But because it may be that some expect from me in this
place a statement of the reasons establishing the immortality
of the soul, I feel that I should here make known to them that
having aimed at writing nothing in all this Treatise of which
I do not possess very exact demonstrations, I am obliged to
follow a similar order to that made use of by the geometers,
which is to begin by putting forward as premises all those
things upon which the proposition that we seek depends, before
coming to any conclusion regarding it. Now the first and
principal matter which is requisite for thoroughly
understanding the immortality of the soul is to form the
clearest possible conception of it, and one which will be
entirely distinct from all the conceptions which we may have
of body; and in this Meditation this has been done. In
addition to this it is requisite that we may be assured that
all the things which we conceive clearly and distinctly are
true in the very way in which we think them; and this could
not be proved previously to the Fourth Mediation.
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