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To Regius 24 May r64ois not double. But I think that it is the other parts of the brain, especially theinterior parts, which are for the most part utilized in memory. I think thatall the nerves and muscles can also be so utilized, so that a lute player, forinstance, has a part of his memory in his hands: for the ease of bending andpositioning his fingers in various ways, which he has acquired by practice,helps him to remember the passages which need these positions when theyare played. You will find this easy to believe if you bear in mind that whatpeople call local memory is outside us: for instance, when we have read abook, not all the impressions which can remind us of its contents are in ourbrain. Many of them are on the paper of the copy which we have read. tdoes not matter that these impressions have no resemblance to the thingsof which they remind us; often the impressions in the brain have noresemblance either, as I said in the fourth discourse of my Optics. Butbesides this memory, which depends on the body, I believe there is alsoanother one, entirely intellectual, which depends on the soul alone.49 I would not find it strange that the gland called the conarium should befound decayed when the bodies of lethargic persons are dissected, becauseit decays very rapidly in all other cases too. Three years ago at Leiden,when I wanted to see it in a woman who was being autopsied, I found itimpossible to recognize it, even though I looked very thoroughly, andknew well where it should be, being accustomed to find it without anydifficulty in freshly killed animals. An old professor who was performingthe autopsy, named Valcher, admitted to me that he had never been able tosee it in any human body. I think this is because they usually spend somedays looking at the intestines and other parts before opening the head.

I need no proof of the mobility of this gland apart from its situation; forsince it is supported only by the little arteries which surround it, it is certainthat very little will suffice to move it. But for all that I do not think that itcan go far one way or the other

so) You mention that you have had a letter from England to the effect that Iwas about to receive an invitation to go there. I have had no word of thismyself; but I will tell you in confidence that I would prefer to reside in thatcountry rather than in many others. s far as religion is concerned,moreover, the King himself is said to be Catholic by inclination. So I begyou not to discourage the good intentions of your correspondents

AT III TO REG IUS 24 MAY 64o6 3 I am much obliged to you and M. Emili us for examining and correctingthe manuscripe which I sent you. I see that you were even kind enough to

A manuscript of the Me itations.

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To Regius 24 May r64o 147correct the punctuation and spelling. You would have put me under aneven greater obligation if you had been willing to make some changes inthe words and the thoughts. For however small the changes were, they 6would have given me hope that what you had left was less at fault; but nowI fear that you may have refrained from criticism only because too muchneeded correction, or the whole needed to be cancelled.

Now for your objections. In your first you say: it is because we have inourselves some wisdom, power and goodness that we form the idea of aninfinite, or at least indefinite, wisdom, power, goodness and the otherperfections which we attribute to God; just s it is because we have inourselves some degree of quantity that we form the idea of an infinitequantity . I entirely agree, and am quite convinced that we have no idea ofGod except the one formed in this manner. But the whole point of myargument is this. These perfections are so slight that unless we derived ourorigin from a being in which they are actually infinite, my nature could notenable me to extend them in thought to an infinite degree. Similarly, Icould not conceive of an indefinite quantity by looking at a very smallquantity or a finite body unless the size of the world was actually or at leastpossibly indefinite.

In your second objection you say: the truth of axioms which are clearlyand distinctly understood is self-evident . This too, I agree, is true, duringthe time they are clearly and distinctly understood; for our mind is of sucha nature that it cannot help assenting to what it clearly understands. Butbecause we often remember conclusions that we have deduced from suchpremisses without actually attending to the premisses themselves, I saythat on such occasions, if we lack knowledge of God, we can imagine thatthe conclusions are uncertain even though we remember that they werededuced from clear principles: because perhaps our nature is such that wego wrong even in the most evident matters. Consequently, even at the 6 5moment when we qeduced them from those principles, we did not haveknowledge of them, but only a conviction of them. I distinguish the two asfollows: there is conviction when there remains some reason which mightlead us to doubt, but knowledge is conviction based on a reason so strongthat it can never be shaken by any stronger reason. Nobody can have thelatter unless he also has knowledge of God. But a man who has once clearlyunderstood the reasons which convince us that God exists and is not adeceiver, provided he remembers the conclusion God is no deceiverwhether or not he continues to attend to the reasons for it, will continue topossess not only the conviction, but real knowledge of this and all otherconclusions the reasons for which he remembers he once clearly perceived.

Lat. scientia Descartes term for systematic knowledge based on indubitable foundations.

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To Mersenne, r I june r64oIn your latest objections - which I received yesterday, and whichreminded me to reply to your earlier ones - you say that rashness ofjudgement depends on the innate or acquired temperament of the body. I

do not agree. That would take away the freedom and scope of our will,which can remedy such rashness. f it does not remedy it, the error whichresults is a privation in relation to us, but a mere negation in relation toGod

( 66) I do not see why you think that the perception of universals belongs tothe imagination rather than to the intellect. I attribute it to the intellectalone, which relates to many things an idea which is in itself singular

AT TO MERSENNE, I I JUNE I 64084) There is no doubt that the folds of the memory get in each other s

way, and that there cannot be an infinite number of such folds in the brain;but there are still quite a number of them there. Moreover, the intellectualmemory has its own separate impressions, which do not depend in any

8 5 way on these folds. So I do not believe that the number of folds isnecessarily very large.I do not explain the feeling of pain without reference to the soul. For inmy view pain exists only in the understanding. What I do explain is all theexternal movements which accompany this feeling in us; in animals it isthese movements alone which occur, and not pain in the strict sense

AT III TO MERSENNE, 3o JULY I 64o(I 20) With reference to birth marks, 1 since they never occur in the infant

when the mother eats fruit which she likes, it is quite probable that theycan sometimes be cured when the infant eats the fruit in question. For thesame disposition which was in the mother s brain, and caused her desire, isalso to be found in the infant s brain; and this corresponds to the area thathas the mark, since the mother, by scratching the corresponding area whilethe desire to eat was upon her, transformed the effects of her imagination

I 2 I to the corresponding part of the baby. For in general the individual parts ofthe baby s body correspond to those of the mother, as may be proved byreasoning based on mechanics. The point is also established by a numberof examples, including a striking one which I once read in Forestus. Awoman who had broken her arm while she was pregnant gave birth to ason whose arm was broken in the same place; the doctor treated themr Fr. l s marques d envie, literally marks of desire .2 Dutch physician, whose sixteen books of Medical nd Surgical Observations nd Cureswere published in r623.