Descartes, as we have seen, does not hold
that these truths are involved in the very nature of intelligence as
such, so that we cannot conceive a self-conscious being without them.
On the contrary, we are to regard the divine intelligence as by
arbitrary act determining that two and two should be four, or that
envy should be a vice. We are "_not_ to conceive eternal truth flowing
from God as rays from the sun."[12] In other words, we are not to
conceive all particular truths as different aspects of one truth. It
is part of the imperfection of man's finite nature that he "finds
truth and good determined for him." It is something given,--given,
indeed, along with his very faculty of thinking, but still _given_ as
an external limit to it. It belongs not to his nature as spirit, but
to his finitude as man.

Truth of external world.

After what has been said, it is obvious that the transition from God
to matter must be somewhat arbitrary and external. God's truthfulness
is pledged for the reality of that of which we have _clear and
distinct ideas_; and we have clear and distinct ideas of the external
world so long as we conceive it simply as extended matter, infinitely
divisible, and moved entirely from without,--so long, in short, as we
conceive it as the direct opposite of mind, and do not attribute to it
any one of the properties of mind. "Omnes proprietates, quas in ea
clare percipimus, ad hoc unum reducuntur, quod sit partibilis et
mobilis, secundum partes." We must, therefore, free ourselves from the
obscure and confused modes of thought which arise whenever we
attribute any of the secondary qualities, which exist merely in our
sensations, to the objects that cause these sensations. The subjective
character of such qualities is proved by the constant change which
takes place in them, without any change of the object in which they
are perceived. A piece of wax cannot lose its extension; but its
colour, its hardness, and all the other qualities whereby it is
presented to sense, may be easily altered. What is objective in all
this is merely an extended substance, and the modes of motion or rest
through which it is made to pass. In like manner we must separate from
our notion of matter all ideas of _actio in distans_--e.g. we must
explain weight not as a tendency to the centre of the earth or an
attraction of distant particles of matter, but as a