...from Descartes' Meditation #4

Descartes has this famously weird ontological proof for the existence of God which sort of argues that the "idea" of perfection in our minds points to a separately subsisting Supreme Being. Be that as it may, the other very interesting aspect of this meditation has to do with humans who are self-consciously error-prone and tormented thus by that same idea of perfection, (autonomy, independence, invulnerability, freedom from fallibility) that we can never quite get out of our minds:  "And it is true that when I think only of God and direct my mind wholly to Him, I discover [in myself] no cause of error, or falsity; yet directly afterwards, when recurring to myself, experience shows me that I am nevertheless subject to an infinitude of errors, as to which, when we come to investigate them more closely, I notice that not only is there a real and positive idea of God or of a Being of supreme perfection present to my mind, but also, so to speak, a certain negative idea of nothing, that is, of that which is infinitely removed from any kind of perfection; and that I am in a sense something intermediate between God and nought, i.e. placed in such a manner between the supreme Being and non-being, that there is in truth nothing in me that can lead to error in so far as a sovereign Being has formed me; but that, as I in some degree participate likewise in nought or in non-being, i.e. in so far as I am not myself the supreme Being, and as I find myself subject to an infinitude of imperfections, I ought not to be astonished if I should fall into error."  - from Rene Descartes - Meditation #4