- Regarding thoughts about many external objects like the sky, the earth, light, heat, and countless others, I found it easier to understand where they came from. Since I didn’t see anything in these thoughts that made them superior to myself, I could believe that if these objects were real, they were dependent on my own nature, given its certain perfection. And if they were false, it would be because I had them from nothing—meaning they existed in me due to an imperfection in my nature.
- As for the thoughts of many other objects external to me, as of the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand more, I was less at a loss to know whence these came; for since I remarked in them nothing which seemed to render them superior to myself, I could believe that, if these were true, they were dependencies on my own nature, in so far as it possessed a certain perfection, and, if they were false, that I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me because of a certain imperfection of my nature.