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Descartes, Rene

"Meditations On First Philosophy"

I observe
also in me some other faculties such as that of change of
position, the assumption of different figures and such like,
which cannot be conceived, any more than can the preceding,
apart from some substance to which they are attached, and
consequently cannot exist without it; but it is very clear
that these faculties, if it be true that they exist, must be
attached to some corporeal or extended substance, and not to
an intelligent substance, since in the clear and distinct
conception of these there is some sort of extension found to
be present, but no intellection at all. There is certainly
further in me a certain passive faculty of perception, that
is, of receiving and recognising the ideas of sensible things,
but this would be useless to me [and I could in no way avail
myself of it], if there were not either in me or in some other
thing another active faculty capable of forming and producing
these ideas. But this active faculty cannot exist in me
[inasmuch as I am a thing that thinks] seeing that it does not
presuppose thought, and also that those ideas are often
produced in me without my contributing in any way to the same,
and often even against my will; it is thus necessarily the
case that the faculty resides in some substance different from
me in which all the reality which is objectively in the ideas
that are produced by this faculty is formally or eminently
contained, as I remarked before.


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