he takes it as the goal of reasoning, which indicates that the idea of God,
so to speak, encircled his mind and that he found it at every ultimate
point of thought.

He proves it, therefore, first by an argument analogous to that of
St. Anselm, which is this: we, imperfect and finite, have the idea of a
perfect and infinite Being; we are not capable of this idea. Therefore it
must have come to us from a Being really perfect and infinite, and hence
this perfect Being exists.

Another proof, that of God regarded as cause. First: I exist. Who made me?
Was it myself? No, if it had been myself I should have endowed myself with
all the perfections of which I can conceive and in which I am singularly
deficient. Therefore it must be some other being who created me. It was my
parents. No doubt, but who created my parents and the parents of my
parents? One cannot go back indefinitely from cause to cause, and there
must have been a first one.

Secondly: even my own actual existence, my existence at this very moment,
is it the result of my existence yesterday? Nothing proves it, and there is
no necessity because I existed just now that I should exist at
present. There must therefore be a cause at each moment and a continuous
cause. That continuous cause is God, and the whole world is a creation
perpetually continued, and is only comprehensible as continuous creation
and is only explicable by a Creator.

THE WORLD.--Thus sure of himself, of God, and of the world,
Descartes studies the world and himself. In the world he sees souls and
matter; matter is substance in extensions, souls are substance not in
extension, spiritual substance. The extended substance is endowed with