SOURCE: "On the Idea of God: Incomprehensibility of Incompatibilities?" translated by Charles Paul, in Essays on the Philosophy and Science of René Descartes, edited by Stephen Voss, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 85–94.

[In the essay that follows, Beyssade examines the paradoxical claims that form the basis of Descartes' metaphysics: that God is incomprehensible and that, to know anything, one must have a clear and distinct understanding of God.]

Here I would like to raise the question of the idea of God and its nature, because in the metaphysics of Descartes one thesis remains constant from his lost first draft, written in 1628–29, and because this thesis is paradoxical. The thesis is that the entire methodical structure of scientific knowledge depends on an assured knowledge of God. The paradox is that God is asserted to be incomprehensible.

The totality of Cartesian science is based on metaphysics, and two fundamental principles intersect within this metaphysics or first philosophy: one is called the cogito (I think, therefore I am; and I am a think ing substance); the other is called the divine veracity (God exists; and he cannot deceive me). To appreciate the function assigned to the idea of God one must understand "in what sense it can be said that, if one is ignorant of God, one cannot have any certain knowledge of any other thing."¹ Any other thing: neither mathematics nor physics nor metaphysics. Mathematics, whose reasoning had provided the model of certainty and evidence before metaphysical reflection, does not suffice to give the atheist geometer a true and certain science; but Descartes believes that he "has found how one can demonstrate metaphysical truths in a manner that is more evident than the demonstrations of geometry,"² how one can demonstrate the existence of God "in the same manner" as one demonstrates a property of the triangle, "or in a still more evident manner."³ Physics, which is the trunk of the Cartesian tree, derives its scientific validity from its metaphysical roots: "this is how I have attempted to begin my studies; and I will tell you that I could not have discovered the foundations of physics if I had not sought them in this way."⁴ Here order consists in passing from causes to effects, "without basing my reasons on any other principle than the infinite perfections of God;"⁵ for "we will undoubtedly pursue the best method that can be used to discover the truth [optimam philosophandi viam] if, from our knowledge of his nature [ex ipsius Dei cognitione], we proceed to the explanation of the things he has created, and if we attempt to deduce it from the notions that naturally reside in our souls in such a way that we have a perfect knowledge [science] of it, that is, in such a way that we know the effects from the causes [scientiam perfectissimam, quae est effectuum per causas]."⁶ Finally, in metaphysics—a discipline that is as fundamental for the physics which follows it as for the mathematics that preceded it—if the truth of the cogito is the first discovered therein, it appears as derived when retrospectively we connect it to the knowledge of God: "In some manner I had within me the notion of the infinite before [priorem quodammo do] I had the notion of the finite, that is, that of God before that of myself."⁷ The common root of that triple dependence is to be sought in the general rule of the method: "the very thing that I just now took as a rule [and it matters little whether this just now refers to my past as a mathematician or to the cogito, which is my first assertion as a metaphysician], namely, that those things which we can very clearly and very distinctly perceive are all true, is guaranteed only because God is or exists, and is a perfect being, and because everything within us derives from him."⁸ The evident, that is, the unique criterion of the universal method, namely, clarity and distinctness, therefore hangs on the divine veracity.

Now, by a paradox that is as old as Cartesian metaphysics itself, God is incomprehensible. This thesis appears as early as the letters to Mersenne of spring 1630 on the creation of the eternal truths—the first echo to reach us from the approach adopted in the previous year. "We cannot comprehend [comprendre] the greatness of God, even though we know it [connaissions]."⁹ "Since God is a cause whose power exceeds the limits of human understanding, and since the necessity of these truths (the eternal truths of mathematics) does not exceed our knowledge," one must surmise "that they are something less than this incomprehensible power, and subject to it" (6 May). "I say that I know it, not that I conceive it or comprehend it, because one can know that God is infinite and all-powerful even though our mind, being finite, can neither conceive nor comprehend it" (27 May). Here incomprehensibility is linked to the greatness of God, and in particular to his power. It is, throughout Cartesian metaphysics, the characteristic of the infinite. "The infinite, qua infinite, is never truly comprehended, but it is nevertheless understood [intelligi, entendu]."¹⁰ "In order to have a true idea of the infinite, it is in no way necessary that one comprehend it, inasmuch as incomprehensibility is itself contained in the formal reason of the infinite."¹¹ We seem driven to ask whether the method, in requiring divine veracity, may not require a foundation which in its incomprehensibility would violate that very method. In basing the truth of everything that is evident on the divine infinity, the method seems to introduce an element that is irreducible to what is evident, an element perhaps intrinsically obscure and confused. We may go further. If the Cartesian God is not just provisionally misunderstood at the beginning of the process, but if he also reveals himself at the end of it to be definitively incomprehensible, is there not a danger that this avowed incomprehensibility in reality conceals internal contradictions, incompatibilities? "An infinite and incomprehensible being," Descartes had written on 6 May 1630.¹² "An absolutely incomprehensible and contradictory being" is how the atheist critic will translate it, for example Baron d'Holbach in the eighteenth century.¹³

Incomprehensibility or inconsistencies—that is our question concerning the idea of God and the nature of God in the metaphysics of Descartes. The paradox can be extended in various directions. We shall develop only one of those directions. We raise the question how the idea of God is capable of satisfying the requirements of the method. The method is absolutely universal. It requires that every perception (or cognition or idea) without exception be clear and distinct if the corresponding proposition (or judgment or statement) is to be included in science. The idea of God must therefore be clear and distinct, and, if the judgment concerning God is the first one of the true science, this idea must be recognized as "the clearest and most distinct of all those present in my mind."¹⁴ Is there no inconsistency between these two assertions, namely, that the idea of God is incomprehensible and that it is the clearest and most distinct of all ideas?

God, qua infinite, is incomprehensible. The idea of God is the clearest and most distinct idea of all. These two theses are both incontestably Cartesian. Are they incompatible? Is there an inconsistency here? We do not think so.

First we need to dig deeper into the correlation between (divine) incomprehensibility and distinctness or differentiation. In fact, from 1630 on, Descartes quite rigorously associates the knowledge of God and the recognition of his inconceivable infinity. The knowledge of God is doubly positive: we know at the same time that he exists and, with respect to a certain number of attributes (e.g., omnipotence, immutability, creator of existences and of essences), what he is. The recognition of his incomprehensibility is negative at first: the impossibility that we should embrace or encompass or master his nature. If clarity corresponds to presence, then incomprehensibility instead marks an absence, and this is why it seems connected to obscurity and confusion. This contrast is not false, but it is simplistic and one-sided. The truth is that starting with the letters of 1630, the divine incomprehensibility does not only have the negative function of limiting our knowledge of God by the recognition of something beyond which escapes our grasp. In a positive way it introduces into our idea of God the original and true knowledge of an incommensurable distance. Thanks to it God is not beyond the idea we have of him, like a hidden God, in which case our idea of him would not display him as he is. To the contrary, his greatness is given directly as present, without any possible confusion with our own properties. Incomprehensibility is the positive manner in which the infinite reveals itself to a finite mind as it is, that is to say, as incomparable. By a reversal illustrated in the comparison made between God and a king, what at first seems to be a principle of confusion is shown to be a principle of distinctness.¹⁵ "We cannot comprehend the greatness of God, even though we know it": the phrase "even though," introducing a subordinate clause, contrasts what we know (which is positive, or clear) with what seems negative and obscure (namely, what we cannot comprehend). "But this very fact, that we judge it to be incomprehensible, makes us esteem it the more": the phrase "this very fact" marks the reversal, from a subordinate clause indicating opposition into an explanation indicating assimilation. The failure to reduce (by means of dominating through comprehension) is actually a success; it is the way a finite mind recognizes and esteems the more what in fact can never be esteemed too much, since it is absolute greatness. "Just as a king possesses greater majesty when he is less familiarly known by his subjects": thus distance is a mark of majesty, and to decrease familiarity is not to decrease knowledge, but to disclose to a subject the true knowledge of his unequal relation to his king. On the condition, to be sure, that the distant king is not a king who is hidden or unknown: "provided, however, that this does not make them think that they are without a king, and provided that they know him sufficiently well not to have any doubts about it." The phrase "provided that" leads us back again to the subordinated opposition of the "even though" between knowledge that is sufficient to dispel doubt (presence, or clarity) and noncomprehension (absence, such as distance and distinctness).

This equilibrium is maintained in the great systematic expositions, notably in the Third Meditation.¹⁶ "It is useless to object that I do not comprehend the infinite, or [vel] that there are an infinity of other [alia] attributes within God that I can neither comprehend nor even perhaps reach by thought in any way at all." Here incomprehensibility seems to function as a barrier between two categories of attributes, the ones that I perceive clearly and distinctly and the rest. The first ones ensure knowledge that is sufficient to dispel doubt: "everything real and true that my mind conceives clearly and distinctly and that contains in itself some perfection is entirely contained and enclosed in that idea." Here clarity of presence extends to conception (the Latin only gives percipio), and, it seems at first, to comprehension as well. The other category of attributes ensure distance and majesty. I can neither comprehend them nor perhaps, for certain of them, have any other species of idea of them: this is pure absence or obscurity, which surrounds my knowledge with a black line, like the curtain behind which the king withdraws. "For it is of the nature of infinity that my finite and limited nature cannot comprehend it." The axiom which makes of incomprehensibility the true relation between the infinite and the finite can be counted on to bring us back from opposition (alia) to an explanation indicating assimilation.

"And it is sufficient that I conceive this well [me hoc ipsum intelligere], and that [ac] I judge that all things that I conceive clearly and in which I know there to be some perfection, and perhaps also an infinity of others [atque etiam forte alia innumera] of which I am ignorant, are in God formally or eminently, in order for [ut] the idea I have of him to be the most true, the most clear, and the most distinct of all those existing in my mind." Two conditions must be met in order that the idea of God attains the maximum of clarity and distinctness. It is sufficient that I perceive thoroughly the link between (positive) infinity and incomprehensibility: hoc ipsum, "this very thing," was precisely the reversal of 1630. But this is not the only condition: it is also necessary that I endow God with predicates; and in an attenuated form the ac takes up again the phrase "provided that" of 1630. These predicates are of two kinds. One kind are unknown—innumerable alia which escape me entirely. The other kind, the first ones named, correspond to perfections recognized and identified by me; they constitute the positive element without which there could be no clarity.

A commentary for the benefit of Clerselier, of 23 April, 1649, fixes the doctrine once and for all. It refers quite specifically to our phrase "and it is sufficient that I understand this very thing well," which I have labeled the reversal. Descartes clarifies: "Yes, it is sufficient that I understand this very thing well, namely that God is not comprehended by me, in order that I understand [intelligam] God according to the truth of the thing [juxta rei veritatens] and such as he is [qualis est]."¹⁷ And so incomprehensibility is not an obstacle or a limit to our intellectual understanding of God; on the contrary, it reveals God in his truth, in his real and positive transcendence. This incomprehensibility does not reveal a regrettable and provisional failure of my limited mind, but instead a necessary incommensurability between the infinite and any finite mind, even one more perfect than my own, even the mind of an angel. The truth of my idea is ensured thanks to this lack of comprehension, this intellectual understanding of the incomprehensibility, and not in spite of it. Must we say, with Alquié, that our intellectual understanding of God consists "simply in the apprehension of his incomprehensible character"?¹⁸ To do so would be to forget the necessity of the other element, namely, the presence which is required by clarity. The letter to Clerselier restores to it all the amplitude of the subordinate clause; it revives the overly discreet ac to its true value, namely, "provided that." "Provided that in addition [modo prae terea] I judge that there are in him all the perfections that I know clearly [clare intelligo] and moreover [et insuper] many others which I cannot comprehend." Incomprehensibility is not devoid of perfections; it is superadded to them: the fact that these two terms are externally related, which is implied by the subordinate phrase (modo, "provided that"), is accentuated by praeterea, "in addition." And among the required perfections two species are recorded anew: those of which I have a clear intellection and those, much more numerous (multo plures), which I cannot comprehend. Does this mean that I comprehend the first kind? One might think so, and assimilate my perception of them to a conception, and even a comprehension. Only the second kind, the alia, would then be incomprehensible.

But this would be a mistake. This error must be corrected in order to present Descartes's doctrine in its perfect coherence. The end of the Third Meditation is instructive here. For in fact it discusses, not the divine perfections of which I am ignorant (no doubt there are an infinity of them), but those I know. God exists, therefore, "this same God, I say, the idea of which is within me, that is to say the one who possesses all those exalted perfections [illas perfectiones] which I can, as for myself, not comprehend, but in one manner or another [quocunque modo] reach [attingere] by thought."¹⁹ In the strict sense of the word my thought can never comprehend a single divine perfection. But there are a certain number of them which I can reach and, so to speak, touch by thought, in contrast to an infinity of others of which I am completely ignorant. The perfections to which I can attain are those of which I find marks within myself, such as my knowledge, my free will, my power. I comprehend those perfections within myself from the inside, intimately—even my freedom, which is often said to be infinite.²⁰ They are like traces which allow me to form the idea of a divine (omniscient) understanding, a divine will, a divine omnipotence.²¹ I am able to form a con cept or a conception of each of them, and I should then conceive them in God as infinite or as indefinite, the two adjectives, usually contrasted, here being equivalent, not distinct from one another.²² But we must not allow this legitimate conception to become transformed erroneously into a comprehension, something that would correspond to a drift toward the univocal. It is precisely because all the intelligible perfections are united in God that each of them is, properly speaking, infinite, and none of them can be truly comprehended by me, but only reached by thought or conceived or, still better, understood (entendu).

Let us take up the train of thought as the Second Replies explicates it. It is necessary to begin with those "attributes of God of which we recognize some trace within ourselves": we comprehend them within ourselves, and, were no distance or distinctness to be added to their presence and clarity, we would be content to transfer them, in amplified form, into God, which would ensure the strict univocity of the attributes by turning God into a man writ large.²³ "But in addition [praeterea] we understand [intelligimus, concevons] in God an absolute immensity, simplicity, and unity which embraces and contains all his other attributes, and of which we find no instance either in ourselves or elsewhere."²⁴ This absolute unity, which is one of the most exalted of the divine perfections, is intelligible but neither comprehensible nor even conceivable. It ensures the absolute inseparability of the divine perfections, which is the same thing as the absolute simplicity of God, or what Spinoza was to call, by contrast with that which is merely infinite in its own kind, the absolutely infinite.²⁵ This unity, which is not comprehensible by a finite mind, is itself comprehensive. Non tarn capere quam … capi: this divine unity is not comprehended, "grasped together," by finite minds; instead, it grasps them.²⁶ And—what is a different matter—it grasps or comprehends, embraces, complectentem, all the divine attributes.²⁷ Undoubtedly God comprehends himself; that is, he has an adequate concept of all his properties, both those we know and those of which we are ignorant.²⁸ But it is different for us. First of all, there are attributes of which we have no idea: these are the alia, perhaps innumerable, which are as profoundly unknown as, for Spinoza, all the attributes except for extension and thought are unknown. For Descartes, only revelation is capable eventually of rendering them accessible to us. Then there are attributes of which there are traces within us (e.g., knowledge, will, and power). We may now return to them without risk of univocity.²⁹ For their union with the other attributes, in other words, their connection with the absolute unity on which they depend, deprives them of any possibility of being comprehended. They are nonetheless conceivable, for their relation to our own perfections precludes our speaking of a simple equivocity. What we have here is analogy in the most traditional sense, since the clarity of presence (which alone leads to identity, to comprehension, to univocity) is qualified by distance as distinctness (which distance alone leads to otherness, to ignorance, to equivocity). The infinite is intelligible for the very reason that it is not comprehensible.

Let us conclude by investigating how the idea of God works in relation to the unique and universal method, whose general rule requires clarity and distinctness. We discover that these characteristics, whose conjunction defines the evident, undergo two successive transformations in the course of the operation carried out by metaphysics. Before that operation, clarity and distinctness had been separated, after the example of mathematics, which had served in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind and in Part II of the Discourse on Method both as their prototype and as their model. For an object presented to the view of the mind and made subject to its command, clarity signifies presence (the presence of a spectacle to a spectator, ob-versari, something which is there to see);³⁰ and distinctness signifies difference (the difference between two objects next to each other, which are distinguished through juxta-posing them, as in the case of a polygon with 1,000 sides next to one with 999 sides).

The procedure of the cogito constitutes the first subversion: although the same general rule of evidence, namely, the rule of clarity and distinctness, is derived by reflection on this first truth, the prototype and model has changed, and with it the meaning of the criterion. For a mind which itself makes the discovery of itself, and gradually makes itself better known and more familiar to itself, clarity signifies presence to oneself (the consciousness of a subject which senses and experiences itself, in se con-versus);³¹ and distinctness signifies exclusion (by means of doubt I make myself distinct, in that I reject through denial everything I face, so that I may grasp myself on each occasion as the subject of that exclusion).³² Note well that nothing in the rule has changed—either its universality nor its univocity. The new example takes up within itself the previous ones, and deepens them; it leaves the mathematically evident with all of its brilliance, and simply lays claim to being still more evident, on the basis of the very criteria of the older prototype, which is not so much lowered in class as surpassed in class, and whose criteria have not so much changed as they have manifested what remained implicit in them, yet to be perceived.

The same operation is redoubled in the passage from the cogito to God. For the infinite, the intellectual grasp of which emerges as soon as I comprehend my finitude, clarity signifies the implicit presence of the being (an immediately given reality, a perfect unity prior to all limitation and fragmentation); and distinctness signifies transcendence (separation by distance, by incomprehensibility, which eliminates all confusion by establishing an insurmountable dissimilarity).

Of course, at each passage it is possible to reject the new model, to reduce rationality to the previous model, to consider the shift in foundation as foreign to the method. But what is characteristic of the Cartesian enterprise is that its methodic procedures remain univocal, and in this sense the idea of God must occupy the first place according to the very order of the true science.³³ That is why this idea must be maximally evident according to the method itself.

It is therefore not sufficient to set in opposition God, who is incomprehensible, and the idea of God, which is clear and distinct. It is not sufficient to distinguish the properties of the idea from those of its object: the idea of red is not red, the idea of a sphere is not spherical, and the idea of obscurity may not be obscure, but clear and distinct.³⁴ Certainly this difference between the idea and its object is important. In the case under consideration, God is infinite but the idea of God is not infinite: it is, on the contrary, finite and suited to the small capacity of our minds (finita et ad modulum ingenii nostri accommodata).³⁵ Conversely, if the idea of God is the most clear and the most distinct of all, it would be absurd to speak of God as being clear and distinct: this characteristic pertains to an idea, not to its object. But incomprehensibility, which pertains to the nature of God, or to the nature of the infinite, is also a characteristic of his idea. Idea … infiniti, ut sit vera, nullo modo debet comprehendi: it is emphatically the idea of God, and not God himself, that is spoken of (pace the overzealous translation of Clerselier, not reviewed here by Descartes); and it is this idea which, if it is to be true, must not in any way be comprehended.³⁶ A characteristic of the object, in this case God or the infinite, which is incomprehensible, is therefore introduced into the idea of the object: this idea, first of all (and then perhaps many other ideas, later on), cannot in any way be comprehended. But it is precisely in the case of this idea that this characteristic is eminently positive. It establishes the true relation—once it is noticed, the difference is incommensurable and impossible to miss—between the Being which it represents on the one hand and any knowable object and my knowing mind on the other hand. It is because God is incomprehensible that the idea of him is also incomprehensible; and it is not even though this idea is incomprehensible, but rather because it is incomprehensible that it is the most clear and the most distinct of all.³⁷

Notes

¹Principles of Philosophy I, a. 13, developing Meditation III: AT [Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery, 13 vols., Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1879–1913] VII, 36, 11. 28–29; in CSM [The Philosophical Writings of Descartes; ed. J. G. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch; two vols.; Cambridge University Press, 1985] II, 25: "for if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else."

² To Mersenne, 15 April 1630: AT I, 144, 11. 14–17; Descartes: Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. Ferdinand Alquié, 3 vols. (Paris: Gamier, 1963–73) I, 259 and n. 1 (henceforth abbreviated FA).

³Discourse on Method IV: AT VI, 36, 11. 24 and 27–28, developed in Meditation V: AT VII, 65, 11. 28–29; AT IX, 52; FA II, 472 and n. 2; in HR [The Philosophical Works of Descartes; trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911–12; reprinted, with corrections, 1931; reprinted New York: Dover, 1955] I, 104: "in the same manner … or even more evidently still."

⁴ To Mersenne, 15 April 1630: AT I, 144, 11. 8–11, developed in the letter to Mersenne of 28 January 1641: AT III, 297–298; FA II, 316–317.

⁵Discourse V: AT VI, 43, 11. 6–8; FA I, 615 and n. 2; in HR I, 108: "without resting my reasons on any other principle than the infinite perfections of God."

⁶Principles I, a. 24 (on the difference between the Latin and the French, see FA III, 106, n. 1).

⁷ Meditation III: AT VII, 45, 11. 27–29; AT IX, 36; in CSM II, 31: "my perception of the infinite, that is God, is in some way prior to my perception of the finite, that is myself."

⁸Discourse IV: AT VI, 38, 11. 16–21; FA I, 611 and n. 1; in HR I, 105: "that which I have just taken as a rule, that is to say, that all the things that we very clearly and very distinctly conceive of are true, is certain only because God is or exists."

⁹ To Mersenne, 15 April, 6 May, and 27 May 1630: respectively, AT I, 145, 11. 21–22; 150, 11. 18–22; 152, 11. 9–13; respectively, FA I, 260 and n. 4; 265 and n. 3; 267.

¹⁰ First Responses: AT VII, 112, 11. 21–23; AT IX, 89; FA II, 531; in CSM II, 81 (and n. 3): "the infinite, qua infinite, can in no way be grasped. But it can still be understood."

¹¹ Fifth Responses: AT VII, 368, 11. 2–4; FA II, 811 and n. 2; in CSM II, 253: "for the idea of the infinite, if it is to be a true idea, cannot be grasped at all, since the impossibility of being grasped is contained in the formal definition of the infinite."

¹² To Mersenne, 6 May 1630: AT I, 150, 11. 6–7; FA I, 265.

¹³Le bon sens du Curé J. Meslier, ch. 40, a work published anonymously in 1772 by d'Holbach, its author.

¹⁴ Meditation III: AT VII, 46, 11. 27–28; AT IX, 37; HR I, 166; CSM II, 32.

¹⁵ To Mersenne, 15 April 1630: AT I, 145, 11. 21–28; FA I, 260.

¹⁶ Meditation III: AT VII, 46, 11. 16–28; AT IX, 36–37; HR I, 166; CSM II, 32 and n. 1. On the relation between this passage and the end of the Third Meditation: AT VII, 52, 11. 2–6; AT IX, 41; HR I, 171; CSM II, 35, a passage which will be examined later, see J.-L. Marion, "Descartes et l'ontothéologie," Bulletin de la Societé Française de Philosophie (24 April 1982), 143; discussed by J.-M. Beyssade in Bulletin cartésien XIII, Archives de Philosophie 47, no. 3 (July-September 1984): 47; taken up again in Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes (Presses Universitaires de France: Epimethée, 1986), 119–120 and n. 54. It seems to us that the first passage conjoins comprehendere and attingere ("nec comprehendere nec attingere"), while the second one opposes them ("non comprehendere sed attingere"); but this is because the first passage does not deal with the idea of God in general; it deals only with the alia, the unknown perfections ("which I can neither comprehend nor even reach"), whereas the second one deals with the known perfections ("which I can certainly reach in thought but not comprehend").

¹⁷ To Clerselier, 23 April 1649: AT V, 356, 11. 22–27; FA III, 924 and n. 2.

¹⁸ F. Alquié, La découverte métaphysique de l'homme chez Descartes (Presses Universitaires de France, 1960 and 1966), ch. 10, 216 and n. 2, a formula developed by H. Gouhier in a remarkable commentary to which we owe a great deal, La pensée métaphysique de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1962), ch. 8, ii, 212 and n. 28.

¹⁹ Meditation III: AT VII, 52, 11. 2–6; AT IX, 41; HR I, 171; in CSM II, 35: "God, a God, I say, the very same being the idea of whom is within me, that is, the possessor of all the perfections which I cannot grasp, but can somehow reach in my thought."

²⁰Principles I, a. 41: AT VIII, 20, 11. 25, 28–29; HR I, 235.

²¹ Second Responses: AT VII, 137; AT IX, 108; FA II, 560 and n. 1; CSM II, 98–99. We comment on this passage later.

²²Indefinitae, sive infinitae, Second Responses: AT VII, 137, 11. 24–25; CSM II, 99, 1. 1: "indefinite (or infinite)." Cf. Conversation with Burman: AT V, 154; Descartes' Conversation with Burman, ed. John Cottingham (Oxford, 1976), 14–15.

²³ To Regius, 24 May 1640: AT III, 64; FA II, 244 and n. 1.

²⁴ Second Responses: AT VII, 137: 11. 15–18; AT IX, 108; FA II, 560 and n. 2; CSM II, 98–99; the relevant passage is AT VII, 137, 1. 8–138, 1. 1.

²⁵ Meditation III: AT VII, 50, 11. 16–19; AT IX, 40; HR I, 169–170; CSM II, 34.

²⁶ First Responses: AT VII, 114, 1. 7; AT IX, 90; in CSM II, 82: "not so much to take hold of them as to surrender to them."

²⁷ Second Responses: AT VII, 137, 1. 17; AT IX, 108; in CSM II, 98: "which embraces all other attributes."

²⁸ On adequate concepts, cf. Second, Third (no. 11), and Fifth Responses: respectively, AT VII, 140, 11. 3–4; 189, 11. 17–18; and 365, 11. 3–4. The debate of the Fourth Responses (AT VII, 220) is continued in the Conversation with Burman: AT V, 151–152; Descartes' Conversation, 10–11.

²⁹Univoce, Second Responses: AT VII, 137, 1. 22; in CSM II, 98: "in the same sense." On the relation between Cartesianism and analogy, see Gouhier, La pensée métaphysique, ch. 8, ii and iii; and J.-L. Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981).

³⁰Obversari, Third Meditation: AT VII, 35, 11. 21–22; in HR I, 158: "were presented to my mind"; in CSM II, 24: "appeared before my mind."

³¹In se conversa, preface, Meditations: AT VII, 7–8; in HR I, 137: "reflecting on itself"; in CSM II, 7: "when directed towards itself."

³²Principles I, 60: AT VIII, 29, 1. 2, excludere; in HR I, 244: "shut off from itself."

³³ Marion, Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, seems to us to be completely right in speaking, not of irrationality, but of "another rationality" (p. 243). But he believes that this metaphysical rationality must be "shielded from the method's domain of application" (p. 242, and again pp. 324–325, n. 29); we are not sure that this is necessary.

³⁴ Second Responses: AT VII, 147, 11. 18–27; AT IX, 115; FA II, 573 and n. 1; CSM II, 105.

³⁵ First Response: AT VII, 114, 11. 14–17; AT IX, 90; FA II, 533; in CSM II, 82: "knowledge of the finite kind just described, which corresponds to the small capacity of our minds."

³⁶ Fifth Responses: AT VII, 368, 11. 2–3; Clerselier's translation in FA II, 811 and n. 2.

³⁷ I am deeply indebted to Charles Paul and Stephen Voss for many linguistic and philosophical emendations. The remaining mistakes are mine.