it was his will to create us so that we are always deceived, even in
the things we think we know best: since this does not appear more
impossible than our being occasionally deceived, which, however, as
observation teaches us, is the case. And if we suppose that an all-
powerful God is not the author of our being, and that we exist of
ourselves or by some other means, still, the less powerful we
suppose our author to be, the greater reason will we have for
believing that we are not so perfect as that we may not be
continually deceived.

VI. That we possess a free-will, by which we can withhold our
assent from what is doubtful, and thus avoid error.

But meanwhile, whoever in the end may be the author of our being,
and however powerful and deceitful he may be, we are nevertheless
conscious of a freedom, by which we can refrain from admitting to a
place in our belief aught that is not manifestly certain and
undoubted, and thus guard against ever being deceived.

VII. That we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt, and that
this is the first knowledge we acquire when we philosophize in
order.

While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest
doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose
that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we
ourselves even have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body;
but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt
of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in
conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very time when it