ABSTRACT
It is a fundamental feature of Descartes’s system that the knowledge of God’s existence is more certain than the knowledge of anything else except that of one’s own mind; and, further, that the advance of knowledge to the recognition of anything other than God and one’s own mind must itself be founded on God, as we have already noticed at the end of the last chapter. In particular, God provides the route that leads back to the physical world. God provides in fact the foundation of all knowledge; there is even a way, which we shall investigate in the next chapter, in which he provides the foundation of the knowledge of the basic certainties themselves. He provides all this in virtue of his creative power and his
infinite benevolence, which guarantee that he is ‘no deceiver’. From this there follow two, closely connected, assurances. The first is that the malicious demon who was suggested as a universal cause of error does not exist, for God himself, of course, is no such being, nor would he permit his creatures to be constantly deceived by any such. Second, the faculty of judgement which Descartes finds in himself was certainly received from God who created him, and God cannot have provided him with a faculty which, when correctly employed, will lead to error. This second assurance is in fact the more basic one: the existence of a faculty of judgement which, correctly used, will not lead to error, is sufficient to dispose of the fear of a malicious demon who is a universal cause of error.
