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 94 DESCARTES. has bestowed on mc all that I am and all that I am capa- ble of becoming. If I had created myself, I would have bestowed upon myself these absent perfections also. And the existence of a plurality of causes is negatived by the supreme perfection which I conceive in the idea of God, tile indivisible unity of his attributes. Among the attributes of God his veracity is of special importance. It is impossible that he should will to deceive us ; that he should be the cause of our errors. God would be a deceiver, if he had endowed us with a reason to which error should appear true, even when it uses all its foresight in avoiding it and assents only to that which it clearly and distinctly per- ceives. Erro£_LS j^nan's o wn f^''^*" ; he falls into it only when he misuses the divine gift of knowledge, which includes its own standard. Thus Descartes finds new confirmation for his test of truth in the veracitas dei. Erdmann has given a better defense of Descartes than the philosopher himself against the charge that this is arguing in a circle, inasmuch as the existence of God is proved by the criterion of truth, and then the latter by the former: The criterion of certitude is the ratio cognoscendi of God's existence ; God is the ratio essendi of the criterion of certitude. In the order of exist- ence God is first, he creates the reason together with its criterion ; in the order of knowledge the criterion precedes, and God's existence follows from it. Descartes himself endeavors to avoid the circle by making intuitive knowl- edge self-evident, and by not bringing in the appeal to God's veracity in demonstrative knowledge until, in reflect- ive thought, we no longer have each separate link in the chain of proof present to our minds with full intuitive cer- tainty, but only remember that we have previously under- stood the matter with clearness and distinctness. Our ideas represent in part things, in part qualities. Substance is denned by the concept of independence ^ ^r^j* qu ^ ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad ex istendum ; a pregnant definition with which the con ce pt of substanp e gains the leadership in m etaphysics, which it held till the tjrne of Hume and Kant, sharing it the n with the conceptio n of cause or, rather, relinquishing it to the latter. The Spi- nozistic conclusion that, according to the strict meaning of