Samayasara

Author(s): A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 26

SAMAYASARA
what is known as Cartesianism, a philosophical reconstruction just after the Renaissance in Europe.
Because thought exists therefore the soul exists, is a proposition which emphasises the relation between a substance and its essential attribute. The principle of cogito is an inference from the reality of an essential attribute to the substance in which the attribute inheres. The metaphysical bedrock on which Descartes wanted to raise a superstructure was thus arrived at through a sceptical analysis of human experience. Having arrived at this inevitable conclusion Descartes tries to bring back all those ideas which he dismissed as improbable and unreal. When he examines the contents of thought he is able to perceive certain ideas entirely distinct in nature from the ideas acquired through senseperception. The latter are only contingents whereas the former are found to be necessary and certain. All ideas relating to mathematics are such necessary ideas. These cannot be contradicted; hence they are absolutely certain. Such necessary ideas which he calls “innate” must be traced to a different origin altogether. One of such ideas which he chooses for investigation is the idea of a perfect and infinite Being, God. Man could not have acquired this idea through sense perception. Nor is it possible for him to construct such an idea from elements supplied to him by the senses. Hence he concludes that this idea of a perfect and infinite Being must be an item of thought from the very beginning of man. Man from the very moment of his origin should have started with this idea and hence Descartes infers that this idea necessarily leads to the conclusion that there is a real being who is the origin of this idea-God. He stamped his own mark on man from the very beginning. By such an argument Descartes emphasises the reality of a perfect and infinite Being, God, besides the thinking substance, Soul, whose reality he established through the famous cogito. Given the reality of Soul and God, the rest of experience which he dismissed as unreal is brought back again. The external world which he dismissed on the supposition that it might be due to sense deception is now recognised to be real, for sense deception would be a blot on the character of the Creator-the Perfect Being. Such a being cannot indulge in deceiving his creatures. Hence the external world must be accepted to be real. The reality of the external world though admitted to be real is considered to be entirely distinct from the soul. The external world which consists of material objects is made up of a different substance altogether-matter, whose essential attribute is extension. Thus Descartes recognises two distinct substances, the thinking thing and the extended thing. These two substances constitute the whole of reality, The physical realm made of extended things is entirely based upon the mechanical principle of causation. Any event in this physical world is necessarily conditioned by appropriate physical antecedents. Human body as a part of this realm of extension is controlled by the same physical law of nature, whereas the soul and its behaviour since they are guided by a different system pf laws are not subjected to the operation of physical laws. This duality