Discourse on the Method, part 4, ¶ 6-2 (ChatGPT)

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This is clearly shown by the fact that traditional philosophers believe that there is nothing in our understanding that wasn’t first in our senses. However, it’s clear that we’ve never had the ideas of God or the soul through our senses. It seems to me that those who try to understand these ideas through imagination are like people trying to hear sounds or smell odors using only their eyes. In other words, while sight, smell, and hearing all provide similar levels of certainty, neither imagination nor the senses can assure us of anything without the involvement of our understanding.

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translation (ChatGPT) of

The truth of this is sufficiently manifest from the single circumstance, that the philosophers of the Schools accept as a maxim that there is nothing in the Understanding which was not previously in the Senses, in which however it is certain that the ideas of God and of the soul have never been; and it appears to me that they who make use of their imagination to comprehend these ideas do exactly the same thing as if, in order to hear sounds or smell odours, they strove to avail themselves of their eyes; unless indeed that there is this difference, that the sense of sight does not afford us an inferior assurance to those of smell or hearing; in place of which, neither our imagination nor our senses can give us assurance of anything unless our Understanding intervene.