nd down the world a spectator rather than
an actor. These nine years slipped away before I had begun to seek for
the foundations of any philosophy more certain, nor perhaps should I
have dared to undertake the quest had it not been put about that I had
already succeeded.

_IV.--"I THINK, THEREFORE I AM"_

I had long since remarked that in matters of conduct it is necessary
sometimes to follow opinions known to be uncertain, as if they were not
subject to doubt; but, because now I was desirous to devote myself to
the search after truth, I considered that I must do just the contrary,
and reject as absolutely false everything concerning which I could
imagine the least doubt to exist.

Thus, because our senses sometimes deceive us I would suppose that
nothing is such as they make us to imagine it; and because I was as
likely to err as another in reasoning, I rejected as false all the
reasons which I had formerly accepted as demonstrative; and finally,
considering that all the thoughts we have when awake can come to us also
when we sleep without any of them being true, I resolved to feign that
everything which had ever entered into my mind was no more truth than
the illusion of my dreams.

But I observed that, while I was thus resolved to feign that everything
was false, I who thought must of necessity be somewhat; and remarking
this truth--"_I think, therefore I am_"--was so firm and so assured that
all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were unable to
shake it, I judged that I could unhesitatingly accept it as the first
principle of the philosophy I was seeking. I could feign that there was
no world, I could not feign that I did not exist. And I judged that I
might take it as a general rule that the things which we conceive very
clearly and very distinctly are all true, and that the only difficulty
lies in the way of discerning which those things are that we conceive
distinctly.

After this, reflecting upon the fact that I doubted, and that
consequently my being was not quite perfected (for I saw that to _know_
is a greater perfection than to _doubt_), I bethought me to inquire
whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself; and
it was clear to me that this must come from some nature which was in
fact more perfect. For other things I could regard as dependencies of my
nature if they were real, and if they were not real they might proceed
from nothing--that is to say, they might