composed and explicitly worded. He invariably commences by stating the
groundwork of his opponent's theories, and from them deduces a great
number of facts and axioms of a contrary character, and upon those
builds his whole chain of argument. He is seldom witty--never uses the
flowers of rhetoric, combining a most rigid analysis with a synthetic
scheme, admitting but of one unswerving end. He was characteristically
great in purpose. He avoided carrying forward his arguments beyond
the basis of his facts. Whether in treating the tangled intricacies
of necessity, or the theological quagmires of prophecy, he invariably
explained without confusing, and refuted without involving other
subjects than those legitimately belonging to the controversy. His style
of writing was serious, plain, and without an undue levity, yet withal
perfectly readable. Men studied Collins who shrunk from contact with
the lion-hearted Woolston, whose brusque pen too often shocked those
it failed to convince. There was a timidity in many of the letters of
Blount, and a craving wish to rely more on the witticisms of Brown, than
was to be found in the free and manly spirit of our hero. To the general
public, the abstruse speculations of the persecuted Toland were a
barrier which his many classical allusions only heightened; and the
musical syllables of Shaftesbury, with his style, at once so elevated,
so pompous, and so quaint; or the political economic doctrines of
Mandeville, all tended to exalt the name of Collins above those of his
contemporaries and immediate successors; and posterity cannot fail to
place his bust in that historic niche betwixt Hobbes--his master on one
hand--and Bolingbroke, his successor on the other. From the great
St. John has descended in the true apostolical descent the mantle of
Free-thought upon Hume, Gibbon, Paine, Godwin, Carlile, Taylor, and
Owen. And amongst this brilliant galaxy of genius, no name is more
deserving of respect than that of Anthony Collins.
A. C.
DES CARTES.
Rene des Cartes Duperron, better known as Des Cartes, the father of
modern philosophy, was born at La Haye, in Touraine, of Breton parents,
near the close of the sixteenth century, at a time when Bacon was like
the morning sun, rising to shed new rays of bright light over the then
dark world of philosophy. The mother of Des Cartes died while he was but
a few days old, and himself a sickly child, he began to take part in
the battle of life with but little appearance of ever possessing the
capability for action on the minds of his fellows, which he afterwards
so fully exercised. Debarred, however, by his physical weakness from
many boyish pursuits, he devoted himself to study in his earliest years,
and during his youth gained the title of the young philosopher, from
his eagerness to learn, and from his earnest endeavors by inquiry
and experiment to solve every problem presented to his notice. He was
educated in the Jesuits' College of La Flèche; and the monument erected
to him at Stockholm informs us, "That having mastered all the learning
of the schools, which proved short of his expectations, he betook
himself to the army in Germany and Hungary, and there spent his vacant
winter hours in comparing the mysteries and phenomena of nature with the
laws of mathematics, daring to hope that the one might serve as a key
to the other. Quitting, therefore, all other pursuits, he retired to a
little village near Egmont, in Holland, where spending twenty-five years
in continual reading and meditation, he effected his design."
In his celebrated "Discourse on Method," he says,--"As soon as my age
permitted me to leave my preceptors, I entirely gave up the study of
letters; and, resolving to seek no other science than that which I could
find in myself, or else in the great book of the world, I employed
the remainder of my youth in travel--in seeing courts and camps--in
frequenting people of diverse humors and conditions--in collecting
various experiences; and, above all, in endeavoring to draw some
profitable reflection from what I saw. For it seemed to me that I should
meet with more truth in the reasonings which each man makes in his own
affairs, and which, if wrong, would be speedily punished by failure,
than in those reasonings which the philosopher makes in his study upon
speculations which produce no effect, and which are of no consequence
to him, except perhaps that he will be the more vain of them, the more
remote they are from common sense, because he would then have been
forced to employ more ingenuity and subtlety to render them plausible."
At the age of thirty-three Des Cartes retired from the world for a
period of eight years, and his seclusion was so effectual during that
time, that his place of residence was unknown to his friends. He there
prepared the "Meditations," and "Discourse on Method," which have since
caused so much pen-and-ink warfare amongst those who have aspired to
be ranked as philosophical thinkers. He became European in fame; and,
invited by Christina of Sweden, he visited her kingdom, but the rudeness
of the climate proved too much for his delicate frame, and he died
at Stockholm in the year 1650, from inflammation of the lungs, being
fifty-four years of age at the time of his death.
Des Cartes was perhaps the most original thinker that France had up
to that date produced; and, contemporary with Bacon, he exercised a
powerful influence or the progress of thought in Europe; but although a
great thinker, he was not a brave man, and the fear of giving offence
to the church and government, has certainly prevented him from making
public some of his writings, and perhaps has toned down some of these
thoughts which, when first uttered, took a higher flight, and struck
full home to the truth itself.
The father and founder of the deductive method, Des Cartes still proudly
reigns to the present day, although some of his conclusions have
been over-turned, and others of his thinkings have been carried to
conclusions which he never dared to dream of. He gave a strong aid to
the tendency of advancing civilization, to separate philosophy from
theology, thereby striking a blow, slow in its effect, and effectual in
its destructive operation, on all priestcraft. In his dedication ol the
"Meditations," he says,--"I have always thought that the two questions
of the existence of God and the nature of the soul, were the chief
of those which ought to be demonstrated rather by philosophy than by
theology; for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to believe
in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it does not
seem possible ever to persuade the Infidels to any religion, unless we
first prove to them these two things by natural reason."
Having relinquished faith, he found that he must choose an entirely new
faith in which to march with reason; the old ways were so cumbered with
priests and Bibles, that progression would have been impossible. This
gave us his method. He wanted a starting point from which to reason,
some indisputable fact upon which to found future thinkings.
"He has given us the detailed history of his doubts. He has told us how
he found that he could, plausibly enough, doubt of everything except
his own existence. He pushed his scepticism to the verge of
self-annihilation. There he stopped: there in self, there in his
consciousness, he found at last an irresistible fact, an irreversible
certainty. Firm ground was discovered. He could doubt the existence
of the external world, and treat it as a phantasm. He could doubt the
existence of God, and treat the belief as a superstition. But of the
existence of his own thinking, doubting mind, no sort of doubt was
possible. He, the doubter, existed if nothing else existed. The
existence that was revealed to him in his own consciousness, was the
primary fact, the first indubitable certainty. Hence his famous _Cogito
ergo Sum_: I think, therefore I am." (_Lewes's Bio. Hist. Phil._)
Proceeding from the certainty of his existence, Des Cartes endeavors
to rind other equally certain tacts, and for that purpose presents
the following doctrine and rules for our guidance:--The basis of all
certitude is consciousness, consciousness is the sole foundation of
absolute certainty, whatever it distinctly proclaims must be true.
The process is, therefore, rendered clear and simple: examine your
consciousness--each distinct reply will be a fact.
He tells us further that all clear ideas are true--that whatever is
clearly and distinctly conceived is true--and in these lie the vitality
of his system, the cause of the truth or error of his thinkings.
The following are the rules he gave us for the detection and separation
of true ideas from false, (_i.e._, imperfect or complex):--
"1. Never to accept anything as true but what is evidently so; to admit
nothing but what so clearly and distinctly presents itself as true, that
there can be no reason to doubt it.
"2. To divide every question into as many separate parts as possible,
that each part being more easily conceived, the whole may be more
intelligible.
"3. To conduct the examination with order, beginning by that of objects
the most simple, and therefore the easiest to be known, and ascending
little by little up to knowledge of the most complex.
"4. To make such exact calculations, and such circumspections as to be
confident that nothing essential has been omitted. Consciousness being
the basis of all certitude, everything of which you are clearly and
distinctly conscious must be true: everything which you clearly and
distinctly conceive, exists, if the idea of it involve existence."
In these four rules we have the essential part of one half of Des
Cartes's system, the other, which is equally important, is the attempt
to solve metaphysical problems by mathematical aid. To mathematics he
had devoted much of his time. He it was who, at the age of twenty three,
made the grand discovery of the applicability of algebra to geometry.
While deeply engaged in mathematical studies and investigations, he
came to the conclusion that mathematics were capable of a still further
simplification, and of much more extended application. Impressed with
the certainty of the conclusions arrived at by the aid of mathematical
reasoning, he began to apply mathematics to metaphysics.
His ambition was to found a system which should be solid and
convincing. Having searched for certitude, he had found _its basis_ in
consciousness; he next wanted a _method_, and hoped he had found it in
mathematics.
He tells us that "those long chains of reasoning, all simple and
easy, by which geometers used to arrive at their most difficult
demonstrations, suggested to him that all things which came within human
knowledge, must follow each other in a similar chain; and that provided
we abstain from admitting anything as true which is not so, and that
we always preserve in them the order necessary to deduce one from the
other, there can be none so remote to which we cannot finally attain,
nor so obscure but that we may discover them."
Acting out this, he dealt with metaphysics as we should with a problem
from Euclid, and expected by rigorous reasoning to discover the truth.
He, like Archimedes, had wished for a standing place from which to use
the lever, that should overturn the world; but, having a sure standing
place in the indubitable fact of his own existence, he did not possess
sufficient courage to put forth the mighty power--it was left for one
who came after him to fairly attempt the over-throw of the world of error
so long existent.
Cartesianism was sufficiently obnoxious to the divines to provoke
their wrath; and yet, from some of its peculiarities, it has found many
opponents amongst the philosophical party. The Cartesian philosophy
is founded on two great principles, the one metaphysical, the other
physical. The metaphysical is Des Cartes's foundation-stone--the "I
think, therefore I am." This has been warmly attacked as not being
logical. Des Cartes said his existence was a fact--a fact above and
beyond all logic; logic could neither prove nor disprove it. The _Cogito
ergo Sum_ was not new itself, but it was the first stone of a new
building--the first step in a new road: from this fact Des Cartes tried
to reach another, and from that others.
The physical principle is that nothing exists but substance, which
he makes of two kinds--the one a substance that thinks, the other a
substance extended. Actual thought and actual extension are the essence
of substance, so that the thinking substance cannot be without some
actual thought, nor can anything be retrenched from the extension of a
thing, without taking away so much of its actual substance.
In his physical speculations, Des Cartes has allowed his imagination
to run very wild. His famous theory of vortices is an example of
this. Assuming extension to be the essence of substance, he denied the
possibility of a vacuum by that assumption; for if extension be the
essence of substance, wherever extension is, there substance must be.
This substance he assumes to have originally been divided into equal
angular particles, each endowed with an equal degree of motion; several
systems or collections of these particles he holds to have a motion
about certain equidistant points, or centres, and that the particles
moving round these composed so many vortices. These angular particles,
by their intestine motions, he supposes to become, as it were, ground
into a spherical form; the parts rubbed off are called matter of the
first element, while the spherical globules he calls matter of the
second element; and since there would be a large quantity of this
element, he supposes it to be driven towards the centre of each vortex
by the circular motion of the globules, and that there it forms a large
spherical body such as the suu. This sun being thus formed, and
moving about its own axis with the common matter of the vortex, would
necessarily throw out some parts of its matter, through the vacuities
of the globules of the second element constituting the vortex; and this
especially at such places as are farthest from its poles: receiving, at
the same time in, by these poles, as much as it loses in its equatorial
parts. And, by these means, it would be able to carry round with it
those globules that are nearest, with the greater velocity; and the
remoter, with less. And, further: those globules which are nearest the
centre of the sun, must be smallest; because, were they greater,
or equal, they would, by reason of their velocity, have a greater
centrifugal force, and recede from the centre. If it should happen that
any of these sun-like bodies, in the centres of the several vortices,
should be so in-crusted and weakened, as to be carried about in the
vortex of the true sun: if it were of less solidity, or had less motion
than the globules towards the extremity of the solar vortex, it would
descend towards the sun, till it met with globules of the same solidity,
and susceptible of the same degree of motion with itself* and thus,
being fixed there, it would be for ever after carried about by the
motion of the vortex, without either approaching any nearer to, or
receding from the sun, and so become a planet. Supposing, then, all
this, we are next to imagine that our system was at first divided into
several vortices, in the centre of each of which was a lucid spherical
body; and that some of these being gradually incrustated, were swallowed
up by others which were larger, and more powerful, till at last they
were all destroyed and swallowed up by the biggest solar vortex,
except some few which were thrown off in right lines from one vortex to
another, and so became comets. It should also be added, that in addition
to the two elements mentioned above, those particles which may yet
exist, and be only in the course of reduction to their globular form an
it still retain their angular proportions, form a third element.
This theory has found many opponents; but in this state of our work
we conceive our duty to be that of giving a simple narrative of the
philosopher's ideas, rather than a history of the various criticisms
upon those ideas, the more especially as our pages scarcely afford room
for such a mode of treatment.
Having formed his method, Des Cartes proceeded to apply it. The basis
of certitude being consciousness, he interrogated his consciousness, and
found that he had an idea of a substance infinite, eternal, immutable,
independent, omniscient, omnipotent. This he called an idea of God:
he said, "I exist as a miserably imperfect finite being, subject to
change--ignorant, incapable of creating anything--I find by my finitude
that I am not the infinite; by my liability to change that I am not the
immutable; by my ignorance that I am not the omniscient: in short, by
my imperfection, that I am not the perfect. Yet an infinite,
immutable, omniscient, and perfect being must exist, because infinity,
immutability, omniscience, and perfection are applied as correlatives in
my ideas of finitude, change, etc. God therefore exists: his existence
is clearly proclaimed in my consciousness, and therefore ceases to be
a matter of doubt any more than the fact of my own existence. The
conception of an infinite being proved his real existence, for if there
is not really such a being I must have made the conception; but if
I could make it I can also unmake it, which evidently is not true;
therefore there must be externally to myself, an archetype from which
the conception was derived.".... "All that we clearly and distinctly
conceive as contained in anything is true of that thing."
"Now, we conceive clearly and distinctly that the existence of God is
contained in the idea we have of him: ergo--God exists."--(_Lewes's Bio.
Hist. Phil._)
Des Cartes was of opinion that his demonstrations of the existence of
God "equal or even surpass in certitude the demonstrations of geometry."
In this opinion we must confess we cannot share. He has already told
us that the basis of all certitude is consciousness--that whatever
is clearly and distinctly conceived, must be true--that imperfect and
complex conceptions are false ones. The first proposition, all must
admit, is applicable to themselves. I conceive a fact clearly and
distinctly, and, despite all resistance, am compelled to accept that
fact; and if that fact be accepted beyond doubt, no higher degree of
certainty can be attained, That two and two are four--that I exist--are
facts which I never doubt. The _Cogito ergo Sum_ is irresistible,
because indubitable; but _Cogito ergo Deus est_ is a sentence requiring
much consideration, and upon the face of it is no syllogism, but, on the
contrary, is illogical. If Des Cartes meant "I" am conscious that I am
not the whole of existence, he would be indisputable; but if he meant
that "I" can be conscious of an existence entirely distinct, apart from,
and external to, that very consciousness, then his whole reasoning from
that point appears fallacious.
We use the word "I" as given by Des Cartes. Mill, in his "System of
Logic," says, "The ambiguity in this case is in the pronoun I, by which
in one place is to be understood _my will_: in another _the laws of
my nature_. If the conception, existing as it does in my mind, had no
original without, the conclusion would unquestionably follow that '1'
had made it--that is, that the laws of my nature had spontaneously
evolved it; but that my _will_ made it would not follow. Now, when Des
Cartes afterwards adds that I cannot unmake the conception, he means
that I cannot get rid of it by an act of my will, which is true; but is
not the proposition required. That what some of the laws of my nature
have produced, other laws, or those same laws in other circumstances,
might not subsequently efface, he would have found it difficult to
establish."
Treating the existence of God as demonstrated from the _a priori_ idea
of perfection and infinity, and by the clearness of his idea of God's
existence, Des Cartes then proceeds to deal with the distinction between
body and soul. To prove this distinction was to him an easy matter.
The fundamental and essential attribute of substance must be extension,
because we can denude substance of every quality but that of extension;
this we cannot touch without at the same time affecting the substance..
The fundamental attribute of mind is thought; it is in the act of
thinking that the consciousness of existence is revealed; to be without
thought would be to be without consciousness.
Des Cartes has given us, among others, the axiom "That two substances
are really distinct when their ideas are complete, and no way imply each
other. The idea of extension is complete and distinct from the idea of
thought, which latter is also clear and distinct by itself. It follows,
therefore, that substance and mind are distinct in essence."
Des Cartes has, from the vagueness of some of his statements, subjected
himself to the charge of asserting the existence of innate ideas,
and the following quotations will speak for themselves on the
subject:--"When I said that the idea of God is innate in us, I never
meant more than this, that Nature has endowed us with a faculty by which
we may know God; but I have never either said or thought that such ideas
had an actual existence, or even that they were a species distinct from
the faculty of thinking.... Although the idea of God is so imprinted on
our minds, that every person has within him the faculty of knowing him,
it does not follow that there may not have been various individuals who
have passed through life without ever making this idea a distinct object
of apprehension; and, in truth, they who think they have an idea of a
plurality of Gods, have no idea of God whatever." This seems explicit
as negativing the charge of holding the doctrine of innate ideas; but in
the _Edinburgh Review_ several passages are given, amongst which is
the following:--"By the word idea I understand all that can be in our
thoughts; and I distinguish three sorts of ideas--adventitious, like
the common idea of the sun, framed by the mind, such as that which
astronomical reasoning gives of the sun; and innate, as the idea of God,
mind, body, a triangle, and generally all those which represent true,
immutable, and eternal essences." With regard to these rather opposite
statements, Lewes says, "If Des Cartes, when pressed by objections, gave
different explanations, we must only set it down to a want of a steady
conception of the vital importance of innate ideas to his system. The
fact remains that innate ideas form the necessary groundwork of the
Cartesian doctrine.... The radical error of all ontological speculation
lies in the assumption that we have ideas independent of experience;
because experience can only tell us of ourselves or of phenomena; of
noumena it can tell us nothing.... The fundamental question, then, of
modern philosophy is this--Have we any ideas independent of experience?"