This chapter's subtitle – “The Body of Descartes?” – quite rightly dresses the body of Descartes with a question mark. The question mark is most fitting, for, indeed, what we might want to identify under its garments as the body of Descartes could turn out to be a ghost or an automaton – like those hats and cloaks at the end of the Second Meditation that we judge (by the “pure inspection of the mind”) to clothe men but which may turn out to cover only “spectres or feigned men” (des spectres ou des hommes feints). But these shapes become all the more questionable if we remember that in context they are the figures for a still more famous body of Descartes: the body of the “piece of wax.” In the same way that ordinary language almost deceives us into saying that we see the same wax after it has undergone all kinds of changes to its corporeal nature – when, in reality, what we do is to judge by the pure inspection of the mind that it is the self-same wax – so it would deceive us into saying that we see men when we look out the window at hats and cloaks passing in the street – when, in reality, what we do is to judge by the pure inspection of the mind that these hats and cloaks cover the bodies of men and not ghosts or automatons.