Third Meditation Latin English Heffernan
Third Meditation Latin/English translated by George Heffernan
MEDITATIO III. De Deo, qudd existat.
Claudam nunc oculos, aures obturabo, avocabo omnes sensus, imagines etiam rerum corporalium omnes vel ex cogitatione mea delebo, vel certe, quia hoc fieri vix potest, illas ut inanes & falsas nihili pendam, meque solum alloquendo & penitius inspiciendo, meipsum paulatim mihi magis notum & familiarem reddere conabor. Ego sum res cogitans, id est dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens, imaginans etiam & sentiens; ut enim ante animadverti, quamvis illa quae sentio vel imaginor extra me fortasse nihil sint, illos tamen cogitandi modos, quos sensus & imaginationes [35] appello, quatenus cogitandi quidam modi tantiim sunt, in me esse sum certus. Atque his paucis omnia recensui quae vere scio, vel saltem quae me scire hactenus animadverti. Nunc circumspiciam diligentiūs an forte adhuc apud me alia sint ad quae nondum respexi. Sum certus me esse rem cogitafitem. Nunquid ergo etiam scio quid requiratur ut de aliqufi re sim certus? Nempe in hac prima cognitione nihil aliud est, qt.tin clara quaedam & distincta perceptio ejus quod affirmo; quae sane non sufficeret ad me certum de rei veritate reddendum, si posset unquam con-tingere, ut aliquid, quod ita clare & distincte perciperem, fal- 118
MEDITATION III: Concerning God, that he exists.
[1.] Now I shall close my eyes. I shall stop up my ears. I shall call away all my senses. I shall also delete all the images of corporeal things from my cogitation — or rather shall I, because this can hardly be done, certainly regard these images, as empty and false, as being nothing— , and by conversing with and more penetratingly inspecting me alone I shall attempt to render me myself gradually more known and familiar to me. I am a cogitating thing, that is, a thing doubting, affirming, denying, understanding a few things, being ignorant of many things, willing, not willing, as well as imagining and sensing. For as I have noticed before, although those things which I sense or imagine would perhaps be nothing outside me, I am still certain that those modes of cogitating which I call "sensations" and "imaginations," in so far as they are only certain modes of cogitating, are in me. [2.] And with these few words I have reviewed all the things that I truly know, or at least all the things that I have hitherto noticed that I know. Now I will look around more diligently to see whether there might perhaps be still other things within me at which I have not yet looked. I am certain that I am a cogitating thing. Do I therefore also now know what would be required in order that I might be certain of anything? In this primary cognition there is, namely, nothing other than a certain clear and distinct perception of that which I affirm: which would indeed not suffice to render me certain of the truth of the matter if it could ever happen that something that I did so clearly and distinctly perceive were false. And so I now seem
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