No. III.
THE INNATE IDEAS OF DESCARTES AND LEIBNITZ, DERIVED FROM PLATO,
HERACLITUS, PYTHAGORAS, AND THE CHALDEANS--THE SYSTEM OF MALLEBRANCHE
FROM THE SAME SOURCE, AND ST. AUGUSTINE.
The innate perception of first truths, maintained by Descartes and
Leibnitz, which raised such warm and subtle disputes among
metaphysicians, is a doctrine derived from Plato. That great
philosopher, who acquired the surname of divine, by having written best
on the subject of Deity, entertained a very peculiar sentiment
respecting the origin of the soul. He calls it “an emanation of the
divine essence, from whom it imbibed all its ideas; but that having
sinned, it was degraded from its first estate, and condemned to a union
with body, wherein it is confined as in a prison; that its forgetfulness
of its former ideas was the necessary consequence of this penalty.” He
adds, that “the benefit of philosophy consists in repairing this loss,
by gradually leading back the soul to its first conceptions, accustoming
it by degrees to recognise its own ideas, and by a full recollection of
them to comprehend its own essence, and the true nature of things.” From
that Platonic principle of the soul’s “divine emanation,” it naturally
followed, that, having formerly had within itself the knowledge of every
thing, it still retained the faculty of recalling to mind its immortal
origin and primeval ideas. Descartes and Leibnitz reasoned in the very
same manner, in admitting eternal and first truths to be imprinted on
the soul:--they substitute indeed the creation and preexistence of
souls, in place of the “divine emanation” of them taught by Plato; but
they defend their system by the same sort of arguments.
Mallebranche entered the lists in defence of Descartes’s principles, and
took upon him to support an opinion respecting the nature of ideas,
which caused universal astonishment by its apparent singularity, and was
treated as almost extravagant; although he advanced nothing but what
might be defended by the authority of the finest geniuses of antiquity.
After having defined ideas to be “the immediate, or nearest objects of
the mind when it perceives any thing.” Mallebranche demonstrates the
reality of their existence, by displaying their qualities, which never
can belong to nothing, that have no properties. He then distinguishes
between sentiments and ideas; considers the five different ways, whereby
the mind comes at the view of external objects; shows the fallacy of
four of them, and establishes the preeminence of the fifth, as being
that alone which is conformable to reason, by saying, that it is
absolutely necessary God should have in himself the ideas of all
essences, otherwise he never could have given them existence. He
undertakes to prove, that God, by his presence, is nearly united to our
souls; insomuch, that he may be called the place of spirits, as space is
of bodies; and thence he concludes, that the soul may discern in God
whatever is representative of created things, if it be the will of God
to communicate himself in that manner to it. He remarks, that God, or
the universal intelligence, contains in himself those ideas which
illuminate us; and that his works having been formed on the model of his
ideas, we cannot better employ ourselves than in contemplating them, in
order to discover the nature and properties of created things.
Mallebranche was treated as a visionary for having advanced these
sentiments, although he accompanied them with the most solid and
judicious proofs that metaphysics could afford; but he was never charged
with plagiarism, though his system and manner of proof exist literally
in ancient authors. After reciting passages from the “Oracula
Chaldæorum,” which he reveres as a divine oracle, he says, “The gods
here declare where the existence of ideas is to be found, even in God
himself, who is their only source; they being the model according to
which the world was formed, and the spring from which every thing arose.
Others, by applying immediately to the divine ideas themselves, are
enabled to discover sublime truths; but as for our part, we are content
to be satisfied with what the gods themselves have declared in favour of
Plato, in assigning the name of ideas to causes purely intellectual; and
affirming, that they are the archetypes of the world, and the thoughts
of the supreme father; that, in effect, they reside in the paternal
intellect, and emanate from him to concur in the formation of the
world.”
Pythagoras and his disciples understood almost the same thing by their
numbers, that Plato did by his ideas. The Pythagorists expressed
themselves with regard to numbers in the same terms as Plato uses,
calling them “τα ὁντως ὁντα, real existences, the only things truly
endowed with essence, eternally invariable.” They give them also the
appellation of incorporeal entities, by means of which all other beings
participate of existence.
Heraclitus adopted those first principles of the Pythagoreans, and
expounded them in a very clear and systematic manner. “Nature,” says he,
“being in a perpetual flow, there must belong to it some permanent
entities, on the knowledge of which all science is founded, and which
may serve as the rule of our judgment in fleeting and sensible objects.”
Democritus also taught, that the images of objects are emanations of the
Deity, and are themselves divine; and that our very mental ideas are so
too. Whether the doctrine be true or erroneous is not here a subject of
inquiry: the present purpose being merely to show the analogy between
the principles of Mallebranche and those of the ancients.
Plato, who, of all the ancient philosophers, deservedly ranks the
highest, for the clearness and accuracy wherewith he hath explained and
laid open this system, gives the appellation of “ideas” to those eternal
intellectual substances, which were, with regard to God, the exemplary
forms or types of all that he created; and are, with regard to men, the
object of all science, and of their contemplation when they would attain
to the knowledge of sensible things. “The world,” according to Plato,
“always existed in God’s ideas; and when at length he determined to
produce it into being, such as it is at present, he created it according
to those eternal models, forming the sensible into the likeness of the
intellectual world.” Admitting, with Heraclitus, the perpetual
fluctuation of all sensible things, Plato perceived that there could be
no foundation for science, unless there were things real and permanent
to build it upon, which might be the fixed object of knowledge, to which
the mind might have recourse, whenever it wanted to inform itself of
sensible things. We clearly see that this was Plato’s apprehension of
things; and we need only look at the passages quoted from him to be
convinced, that whatever Mallebranche said on the subject, he derived
from Plato.
Mallebranche would not have been railed against as impious, had his
antagonists known to whom he was indebted for his opinions and
reasonings; and that St. Augustine himself had said, “Ideas are eternal
and immutable; the exemplars, or archetypes of all created things; and,
in short, exist in God.” In this respect he differs somewhat from Plato,
who separated them from the divine essence: but we may easily discern a
perfect conformity between the father of the church and the modern
philosopher.
Leibnitz was in some measure of the opinion of father Mallebranche; and
it was natural that he should be, for he derived his principles from the
same ancient sources. His “monads” were “entities truly existing; simple
substances; the eternal images of universal nature.”
* * * * *
In this inquiry, concerning the discoveries and thoughts of the ancients
attributed to the moderns, it has appeared advisable that their views of
the mind, or intellectual system, should precede their consideration of
sensible qualities, and the system of the universe. To persons
unaccustomed to such investigations, the succeeding papers will be more
interesting.
* * * * *