[In this paragraph, Descartes uses ‘distinct’ in two ways. (i) As before, he calls an idea ‘distinct’ if it is absolutely sharp and clear. (ii) He also, for the first time in this work, speaks of one thing as being ‘distinct from’ another, meaning that they are two things, not one.] First, I know that if I have a clear and distinct thought of something, God could have created it in a way that exactly corresponds to my thought. So the fact that I can clearly and distinctly think of one thing apart from another assures me that the two things are distinct from one another - ·that is, that they are two· -, since they can be separated by God. Never mind how they could be separated; that does not affect the judgment that they are distinct.

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But the philosophy schools through all the universities of the Christian world, on the basis of certain texts of Aristotle’s, teach a different doctrine. For the cause of vision they say that the thing that is seen sends out in all directions a visible species, and that seeing the object is receiving this visible species into the eye. (In English, a ‘visible species’ is a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or being-seen.) [Hobbes includes ‘being-seen’ on the strength of the fact that several dominant senses of the Latin species involve seeing. Other senses don’t, but Hobbes’s reason for his choice will appear in a moment.] And for the cause of hearing they say that the thing that is heard sends forth an audible species (that is, an audible aspect, or audible being-seen) which enters the ear and creates hearing. Indeed, for the cause of understanding they say that the thing that is understood sends out intelligible species, that is, an intelligible being-seen, which comes into the understanding and makes us understand! I don’t say this in criticism of universities; I shall come later to the topic of their role in a commonwealth. But on the way to that I must take every opportunity to let you see what things would be amended in them ·if they played their proper role properly·; and one of these is the frequency of meaningless speech.