Without Lifting A Finger

Annotation E. It is often not within our power to keep our minds clear of images: whenever we deal with lines, surfaces, and points, our mind resorts to these fictions and models, because that was how we first comprehended what they represent; and thereafter we made a habit of using them. Likewise, when we think about God, some picture of a dignified old man comes into our mind; and those who religiously struggle to shake them off usually do not succeed. The mind is only clear when it is abstracted from such images, or at least when we do not have them in any great number, do not value them, do not affirm or deny anything of them, and do not infer anything from them, but infer the natures of things only from a notion or idea. Thus, little by little we reach a state in which those images are so well filtered that very few pass through, or even none at all. For images are reinforced by repeated reflection, and by the utterance of speeches evoked by them and the demands they mak...

Seemed like a natural switch: from Physics to Metaphysics. Physics was ok but getting a bit tedious. *      Further, of the ways in which we prove that the Forms exist, none is convincing; for from some no inference necessarily follows, and from some arise Forms even of things of which we think there are no Forms. For according to the arguments from the existence of the sciences there will be Forms of all things of which there are sciences and according to the 'one over many' argument there will be Forms even of negations, and according to the argument that there is an object for thought even when the thing has perished, there will be Forms of perishable things; for we have an image of these. Further, of the more accurate arguments, some lead to Ideas of relations, of which we say there is no independent class, and others introduce the 'third man'.