The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may
very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat,
without being therefore shut up to the conclusion that a chimaera exists;
for it is not a dictate of reason that what we thus see or imagine is in
reality existent; but it plainly tells us that all our ideas or notions
contain in them some truth; for otherwise it could not be that God, who is
wholly perfect and veracious, should have placed them in us. And because
our reasonings are never so clear or so complete during sleep as when we
are awake, although sometimes the acts of our imagination are then as
lively and distinct, if not more so than in our waking moments, reason
further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of
 Reason Discourse |