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Anonymous
You say a great many things in attempting to seem to contradict me yet nonetheless you say nothing that contradicts me since you come to the same conclusion that I do. Nonetheless you interpose in certain passages certain remarks to which I cannot agree, for instance the axiom that 'there is nothing in an effect which was not previously in it's cause' should be understood to be denoting the material cause rather than the efficacy, for it is impossible to conceive of perfection of form pre-existing in material cause, only in the sole efficacious cause, and you also say that the formal reality of an idea is a substance, with several remarks if you had any evidence of the existence of material things then no doubt you would have set it down here. But since you only ask 'if it is therefore true that that I am not certain of the existance of anything besides myself in the world' and since you pretend there is no need to look for reasons for something so obvious, and thus you are reporting only your old prejudices you make it all the more clear that you have no reasons. Proving what you say more that if you had never said anything at all, As for what you say about ideas it needs no reply because you confine the idea of idea soly to images depicted in the imagination, while I understand it as all that we concive in our thoughts. However, I will ask in passing what argument you cite to prove that 'nothing acts upon itself', for it is not your habit to use arguments in evidence of the finger which cannot strike itself,, and the eye which Cannot see itself except in the mirrow, to which it is easy to reply that is by no means the eye which sees itself in the mirror , but the mind which alone knows the eye and the mirror itself. One may even cite further examples drawn from corporeal matters concerning the action a thing may have upon itself. as when a curved plane turns in upon itself, for is it not that conversion that is an action exersized upon itself?
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