The sense in which Descartes understood his first principle becomes
clearer when we look at his answers to the objections made against it.
On the one hand it was challenged by those who asked, like Gassendi,
why the argument should be based especially on thought, and why we
might not say with as good a right, _ambulo, ergo sum_: "I walk,
therefore I am." Descartes explains that it is only as referred to
consciousness that walking is an evidence of my existence; but if I
say, "I am conscious of walking, therefore I exist," this is
equivalent to saying, "I think in one particular way, therefore I
exist." But it is not thinking in a particular way, but thinking in
general that is coextensive with my existence. I am not always
conscious of walking or of any other special state or object, but I am
always conscious, for except in consciousness there is no ego or self,
and where there is consciousness there is always an ego. "Do I then
always think, even in sleep?" asks the objector; and Descartes exposes
himself to the criticisms of Locke, by maintaining that it is
impossible that there should ever be an interval in the activity of
consciousness, and by insisting that as man is essentially a thinking
substance, the child thinks, or is self-conscious, even in its
mother's womb. The difficulty disappears when we observe that the
question as to the conditions under which self-consciousness is
developed in the individual human subject does not affect the nature
of self-consciousness in itself or in its relation to knowledge. The
force of Descartes's argument really lies in this, that the world as
an intelligible world exists only for a conscious self, and that
therefore the unity of thought and being in self-consciousness is
presupposed in all knowledge. Of this self it is true to say that it
exists only as it thinks, and that it thinks always. _Cogito, ergo
sum_ is, as Descartes points out, not a syllogism, but the expression
of an identity which is discerned by the simple intuition of the
mind.[2] If it were otherwise, the major "_omne quod cogitat existit_"
would require to have been known before the minor "_cogito_"; whereas
on the contrary it is from the immediate consciousness of being as
contained in self-consciousness that that major can alone be derived.
Again, when Hobbes and others argued that thinking is or may be a
property of a material substance, Descartes answers that the question
whether the material and the thinking substance are one does not meet
us at the outset, but can only be solved after we have considered what
is involved in the conception of these different substances
respectively.[3] In other words, to begin by treating thinking as a
quality of a material substance, is to go outside of the intelligible
world for an explanation of the intelligible world. It is to ask for
something prior to that which is first in thought. If it be true that
the consciousness of self is that from which we cannot abstract, that
which is involved in the knowledge of anything, then to go beyond it
and seek for a reason or explanation of it in anything else is to go
beyond the beginning of knowledge; it is to ask for a knowledge before
knowledge.
Descartes, however, is himself unfaithful to this point of view; for,
strictly taken, it would involve the consequence, not only that there
is nothing prior to the pure consciousness of self, but that there can
be no object which is not in necessary relation to it. Hence there can
be no absolute opposition between thought and anything else, no
opposition which thought itself does not transcend. But Descartes
commits the error of making thought the property of a substance, a
_res cogitans_, which as such can immediately or directly apprehend
nothing but thoughts or ideas; while, altogether outside of these
thoughts and ideas, there is another substance characterized by the
property of extension, and with which thought has nothing to do.
Matter in space is thus changed, in Kantian language, into a "thing in
itself," an object out of all relation to the subject; and on the
other hand, mind seems to be shut up in the magic circle of its own
ideas, without any capacity of breaking through the circle or
apprehending any reality but itself. Between thought and being, in
spite of their _subjective_ unity in self-consciousness, a great gulf
seems still to be fixed, which cannot be crossed unless thought should
become extended, or matter think. But to Descartes the dualism is
absolute, because it is a presupposition with which he starts. Mind
cannot go out of itself, cannot deal with anything but thought,
without ceasing to be mind; and matter must cease to be matter ere it
can lose its absolute externality, its nature as having _partes extra
partes_, and acquire the unity of mind. They are opposed as the
divisible and the indivisible, and there is no possible existence of
matter in thought except a representative existence. The ideal (or, as
Descartes calls it, objective) existence of matter _in_ thought and
the real (or, as Descartes calls it, formal) existence of matter _out
of_ thought are absolutely different and independent things.
Proof of existence of God.
It was, however, impossible for Descartes to be content with a
subjective idealism that confined all knowledge to the tautological
expression of self-consciousness "I am I," "What I perceive I perceive."
If the individual is to find in his self-consciousness the principle of
all knowledge, there must be something in it which transcends the
distinction of self and not self, which carries him beyond the limit of
his own individuality. What then is the point where the subjective
consciousness passes out into the objective, from which it seemed at
first absolutely excluded? Descartes answers that it is through the
connexion of the consciousness of self with the consciousness of God. It
is because we find God in our minds that we find anything else. The
proof of God's existence is therefore the hinge on which the whole
Cartesian philosophy turns, and it is necessary to examine the nature of
it somewhat closely.
Descartes, in the first place, tries to extract a criterion of truth out
of the _cogito, ergo sum_. Why am I assured of my own existence? It is
because the conception of existence is at once and immediately involved
in the consciousness of self. I can logically distinguish the two
elements, but I cannot separate them; whenever I clearly and distinctly
conceive the one, I am forced to think the other along with it. But this
gives me a rule for all judgments whatever, a principle which is
related to the _cogito, ergo sum_ as the formal to the material
principle of knowledge. Whatever we cannot separate from the clear and
distinct conception of anything, necessarily belongs to it in reality;
and on the other hand, whatever we can separate from the clear and
distinct conception of anything, does not necessarily belong to it in
reality. Let us therefore set an object clearly before us, let us sever
it in thought so far as is possible from all other objects, and we shall
at once be able to determine what properties and relations are essential
and what are not essential to it. And if we find empirically that any
object manifests a property or relation not involved in the clear and
distinct conception of it, we can say with certainty that such property
or relation does not belong to it except by arbitrary arrangement, or,
in other words, by the external combination of things which in their own
nature have no affinity or connexion.
Now, by the application of this principle, we might at once assure
ourselves of many mathematical truths; but, as has been already shown,
there is a point of view from which we may doubt even these, so long as
the idea of a God that deceives us is not excluded. If it is not certain
that there is a God that cannot lie, it is not certain that there is an
objective matter in space to which mathematical truth applies. But the
existence of God may be proved in two ways. In the first place, it may
be proved through the principle of causality, which is a self-evident
truth. We have in our mind many ideas, and according to the principle of
causality, all these ideas must be derived from something that contains
a "formal" reality which corresponds to their "objective" reality, i.e.
which contains at least as much reality in its existence out of thought
as they contain in their existence in thought. Now we might derive from
ourselves not only the ideas of other minds like ourselves, but possibly
also of material objects, since these are lower in the scale of
existence than ourselves, and it is conceivable that the idea of them
might be got by omitting some of the qualities which distinguish
ourselves. But the idea of God, of a being who is eternal and immutable,
all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good, cannot be derived from our own
limited and imperfect existence. The origin, therefore, must be sought
in a being who contains actually in himself all that is contained in our
idea of him.
Descartes's metaphysics.
It was objected by some of the critics of Descartes that the idea of
God as the infinite Being is merely negative, and that it is derived
from the finite simply by abstracting from its conditions. Descartes
answers that the case is just the reverse--the infinite is the
positive idea, and the finite is the negative, and therefore the
former is the presupposition of the latter. As Kant, at a later date,
pointed out that space is not a general conception, abstracted from
the ideas of particular spaces, and representing the common element in
them, but that, on the contrary, the ideas of particular spaces are
got by the limitation of the one infinite space that is prior to them,
so Descartes maintains in general that the idea of the finite is had
only by limitation of the infinite, and not the idea of the infinite
by abstraction from the particular determinations of the finite. It is
a necessary consequence of this that the self-consciousness of a
finite being is bound up with the consciousness of the infinite. Hence
the idea of God is not merely one among other ideas which we have, but
it is the one idea that is necessary to our very existence as thinking
beings, the idea through which alone we can think ourselves, or
anything else. "I ought never to suppose," says Descartes, "that my
conception of the infinite is a negative idea, got by negation of the
finite, just as I conceive repose to be merely negation of movement,
and darkness merely the negation of light. On the contrary, I see
manifestly that there is more reality in the infinite than in the
finite substance, and that therefore I have in me the notion of the
infinite, _even in some sense prior to the notion of the finite_, or,
in other words, that the notion of myself in some sense presupposes
the notion of God; for how could I doubt or desire, how could I be
conscious of anything as a want, how could I know that I am not
altogether perfect, if I had not in me the idea of a being more
perfect than myself, by comparison with whom I recognize the defects
of my own existence?"[4] Descartes then goes on in various ways to
illustrate the thesis that the consciousness of a defective and
growing nature cannot give rise to the idea of infinite perfection,
but on the contrary presupposes it. We could not think of a series of
approximations unless there were somehow present to us the idea of the
completed infinite as the goal we aim at. If we had not the
consciousness of ourselves as finite _in relation_ to the infinite,
either we should not be conscious of ourselves at all, or we should
be conscious of ourselves as infinite. The image of God is so
impressed by him upon us, that we "conceive that resemblance wherein
the idea of God is contained by the same faculty whereby we are
conscious of ourselves." In other words, our consciousness of
ourselves is at the same time consciousness of our finitude, and hence
of our relation to a being who is infinite.
The principle which underlies the reasoning of Descartes is that to be
conscious of a limit, is to transcend it. We could not feel the limits
either upon our thought or upon our existence, we could not doubt or
desire, if we did not already apprehend something beyond these limits.
Nay, we could not be conscious of our existence as individual selves
if we were not conscious of that which is not ourselves, and of a
unity in which both self and not-self are included. Our individual
life is therefore to us as self-conscious beings a part of a wider
universal life. Doubt and aspiration are but the manifestation of this
essential division and contradiction of a nature which, as conscious
of itself, is at the same time conscious of the whole in which it is a
part. And as the existence of a self and its consciousness are one, so
we may say that a thinking being is not only an individual, but always
in some sense identified with that universal unity of being to which
it is essentially related.
If Descartes had followed out this line of thought, he would have been
led at once to the pantheism of Spinoza, if not beyond it. As it is,
he is on the verge of contradiction with himself when he speaks of the
consciousness of God as _in some sense_ prior to the consciousness of
self. How can anything be prior to the first principle of knowledge?
It is no answer to say that the consciousness of God is the
_principium essendi_, while the consciousness of self is the
_principium cognoscendi_. For, if the idea of God is prior to the idea
of self, knowledge must begin where existence begins, with God. The
words "in some sense," with which Descartes qualifies his assertion of
the priority of the idea of God, only betray his hesitation and his
partial consciousness of the contradiction in which he is involved.
Some of Descartes's critics presented this difficulty to him in
another form, and accused him of reasoning in a circle when he said
that it is because God cannot lie that we are certain that our clear
and distinct ideas do not deceive us. The very existence of the
conscious self, the _cogito, ergo sum_, which is the first of all
truths and therefore prior in certitude to the existence of God, is
believed only because of the clearness and distinctness with which we
apprehend it. How then, they argued, could God's truthfulness be our
security for a principle which we must use in order to prove the being
of God? The answer of Descartes is somewhat lame. We cannot doubt any
self-evident principle, or even any truth based on a self-evident
principle, when we are directly contemplating it in all the necessity
of its evidence; it is only when we forget or turn away from this
evidence, and begin to think of the possibility of a deceitful God,
that a doubt arises which cannot be removed except by the conviction
that God is true.[5] It can scarcely be said that this is a _dignus
vindice nodus_, or that God can fitly appear as a kind of second-best
resource to the forgetful spirit that has lost its direct hold on
truth and its faith in itself. God, truth, and the human spirit are
thus conceived as having merely external and accidental relations with
each other. What Descartes, however, is really expressing in this
exoteric way is simply that beneath and beyond all particular truths
lies the great general truth of the unity of thought and existence. In
contemplating particular truth, we may not consciously relate it to
this unity, but when we have to defend ourselves against scepticism we
are forced to realize this relation. The ultimate answer to any attack
upon a special aspect or element of truth must be to show that the
fate of truth itself, the very possibility of knowledge, is involved
in the rejection of it, and that we cannot doubt it without doubting
reason itself. But to doubt reason is, in the language of Descartes,
to doubt the truthfulness of God, for, in his view, the idea of God is
involved in the very constitution of reason. Taken in this way then,
the import of Descartes's answer is, that the consciousness of self,
like every other particular truth, is not at first seen to rest on the
consciousness of God, but that when we realize what it means we see
that it does so rest. But if this be so, then in making the
consciousness of self his first principle of knowledge, Descartes has
stopped short of the truth. It can only be the first principle if it
is understood, not as the consciousness of the individual self, but in
a sense in which the consciousness of self is identical with the
consciousness of God.
Descartes, however, is far from a clear apprehension of the ultimate
unity of thought and being, which nevertheless he strives to find in
God. Beginning with an absolute separation of the _res cogitans_ from
the _res extensa_, he is continually falling back into dualism just
when he seemed to have escaped from it. Even in God the absolute
unity, idea and reality fall asunder; our idea of God is not God in
us, it is only an idea of which God's existence is the cause. But the
category of causality, if it forms a bridge between different things,
as here between knowing and being, at the same time repels them from
each other. It is a category of external relation which may be
adequate to express the relation of the finite to the finite, but not
the relation of the finite to the infinite. We cannot conceive God as
the cause of our idea of him, without making God a purely objective
and therefore finite existence. Nor is the case better when we turn to
the so-called ontological argument,--that existence is necessarily
involved in the idea of God, just as the property of having its angles
equal to two right angles is involved in the idea of a triangle. If
indeed we understood this as meaning that thought transcends the
distinction between itself and existence, and that therefore existence
cannot be a thing in itself out of thought, but must be an
intelligible world that exists as such only for the thinking being,
there is some force in the argument. But this meaning we cannot find
in Descartes, or to find it we must make him inconsistent with
himself. He was so far from having quelled the phantom "thing in
itself," that he treated matter in space as such a thing, and thus
confused externality of space with externality to the mind. On this
dualistic basis, the ontological argument becomes a manifest
paralogism, and lies open to all the objections that Kant brought
against it. That the idea of God involves existence, proves only that
God, if he exists at all, exists by the necessity of his being. But
the link that shall bind thought to existence is still wanting, and,
in consistency with the other presuppositions of Descartes, it cannot
be supplied.
But again, even if we allow to Descartes that God is the unity of
thought and being, we must still ask what kind of unity? Is it a mere
generic unity, reached by abstraction, and therefore leaving out all
the distinguishing characteristics of the particulars under it? Or is
it a concrete unity to which the particular elements are subordinated,
but in which they are nevertheless included? To answer this question,
we need only look at the relation of the finite to the infinite, as it
is expressed in that passage already quoted, and in many others.
Descartes always speaks of the infinite as a purely affirmative or
positive existence, and of the finite in so far as it is distinguished
from the infinite, as purely negative, or in other words as a
nonentity. "I am," he says, "a mean between God and nothing, between
the Supreme Being and not-being. In so far as I am created by God,
there is nothing in me that can deceive me or lead me into error. But
on the other hand, if I consider myself as participating in
nothingness or not-being, inasmuch as I am not myself the Supreme
Being, but in many ways defective, I find myself exposed to an
infinity of errors. Thus error as such is not something real that
depends on God, but simply a defect; I do not need to explain it by
means of any special faculty bestowed on me by God, but merely by the
fact that the faculty for discerning truth from error with which he
has endowed me, is not infinite."[6] But if we follow out this
principle to its logical result, we must say not only that error is a
consequence of finitude, but also that the very _existence_ of the
finite as such is an error or illusion. All finitude, all
determination, according to the well-known Spinozistic aphorism, is
negation, and negation cannot constitute reality. To know the reality
of things, therefore, we have to abstract from their limits, or in
other words, the only reality is the infinite. Finite being, _qua_
finite, has no existence, and finite self-consciousness, consciousness
of a self in opposition to or limited by a not-self, is an illusion.
But Descartes does not thus reason. He does not see "anything in the
nature of the infinite which should exclude the existence of finite
things." "What," he asks, "would become of the power of that imaginary
infinite if it could create nothing? Perceiving in ourselves the power
of thinking, we can easily conceive that there should be a greater
intelligence elsewhere. And even if we should suppose that
intelligence increased _ad infinitum_, we need not fear that our own
would be lessened. And the same is true of all other attributes which
we ascribe to God, even of his power, provided only that we do not
suppose that the power in us is not subjected to God's will. In all
points, therefore, he is infinite without any exclusion of created
things."[7] The truth of this view we need not dispute; the question
is as to its consistency with Cartesian principles. It may be a higher
idea of God to conceive him as revealing himself in and to finite
creatures; but it is a different idea from that which is implied in
Descartes's explanations of error. It is an inconsistency that brings
Descartes nearer to Christianity, and nearer, it may also be said, to
a true metaphysic; but it is not the less an inconsistency with his
fundamental principles, which necessarily disappears in their
subsequent development. To conceive the finite as constituted not
merely by the absence of some of the positive elements of the
infinite, but as in necessary unity with the infinite; to conceive the
infinite as not merely that which has no limits or determinations, but
as that which is self-determined and self-manifesting, which through
all finitude and manifestation returns upon itself, may not be
erroneous. But it would not be difficult to show that the adoption of
such a conception involves the rejection or modification of almost
every doctrine of the Cartesian system.
Mind and matter.
In connexion with this inconsistency we may notice the very different
relations in which Descartes conceives mind on the one side and matter
on the other, to stand towards God, who yet is the cause of both, and
must therefore, by the principle of causality, contain in himself all
that is in both. Matter and mind are to Descartes absolute opposites.
Whatever can be asserted of mind can be denied of matter, whatever can
be asserted of matter can be denied of mind. Matter is passive, mind
is active; matter is extended, and therefore divisible _ad infinitum_;
mind is an indivisible unity. In fact, though of this Descartes is
not conscious, the determination of the one is mediated by its
opposition to the other; the ideas of object and subject, the self and
not-self, are terms of a relation distinguishable but inseparable. But
in the idea of God we must find a unity which transcends this
difference in one way or another, whether by combining the two under a
higher notion, or, as it would be more natural to expect on Cartesian
principles, by abstracting equally from the particular characteristics
of both. Descartes really does neither, or rather he acts partly on
the one principle and partly on the other. In his idea of God he
abstracts from the properties of matter but not from those of mind.
"God," he says, "contains in himself _formaliter_ all that is in mind,
but only _eminenter_ all that is in matter";[8] or, as he elsewhere
expresses it more popularly, he _is_ mind, but he is only the creator
of matter. And for this he gives as his reason, that matter as being
divisible and passive is essentially imperfect. _Ipsa natura corporis
multas imperfectiones involvit_, and, therefore, "there is more
analogy between sounds and colours than there is between material
things and God." But the real imperfection here lies in the
abstractness of the Cartesian conception of matter as merely extended,
merely passive; and this is balanced by the equal abstractness of the
conception of mind or self-consciousness as an absolutely simple
activity, a pure intelligence without any object but itself. If matter
as absolutely opposed to mind is imperfect, mind as absolutely opposed
to matter is equally imperfect. In fact they are the elements or
factors of a unity, and lose all meaning when severed from each other,
and if we are to seek this unity by abstraction, we must equally
abstract from both.
Reason and will.
The result of this one-sidedness is seen in the fact that Descartes,
who begins by separating mind from matter, ends by finding the essence
of mind in pure will, i.e. in pure formal self-determination. Hence
God's will is conceived as absolutely arbitrary, not determined by any
end or law, for all laws, even the necessary truths that constitute
reason, spring from God's determination, and do not precede it. "He is
the author of the essence of things no less than their existence," and
his will has no reason but his will. In man there is an intelligence
with eternal laws or truths involved in its structure, which so far
limits his will. "He finds the nature of good and truth already
determined by God, and his will cannot be moved by anything else." His
highest freedom consists in having his will determined by a clear
perception of the nature of good and truth, and "he is never
indifferent except when he is ignorant of it, or at least does not see
it so clearly as to be lifted above the possibility of doubt."[9]
Indifference of will is to him "the lowest grade of liberty," yet, on
the other hand, in nothing does the image of God in him show itself
more clearly than in the fact that his will is not limited by his
clear and distinct knowledge, but is "in a manner infinite." For
"there is no object of any will, even the infinite will of God, to
which our will does not extend."[10] Belief is a free act, for as we
can yield our assent to the obscure conceptions presented by sense and
the imagination, and thus allow ourselves to be led into error, so on
the other hand we can refuse to give this assent, or allow ourselves
to be determined by anything but the clear and distinct ideas of
intelligence. That which makes it possible for us to err is that also
in which the divine image in us is most clearly seen. We cannot have
the freedom of God whose will creates the object of his knowledge; but
in reserving our assent for the clear and distinct perceptions of
intelligence, we, as it were, re-enact for ourselves the divine law,
and repeat, so far as is possible to finite beings, the transcendent
act of will in which truth and good had their origin.
The inherent defect of this view is the divorce it makes between the
form and the matter of intelligence. It implies that reason or
self-consciousness is one thing, and that truth is another and quite
different thing, which has been united to it by the arbitrary will of
God. The same external conception of the relation of truth to the mind
is involved in the doctrine of innate ideas. It is true that Descartes
did not hold that doctrine in the coarse form in which it was
attributed to him by Locke, but expressly declares that he has "never
said or thought at any time that the mind required innate ideas which
were separated from the faculty of thinking. He had simply used the
word innate to distinguish those ideas which are derived from that
faculty, and not from external objects or the determination of the
will. Just as when we say generosity is innate in certain families,
and in certain others diseases, like the gout or the stone, we do not
mean to imply that infants in their mother's womb are affected with
these complaints."[11] Yet Descartes, as we have seen, does not hold
that these truths are involved in the very nature of intelligence as
such, so that we cannot conceive a self-conscious being without them.
On the contrary, we are to regard the divine intelligence as by
arbitrary act determining that two and two should be four, or that
envy should be a vice. We are "_not_ to conceive eternal truth flowing
from God as rays from the sun."[12] In other words, we are not to
conceive all particular truths as different aspects of one truth. It
is part of the imperfection of man's finite nature that he "finds
truth and good determined for him." It is something given,--given,
indeed, along with his very faculty of thinking, but still _given_ as
an external limit to it. It belongs not to his nature as spirit, but
to his finitude as man.
Truth of external world.
After what has been said, it is obvious that the transition from God
to matter must be somewhat arbitrary and external. God's truthfulness
is pledged for the reality of that of which we have _clear and
distinct ideas_; and we have clear and distinct ideas of the external
world so long as we conceive it simply as extended matter, infinitely
divisible, and moved entirely from without,--so long, in short, as we
conceive it as the direct opposite of mind, and do not attribute to it
any one of the properties of mind. "Omnes proprietates, quas in ea
clare percipimus, ad hoc unum reducuntur, quod sit partibilis et
mobilis, secundum partes." We must, therefore, free ourselves from the
obscure and confused modes of thought which arise whenever we
attribute any of the secondary qualities, which exist merely in our
sensations, to the objects that cause these sensations. The subjective
character of such qualities is proved by the constant change which
takes place in them, without any change of the object in which they
are perceived. A piece of wax cannot lose its extension; but its
colour, its hardness, and all the other qualities whereby it is
presented to sense, may be easily altered. What is objective in all
this is merely an extended substance, and the modes of motion or rest
through which it is made to pass. In like manner we must separate from
our notion of matter all ideas of _actio in distans_--e.g. we must
explain weight not as a tendency to the centre of the earth or an
attraction of distant particles of matter, but as a consequence of the
pressure of other bodies, immediately surrounding that which is felt
to be heavy.[13] For the only conceivable _actio in distans_ is that
which is mediated by thought, and it is only in so far as we suppose
matter to have in it a principle of activity like thought, that we can
accept such explanations of its motion. Again, while we must thus keep
our conception of matter clear of all elements that do not belong to
it, we must also be careful not to take away from it those that _do_
belong to it. It is a defect of distinctness in our ideas when we
conceive an attribute as existing apart from its substance, or a
substance without its attribute; for this is to treat elements that
are only separated by a "distinction of reason," as if they were
distinct things. The conception of the possibility of a vacuum or
empty space arises merely from our confusing the possible separation
of any mode or form of matter from matter in general with the
impossible separation of matter in general from its own essential
attribute. Accordingly, in his physical philosophy, Descartes attempts
to explain everything on mechanical principles, starting with the
hypothesis that a certain quantity of motion has been impressed on the
material universe by God at the first, a quantity which can never be
lost or diminished, and that space is an absolute plenum in which
motion propagates itself in circles.
Material universe a mechanism.
It is unnecessary to follow Descartes into the detail of the theory of
vortices. It is more to the purpose to notice the nature of the
reasons by which he is driven to regard such a mechanical explanation
of the universe as necessary. A real or substantive existence is, in
his view, a _res completa_, a thing that can be conceived as a whole
in itself without relations to any other thing. Now matter and mind
are, he thinks, such complete existences, so long as we conceive them,
as pure intelligence must conceive them, as abstract opposites of each
other; and do not permit ourselves to be confused by those mixed modes
of thought which are due to sense or imagination. Descartes does not
see that in this very abstract opposition there is a bond of union
between mind and matter, that they are correlative opposites, and
therefore in their separation _res incompletae_. In other words, they
are merely elements of reality substantiated by abstract thought into
independent realities. He indeed partly retracts his assertion that
mind and matter severed from each other are _res completae_, when he
declares that neither can be conceived as existing apart from God, and
that therefore, strictly speaking, God alone is a substance. But, as
we have seen, he avoids the necessary inference that in God the
opposition between mind and matter is reconciled or transcended, by
conceiving God as abstract self-consciousness or will, and the
material world not as his necessary manifestation, but simply as his
creation,--as having its origin in an act of bare volition and that
only. His God is the God of monotheism and not of Christianity, and
therefore the world is to God always a foreign matter which he brings
into being, and acts on from without, but in which he is not revealed.
Animals automata.
It is a natural consequence of this view that nature is essentially
_dead matter_, that beyond the motion it has received from God at the
beginning, and which it transmits from part to part without increase
or diminution, it has no principle of activity in it. Every trace of
vitality in it must be explained away as a mere false reflection upon
it of the nature of mind. The world is thus "cut in two with a
hatchet," and there is no attraction to overcome the mutual repulsion
of its severed parts. Nothing can be admitted in the material half
that savours of self-determination, all its energy must be
communicated, not self-originated; there is no room for gravitation,
still less for magnetism or chemical affinity, in this theory. _A
fortiori_, animal life must be completely explained away. The machine
may be very complicated, but it is still, and can be nothing but, a
machine. If we once admitted that matter could be anything but
mechanical, we should be on the way to admit that matter could become
mind. When a modern physical philosopher declares that everything,
even life and thought, is ultimately reducible to matter, we cannot
always be certain that he means what he seems to say. Not seldom the
materialist _soi-disant_, when we hear his account of the properties
of matter, turns out to be something like a spiritualist in disguise;
but when Descartes asserted that everything _but_ mind is material,
and that the animals are automata, there is no such dubiety of
interpretation. He said what he meant, and meant what he said, in the
hardest sense his words can bear. _His_ matter was not even
gravitating, much less living; it had no property except that of
retaining and transmitting the motion received from without by
pressure and impact. And _his_ animals were automata, not merely in
the sense of being governed by sensation and instinct, but precisely
in the sense that a watch is an automaton. Henry More cries out
against the ruthless consequence with which he develops his principles
to this result. "In this," he says, "I do not so much admire the
penetrative power of your genius as I tremble for the fate of the
animals. What I recognize in you is not only subtlety of thought, but
a hard and remorseless logic with which you arm yourself as with a
sword of steel, to take away life and sensation with one blow, from
almost the whole animal kingdom." But Descartes was not the man to be
turned from the legitimate result of his principles by a scream. "Nec
moror astutias et sagacitates canum et vulpium, nec quaecunque alia
propter cibum, venerem, aut metum a brutis fiunt. _Profiteor enim me
posse perfacile illa omnia ut a sola membrorum conformatione profecta
explicare._"[14]
Nature of sensation.
The difficulty reaches its height when Descartes attempts to explain
the union of the body and spirit in man. Between two substances which,
when clearly and distinctly conceived, do not imply each other, there
can be none but an artificial unity,--a unity of composition that
still leaves them external to each other. Even God cannot make them
one in any higher sense.[15] And as it is impossible in the nature of
mind to see any reason why it should be embodied, or in the nature of
matter to see any reason why it should become the organ of mind, the
union of the two must be taken as a mere empirical fact. When we put
on the one side all that belongs to intelligence, and on the other all
that belongs to matter, there is a residuum in our ideas which we
cannot reduce to either head. This residuum consists of our appetites,
our passions, and our sensations, including not only the feelings of
pain and pleasure, but also the perceptions of colour, smell, taste,
of hardness and softness, and all the other qualities apprehended by
touch. These must be referred to the union of mind with body. They are
subjective in the sense that they give us no information as to the
nature either of things or of mind. Their function is only to indicate
what things are useful or hurtful to our composite nature as such, or
in other words what things tend to confirm or dissolve the unity of
mind and body. They indicate that _something_ is taking place in our
body, or without it, and so stimulate us to some kind of action, but
_what_ it is that is taking place they do not tell us. There is no
resemblance in the sensation of pain produced by great heat to the
rending of the fibres of our body that causes it. But we do not need
to know the real origin of our sensation to prevent us going too near
the fire. Sensation leads us into error only when we are not conscious
that its office is merely practical, and when we attempt to make
objective judgments by means of its obscure and confused ideas, e.g.
when we say that there is heat in our hands or in the fire. And the
remedy for this error is to be found simply in the clear conviction of
the subjectivity of sensation.
Theory of occasional causes.
These views of the nature of sense, however, at once force us to ask
how Descartes can consistently admit that a subjective result such as
sensation, a result in mind, should be produced by matter, and on the
other hand how an objective result, a result in matter, should be
effected by mind. Descartes explains at great length, according to his
modification of the physiology of the day, that the pineal gland,
which is the immediate organ of the soul, is acted on by the nerves
through the "animal spirits," and again by reaction upon these spirits
produces motions in the body. It is an obvious remark that this
explanation either materializes mind, or else puts for the solution
the very problem to be solved. It was therefore in the spirit of
Descartes, it was only making explicit what is involved in many of his
expressions, when Geulincx, one of his earliest followers, formulated
the theory of occasional causes. The general approval of the Cartesian
school proved that this was a legitimate development of doctrine. Yet
it tore away the last veil from the absolute dualism of the system,
which had so far stretched the antagonism of mind and matter that no
mediation remained possible, or what is the same thing, remained
possible only through an inexplicable will of God. The intrusion of
such a _Deus ex machina_into philosophy only showed that philosophy by
its violent abstraction had destroyed the unity of the known and
intelligible world, and was, therefore, forced to seek that unity in
the region of the unknown and unintelligible. If our light be
darkness, then in our darkness we must seek for light; if reason be
contradictory in itself, truth must be found in unreason. The
development of the Cartesian school was soon to show what is the
necessary and inevitable end of such worship of the unknown.
Ethics.
To the ethical aspect of his philosophy, Descartes, unlike Spinoza,
only devoted a subordinate attention. In a short treatise, however, he
discussed the relation of reason to the passions. After we have got
over the initial difficulty, that matter should give rise to effects
in mind, and mind in matter, and have admitted that in man the unity
of mind and body turns what in the animals is mere mechanical
reception of stimulus from without and reaction upon it into an action
and reaction mediated by sensation, emotion and passion, another
question presents itself. How can the mere natural movement of
passion, the nature of which is fixed by the original constitution of
our body, and of the things that act upon it, be altered or modified
by pure reason? For while it is obvious that morality consists in the
determination of reason by itself, it is not easy to conceive how the
same being who is determined by passion from without should also be
determined by reason from within. How, in other words, can a spiritual
being maintain its character as self-determined, or at least
determined only by the clear and distinct ideas of the reason which
are its innate forms, in the presence of this foreign element of
passion that seems to make it the slave of external impressions? Is
reason able to crush this intruder, or to turn it into a servant? Can
the passions be annihilated, or can they be spiritualized? Descartes
could not properly adopt either alternative; he could not adopt the
ethics of asceticism, for the union of body and mind is, in his view,
natural; and hence the passions which are the results of that union
are in themselves good. They are provisions of nature for the
protection of the unity of soul and body, and stimulate us to the acts
necessary for that purpose. Yet, on the other hand, he could not admit
that these passions are capable of being completely spiritualized; for
so long as the unity of body and soul is regarded as merely external
and accidental, it is impossible to think that the passions which
arise out of this unity can be transformed into the embodiment and
expression of reason.
Descartes, indeed, points out that every passion has a lower and a
higher form, and while in its lower or primary form it is based on the
obscure ideas produced by the motion of the animal spirits, in its
higher form it is connected with the clear and distinct judgments of
reason regarding good and evil. If, however, the unity of soul and
body be a unity of composition, there is an element of obscurity in
the judgments of passion which cannot be made clear, an element in
desire that cannot be spiritualized. If the mind be external to the
passions it can only impose upon them an external rule of moderation.
On such a theory no _ideal_ morality is possible to man in his present
state; for, in order to the attainment of such an ideal morality, it
would be necessary that the accidental element obtruded into his life
as a spiritual being by his connexion with the body should be
expelled. What can be attained under present conditions is only to
abstract so far as is possible from external things, and those
relations to external things into which passion brings us. Hence the
great importance which Descartes attaches to the distinction between
things in our power and things not in our power. What is not in our
power includes all outward things, and therefore it is our highest
wisdom to regard them as determined by an absolute fate, or the
eternal decree of God. We cease to wish for the impossible; and
therefore to subdue our passions we only need to convince ourselves
that no effort of ours can enable us to secure their objects. On the
other hand, that which is within our power, and which, therefore, we
cannot desire too earnestly, is virtue. But virtue in this abstraction
from all objects of desire is simply the harmony of reason with
itself, the [Greek: ataraxia] of the Stoic under a slight change of
aspect. Thus in ethics, as in metaphysics, Descartes ends not with a
reconciliation of the opposed elements, but with a dualism, or at
best, with a unity which is the result of abstraction.
_The Philosophy of Malebranche._--Malebranche was prepared, by the
ascetic training of the cloister and the teaching of Augustine, to bring
to clear consciousness and expression many of the tendencies that were
latent and undeveloped in the philosophy of Descartes. To use a chemical
metaphor, the Christian Platonism of the church father was a medium in
which Cartesianism could precipitate the product of its elements. Yet
the medium was, as we shall see, not a perfect one, and hence the
product was not quite pure. Without metaphor, Malebranche, by his
previous habits of thought, was well fitted to detect and develop the
pantheistic and ascetic elements of his master's philosophy. But he was
not well fitted to penetrate through the veil of popular language under
which the discordance of that philosophy with orthodox Christianity was
hidden. On the contrary, the whole training of the Catholic priest, and
especially his practical spirit, with that tendency to compromise which
a practical spirit always brings with it, enabled him to conceal from
himself as well as from others the logical result of his principles. And
we do not wonder even when we find him treating as a "miserable" the
philosopher who tore away the veil.
Malebranche saw "_all things in God._" In other words, he taught that
knowledge is possible only in so far as thought is the expression, not
of the nature of the individual subject as such, but of a universal life
in which he and all other rational beings partake. "No one can feel my
individual pain; every one can see the truth which I contemplate--why is
it so? The reason is that my pain is a modification of my substance, but
truth is the common good of all spirits."[16] This idea is ever present
to Malebranche, and is repeated by him in an endless variety of forms of
expression. Thus, like Descartes, but with more decision, he tells us
that the idea of the infinite is prior to the idea of the finite. "We
conceive of the infinite being by the very fact that we conceive of
being without thinking whether it be finite or no. But in order that we
may think of a finite being, we must necessarily cut off or deduct
something from the general notion of being, which consequently we must
previously possess. Thus the mind does not apprehend anything whatever,
except in and through the idea that it has of the infinite; and so far
is it from being the case that this idea is formed by the confused
assemblage of all the ideas of particular things as the philosophers
maintain, that, on the contrary, all these particular ideas are only
participations in the general idea of the infinite, just as God does not
derive his being from the creatures, but all the creatures are imperfect
participations of the divine Being."[17] Again, he tells us, in the same
chapter, that "when we wish to think of any particular thing, we first
cast our view upon all being, and then apply it to the consideration of
the object in question. We could not desire to see any particular object
unless we saw it already in a confused and general way, and as there is
nothing which we cannot desire to see, so all objects must be in a
manner present to our spirit." Or, as he puts it in another place, "our
mind would not be capable of representing to itself the general ideas of
genera and species if it did not see all things as contained in one; for
every creature being an individual we cannot say that we are
apprehending any created thing when we think the general idea of a
triangle."
Relation of the Divine mind to human knowledge.
The main idea that is expressed in all these different ways is simply
this, that to determine any individual object as such, we must relate
it to, and distinguish it from, the whole of which it is a part; and
that, therefore, thought could never apprehend anything if it did not
bring with itself the idea of the intelligible world as a unity.
Descartes had already expressed this truth in his _Meditations_, but
he had deprived it of its full significance by making a distinction
between the being and the idea of God, the former of which, in his
view, was only the cause of the latter. Malebranche detects this
error, and denies that there is any idea of the infinite, which is a
somewhat crude way of saying that there is no division between the
idea of the infinite and its reality. What Reid asserted of the
external world, that it is not represented by an idea in our minds,
but is actually present to them, Malebranche asserted of God. No
individual thing, he tells us--and an idea is but an individual
thing--could represent the infinite. On the contrary, all individual
things are represented through the infinite Being, who contains them
all in his substance "tres efficace, et par consequence tres
intelligible."[18] We know God by himself, material things only by
their ideas in God, for they are "unintelligible in themselves, and we
can see them only in the being who contains them in an intelligible
manner." And thus, unless we in some way "saw God, we should be able
to see nothing else." The vision _of_ God or _in_ God, therefore, is
an "intellectual intuition" in which seer and seen, knower and known,
are one. Our knowledge of things is our participation in God's
knowledge of them.
When we have gone so far with Malebranche, we are tempted to ask why
he does not follow out his thought to its natural conclusion. If the
idea of God is not separable from his existence, if it is through the
idea of him that all things are known, and through his existence that
all things are, then it would seem necessarily to follow that our
consciousness of God is but a part of God's consciousness of himself,
that our consciousness of self and other things is but God's
consciousness of them, and lastly, that there is no existence either
of ourselves or other things except in this consciousness. To
understand Malebranche is mainly to understand how he stopped short of
results that seemed to lie so directly in the line of his thought.
To begin with the last point, it is easy to see that Malebranche only
asserts unity of idea and reality in God, to deny it everywhere else,
which with him is equivalent to asserting it in general and denying it
in particular. To him, as to Descartes, the opposition between mind
and matter is absolute. Material things cannot come into our minds nor
can our minds go out of themselves "pour se promener dans les
cieux."[19] Hence they are in themselves absolutely unknown; they are
known only in God, in whom are their ideas, and as these ideas again
are quite distinct from the reality, they "might be presented to the
mind without anything existing." That they exist _out_ of God in
another manner than the intelligible manner of their existence _in_
God, is explained by a mere act of His will, that is, it is not
explained at all. Though we see all things in God, therefore, there is
no connexion between his existence and theirs. The "world is not a
necessary emanation of divinity; God is perfectly self-sufficient, and
the idea of the infinitely perfect Being can be conceived quite apart
from any other. The existence of the creatures is due to the free
decrees of God."[20] Malebranche, therefore, still treats of external
things as "things in themselves," which have an existence apart from
thought, even the divine thought, though it is only in and through the
divine thought they can be known by us. "To see the material world, or
rather to judge that it exists (since in itself it is invisible), it
is necessary that God should reveal it to us, for we cannot see the
result of his arbitrary will through necessary reason."[21]
But if we know external things only through their idea in God, how do
we know ourselves? Is it also through the idea of us in God? Here we
come upon a point in which Malebranche diverges very far from his
master. We do not, he says, properly _know_ ourselves at all as we
know God or even external objects. We are conscious of ourselves by
inner sense (_sentiment interieur_), and from this we know _that_ we
are, but we do not know _what_ we are. "We know the existence of our
soul more distinctly than of our body, but we have not so perfect a
knowledge of our soul as of our body." This is shown by the fact that
from our idea of body as extended substance, we can at once see what
are its possible modifications. In other words, we only need the idea
of extended substance to see that there is an inexhaustible number of
figures and motions of which it is capable. The whole of geometry is
but a development of what is given already in the conception of
extension. But it is not so with our consciousness of self, which does
not enable us to say prior to actual experience what sensations or
passions are possible to us. We only know what heat, cold, light,
colour, hunger, anger and desire are by feeling them. Our knowledge
extends as far as our experience and no further. Nay, we have good
reason to believe that many of these modifications exist in our soul
only by reason of its accidental association with a body, and that if
it were freed from that body it would be capable of far other and
higher experiences. "We know by feeling that our soul is great, but
perhaps we know almost nothing of what it is in itself." The
informations of sense have, as Descartes taught, only a practical but
no theoretical value; they tell us nothing of the external world, the
real nature of which We know not through touch and taste and sight,
but only through our idea of extended substances; while of the nature
of the soul they do not tell us much more than that it exists and that
it is not material. And in this latter case we have no idea, nothing
better than sense to raise us above its illusions. It is clear from
these statements that by self-consciousness Malebranche means
consciousness of desires and feelings, which belong to the individual
as such, and not consciousness of self as thinking. He begins, in
fact, where Descartes ended, and identifies the consciousness of self
as thinking, and so transcending the limits of its own particular
being, with the consciousness or idea of God. And between the
consciousness of the finite in sense and the consciousness of the
infinite in thought, or in other words, between the consciousness of
the universal and the consciousness of the individual, he sees no
connexion. Malebranche is just one step from the pantheistic
conclusion that the consciousness of finite individuality as such is
illusory, and that as all bodies are but modes of one infinite
extension, so all souls are but modes of one infinite thought. But
while he willingly accepts this result in regard to matter, his
religious feelings prevent him from accepting it in relation to mind.
He is driven, therefore, to the inconsistency of holding that sense
and feeling, through which in his view we apprehend the finite as
such, give us true though imperfect knowledge of the soul, while the
knowledge they give us of body is not only imperfect but false.[22]
Thus the finite spirit is still allowed to be a substance, distinct
from the infinite, though it holds its substantial existence on a
precarious tenure. It is left hanging, we may say, on the verge of the
infinite, whose attraction must soon prove too strong for it. Ideas
are living things, and often remould the minds that admit them in
spite of the greatest resistance of dead custom and traditionary
belief. In the grasp of a logic that overpowers him the more easily in
that he is unconscious of its tendency. Malebranche is brought within
one step of the pantheistic conclusion, and all his Christian feeling
and priestly training can do is _just_ to save him from denial of the
personality of man.
But even this denial is not the last word of pantheism. When the
principle that the finite is known only in relation to the infinite,
the individual only in relation to the universal, is interpreted as
meaning that the infinite and universal is complete in itself without
the finite and individual, when the finite and individual is treated
as a mere accidental existence due to the "arbitrary will of God," it
ceases to be possible to conceive even God as a spirit. Did
Malebranche realize what he was saying when he declared that God was
"being in general," but not any particular being? At any rate we can
see that the same logic that leads him almost to deny the reality of
finite beings, leads him also to seek the divine nature in something
more abstract and general even than thought. If we must abstract from
all relation to the finite in order to know God as he is, is it not
necessary for us also to abstract from self-consciousness, for
self-consciousness has a negative element in it that is something
definite, and therefore limited? We do not wonder, therefore, when we
find Malebranche saying that reason does not tell us that God is a
spirit, but only that he is an infinitely perfect being, and that he
must be conceived rather as a spirit than as a body simply because
spirit is more perfect than body. "When we call God a spirit, it is
not so much to show positively what he is, as to signify that he is
not material." But as we ought not to give him a bodily form like
man's, so we ought not to think of his spirit as similar to our own
spirits, although we can conceive nothing more perfect. "It is
necessary rather to believe that as he contains in himself the
properties of matter without being material, so he comprehends in
himself the perfections of created spirits without being a spirit as
we alone can conceive spirits, and that his true name is 'He who is,'
i.e. Being without restriction, Being infinite and universal."[23]
Thus the essentially self-revealing God of Christianity gives way to
pure spirit, and pure spirit in its turn to the eternal and
incomprehensible substance of which we can say nothing but that it is.
The divine substance contains in it, indeed, everything that is in
creation, but it contains them _eminenter_ in some incomprehensible
form that is reconcilable with its infinitude. But we have no adequate
name by which to call it except Being. The curious metaphysic of
theology by which, in his later writings, Malebranche tried to make
room for the incarnation by supposing that the finite creation, which
_as_ finite is unworthy of God, was made worthy by union with Christ,
the divine Word, shows that Malebranche had some indistinct sense of
the necessity of reconciling his philosophy with his theology; but it
shows also the necessarily artificial nature of the combination. The
result of the union of such incongruous elements was something which
the theologians at once recognised as heterodox and the philosophers
as illogical.
There was another doctrine of Malebranche which brought him into
trouble with the theologians, and which was the main subject of his
long controversy with Arnauld. This was his denial of particular
providence. As Leibnitz maintained that this is the best of all
possible worlds, and that its evils are to be explained by the
negative nature of the finite, so Malebranche, with a slight change of
expression derived evil from the nature of particular or individual
existence. It is not conformable to the nature of God to act by any
but universal laws, and these universal laws necessarily involve
particular evil consequences, though their ultimate result is the
highest possible good. The question why there should be any particular
existence, any existence but God, seeing such existence necessarily
involves evil, remains insoluble so long as the purely pantheistic
view of God is maintained; and it is this view which is really at the
bottom of the assertion that he can have no particular volitions. To
the coarse and anthropomorphic conception of particular providence
Malebranche may be right in objecting, but on the other hand, it
cannot be doubted that any theory in which the universal is absolutely
opposed to the particular, the infinite to the finite, is unchristian
as well as unphilosophical. For under this dualistic presupposition,
there seem to be only two possible alternatives open to thought:
either the particular and finite must be treated as something
independent of the universal and infinite, which involves an obvious
contradiction, or else it must be regarded as absolute nonentity. We
find Malebranche doing the one or the other as occasion requires. Thus
he vindicates the freedom of man's will on the ground that the
universal will of God does not completely determine the particular
volitions of man; and then becoming conscious of the difficulty
involved in this conception, he tries, like Descartes, to explain the
particular will as something merely negative, a defect, and not a
positive existence.
Reason and will.
But to understand fully Malebranche's view of freedom and the ethical
system connected with it, we must notice an important alteration which
he makes in the Cartesian theory of the relation of will and
intelligence. To Descartes, as we have seen, the ultimate essence of
mind lay in pure abstract self-determination or will, and hence he
based even moral and intellectual truth on the arbitrary decrees of
God. With Malebranche, on the other hand, abstraction goes a step
further; and the absolute is sought not in the subject as opposed to
the object, not in pure formal self-determination as opposed to that
which is determined, but in a unity that transcends this difference.
With him, therefore, will ceases to be regarded as the essence of
intelligence, and sinks into a property or separable attribute of it.
As we can conceive an extended substance without actual movement, so,
he says, we can conceive a thinking substance without actual volition.
But "matter or extension without motion would be entirely useless and
incapable of that variety of forms for which it is made; and we
cannot, therefore, suppose, that an all-wise Being would create it in
this way. In like manner, if a spiritual or thinking substance were
without will, it is clear that it would be quite useless, for it would
not be attracted towards the objects of its perception, and would not
love the good for which it is made. We cannot therefore conceive an
intelligent being so to fashion it."[24] Now God need not be conceived
as creating at all, for he is self-sufficient; but if he be a creator
of spirits, he must create them for himself. "God cannot will that
there should exist a spirit that does not love him, or that loves him
less than any other good."[25] The craving for good in general, for an
absolute satisfaction, is a _natural_ love of God that is common to
all. "The just, the wicked, the blessed, and the damned all alike love
God with this love." Out of this love of God arises the love we have
to ourselves and to others, which are the _natural inclinations_ that
belong to all created spirits. For these inclinations are but the
elements of the love which is in God, and which therefore he inspires
in all his creatures. "Il s'aime, il nous aime, il aime toutes ses
creatures; il ne fait donc point d'esprits qu'il ne les porte a
l'aimer, a s'aimer, et a aimer toutes les creatures."[26] Stripping
this thought of its theological vesture, what is expressed here is
simply that as a spiritual being each man is conscious of his own
limited and individual existence, as well as of the limited and
individual existence of other beings like himself, only in relation to
the whole in which they are parts, so he can find his own good only in
the good of the whole, and he is in contradiction with himself so long
as he rests in any good short of that. His love of happiness, his
natural inclinations both selfish and social, may be therefore
regarded as an undeveloped form of the love of God; and the ideal
state of his inclinations is that in which the love of self and of
others are explicitly referred to that higher affection, or in which
his love does not proceed from a part to the whole, but from the whole
to the parts.
Ethics.