away
from it. But now that we have demonstrated that these faculties are
universal notions which are not distinguishable from the individual
notions from which they are formed, we must now inquire whether the
volitions themselves are anything more than the ideas of things. We must
inquire, I say, whether in the mind there exists any other affirmation
or negation than that which the idea involves in so far as it is an
idea. For this purpose see the following, so that thought may not fall
into pictures. For by ideas I do not understand the images which are
formed at the back of the eye, or, if you please, in the middle of the
brain, but rather the conceptions of thought.

In the mind there exists no absolute faculty of willing or not willing.
Only individual volitions exist, that is to say, this and that
affirmation and this and that negation. Let us conceive, therefore, any
individual volition, that is, any mode of thought, by which the mind
affirms that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right
angles. This affirmation involves the conception or idea of the
triangle, that is to say, without it the affirmation cannot be
conceived. For to say that _A_ must involve the conception _B_, is the
same as saying that _A_ cannot be conceived without _B_. Moreover,
without the idea of the triangle this affirmation cannot be, and it can
therefore neither be nor be conceived without that idea. But this idea
of the triangle must involve this same affirmation that its three angles
are equal to two right angles. Therefore also, _vice versa_, this idea
of the triangle without this affirmation can neither be nor be
conceived. Therefore this affirmation pertains to the essence of the
idea of the triangle, nor is it anything else besides this. Whatever too
we have said of this volition (since it has been taken arbitrarily)
applies to all other volitions, that is to say, they are nothing but
ideas.

The will and the intellect are nothing but the individual volitions and
ideas themselves. But the individual volition and idea are one and the
same. Therefore the will and the intellect are one and the same.

_False Doctrines about Error Exposed_

I have thus removed what is commonly thought to be the cause of error.
It has been proved above that falsity consists solely in the privation
which mutilated and confused ideas involve. A false idea, therefore, in
so far as it is false, does not involve certitude. Consequently, when w