Part of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy for an understanding of his later writings, in particular the Meditations and Principles of Philosophy. Henry Torrey explains this thusly in his The Philosophy of Descartes in Extracts from His Writing, The effect cannot transcend the cause; but if God did not exist, the presence of the idea of infinite perfection within a finite consciousness would be inexplicable; the effect would transcend the cause (Torrey 19). This is an apriori The philosophy of Descartes, in extracts from his writing; [Ren