Arnauld on Ideas

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190]

H PTER IV

That what the author of The Search for Truth says about the nature of

ideas in his ook l l is based only on fantasies which we retain from the

prejudices of childhood

Since all men were first children, and at that time were concerned almost

only with their bodies and with what struck their senses, they lived for

a long time without knowing any vision other than bodily vision, which

they attributed to their eyes, and they could not avoid noticing two things

about that vision. First, the object had to be in front of their eyes for

them to see it, a requirement which they called

presence

This made them

consider that presence of the object as a necessary condition of seeing.

21 Second, they sometimes saw visible things in mirrors, in water or in other

things which represented them. As a result, they mistakenly believed that

it was not the bodies themselves that they saw, but their images. For a

long time that was their only idea of what they called seeing, whence they

became accustomed, by long habit, to join to the idea expressed by this

word one or other of these two circumstances, that the object be present in

direct vision, or that it be seen only through its image, in reflected vision

by means of mirrors. But we know how hard it is to separate ideas which

we are accustomed to finding together in our mind, and that this is one of

the most common causes of our errors.

But in time, men came to realize that they knew diverse things which

they could not see with their eyes, either because they were too small

or were invisible, like the air, or because they were too far away, like

cities in foreign countries we have never visited. That is what made them

believe that there are things we see by the mind and not by the eyes. They

would have done better to conclude that they saw nothing by the eyes, and

everything by the mind, although in diverse ways. But it has taken them

22

a good deal of time to get that far. Nevertheless, since they imagined that

191 mental vision is rather similar to the vision they had attributed to the eyes,

they followed the customary procedure and transferred this word to the


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ON TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS

13

mind, together with the same conditions they had imagined accompanied

it when it was applied to the eyes.

The first was the presence of the object: they took it as a certain and

undoubted principle, for the mind just as for the eyes, that an object must

be present to be seen. But the philosophers, i.e., those who believed they

knew nature better than the vulgar and who never ceased being taken in

by that principle without ever having examined it well, were brought to a

halt when they tried to use it to explain mental visi6n, because some of

them had recognized that the soul was immaterial, while the others, who

believed that it was corporeal, thought that it was a subtle matter, trapped

in the body. They thought that it could not get out to seek external objects,

and that external objects could not come in to be joined to it. How then

could it see them, since an object cannot be seen if it is not present? To

escape from this difficulty, they had recourse to another way of seeing

which they associated with this word in connection with bodily vision,

namely, seeing things not through themselves but through their images, 23

as when we see a body in a mirror. As I have already said, they believed,

and almost everyone still believes, that in that case we do not see the

bodies, but only their images. They were confirmed in that position, and

this prejudice had so much power over their mind that they did not think

there was the least reason to doubt it. Thus, assuming it as a certain and

incontestable truth, they were concerned only to inquire about what those

images could be, those

beings represent tive of bodies

which the mind

needs in order to perceive bodies.

This prejudice was further strengthened by another factor, which is

connected with what we have just mentioned and is hardly different from

it, namely, our natural tendency to want to know things by means of

examples and comparisons. Thus, if we pay close attention, we will

recognize that it is always hard to believe something which is unusual and

unexampled. Therefore when men began to realize that we see things by

means of the mind, they did not consult themselves and attend to what

they saw clearly happening in their own mind when they had knowledge

of things, but instead imagined that they would understand it better by

means of some comparison. Now ever since the scourge of sin, our love

of the body has increased our interest in it, and this has made us think that 192

we know bodily things better and more easily than spiritual ones. So they 24

thought that they ought to search in the bodily realm for some comparison

which would make us understand how we see, by means of the mind,

everything that we conceive, and principally how we see material things.

They failed to note that this was not the way to illuminate, but rather to


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Antoine Arnauld

obscure, what would have been very clear to them if they had been content

to study it in themselves. Mind and body are two very different and, as

it were, opposed natures, whose properties consequently are not likely to

have anything in common, so that the attempt to explain one by means

of the other can only cause confusion. It is also one of the most general

sources of error, that on a thousand occasions we attribute the properties

of mind to body and the properties of body to mind.

Be that as it may, they were not enlightened enough to avoid that trap.

With all their heart, they wanted a comparison drawn from bodies which

would enable both themselves and others better to understand as they

thought how our mind can see material things. That is what they found,

and what people still find, the most difficult thing to understand. They

had no trouble finding a comparison. It seemed to offer itself, through that

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other prejudice, the belief that there must be at least a great resemblance

between things which have the same name. But, as I have already pointed

out, they had given the same name to bodily vision and to spiritual vision,

which made them reason thus: Something rather similar must happen in

mental vision and in bodily vision. Now in the latter, we can only see

what is present, i.e., what is in front of our eyes, or, if we do sometimes

see things which are not in front of our eyes, it is only through images

which represent them to us. Therefore it must be the same in the case of

mental vision. That was sufficient to make a certain principle out of this

maxim: that by our mind, we see only objects which are present to our

soul, not in the sense of an

o jective

presence, according to which a thing

is objectively in our mind merely because our mind knows it, so that to

say that a thing is objectively in our mind and consequently is present to

it and to say that it is known by the mind, is only to say the same thing in

different ways. They did not take the word presence in that way. Rather

[193] they understood it in the sense of a presence prior to the perception of the

object, which they judged necessary in order that the object be in a position

to be perceived, as they thought they had discovered was necessary in

26

vision. Thence they passed quickly to the other principle, that since the

bodies which our souls know cannot be present through themselves, they

must be present through images which represent them. The philosophers

were even more confirmed in this opinion than the people, because they

had the same thought about bodily vision. They imagined that even our

eyes perceive their objects only by means of images which they called

intentional species, of which they thought they had a convincing proof

from what happens in a room which is entirely closed off except for one

hole, in front of which is placed a lens. If a white cloth is spread a


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ON TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS 15

certain distance back from the lens, the light from outside forms images

on the cloth which perfectly represent to people inside the room the objects

outside opposite the hole.

Therefore they took this other principle to be undeniable: that the

soul sees bodies only through images or species which represent them.

They drew different conclusions from it, depending on their different

ways of philosophizing, some of them very dangerous. Thus, consider

how Gassendi reasons, or rather those whose thoughts he puts forward as

objections which he wants Descartes to satisfy: Our soul has knowledge of

bodies only through the ideas which represent them. But those ideas could

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not represent extended things unless they were material and extended them

selves. Therefore they are of that kind. But in order to enable the soul to

know bodies they must be present to the soul i.e. be received in the soul.

Therefore the soul must be extended and consequently corporeal. However

damnable that conclusion, I do not see that it can easily be avoided if the

principles are accepted. That ought to make us judge that the principles

cannot be true.

Nevertheless, the other philosophers, who would have been horrified

at such a consequence, thought they could avoid it by saying that the

ideas of bodies are at first material and extended, but are spiritualized

before being received into the soul, just as gross matter is made subtle by

passing through a still. I do not know whether they used that comparison,

but it amounts to the same thing when they say: that the ideas of bodies [ 9

which they call impressed species being at first material and sensible

are rendered intelligible and immaterial by the agent intellect and by that

means become suitable for being received into the patient intellect.

I am not surprised that most philosophers have reasoned in that way, 28

after blindly accepting these two principles as incontestable: that the soul

can perceive bodies only if they are present and that bodies can be present

only through certain representative beings called ideas or species which

are similar to them and take their place and which are intimately united in

their stead with the soul. But it is most astonishing that the author of The

Search for Truth who professes to follow a completely different path, has

accepted them, like the other philosophers, without any other examination.

For he, better than anyone else, knows that the comparison of bodily

with spiritual vision on which all this seems to be founded, is false in

every way, not only because it is the soul which sees, and not the eyes,

but also because, even if vision occurred in the eyes, or in the soul insofar

as it is in the eyes, there would be nothing in this vision which could

justify the two claims made by the scholastic philosophers about what


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Antoine Arnauld

must take place in bodily vision. The first is the presence of the object,

which they say must be intimately united to the soul. But it is quite the

opposite in bodily vision, for although when speaking in a popular way

we say that the object must be present to the eyes in order for us to see it,

which was the cause of their error, nevertheless, speaking in an exact and

philosophical way, it is entirely the opposite. The object must be absent

29 from them, since it must be at a distance, and if it were in the eye or too

close to the eye, it could not be seen.

It is the same in the case of the second condition, which has to do with

certain representative beings which cause us to know objects because they

are similar to them. He very well knows that our eyes see nothing of the

sort, nor our soul through our eyes. He knows that when we see ourselves

in a mirror, it is ourselves we see, and not our image. He very well knows

that those small entities flying through the air, which the scholastics call

intentional species

are only chimeras. Finally, he very well knows that,

although the objects we look at form quite perfect images at the back of

our eyes, our eyes certainly do not see those small images painted on

the retina, and that they do not contribute to vision in that way but in a

different way, which Descartes has explained in his Dioptrics

\95 Thus it is quite surprising that he, who knew so well the falsehood of

all that has given rise to those prejudices, let himself be so persuaded of

them that he took them without hesitation as the unshakable foundation of

everything he says on this topic. That is what he does in Book III, Part II,

30 which deals with The Nature of Ideas and whose first chapter bears the

title:

What is meant by an idea That they truly exist and are necessary for

the perception of material objects from which one can see what he plans

to prove. Observe how he tries to establish it on certain principles.

I believe

he says,

that everyone will agree

note how they speak who

want us to judge of things according to common prejudices

that we do

not perceive objects outside of us through themselves Wesee the sun the

stars and countless objects outside of us and it is not likely that the soul

leaves the body and so to speak goes for a stroll in the sky in order to

contemplate all those objects there Hence it does not see them through

themselves and the immediate object of our mind when it sees the sun for

example is not the sun but rather something which is intimately united to

our soul and that is what I call the idea So by the word idea, I here mean

nothing other than the immediate object or the object closest to the mind

when it perceives something It must be carefully noted that in order for

the mind to perceive some object it is absolutely necessary that the idea

of that object be actually present to it That cannot be doubted


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Behold, Sir, his approach. He does not examine whether his assumption

ought to be accepted without scrutiny. He takes it as indubitable because

it is ordinarily thought to be so. He has no doubt about it. He takes it 31

as a first principle which requires only a little attention to be put beyond

doubt. Therefore he does not take the trouble to persuade us by any proof.

He is content to tell us that he thinks everyone agrees

Nevertheless, you see that after having told us in the very first chapter of

his work, that the idea of an object was the same thing as the perception

of that object he here gives us an entirely different notion of it. No

longer is it the perception of bodies which he calls their idea; rather it is a

certain being representative of bodies, which he claims is needed to make

up for the absence of bodies because they cannot be intimately united

to the soul in the same way as the representative being which, for that

reason, is the immediate object and the object closest to the mind when it

[ 9

perceives something He does not say that it is in the mind, and that it is

a modification of the mind, as he ought to say if by it he meant only the

perception of the object; but only that it is the closest to the mind because

he regards that representative being as something really distinct from our

mind as well as from the object.

That is apparent again in what he says on the following page, that the

soul and everything in it, such as its thoughts and its modes of thinking,

are seen without ideas. That would be an obvious contradiction if, by

the idea of an object he meant only the perception of the object for that

would be to say that the soul perceives itself without perceiving itself, and

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that it knows itself without knowing itself. Therefore it is clear that he

wanted to indicate that in order to know itself, the soul does not need a

representative being to make up for its own absence, because it is always

present to itself.

Finally, what he says at the end of the chapter shows that what he

means by the word idea in that place cannot be the perception of the

object but that he means a representative being which takes the place of

the object in the knowledge of material things, because they are absent

and the soul can see only what is present to it.

Here I speak principally

of material things which certainly cannot be united to our soul in the way

necessary for them to be perceived because since they are extended and

the soul is not there is no proportion between them Furthermore our

soul does not leave the body in order to take the measure of the heavens

and consequently it can see the bodies outside of itself only through ideas

3 Book III, Part II, Chapter I, p. 190.

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n to ine rn uld

which represent them. Everyone should agree with this.

One could not

speak with greater confidence if he were proposing only things as clear as

the axioms of geometry. He continues in the same tone.

33 Therefore we affirm that it is absolutely necessary that our ideas of

bodies and of all other objects that we do not perceive through themselves

come from the same bodies and objects or otherwise that our soul has

the power of producing those ideas or that God produced them with the

soul when he created it or that he produces them whenever we think of

an object or that the soul has in itself all the perfections that it sees in

bodies or finally that the soul is united with a supremely perfect being

who contains in general all the perfections of created beings.

If those assumed beings representative of bodies were not pure chimeras,

197

I would admit that they would have to be in the soul in one of those five

ways. But since I believe that nothing is more chimerical, I am astonished

at what our friend, who has destroyed so many other chimeras, has put

forward in this case.

The conclusion has the same air of confidence, but it is accompanied

by some modest terms not used by those who are fully convinced that

they are putting forward nothing which is not of the greatest clarity.

We can see objects only in one of these ways. Let us examine which

34 seems the most likely without anxiety and without fear of the difficulty of

the question. Perhaps we will resolve it clearly enough even though we do

not claim here to give demonstrations unquestionable for every sort ofper

son but only proofs very convincing for those at least who meditate upon

them with serious attention for it would perhaps appear presumptuous to

speak otherwise.

For my part, Sir, I am not afraid to seem presumptuous in saying two

things. One, that those ideas, taken in the sense of

representative beings

distinct from perceptions, are not needed by our soul in order to see bodies,

and consequently that it is not necessary that they be in the soul in any

of those five ways. The other, that the least likely of all those ways and

that by which one can least explain how our soul sees bodies, is the one

which our friend prefers above all the others.


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H PTER V

That we can prove geometrically the falsity of

ideas,

taken in the sense

of

representative

beings Definitions Axioms and Postulates to serve as

principles for the demonstrations

I believe, Sir, that I can demonstrate to our friend the falsity of

those

representativebeings

provided that he agrees to follow in good faith what 35

he himself has said so many times we ought to observe in order to discover

truth in metaphysics as well as in the other natural sciences, namely, that

we ought to accept as true only what is clear and evident, and not make

use of assumed entities of which we have no clear idea, to explain the 198

effects of nature, bodily or spiritual. I will even attempt to prove it by the

method of the geometers.

finitions

1. The substance which thinks, I call soul or mind.

2. To think, to know, to perceive, are the same thing.

3. I also take the

idea

of an object and the perception of an object to

be the same thing. I set aside the question of whether there are other

things which can be called

ideas

But it is certain that there are

ideas

in my sense and that these ideas are attributes or modifications of our

soul.

4. I say that an object is present to our mind when our mind perceives and

knows it. I postpone the question of whether there is another presence

of the object, prior to knowledge and necessary for the object to be

in a position to be known. But the way in which I sayan object is

present to the mind when it is known is beyond question. This sort of 36

presence makes us say that a person we love is often present to our

mind because we often think of him.

5. I say that a thing is

objectively

in my mind when I conceive of it.

When I conceive of the sun, of a square or of a sound, then the sun,

the square or that sound is objectively in my mind whether or not it


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Antoine Arnauld

exists outside of my mind.

6. I have said that I take the perception and the idea to be the same thing.

Nevertheless it must be noted that this thing, although only one, has

two relations: one to the soul which it modifies, the other to the thing

perceived insofar as it is objectively in the soul; and that the word

perception indicates more directly the first relation and the word idea

the second. So the perception of a square indicates more directly my

soul as perceiving a square and the idea of a square indicates more

directly the square insofar as it is objectively in my mind. This remark

is very important for the solution of many difficulties which are based

only on the fact that it is not well enough understood that these are not

two different entities but one and the same modification of our soul,

which includes essentially the two relations, because I cannot have a

perception which is not at the same time the perception of my mind, as

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perceiving, and the perception of some thing, as perceived, and nothing

can be objectively in my mind which is what

call the idea unless

199 my mind perceives it.

7. When attack representative beings as superfluous, I am referring to

those which are assumed to be really distinct from ideas taken in the

sense of perceptions. I am careful not to attack every kind of repre-

sentative being or modality, since I hold that it is clear to whoever

reflects on what takes place in his own mind, that all our perceptions

are modalities which are essentially representative.

8. When it is said that our ideas and our perceptions for I take them to be

the same thing represent to us the things that we conceive, and are the

images of them, it is in an entirely different sense than when we say that

pictures represent their originals and are images of them, or that words,

spoken or written, are images of our thoughts. With regard to ideas,

it means that the things that we conceive are objectively in our mind

and in our thought. But this way of being objectively in the mind is

so peculiar to mind and to thought, being what in particular constitutes

their nature, that we would look in vain for anything similar in the

38 realm of what is not mind and thought. As I have already remarked,

what confuses this entire matter of ideas is that people want to use

comparisons with corporeal things to explain the way in which objects

are represented by our ideas, even though there can be no true relation

here between bodies and minds.

9. When I say that the idea is the same thing as the perception I mean by

the perception, anything that my mind conceives by the first apprehen-

sion that it has of things, by the judgments which it makes about them,


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or by what it discovers about them in reasoning. Thus although there

are infinitely many shapes whose nature I know only by long processes

of reasoning, yet when have carried out the reasoning, have as true

an idea of those figures as have of a circle or a triangle, which can

conceive straightaway. Although perhaps am entirely sure that there

truly is an earth, a sun and stars outside my mind only by reasoning,

the idea which represents to me the earth, the sun and the stars as truly

existing outside my mind no less merits the name idea than if had

it without need of reasoning.

10. There is another ambiguity to clear up.

The idea of an object

must [200]

not be confused with

the object conceived

unless one adds,

insofar

as it is objectively in the mind

For to be

conceived with regard to 39

the sun

which is in the sky, is only an extrinsic denomination, which

is only a relation to the perception that have of it. But this is not

what should be understood when one says that the idea of the sun is

the sun itself insofar as it is objectively in my mind What is called

being objectively in the mind

is not only being the object, at which

my thought terminates, but it is being in my mind

intelligibly

in the

specific way in which objects are in the mind. The idea of the sun

is

the sun insofar as it is in my mind not formally as it is in the sky but

objectively i.e., in the way that objects are in our thought, which is a

way of being much more imperfect than that by which the sun is really

existent, but which nevertheless we cannot say is nothing and does not

need a cause.

11. When I say that the soul does this or that, and that it has the faculty

of doing this or that,

mean by the word to do the perception that it

has of objects, which is one of its modifications, without concerning

myself about the efficient cause of that modification, i.e., with whether

God gives it to the soul or the soul gives it to itself. That does not

concern the nature of

ideas

but only their origin, which is an entirely

different question.

12. What I cal1 a faculty is the power I know that a spiritual or corporeal 40)

thing certainly has, either to act or be acted on, or to exist in one way

or in another, i.e., to have a modification of one sort or another.

13. When that

faculty

is certainly a property of the nature of the thing, I

say that the thing has it from the author of its being, who can only be

God.

Axioms

When we claim to know what is true by science, we ought to accept


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3

[201)

4

6

41)

7.

ntoine rn uld

only what we conceive clearly.

Nothing should make us doubt something if we know that it is so with

entire certainty, no matter what difficulties can be put forward against

it.

To want to explain what is clear and certain by things obscure and

uncertain is an obvious disorder of the mind.

We ought to reject as imaginary, certain

ntiti s

of which we do not

have any clear idea and which we see very well were invented only to

explain things we fancied could not be well understood without them.

That is even more indubitable when we can very well explain those

things without those

ntiti s

invented by the new philosophers.

Nothing is more certain than our knowledge of what takes place in

our soul when we pause there. It is very certain, for example, that I

conceive of bodies when I think I conceive of bodies, even though it

may not be certain that the bodies that I conceive either truly exist, or

are such as I conceive them to be.

lt is certain, either by reason, assuming that God is not a deceiver, or at

least by faith, that I have a body and that the earth, the sun, the moon

and many other bodies which I know as existing outside of my mind,

truly exist outside my mind.

8. From act to power the consequence is necessary, i.e., it is certain that he

who does something taking the word to do in a large sense according

to the eleventh definition) has the power to do it, and consequently one

ought to say that he has that faculty, according to the twelfth definition.

ostul tes

I ask that everyone reflect seriously upon what happens in his mind

when he knows diverse things, that he consider everything that he notices

by simple vision, without reasoning and without seeking elsewhere for

comparisons taken from corporeal things, and that he accept only what he

sees to be so certain that he cannot doubt it.

And if anyone cannot do that for himself, I ask that he follow me and

examine in good faith whether what I say is clear to me is not also clear

and certain to him.

1. I am sure that I am because I think, and so I am a substance which

thinks.

42) 2. I am more certain that I am than that I have a body, or that there are

other bodies, for I could doubt whether there are bodies, but I could

not for all that doubt that I am.


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3. I know perfect being, being itself, universal being, and so I cannot

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doubt that I have the idea of it, taking the idea of an object to be the

perception of an object according to the third definition.

4. I am sure that I know bodies even though I could doubt whether there

are any which exist, for it suffices that I know them as possible. Should

I know a body as existing, though it did not exist, I would be mistaken,

but it would be no less true that this body was objectively in my mind

even though it did not exist outside my mind, and so I would know it,

according to the fourth definition.

5. Even if my senses were unable to assure me of the existence of material

things, reason would assure me of it by adding to my sensations the

fact that God cannot be a deceiver. If I were not entirely assured of

it by reason, I would know that they exist at least by faith which I

say in order to give it the highest certainty even for the author of The

Search for Truth . Consequently, for me, who have faith in addition to

reason, it is very certain that when I see the earth, the sun, the stars and

men who converse with me, I do not see imaginary bodies or men, but

43

works of God and true men whom God has created like me. It does

not matter to me that one in a thousand of these might be only in my

mind; it suffices for what I claim that I cannot doubt that ordinarily the

bodies I believe I see are true bodies which exist outside me, whether

the source of my certainty be reason or faith.

6. It is no less certain that I know countless objects in general, and not

only in particular, like the even number in general, which includes

an infinity of numbers, a square number in general, etc. The same

holds for bodies, since I certainly know a cube in general, a cylinder

in general and a pyramid in general, even though there is an infinity of

different sizes for each of these species.

7. Nor can I doubt that I know things in two ways, by a direct vision

and by an explicitly reflexive vision, as when I reflect upon the idea or

the knowledge I have of a thing, and examine it with more attention

in order to recognize what is included in the idea, taken in the sense

specified in the third definition.

If I had a little Eraste here, I would question him, as was done so

44

ingeniously in the Christian Conversations and I am sure that he would

[203

reply regarding all these things that he is perfectly sure of them. If I asked

him instead whether it was necessary, in addition to all that, to admit those

other ideas, which are representative beings etc., I am no less sure that

he would answer that he made nothing of them, that he had nothing to

say about them and that he had a reply only about things of which he had


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Antoine Arnauld

clear notions not about those representative beings As for the author of

The Search for Truth I think I would do him an injustice if I had any

doubt that he recognized in good faith that all the above matters are quite

certain

But I must still explain several other terms and ways of speaking about

which I said nothing in the definitions because it seemed to me that

it would require a longer discussion to explain them well and to warn

against difficulties which are based only on certain ambiguities not yet

sufficiently cleared up by what I have said I will treat of these in the

following chapter

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Arnauld on Ideas

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