uld live as solitary and retired as in the
most remote deserts.

Part. IIII.

I Know not whether I ought to entertain you with the first Meditations
which I had there, for they are so Metaphysicall and so little common,
that perhaps they will not be relished by all men: And yet that you may
judge whether the foundations I have laid are firm enough, I find my
self in a manner oblig'd to discourse them; I had long since observed
that as for manners, it was somtimes necessary to follow those opinions
which we know to be very uncertain, as much as if they were indubitable,
as is beforesaid: But because that then I desired onely to intend the
search of truth, I thought I ought to doe the contrary, and reject as
absolutely false all wherein I could imagine the least doubt, to the end
I might see if afterwards any thing might remain in my belief, not at
all subject to doubt. Thus because our senses sometimes deceive us, I
would suppose that there was nothing which was such as they represented
it to us. And because there are men who mistake themselves in reasoning,
even in the most simple matters of Geometry, and make therein
Paralogismes, judging that I was as subject to fail as any other Man, I
rejected as false all those reasons, which I had before taken for
Demonstrations. And considering, that the same thoughts which we have
waking, may also happen to us sleeping, when as not any one of them is
true. I resolv'd to faign, that all those things which ever entred into
my Minde, were no more true, then the illusions of my dreams. But
presently after I observ'd, that whilst I would think that all was
false, it must necessarily follow, that I who thought it, must be
something. And perceiving that this Truth, _I think_, therefore, _I am_,
was so firm and certain, that all the most extravagant suppositions of
the Scepticks was not able to shake it, I judg'd that I might receive it
without scruple for the first principle of the Philosophy I sought.

Examining carefully afterwards what I was; and seeing that I could
suppose that I had no _body_, and that there was no _World_, nor any
_place_ where I was: but for all this, I could not feign that I _was
not_; and that even contrary thereto, thinking to doubt the truth of
other things, it most evidently and certainly followed, That _I was_:
whereas, if I had ceas'd to _think_, although all the rest of what-ever
I had imagined were true, I had no reason to beleeve that _I had