I had even intended to ask your attention a little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend to see a favourite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we had unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. But … since I have heard it said by men practised in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to his purposes – I will take off the slight mask at once.

from the mere fact that I know for certain that I exist and that I cannot see anything else that belongs necessarily to my nature or essence, except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone: that I am a thinking thing, a substance whose whole nature or essence is to think … it is certain that this I, that is to say my soul, which makes me what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and can be or exist without it.