Six metaphysical meditations · René Descartes
OBJECT XIV.
_Against the Fifth Meditation. Of the Essence of material things._ * _As when for Example, I imagine a Triangle, tho perhaps such a Figure exists no where out of my thoughts, nor ever will exist, yet the Nature thereof is determinate, and its Essence or Form is immutable and eternal, which is neither made by me nor depends on my mind, as appears from this, that many propositions may be demonstrated of this Triangle._ If a Triangle be _no where_, I understand not how it can have _any Nature_, for what is _no where_, is not, and therefore has not a _Being_, or any _Nature_. A Triangle in the _Mind_ arises from a Triangle _seen_, or from one made up of what has been _seen_, but when once we have given the name of a _Triangle_ to a thing (from which we think the _Idea_ of a _Triangle_ arises) tho the Triangle it self perish, yet the _name_ continues; In the like manner, when we have once conceived in our thought, _That all the Angles of a Triangle are equal to two right ones_, and when we have given this other name (viz. _Having its three Angles equal to two right ones_) to a Triangle, tho afterwards there were no such thing in the World, yet the _Name_ would still continue, and this Proposition, _A Triangle is a Figure having three Angles equal to two right Ones_, would be _eternally true_. But the Nature of a Triangle will not be eternal if all Triangles were destroy’d.
This Proposition likewise, _A Man is an Animal_, will be _true_ to _Eternity_, because the Word _Animal_ will eternally signifie what the Word _Man_ signifies; but certainly if _Mankind_ perish, _Humane Nature_ will be no longer. From whence ’tis Manifest, That _Essence_ as ’tis distinguish’d from _Existence_ is nothing more than the _Copulation_ of _Names_ by this word _Is_, and therefore _Essence_ without _Existence_ is meerly a _Fiction_ of our own; and as the _Image_ of a _Man_ in the _Mind_ is to a _Man_, so it seems _Essence_ is to _Existence_. Or as this Proposition _Socrates is a Man_, is to this, _Socrates Is or Exists_, so is the _Essence_ of _Socrates_ to his Existence. Now this Proposition, _Socrates is a Man_, when _Socrates_ does not exist, signifies only the Connection of the Names, and the word _Is_ carries under it the _Image_ of the _unity_ of the thing, which is called by these _Two Names_. The Difference between _Essence_ and _Existence_ is known to all Men. And what is here said of _Eternal Names_ instead of _Eternal Truth_, has been long ago sufficiently rejected.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.