Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/111

 difficulties in Descartes’ view which have led to attempts at simplification, keeping his general supposition of stuff with attributes.

Note that Descartes presupposes three types of substance — namely, God, bits of matter, minds. Descartes’ proof of the existence of God is accepted by very few philosophers, religious or otherwise. Indeed, given his starting point, it is difficult to see how any proof can be found.

The simplifications all concern dropping either one or two of these types of substances. For example, dropping God, and retaining only matter and mind; or dropping God and minds, and retaining the matter, as with Hobbes; or dropping matter, and retaining God and minds, as with Berkeley; or dropping matter and minds, and retaining God alone. In this latter case, the temporal world becomes an appearance forming an attribute of God.

But the main point of all such philosophies is that they presuppose individual substance,