And thus we may easily have two clear and distinct notions or ideas,
the one of created substance, which thinks, the other of corporeal
substance, provided we carefully distinguish all the attributes of
thought from those of extension. We may also have a clear and
distinct idea of an uncreated and independent thinking substance,
that is, of God, provided we do not suppose that this idea
adequately represents to us all that is in God, and do not mix up
with it anything fictitious, but attend simply to the characters
that are comprised in the notion we have of him, and which we
clearly know to belong to the nature of an absolutely perfect Being.
For no one can deny that there is in us such an idea of God, without
groundlessly supposing that there is no knowledge of God at all in
the human mind.
LV. How duration, order, and number may be also distinctly
conceived.
We will also have most distinct conceptions of duration, order, and
number, if, in place of mixing up with our notions of them that
which properly belongs to the concept of substance, we merely think
that the duration of a thing is a mode under which we conceive this
thing, in so far as it continues to exist; and, in like manner, that
order and number are not in reality different from things disposed
in order and numbered, but only modes under which we diversely
consider these things.
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