On the first and second moment read and understand the text well.
First moment:
- Some years ago I was struct by hopw many false things I had believed , and by how doubtful was the structure of beliefs that I had based on them. I realized that if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I - just once in my life - to demolish everything completely and start again from foundations. It looked like an enormous task, and i decided to wait until I was old enoough to be sure that there was nothing to be gained from putting it off any longer. I have now delayed if for so long that I have no excuse for going on planning to do it rather than getting to work. So today I have set all my worries aside and arranged for my self a clear stretch of free time. I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote my self, sincerely and without holding back, to demolishing my opinions.
- I can do this without showing that all my beliefs are false, which is probably more than I could ever manage. My reason tells me that as well as withholding assent from propositions that obviously false, I should also withhild it from ones that are not completely certain and induibitable. So all I need , for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, is to fine in each of them at least some reasons for doubt. I can do this without going through them by one, which would take forever: once the foundations of building have been undermined, the rest collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for basic principles on which all former beliefs rested.
- Whatever I have accepted untill now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived us even once.
- Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects that are very small or distant, that doesn't apply to my belief that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. I tt seems to be quite impossible to doubt beliefs like these, which come from the senses
SECOND MOMENT: The mad man analogy
- Another example: how can I doubt that these hands or this whole body are mine? To doubt such things i would have to liken my self to Brain-damage madmen who are convinced they are kings when really they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass. Such people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I modeled my self on them.