s 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 manifest 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 is not perceived through the senses or the imagination but through the mind alone. It is an inspection of the mind. This inspection is not infallible and its accuracy is dependant upon the attention and speculation given to the subject. Thinking is merely judging, reaching conclusions and assumptions based on connections. Another example would clarify what is meant by judging and perceiving through the mind alone. Were you to look out the window and watch people crossing the street, you might say that you see the people themselves through the faculty of sight. But what you actually see is clothes, hats, and the like. You perceive these people through an inspection of the mind alone. What things apply to the perception of wax or people can be applied to all things external. If his perception of things becomes clearer once he knows what faculties and reasons are us...
