 It might seem surprising that as a philosopher Descartes ever flirts with confusions at all. When he does so he is just employing his analytic method – what he calls the “best and truest method of instruction…” (Second Replies, AT 7:156, CSM 2:111). Descartes does not hide that he sometimes makes claims early in the Meditations that from a later and more sophisticated point of view he will retract. He says,