After this, reflecting upon the fact that I doubted, and that consequently my being was not quite perfected (for I saw that to know is a greater perfection than to doubt), I bethought me to inquire whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself; and it was clear to me that this must come from some nature which was in fact more perfect.  For other things I could regard as dependencies of my nature if they were real, and if they were not real they might proceed from nothing—­that is to say, they might exist in me by way of defect.  But it could not be the same with the idea of a being more perfect than my own; for to derive it from nothing was manifestly impossible; and, because it is no less repugnant that the more perfect should follow and depend upon the less perfect than that something should come forth out of nothing, I could not derive it from myself.

It remained, then, to conclude that it was put into me by a nature truly more perfect than was I, and possessing in itself all the perfections of what I could form an idea—­in a word, by God.  To which I added that, since I knew some perfections which I did not possess, I was not the only being who existed, but that there must of necessity be some other being, more perfect, on whom I depended, and from whom I had acquired all that I possessed; for if I had existed alone and independent of all other, so that I had of myself all this little whereby I participated in the Perfect Being, I should have been able to have in myself all those other qualities which I knew myself to lack, and so to be infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, almighty—­in fine, to possess all the perfections which I could observe in God.

Proposing to myself the geometer’s subject matter, and then turning again to examine my idea of a Perfect Being, I found that existence was comprehended in that idea just as, in the idea of a triangle is comprehended the notion that the sum of its angles is equal to two right angles; and that consequently it is as certain that God, this Perfect Being, is or exists, as any geometrical demonstration could be.

That there are many who persuade themselves that there is a difficulty in knowing Him is due to the scholastic maxim that there is nothing in the understanding which has not first been in the senses; where the ideas of God and the soul have never been.

Than the existence of God all other things, even those which it seems to a man extravagant to doubt, such as his having a body, are less certain.  Nor is there any reason sufficient to remove such doubt but such as presupposes the existence of God.  From His existence it follows that our ideas or notions, being real things, and coming from God, cannot but be true in so far as they are clear and distinct.  In so far as they contain falsity, they are confused and obscure, there is in them an element of mere negation (elles participent du neant); that is to say,