 The remark can be read as a concession that the Sixth Meditation arguments are weaker than the earlier arguments about minds and God – that these later arguments do not “prove what they establish.” Of course, one need not read the remark this way. And other texts are unfavorable to this interpretation. For example, in the opening paragraphs of the Sixth Meditation, Descartes considers a probabilistic argument for the existence of external bodies. Though he accepts the proposed account as offering the best explanation, he nonetheless dismisses it for the express reason that it grounds “only a probability” – it does not provide the “basis for a necessary inference that some body exists” (AT 7:73, CSM 2:51). This is a puzzling dismissal, assuming Descartes has relaxed his standards to probable inference.