For [even] when I think that a stone is a substance, or at
least a thing capable of existing of itself, and that I am a
substance also, although I conceive that I am a thing that
thinks and not one that is extended, and that the stone on the
other hand is an extended thing which does not think, and that
thus there is a notable difference between the two
conceptions?they seem, nevertheless, to agree in this, that
both represent substances. In the same way, when I perceive
that I now exist and further recollect that I have in former
times existed, and when I remember that I have various
thoughts of which I can recognise the number, I acquire ideas
of duration and number which I can afterwards transfer to any
object that I please. But as to all the other qualities of
which the ideas of corporeal things are composed, to wit,
extension, figure, situation and motion, it is true that they
are not formally in me, since I am only a thing that thinks;
but because they are merely certain modes of substance [and so
to speak the vestments under which corporeal substance appears
to us] and because I myself am also a substance, it would seem
that they might be contained in me eminently.
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