To Regius, 24 May r64o

is not double. But I think that it is the other parts of the brain, especially the interior parts, which are for the most part utilized in memory. I think that all the nerves and muscles can also be so utilized, so that a lute player, for instance, has a part of his memory in his hands: for the ease of bending and positioning his fingers in various ways, which he has acquired by practice, helps him to remember the passages which need these positions when they are played. You will find this easy to believe if you bear in mind that what people call 'local memory' is outside us: for instance, when we have read a book, not all the impressions which can remind us of its contents are in our brain. Many of them are on the paper of the copy which we have read. It does not matter that these impressions have no resemblance to the things of which they remind us; often the impressions in the brain have no resemblance either, as I said in the fourth discourse of my Optics. But besides this memory, which depends on the body, I believe there is also another one, entirely intellectual, which depends on the soul alone. I would not find it strange that the gland called the conarium should be found decayed when the bodies of lethargic persons are dissected, because it decays very rapidly in all other cases too. Three years ago at Leiden, when I wanted to see it in a woman who was being autopsied, I found it impossible to recognize it, even though I looked very thoroughly, and knew well where it should be, being accustomed to find it without any difficulty in freshly killed animals. An old professor who was performing the autopsy, named Valcher, admitted to me that he had never been able to see it in any human body. I think this is because they usually spend some days looking at the intestines and other parts before opening the head. I need no proof of the mobility of this gland apart from its situation; for since it is supported only by the little arteries which surround it, it is certain that very little will suffice to move it. But for all that I do not think that it can go far one way or the other ... You mention that you have had a letter from England to the effect that I was about to receive an invitation to go there. I have had no word of this myself; but I will tell you in confidence that I would prefer to reside in that country rather than in many others. As far as religion is concerned, moreover, the King himself is said to be Catholic by inclination. So I beg you not to discourage the good intentions of your correspondents ... TO REG IUS, 24 MAY
1

49

(so)

AT III
63

64o

I am much obliged to you and M. Emili us for examining and correcting the manuscripe which I sent you. I see that you were even kind enough to
1

A manuscript of the Me itations.

To Regius, 24 May r64o

147

correct the punctuation and spelling. You would have put me under an even greater obligation if you had been willing to make some changes in the words and the thoughts. For however small the changes were, they 64 would have given me hope that what you had left was less at fault; but now I fear that you may have refrained from criticism only because too much needed correction, or the whole needed to be cancelled. Now for your objections. In your first you say: 'it is because we have in ourselves some wisdom, power and goodness that we form the idea of an infinite, or at least indefinite, wisdom, power, goodness and the other perfections which we attribute to God; just as it is because we have in ourselves some degree of quantity that we form the idea of an infinite quantity'. I entirely agree, and am quite convinced that we have no idea of God except the one formed in this manner. But the whole point of my argument is this. These perfections are so slight that unless we derived our origin from a being in which they are actually infinite, my nature could not enable me to extend them in thought to an infinite degree. Similarly, I could not conceive of an indefinite quantity by looking at a very small quantity or a finite body unless the size of the world was actually or at least possibly indefinite. In your second objection you say: 'the truth of axioms which are clearly and distinctly understood is self-evident'. This too, I agree, is true, during the time they are clearly and distinctly understood; for our mind is of such a nature that it cannot help assenting to what it clearly understands. But because we often remember conclusions that we have deduced from such premisses without actually attending to the premisses themselves, I say that on such occasions, if we lack knowledge of God, we can imagine that the conclusions are uncertain even though we remember that they were deduced from clear principles: because perhaps our nature is such that we go wrong even in the most evident matters. Consequently, even at the 6 5 moment when we qeduced them from those principles, we did not have knowledge 1 of them, but only a conviction of them. I distinguish the two as follows: there is conviction when there remains some reason which might lead us to doubt, but knowledge is conviction based on a reason so strong that it can never be shaken by any stronger reason. Nobody can have the latter unless he also has knowledge of God. But a man who has once clearly understood the reasons which convince us that God exists and is not a deceiver, provided he remembers the conclusion 'God is no deceiver' whether or not he continues to attend to the reasons for it, will continue to possess not only the conviction, but real knowledge of this and all other conclusions the reasons for which he remembers he once clearly perceived.
1

Lat. scientia, Descartes' term for systematic knowledge based on indubitable foundations.

To Mersenne, r I june r64o

In your latest objections - which I received yesterday, and which reminded me to reply to your earlier ones - you say that rashness of judgement depends on the innate or acquired temperament of the body. I do not agree. That would take away the freedom and scope of our will, which can remedy such rashness. If it does not remedy it, the error which results is a privation in relation to us, but a mere negation in relation to God ... I do not see why you think that the perception of universals belongs to the imagination rather than to the intellect. I attribute it to the intellect alone, which relates to many things an idea which is in itself singular ...

(66)

AT III
(84)

TO MERSENNE,

I I

JUNE

640

... There is no doubt that the folds of the memory get in each other's

way, and that there cannot be an infinite number of such folds in the brain; but there are still quite a number of them there. Moreover, the intellectual memory has its own separate impressions, which do not depend in any 8 5 way on these folds. So I do not believe that the number of folds is necessarily very large. I do not explain the feeling of pain without reference to the soul. For in my view pain exists only in the understanding. What I do explain is all the external movements which accompany this feeling in us; in animals it is these movements alone which occur, and not pain in the strict sense ...

AT III
(I 20)

TO MERSENNE, 3 o JULY

64o

I 2I

... With reference to birth marks, 1 since they never occur in the infant when the mother eats fruit which she likes, it is quite probable that they can sometimes be cured when the infant eats the fruit in question. For the same disposition which was in the mother's brain, and caused her desire, is also to be found in the infant's brain; and this corresponds to the area that has the mark, since the mother, by scratching the corresponding area while the desire to eat was upon her, transformed the effects of her imagination to the corresponding part of the baby. For in general the individual parts of the baby's body correspond to those of the mother, as may be proved by reasoning based on mechanics. The point is also established by a number of examples, including a striking one which I once read in Forestus. 2 A woman who had broken her arm while she was pregnant gave birth to a son whose arm was broken in the same place; the doctor treated them
r Fr. les marques d'envie, literally 'marks of desire'. Dutch physician, whose sixteen books of Medical and Surgical Observations and Cures were published in r623.