Excersise 3: The longer and more carefully I examine all these points, the more clearly and distinctly I recognize their truth. But what is my conclusion to be? If I find that some idea of mine has so much representative reality that I am sure the same reality doesn’t reside in me, either straightforwardly or in a higher form, and hence that I myself can’t be the cause of the idea, then [because everything must have some cause], it will necessarily follow that I am not alone in the world: there exists some other thing that is the cause of that idea. If no such idea is to be found in me, I shall have no argument to show that anything exists apart from myself: for, despite a most careful and wide-ranging survey, this is the only argument I have so far been able to find.
Exercise 4: So there remains only the idea of God: is there anything in that which couldn’t have originated in my- self? By the word “God” I understand a substance that is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, which created myself and anything else that may exist. The more carefully I concentrate on these attributes, the less possible it seems that any of them could have originated from me alone. So this whole discussion implies that God necessarily exists.
Exercise 5: The core of the argument is this: I couldn’t exist with the nature that I have—that is, containing within me the idea of God—if God didn’t really exist. By “God” I mean the very being the idea of whom is within me—the one that has no defects and has all those perfections that I can’t grasp but can somehow
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