Letter to Johannes Bouwmeester

Most Learned Sir, special Friend,

I have not been able till now to reply to your last letter, which I received some time ago. I have been so hindered by various affairs and worries that only after much effort have I been able to free myself. However, since I am now granted a little relief, I don’t want to fail in my duty, but I want to thank you as warmly as I can for your love and courtesy to me, which you have quite often demonstrated by your actions, but have now also shown more than sufficiently by your letter, etc.

I pass now to your question, which is: whether there is, or could be, a Method which would enable us to proceed, without either obstruction or weariness, in thinking about the most excellent things? Or whether our minds, like our bodies, are also subject to chance events and our thoughts are governed more by fortune than by skill? I think I will do what is needed if I show that there must, necessarily, be a Method by which we can direct and link our clear and distinct perceptions, and that the intellect is not subject, as the body is, to accidents.

This is evident simply from this: that one clear and distinct perception, or many together, can be absolutely the cause of another clear and distinct perception. Indeed, all the clear and distinct perceptions we form can arise only from other clear and distinct perceptions in us, and cannot have any other cause outside us. From this it follows that the clear and distinct perceptions we form depend only on our nature, and its definite, fixed laws, that is, on our absolute power, not on fortune (that is, on causes which, although they too act according to definite and fixed laws, are nevertheless unknown to us and foreign to our nature and power). As for the rest of our perceptions, I confess that they depend on fortune in the highest degree.

From these considerations, then, it is clearly evident what the true Method must be like, and in what it chiefly consists: namely, solely in the knowledge of the pure intellect, and of its nature and laws. To acquire this it is necessary above all else to distinguish between the intellect and the imagination, or between true ideas and the rest, namely, the fictitious, the false, the doubtful, and absolutely all those which depend only on the memory. To understand these things, at least as far as the Method requires, it is not necessary to know the nature of the mind through its first cause, but it is sufficient to put together a little history of the mind, or of perceptions, in the way Bacon teaches.

With these few words I think I have explained and demonstrated the true Method, and at the same time, shown the Way by which we may arrive at it. I should, however, still warn you that all these things require uninterrupted meditation, and a constant mind and purpose. To acquire these it is necessary above all to decide upon a definite way and principle of living, and to prescribe a definite end for oneself. But enough of these things for now.