46 DESCARTES. 



shade, and to express my judgment regarding them 

 with greater freedom, without being necessitated to 

 adopt or refute the opinions of the learned, I 

 resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes, 

 and to speak only of what would happen in a new 

 world, if God were now to create somewhere in the 

 imaginary spaces matter sufficient to compose one, 

 and were to agitate variously and confusedly the 

 different parts of this matter, so that there resulted 

 a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned, and 

 after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary 

 concurrence to nature, and allow her to act in 

 accordance with the laws which he had established. 

 On this supposition, I, in the first place, described 

 this matter, and essayed to represent it in such a 

 manner that to my mind there can be nothing 

 clearer and more intelligible, except what has been 

 recently said regarding God and the soul ; for I even 

 expressly supposed that it possessed none of those 

 forms or qualities which are so debated in the 

 Schools, nor in general anything the knowledge of 

 which is not so natural to our minds that no one can 

 so much as imagine himself ignorant of it. Besides, 

 I have pointed out what are the laws of nature ; 

 and, with no other principle upon which to found 

 my reasonings except the infinite perfection of God, 

 I endeavoured to demonstrate all those about which 

 there could be any room for doubt, and to prove that 

 they are such, that even if God had created more 

 worlds, there could have been none in which these 

 laws were not observed. Thereafter, I showed how 

 the greatest part of the matter of this chaos must, in 



