ABSTRACT
The Meditations fall naturally into two parts, the first, the statement of the doubt, occupying the first Meditation; the second, the systematic body of metaphysical proofs of the last five Meditations for which the doubt clears the ground. The second has two explicit aims, first, to prove God's existence, secondly, to prove the soul's immateriality, that is, to prove that it is a thinking substance really distinct from body. If Descartes assumes the distinction between mind and body, then Metaphysic is an empty parade of false logic. The nature of the steps of the transition: cogito to the proof of the real distinction of body and mind, is a principal point of discussion between Descartes and Amauld. If Amauld were right then not only would the Meditations collapse but the whole Cartesian method. Since it is a universal method, then, if it fails to be a genuine instrument of discovery in metaphysics, its uselessness in all the sciences is proved.
