Meditation III: Of God

René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation III: Of God, That He Exists (1641)

René Descartes

Turns inward to find the one idea too large to have made for itself.

Catch rate: 52 / 255
Base research: 210
Stat total: 298

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina72

Contend82

Defend78

Popularity66

Total298

Cited for this book

In his Third Meditation, Descartes looks through his own mind and finds an idea he cannot explain: a perfect, infinite being. A cause must be at least as great as its effect, he argues. A finite, doubting mind could not have made up the idea of infinite perfection by itself. Whatever the problems with the rest of his system, this argument is worth reading on its own terms.

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	Not From Myself Alone	Natural Theology	Argument	80	100%	15
1	Random Verse	Bible	Argument	10	100%	30
34	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“By the name God, I understand a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other thing that exists, if any such there be, were created… And thus it is absolutely necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, that God exists.”
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation III §22 (trans. John Veitch, 1853/1901), public domain. (trimmed quote)public domain

Not From Myself Alone

Natural TheologyArgument · power 80 · 100% accurate

In the gameThe idea of an infinite, perfect being is sitting in a finite, imperfect mind, and Descartes asks where it came from. A cause must contain at least as much reality as its effect — so something that small could not have invented something that large.