God (see Chapter 2, Corollary)
is implicated in the Trinity because “the Word became flesh” in the person of Christ (see John 1:1-14).
26
I read ainsi (“thus”) for MS’s on si (“one if,” which doesn’t make sense.)
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
[88L] [Response.] It is not true that the demonstration of the existence of
Godthe matter at handis founded upon the knowledge of the mystery of the
Trinity, and even less upon what we see, all things in God.
27
Here is the
principle upon which it is founded: we
28
cannot conceive that a created thing
could represent the infinite, that the being without restrictions, the immense
being, could be perceived by one idea, that is, by a particular being, by a
different being than the universal and infinite being. Thus if we think about
God, it is necessary that He exist, since we cannot see the infinite except in
Himself. For creatures
29
, it is not necessary that they exist in order to see them;
we sometimes see those which were not here, but whether it is the modalities of
the soul [88R] or the perfections of God that represent them, this does not affect
the demonstration. As for the knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity, I say that
all those who pay attention to the idea of Godor rather, if you like, to what we
understand by this word Godare persuaded that the infinitely perfect being
sees within Himself not only these divine perfections but also all the perfections
of the beings that He can create; and that which is within God, which represents
all these things to Him, is called the mystery of the Trinity, the Word, the
wisdom of the Father, the image of His substance, etc. by the believers. In
addition to this, Christians believe that the Word is a person distinct from the
Father, and [89L] properly speaking, this means it is not necessary to know the
mystery of the Trinity to be convinced of the demonstration of the existence of
God that is the matter at hand. In fact, whether or not there are within God
three persons distinct from one another, this does not affect the principle that
nothing created can represent the infinite and that God sees all things within
Himself. Nevertheless, as the idea that we have of God consists of those divine
perfections that are present in our minds, P.M.speaking to a philosopher
30
27
The syntax here is a bit strange; I wonder if a word is missing.
28
In the MS there is an et (“and”) crossed out here.
29
Or “creations.
30
The abbreviation phē, again (see note 24).
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
who believes in the mystery of the Trinityought to have called this idea of the
word Word
31
since this is the language of writing.
[89R]
Chapter 6
In what sense one must understand
that God exists because of
Himself, and that He is positively
His own cause
Natural enlightenment dictates to me that there is nothing for which it is
permitted to seek the efficient causeor, if it has none, to ask why it does not
need itso that if I thought that something cannot in any way be with regard to
itself (which efficient cause is with regard to its effect, that is, that it cannot
preserve itself and [90L] produce itself continually), I should not pause at all on
this cause as on the first. But of that very one that we would call first, I would
seek the cause anew, and thus I would never come to a first one. Nevertheless
there could be something in which there is a power so great and so fertile that it
would have never needed any help to exist, and which now does not yet need
[help] to be preserved, and which is thus in some way its own cause. And I
conceive of God as such; and yet I could not say [90R] the same thing about
myself. However, let me suppose that I have existed for all eternity, and that
there was nothing before me; for seeing that parts of time can be separated from
each other, it does not follow from what I am now that I must still be afterward,
if I am not created again at every moment by some cause, so that I will make no
trouble about calling the cause that creates me continuouslythat is, that
preserves me“efficient.” Thus even though God has always existed, because it
is He who in fact preserves Himself, it seems to me that He can be called [91L]
the cause of Himself. It must yet be remarked that when I say that God is His
31
Mot and verbe in French, but in this context they cannot easily be rendered as anything other than
word in English.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
own cause, I do not take this word “cause” as meaning that which preservesan
effect different from itselfbut I understand only that the essence of God is
such that it is impossible that He is not or that He does not always exist.
When the common crowd says that something exists because of itself, they do
not mean anything other than that it has no cause. However, if they want to
consider the thing more closely without stopping at the words, they would easily
recognize that the negative signification of the expression because of itself
proceeds only [91R] from the sole imperfection of the human mind, and that
there is another positive [meaning]. For if, for example, someone thinks that a
body exists because of itself, he could understand nothing else by this, except
that this body has no cause at all; thus he does not assure what he thinks by any
positive reason, but only in a negative way, because he knows no other cause of
this body. But that marks some imperfection in his judgement, as he can
recognize if he considers that the parts of time do not depend upon each other at
all, and that since he supposed up until now that this body had existed [92L]
because of itselfthat is, without causeit does not therefore follow that he
must still exist in the future if he does not have within himself some real and
positive power that produces him continuously. And so seeing that in the idea of
the body he does not discover such a power, he can easily infer from this that
this body does not exist because of itselfthat is, this body is not the real and
positive cause that influences itself, its preservation, so to speakthus he will
take this expression because of itself positively.
At the same time, when I say that God exists because of Himself, I can
understand it negatively; and for the moment I [92R] would like to say that
there is no cause. But if I had previously sought the cause of why He is or why
He does not at all cease to be and is sufficient for Himself, then considering the
immense and incomprehensible power that is contained in the idea that I have of
the infinitely perfect being, I will know it to be so plain and so abundant that I
will see that it is the true cause
32
of why He is and why He always continues to
be. Thus I will no longer say that He exists negatively, but positively, although I
do not make use of the name of efficient cause to express that He exists positively,
32
In this clause “it” (la) refers to God’s power (puissance).
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
for fear that one would not believe
33
that I want to say that He [93L] produced
Himself, or else that what preserves Him is different from Him, as the cause of
the effect.
34
Nevertheless, because I see that the reason why He exists by Himself or has
no efficient cause does not proceed from nothingness but from the real and true
immensity of His being and His power, I will be permitted to think that He does
the same thing, in some way, with regard to Himself as the efficient cause with
regard to His effect, and yet
35
that He exists because of Himself not negatively
but positively.
Everybody must also interrogate himself to know whether, in this same sense
that I have just [93R] spoken about God, he exists because of himself. And
when he does not find within himself any power capable of preserving him for
even one moment, he logically concludes that he exists because of another, and
even because of another who exists because of Himself; for since the question
here is of the present time and not of the past nor the future, progress cannot be
continued toward the infinite.
Demonstration
in the manner of the geometers
Lemma 1
To exist because of oneself negatively means to have no cause at all of one’s
own production.
[94L] Lemma 2
To exist because of oneself positively means to contain within oneself enough
power to preserve oneself.
33
The MS creut (modern spelling: crût) is an imperfect subjunctive, rarely used in modern French.
34
The French could also be read as “as the cause [is different] from the effect.”
35
The MS reads partant (“leaving,” “departing”), which does not easily make sense in this context. I
suggest that it is scribal error for pourtant (“yet,” “however”).
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
Lemma 3
That which exists because of itself negatively is itself the cause of its own
preservation.
Lemma 4
The reason why one preserves oneself cannot come from nothingness; thus it
must be something positive.
[94R] Everything that is not at all produced exists because of itself
negatively, according to Lemma 1.
Now then, Godthat is, the infinitely perfect beingwas not at all produced
in any other way; there would be a contradiction within these terms.
Therefore He exists because of himself negatively, and consequently,
according to Lemma 3, He is Himself the cause of His preservation and He
exists because of himself positively.
I shall prove it:
The reason why
36
one preserves oneself cannot come from nothingness,
according to Lemma 4.
[95L], Now then, God has within Himself in His essence the reason why He
preserves Himself.
Therefore it must be that He is his cause positively, and that is what was to
be demonstrated
37
.
Corollary
As God preserves Himself by His power, which is immense and
incomprehensible, and since this power is God Himself, I will not call this cause
of His preservation an efficient cause, because these kinds of causes are distinct
36
The MS reads ce par quoi; this could mean “this thing by which,” which is a bit awkward but makes
some sense. However, given that this sentence is referring directly to Lemma 4, and we have seen how
careful the author is in phrasing the elements of his proofs and arguments, I think this is meant to use
the exact same language as in Lemma 4: Ce pourquoi. I have emended the modern edition accordingly.
(Ce pourquoi is an archaic phrase meaning “the reason(s) for which.”)
37
A formula for the conclusion of a proof, equivalent to the Latin “QED” (quod erat demonstrandum),
which is also used in English. In French, ce qu’il fallait démontrer is sometimes abbreviated CQFD.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
from their effect. But as it
38
is found within God Himself* I will call it the formal
cause. [*Or that it
39
is God Himself.]
38
i.e. power
39
i.e. power
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
1
[95R]
Chapter 7
What the immutable order
is, [and] that God must
necessarily conform to it
[Treatise on Nature and Grace, p. 26
1
] Since I continue to speak about God and
since I would not know how to do it with too much exactitude, I must not I
consult myself nor I speak like the majority of men. I must raise up my mind
above all creatures, so that I forget all that happens within me, and consult the
vast and immense idea of the infinitely perfect [96L] being with a great deal of
attention and respect. And as this idea represents to me the true Godquite
different from the one most people imagineI ought not to speak of it at all
according to the language of the people. Everyone is allowed to say, with the
Scriptures and in a discourse of morality to show the horror of the crime, that
God repented of having created man, that He grew angry toward his people,
that He delivered Israel from captivity by the strength of His arm.
But these statements, or similar ones, are not at all permitted to philosophers,
since they must speak exactly in this way. When I will speak of God in a
humanistic way [96R] and compare Him to men, it will only be to sustain the
attention of my mind and to raise it up toward that infinitely perfect being, to
whom nobody can be compared.
Nothing is more important than knowing thoroughly what order is, which is
the rule that all minds and God Himself are obligated to follow. And because I
am assured that all the most important truths of metaphysics and religion
depend upon the knowledge of this divine rule, I want to renew all my attention
to thoroughly understand what follows.
[97L] It is certain that God saw all the beings that He created before they
existed, and that He sees all those that He can create; otherwise He would not
have been able to produce them.
1
Nicolas Malebranche, 1680.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
2
He can see these beings, both created and potential, only within himself; this
is constant. God is His light for Himself; He can receive nothing from outside.
Therefore there are within God several perfections that represent to Him the
different beings that He has created or that He can create; for if that which
represents my mind to Him, for example, was the same as that which represents
my body to Him, He would not be able to know the difference between them.
Thus this consideration convinces me [97R] that the perfections that are within
God, which represent to Him created or potential beings, are not all equal: those
that represent bodies are not as noble as those that represent minds. Among
these, even those that represent nothing but bodies, there are some more perfect
then others, to infinity.
I conceive of this clearly and without effort, although I cannot conceive of
how God, who is a simple
2
being, contains ideas of all things; for in the end it is
obvious, and I cannot say it to myself often enough, because I cannot think
about it often enough, that [98L] if all God’s ideas were equal, He would not be
able to see any difference between His works, since He cannot see His creatures
except in He who represents them. And if the idea of a watch that tracks all the
different movements of the planets in addition to the hours were not more
perfect than that of a watch that tracks only the hours, or that of a circle or a
square, a watch would not be more perfect than a circle, for we cannot judge the
perfection of works except by the perfection of the ideas that we have of them.
And if there were not more wit or a mark of wisdom
3
[98R] in a watch than in a
circle, it would not be more difficult to understand the most complex machines
than to conceive of a square or a circle.
Being thus assured that God encloses all beings within Himself in an
intelligible manner and who for this reason is called the universal being, and that
all these intelligible beings or ideas that have a necessary existence in God are
not equally perfect, it is clear that there would be among these ideas an
immutable and necessary order, because of the different relations to perfection
that they contain.
2
See Chs. 2-4 translation (p. 4, n. 8).
3
I take this to mean that more intelligence and craft goes into the construction of a watch than
into a simple geometric form, not that the watch itself possesses wit or wisdom!
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
3
[99L] This order as I have considered it until now seems to be rather a
speculative truth (for the contemplation of which my mind must just pause) than
a necessary law and a practical truth, that is, one which compels my mind to act
and to love one thing rather than another. For if I do not consider order except
as I have just done, I see clearly, for example, that it is a truth that my mind is
more noble than my body; but I do not see that this truth is at the same time an
order that has the force of law, and which compels me to act, to love one thing
rather than another. [99R] Therefore, here is the manner and reason why this
immutable order has the force of law:
It is certain that God necessarily loves Himself, that He cannot refrain from
loving that which is infinitely lovable, such that if it is true, as I have just proved,
that He encloses different perfections within the infinity of His substance and in
the simplicity of His beingfor it is a property of the infinite, incomprehensible
to the human mind, to comprehend everything intelligibly and to remain
simplethen it is a constant that God necessarily has more love for that which is
within Him that is more [100L] perfect than for that which there is that is less
perfect. And suppose that the idea that He has of my mind encloses a hundred
times more perfection than that which He has of my body: it is necessary that
God, who loves all these things in proportion to their perfection, love that which
is within Him that represents the mind (which I call the intelligible mind) a
hundred times more than that which represents to him my body, which I also
call the intelligible [body or expanse]
4
.
But even though God loves one thing more than another, is not the love of
God infinite? Thus it seems that He loves everything equally.
Even though God loves [100R] unequally the unequal perfections that He
encloses, this does not prevent His love and all that He contains from being
infinite. And to comprehend all this thoroughly, it must be noted that there are
the same relationships among infinite things as among finite things, and that all
infinities are not equal: there are double infinities, some triple others, even
though the smallest of infinities is infinitely larger than any finite size, as large as
we could imagine; and that thus there could only be a finite relationship between
4
MS has esprit crossed out and replaced by corps ou etendue (in the hand of the annotator, not
the scribe).
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
4
the finite and the infinite, and that the human mind could understand it.
Nevertheless, I can precisely measure [101L] the relationships of size that the
infinities have among themselves: for I see clearly that an infinity of
parallelograms contains an infinity of triangles, which is double that of the
parallelograms; that an infinity of triangles, rectangles
5
have an infinity of bases
whose infinite squares are double the infinite squares of their sides. Thus
although I could discover the relationships that exist between immeasurable
numbers and unitythat is, that I could not discover, for example, how much
the diagonal of a square contains of parts of one of its sidesI know the
relationships that exist among immeasurable numbers [101R], as I have just
shown. [See the Meditations [?rcti.] page 54.]
6
Therefore since it is a constant that some infinities are larger than others, and
that by the necessity of His nature God loves unequally yet infinitely the
unequal yet infinite perfections that He encloses within the infinity of His
substance, I understand without effort that all the relationships of perfection that
exist within Him are the necessary order, the eternal law, the immutable rule of
all minds and of God himself. For as God, by the necessity of His nature, loves
all things in proportion [102L] to how lovable they are, he could not, for
example, place minds beneath
7
bodies, render someone unhappy without his
having deserved it, create monsters with
8
a positive and direct will, etc.
Whoever thoroughly understands the necessity and the beauty of the
immutable order finds the conclusion of thousands of difficulties that have
embarrassed (and still embarrass) philosophers who have no knowledge of it,
5
Is this an error? Either a conjunction is missing or one of these words should be crossed out;
it’s not clear whether the author is referring to triangles, or rectangles, or both or either.
6
This seems to be a reference to Descartes’ Meditations, but I cannot decipher the fourth word
(I haven’t been able to make out the first character). From the context I think this is referring
to a chapter or section of Descartes’s text.
7
The meaning of soumettre in this context is to hold something at a lesser value than something
else; bodies are “beneath” minds in the sense of being less worthy, because they are bound to
the material world while the mind can access the idea of divinity. I render soumettre as “place
beneath” throughout this chapter.
8
I’ve chosen to retain the ambiguity of the original French in translation. In context, it means
creating monsters by means of positive and direct will, but the French “d’une volonté….” could
also mean the monsters are characterized by a positive and direct will. (An interesting kind of
monster.)
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
5
and who imagine that God does everything precisely because He wishes to,
without regard for the love that He bears for Himself and for His divine [102R]
perfectionsin a word, without respecting the immutable order.
Therefore I will take good care in the future not to think that God does
everything precisely because it pleases Him and because He wishes to; for I am
persuaded that He must consult a reason and a wisdom that is consubstantial
with Him. And if this principle that God does everything absolutely and
independently of the immutable order were true, there would be nothing left that
was certain, especially in religion: for it confuses good with evil, true with false,
and makes of all things a chaos in which the mind knows nothing. Man [103L]
suffers, therefore he is not innocent; the mind depends upon the body, therefore
man is not at all as God has made him; God cannot place what is nobler beneath
what is less noble, for the order does not permit it.
[Mr. Arnauld, Reflexions, Volume 1, page 95
9
] What consequence for these
philosophers who have absolutely no fear of saying that the will of God is the
only rule of His actions? They have only to reply that “God has willed it thus;
that men are naturally blind and timid and entirely incapable of penetrating into
the depth of His counsels and His designs, upon which principally depend the
judgment that we must hold of the [103R] perfection or imperfection of the
manners of acting in an intelligent nature . . . One ought to know God’s designs
to be able to judge if His manners of acting are worthy of His wisdom. Well, the
wisest and most enlightened are those who recognize moreover that nearly all
God’s designs are hidden from us, beyond those which he has deigned to reveal
to us in His Word. Therefore on this subject we can only have conjectures and
not certain and demonstrative knowledge of what is worthy or unworthy in
God’s wisdom.” This being the case, who is it that would prevent [104L]
libertines from saying that if we suffer pain, it is our pride that makes us find it
unjust, that is our pride that takes offense, that the mind is placed beneath the
body, that God wanted these apparent disorders? It is impiety to appeal to
reason about these things since the will of God does not at all recognize [reason]
as a rule of His conduct. [Mr. Arnauld, Reflections, Vol. 1 pag. 81] “God directly
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
6
wanted monsters as well as the most perfect of works; he wanted them
intermingled among a nearly infinite number of things that were not
[monstrous], just as a musician who only wanted one concord to be sung [104R]
would not choose a discord to make his ability knownwhich does not prevent
him from willingly mixing [discords] in pieces that are sung by several parties,
because that way it contributes to the beauty of the song, being followed by
natural concords.”
10
This being the case, what will I find in the universe that deserves my
adoration? Even if the world were built as we would want it, it will always be
equally admirable; in other words, not at all [admirable], as I know nothing of
God’s designs. What appears monstrous to me is nothing of the sort in His view;
[105L] it is because men err, and their ignorance makes them see faults where
there are none at all. And by the same principle, nothing is perfect except in
relation to God’s designs. Well, these designs are unknown; therefore I must
admire nothing in His work. But if I consider it beautiful that God placed eyes at
the top of a man’s head, then by the same reasoning I must consider it misshapen
to have placed them in a monster’s belly, or that He made them born with eyes
incapable of receiving the action of the light.
Someday I will show that all disorders arrive [105R] in the world because
God follows the order, and that He could not scorn the love that He bears for
His divine perfections. It is enough for the moment for me to be thoroughly
convinced that there is nothing that wounds Christian ears as much as to make
God behave as if He utterly lacked reason to consult.
11
But do I not admit any imperfection in God when I say that He consults the
order and that he follows universal reason? These methods of speaking, says a
9
Presumably the source of the long quotation that follows (I do not have a copy available to
confirm). This is the first time in the MS that quotation marks (in the left-hand margin) are
uses to identify a citation from another text.
10
In other words, God does not create monstrous things gratuitously, but for the sake of
casting into relief the beauty of his other creations.
11
i.e. as if God did not possess the capacity of reason, which he could choose to consult, even
though (as the author has argued) reason is not the force that exclusively drives God’s actions.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
7
modern philosopher*, signify perfections which, being merely respective, cannot
be suited to God. [*Mr. Régis, Vol. 1 On Metaphysical Philosophy, page 174.
12
]
After having [106L] considered this reasoning as little as possible, I find that
it is defective in what it considers respective, which it isn’t at all and which is not
suited to God. I fully admit that if God consulted a reason other than His
wisdom, it would be respective and would be a mark of imperfection, and I
would be in error if I believed that God consulted the order and that He
followed reason. But since this order and this reason are consubstantial with
Him, I confirm myself still in my opinion. I do not in the slightest say
13
that
consulting reason in the manner that God consults [it] brings some imperfection
upon Him, but that on the contrary [106R] I have just proven demonstratively
that this cannot be otherwise, and that it can only be suited to God, who is an
infinitely perfect being, who is His reason and His light for Himself.
Demonstration
of the immutable order
in the manner of the geometers
Definitions
1. By the ideas that are within God, I understand that which is within Him,
which represents something to Him.
[107L] 2. The word order signifies the subordination that exists among several
things, either among several ideas or among several beings.
12
I believe this is Sylvain Leroy (1632-1707), philosopher and member of the French Royal
Academy of Sciences, who was also known by the name Pierre-Sylvain Régis or simply Régis.
(The name is a pun: le roy in French means “the king,” regis is Latin for “of the king”.) Régis’s
first book, Système de philosophie, contenant la logique, la métaphysique, la physique et la morale
(System of philosophy, containing logic, metaphysics, physics, and moral philosophy) in three
volumes, was published in Paris in 1690 by Denys Thierrey. Our MS is dated only a year
after this publication date. Given the inclusion of a page number, the author/commentator is
almost certainly working from a printed edition, but depending on who our author was and
how widely Régis’s manuscript circulated, might he have read it before it was published?
13
MS reads tant sans faut, which is an uncommon construction and would mean something
like “so much without fault”—tricky to make sense of in this sentence. I suggest it is scribal
error for the much more common (and homophonic) idiom tant s’en faut, which means “not in
the slightest,” “not by a long shot.”
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
8
3. The immutable order is the subordination of divine ideas.
4. I call loving one thing more than another placing one thing beneath another.
5. A speculative truth is a relationship that is found among several sizes, such as
the relationship that is found among the sides of equilateral triangles, between
two-times-two and four. Because my mind does nothing but consider
14
this
relationship it is called a speculative truth.
[107R] 6. A practical truth, on the other hand, is a relationship of perfection
that is found among several different ideas, a relationship, I say, which lets my
mind know that it ought to love one thing more than another, and toward which
God pushes it.
Postulates
1. God cannot know things except within Himself; there is nothing distinct
from Him that can enlighten Him.
2. God can do different things, some more perfect than others, and He would
not know how to do them without knowing them, [108L] as a worker would not
know how to make a machine without first imagining the springs from which he
wants to construct it.
3. God intelligibly encloses all possible beings: that is, His substance
represents all of them. And if one asks me how it is possible that God contains all
beings eminently and intelligibly without
15
having their imperfections, I must say
that thisto contain all without imperfectionis a property of the infinite,
because this passes beyond the reach of my mind and I cannot comprehend it.
4. All that exists within God is infinitely lovable. But just as there are some
infinities larger in size than others, so there are in perfection.
16
5. As God loves Himself by the necessity of His nature, there is necessarily
more love for what is within Him that is most perfect than for that which is less
perfect. Thus I conceive that there is a type of subordination among God’s
perfections.
14
As opposed to experimenting with it in tangible or material terms.
15
The MS reads sens (“sense”), which does not fit syntactically or logically in this sentence.
I’ve emended to sans (without).
16
i.e. some infinities are more perfect than others (just as some are larger than others).
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
9
Demonstration
Where I conceive of difference perfections, there I conceive of [109L] an
order such as is explained in Definition 2 by Postulate 5.
Now then, I conceive of different perfections within God.
Thus I conceive of an order within God.
I prove the lesser:
God knows within Himself all that He can create, according to Postulate 1.
Now then, He can create some beings that are more perfect than others;
therefore He knows different perfections within Himself. Therefore there is
within God an order that I will call immutable because it is the substance of God
Himself as representing created [109R] or potential beings.
I will also sometimes call this immutable order the Word or the wisdom of
God, for in just the same way as speech represents our thoughts, thus the order
that is found among divine perfections represents to God the perfection of the
beings that He can create or that He has created.
Corollary 1
As God necessarily loves Himself, according to Postulate 5, His will cannot
change anything in the immutable order. Thus it is necessary that [God’s will]
conform to [the order], and that what is bad in its nature is not at all so [110L]
because God willed it thus, but because it
17
does not conform to the order.
Corollary 2
Although properly speaking God cannot be definedsince to define
something is to explain its nature by its type and difference, which one would
not know how to do with regard to the infinitely perfect beingnevertheless of
all the definitions that the philosophers put forth, I must choose that which
explains best and gives me the greatest idea of the universal being. Well, there is
absolutely none that does it better than this: God is He who is. For [110R] as He
intelligibly encloses all things within him, according to Postulate 3, properly
17
This pronoun il is a bit ambiguous; I’m taking as antecedent ce qui est mauvais…, i.e. “it” here
refers to the apparent bad elements of God’s nature. But grammatically il here could also refer
to God—though I think the author would be undermining his argument to state that God does
not conform to the immutable order.
Translation © Ariane Helou, September 2018
10
speaking the only one who exists is Him. Truly all creatures are but
dependencies upon the Being. I will consider then the definition of God that a
modern philosopher offered on these terms: God is an infinite thought. I will
consider it, I say, as explaining with little exactitude what is suited to the
universal being, who is not one at allthat is, such a being as this definition
statesbut rather the being in general, the being that contains all beings: in a
word, [111L] He is who He is. [Mr. Régis in his Metaphysics.]
Translation © Ariane Helou, October 2018
1
[111L]
Chapter 8
On the attributes of God:
that He is immutable
God being the infinitely perfect being, there is a contradiction : that I could
be in error
1
, since I will only attribute to Him that which I will clearly conceive
is suitable to the infinitely perfect being. For if I am never in error, when I judge
of God’s works only according to what I see clearly [111R] and distinctly within
their ideas, because God has formed them.
2
As for these ideas, it must be the
case that they distinctly represent their nature all the more. I will never be in
error, provided
3
that I attribute to God only that which I see clearly and
distinctly as belonging to the infinitely perfect being.
Therefore I will attribute to God all perfections, even those that seem
incomprehensible, provided that I am certain that they are realities or true
perfections that are not confined by imperfections of [112L] limitations similar
to those of [God’s] creatures
4
. And by this means I will avoid the pitfall into
which fell Spinoza, who wanted God to be nothing other than that which
existed, that is, all His creations, because, he said, existence is a perfection.
When I consider that matter
5
can be arranged or diversified in several
wayslike a circle becoming a squareI use the name mode or way of being to
designate this change; and when this arrangement or change may be called such,
I name the different [112R] ways that allow it to be named as such quality.
Finally, when I think more generally that these modes or qualities are in matter
without considering them in any way but as the dependencies of this matter, I
call them attributes, that is, perfections. And because I must not conceive of any
1
There may be a word missing, since this syntax is a bit strange.
2
There may be one or more words missing, since this syntax is strange (si is the protasis that
sets up a conditional clause, but there is no apodosis).
3
MS reads pour veux, which I am understanding as a mis-transcription or perhaps misspelling
of pourvu.
4
Or: “creations”
5
Or (literally) substance.
Translation © Ariane Helou, October 2018
2
variety or change within God, I do not say that He has within Him modes or
qualities, but rather attributes and perfections.
I say that I must not conceive of any variety or change within God, because
he is immutable. For since he [113L} can have no effect or change without
reason, God being independent of the efficacy of causes, if some change happens
in God then He Himself would be the author of it. So although God is the cause
or the principle of these wills or these decrees, he has never produced any
change within Himself; for these decrees, although perfectly free, are themselves
eternal and immutable. God made them, these decrees, and although the effects
of these decrees are infinite and produce a thousand changes in the universe,
these decrees are always the same, because the efficacy of these immutable
decrees [113R} is only determined in action by the circumstances of causes that
I will call natural or occasional.
As God is fully sufficient unto Himself, He loves nothing invincibly except
His own substance. The will to create such and such beings, for example,
although eternal and immutable, just as much as immanent operations, enclose
nothing that is necessary. [The action by which God loves Himself is an immanent
action.]
[ I explain what immanent action is, because this term is in the Dialogues on
Metaphysics
6
, p. 234.] (We can distinguish between two sorts of actions: some are
immanent, and others are temporary. The former are those that are received in
the principle [114L] from which they proceed, as thought is received in the soul
from which it proceeds; it does not go out beyond it, so to speak.
7
The latter are
those that do go out beyond the cause from which they proceed, just as the heat
from a fire is received on my hand.
6
Nicolas Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion (Dialogues on
Metaphysics and Religion), 1688. The marginal note “I explain…” does not in itself suggest
any particular relationship between this writer and Malebranche; it seems to simply be a
textual citation.
7
That is, one’s thought is only understood by the subject who thinks them; we cannot perceive
each other’s thoughts.
Translation © Ariane Helou, October 2018
3
As God was able to form the decree to create the world at one time
8
, He is
and was able to cease wanting the world to exist; not because the act of His
decree could be and not be, but because this eternal and immutable able is
perfectly free, and because it does not enclose an eternal duration except by
supposition. God [144R] wanted and will continue to want for all eternity; or to
speak more accurately, God wants ceaselessly, but without variety, without
succession. That is, there is no succession of will at all. God, I say, wants
everything that He will be, without necessity, in the sequence of time. The act of
His eternal decree is necessary only because it exists, and it can only be because
it is, but it is only because God truly wants it.
God is free and even indifferent with regard to a thousand effects: He can
change His will, in this sense that He is indifferent toward wanting and not
wanting such an effect. [115l} It is necessary only to love His own substance,
but I must be careful with this, which will give me some enlightenment in this
matter, which is very difficult. Right now as I am sitting, I could be standingI
absolutely could do it, but according to this supposition I cannot do it, because I
cannot be standing and sitting at the same time. Therefore I must consider that,
just as in God, there is no succession at all of thoughts and wills: by an eternal
and immutable act He knows all, He wants all that He wants. God wants, with a
[115R] perfect liberty and a full indifference, to create the world; He wants to
form decrees, to establish simple and general laws, as I will say at another time,
to govern it
9
in a manner that bears the character of His attributes. But, these
decrees having been set out, they cannot be changednot because it is
absolutely necessary, but by the force of supposition, just as it is necessary that I
be sitting while I am sitting. Thus it is only the fact that they have been set out,
and that God in forming them knew so well what He was doing, [which is the
reason] why they cannot be revoked. And [116L] although there are some for
[only] a certain time, it is not because He changed His mind when this time
arrives, but it is because the same acte of His will relates to the differences
among the times that His eternity encloses. Therefore God does not change at
8
Dans le temps is an idiom that most frequently means “on time” or “on schedule,” but it also
can be used to mean “in another era” or “at one time,” which seems to fit better here.
9
i.e. the world
Translation © Ariane Helou, October 2018
4
all; He cannot change His
10
thoughts, His designs, and His wills; He is
immutable. This is one of the perfections of His nature. And nonetheless He is
perfectly free in all that He does beyond [this]; He cannot change because He
wants to, and He wants to, without succession, by a simple and invariable act.
But [116R] He is able to not want it, because He freely wants what He wants
presently.
Demonstration
of the immutability of God
in the manner of the geometers
Lemma 1
There is no effect that does not have its cause.
Lemma 2
That which receives new perfections is not infinitely perfect. This proposition
will always be true, even when one gives perfections to oneself; for he who says
to receive something new supposes [117L] his privation at the same time, and he
who supposes the privation of some perfection also supposes that this thing is
imperfect.
11
Lemma 3
A thing may be called free and necessary. A thing is free, in my view, for
example when I do
12
it with indifference; that is, I can do it or not do it, but it is
necessary in the time when I do it, since it is impossible that I not do it in this
moment.
10
MS reads ces (“these”), but I suspect it is scribal error for ses (“his”) given the context and
sentence structure.
11
This relies on the etymological meaning of perfection, from the Latin perfectus, meaning
“complete.” Perfection always contains the idea of completeness, of finished-ness; something
that is still changing or being augmented is not complete, and therefore not perfect.
12
Faire can mean either “do” or “make.” Although une chose (“a thing”) frequently refers to
object, the sense here is broad and seems to encompass both objects and actions.
Translation © Ariane Helou, October 2018
5
Lemma 4
As God created time, and as He would not know how to create anything
[117R] that He did not know beforehand, He knew it within Himself, according
to Postulates 1 and 2 in the Demonstration of Chapter 4. Thus we can say that
time is enclosed within eternity.
Lemma 5
All that God can give to Himself could only know how to be infinitely
perfect.
Demonstration
If God was not at all immutable, He would undergo some change; and if He
underwent some change, He would undergo it for some reason, according to
Lemma 1.
Now then, there is no cause that can produce a change in God.
God is immutable.
I prove the lesser: there is a contradiction in terms, to say that something
outside of God could act upon God Himself.
Therefore if some change occurs in His substance, it is He Himself who
produces it upon Himself.
Now then, He would not know how to produce any change within Himself.
Therefore He undergoes none.
What He receives of new perfection is not at all [118R] infinitely perfect,
according to Lemma 2.
Now then, if God were able to produce within Himself some change, He
would produce some new perfection, according to Lemma 5.
Therefore He cannot produce any change, and He is immutable in every way.
QED.
13
Corollary
Although God has always wanted and would forever want for the world to be
created, for example, He did not want the execution of this decree except at that
13
See p. 15 in the translation of Chapter 6 (note 37).
Translation © Ariane Helou, October 2018
6
time. Thus the eternal will of God to create the [119L] world must not render
Him eternal a parte ante,
14
as the philosophers at school saythat is, from the
side of His origin.
14
A Latin phrase referring to the concept of God’s eternal existence as being illimitable with
regard to the past; in other words, eternity has no start date. (A similar proposition exists with
regard to future eternity: a parte post.) This is inherently contradictory, since the very idea of
eternity almost negates the idea of linear time. But the author’s point, as I take it, is that the
eternity of God’s existence exists independently of the moment of the creation of the world.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
1
[119L]
Chapter 9
That God is not at all corporeal
even though He is immense
and that His substance is found throughout the world
and infinitely beyond it
Although I remark some perfections in the parts of which the world [119R] is
composed, neverthelessbecause they are limited and in some respects
imperfectthere are none that can be suitable to God. Thus, because extension
1
constitutes the nature of these parties that I call “bodies,” and because this marks
a fault, I conclude that God is not at all corporeal or extended in the manner of
bodies. For if it were so, a larger part of the Earth would contain a larger part of
the infinitely perfect being and a smaller [part would contain] a lesser, and all
these things would be [120L] so filled with God that the body of an elephant
would contain a larger part [of God] than that of a little bird, because being
much larger it would take up a larger space. And thus in proportion to all parts
of the world: the larger ones would consist of larger parts and the smaller ones of
smaller ones, which does not suit the idea of an infinitely perfect being.
Nevertheless, although God is not extended as bodies are, I conceive that he
must be immense and that his substance must be found, whole, throughout the
world and infinitely [120R] beyond it. For God is not enclosed within His work,
but His work is in Him and persists in His substance which saves Him by His
all-powerful efficacy. It is in Him that we are, it is in Him that we have
movement and life: “for in Him we live, move, and are.” [Acts 17:28 91.
2
]
Although I have just proven that God is not corporeal, one ought not to
imagine that I now fall into a contradiction in asserting that He is everywhere;
1
The words extension in this sentence and extended throughout the chapter are linked to the question of
God’s corporeality. To be “extended” in this context means to take up space, to exist materially in the
physical world
2
I’m not sure what the number 91 refers to here.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
2
for it is because He is not corporeal that He can be everywhere. If He were
[121L] corporeal, He would not be able to penetrate bodies in the manner in
which he penetrates them; for there is a contradiction [in saying that] two feet of
extension make up only one [foot]. As the divine substance is not corporeal, it is
not extended locally as bodies are: large in an elephant, small in a midge. It is
whole, so to speak, everywhere it is, and it is found everywhere, or rather it is
within it
3
that everything is found; for the substance of the Creator is the
intimate space of the creation, since it
4
can only persist within Him.
[Dialog. Metap. p. 249]
5
The created extension is to the divine immensity
[121R] what time is to eternity: all bodies are extended within the immensity of
God just as all times proceed within His eternity. God is always what He is,
without the procession of time; He fills everything with His substance without a
local extension; everything is present, immutable, eternal. In His substance there
is neither large nor small; all is simple and infinite. God created the world, but
the will to change is not future at all; the will [122L] of God who did and will do
is an eternal and immutable act whose effects change without there being any
change in God. In a word, God has not been and will not be, but He is. I can say
that God was in time past, but then He was everything that He would be in
future time. It is because His duration and His existenceif one is permitted to
use these termsis whole within eternity and whole in all the moments that pass
within His eternity. Likewise God is not at all partly in Heaven and partly on
Earth; He is whole within His [122R] immensity and whole in all the bodies that
are extended locally within his whole immensity in all parts of matter, although
indivisible from the infinite. Or to speak precisely, God is not so much within
the whole world as the whole world is within Him or within His immensity, just
as eternity is not so much within time ans time is within eternity. [It is because He
is everywhere. We still call His immensity “ubiquity” from the word ubique
6
which means
“everywhere.”]
3
i.e. the divine substance
4
i.e. the creation
5
Nicolas Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métaphysique (Dialogues on Metaphysics), 1688. See note 6 in
Ch 8 Translation.
6
Latin.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
3
Everything I say is only to give myself some knowledge of the immensity of
God; and if I do not feel myself struck by the same evidence that appears in the
materials I have examined above, [123L], it is because the immensity of God is a
thing incomprehensible to the human mind.
If I want to support myself in a matter as difficult as this one, I must not
create implications from the comparison between the infinite and the finite. If I
want to judge divine attributes, I must consult the notion of an infinitely perfect
being. Thus I will find this reasoning very defective: the created extension is
greater in a large space than in a small one. Thus if God were everywhere, he
would be greater in a giant than in a pygmy. This reasoning, I say, is very
defective, [123R] since the infinite being is not at all subject to the imperfections
and limitations of created beings. That is why I judge that God is everywhere,
and that He is not anywhere in the manner of bodies.
[As the soul is a limited being that is not infinitely perfect, it is ridiculous to say that it
is whole in all parts of the body and whole within the whole body. This way of being is only
suitable to the infinitely perfect being.] Yes, God is everywhere: He is there, whole,
there, there, and there, and everywhere else and in the spaces that we conceive
of beyond the world. This is not understood, but it is so nevertheless because the
infinite surpasses me.
Nevertheless, if I want to conceive of the immensity of God as much as the
weakness of my mind will allow me to, I must be cautious and keep myself at a
distance from everything that imagination is accustomed [124L] to represent to
me in similar encounters. God is there, there, in this room, but He is not there in
the manner of bodies; that is, He is not there contained and as if enclosed. That
is a coarse imagination: He is there as if containing all that is found there, since
all persists within Him. If by “being in this room” you understand that God is
there by His operation, could you say to me with certainty: God is there, and He
is everywhere in that way, just as the soul is within the body? For [the soul] is
within the head because it reasons there; it is within the feet because it moves
them, etc.; yet it is not extended within [124R] the whole body. Thus God is in
the world because He keeps it and governs it.
God is in the world by his operation; and what sort of reality is it that this
operation of God distinguishes from His substance? Certainly this operation of
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
4
God is not the effect that He produces, for the effect is not the action, but the
terms* of the action, that is, what is done by the action. And just as by “the
operation of God” one must understand the act by which He operates, the act by
which he keeps this thing, for example, being here, certainly God is there
Himself. And if He is there, it must be that He is there [125L] whole, and thus
in all the other places in which he operates. [*We say that the effect is the term of the
action because it terminates there and is produced by it.]
The comparison that we usually bring of the soul and the body to explain
how God is in the world is based on nothing but prejudice. For the soul is not at
all within the body, nor the body within the soul, since these two substances
operate nothing upon one another: the soul operates nothing within the body nor
the body within the soul; thus they are not within one another. The soul is within
the divine reason, and the body within its immensity; the mind and the body
have no necessary or essential relationship with each other; it is only with God
that they have this
7
relationship. The mind can think without [125R] the body,
but it cannot know anything except within the divine reason; the body can be
extended without the mind, but it cannot be so except within the immensity of
God, for the qualities of the body have nothing in common with those of the
mind. The body cannot think nor the mind be extended, but each of them
participates in the divine being: this must be so, since He gives them their reality
and since He would not know how to give it without possessing it, although He
possesses it without the limitations that are attached to the realities of His
creatures: God knows as minds do, He is extended as bodies are, but all this of
an entirely different manner than His creatures. Thus God is everywhere [126L]
in the world and beyond it, but the soul is nowhere within the body. The soul
does not know within the brain; it knows only within the divine reason, as I will
prove, although it knows nothing there except because of what happens within a
certain portion of matter which I call the brain. Nor does it move the limbs of its
body at all except by the application of a force that belongs to its nature; it only
moves than because He who is everywhere by His immensity executes, by His
power, the powerless desires of His
8
creatures.
7
MS reads se (personal pronoun) which I have emended to ce.
8
MS: ces (these). It ma
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
5
Therefore I will not say that God is in the world, that He [126R] governs it
as the soul does the body, for there is nothing real in this comparison, not only
because the soul cannot be within the body nor the body within it, but also
because, as minds cannot operate within the body that they animate, they cannot
consequently expand themselves within them by their operation as we pretend
that the divine operation does, by which alone (according to some philosophers)
God is found everywhere.
To show that my opinion regarding the immensity of God is that of all those
who attentively consider the idea of the [127L] infinitely perfect being, I can do
no better than to relay what Saint Augustine writes to Dardanus. One cannot
suspect that Saint Augustine would make God corporeal, he who rejects this
thought which he had while he was Manichaean
9
. In him, I say, who strongly
rejects it in his Confessions, therefore here are his words; he is sure that he was no
longer a Manichaean: “Therefore God is infused through everything, as indeed
He said according to the prophet: I fill Heaven and Earth
10
. And that which I
stated a little before of His wisdom: It reaches strongly from end to end, and
arranges all things sweetly.
11
And likewise it is written: The spirit of the Lord
filled the globe [127R] of the world
12
. And to Him it is said in a certain psalm:
Where I will go away from Your spirit, and where will I flee to away from Your
face? If I ascend into Heaven You are there, if I descend into Hell You are
there.
13
But thus God is infused through everything so that He is not the quality
of the world, but the substance that is creator the world, ruling without labor,
sustaining the world without burden. Yet He is not infused through the spaces
of places as if by size, so that He would be half in half the body of the world, and
half in the other half; and thus He is whole through all, but whole only in
Heaven and whole only on Earth, and whole in Heaven and on Earth, and
9
Manichaeanism was a religion with a widespread following during the early Christian era and
through the 7th century CE, declining thereafter. Its dualist worldview imagines the cosmos as a
battleground between good and evil: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/#DuaPriTheEvi
10
Jeremiah 23:24
11
Wisdom 8:1
12
Wisdom 1:7
13
Psalm 138:7-8.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
6
confined in no place, but whole everywhere unto himself.” [Letter of St. August.
44
14
]
[128L]
Demonstration
in the manner of the geometers
that God is not corporeal
Lemma 1
The being that excludes the perfection of another is not wholly perfect if that
perfection is worthy of him.
Lemma 2
That which is extended locally contains some parts that are larger than
others. I am not seeking to know here whether [128R] they can be separated
from each other. [In this lemma I mean that the world, which is extended locally,
contains some parts that are larger than others. The Earth is smaller than the sun.
15
]
Lemma 3
That which does not depend upon a being in its manner of existing is not a
mode of this being.
Lemma 4
Everything that is within God is God Himself; He is all perfect, all-powerful,
all-wise, etc.
14
This letter is identified in modern editions as 187. In this 17th-century edition it’s 57:
https://books.google.com/books?id=yzXDVJlfj7wC&pg=RA1-PA105&lpg=RA1-
PA105&dq=%22ergo+deus+per+cuncta+diffusus%22&source=bl&ots=vnM39LlfUe&sig=PRQxkenF
Qe0GyaVlIMOYeqRbExU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjY9f71tc3eAhVH6Z8KHR_IC_MQ6AEw
A3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22ergo%20deus%20per%20cuncta%20diffusus%22&f=true
The number in the MS looks to me like 44, but I would believe it could be 55 or 99. (Not 57 or 187,
though!) This raises the question of which edition of Augustine’s letters the author is working from, or
whether he is perhaps citing this from memory.
15
The distinction which is noted explicitly here is implied in the rest of the work: the Earth (la terre) is
distinct from the world (le monde), which in this context seems to mean all of creation, i.e. the cosmos.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
7
Demonstration
I ought not to attribute anything to God of all that is manifestly opposed to
the idea that I have of Him.
Now then, being corporeal or extended in the manner of bodies [129L] is
something that is contrary to the idea that
16
I have of God.
Therefore I ought not to say that God is corporeal or extended.
I prove the lesser: to conceive that all that is within God is not God Himself is
opposed to the idea that I have of God, according to Lemma 4.
So to make God corporeal is to conceive that everything that is extended is
not God Himself.
Therefore I attribute to Him something that is opposed to the idea that I have
of Him, if I make Him corporeal.
I prove the lesser of the second argument: everything [129R] that excludes
the perfection of another is not wholly perfect, according to the first lemma.
Now then, if God is extended, there are very perfect things that exclude each
other, since there are different parts, according to the second lemma, and since
these parts are beings, according to Lemma 3.
Therefore there would be within God things that would not be God Himself
and which would not be infinitely perfect.
Therefore God is not corporeal.
Remark
When I said above that God contained, [130L] intelligibly, the essence of all
beings, I did not understand that what represents the perfections of beings was
part of the divine being, as parts of a whole; but I wanted to say that the
substance of God represented all the essences of beings in its simplicity. And
since it is a perfection of the infinitely perfect being that I do not understand as
being all things and remaining simplesuch that all that is within Him is God
Himselfwe would not know to say whether he were corporeal or extended in
the manner of bodies, since this extension would contain parts of which one
would not be [130R] another, according to Lemma 3.
16
MS reads qui (“whom”), which I have emended to que (“which”).
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
1
[130R]
Chapter 10
In what manner one must understand that God is wise, just, merciful, patient, and what must
be understood when it is said that He can be offended.
I am assured that God knows and that He wants,
1
[but] not because I experience knowing
and wanting. [131L] For to judge of God by oneself is to make God similar to oneself, and I
would not know how to judge Him in this way without being in error. God knows, therefore He
wants, because to know and to want are perfections. And when I say that God knows and that
He wants, I do not allege that it is as men do. I allege only in general that God wants and knows
in a manner that I cannot comprehend : for all divine manners are incomprehensible. I do not
know how I know myself; so, moreover, could I explain exactly the manner in which God [131R]
knows and in which He wants?
Therefore, since God knows and since it is within Himself, I can affirm that all truths are
within God since, being infinitely perfect, there is nothing within Him that escapes His
knowledge; therefore His substance encloses all intelligible relationships, for truths are nothing
but real relationships, and falsehoods are imaginary relationships that we believe we see. God is
therefore not only wise, but wisdom itself; not only enlightened, but light itself. He is infallible by
His nature; He cannot be subject to [132L] error, being infinite. He uncovers all the relationships
that the intelligible substance of the Word encloses, as God encloses within the simplicity of His
being the ideas of all things and their infinite relationships: generally all truths. We can
distinguish within God two kinds of truths or relationships: relationships of size and relationships
of perfection; truths of speculation and practical truths, as [they] are explained in the [fifth and
sixth]
2
definition of Chapter 4; relationships that demand only judgment by their evidence, and
other relationships that spark movements, [132R] so to speak, in my mind. Nevertheless, it is not
the case that the relationships of perfection can be clearly known if they do not express
themselves by relationships of size. This means that if I knew, for example, how much more
perfect the mind is than the body, this relationship would express itself by a certain size (by the
word “size” I understand [that which is capable] of more or of
3
less. But I must not stop there.
1
The sense of vouloir here means specifically to want or to intend to complete an action; to want to do
something, as opposed to wanting an object. It could also be translated to will (especially as vouloir is shares a
root with the noun volonté, “will”; these two concepts are frequently paired in this chapter).
2
The words in brackets appear to be written in the same hand as the marginalia, but are placed within
the text.
3
In this sentence, du . . . du is a correction written over le . . . le and appears to be in the same hand as the
marginalia. The phrase in brackets is written above the line of text, also in that hand.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
2
Equilateral triangles have their proportional sides; the angles that are in the same segment [of a]
4
circle or that have the same arc as a base are equal. [133L] These are relationships of equality in
size; these
5
are speculative truths that spark no movement in the soul, that bring it neither toward
hate nor toward love, neither to esteem nor to scorn. [See The Dialogues on Metaphysics p. 299.
6
]
Man is worth more than beast: that is a relationship of inequality in perfection, which
demands not only that the mind yield to it, but that rules its love and its respect by the knowledge
of this relationship.
[See the chapter on order.
7
] I have proven above that God encloses all relationships of perfections.
So He knows and He loves everything that He encloses within the simplicity of His being;
therefore He respects and He loves all things [133R] in proportion to how lovable and
respectable they are. He loves invincibly the order that consists of nothing but the relationship of
perfections that exist between these attributes; therefore He is just, essentially and of His own
accord. He cannot but love, and He cannot but render justice upon all that He encloses.
Consequently He cannot positively and directly want to produce some malfunction
8
in His work,
because He respects all Creatures in proportion to their perfection, to their archetype, that is, to
what represents them.
I say that God cannot [134L] positively and directly want to produce some malfunction to
show that malfunctions exist in the world; He allows them because He owes it to Himself to not
disturb His own conduct, which must be uniform, constant, and orderly. Thus I can say that He
does not produce them directly, these malfunctions, even though it is He who does all, because
He has not established these laws for such effects. [See the Dialogues on Metaphysics, p. 300.]
Therefore God cannot want, without reason, for the mind to be subject to the body, [or] for
His creations to suffer undeservedly; and if this is the case, it is because now [134L] humans are
not at all as God made them. He cannot favor injustice; and if this is the case, it is because the
uniformity of His conduct must not depend upon the irregularity of human conduct. And this
convinces me that the day must come when He will punish all these disorders.
Thus God is just within Himself, essentially just, because all His
9
will conforms necessarily to
the immutable order. He cannot but love His divine perfections to the degree that they are
lovable.
4
My addition (necessary for the logic of the sentence).
5
I’ve emended MS se to ce.
6
Nicolas Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion (Dialogues on Metaphysics and
Religion), 1688.
7
Chapter 7 of this MS, “What the immutable order is, and that God must necessarily conform to it.”
8
Dérèglement can also have the sense of “imbalance,” “disorder”. I’ve chosen to render it as “malfunction”
because here the author is describing a disruption of a system that may seem to be caused deliberately,
rather than arisen organically or from carelessness.
9
I’ve emended MS ces (“these”) to ses (“his”).
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
3
[Hobbes] I understand presently that justice and injustice [135L] are not at all inventions of
the human mind, as one philosopher
10
has alleged. Men, he said, made laws for their mutual
protection; they made an agreement amongst themselves, and they are obligated to that. The one
who is missing from the agreement or accord, finding himself weaker than the rest who have
entered into the contract—that is, those who have made the agreement—finds himself among
enemies who satisfy their pride by punishing him. Thus on account of pride, for fear of being
punished, he must observe the laws of the country where he lives, not because they are just in
and of themselves—for, [135R] idiots
11
, they say, we see entirely the opposite—but because in
subjecting ourselves to them we have nothing to fear from those who are more powerful.
According to these philosophers, all is naturally permitted to all men.
It is not possible to say anything more brutal or more senseless; strength gave the lion
dominion over the other brutes, and it is often the means by which men encroach upon one
another. But to believe that this is permissible and that the strongest has the right to everything,
without even committing any crime, is to make human society [136L] an assembly of brute
beasts; for it is clear as day, and more obvious than the fact that [the sum of] the three angles of a
triangle are equal to [the sum of] two right angles, that there is an immutable order and a law
that God Himself can never avoid, and according to which all minds must govern their conduct.
God is just, in the sense that He cannot but love His
12
divine perfections. I am certain of this
truth, but that is not enough; I must still examine whether God is essentially just, in the sense that
he necessarily rewards good deeds [136R] and unavoidably punishes everything that offends
His
13
divine attributes. Until now I have only had rather crude ideas about justice and the
10
Abbreviated in MS as phē. The reference is to Hobbes, Leviathan Ch. 13: “To this war of every man
against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong,
justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no
law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the
faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well
as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent
also to the same condition that there be no propriety, no dominion, no ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ distinct, but only
that to be every man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill
condition which man by mere nature is actually placed in, though with a possibility to come out of it,
consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason.” (https://www.bartleby.com/34/5/13.html,
emphasis mine). See also https://www.iep.utm.edu/justwest/ - SH3a
11
This is an archaic expression, not much used since the 17th c. Au delà l’eau means “on the other side of
the water,” and beginning in the 16th c was used to refer to people who had just arrived (by boat,
presumably) in a new land. The implication was that they were uninformed and foolishly naïve about
their new surroundings. By the late 17th c the sense seems to be more pejorative; Cotgrave’s French-
English dictionary of 1673 defines gens de delà l’eau as “simple fellowes, witlesse companions, ignorant
creatures.” It’s a little hard to fit into this sentence, especially given that delà l’eau does not seem to be
modifying a noun.
12
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
13
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
4
goodness of God, and I believed that God could reward and punish men as He wanted to.
Therefore I must try to form distinct ideas about this justice and this goodness.
I fully believe that if His creations were capable of offending Him, God could not help but
avenge Himself. But I was not certain that God could be offended by them, [137R] for here is
how I reasoned, like the majority of people: If I were capable of offending God, as God
necessarily loves Himself, or rather as He foresaw that I would offend Him, He would never have
given me life, or at least this liberty and this power to resist Him. I sense that I exist, therefore
God hardly cares whether I offend Him or not.
[It is necessary to have understood thoroughly what is in the chapter on order.
14
] But now that I know that
the immutable order is God’s law, the inviolable rule of His
15
will, and that He cannot prevent
Himself from loving things in proportion to how lovable they are, I also know that God [137R]
cannot want me not to love, according to this same immutable order, and that He cannot
exempt me from following this law; he cannot want me to give more love to one who is least
deserving of being loved.
And what does our love do for God?
16
Could someone tell me anything at all? I would reply
to him: humans want to be respected, to be loved, because they need each other. But God is so
far above His
17
creations that apparently He takes no interest in their judgment of Him. I assert
that God wants neither my love [138L] nor my respect. In that sense, God neither hopes for nor
fears anything of man’s judgments; He is abundantly self-sufficient. However, I maintain that as
much as God takes no interest at all in my judgments, He cannot exempt me from following His
law. Here is the reason why: it
18
is abstract, and I have to apply myself with all my strength if I
want to. This is because God makes me want to. I discover no power within myself; therefore
God acts within me when I want, and He does not act because He wants to act, and He cannot
want to except by His will. His will [138R] is nothing other than the love that He bears for
Himself and for His
19
divine perfections. Therefore He cannot make me want, except in turning
myself toward Him; therefore He cannot want anything but my love, which is not the effect of
His [love], although contrary to His it does not extend to where His does not extend.
20
Therefore
He cannot want me to give more love to what is less lovable; He necessarily wants the immutable
order that is His law to be mine as well. And since He made me in such a way that I feel that I
can follow and not follow this natural law—that is, that I [139L] am free—it must be that I be
14
Again, a reference to Ch 7 of this MS.
15
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
16
I’ve emended MA He or (“hey”) for the homonym Et (“and”), which is more logical in context.
17
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
18
i.e. God’s law
19
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
20
This is a bit hard to work out syntactically. There’s a word crossed out in the middle of the sentence in
MS which makes me wonder if another word is missing.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
5
such as I can be, rewarded or punished; it must be that I can be happy or unhappy; and if I am
capable or happiness or unhappiness, it must necessarily be the case that I am free.
21
Since my only goal in this treatise on metaphysics is to acquire the understanding
22
of most of
the truths that I already believe in by faith—that is, because they have been revealed—I will
make no difficulty about examining more thoroughly whether God can make be happy or
unhappy [139R] without my having deserved it. He can if He wants, but I believe He cannot. It
is pleasure that makes us effectively and formally* happy ; I do not say just or perfect. Pain
23
makes us effectively and formally unhappy; I do not say criminal or imperfect. So it is God alone
who causes pain and pleasure in the soul, and as He cannot act without reason, if He has some
reason to cause pleasure or pain in a soul, it can only be to reward or to punish. So if a soul has
nothing [140L] that is worthy of being rewarded, it must not wait for any reward; and if it
deserves to be punished, it will be, for God must act according to reason. [*There is the efficient cause
of our pleasure or of our feelings, and that is what produces them, as God does. There is also the formal cause of our
feelings, and that is what they are composed of, so to speak. Thus the modifications are the formal causes of our
feelings, and what makes us formally happy or unhappy is the modification or pleasure or pain.] [To be perfect is to
love things according to the order, that is, in proportion to how lovable they are. But to be happy is to feel pleasure;
to be imperfect is to love what is not lovable, and to be unhappy is to feel pain.]
This will appear clearer because, I will
24
say, the majority of men imagine that God can make
one of His
25
creatures happy by goodness alone; they even think that it is within the power of His
clemency to pardon and reward souls in which He finds inclinations that do not conform to the
order. But let us suppose that God does not want to act by [140R] pure goodness; could He,
according to this supposition, not make someone happy who has deserved to be? Certainly, being
just, it must be that He rewards merit. Therefore the essential reason to make one happy is a
reason of order and justice that God follows inviolably. Let us suppose moreover, if possible, that
God does not want to act by the principle of justice; could He, according to this supposition, not
make someone happy who has deserved to be? Certainly He could, although He is good,
according to the idea that [141L] the majority form of God along with the one that represents to
them an infinitely perfect being, doing nothing without reason, being essentially just, and nor
being able to fail nor to cease loving His
26
divine perfections? Therefore it is necessary that men
be worthy of reward, if God gives it to them, and that they are guilty if they are punished, for
since God communicates His being to creatures, His
27
perfections, when He illuminates and
21
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
22
i.e. in an intellectual sense
23
Or “sorrow.
24
I’ve emended MS va to vais.
25
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
26
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
27
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
6
animates them He acts with pure goodness; He cannot but do so; He executes His
28
arbitrary
designs, but [142L] when He makes someone happy or unhappy, He acts with justice, He follows
an inviolable law.
Demonstration
That God is essentially just.
To be essentially just is to love things necessarily in proportion to how lovable they are.
Now then, God necessarily loves things in proportion to how lovable they are.
Therefore He is essentially [142R] just.
I will not prove this any farther, because it has already been done in the chapter where I
discussed the immutable order.
Remark
God is patient in the sense that He must not disturb the uniformity of His conduct to punish
crimes. He is merciful in that He gives time and means to men to change their life and to return
to the order.
[143L]
Chapter 11
That true power resides only within God.
When I make use of my eyes, I discover within the universe an infinite number of small
divinities that, by their own strength, make all those marvelous effects that dazzle and enchant
me. But before I close my eyes and enter within myself, the light of my reason makes everything
disappear. I see nothing but impotent matter; the earth becomes totally sterile, the sun itself loses
in a moment that efficacy [143R] that I attributed to it before, and I begin to see that there is
nothing but the infinitely perfect being who truly has the strength to produce everything that I
admire.
As the question that I must examine in the rest of this chapter is of the utmost importance,
and as it is the foundation of all that I will say, if
29
afterward I will try to hold my senses in
28
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
29
The sentence seems to be missing its apodasis.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
7
silence, to forget my prejudices, and to have no regard for everything that we call “experience” to
thoroughly understand and familiarize to myself the following proofs.
Since God is an infinitely perfect being, His will [144L] is efficacious by itself; for it is a great
perfection that everything that we want is done by the very efficacy of His will, that is, that there
is a necessary liaison between the efficacy of His
30
will and everything that is alleged to be done.
Therefore if God has the will that a creature exist, it will exist; if God has the will that a body be
moved
31
, only that will set it in motion. And if God stops wanting that creature to exist and for
that body to no longer be in motion, only that will destroy
32
the creature and put that body at
rest.
For if a creature, being produced, could continue to exist, and if a body could persevere in
motion without [144R] God continuing to want all this to be, the creature and the motion of the
body would be independent, and even of such a manner that God would no longer be in a
position to destroy them. For in order for God to destroy them, He would have to at least have
wanted that, as God does not operate except by His will. So I understand that He could not want
it, because God canot have a positive and practical will that tends toward nothingness, since
nothingness has nothing that is good nor lovable. God cannot want to act in order to do nothing:
this is clear, since God is able to destroy His
33
creatures. Therefore it is enough that He [145L]
can cease to want them to exist. It is not at all necessary that He positively want their destruction,
for that is not worthy of God. Once again, nothingness cannot be the object of divine will, nor
the term of its efficacy. This being the case, it is clear that the action by which God protects His
34
creatures is the very one by which He creates them, and the one by which He sets them in
motion, and
35
the same which protects them in different places.
It is true, it is God who gave being to bodies and who set matter in motion, but [145R] can’t
He have created some entity to make strengths [capable of] moving each being?
Not only did God not create these alleged entities, but I want to prove that there would be a
contradiction if a body could move of its own acord, and if it continued to move of its own
accord without the immediate efficacy of God’s will. Here is how:
There is a contradiction that a body be neither at rest nor in motion, for God Himself cannot
create some body such that it is nowhere, or that is not applied to the parts of those that surround
it. I call a body “at rest” [146L] when it always has the same relationship of distance with the
other [bodies], and it is in motion when it is applied differently to the bodies that surround it, and
30
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
31
is the past participle of mouvoir, a formal and slightly archaic form.
32
Anéantir is in a sense both stronger and less violent than “destroy”; it shares an etymology with
“annihilate,” which has an extremely violent connotation in English, but means literally “to render into
nothingness.” (Or perhaps “to void,” as néant meansthe void” or “nothingness.”)
33
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
34
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
35
I’ve emended MS est to et.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
8
this application is done by some action that it receives. So it is evident that every body is applied,
or ceases to be applied, to those that surround it; or, if you prefer, every body changes its
relationship of distance or does not change at all. There is no middle ground between these
propositions; they are contradictory. A body is white or black: these propositions are not
contradictory, but merely opposite. And there is also a middle ground, for a body [146R] could
be red, green, etc. But there is none
36
at all in these: to be applied and to not be applied, to have
the same relationship of distance and to not have it, to change it or to not change it. So, since all
these manners of speaking mean nothing except that a body is at rest or in motion, therefore
there is a contradiction [in the statement] that a body is neither moved nor at rest; that does not
need to be proven.
So I am convinced by what I said at the beginning of this chapter that it is God’s will that
gives existence to bodies and to all His
37
creatures, [147L] since they are not necessary and
eternal, as I will prove in what follows. Therefore it is this same will that sets bodies at rest or in
motion, since that is what gives them being, and as they cannot exist if they are not at rest or in
motion. For God cannot do the impossible, or something that encloses an obvious contradiction;
He cannot want what cannot be conceived of; therefore He cannot want this chair to exist,
without wanting at the same time for it to be here or there, and for His will to place it there, since
I would not know how [147R] to conceive that this chair exists if it is not somewhere there or
elsewhere.
And although I can think about a body without conceiving of it as either at rest or in motion,
nevertheless I would not know how to conceive that it exists if it is not somewhere at the same
time, and if the relationship that it has with other [bodies] changes or does not change, and
consequently I would not know how to conceive of it as existing when I do not conceive of it as at
rest or in motion. If I can think of a body in general, it is because I can do as I please with
abstractions on the idea that I have of them; but, once again, I [148L] would not know how to
conceive of it as existing without it existing somewhere.
It is true, and naturally I conceive of it, that when God creates a body he must first put it at
rest or in motion; but once the moment of creation is past, the body has the power to move of its
own accord, it roams at random or toward the place where it is pushed most strongly.
Previously I allowed myself to be seduced by similar reasons, because I believed that before
God had created something, He rested and did nothing more. But now that I know that the
moment of creation does not pass at all, [148R] I am strongly convinced that if something lasts, it
is because God wants it to last for just as much time as it exists; that God wants there to be a
world; His will is all-powerful. Therefore here is this world, made; when God no longer wants
there to be a world, here it is, destroyed. Therefore if the world lasts, it is because God continues
to want the world to exist; the conservation of creatures is therefore nothing more on God’s part
36
i.e. no middle ground
37
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
9
than their continuous creation. Therefore creation never passes, and it does not differ at all from
the continuous conservation of beings.
It seems to me that this proposition—[149L] that God no longer wants there to be a world,
to have it suddenly destroyed—is not of the final evidence, for it is not enough to destroy the
world for God to no longer want it to exist; He must want positively for it to exist no longer.
Nevertheless, when I consider it more closely, I see that if at another time I found some
obscurity, that was the result of my judging God myself, I who consider matter but do not make
it; for when I create some work, my work lasts even though I don’t touch it again, and can even
last after my death; and that is because it has no [149R] essential or necessary liaison with my life
and my will. But the foundation of my being depends essentially upon God; and even though the
arrangement of some parts of my work depends, in a certain sense, on my will, the work itself and
what it is composed of do not depend on it at all. Thus, just as the universe has not always
existed, as I will prove shortly, it depends so strongly on the universal cause that it would fall back
into nothingness if God ceased to protect it; otherwise it would be independent.
To be independent, we could say, it is enough that God would be able to destroy this
universe, [150L] for it is not necessary that there be a relationship and a continual influence on
the part of the Creator over His work.
False thought, as I could not imagine a greater independence than to persist on my own and
without support; if I did not have need of God’s [support], I would be truly independent. My
house, for example, does not depend on me at all, and that is because it is not supported by me;
that is why there is no essential dependence between it and me. Nevertheless, I can set it on fire,
just as God can destroy the universe, [150R] but that does not mean that there is an essential
dependence between my house and me, since it can persist without me. Therefore, if the universe
can last a moment without the continual influence of its Creator, even though He can destroy it
when He pleases, it is independent and has no necessary liaison with Him. And to finish
demonstrating this truth and making it apparent, I will follow the maxim that I propoosed for
myself in the method for properly guiding my mind,
38
which is to suppose certain things to draw
out their consequences, when these consequences [151L] can guide me toward to the discovery
of the truth. Therefore I will suppose for a moment that God is no longer in this supposition; the
universe will not stop existing, since the reasoning that I am arguing against supposes that God
has no influence at all on the universe. Therefore it is evident, according to this supposition, that
the world would not be essentially dependent on God at all, if all its dependence consisted only of
the power of being able to destroy it; for we could not
39
conceive of the world without conceiving
of the Creator. Therefore if the universe is dependent on God, then to persist it needs to be
sustained [151R] continually by His continual influence and by the same efficacy that creates it.
If God were only to cease wanting it to exist, all that would necessarily follow from that would be
38
The section beginning at 23R.
39
In the MS this word (ne) looks as if it has been written over another word, or perhaps crossed out, but I
think the former is more likely (and more logical in the sentence).
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
that it would no longer exist. For if it continued to exist, even though God no longer continued to
want it to exist, it would be independent, because God would no longer be able to destroy it; for
to destroy it, He would have to positively want such a destruction. And as God can hardly want
for no purpose, it follows that He cannot want to destroy His work. In fact, since God’s will is the
love that He bears [152L] for Himself, if He wanted to destroy His work then He would love
nothingness, which is inconceivable. Therefore I cannot conceive that a body persists and that it
does not persist by the continual influence of He who created it.
I do not need to be told that, in truth, we can well understand that a body cannot move of its
own accord, but that once it has been moved it can move another, as a true cause. If we suppose
that it moves before God has established occasional causes for the motion of bodies and [that it]
encounters another [152R] concave [body], that it could run into it like a mold.
40
For the
moment, let us say, either this body will rebound or it will not. If it rebounds, there is a new
effect, caused by the body that has been struck. If it does not rebound, there is a force destroyed
without action.
41
Therefore this body must be the true cause of the other’s motion, unless we’d
rather say that it loses its own [motion] without communicating it.
We must not, I say, present this reasoning to support the efficacy of secondary causes. For
although God has not at all established occasional causes of motion, as we suppose, [153L], the
only impenetrability of bodies would be one that is sufficient on this occasion to determine it in
the instant of the collision to move these two bodies, as He would judge, by the way. Thus it is
constant that this reasoning has no force and does not at all weaken what I have just proposed
regarding the power that no creature can possess.
If for the moment God had not yet established laws of communications, of movements, the
nature of bodies, their impenetrability would oblige Him to make such [laws] that would be the
most appropriate for carrying out the work that He would want to form [153R] from matter. But
it is clear that impenetrabilty would have no real efficacy and that it would do nothing but give
God, who treats things according to their nature, an opportunity to diversify His action without
changing any aspect of His conduct.
There are still two more difficulties that I must resolve in order to leave no doubt as to a
matter as important as the one I treat in this chapter.
The first is that in order to examine whether creatures can truly have some power to move
bodies, God would have to have given me a clear idea [154L] corresponding to this word
“power”; and since I have none, I have not had to examine whether God could actually
communicate His power to His creatures. According to this axiom, received from all
40
This phrase is peculiar. En filer usually would mean to run through or to thread, though it can also
mean to run/flow/merge into. Moule means mold in the sense of a concave form waiting to be filled to
create a shape. The meaning of the words is pretty clear (i.e. that the traveling body will fit into the
concavity of the body it collides with) but the phrasing is muddy; I wonder if this is just an idiomatic
expression I’m not familiar with.
41
I understand this to mean that the force or strnegh of the traveling body is dissipated when it collides
with the concave body; its momentum is destroyed even though no action is taken.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
philosophers—that one must never reason except with clear ideas—I therefore acted a little bit
like a blind man who would come and tell me that the colors in Rubens
42
’s paintings are livelier
and more beautiful than those in Poussin
43
’s paintings, and that he discovered this by looking at
each of them carefully.
Every time I consider that I have not established my earlier reasoning on the idea of power,
which [154R] I do not have at all, but on that of motion, which I am certain of having, I easily
discover the sophism that is hidden under the reasoning that I have just reported. A body has
been moved; I am certain that there is is no effect without cause and without power, even though
I have no certain idea that there is one
44
. I also know that the motion of a body is nothing but the
continual creation of that same body in different places. Therefore I conclude very well that the
power that moves bodies but be the very same one that creates them. And as no creation can
create another
45
, I am [155L] certain that it cannot move another. Therefore I have had reason
to say that it is only God who truly and actually possesses power, even though I have no idea of
it.
The second difficulty is drawn from some passages of Holy Scripture, which seem to prove
that God communicated His power to His
46
creatures on Earth: for example, to produce green
grass, etc.
47
But as the same Scripture expressly states that it is God who creates all things (I am
God who makes everything, Isaiah 44:24
48
), and as I must interpret and explicate the passages [155R]
of the Scripture that favor prejudices along with those that do not favor it, it is nowhere near
being contrary to the opinion that I am defening, since on the contrary it fits it better than the
42
Sir Peter Paul Rubens, 1577-1640. One of the most notable Flemish Baroque painters; worked
primarily in Antwerp, but also in London and Italy.
43
Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665. A major French Baroque painter, spent much of his career in Rome.
44
i.e. a cause. (The antecedent of une must be either cause or puissance/“power”, which are feminine;
effet/“effect” is masculine.)
45
This statement might seem contradictory, as humans can both create (artworks, objects) and procreate.
However, we are not creating new matter; we are not creating worlds. Molding and re-fashioning what
exists in the world is not the same as creating a world or parts of one, and propagating one’s species is not
the same as creating new forms of life. I think that’s the distinction that the author is making. Whatever
creative acts humans are capable of fall infinitely short of divine creation, according to the author.
46
I’ve emended MS ces to ses.
47
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and
herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and
God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:11-12 (King James Version).
48
Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all
things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself” (KJV, emphasis
mine)
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
other one does; see Volume 2 of The Search After Truth
49
from page 499 to 548, and the first
volume of Philosophical Essays,
50
Chapter 18, the replies to different objections.
[156L]
Demonstration
in the manner of the geometers
that God cannot communicate His true power to His creatures
Lemma 1
I must attribute to God all perfections that are worthy of the infinitely perfect being. So, to
have a will whose efficacy has a natural relationship with everything that it wants to produce is a
perfection worthy of the infinitely perfect being; I would therefore not conceive of it as it if I were
to separate it from the notion I have of it.
[156R]
Lemma 2
The infinitely perfect being must have an absolute dominion over everything that is not God.
Nothing must be independent of Him, otherwise we could conceive of something more perfect
than that
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God upon whom all things depend; thus what we conceive of would not be the idea of
God.
Lemma 3
The infinitely perfect being would not have an absolute power and dominion over all things if
we could conceive of them as existing without His influence.
[157L]
Lemma 4
As there is no effect without a cause, everywhere that I see some change occur I could
reasonably search for its cause, either in the thing itself or outside of it.
49
Pierre Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité. Où l’on traite de la Nature de l’Esprit de l’homme, et de l’usage qu’il
en doit faire pour éviter l’erreur dans les Sciences. Six books, published in two volumes 1674-75. Translated into
English as The Search After Truth (Thomas Taylor; London, 1700).
50
MS is titled Essais Philosophiques. The text is labeled Livre 3 and the title page reads To. 5 (Volume 5). It
is not clear, however, whether this refers to the present work or another by a different author.
51
I’ve emended MS se to ce.
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
Lemma 5
A body cannot exist and not exist in any place; that is, it is necessary that it either have a
permanent relationship to a place, which is called “being at rest,” or else that this relationship be
successive in different places, which is what I call [157R] “a body in motion.”
Lemma 6
In every body that moves there is motion, which is transportation from one place to another
and the cause of that transportation.
Lemma 7
There is a contradiction that a mode could pass from one body or one subject into another. I
say that there is a contradiction because if this ould happen, it would no longer be a mode, since
it could persist [158L] without the subject to which it is supposed to be inherent.* [*attached]
Lemma 8
There is only He who protects beings who can modify them, since modifications are nothing
but the being
52
in such and such a manner, and which are not at all distinguishable from it.
Demonstration 1
Anything that does not enclose any contradiction can be produced by this Being, the efficacy
of whose will has a necessary relationsihp with everything that He wants to produce.
[158R] Now then, God or the infinitely perfect being has such a will, according to Lemma 1.
Therefore God can produce everything that does not enclose any contradiction.
Corollary 1
Thus suppose that bodies exist. God created them by the efficacy of His will. Otherwise we
could conceive of them without Him, and He would not have absolute dominion over them and
[they]
53
would be independent, which is contrary to Lemmas 2 and 3.
[159L]
Corollary 2
To exist, bodies need the continual influence of God; thus if they continue to exist, it is
because God continues to create them. For if this were not the case, we could conceive of them
without relation to God; they would be independent, which is still contrary to Lemmas 2 and 3.
52
It’s not entirely clear whether this être is the “infinitely perfect being,” or one of the protected beings of
the previous clause. From the syntax, the latter seems more likely; from the context and the following
Demonstration, the former seems more logical. (The lack of capitalization in MS doesn’t help.)
53
My interpolation (word missing from MS).
Translation © Ariane Helou, November 2018
Demonstration 2
To make a body pass from rest into movement is to make this body exist successively in
different places, according to the second part of Lemma 5.
It is necessary to spend some time thinking about [159R] all of Lemma 5.
Now then, no creation
54
can make a body exist in different places, according to Corollary 2.
Therefore it is only God that can produce motion, and consequently He cannot
communicate His true power; that that is what was left to demonstrate.
Corollary 3
Since it is only God who can set bodies in motion, because it is only He who can make them
exist in different places successively, I will also say that He alone can modify my [160L] soul and
act upon it, since to modify a being, according to Lemma 8, is to protect it, and there is no
creature of any characteristic at all who has this power.
54
Or “creature.”