CHAPTER XI

CHRISTIANITY

Philosophic Ideas which Christianity Welcomed, Adopted, or Created

How it must Give a Fresh Aspect to All Philosophy,

even that Foreign to Itself.

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND MORALITY.--Christianity spread through the

Empire by the propaganda of the Apostles, and more especially St. Paul,

from about the year 40. Its success was extremely rapid, especially among

the populace, and little by little it won over the upper classes. As a

general philosophy, primitive Christianity did not absolutely bring more

than the Hebrew dogmas: the unity of God, a providential Deity, that is,

one directly interfering in human affairs; immortality of the soul with

rewards and penalties beyond the grave (a recent theory among the Jews, yet

one anterior to Christianity). As a moral system, Christianity brought

something so novel and so beautiful that it is not very probable that

humanity will ever surpass it, which may be imperfectly and incompletely

summed up thus: love of God; He must not only be feared as He was by the

pagans and the ancient Jews; He must be loved passionately as a son loves

his father, and all things must be done for this love and in consideration

of this love; all men are brethren as sons of God, and they should love one

another as brothers; love your neighbour as yourself, love him who does not

love you; love your enemies; be not greedy for the goods of this world, nor

ambitious, nor proud; for God loves the lowly, the humble, the suffering,

and the miserable, and He will exalt the lowly and put down the mighty from

their seats.

Nothing like this had been said in all antiquity, and it needs

extraordinary ingenuity (of a highly interesting character, by the way), to

find in ancient wisdom even a few traces of this doctrine.

Finally, into politics, so to speak, Christianity brought this novelty:

there are two empires, the empire of God and the empire of man; you do not

owe everything to the earthly empire; you are bound to give it faithfully

only what is needed for it to be strong and to preserve society; apart from

that, and that done, you are the subject of God and have only to answer to

God for your thoughts, your belief, your conscience; and over that portion

of yourself the State has neither right nor authority unless it be usurped

and tyrannical. And therein lay the charter of individual liberty like the

charter of the rights of man.

As appeal to the feelings, Christianity brought the story of a young God,

infinitely good and gentle, who had never cursed, who had been infinitely

loved, who had been persecuted and betrayed, who had forgiven his

executioners, and who died in great sufferings and who was to be imitated

(whence came the thirst for martyrdom). This story in itself is not more

affecting than that of Socrates, but it is that of a young martyr and not

of an old one, and therein lies a marked difference for the imagination and

emotions of the multitude.

THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The prodigious rapidity of the success

of Christianity is easily explicable. Polytheism had no longer a great hold

on the masses, and no philosophic doctrine had found or had even sought the

path to the crowd; Christianity, essentially democratic, loved the weak and

humble, had a tendency to prefer them to the great ones of this world, and

to regard them as being more the children of God, and was therefore

received by the masses as the only doctrine which could replace the

worm-eaten polytheism. And in Christianity they saw the religion for which

they were waiting, and in the heads of Christianity their own protectors

and defenders.

ITS EVOLUTION.--The evolution of Christianity was very rapid, and

from a great moral doctrine with a minimum of rudimentary metaphysics it

became, perchance mistakenly, a philosophy giving account, or desirous of

giving account of everything; it so to speak incorporated a metaphysic,

borrowed in great part from Greek philosophy, in great part from the Hebrew

traditions. It possessed ideas on the origin of matter, and whilst

maintaining that God was eternal, denied that matter was, and asserted that

God created it out of nothing. It had theories on the essence of God, and

saw Him in three Persons, or hypostases, one aspect of God as power,

another as love, and the other as intelligence. It presented theories on

the incarnation and humanisation of God, God being made man in Jesus Christ

without ceasing to be God. It conceived new relationships of man to God,

man having in himself powers of purgation and perfection, but always

needing divine help for self-perfection (theory of grace). And this he

must believe; if not he would feel insolent pride in his freedom. It had

ideas about the existence of evil, declaring in "justification of God" for

having permitted evil on earth, that the world was a place of trial, and

that evil was only a way of putting man to the test and discovering what

were his merits. It had its notions on the rewards and penalties beyond the

grave, hell for the wicked and heaven for the good, as had been known to

antiquity, but added purgatory, a place for both punishment and

purification by punishment, an entirely Platonic theory, which Plato may

have inspired but did not himself entertain. Finally, it was a complete

philosophy answering, and that in a manner often admirable, all the

questions that mankind put or could ever put.

And, as so often happens, that has proved a weakness and a strength to it:

a weakness because embarrassed with subtle, complicated, insoluble

questions wherein mankind will always be involved, it was forced to engage

in endless discussions wherein the bad or feeble reasons advanced by this

or that votary compromised the whole work; a strength because whoever

brings a rule of life is practically compelled to support it by general

ideas bearing on the relations of things and to give it a place in a

general survey of the world; otherwise he appears impotent, weak,

disqualified to give that very rule of life, incapable of replying to the

interrogations raised by that rule of life; and finally, lacking in

authority.

SCHISMS AND HERESIES.--Right or wrong, and it is difficult and

highly hazardous to decide the question, Christianity was a complete

philosophy, which was why it had its schisms and heresies, a certain number

of sincere Christians not resolving the metaphysical questions in the way

of the majority. Heresies were innumerable; only the two shall be cited

which are deeply interesting in the history of philosophy. Manes, an Arab

(and Arabia was then a Persian province), revived the old Zoroastrian

doctrine of two principles of good and evil, and saw in the world two

contending gods, the God of perfection and the god of sin, and laid upon

man the duty of assisting the God of goodness so that His kingdom should

come and cause the destruction of evil in the world. From him proceeded the

Manicheans, who exerted great influence and were condemned by many Councils

until their sect died out, only to reappear or seem to reappear fairly

often in the Middle Ages and in modern times.

Arius denied the Trinity, believing only in one God, not only unique, but

in one Person, and in consequence denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. He

was perpetually involved in controversies and polemics, supported by some

Bishops, opposed by the majority. After his death his doctrine spread

strangely. It was stifled in the East by Theodosius, but was widely

adopted by the "barbarians" of the West (Goths, Vandals, Burgundians,

Lombards). It was revived, more or less exactly, after the Reformation,

among the Socinians.

ROME AND CHRISTIANITY.--The relations of Christianity with the Roman

government were in the highest degree tragic, as is common knowledge. There

were ten sanguinary persecutions, some being atrocious. It has often been

asked what was the cause of this animosity against the Christians on the

part of a government which tolerated all religions and all

philosophies. Persecutions were natural at Athens where a democracy,

obstinately attached to the local deities, treated as enemies of the

country those who did not take these gods into consideration; persecutions

were natural on the part of a Calvin or a Louis XIV who combined in

themselves the two authorities and would not admit that anyone in the State

had the right to think differently from its head; but it has been argued

that they were incomprehensible on the part of a government which admitted

all cults and all doctrines. The explanation perhaps primarily lies in the

fact that Christianity was essentially popular, and that the government saw

in it not only plebeianism, which was disquieting, but an organisation of

plebeianism, which was still more so. The administration of religion had

always been in the hands of the aristocracy; the Roman pontiffs were

patricians, the Emperor was the sovereign pontiff; to yield obedience, even

were it only spiritually, to private men as priests was to be disobedient

to the Roman aristocracy, to the Emperor himself, and was properly speaking

a revolt.

A further explanation, perhaps, is that each new religion that was

introduced at Rome did not oppose and did not contradict polytheism, the

principle of polytheism being precisely that there are many gods; whereas

Christianity denying all those gods and affirming that there is only one,

and that all others must be despised as non-existent, inveighed against,

denied, and ruined or threatened to destroy the very essence of

polytheism. It was not a variation, it was a heresy; it was more than

heretical, it was anarchical; it did not only condemn this or that

religion, but even the very tolerance with which the Roman government

accepted all religions. Hence it is natural enough that it should have been

combated to the utmost by practically all the Emperors, from the most

execrable, such as Nero, to the best, such as Marcus Aurelius.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE PHILOSOPHERS.--The relations of Christianity

with philosophy were confused. The immense majority of philosophers

rejected it, considering their own views superior to it, and moreover,

feeling it to be formidable, made use against it of all that could be found

beautiful, specious, or expedient in ancient philosophy; and the ardour of

Neoplatonism, which we have considered, in part arose from precisely this

instinct of rivalry and of struggle. At that epoch there was a throng of

men like Ernest Havet presenting Hellenism in opposition to Christianity,

and Ernest Havet is only a Neoplatonist of the nineteenth century.

A certain number of philosophers, nevertheless, either on the

Jewish-Christian side or on the Hellenic, tried some reconciliation either

as Jews making advances to Hellenism or as Greeks admitting there was

something acceptable on the part of Sion. Aristobulus, a Jew (prior to

Jesus Christ), seems to have endeavoured to bring Moses into agreement with

Plato; Philo (a Jew contemporary with and surviving Jesus Christ and a

non-Christian), about whom there is more information, throughout his life

pursued the plan of demonstrating all the resemblances he could discover

between Plato and the Old Testament, much in the same way as in our time

some have striven to point out the surprising agreement of the Darwinian

theory with Genesis. He was called the Jewish Plato, and at Alexandria it

was said: "Philo imitates Plato or Plato imitates Philo."

On their side, later on, certain eclectic Greeks already cited, Moderatus,

Nicomachus, Nemesius, extended goodwill so far as to take into account, if

not Jesus, at least Moses, and to admit Israelitish thought into the

history of philosophy and of human wisdom. But, in general it was by the

schools of philosophy and by the ever dwindling section of society priding

itself upon its philosophy that Christianity was most decisively repulsed,

thrust on one side and misunderstood.

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS.--Without dealing with many others who belong

more especially to the history of the Church rather than to that of

philosophy, the Christians did not lack two very illustrious philosophers

who must receive attention--Origen and St. Augustine.

ORIGEN.--Origen was a native of Alexandria at the close of the

second century, and a pupil of St. Clement of Alexandria. A Christian and a

Platonist, in order to give himself permission and excuse for reconciling

the two doctrines, he alleged that the Apostles had given only so much of

the Christian teaching as the multitude could comprehend, and that the

learned could interpret it in a manner more subtle, more profound, and more

complete. Having observed this precaution, he revealed his system, which

was this: God is a pure spirit. He already has descended one step in

_spirits_ which are emanations from Him. These spirits are capable of

good and evil. When addicted to evil, they clothe themselves with matter

and become souls in bodies;--which is what we are. There are others lower

than ourselves. There are impure spirits which have clothed themselves

with unclean bodies; these are demons. Now, as the fallen brethren of

angels, we are free, less free than they, but still free. Through this

freedom we can in our present existence either raise or lower

ourselves. But this freedom does not suffice us; a little help is

essential. This help comes to us from the spirits which have remained

pure. The help they afford us is opposed by the efforts of the utterly

fallen spirits who are lower in the scale than ourselves. To combat these

fallen spirits, to help the pure spirits who help us, and to help them to

help us, such is our duty in this life, which is a medicine, the medicine

of Plato, namely a punishment; sterile when it is not accepted by us,

salutary when gratefully accepted by us, it then becomes expiation and in

consequence purification. The part of the Redeemer in all this is the same

as that of the spirits, but on a grander and more decisive plane. King of

spirits, Spirit of spirits, by revelation He illumines our confused

intelligence and fortifies our weak will against temptation.

ST. AUGUSTINE.--St. Augustine of Tagaste (in Africa), long a pagan

exercising the profession of professor of rhetoric, became a Christian and

was Bishop of Hippo. It is he who "fixed" the Christian doctrine in the way

most suitable to and most acceptable to Western intelligence. Instead of

confusing it, more or less intentionally, more or less inadvertently, with

philosophy, he exerted all his great talents to make the most precise

distinction from it. Philosophers (he says) have always regarded the world

as an emanation from God. Then all is God. Such is not the way to

reason. There is no emanation, but creation; God created the world and has

remained distinct from it. He lives in it in such a way that we live in

Him; in Him we live and move and have our being; He dwells throughout the

world, but He is not the world; He is everywhere but He is not all. God

created the world. Then, can it be said that before the world was created

God remained doing nothing during an immense space of time? Certainly not,

because time only began at the creation of the world. God is outside

time. The eternal is the absence of time. God, therefore, was not an

instant before He created the world. Or, if it be preferred, there was an

eternity before the birth of the world. But it is the same thing; for

eternity is the non-existence of time.

Some understand God in three Persons as three Gods. This polytheism, this

paganism must be rejected. But how to understand? How? You feel in

yourself several souls? No. And yet there are several faculties of the

soul. The three Persons of God are the three divine faculties. Man has body

and soul. No one ought to have doubts about the soul, for to have doubts

presupposes thought, and to think is to be; above all things we are

thinking beings. But what is the soul? Something immaterial, assuredly,

since it can conceive immaterial things, such as a line, a point, surface,

space. It is as necessary for the soul to be immaterial in order to be able

to grasp the immaterial, as it is necessary for the hand to be material in

order that it can grasp a stone.

Whence comes the soul? From the souls of ancestors by transmission? This is

not probable, for this would be to regard it as material. From God by

emanation? This is inadmissible; it is the same error as believing that the

world emanates from God. Here, too, there is no emanation, but creation.

God creates the souls in destination for bodies themselves born from

heredity. Once the body is destroyed, what becomes of the soul? It cannot

perish; for thought not being dependent upon the senses, there is no reason

for its disappearance on the disappearance of the senses.

Human liberty is an assured fact; we are free to do good or evil. But then

God has not been able to know in advance what I shall do to-day, and in

consequence God, at least in His knowledge, has limitations, is not

omnipotent. St. Augustine replies confusedly (for the question is

undoubtedly insoluble) that we have an illusion of liberty, an illusion

that we are free, which suffices for us to acquire merit if we do right and

demerit if we do wrong, and that this illusion of liberty is a relative

liberty, which leaves the prescience of God, and therefore His omnipotence,

absolute. Man is also extremely weak, debilitated, and incapable of good on

account of original sin, the sin of our first parents, which is transmitted

to us through heredity and paralyses us. But God helps us, and this is what

is termed grace. He helps us gratuitously, as is indicated by the word

"grace"--if He wishes and when He wishes and in the measure that He wishes.

From this arises the doctrine of "predestination," by which it is

preordained whether a man is to be saved or lost.

PART II

IN THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER I

FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE THIRTEENTH

Philosophy is only an Interpreter of Dogma.

When it is Declared Contrary to Dogma by the Authority of Religion,

it is a Heresy.

Orthodox and Heterodox Interpretations.

Some Independent Philosophers.

DOGMA.--After the invasion of the barbarians, philosophy, like

literature, sought refuge in monasteries and in the schools which prelates

instituted and maintained near them. But the Church does not permit the

free search for truth. The truth has been established by the Fathers of the

Church and fixed by the Councils. Thenceforth the philosophic life, so to

speak, which had never been interrupted, assumed a fresh character. Within

the Church it sheltered--I will not say disguised--itself under the

interpretation of dogma; it became a sort of respectful auxiliary of

theology, and was accordingly called the "handmaid of theology," _ancilla

theologiae_. When emancipated, when departing from dogma, it is a

"heresy," and all the great heresies are nothing else than schools of

philosophy, which is why heresies must come into a history of

philosophy. And at last, but only towards the close of the Middle Ages, lay

thought without disturbing itself about dogma and no longer thinking about

its interpretation, created philosophic doctrines exactly as the

philosophers of antiquity invented them apart from religion, to which they

were either hostile or indifferent.

SCHOLASTICISM: SCOTUS ERIGENA.--The orthodox philosophy of the

Middle Ages was the scholastic. Scholasticism consisted in amassing and in

making known scientific facts and matters of knowledge of which it was

useful for a well-bred man not to be ignorant and for this purpose

encyclopaedias were constructed; on the other hand, it consisted not

precisely in the reconciliation of faith with reason, not precisely and far

less in the submission of faith to the criticism of reason, but in making

faith sensible to reason, as had been the office of the Fathers of the

Church, more especially St. Augustine.

Scotus Erigena, a Scotsman attached to the Palatine Academy of Charles the

Bald, lived in the eleventh century. He was extremely learned. His

philosophy was Platonic, or rather the bent of his mind was Platonic. God

is the absolute Being; He is unnamable, since any name is a delimitation of

the being; He _is_ absolutely and infinitely. As the creator of all

and uncreated, He is the cause _per se_; as the goal to which all

things tend, He is the supreme end. The human soul is of impenetrable

essence like God Himself; accordingly, it is God in us. We have fallen

through the body and, whilst in the flesh, we can, by virtue and more

especially by the virtue of penitence, raise ourselves to the height of the

angels. The world is the continuous creation of God. It must not be said

that God created the world, but that He creates it; for if He ceased from

sustaining it, the world would no longer exist. God is perpetual creation

and perpetual attraction. He draws all beings to Himself, and in the end He

will have them all in Himself. There is predestination to perfection in

everything.

These theories, some of which, as has been seen, go beyond dogma and form

at least the beginning of heresy, are all impregnated with Platonism,

especially with Neoplatonism, and lead to the supposition that Scotus

Erigena possessed very wide Greek learning.

ARABIAN SCIENCE.--A great literary and philosophical fact in the

eighth century was the invasion of the Arabs. Mahometans successively

invaded Syria, Persia, Africa, and Spain, forming a crescent, the two

points of which touched the two extremities of Europe. Inquisitive and

sagacious pupils of the Greeks in Africa and Asia, they founded everywhere

brilliant universities which rapidly acquired renown (Bagdad, Bassorah,

Cordova, Granada, Seville, Murcia) and brought to Europe a new quota of

science; for instance, all the works of Aristotle, of which Western Europe

possessed practically nothing. Students greedy for knowledge came to learn

from them in Spain; for instance, Gerbert, who developed into a man of

great learning, who taught at Rheims and became Pope. Individually the

Arabs were often great philosophers, and at least the names must be

mentioned of Avicenna (a Neoplatonist of the tenth century) and Averroes

(an Aristotelian of the twelfth century who betrayed tendencies towards

admitting the eternity of nature, and its evolution through its own

initiative during the course of time). Their doctrines were propagated,

and the ancient books which they made known became widely diffused. From

them dates the sway of Aristotle throughout the middle ages.

ST. ANSELM.--St. Anselm, in the eleventh century, a Savoyard, who

was long Abbot of Bec in Normandy and died Archbishop of Canterbury, is one

of the most illustrious doctors of philosophy in the service of theology

that ever lived. "A new St. Augustine" (as he has been called), he starts

from faith to arrive at faith after it has been rendered sensible to

reason. Like St. Augustine he says: "I believe in order to understand"

(well persuaded that if I never believed I should never understand), and he

adds what had been in the thought of St. Augustine: "I understand in order

to believe." St. Anselm proved the existence of God by the most abstract

arguments. For example, "It is necessary to have a cause, one or multiple;

one is God; multiple, it can be derived from one single cause, and that one

cause is God; it can be a particular cause in each thing caused; but then

it is necessary to suppose a personal force which must itself have a cause

and thus we work back to a common cause, that is to say to a single one."

He proved God again by the proof which has remained famous under the name

of the argument of St. Anselm: To conceive God is to prove that He is; the

conception of God is proof of His existence; for every idea has its object;

above all, an idea which has infinity for object takes for granted the

existence of infinity; for all being finite here below, what would give the

idea of infinity to the human mind? Therefore, if the human brain has the

idea of infinity it is because of the existence of infinity. The argument

is perhaps open to difference of opinion, but as proof of a singular vigour

of mind on the part of its author, it is indisputable.

Highly intellectual also is his explanation of the necessity of

redemption. _Cur Deus Homo?_ (the title of one of his works) asked

St. Anselm. Because sin in relation to an infinite God is an infinite

crime. Man, finite and limited in capacity, could therefore never expiate

it. Then what could God do to avenge His honour and to have satisfaction

rendered to Him? He could only make Himself man without ceasing to be God,

in order that as man He should offer to God a reparation to which as God He

would give the character of infinitude. It was therefore absolutely

necessary that at a given moment man should become God, which could only be

done upon the condition that God made Himself man.

REALISTS; NOMINALISTS; CONCEPTUALISTS.--It was in the time of

St. Anselm that there arose the celebrated philosophic quarrel between the

"realists, nominalists, and conceptualists." It is here essential to employ

these technical terms or else not to allude to the dispute at all, because

the strife is above all a war of words. The realists (of whom St. Anselm

was one), said: "The ideas (idea of virtue, idea of sin, idea of greatness,

idea of littleness) are realities; they exist, in a spiritual manner of

course, but they really exist; they are: there is a virtue, a sin, a

greatness, a littleness, a reason, etc. (and this was an exact reminiscence

of the ideas of Plato). It is indeed only the idea, the general, the

universal, which is real, and the particular has only the appearance of

reality. Men do not exist, the individual man does not exist; what exists

is 'man' in general, and individual men are only the appearance of--the

coloured reflections of--the universal man." The nominalists (Roscelin the

Canon of Compiegne, for instance) answered: "No; the general ideas, the

universals as you say, are only names, are only words, emissions of the

voice, labels, if you like, which we place on such and such categories of

facts observed by us; there is no greatness; there are a certain number of

great things, and when we think of them we inscribe this word 'greatness'

on the general idea which we conceive. 'Man' does not exist; there are men

and the word humanity is only a word which to us represents a collective

idea."

Why did the realists cling so to their universals, held to be realities and

the sole realities? For many reasons. If the individual alone be real,

there are not three Persons in the Godhead, there are three Gods and the

unity of God is not real, it is only a word, and God is not real, He is

only an utterance of the voice. If the individual is not real, the Church

is not real; she does not exist, there only exist Christians who possess

freedom of thought and of faith. Now the Church is real and it is not only

desirable that she should be real, but even that she alone should possess

reality and that the individuals constituting her should exist by her and

not by themselves. (This is precisely the doctrine with regard to society

now current among certain philosophers: society exists independently of its

members; it has laws of its own independently of its members; it is a

reality on its own basis; and its members are by it, not it by them, and

therefore they should obey it; M. Durckheim is a "realist.")

ABELARD of Nantes, pupil of the nominalist, William of Champeaux,

learned man, artist, man of letters, an incomparable orator, tried to

effect a conciliation. He said: "The universal is not a reality, certainly;

but it is something more than a simple word; it is a conception of the

mind, which is something more than an utterance of the voice. As conception

of the mind, in fact, it lives with a life which goes beyond the

individual, because it can be common to several individuals to many

individuals, and because in fact it is common to them. The general idea

that I have and which I have communicated to my hearers, and which returns

to me from my hearers, is more than a word since it is a link between my

hearers and myself, and an atmosphere in which I and my hearers live. Is

the Church only to be a word? God forbid that I should say so. She is a

bond between all Christians; she is a general idea common to them all, so

that in her each individual feels himself several, feels himself many;

although it is true that were she not believed in by anyone she would be

nothing." At bottom he was a nominalist, but more subtle, also more

profound and more precise, having a better grasp of what William of

Champeaux had desired to say. He shared in his condemnation.

Apart from the great dispute, his ideas were singularly broad and

bold. Half knowing, half guessing at ancient philosophy, he held it in high

esteem; he found there, because he delighted in finding there, all the

Christian ideas: the one God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the imputation

of the merits of the saints, original sin; and he found less of a gulf

between ancient philosophy and Christianity than between the Old and the

New Testament (this is because the only Christianity known to Abelard, not

the primitive but that constituted in the fourth century, was profoundly

impregnated with Hellenism). He believed the Holy Ghost to have revealed

Himself to the wise men of antiquity as well as to the Jews and the

Christians, and that virtuous pagans may have been saved. The moral

philosophy of Abelard is very elevated and pure. Our acts proceed from

God; for it is impossible that they should not; but He permits us the

faculty of disobedience "in order that virtue may exist," to which it

tends; for if the tendency to evil did not exist, there would be no

possibility of effort against evil, and if no efforts, then no virtue; God,

who cannot be virtuous since He cannot be tempted by evil, can be virtuous

in man, which is why He leaves him the tendency to evil for him to triumph

over it and be virtuous so that virtue may exist; even if He were Himself

to lead us into temptation, the tendency would still be the same; He would

only lead us into it to give us the opportunity for struggle and victory,

and therefore in order that virtue might exist; the possibility of sin is

the condition of virtue, and in consequence, even in the admission of this

possibility and above all by its admission, God is virtuous.

The bad deed, furthermore, is not the most considerable from the point of

view of guilt; as merit or demerit the intention is worth as much as the

deed and he is criminal who has had the intention to be so (which is

clearly according to the Gospel).

HUGO DE SAINT-VICTOR; RICHARD.--Abelard possessed perhaps the

broadest and greatest mind of the whole of the Middle Ages. After these

famous names must be mentioned Hugo de Saint-Victor, a somewhat obscure

mystic of German origin; and the not less mystical Richard, who, thoroughly

persuaded that God is not attained by reason but by feeling, taught

exaltation to Him by detachment from self and by six degrees: renunciation,

elevation, impulsion, precipitation, ecstasy, and absorption.

CHAPTER II

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

Influence of Aristotle

His Adoption by the Church.

Religious Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

ARISTOTLE AND THE CHURCH.--From the thirteenth century, Aristotle,

completely known and translated into Latin, was adopted by the Church and

became in some sort its lay vicar. He was regarded, and I think rightly, as

of all the Greek thinkers the least dangerous to her and as the one to whom

could be left all the scientific instruction whilst she reserved to herself

all the religious teaching. Aristotle, in fact, "defended her from Plato,"

in whom were always found some germs of adoration of this world, or some

tendencies in this direction, in whom was also found a certain polytheism

much disguised, or rather much purified, but actual and dangerous;

therefore, from the moment when it became necessary to select, Aristotle

was tolerated and finally invested with office.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.--As Aristotelian theologians must be cited

William of Auvergne, Vincent of Beauvais, Albertus Magnus; but the

sovereign name of this period of the history of philosophy is St. Thomas

Aquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote several small works but, surpassing them

all, the _Summa_ (encyclopaedia) which bears his name. In general

philosophy St. Thomas Aquinas is an Aristotelian, bending but not

distorting the ideas of Aristotle to Christian conceptions. Like

Aristotle, he demonstrated God by the existence of motion and the necessity

of a first motive power; he further demonstrated it by the contingent,

relative, and imperfect character of all here below: "There is in things

more or less goodness, more or less truth." But we only affirm the more or

less of a thing by comparing it with something absolute and as it

approaches more or less to this absolute; there is therefore an absolute

being, namely God--and this argument appeared to him better than that of

St. Anselm, which he refuted.

HIS CONCEPTION OF NATURE.--He showed the whole of nature as a great

hierarchy, proceeding from the least perfect and the most shapeless to the

most complete and determinate; from another aspect, as separated into two

great kingdoms, that of necessity (mineral, vegetable, animal), and that of

grace (humanity). He displayed it willed by God, projected by God, created

by God; governed by God according to antecedent and consequent wills, that

is, by general wills (God desires man to be saved) and by particular wills

(God wishes the sinner to be punished), and the union of the general wills

is the creation, and the result of all the particular wills is

Providence. Nature and man with it are the work not only of the power but

of the goodness of God, and it is by love that He created us and we must

render Him love for love, which is involuntarily done by Nature herself in

her obedience to His laws, and which we must do voluntarily by obedience to

His commandments.

THE SOUL.--Our soul is immaterial and more complete than that of

animals, for St. Thomas does not formally deny that animals have souls; the

instinct of animals is the sensitive soul according to Aristotle, which is

capable of four faculties: sensibility, imagination, memory, and

estimation, that is elementary intelligence: "The bird picks up straw, not

because it gratifies her feelings [not by a movement of sensibility], but

because it serves to make her nest. It is therefore necessary that an

animal should perceive those intuitions which do not come within the scope

of the senses. It is by opinion or estimation that it perceives these

intuitions, these distant ends." We, mankind, possess a soul which is

sensibility, imagination, memory, and reason. Reason is the faculty not

only of having ideas, but of establishing connections and chains of

connection between the ideas and of conceiving general ideas. Reason pauses

before reaching God because the idea of God precisely is the only one which

cannot be brought to the mind by the interrelation of ideas, for God

surpasses all ideas; the idea of God is given by faith, which can be

subsequently helped by reason, for the latter can work to make faith

perceptible to reason.

Our soul is full of passions, divisible into two great categories, the

passions of desire and those of anger. The passions of desire are rapid or

violent movements towards some object which seems to us a good; the

passions of anger are movements of revolt against something which opposes

our movement towards a good. The common root of all the passions is love,

for it is obvious that from it are derived the passions of desire; and as

for the passions of wrath they would not exist if we had no love of

anything, in which case our desire not coming into collision would not turn

into revolt against the obstacle. We are free to do good or evil, to master

our evil passions and to follow those of which reason approves. Here

reappears the objection of the knowledge God must have beforehand of our

actions: if God foresees our actions we are not free; if free, we act

contrary to his previsions, then He is not all-powerful. St. Thomas makes

answer thus: "There is not prevision, there is vision, because we are in

time whereas God is in eternity. He sees at one glance and instantaneously

all the past, present, and future. Therefore, He does not foresee but see,

and this vision does not hinder human freedom any more than being seen

acting prevents one from acting. Because God knows our deeds after they are

done, no one can plead that that prevents our full liberty to do them; if

He knew them before it is the same as knowing them after, because for Him

past, present, and future are all the same moment." This appears subtle but

is not, for it only amounts to the statement that in speaking of God time

must not be mentioned, for God is as much outside time as outside space.

THE MORAL SYSTEM OF ST. THOMAS.--The very detailed and

circumstantial moral system of St. Thomas may thus be summarized: there is

in conscience, first, an intellectual act which is the distinction between

good and evil; secondly, an act of will which leads us to the good. This

power for good urges the practice of virtue. There are human virtues, well

known to the ancient philosophers, temperance, courage, wisdom, justice,

which lead to happiness on earth; there are divine virtues, inspired in man

by God, which are faith, hope, and charity, and they lead to eternal

happiness. We practise the virtues, when we are well-disposed, because we

are free; but our liberty and our will do not suffice; it is necessary for

God to help us, and that is "grace."

FAITH AND REASON.--On the question of the relation of reason to

faith, St. Thomas Aquinas recognizes, or rather proclaims, that reason will

never demonstrate faith, that the revealed truths, the Trinity, original

sin, grace, etc., are above reason and infinitely exceed it. How, then, can

one believe? By will, aided by the grace of God. Then henceforth must no

appeal be made to reason? Yes, indeed! Reason serves to refute the errors

of the adversaries of the faith, and by this refutation to confirm itself

in belief. The famous _Credo ut intelligam_--I believe in order to

understand--is therefore true. Comprehension is only possible on condition

of belief; but subsequently comprehension helps to believe, if not more, at

least with a greater precision and in a more abundant light. St. Thomas

Aquinas here is in exactly the position which Pascal seems to have taken

up: Believe and you will understand; understand and you will believe more

exactly. Therefore an act of will: "I wish to believe"--a grace of God

fortifying this will: faith exists--studies and reasoning: faith is the

clearer.

ST. BONAVENTURA; RAYMOND LULLE.--Beside these men of the highest

brain-power there are found in the thirteenth century mystics, that is,

poets and eccentrics, both by the way most interesting. It was St.

Bonaventura who, being persuaded, almost like an Alexandrine, that one

rises to God by synthetic feeling and not by series of arguments, and that

one journeys towards Him by successive states of the soul each more pure

and more passionate--wrote _The Journey of the Soul to God_, which is,

so to speak, a manual of mysticism. Learned as he was, whilst pursuing his

own purpose, he digressed in agreeable and instructive fashion into the

realms of real knowledge.

Widely different from him, Raymond Lulle or de Lulle, an unbridled

schoolman, in his _Ars magna_ invented a reasoning machine, analogous

to an arithmetical machine, in which ideas were automatically deduced from

one another as the figures inscribe themselves on a counter. As often

happens, the excess of the method was its own criticism, and an enemy of

scholasticism could not have more ingeniously demonstrated that it was a

kind of mechanism. Raymond de Lulle was at once a learned man and a

well-informed and most enquiring naturalist for whom Arabian science held

no secrets. With that he was poet, troubadour, orator, as well as very

eccentric and attractive. He was beloved and persecuted in his lifetime,

and long after his death still found enthusiastic disciples.

BACON.--Contemporaneously lived the man whom it is generally the

custom to regard as the distant precursor of experimental science, Roger

Bacon (who must not be confused with Francis Bacon, another learned man who

lived much nearer to our own time). Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar,

occupied himself almost exclusively with physical and natural science. He

passed the greater portion of his life in prison by reason of alleged

sorcery and, more especially, perhaps, because he had denounced the evil

lives of his brethren. He had at least a presentiment of almost all modern

inventions: gunpowder, magnifying glass, telescope, air-pump; he was

distinctly an inventor in optics. In philosophy, properly speaking, he

denounced what was hollow and empty in scholasticism, detesting that

preference should be given to "the straw of words rather than to the grain

of fact," and proclaiming that reasoning "is good to conclude but not to

establish." Without discovering the law of progress, as has too often been

alleged, he arrived at the conclusion that antiquity being the youth of the

world, the moderns are the adults, which only meant that it would be at our

school that the ancients would learn were they to return to earth and that

we ought not to believe blindly in the ancients; and this was an

insurrection against the principle of authority and against the idolatry of

Aristotle. He preached the direct study of nature, observation, and

experiment with the subsequent application of deduction, and especially of

mathematical deduction, to experiment and observation. With all that, he

believed in astrology; for those who are in advance of their time none the

less belong to it: but he was a very great man.

CHAPTER III

THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES

Decadence of Scholasticism. Forebodings of the Coming

Era. Great Moralists. The Kabbala. Sorcery.

DECADENCE OF SCHOLASTICISM.--The fourteenth century dated the

decadence of scholasticism, but saw little new. "Realism" was generally

abandoned, and the field was swept by "nominalism," which was the theory

that ideas only have existence in the brains which conceive them. Thus

Durand de Saint-Pourcain remains famous for having said, "To exist is to be

individually," which at that epoch was very audacious. William of Ockham

repeated the phrase with emphasis; there is nothing real except the

individual. That went so far as to cast suspicion on all metaphysics, and

somewhat on theology. In fact, _although a devout believer_, Ockham

rejected theology, implored the Church not to be learned, because her

science proved nothing, and to content herself with faith: "Science belongs

to God, faith to men." But, or rather in addition, if the ministers of God

were no longer imposing because of their ambitious science, it was

necessary for them to regain their sway over souls by other and better

means. It was incumbent on them to be saintly, to revert to the purity, the

simplicity, and the divine childishness of the primitive Church; and here

he was virtually a forerunner of the Reformation.

Ockham was indeed one of the auxiliaries of Philip the Fair in his struggle

with the Holy See, suffered excommunication, and sought refuge with the

Duke of Bavaria, the foe of the Pope.

BURIDAN: THE LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE.--Realists and nominalists

continued their mutual strife, sometimes physically even, until the middle

of the fifteenth century. But nominalism always gained ground, having

among other celebrated champions, Peter d'Ailly and Buridan; the one

succeeded in becoming Chancellor of the University of Paris, the other in

becoming its Rector. Buridan has remained famous through his death and his

donkey, both alike legendary. According to a ballad by Villon, Buridan

having been too tenderly loved by Joan of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair,

was by his order "thrown in a sack into the Seine." By comparison of

dates, the fact seems impossible. According to tradition, either in order

to show the freedom of indifference, or that animals are mere machines,

Buridan declared that an ass with two baskets full of corn placed one on

each side of him and at equal distance from him, would never decide from

which he should feed and would die of starvation. Nothing of the kind is to

be found in his works, but he may have said so in a lecture and his pupils

remembering it have handed it down as a proverb.

PETER D'AILLY; GERSON.--Peter d'Ailly, a highly important

ecclesiastic, head of the College of Navarre, chevalier of the University

of Paris, Cardinal, a leader in the discussions at the Councils at Pisa and

Constance, a drastic reformer of the morals and customs of the Church, did

not evince any marked originality as a philosopher, but maintained the

already known doctrines of nominalism with extraordinary dialectical skill.

Among his pupils he numbered Gerson, who was also Chancellor of the

University of Paris, another highly zealous and energetic reformer, a more

avowed enemy of scholasticism and mysticism, of exaggerated austerity and

astrology, eminently modern in the best sense of the word, whose political

and religious enemies are his title of respect. He was the author of many

small books devoted to the popularization of science, religion, and

morality. To him was long attributed the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_,

which on the whole bears no resemblance to his writings, but which he might

very well have written in old age in his retreat in the peaceful silence of

the Celestines of Lyons.

THE KABBALA.--From the beginning of the fifteenth century the

Renaissance was heralded by a revival of Platonism, both in philosophy and

literature. But it was a Platonism strangely understood, a quaint medley of

Pythagoreanism and Alexandrinism, the source of which is not very clear

(the period not having been much studied). Then arose an incredible

infatuation for the Kabbala--a doctrine which was for a long while the

secret of the Jews, brooded over by them so to speak during the darkness of

the Middle Ages, in which are to be found traces of the most sublime

speculations and of the basest superstitions of antiquity. It contained a

kind of pantheistic theology closely analogous to those of Porphyry and

Iamblichus, as well as processes of magic mingled with astrology. The

Kabbalists believe that the sage, who by his astrological knowledge is

brought into relation with the celestial powers, can affect nature, alter

the course of phenomena, and work miracles. The Kabbala forms part of the

history of the marvelous and of occult science rather than of the history

of philosophy. Nevertheless men of real learning were initiated and were

infatuated, among them the marvelous Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, not

less remarkable as humanist and Hebraist, who would have run grave risk at

the hands of the Inquisition at Cologne if he had not been saved by Leo

X. Cardan, a mathematician and physician, was one of the learned men of the

day most impregnated with Kabbalism. He believed in a kind of infallibility

of the inner sense, of the intuition, and regarded as futile all sciences

that proceeded by slow rational operations. He believed himself a mage and

magician. From vanity he spoke of himself in the highest terms and from

cynicism in the lowest. Doubt has been cast on his sincerity and also on

his sanity.

MAGIC.--There were also Paracelsus and Agrippa. Paracelsus, like

Cardan, believed in an intense light infinitely superior to bestial

reasoning and calls to mind certain philosophy of intuition of the present

day. He too believed himself a magician and physician, and effected cures

by the application of astrology to therapeutics. Agrippa did the same with

yet stranger phantasies, passing from absolute scepticism through mysticism

to magi and demonology; in his own time and in subsequent centuries

enjoying the reputation of a devil incarnate as man.

CHAPTER IV

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

It Is Fairly Accurate to Consider that from the Point of

View of Philosophy, the Middle Ages Lasted until Descartes.

Free-thinkers More or Less Disguised.

Partisans of Reason Apart from Faith, of Observation,

and Of Experiment.

THE FREEDOM OF PHILOSOPHY: POMPONAZZO.--The freedom and even the

audacity of philosophy rapidly increased. Learned and convinced

Aristotelians were bent, either from sheer love of truth or from a more

secret purpose, on demonstrating to what extent Aristotle, accurately read,

was opposed to the teaching of the Church. For instance, Pomponazzo

revealed that nothing could be drawn from Aristotle in favour of the

immortality of the soul, in which he himself believed fervently, but in

which Aristotle did not believe, hence it was necessary to choose between

the Church and Aristotle; that without the immortality of the soul there

could be no rewards beyond the grave, which was entirely his own opinion,

but whoever should desire to offer excuses for Aristotle could say it was

precisely the existence of punishments and rewards which deprived virtue of

existence, which did away with virtue, since the good that is done for the

sake of reward or from fear of punishment is no longer good; that, still

according to Aristotle, there could never be miracles; that he, Pomponazzo,

believed in all the miracles recorded in the Scriptures; but that Aristotle

would not have believed in them, and could not have believed in them, a

fact which demanded consideration, not assuredly in order to reject belief

in miracles, but in order not to bestow on Aristotle that confidence which

for so long had been too readily placed in him.

In the same way, he took up again the eternal question of the prescience of

God and of human liberty, and showed that no matter what had been said it

was necessary to choose: either we are free and God is not omnipotent, or

God is omnipotent and we are not free. To regard as true this latter

hypothesis, towards which the philosopher evidently leans, would cause God

to be the author of evil and of sin. It would not be impossible for God to

be the author of evil as an essential condition of good, for if evil were

not to exist then there could not be good; nor would it be impossible that

He should be the author, not of sin, but of the possibility of sin in order

that virtue might be possible, there being no virtue where it is impossible

to commit sin; but therein lies a mystery which faith alone can solve, and

which Aristotle at any rate has not solved, therefore let us not place

reliance on Aristotle.

This disguised freethinker, for he does not appear to me to be anything

else, was one of the most original thinkers of the period intermediate

between the Middle Ages and Descartes.

MICHAEL SERVETUS; VANINI.--Such instances of temerity were sometimes

fatal to their authors. Michael Servetus, a very learned Spanish physician

who perhaps discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey,

disbelieved in the Trinity and in the divinity of Jesus, and, as he was a

Platonist, perceived no intermediaries between God and man save

ideas. Persecuted by the Catholics, he sought refuge at Geneva, believing

Calvin to be more merciful than the Inquisitors, and Calvin burned him

alive.

Vanini, half a century later, that is at the commencement of the

seventeenth, a restless, vain, and insolent man, after a life full of

sudden changes of fortune, and yet distinguished, was burnt alive at

Toulouse for certain passages in his _De admirandis ... arcanis_, and

for having said that he would not express his opinion on the immortality of

the soul until he was old, a Jew, and a German.

BRUNO; CAMPANELLA.--Giordano Bruno, an astronomer and one of the

first to affirm that the sun was the centre of the world, professed,

despite certain precautions, a doctrine which confused God with the world

and denied or excluded creation. Giordano Bruno was arrested at Venice in

1593, kept seven years in prison, and finally burnt at Rome in 1600.

Campanella, likewise an Italian, who spent twenty-seven years in a dungeon

for having conspired against the Spanish masters of his country, and who

died in exile in Paris in 1639, was a sceptic in philosophy, or rather an

anti-metaphysician, and, as would be said nowadays, a positivist. There are

only two sources of knowledge, observation and reasoning. Observation makes

us know things--is this true? May not the sensations of things which we

have be a simple phantasmagoria? No; for we have an internal sense, a sense

of our own, which cannot deceive us, which affirms our existence (here is

the _Cogito_ of Descartes anticipated) and which, at the same time,

affirms that there are things which are not ourselves, so that coincidently

the ego and the non-ego are established. Yes, but is this non-ego really

what it seems? It is; granted; but what is it and can we know what it is?

Not without doubt, and here scepticism is unshakable; but in that there is

certitude of the existence of the non-ego, the presumption is that we can

know it, partially, relatively, very relatively, while we remain infinitely

distant from an absolute knowledge, which would be divine. Therefore let us

observe and experiment; let us make the "history" of nature as historians

make the history of the human race. And this is the simple and solid

philosophy of experiment.

But Campanella, like so many more, was a metaphysician possessed by the

devil of metaphysics, and after having imperiously recommended the writing

of only the history of nature, he himself wrote its romance as well. Every

being, he said (and the thought was a very fine one), exists on condition

of being able to exist, and on condition that there be an idea of which it

is the realization, and again on condition that nature is willing to create

it. In other words, nature can, knows what she wishes, and wishes. Now all

beings, in a greater or less degree according to their perfection or

imperfection, feel this triple condition of being able, knowing, and

wishing. Every being can, knows, and wishes, even inorganic matter (here

already is the world as will and representation of Schopenhauer), and God

is only absolute power, absolute knowledge, and absolute will. This is why

all creative things gravitate to God and desire to return to Him as to

their origin, and as the perfection of what they are: the universe has

nostalgia for God.

Campanella was also, as we should say nowadays, a sociologist. He made his

"Republic" as Plato had made his. The Republic of Campanella was called the

_City of the Sun_. It was a community republic, leavened with

aristocracy with "spiritual power" and "temporal power" somewhat after the

manner of Auguste Comte. Campanella was a great sower of ideas.

FRANCIS BACON.--Francis Bacon, lawyer, member of Parliament, Lord

Chancellor of England, personal friend of James I, friend, protector, and

perhaps collaborator with Shakespeare, overthrown as the result of

political animosity and relegated to private life, was a very learned man

with a marvellous mind. Like his namesake, Roger Bacon, but in an age more

favourable to intellectual reform, he attempted a sort of renewal of the

human mind (_Instauratio Magna_) or at least a radical revolution in

the methods and workings of the human mind. Although Francis Bacon

professed admiration for many of the thinkers of antiquity, he urged that

it was wrong to rely on them because they had not sufficiently observed;

one must not, like the schoolmen, have ideas _a priori_, which are

"idols," and there are idols of tribe, of party, of school, of eras;

intentions must not be perceived everywhere in nature, and we must not,

because the sun warms, believe it was created to warm, or because the earth

yields nourishment believe her creation was for the purpose of feeding us,

and that all things converge to man and are put at his service. It is

necessary to proceed by observation, by experiment, and then by induction,

but with prodigious mistrust of induction. Induction consists in drawing

conclusions from the particular to the general, from a certain number of

facts to a law. This is legitimate on condition that the conclusion is not

drawn from a few facts to a law, which is precipitate induction, fruitful

in errors; but from a very large number of facts to a law, which even then

is considered as provisional. As for metaphysics, as for the investigation

of universal law, that should be entirely separated from philosophy itself,

from the "primary philosophy" which does not lead to it; it has its own

field, which is that of faith: "Give to faith what belongeth to faith." In

the main he is uninterested in metaphysics, believing them always to

revolve in a circle and, I do not say, only believes in science and in

method, but has hope only from knowledge and method, an enthusiast in this

respect just as another might be about the super-sensible world or about

ideas, saying human knowledge and human power are really coincident, and

believing that knowledge will support humanity in all calamities, will

prolong human life, will establish a new golden age, etc.

Moreover, let there be none of that eternal and unfounded fear that

knowledge will cause the disappearance of the religious feeling. With

profound conviction and judging by himself, Bacon said: "A little

philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy

bringeth a man's mind about to religion." Such is true philosophy,

"subordinate to the object," attentive to the object, listening to the

voices of the world and only anxious to translate them into human language:

"that is true philosophy which renders the voices of the world the most

accurately possible, like an echo, which writes as if at the dictation of

the world itself, adding nothing of its own, only repeating and

_resounding_."

And, as a man is always of his time, he believed in alchemy and in the

possibility of transmuting base metals into gold. But note how he

understood it: "To create a new nature in a given body or to produce new

natures and to introduce them ... he who is acquainted with the forms and

modes of super-inducing yellowness, weight, ductility, fixity, fluidity,

solution, and the rest, with their gradations and methods, will see and

take care that these properties be united in some body, whence its

transformation into gold may follow." Modern chemistry, with scientific

methods highly analogous to those which Bacon indicated or foresaw, has not

made gold, which is not a very useful thing to do, but has done better.

THOMAS HOBBES.--At the end of the sixteenth century, another

Englishman, Thomas Hobbes, began to think. He was, above all else, a

literary man and a sociologist; he translated Thucydides and Homer, he

wrote _Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth_,

which is a manual of despotism, demonstrating that all men in a natural

state were beasts of prey with regard to one another, but that they escaped

this unpleasant fate by submission to a prince who has all rights because

he is perpetually saving his subjects from death, and who can therefore

impose on them whatever he pleases, even scientific dogma or religious

beliefs. Merely regarded as a philosopher, properly so called, Hobbes has

an important position in the history of ideas. Like Francis Bacon, but more

rigorously and authoritatively, he began by separating metaphysics and

theology from philosophy. Philosophy is the art of thinking. That which is

not sensible--mind, soul, God--cannot be thought: can only be believed;

philosophy does not deny all that; merely it does not concern itself

therewith. Here is the whole of positivism established in principle. What

we can think is what we feel. Things are known to us only through

sensations; a thought is a sensation, the human mind is a compound of

sensations.

No; for I can think of a thing without hearing, seeing, feeling it, etc.

This is because we have memory, which is itself a sensation; it is a

sensation which prolongs itself; to remember is to feel that one has felt;

it is to feel a former sensation which the brain is able to preserve. We

think only by combining current sensations with other current sensations,

or much more often indeed, thanks to memory, by combining current

sensations with older ones, or former sensations with each other. This is

but a fragile basis for knowledge and thought, for sensation is only a

modification of ourselves caused by an external object, and consequently

gives us nothing at all of the external object, and of itself the external

world is eternally unknown to us; but we combine with each other the

illusions that the external world deposits in us through the delusive or

doubtful intermediary of our senses.

When the sensation thus combined with other sensations has become thought,

then ideas begin to exist. They are products of sensation detached from

sensation. They are interassociated by laws that are obscure, yet which can

be vaguely perceived. They awake, so to speak, and call to one another;

every time an idea previously acquired reappears, it is followed by the

thought which accompanied it when it was acquired. In a conversation a

traitor is spoken of. Someone asks what was the value of a piece of silver

in ancient times. This appears incoherent; really it is a natural and

simple association of ideas in which there are few intermediate steps. The

person who listened as the traitor was mentioned thought of Judas, who was

the first traitor of whom he had heard, and of the thirty pieces of silver,

the price of the betrayal by Judas. The association of ideas is more or

less close, more or less loose; it is disconnected in dreams, irregular in

musing, close directly it is dominated and in consequence directed by an

end pursued, by a goal sought; for then there is a desire to attain which

associates nothing of itself, but which, eliminating all ideas that are not

pertinent to the end pursued, permits only the association of those which

have relation to it.

Seeing in the human soul only successive impulses arising from those first

impulses which are the sensations, Hobbes does not believe we are free to

do what we wish; we are carried away by the strongest impulse of our

internal impulses, desire, fear, aversion, love, etc. Nevertheless we

deliberate, we consider different courses to pursue and we decide on the

one we desire to choose. No; we do not deliberate, we only imagine we

deliberate. Deliberation is only a succession of different feelings, and to

the one that gains the day we give the name of volition. "In the

[so-called] deliberation, the final desire or the final fear is called

will." Therefore liberty has no more existence among men than among

animals; will and desire are only one and the same thing considered under

different aspects.

UTILITARIAN MORALITY.--Henceforth there is no morality; without the

power to will this and not to will that, there is no possible

morality. Hobbes retorts with "utilitarian morality": What man should seek

is pleasure, as Aristippus thought; but true pleasure--that which is

permanent and that which is useful to him. Now it is useful to be a good

citizen, a loyal subject, sociable, serviceable to others, careful to

obtain their esteem by good conduct, etc. Morality is interest rightly

understood, and interest rightly understood is absolutely blended with the

morality of duty. The criminal is not a criminal but an idiot; the honest

man is not an honest man but an intelligent one. Observe that a man is

hardly convinced when preached to in the name of duty, but always convinced

when addressed in the name of his own interest.

All this is fairly sensible; but from the time that freedom ceases there

can be no morality, _not even utilitarian_; for it is useless even

from the point of view of his own interests, to preach to a man who is only

a machine moved by the strongest force; and, if he be only that, to lay

down a moral code for him either from the point of view of his own

interests, or from that of morality, or from that of the love of God are

things which are the same and which are as absurd the one as the other. All

philosophy, which does not believe in human liberty, yet which enunciates a

system of morality, is in perpetual contradiction.

PART III

MODERN TIMES

CHAPTER I

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Descartes. Cartesianism.

DESCARTES.--The seventeenth century, which was the greatest

philosophic century of modern times and perhaps of any time, began with

Rene Descartes. Descartes, born at La Haye in Touraine in 1596, of noble

family (his real name was des Quartes), was educated by the Jesuits of the

college of La Fleche, followed the military profession for several years,

then gave himself up to mathematics and became one of the greatest

mathematicians of Europe, traveled all over Europe for his own amusement

and instruction, wrote scientific and philosophical works, of which the

most famous are the _Discourse on_ METHOD, the _Meditations_, and

the _Rules for the Control of the Mind_, resided sometimes in Paris,

sometimes in Holland, and finally, at fifty-four years of age, unhappily

attracted by the flattering invitations of Queen Christina of Sweden,

proceeded to Stockholm, where he succumbed in four months to the severity

of the climate. He died in February, 1650.

THE SYSTEM OF DESCARTES.--In the works of Descartes there are a

general system of philosophy, a psychology, and a method. This order is

here adopted because of the three, in Descartes; it is the third which is

the most important, and which has left the most profound traces. The

foundation of the system of Descartes is belief in God and in the goodness

of God. I say the foundation and not the starting-point. The starting-point

is another matter; but it will be clearly seen that the foundation is what

has just been stated. The starting-point is this: I do not believe,

provisionally, in anything, not wishing to take into account what I have

been taught. I doubt everything. Is there anything I cannot doubt? It

seems to me there is: I cannot doubt that I doubt. Now if I doubt, I

think; if I think, I am. There is one certainty, I am.

And having arrived there, Descartes is at a dead stop, for from the

certitude of one's own existence nothing can be deduced save the certitude

of one's existence. For instance, shall I believe in the existence of

everything that is not myself? There is no reason why I should believe in

it. The world may be a dream. But if I believe in God and in a God of

perfect goodness, I can then believe in something outside of myself, for

God not being able to deceive Himself or me, if He permits me to see the

external world, it is because this external world exists. There are

already, therefore, three things in which I believe: my own existence, that

of God, and that of the universe. Which of these beliefs is the fundamental

one? Evidently, the one not demonstrated; the axiom is that upon which one

rests to demonstrate everything except itself. Now of the three things in

which Descartes believed, his own existence is demonstrated by the

impossibility of thinking or feeling, without feeling his own existence;

the other is demonstrated by the existence of a good God; the existence of

a good God is demonstrated by nothing. It is believed. Hence belief in a

good God is Descartes' foundation. This has not been introduced in order

that he may escape from the _I am_ at which he came to a stop; that

belief certainly existed previously, and if he had recourse to it, it was

because it existed first. Without that, he had too much intellectual

honesty to invent it for a particular need. He had it, and he found it as

it were in reserve when he asked himself if he could go beyond _I

am_. Here was his foundation; all the rest would complete the proof.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.--Although Descartes rests on God as being his

first principle, he does not fail to prove His existence, and that is

begging the question, something proved by what has to be proved. For if

Descartes believed only in something outside himself because of a good God,

that Being outside himself, God, he can prove only because of the existence

of a good God, who cannot deceive us, and thus is God proved by the belief

in Him. That is begging the question. Descartes does not fail to prove the

existence of God by superabundance as it were; and this, too, in itself

indicates clearly that faith in God is the very foundation of the

philosophy of Descartes. After having taken it as the basis of reasoning,

he takes it as the goal of reasoning, which indicates that the idea of God,

so to speak, encircled his mind and that he found it at every ultimate

point of thought.

He proves it, therefore, first by an argument analogous to that of

St. Anselm, which is this: we, imperfect and finite, have the idea of a

perfect and infinite Being; we are not capable of this idea. Therefore it

must have come to us from a Being really perfect and infinite, and hence

this perfect Being exists.

Another proof, that of God regarded as cause. First: I exist. Who made me?

Was it myself? No, if it had been myself I should have endowed myself with

all the perfections of which I can conceive and in which I am singularly

deficient. Therefore it must be some other being who created me. It was my

parents. No doubt, but who created my parents and the parents of my

parents? One cannot go back indefinitely from cause to cause, and there

must have been a first one.

Secondly: even my own actual existence, my existence at this very moment,

is it the result of my existence yesterday? Nothing proves it, and there is

no necessity because I existed just now that I should exist at

present. There must therefore be a cause at each moment and a continuous

cause. That continuous cause is God, and the whole world is a creation

perpetually continued, and is only comprehensible as continuous creation

and is only explicable by a Creator.

THE WORLD.--Thus sure of himself, of God, and of the world,

Descartes studies the world and himself. In the world he sees souls and

matter; matter is substance in extensions, souls are substance not in

extension, spiritual substance. The extended substance is endowed with

impulse. Is the impulse self-generated, are the bodies self-impelled? No,

they are moved. What is the primary motive force? It is God. Souls are

substances without extension and motive forces. In this respect they are

analogous to God. They are united to bodies and act on them. How? This is

an impenetrable mystery, but they are closely and substantially united to

the bodies, which is proved by physical pains depressing the soul and moral

sufferings depressing the body; and they act on them, not by creating

movements, for the quantity of movements is always the same, but by

directing the movements after this fashion or that. Souls being spiritual,

there is no reason for their disaggregation, that is, their demise, and in

fact they do not die.

It is for this reason that Descartes lays such stress on animals not having

souls. If they had souls, the souls would be spiritual, they would not be

susceptible to disaggregation and would be immortal. "Save atheism, there

is no doctrine more dangerous and detestable than that," but animals are

soulless and purely mechanism; Descartes exerts himself to prove this in

great detail, and he thus escapes avowing the immortality of the souls of

animals, which is repugnant to him, or by allowing that they perish with

the bodies to be exposed to the objection: "Will it not be the same with

the souls of men?"

THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL.--The human soul is endowed with freedom to

do good or evil. What proof is there of this freedom? First, the inward

feeling that we have. Every evident idea is true. Now, not only have we

the idea of this freedom, but it would be impossible for us not to have it.

Freedom "is known without proofs, merely by the experience we have of it."

It is by the feeling of our freedom, of our free-will that we understand

that we exist as a being, as a thing which is not merely a thing. The true

_ego_ is the will. Even more than an intelligent being, man is a free

individual, and only feels himself to be a man when feeling himself free,

so that he might not believe himself to be intelligent, nor think himself

sensible, etc., but not to think himself free would for him be moral

suicide; and in fact he actually never does anything which he does not

believe himself to be free to do--that is, which he does not believe that

he might avoid doing, if he so wished. Those who say, "It is simply the

feeling that it is better for ourselves which tends to make us do this

instead of doing that," are deeply in error. They forget that we often

prefer the worst for ourselves in order to prove to ourselves that we are

free and therefore have no other _motive power than our own freedom_.

(And this is exactly what contemporaneous philosophy has thus formulated:

"Will is neither determinate nor indeterminate, it is determinative.")

"Even when a very obvious reason leads us to a thing, although morally

speaking it is difficult for us to do the opposite, nevertheless, speaking

absolutely, we can, for we are always free to prevent ourselves from

pursuing a good thing clearly known ... provided only that _we think it

is beneficial thereby to give evidence of the truth of our free-will_."

It is the pure and simple wish to be free which _creates an action;_

it is the all-powerful liberty.

As has been happily observed, in relation to the universe the philosophy of

Descartes is a mechanical philosophy; in relation to man the philosophy of

Descartes is a philosophy of will. As has also been remarked, there are

very striking analogies between Corneille and Descartes from the point of

view of the apotheosis of the will, and the _Meditations_ having

appeared after the great works of Corneille, it is not so much that

Corneille was a Cartesian, as that Descartes was a follower of Corneille.

PSYCHOLOGY OF DESCARTES.--Descartes has almost written a psychology,

what with his _Treatise on the Passions_ and his letters and, besides,

certain passages in his _Meditations_. The soul thinks and has

passions. There are three kinds of ideas, the factitious, the adventitious,

and the innate; the factitious ideas are those which the imagination forms;

the adventitious ideas are those suggested by the external world through

the intermediary of the senses; the innate ideas are those constituting the

mind itself, the conditions under which it thinks and apart from which it

cannot think: we cannot conceive an object not extended, nor an object

apart from time, nor anything without a cause; the ideas of time, space,

and cause are innate ideas; we cannot conceive ourselves as other than

free; the idea of liberty is an innate idea.

The soul has passions; it is therein that, without dependence on the body,

it has intimate relations with and is modified by it, not radically, but in

its daily life. There are operations of the soul which cannot strictly be

termed passions, and yet which are directed or at least _influenced_

by the body. Memory is passive, and consequently memory is a species of

passion. The lively sensations which the body transmits to the brain leave

impressions (Malebranche would say "traces"), and according to these

impressions the soul is moved a second or a third time, and that is what is

called memory. "The impressions of the brain render it suitable to stir

the soul in the same way as it has been stirred before, and also to make it

recollect something, just as the folds in a piece of paper or linen make it

more suitable to be folded anew as it was before than if it had never been

thus folded." Similarly, the association of ideas is passive, and in

consequence is a kind of passion. The association of ideas is the fact that

thought passes along the same path it has already traversed, and follows in

its labyrinth the thread which interlinks its thoughts, and this thread is

the traces which thoughts have left in the brain. In abandoning ourselves

to the association of ideas, we are passive and we yield ourselves freely

to a passion. That is so true that current speech itself recognizes this:

musing is a passion, it is possible to have a passion for musing, and

musing is nothing else than the association of ideas in which the will does

not intervene.

THE PASSIONS.--Coming to the passions strictly speaking, there are

some which are of the soul and only of the soul; the passion for God is a

passion of the soul, the passion for liberty is a passion of the soul; but

there are many more which are the effects of the union of the soul with the

body. These passions are excited in the soul by a state of the body or a

movement of the body or of some part of the body; they are "emotions" of

the soul corresponding to "movements" of the machine. All passions have

relation to the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain, and according as

they relate to the former or the latter are they expansive or oppressive.

There are six principal passions, of which all the rest are only

modifications: admiration, love, desire, joy, having relation to the

appetite of happiness; hatred, sadness, having relation to the fear of

pain. "All the passions are good and may become bad" (Descartes in this

deviates emphatically from Stoicism for which the passions are simply

maladies of the soul). All passions are good in themselves. They are

destined (this is a remarkable theory) to cause the duration of thoughts

which would otherwise pass and be rapidly effaced; by reason of this, they

cause man to act; if he were only directed by his thoughts, unaccompanied

by his passions, he would never act, and if it be recognized that man is

born for action, it will at the same time be recognized that it is

necessary he should have passions.

But, you will say, there can be good passions (of a nature to give force to

just ideas) and evil passions.

No, they are all good, but all also have their bad side, their deviation,

rather, which enables them to become bad. Therefore, in each passion no

matter what it be, it is always possible to distinguish between the passion

itself, which is always good, and the excess, the deviation, the

degradation or corruption of this passion which constitutes, if it be

desired to call it so, an evil passion, and this is what Descartes

demonstrates, passion by passion, in the fullest detail, in his _Treatise

on the Passions_.

THE PART OF THE SOUL.--If it is thus, what will be the part of the

soul (the soul is the will)? It will be to abandon itself to good passions,

or more accurately to the good that is in all passions, and to reduce the

passions to be "nothing more than themselves." In courage, for example,

there is courage and temerity. The action of the will, enlightened by the

judgment, will consist in reducing courage to be nothing but courage. In

fear, there is cowardice and there is the feeling of self-preservation

which, according to Descartes, is the foundation of fear and which is a

very good passion. The action of the soul is to reduce fear to simple

prudence.

But _how_ will the will effect these metamorphoses or at least these

departures, these separations, these reductions to the due proportion?

_Directly_ it can effect _nothing_ upon the passions; it cannot

_remove_ them; it cannot even remove the baser portions of them; but

it can exercise influence over them by the intermediary of reasoning; it

can lead them to the attentive consideration of the thought that they carry

with them, and by this consideration modify them. For instance, if it is a

question of fear, the soul forces fear to consider that the peril is much

less than was imagined, and thus little by little brings it back to simple

prudence.

Note that this method, although indirect, is very potent; for it ends by

really transforming the passions into their opposites. Persuade fear that

there is less peril in marching forward than in flight and that the most

salutary flight is the flight forward and you have changed fear to

courage.--But such an influence of the will over the passions is

extraordinarily unlikely: it will never take place.--Yes, by habit! Habit

too is a passion, or, if you will, a passive state, like that of memory or

the association of ideas, and there are men possessed only of that passion.

But the will, by the means which have been described, by imposing an act, a

first act, creates a commencement of habit, by imposing a second confirms

that habit, by imposing a third strengthens it, and so on. In plain words,

the will, by reasoning with the passions and reasoning with them

incessantly, brings them back to what is good in them and ends by bringing

them back there permanently, so that it arrives at having only the passions

it desires, or, if you prefer it, for it is the same thing, at having only

the passion for good. Morality consists in loving noble passions, as was

later observed by Vauvenargues, and that means to love all the passions,

each for what is good in it, that is to reduce each passion to what real

goodness is inherent in it, and that is to gather all the passions into

one, which is the passion of duty.

THE METHOD OF DESCARTES.--As has been observed, not only had

Descartes influence through all that he wrote, but it was by his method

that he has exerted the greatest and most durable sway, and that is why we

conclude with the examination of his method. It is all contained in this:

to accept nothing as true except what is evident; to accept as true all

that is evident. Descartes therefore made evidence the touchstone of

certainty. But mark well the profound meaning of this method: what is it

that gives me the assurance of the evidence of such or such an idea? How

shall I know that such an idea is really evident to me? Because I see it in

perfect clearness? No, that does not suffice: the evidence may be

deceptive; there can be false evidence; all the wrong ideas of the

philosophers of antiquity, save when they were sophists, had for them the

character of being evident. Why? Why should error be presented to the mind

as an evident truth? Because in truth, in profound truthfulness, it must

be admitted that judgment does not depend upon the intelligence. And on

what does it depend? On will, on free-will. This is how. No doubt, error

depends on our judgment, but our judgment depends on our will in the sense

that it depends on us whether we adhere to our judgment without it being

sufficiently precise or do not adhere to it because it is not sufficiently

precise: "If I abstain from giving my judgment on a subject when I do not

conceive it with sufficient clearness and distinction, it is evident that I

shall not be deceived." Evidence is therefore not only a matter of

judgment, of understanding, of intelligence, it is a matter of energetic

will and of freedom courageously acquired. We are confronted with evidence

when, with a clear brain, we are capable, in order to accept or refuse what

it lays before us, of acting "after such a fashion," of having put

ourselves in such a state of the soul that we feel "that no external force

can constrain us to think in such or such a way."

These external forces are authority, prejudices, personal interest, or that

of party. The faculty of perceiving evidence is therefore the triumph both

of sound judgment in itself and of a freedom of mind which, supposing

probity, scrupulousness, and courage, and perhaps the most difficult of all

courage, supposes a profound and vigorous morality. Evidence is given only

to men who are first highly intelligent and next, or rather before all

else, are profoundly honest. Evidence is not a consequence of morality; but

morality is the _condition_ of evidence.

There is the foundation of the method of Descartes; add to it his advice on

the art of reasoning, which even in his time was not at all novel, but

which with him is very precise; not to generalize too hastily, not to be

put off with words, but to have a clear definition of every word, etc., and

thus a sufficient idea of it will be obtained.

Now first, to this method Descartes was unfaithful, as always happens, and

often accepted the suggestions of his magnificent imagination as the

evidences of his reason; secondly, the touchstone of evidence is certainly

the best, but is far from being infallible (and Vico has ridiculed it with

as much sense as wit) and the freest mind can still find false things

evident; yet, thirdly, favouring freedom of research self-controlled,

individual and scornful of all authority, the method of Descartes has

become a banner, a motto, and a flag for all modern philosophy.

DESCARTES THE FATHER OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.--And from all that the

result has been that all modern philosophy, with few exceptions, has

recognised Descartes as its parent--that individual evidence, if it may be

thus expressed, favouring temerity and each believing himself closer to the

truth the more he differed from others, and consequently was unable to

suspect himself of being subject to influences, individual evidence has

provided a fresh opportunity for self-deception; finally, that Descartes,

by a not uncommon metamorphosis, by means of his system which he did not

follow, has become the head or the venerated ancestor of doctrines which he

would have detested and which he already did detest more than all

others. Because he said that evidence alone and the free investigation of

evidence led to truth, he has become the ancestor of the sceptics who are

persuaded that surrender must be made only to evidence and that evidence

cannot be found; and he has become the ancestor of the positivists who

believe that evidence certainly exists somewhere, but not in metaphysics or

in theodicy, or in knowledge of the soul, of immortality, and of God,

branches of knowledge which surpass our means of knowing, which are in fact

outside knowledge. So that this man who conceived more than any man, this

man who so often constructed without a sure foundation, and this man, yet

again, as has been aptly said, who always thought by innate ideas, by his

formula has become the master and above all the guarantor of those who are

the most reserved and most distrustful as to philosophic construction,

innate ideas, and imagination. This does not in the least diminish his

brilliant merit; it is only one of those changes of direction in which the

history of ideas abounds.

CHAPTER II

CARTESIANS

All the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes.

Port-Royal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.

CARTESIAN INFLUENCE.--Nearly all the seventeenth century was

Cartesian, and in the general sense of the word, not only as supporters of

the method of evidence, but as adherents of the general philosophy of

Descartes. Gassendi (a Provencal, and not an Italian), professor of

philosophy at Aix, subsequently in Paris, was not precisely a faithful

disciple of Descartes, and he opposed him several times; he had leanings

towards Epicurus and the doctrine of atoms; he drew towards Hobbes, but he

was also a fervent admirer of Bacon, and so approached Descartes, who

thought very highly of him, though impatiently galled by his criticisms.

After the example of Epicurus he was the most sober and austere of men, and

of the two it was Descartes rather than he who was Epicurean in the common

use of the word. According to a tradition, which to my mind rests on

insufficient proof, he was an instructor of Moliere.

All the thinkers of the seventeenth century came more or less profoundly

under the Cartesian influence: Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Arnauld, and all

Port-Royal. This influence was to diminish only in the eighteenth century,

though kept up by the impenitent Fontenelle, but outweighed by that of

Locke, to reappear very vigorously in the nineteenth century in France in

the school of Maine de Biran and of Cousin.

MALEBRANCHE.--A separate niche must be made for the Cartesians,

almost as great as Descartes, who filled the seventeenth century with their

renown,--the Frenchman Malebranche, the Dutchman Spinoza, and the German

Leibnitz. Pushing the theories of Descartes further than Descartes would

himself in all probability have desired to, from what Descartes had said

that it was only _through God_ that we perceived accurately,

Malebranche declared that it was only _in God_ that we perceived

accurately, and fundamentally this is the same idea; it can only be deemed

that Malebranche is the more precise: "God alone is known by Himself [is

believed in without uncertainty]; there is only He that we can see in

immediate and direct perspective." All the rest we see in Him, in His

light, in the light He creates in our minds. When we see, it is that we are

in Him. Evidence is divine light. He is the link of ideas. (And thus

Malebranche brought Plato near to Descartes and showed that, without the

latter being aware of it, they both said the same thing.) God is always the

cause and as He is the cause of all real things, He is cause also of all

truths, and as He is everywhere in real objects, He is also everywhere in

the true ideas which we can have, or rather in which we can participate.

When we seek a truth we pray without thinking we do so; attention is a

prayer.

In the same way, from the saying of Descartes that the universe is a

continuous creation, Malebranche deduced or rather concluded that our

thoughts and actions are acts of God. There can be no action of the body on

the soul to produce ideas; that would be inconceivable; but on the

occasion, for instance, of our eyes resting on an object, God gives us an

idea of that object, whether in conformity or not we cannot tell; but at

any rate He gives us that idea of the object which He wishes us to have.

There is no action of our soul on our body; that would be

inconceivable. But God to our will adds a force having a tendency towards

goodness as a rule, and to each of our volitions adds a force tending to

its execution and capable of executing it.

Then, when our will is evil and we execute it, does God sin in our name?

Certainly not; because sin is not an act; it consists in doing nothing; it

consists precisely in the soul not acting on the body; therefore it is not

a force but a weakness. Sin is that God has withdrawn Himself from us. The

sinner is only a being who is without strength because he is lacking in

grace.

The principle of morality is the respect for order and the love of

order. That makes two degrees, the first of which is regularity and the

second virtue. To conform to order is highly rational but without merit

(_e.g._, to give money to the poor from habit or possibly from

vanity). To love order and to desire that it should be greater, more

complete, and nearer to the will of God, is to adhere to God, to live in

God, just as to see rightly is to see in God. All morality, into the

details of which we will not enter, evolves from the love of order. The

universe is a vast mechanism, as was stated by Descartes, set in motion and

directed by God--that is to say, by the laws established by God; for God

acts only by general dispositions (which are laws) and not by particular

dispositions. In other words, there exists a will, but there are no

volitions.

MIRACLES.--But then you will say there are no miracles; for miracle

is precisely a particular will traversing and interrupting the general

will.

To begin with, there are very few miracles, which therefore permits order

to subsist; it would be only if there were incessant miracles that order

would be non-existent. Next, a miracle is a warning God gives to men

because of their weakness, to remind them that behind the laws there is a

Lawgiver, behind the general dispositions a Being who disposes. Because of

their intellectual weakness, if they never saw any derogation from the

general laws they would take them to be fatalities. A miracle is a grace

intervening in things, just as grace properly so-called intervenes in human

actions. And it is not contradictory to the general design of God, since

by bringing human minds back to the truth that there is a Being who wills,

it accustoms them to consider all general laws as permanent acts, but also

as the acts of the Being who wills. The miracle has the virtue of making

everything in the world miraculous, which is true. Hence the miracle

confirms the idea of order. Therein, perhaps alone, the exception proves

the rule.

SPINOZA.--Spinoza, who during his life was a pure Stoic and the

purest of Stoics, polishing the lenses of astronomical telescopes in order

to gain his living, refusing all pensions and all the professorial

positions offered to him, and living well-nigh on nothing, had read

Descartes and, to conform to the principle of evidence, had begun by

renouncing his religion, which was that of the Jews. His general outlook

on the world was this: There is only one God. God is all. Only He has His

attributes--that is to say, His manners of being and His modes, that is His

modifications, as the sun (merely a comparison) has as its manners of

being, its roundness, colour, and heat, as modifications its rays,

terrestrial heat, direct and diffused light, etc. Now God has two

attributes, thought and extension, as had already been observed by

Descartes; and for modifications He has exactly all we can see, touch, or

feel, etc. The human soul is an attribute of God, as is everything else; it

is an attribute of God in His power. It is not free, for all that comes

from God, all that _is of God_, is a regular and necessary development

of God Himself. "There is nothing contingent" [nothing which may either

happen or not happen]. All things are determined, by the necessity of the

divine nature, to exist and to act in a given manner. There is therefore

no free-will in the soul, the soul is determined to will this or that by a

cause which is itself determined by another and that by another, and so on

to infinity.

Nevertheless we believe ourselves to be free and according to the principle

of evidence we are; for nothing is more evident to us than our liberty. We

are as intimately convinced of our liberty as of our existence and we

_all_ affirm, I am free,--with the same emphasis that Descartes

affirms: I am. I am and I am free are the two things it is impossible for

man to doubt, no matter what effort he makes.