hese characteristics of the soul he cannot define nor claim to understand it. He likens the soul to wind, fire, or either none of which he can deny or explain. The last and most important part of the "I" is the mind. It is the thinking thing that proves his existence. An evil genius could trick him neither into believing this body is his when it is not, but his mind cannot be replaced nor absent without a loss of existence. Also, the mind and soul can sense and move, as they do in dreams, while the body remains motionless, almost absent. Now, he has some understanding of what the "I" is, but how does it relate to, function in, and perceive reality? What faculties does the "I" use to recognize and judge things? It can sense things through seeing, smelling, tasting It can also imagine, which is "the contemplation of the shape or image of a corporeal thing." Descartes uses wax as an example to show how the "I" recognizes and evaluates things. A piece of wax has a color, shape, and size that are obvious the senses. It is hard and cold; when you knock on it, it emits a sound. These things he says "enable a body to be known as distinctly as possible." Now, when the wax is brought close to the fire it changes. It has lost its smell, the shape is disappearing, its size is increasing, and it has become a hot liquid. When you knock on it, it no longer emits a sound. "For whatever came under the senses of taste, smell, sight touch or hearing has now changed; and yet the wax remains." Perhaps, the wax was never how it appeared to the senses but simply a body that was once manifests in these ways and is now manifest in others. As the imagination grasps it, an extended, flexible, and mutable body that is capable of many changes. Even so, the wax is capable of innumerable changes that it is impossible for one to imagine them all through the imagination. Descartes concludes "Therefore this insight is not achieved by the faculty of imagination." The wax...
