Meditations on First Philosophy

Still, I am a real,existing thing. What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing.

Undoubtedly, the •ideas that represent substances amount to something more—they contain within themselves more representative reality—than do the •ideas that merely represent modes [= ‘qualities’].

And the mistake they most commonly involve is to judge that my ideas resemble things outside me.

pushed me the wrong way

But perhaps really all my ideas are caused from the outside, or all are innate, or all are made up; for I still have not clearly perceived their true origin.

But it is also true that the idea of heat or of a stone can be caused in me only by something that contains at least as much reality as I conceive to be in the heat or in the stone.

Considered simply as mental events, my ideas seem to be all on a par: they all appear to come from inside me in the same way.

sarcastically

Similarly, the natural impulses that I have been talking about, though they seem opposed to my will, come from within me; ·which provides evidence that I can cause things that my will does not cause·.

Well, then, what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands,affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.

Now it is obvious by the natural light that the total cause of something must contain at least as much reality as does the effect.

even if the objects of my sensory experience and imagination don’t exist outside me, still sensory perception and imagination themselves, considered simply as mentalevents, certainly do occur in me.