at the case is just the reverse--the infinite is the
positive idea, and the finite is the negative, and therefore the
former is the presupposition of the latter. As Kant, at a later date,
pointed out that space is not a general conception, abstracted from
the ideas of particular spaces, and representing the common element in
them, but that, on the contrary, the ideas of particular spaces are
got by the limitation of the one infinite space that is prior to them,
so Descartes maintains in general that the idea of the finite is had
only by limitation of the infinite, and not the idea of the infinite
by abstraction from the particular determinations of the finite. It is
a necessary consequence of this that the self-consciousness of a
finite being is bound up with the consciousness of the infinite. Hence
the idea of God is not merely one among other ideas which we have, but
it is the one idea that is necessary to our very existence as thinking
beings, the idea through which alone we can think ourselves, or
anything else. "I ought never to suppose," says Descartes, "that my
conception of the infinite is a negative idea, got by negation of the
finite, just as I conceive repose to be merely negation of movement,
and darkness merely the negation of light. On the contrary, I see
manifestly that there is more reality in the infinite than in the
finite substance, and that therefore I have in me the notion of the
infinite, _even in some sense prior to the notion of the finite_, or,
in other words, that the notion of myself in some sense presupposes
the notion of God; for how could I doubt or desire, how could I be
conscious of anything as a want, how could I know that I am not
altogether perfect, if I had not in me the idea of a being more
perfect than myself, by comparison with whom I recognize the defects
of my own existence?"[4] Descartes then goes on in various ways to
illustrate the thesis that the consciousness of a defective and
growing nature cannot give rise to the idea of infinite perfection,
but on the contrary presupposes it. We could not think of a series of
approximations unless there were somehow present to us the idea of the
completed infinite as the goal we aim at. If we had not the
consciousness of ourselves as finite _in relation_ to the infinite,
either we should not be conscious of ourselves at all, or we should
be conscious of ourselves as infi