- Next, I carefully examined what I was. I realized that I could imagine having no body and that there was no world or place where I might be. However, I couldn’t suppose that I didn’t exist. On the contrary, the very act of doubting the truth of other things made it clear and certain that I did exist. If I had stopped thinking, even if all the other things I had imagined were real, I would have no reason to believe I existed. From this, I concluded that I am a substance whose entire essence or nature is just thinking. I don’t need a place to exist, nor am I dependent on anything material. Thus, “I”—that is, the mind by which I am what I am—is completely distinct from the body. The mind is even more easily known than the body and would continue to exist even if the body did not.
- Seattle Neighborhoods: Phinney — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Seattle’s Phinney neighborhood lies mostly on a high ridge that rises from the western shore of Green Lake. It owes its name to Guy Phinney (1852-1893), a wealthy immigrant from Nova Scotia who developed a private estate that became Woodland Park (later Woodland Park Zoo). The neighborhood is largely a bedroom community that on the east spills off the spine of Phinney Ridge down to Green Lake’s shores, and on the west runs to the edge of Ballard at 8th Avenue NW. The ice age moraine runs north from N 50th Street and peters out somewhere south of N 80th Street, where Phinney and Greenwood community residents disagree over sovereign rights. Phinney residents also lay claim to Woodland Park Zoo and its four-footed residents, but this birthright is contested by the Wallingford and Green Lake neighborhoods.
- In the next place, I attentively examined what I was, and as I observed that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and certainly followed that I was; while, on the other hand, if I had only ceased to think, although all the other objects which I had ever imagined had been in reality existent, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed; I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that “I,” that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.