eive him could not deceive him into thinking that he did exist when in fact he did not exist (34). Having determined for certain that he exists, by a second application of the methods of Doubt and Analysis he has also determined that his essence is to be thinking thing. And by yet a third application of these methods, he has also determined that the essence of the matter, which can only be known by the mind, is to be flexible, changeable and extendable.
             With the proof of his existence done, he unfolds at sufficient length his chief argument for the existence of God. Descartes comes up with a criterion of certainty. By examining the truths which he discovered in the course of his previous meditations, he decided that all of them have in common the proper ties of being clear and distinct. He thereby claims, "Thus I now seem able to posit as a general rule that everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true" (34). He goes on even further to assert that there are three possible ideas: adventitious, which are ideas entering the mind from the outside world; factitious, idea manufactured by the mind itself; or innate, idea inscribed on the mind from birth by God (35). These and his previous meditations are the foundation in which Descartes develops his three chief arguments of God's existence.
             Descartes next takes up the nature of representation. He considers the possibility that though an idea has some objective reality, there is no need for the thing it represents to have the corresponding level of formal reality. His first point in rebutting this possibility is to note that "just as the objective mode of being belongs to ideas by their very nature, so the formal mode of being belongs to the causes of ideas, at least to the first and preeminent ones, by their very nature" (37). At some point one must come to the archetype of the idea which must possess formally all of the perfection or r...