THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARTESIANISM IN THE NETHERLANDS AND
IN FRANCE.[1]
[Footnote 1: Cf. G. Monchamp, _Histoire du Cartésianisme en Belgique_,
Brussels, 1886.]
%1. Occasionalism: Geulincx.%
The propagation and defense of a system of thought soon give occasion
to its adherents to purify, complete, and transform it. Obscurities and
contradictions are discovered, which the master has overlooked or allowed
to remain, and the disciple exerts himself to remove them, while retaining
the fundamental doctrines. In the system of Descartes there were two
closely connected points which demanded clarification and correction, viz.,
his double dualism (1) between extended substance and thinking substance,
(2) between created substance and the divine substance. In contrast with
each other matter and mind are substances or independent beings, for
the clear conception of body contains naught of consciousness, thought,
representation, and that of mind nothing of extension, matter, motion.
In comparison with God they are not so; apart from the creator they can
neither exist nor be conceived. In every case where the attempt is made to
distinguish between intrinsic and general (as here, between substance in
the stricter and wider senses), an indecision betrays itself which is not
permanently endured.
The substantiality of the material and spiritual worlds maintained by
Descartes finds an excellent counterpart in his (entirely modern) tendency
to push the _concursus dei_ as far as possible into the background, to
limit it to the production of the original condition of things, to give
over motion, once created, to its own laws, and ideas implanted in the mind
to its own independent activity; but it is hard to reconcile with it the
view, popular in the Middle Ages, that the preservation of the world is a
perpetual creation. In the former case the relation of God to the world is
made an external relation; in the latter, an internal one. In the one the
world is thought of as a clock, which once wound up runs on mechanically,
in the second it is likened to a piece of music which the composer himself
recites. If God preserves created things by continually recreating them
they are not substances at all; if they are substances, preservation
becomes an empty word, which we repeat after the theologians without giving
it any real meaning.
Matter and spirit stand related in our thought only by way of exclusion;
is the same true of them in reality? They can be conceived and can exist
without each other; can they, further, without each other effect all that
we perceive them to accomplish? There are some motions in the material
world which we refer to a voluntary decision of the soul, and some among
our ideas (_e.g._, perceptions of the senses) which we refer to corporeal
phenomena as their causes. If body and soul are substances, how can they
be dependent on each other in certain of their activities, if they are of
opposite natures, how can they affect each other? How can the incorporeal,
unmoved spirit move the animal spirits and receive impulses from them?
The substantiality (reciprocal independence) of body and mind, and their
interaction (partial reciprocal dependence), are incompatible, one or
the other is illusory and must be abandoned. The materialists (Hobbes)
sacrifice the independence of mind, the idealists (Berkeley, Leibnitz), the
independence of matter, the occasionalists, the interaction of the two.
This forms the advance of the last beyond Descartes, who either naïvely
maintains that, in spite of the contrariety of material and mental
substances, an exchange of effects takes place between them as an
empirical fact, or, when he realizes the difficulty of the anthropological
problem,--how is the union of the two substances in man possible,--ascribes
the interaction of body and mind, together with the union of the two, to
the power of God, and by this abandonment of the attempt at a natural
explanation, opens up the occasionalistic way of escape. Further, in
his more detailed description of the intercourse between body and mind
Descartes had been guilty of direct violations of his laws of natural
philosophy. If the quantity of motion is declared to be invariable and a
change in its direction is attributed to mechanical causes alone, we must
not ascribe to the soul the power to move the pineal gland, even in the
gentlest way, nor to control the direction of the animal spirits. These
inconsistencies also are removed by the occasionalistic thesis.
The question concerning the substantiality of mind and matter in relation
to God, is involved from the very beginning in this latter problem, "How
is the appearance of interaction between the two to be explained without
detriment to their substantiality in relation to each other?" The denial
of the reciprocal dependence of matter and spirit leads to sharper
accentuation of their common dependence upon God. Thus occasionalism forms
the transition to the pantheism of Spinoza, Geulincx emphasizing the
non-substantiality of spirits, and Malebranche the non-substantiality of
bodies, while Spinoza combines and intensifies both. And yet history was
not obliging enough to carry out this convenient and agreeable scheme of
development with chronological accuracy, for she had Spinoza complete his
pantheism _before_ Malebranche had prepared the way. The relation which was
noted in the case of Bruno and Campanella is here repeated: the earlier
thinker assumes the more advanced position, while the later one seems
backward in comparison; and that which, viewed from the standpoint of the
question itself, may be considered a transition link, is historically to be
taken as a reaction against the excessive prosecution of a line of thought
which, up to a certain point, had been followed by the one who now shrinks
back from its extreme consequences. The course of philosophy takes first a
theological direction in the earlier occasionalists, then a metaphysical
(naturalistic) trend in Spinoza, to renew finally, in Malebranche, the
first of these movements in opposition to the second. The Cartesian school,
as a whole, however, exhibits a tendency toward mysticism, which was
concealed to a greater or less extent by the rationalistic need for clear
concepts, but never entirely suppressed.
Although the real interaction of body and mind be denied, some explanation
must, at least, be given for the appearance of interaction, _i.e._ for the
actual correspondence of bodily and mental phenomena. Occasionalism denotes
the theory of occasional causes. It is not the body that gives rise to
perception, nor the mind that causes the motion of the limbs which it has
determined upon--neither the one nor the other can receive influence from
its fellow or exercise influence upon it; but it is God who, "on the
occasion" of the physical motion (of the air and nerves); produces the
sensation (of sound), and, "at the instance" of the determination of the
will, produces the movement of the arms. The systematic development and
marked influence of this theory, which had already been more or less
clearly announced by the Cartesians Cordemoy and De la Forge,[1] was due to
the talented Arnold Geulincx (1624-69), who was born at Antwerp, taught
in Lyons (1646-58) and Leyden, and became a convert to Calvinism. It
ultimately gained over the majority of the numerous adherents of the
Cartesian philosophy in the Dutch universities,--Renery (died 1639) and
Regius (van Roy; _Fundamenta Physicae_, 1646; _Philosophia Naturalis_,
1661) in Utrecht; further, Balthasar Bekker (1634-98; _The World
Bewitched_, 1690), the brave opponent of the belief in angels and devils,
of magic, and of prosecution for witchcraft,--in the clerical orders in
France and, finally, in Germany.
[Footnote 1: Gerauld de Cordemoy, a Parisian advocate (died 1684,
_Dissertations Philosophiques_, 1666), communicated his occasionalistic
views orally to his friends as early as 1658 (cf. L. Stein in the _Archiv
für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. i., 1888, p. 56). Louis de la Forge,
a physician of Saumur, _Tractatus de Mente Humana_, 1666, previously
published in French; cf. Seyfarth, Gotha, 1887. But the logician, Johann
Clauberg, professor in Duisburg (1622-65; _Opera_, edited by Schalbruch,
1691), is, according to the investigations of Herm. Müller _(J. Clauberg
und seine Stellung im Cartesianismus_, Jena, 1891), to be stricken from
the list of thinkers who prepared the way for occasionalism, since in his
discussion of the anthropological problem (_corporis et animae conjunctio_)
he merely develops the Cartesian position, and does not go beyond it. He
employs the expression _occasio_, it is true, but not in the sense of the
occasionalists. According to Clauberg the bodily phenomenon becomes the
stimulus or "occasion" (not for God, but) for the soul to produce from
itself the corresponding mental phenomenon.]
Geulincx himself, besides two inaugural addresses at Leyden (as Lector in
1662, Professor Extraordinary in 1665), published the following treatises:
_Quaestiones Quodlibeticae_ (in the second edition, 1665, entitled
_Saturnalia_) with an important introductory discourse; _Logica Fundamentis
Suis Restituta_, 1662; _Methodus Inveniendi Argumenta_ (new edition by
Bontekoe, 1675); and the first part of his Ethics--_De Virtute et Primis
ejus Proprietatibus, quae vulgo Virtutes Cardinales Vocantur, Tractatus
Ethicus Primus_, 1665. This chief work was issued complete in all six parts
with the title, _[Greek: Gnothi seauton] sive Ethica_, 1675, by Bontekoe,
under the pseudonym Philaretus. The _Physics_, 1688, the _Metaphysics_,
1691, and the _Annotata Majora in Cartesii Principia Philosophiae_, 1691,
were also posthumous publications, from the notes of his pupils. In view of
the rarity of these volumes, and the importance of the philosopher, it is
welcome news that J.P.N. Land has undertaken an edition of the collected
works, in three volumes, of which the first two have already appeared.[1]
The Hague, 1891-92.[2]
[Footnote 1: On vol. i. cf. Eucken, _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol.
xxviii., 1892, p,200 _seq_.]
[Footnote 2: On Geulincx see V. van der Haeghen, _Geulincx, Étude sur sa
Vie, sa Philosophie, et ses Ouvrages_, Ghent, 1886, including a complete
bibliography; and Land in vol. iv. of the _Archiv für Geschichte der
Philosophie_, 1890. [English translation, _Mind_, vol. xvi. p. 223 _seq_.]]
Geulincx bases the _occasionalistic_ position on the principle, _quod
nescis, quomodo fiat, id non facis_. Unless I know how an event happens, I
am not its cause. Since I have no consciousness how my decision to speak or
to walk is followed by the movement of my tongue or limbs, I am not the one
who effects these. Since I am just as ignorant how the sensation in my mind
comes to pass as a sequel to the motion in the sense-organ; since, further,
the body as an unconscious and non-rational being can effect nothing, it is
neither I nor the body that causes the sensation. Both the bodily movement
and the sense-impression are, rather, the effects of a higher power, of the
infinite spirit. The act of my will and the sense-stimulus are only _causae
occasionales_ for the divine will, in an incomprehensible way, to effect,
in the one case, the execution of the movement of the limbs resolved upon,
and, in the other, the origin of the perception; they are (unsuitable)
instruments, effective only in the hand of God; he brings it to pass that
my will goes out beyond my soul, and that corporeal motion has results in
it. The meaning of this doctrine is misapprehended when it is assumed,--an
assumption to which the Leibnitzian account of occasionalism may mislead
one,--that in it the continuity of events, alike in the material and the
psychical world, is interrupted by frequent scattered interferences from
without, and all becoming transformed into a series of disconnected
miracles. An order of nature such as would be destroyed by God's action
does not exist; God brings everything to pass; even the passage of motion
from one body to another is his work. Further, Geulincx expressly says that
God has imposed such _laws_ on motion that it harmonizes with the soul's
free volition, of which, however, it is entirely independent (similar
statements occur also in De la Forge). And with this our thinker
appears--as Pfleiderer[1] emphasizes--closely to approach the
pre-established harmony of Leibnitz. The occasionalistic theory certainly
constitutes the preliminary step to the Leibnitzian; but an essential
difference separates the two. The advance does not consist in the
substitution by Leibnitz of one single miracle at creation for a number of
isolated and continually recurring ones, but (as Leibnitz himself remarks,
in reply to the objection expressed by Father Lami, that a perpetual
miracle is no miracle) in the exchange of the immediate causality of God
for natural causation. With Geulincx mind and body act on each other, but
not by their own power; with Leibnitz the monads do not act on one another,
but they act by their own power.[2]--When Geulincx in the same connection
advances to the statements that, in view of the limitedness and passivity
of finite things, God is the only truly active, because the only
independent, being in the world, that all activity is his activity, that
the human (finite) spirit is related to the divine (infinite) spirit as
the individual body to space in general, viz., as a section of it, so that,
by thinking away all limitations from our mind, we find God in us and
ourselves in him, it shows how nearly he verges on pantheism.
[Footnote 1: Edm. Pfleiderer, _Geulincx, als Hauptvertreter der
occasionalistischen Metaphysik und Ethik_, Tübingen, 1882; the same,
_Leibniz und Geulincx mit besonderer Beziehung auf ihr Uhrengleichnis_,
Tübingen, 1884.]
[Footnote 2: See Ed. Zeller, _Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie der
Wissenschaften_, 1884, p. 673 _seq_.; Eucken, _Philosophische Monatshefte_,
vol. xix., 1893, p. 525 _seq_; vol. xxiii., 1887, p. 587 _seq_.]
Geulincx's services to noëtics have been duly recognized by Ed. Grimm
(Jena, 1875), although with an excessive approximation to Kant. In this
field he advances many acute and suggestive thoughts, as the deduction
which reappears in Lotze, that the actually existent world of figure and
motion cognized by thought, though the real world, is poorer than the
wonderful world of motley sensuous appearance conjured forth in our minds
on the occasion of the former, that the latter is the more beautiful and
more worthy of a divine author. Further, the conviction, also held by
Lotze, that the fundamental activities of the mind cannot be defined, but
only known through inner experience or immediate consciousness (he
who loves, knows what love is; it is a _per conscientiam et intimam
experientiam notissima res_); the praiseworthy attempt to give a systematic
arrangement, according to their derivation from one another, to the innate
mathematical concepts, which Descartes had simply co-ordinated (the concept
of surface is gained from the concept of body by abstracting from the third
dimension, thickness--the act of thus abstracting from certain parts of
the content of thought, Geulincx terms _consideratio_ in contrast to
_cogitatio_, which includes the whole content); and, finally, the still
more important inquiry, whether it is possible for us to reach a knowledge
of things independently of the forms of the understanding, as in pure
thought we strip off the fetters of sense. The possibility of this is
denied; there is no higher faculty of knowledge to act as judge over the
understanding, as the latter over the sensibility, and even the wisest
man cannot free himself from the forms of thought (categories, _modi
cogitandi_). And yet the discussion of the question is not useless: the
reason should examine into the unknowable as well as the knowable; it is
only in this way that we learn that it is unknowable. As the highest forms
of thought Geulincx names subject (the empty concept of an existent, _ens_
or _quod est_) and predicate _(modus entis_), and derives them from two
fundamental activities of the mind, a combining function _(simulsumtio,
totatio_) and an abstracting function (one which removes the _nota
subjecti_). Substance and accident, substantive and adjective, are
expressions for subjective processes of thought and hence do not hold
of things in themselves. With reference to the importance, nay, to the
indispensability, of linguistic signs in the use of the understanding, the
science of the forms of thought is briefly termed grammar.
The principle _ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis_, forms the connection
between the occasionalistic metaphysics and ethics, the latter deducing the
practical consequences of the former. Where thou canst do nothing, there
will nothing. Since we can effect nothing in the material world, to which
we are related merely as spectators, we ought also not to seek in it the
motives and objects of our actions. God, does not require works, but
dispositions only, for the result of our volition is beyond our power. Our
moral vocation, then, consists in renunciation of the world and retirement
into ourselves, and in patient faithfulness at the post assigned to us.
Virtue is _amor dei ac rationis_, self-renouncing, active, obedient love
to God and to the reason as the image and law of God in us. The cardinal
virtues are _diligentia_, sedulous listening for the commands of the
reason; _obedientia_, the execution of these _justitia_, the conforming of
the whole life to what is perceived to be right; finally, _humilitas_,
the recognition of our impotency and self-renunciation (_inspectio_ and
_despectio_, or _derelictio, neglectus, contemptus, incuria sui_). The
highest of these is humility, pious submission to the divine order of
things; its condition, the self-knowledge commended in the title of the
Ethics; the primal evil, self-love (_Philautia_--_ipsissimum peccatum_).
Man is unhappy because he seeks happiness. Happiness is like our shadows;
it shuns us when we pursue it, it follows us when we flee from it. The joys
which spring from virtue are an adornment of it, not an enticement to it;
they are its result, not its aim. The ethics of Geulincx, which we cannot
further trace out here, surprises one by its approximation to the views of
Spinoza and of Kant. With the former it has in common the principle of love
toward God, as well as numerous details; with the latter, the absoluteness
of the moral law (_in rebus moralibus absolute praecipit ratio aut vetat,
nulla interposita conditione_); with both the depreciation of sympathy, on
the ground that it is a concealed egoistic motive.
The denial of substantiality to individual things, brought in by the
occasionalists, is completed by Spinoza, who boldly and logically proclaims
pantheism on the basis of Cartesianism and gives to the divine All-one a
naturalistic instead of a theological character.
%2. Spinoza.%
Benedictus (originally Baruch) de Spinoza sprang from a Jewish family of
Portugal or Spain, which had fled to Holland to escape persecution at home.
He was born in Amsterdam in 1632; taught by the Rabbin Morteira, and,
in Latin, by Van den Ende, a free-thinking physician who had enjoyed a
philological training; and expelled by anathema from the Jewish communion,
1656, on account of heretical views. During the next four years he found
refuge at a friend's house in the country near Amsterdam, after which he
lived in Rhynsburg, and from 1664 in Voorburg, moving thence, in 1669, to
The Hague, where he died in 1677. Spinoza lived in retirement and had few
wants; he supported himself by grinding optical glasses; and, in 1673,
declined the professorship at Heidelberg offered him by Karl Ludwig, the
Elector Palatine, because of his love of quiet, and on account of the
uncertainty of the freedom of thought which the Elector had assured him.
Spinoza himself made but two treatises public: his dictations on the first
and second parts of Descartes's _Principia Philosophiae_, which had been
composed for a private pupil, with an appendix, _Cogitata Metaphysica_,
1663, and the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, published anonymously
in 1670, in defense of liberty of thought and the right to unprejudiced
criticism of the biblical writings. The principles expressed in the latter
work were condemned by all parties as sacrilegious and atheistic, and
awakened concern even in the minds of his friends. When, in 1675, Spinoza
journeyed to Amsterdam with the intention of giving his chief work, the
_Ethics_, to the press, the clergy and the followers of Descartes applied
to the government to forbid its issue. Soon after Spinoza's death it was
published in the _Opera Posthuma_, 1677, which were issued under the care
of Hermann Schuller,[1] with a preface by Spinoza's friend, the physician
Ludwig Meyer, and which contained, besides the chief work, three incomplete
treatises (_Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione,
Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae_) and a collection of Letters by
and to Spinoza. The _Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata_, in five parts,
treats (1) of God, (2) of the nature and origin of the mind, (3) of the
nature and origin of the emotions, (4) of human bondage or the strength
of the passions, (5) of the power of the reason or human freedom. It has
become known within recent times that Spinoza made a very early sketch
of the system developed in the _Ethics_, the _Tractatus Brevis de Deo et
Homine ejusque Felicitate_, of which a Dutch translation in two copies was
discovered, though not the original Latin text. This treatise was published
by Böhmer, 1852, in excerpts, and complete by Van Vloten, 1862, and by
Schaarschmidt, 1869. It was not until our own century, and after Jacobi's
_Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an Moses Mendelssohn_ (1785)
had aroused the long slumbering interest in this much misunderstood
philosopher, who has been oftener despised than studied, that complete
editions of his works were prepared, by Paulus 1802-03; Gfrörer, 1830;
Bruder, 1843-46; Ginsberg (in Kirchmann's _Philosophische Bibliothek_,
4 vols.), 1875-82; and Van Vloten and Land,[2] 2 vols., 1882-83. B.
Auerbach has worked Spinoza's life into a romantic novel, _Spinoza, ein
Denkerleben_, 1837; 2d ed., 1855 [English translation by C.T. Brooks,
1882.]
[Footnote 1: See L. Stein in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_,
vol. i., 1888, p. 554 _seq_.]
[Footnote 2: For the literature on Spinoza the reader is referred to
Ueberweg and to Van der Linde's _B. Spinoza, Bibliografie_, 1871; while
among recent works we shall mention only Camerer's _Die Lehre Spinozas_,
Stuttgart, 1877. An English translation of _The Chief Works of Spinoza_ has
been given by Elwes, 1883-84; a translation of the _Ethics_ by White,
1883; and one of selections from the _Ethics_, with notes, by Fullerton in
Sneath's Modern Philosophers, 1892. Among the various works on Spinoza, the
reader may be referred to Pollock's _Spinoza, His Life and Times_, 1880
(with bibliography to same year); Martineau's _Study of Spinoza_, 1883; and
J. Caird's _Spinoza_, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1888.--TR.]
We shall consider Spinoza's system as a completed whole as it is given in
the _Ethics_; for although it is interesting for the investigator to trace
out the development of his thinking by comparing this chief work with its
forerunner (that _Tractatus Brevis_ "concerning God, man, and the happiness
of the latter," whose dialogistical portions we may surmise to have been
the earliest sketch of the Spinozistic position, and which was followed by
the _Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione_) such a procedure is not equally
valuable for the student. In regard to Spinoza's relations to other
thinkers it cannot be doubted, since Freudenthal's[1] proof, that he was
dependent to a large degree on the predominant philosophy of the schools,
_i.e._ on the later Scholasticism (Suarez[2]), especially on its Protestant
side (Jacob Martini, Combachius, Scheibler, Burgersdijck, Heereboord);
Descartes, it is true, felt the same influence. Joël,[3]: Schaarschmidt,
Sigwart,[4] R. Avenarius,[5] and Böhmer[6] = have advanced the view that
the sources of Spinoza's philosophy are not to be sought exclusively in
Cartesianism, but rather that essential elements were taken from the
Cabala, from the Jewish Scholasticism (Maimonides, 1190; Gersonides, died
1344; Chasdai Crescas, 1410), and from Giordano Bruno. In opposition
to this Kuno Fischer has defended, and in the main successfully, the
proposition that Spinoza reached, and must have reached, his fundamental
pantheism by his own reflection as a development of Descartes's principles.
The traces of his early Talmudic education, which have been noticed in
Spinoza's works, prove no dependence of his leading ideas on Jewish
theology. His pantheism is distinguished from that of the Cabalists by
its rejection of the doctrine of emanation, and from Bruno's, which
nevertheless may have influenced him, by its anti-teleological character.
When with Greek philosophers, Jewish theologians, and the Apostle Paul
he teaches the immanence of God (_Epist. 21_), when with Maimonides and
Crescas he teaches love to God as the principal of morality, and with the
latter of these, determinism also, it is not a necessary consequence that
he derived these theories from them. That which most of all separates him
from the mediaeval scholastics of his own people, is his rationalistic
conviction that God can be known. His agreement with them comes out most
clearly in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. But even here it holds
only in regard to undertaking a general criticism of the Scriptures and to
their figurative interpretation, while, on the other hand, the demand for
a special historical criticism, and the object which with Spinoza was
the basis of the investigation as a whole, were foreign to mediaeval
Judaism--in fact, entirely modern and original. This object was to make
science independent of religion, whose records and doctrines are to edify
the mind and to improve the character, not to instruct the understanding.
"Spinoza could not have learned the complete separation of religion and
science from Jewish literature; this was a tendency which sprang from the
spirit of his own time" (Windelband, _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_,
vol. i. p. 194).
[Footnote 1: J. Freudenthal, _Spinoza und die Scholastik_ in the
_Philosophische Aufsätze, Zeller zum 50-Jährigen Doktorjubiläum gewidmet_,
Leipsic, 1887, p. 85 _seq_. Freudenthal's proof covers the _Cogitata
Metaphysica_ and many of the principal propositions of the _Ethics_.]
[Footnote 2: The Spanish Jesuit, Francis Suarez, lived 1548-1617. _Works_,
Venice, 1714 Cf. Karl Werner, _Suarez und die Scholastik der letzten
Jahrhunderte_, Regensburg, 1861.]
[Footnote 3: M. Joël, _Don Chasdai Crescas' religions-philosophische Lehren
in ihrem geschichtlichen Einfluss_, 1866; _Spinozas Theo.-pel. Traktat
auf seine Quellen geprüft_, 1870; _Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinozas mit
besonderer Berücksichtigung des kurzen Traktats_, 1871.]
[Footnote 4: _Spinozas neu entdeckter Traktat eläutert u. s. w_., 1866;
_Spinozas kurzer Traktat übersetzt mit Einleitungen und Erläuterungen_,
1870.]
[Footnote 5: _Ueber die beiden ersten Phasen des Spinozistischen
Pantheismus und das Verhältniss der zweiten zur dritten Phase_, 1868.]
[Footnote 6: _Spinozana_ in Fichte's _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_ vols.
xxxvi., xlii., lvii., 1860-70.]
The logical presuppositions of Spinoza's philosophy lie in the fundamental
ideas of Descartes, which Spinoza accentuates, transforms, and adopts.
Three pairs of thoughts captivate him and incite him to think them through:
first, the rationalistic belief in the power of the human spirit to possess
itself of the truth by pure thought, together with confidence in the
omnipotence of the mathematical method; second, the concept of substance,
together with the dualism of extension and thought; finally, the
fundamental mechanical position, together with the impossibility
of interaction between matter and spirit, held in common with the
occasionalists, but reached independently of them. Whatever new elements
are added (_e. g_., the transformation of the Deity from a mere aid to
knowledge into its most important, nay, its only object; as, also, the
enthusiastic, directly mystical devotion to the all-embracing world-ground)
are of an essentially emotional nature, and to be referred less to
historical influences than to the individuality of the thinker. The
divergences from his predecessors, however, especially the extension of
mechanism to mental phenomena and the denial of the freedom of the will,
inseparable from this, result simply from the more consistent application
of Cartesian principles. Spinoza is not an inventive, impulsive spirit,
like Descartes and Leibnitz, but a systematic one; his strength does not
lie in brilliant inspirations, but in the power of resolutely thinking a
thing through; not in flashes of thought, but in strictly closed circles of
thought. He develops, but with genius, and to the end. Nevertheless this
consecutiveness of Spinoza, the praises of which have been unceasingly sung
by generations since his day, has its limits. It holds for the unwavering
development of certain principles derived from Descartes, but not with
equal strictness for the inter-connection of the several lines of thought
followed out separately. His very custom of developing a principle straight
on to its ultimate consequences, without regard to the needs of the heart
or to logical demands from other directions, make it impossible for the
results of the various lines of thought to be themselves in harmony; his
vertical consistency prevents horizontal consistency. If the original
tendencies come into conflict (the consciously held theoretical principles
into conflict with one another, or with hidden aesthetic or moral
principles), either one gains the victory over the other or both insist
on their claims; thus we have inconsistencies in the one case, and
contradictions in the other (examples of which have been shown by Volkelt
in his maiden work, _Pantheismus und Individualismus im Systeme Spinozas_,
1872). Science demands unified comprehension of the given, and seeks the
smallest number of principles possible; but her concepts prove too narrow
vessels for the rich plenitude of reality. He who asks from philosophy more
than mere special inquiries finds himself confronted by two possibilities:
first, starting from one standpoint, or a few such, he may follow a direct
course without looking to right or left, at the risk that in his
thought-calculus great spheres of life will be wholly left out of view, or,
at least, will not receive due consideration; or, second, beginning from
many points of departure and ascending along converging lines, he may seek
a unifying conclusion. In Spinoza we possess the most brilliant example of
the former one-sided, logically consecutive power of (also, no doubt,
violence in) thought, while Leibnitz furnishes the type of the many-sided,
harmonistic thinking. The fact that even the rigorous Spinoza is not
infrequently forced out of the strict line of consistency, proves that the
man was more many-sided than the thinker would have allowed himself to be.
To begin with the formal side of Spinozism: the rationalism of Descartes
is heightened by Spinoza into the imposing confidence that absolutely
everything is cognizable by the reason, that the intellect is able by its
pure concepts and intuitions entirely to exhaust the multiform world of
reality, to follow it with its light into its last refuge.[1] Spinoza is
just as much in earnest in regard to the typical character of mathematics.
Descartes (with the exception of an example asked for in the second of the
Objections, and given as an appendix to the _Meditations_, in which he
endeavors to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction of body
and spirit on the synthetic Euclidean method), had availed himself of the
analytic form of presentation, on the ground that, though less cogent, it
is more suited for instruction since it shows the way by which the matter
has been discovered. Spinoza, on the other hand, rigorously carried out the
geometrical method, even in externals. He begins with definitions, adds to
these axioms (or postulates), follows with propositions or theorems as the
chief thing, finally with demonstrations or proofs, which derive the later
propositions from the earlier, and these in turn from the self-evident
axioms. To these four principal parts are further added as less essential,
deductions or corollaries immediately resulting from the theorems, and the
more detailed expositions of the demonstrations or scholia. Besides these,
some longer discussions are given in the form of remarks, introductions,
and appendices.
[Footnote 1: Heussler's objections (_Der Rationalismus des_ 17
_Jahrhunderts_, 1885, pp. 82-85) to this characterization of Kuno Fischer's
are not convincing. The question is not so much about a principle
demonstrable by definite citations as about an unconscious motive in
Spinoza's thinking. Fischer's views on this point seem to us correct.
Spinoza's mode of thinking is, in fact, saturated with this strong
confidence in the omnipotence of the reason and the rational constitution
of true reality.]
If everything is to be cognizable through mathematics, then everything must
take place necessarily; even the thoughts, resolutions, and actions of man
cannot be free in the sense that they might have happened otherwise. Thus
there is an evident methodological motive at work for the extension
of mechanism to all becoming, even spiritual becoming. But there are
metaphysical reasons also. Descartes had naïvely solved the anthropological
problem by the answer that the interaction of mind and body is
incomprehensible but actual. The occasionalists had hesitatingly questioned
these conclusions a little, the incomprehensibility as well as the
actuality, only at last to leave them intact. For the explanation that
there is a real influence of body on mind and _vice versa_, though not
an immediate but an occasional one, one mediated by the divine will, is
scarcely more than a confession that the matter is inexplicable. Spinoza,
who admits neither the incognizability of anything real, nor any
supernatural interferences, roundly denies both. There is no intercourse
between body and soul; yet that which is erroneously considered such
is both actually present and explicable. The assumed interaction is as
unnecessary as it is impossible. Body and soul do not need to act on one
another, because they are not two in kind at all, but constitute one being
which may be looked at from two different sides. This is called body when
considered under its attribute of extension, and spirit when considered
under its attribute of thought. It is quite impossible for two substances
to affect each other, because by their reciprocal influence, nay, by their
very duality, they would lose their independence, and, with this, their
substantiality. There is no plurality of substances, but only one, the
infinite, the divine substance. Here we reach the center of the system.
There is but one becoming and but one independent, substantial being.
Material and spiritual becoming form merely the two sides of one and the
same necessary world-process; particular extended beings and particular
thinking beings are nothing but the changeable and transitory states
_(modi)_ of the enduring, eternal, unified world-ground. "Necessity in
becoming and unity of being," mechanism and pantheism--these are the
controlling conceptions in Spinoza's doctrine. Multiplicity, the
self-dependence of particular things, free choice, ends, development, all
this is illusion and error.
%(a) Substance, Attributes, and Modes%.--There is but one substance, and
this is infinite (I. _prop_. 10, _schol; prop_. 14, _cor_. 1). Why, then,
only one and why infinite? With Spinoza as with Descartes independence is
the essence of substantiality. This is expressed in the third definition:
"By substance I understand that which is in itself and is conceived by
means of itself, _i.e._, that the conception of which can be formed without
the aid of the conception of any other thing." _Per substantiam intelligo
id, quod in se est et per se concipitur; hoc est id, cujus conceptus
non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat_. An absolutely
self-dependent being can neither be limited (since, in respect to its
limits, it would be dependent on the limiting being), nor occur more than
once in the world. Infinity follows from its self-dependence, and its
uniqueness from its infinity.
Substance is the being which is dependent on nothing and on which
everything depends; which, itself uncaused, effects all else; which
presupposes nothing, but itself constitutes the presupposition of all that
is: it is pure being, primal being, the cause of itself and of all. Thus in
Spinoza the being which is without presuppositions is brought into the most
intimate relation with the fullness of multiform existence, not coldly and
abstractly exalted above it, as by the ancient Eleatics. Substance is the
being in (not above) things, that in them which constitutes their reality,
which supports and produces them. As the cause of all things Spinoza calls
it God, although he is conscious that he understands by the term something
quite different from the Christians. God does not mean for him a
transcendent, personal spirit, but only the _ens absolute infinitum (def.
sexta)_, the essential heart of things: _Deus sive substantia_.
How do things proceed from God? Neither by creation nor by emanation. He
does not put them forth from himself, they do not tear themselves free from
him, but they follow out of the necessary nature of God, as it follows from
the nature of the triangle that the sum of its angles is equal to two right
angles (I. _prop_. 17, _schol_.). They do not come out from him, but remain
in him; just this fact that they are in another, in God, constitutes their
lack of self-dependence (I. _prop_. 18, _dem.: nulla res, quae extra Deum
in se sit_). God is their inner, indwelling cause (_causa immanens, non
vero transiens_.--I. _prop_. 18), is not a transcendent creator, but
_natura naturans_, over against the sum of finite beings, _natura naturata_
(I. _prop_. 29, _schol_.): _Deus sive natura_.
Since nothing exists out of God, his actions do not follow from external
necessity, are not constrained, but he is free cause, free in the sense
that he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him,
that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being (_def. septima: ea
res libera dicitur, quae ex sola suae naturae necessitate existit et a se
sola ad agendum determinatur; Epist_. 26). This inner necessitation is
so little a defect that its direct opposite, undetermined choice and
inconstancy, must rather be excluded from God as an imperfection. Freedom
and (inner) necessity are identical; and antithetical, on the one side, to
undetermined choice and, on the other, to (external) compulsion. Action in
view of ends must also be denied of the infinite; to think of God as acting
in order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him
(an aim) and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action. With
God the ground of his action is the same as the ground of his existence;
God's power and his essence coincide (I. _prop_. 34: _Dei potentia est ipsa
ipsius essentia_). He is the cause of himself (_def. prima: per causam sui
intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura
non potest concipi nisi existens_); it would be a contradiction to hold
that being was not, that God, or substance, did not exist; he cannot be
thought otherwise than as existing; his concept includes his existence. To
be self-caused means to exist necessarily (I. _prop_. 7). The same thing
is denoted by the predicate eternal, which, according to the eighth
definition, denotes "existence itself, in so far as it is conceived to
follow necessarily from the mere definition of the eternal thing."
The infinite substance stands related to finite, individual things, not
only as the independent to the dependent, as the cause to the caused, as
the one to the many, and the whole to the parts, but also as the universal
to the particular, the indeterminate to the determinate. From infinite
being as pure affirmation (I. _prop_. 8, _schol_. I: _absoluta affirmatio_)
everything which contains a limitation or negation, and this includes every
particular determination, must be kept at a distance: _determinatio negatio
est (Epist_. 50 and 41: a determination denotes nothing positive, but a
deprivation, a lack of existence; relates not to the being but to the
non-being of the thing). A determination states that which distinguishes
one thing from another, hence what it is _not_, expresses a limitation of
it. Consequently God, who is free from every negation and limitation, is to
be conceived as the absolutely indeterminate. The results thus far reached
run: _Substantia una infinita--Deus sive natura--causa sui (aeterna) et
rerum (immanens)--libera necessitas--non determinata_. Or more briefly:
Substance = God = nature. The equation of God and substance had been
announced by Descartes, but not adhered to, while Bruno had approached the
equation of God and nature--Spinoza decisively completes both and combines
them.
A further remark may be added concerning the relation of God and the world.
In calling the infinite at once the permanent essence of things and their
producing cause, Spinoza raises a demand which it is not easy to fulfill,
the demand to think the existence of things in substance as a following
from substance, and their procession from God as a remaining in him. He
refers us to mathematics: the things which make up the world are related to
God as the properties of a geometrical figure to its concepts, as theorems
to the axiom, as the deduction to the principle, which from eternity
contains all that follows from it and retains this even while putting
it forth. It cannot be doubted that such a view of causality contains
error,--it has been characterized as a confusion of _ratio_ and _causa_,
of logical ground and real cause,--but it is just as certain that Spinoza
committed it. He not only compares the dependence of the effect on its
cause to the dependence of a derivative principle on that from which it is
derived, but fully equates the two; he thinks that in logico-mathematical
"consequences" he has grasped the essence of real "effects": for him the
type of all legality, as also of real becoming, was the necessity which
governs the sequence of mathematical truths, and which, on the one hand, is
even and still, needing no special exertion of volitional energy, while, on
the other, it is rigid and unyielding, exalted above all choice. Philosophy
had sought the assistance of mathematics because of the clearness and
certainty which distinguish the conclusions of the latter, and which she
wished to obtain for her own. In excess of zeal she was not content with
striving after this ideal of indefectible certitude, but, forgetting the
diversity of the two fields, strove to imitate other qualities which
are not transferable; instead of learning from mathematics she became
subservient to it.
Substance does not affect us by its mere existence, but through an
_Attribute_. By attribute is meant, according to the fourth definition,
"that which the understanding perceives of substance as constituting the
essence of it" _(quod intellectus de substantia percipit, tanquam ejusdem
essentiam constituens)_. The more reality a substance contains, the more
attributes it has; consequently infinite substance possesses an infinite
number, each of which gives expression to its essence, but of which two
only fall within our knowledge. Among the innumerable divine attributes
the human mind knows those only which it finds in itself, thought and
extension. Although man beholds God only as thinking and extended
substance, he yet has a clear and complete; an adequate--idea of God. Since
each of the two attributes is conceived without the other, hence in itself
(_per se_), they are distinct from each other _realiter_, and independent.
God is absolutely infinite, the attributes only in their kind (_in suo
genere_).
How can the indeterminate possess properties? Are the attributes merely
ascribed to substance by the understanding, or do they possess reality
apart from the knowing subject? This question has given rise to much
debate. According to Hegel and Ed. Erdmann the attributes are something
external to substance, something brought into it by the understanding,
forms of knowledge present in the beholder alone; substance itself is
neither extended nor cogitative, but merely appears to the understanding
under these determinations, without which the latter would be unable to
cognize it. This "formalistic" interpretation, which, relying on a passage
in a letter to De Vries (_Epist_. 27), explains the attributes as mere
modes of intellectual apprehension, numbers Kuno Fischer among its
opponents. As the one party holds to the first half of the definition, the
other places the emphasis on the second half ("that which the
_understanding_ perceives--as constituting the _essence_ of substance").
The attributes are more than mere modes of representation--they are real
properties, which substance possesses even apart from an observer, nay, in
which it consists; in Spinoza, moreover, "must be conceived" is the
equivalent of "to be." Although this latter "realistic" party undoubtedly
has the advantage over the former, which reads into Spinoza a subjectivism
foreign to his system, they ought not to forget that the difference in
interpretation has for its basis a conflict among the motives which control
Spinoza's thinking. The reference of the attributes to the understanding,
given in the definition, is not without significance. It sprang from the
wish not to mar the indeterminateness of the absolute by the opposition of
the attributes, while, on the other hand, an equally pressing need for the
conservation of the immanence of substance forbade a bold transfer of the
attributes to the observer. The real opinion of Spinoza is neither so
clear and free from contradictions, nor so one-sided, as that which his
interpreters ascribe to him. Fischer's further interpretation of the
attributes of God as his "powers" is tenable, so long as by _causa_ and
_potentia_ we understand nothing more than the irresistible, but
non-kinetic, force with which an original truth establishes or effects
those which follow from it.
As the dualism of extension and thought is reduced from a substantial to
an attributive distinction, so individual bodies and minds, motions and
thoughts, are degraded a stage further. Individual things lack independence
of every sort. The individual is, as a determinate finite thing, burdened
with negation and limitation, for every determination includes a negation;
that which is truly real in the individual is God. Finite things are
_modi_ of the infinite substance, mere states, variable states, of God. By
themselves they are nothing, since out of God nothing exists. They possess
existence only in so far as they are conceived in their connection with the
infinite, that is, as transitory forms of the unchangeable substance. They
are not in themselves, but in another, in God, and are conceived only
in God. They are mere affections of the divine attributes, and must be
considered as such.
To the two attributes correspond two classes of modes. The most important
modifications of extension are rest and motion. Among the modes of thought
are understanding and will. These belong in the sphere of determinate and
transitory being and do not hold of the _natura naturans_: God is exalted
above all modality, above will and understanding, as above motion and rest.
We must not assert of the _natura naturata_ (the world as the sum of all
modes), as of the _natura naturans_, that its essence involves existence
(I. _prop_. 24): we can conceive finite things as non-existent, as well as
existent (_Epist_. 29). This constitutes their "contingency," which must
by no means be interpreted as lawlessness. On the contrary, all that takes
place in the world is most rigorously determined; every individual, finite,
determinate thing and event is determined to its existence and action by
another similarly finite and determinate thing or event, and this cause is,
in turn, determined in its existence and action by a further finite mode,
and so on to infinity (I. _prop_. 28). Because of this endlessness in the
series there is no first or ultimate cause in the phenomenal world; all
finite causes are second causes; the primary cause lies within the sphere
of the infinite and is God himself. The modes are all subject to the
constraint of an unbroken and endless nexus of efficient causes, which
leaves room neither for chance, nor choice, nor ends. Nothing can be or
happen otherwise than as it is and happens (I. _prop_. 29, 33).
The causal chain appears in two forms: a mode of extension has its
producing ground in a second mode of extension; a mode of thought can be
caused only by another mode of thought--each individual thing is determined
by one of its own kind. The two series proceed side by side, without a
member of either ever being able to interfere in the other or to effect
anything in it--a motion can never produce anything but other motions, an
idea can result only in other ideas; the body can never determine the mind
to an idea, nor the soul the body to a movement. Since, however, extension
and thought are not two substances, but attributes of one substance,
this apparently double causal nexus of two series proceeding in exact
correspondence is, in reality, but a single one. (III. _prop_. 2, _schol_.)
viewed from different sides. That which represents a chain of motions when
seen from the side of extension, bears the aspect of a series of ideas from
the side of thought. _Modus extensionis et idea illius modi una cademque
est res, sed duobus modis expressa_ (II. _prop_. 7, _schol_.; cf. III.
_prop_. 2, _schol_.). The soul is nothing but the idea of an actual body,
body or motion nothing but the object or event in the sphere of extended
actuality corresponding to an idea. No idea exists without something
corporeal corresponding to it, no body, without at the same time existing
as idea, or being conceived; in other words, everything is both body and
spirit, all things are animated (II. _prop_. 13, _schol_.). Thus the famous
proposition results; _Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio
rerum (sive corporum; II. prop_. 7), and in application to man, "the order
of the actions and passions of our body is simultaneous in nature with the
order of the actions and passions of the mind" (III. _prop. 2, schol_.).
The attempt to solve the problem of the relation between the material and
the mental worlds by asserting their thoroughgoing correspondence and
substantial identity, was philosophically justifiable and important,
though many evident objections obtrude themselves upon us. The required
assumption, that there is a mental event corresponding to _every_ bodily
one, and _vice versa_, meets with involuntary and easily supported
opposition, which Spinoza did nothing to remove. Similarly he omitted
to explain how body is related to motion, mind to ideas, and both to
actuality. The ascription of a materialistic tendency to Spinoza is not
without foundation. Corporeality and reality appear well-nigh identical for
him,--the expressions _corpora_ and _res_ are used synonymously,--so that
there remains for minds and ideas only an existence as reflections of
the real in the sphere of [an] ideality (whose degree of actuality it is
difficult to determine). Moreover, individualistic impulses have been
pointed out, which, in part, conflict with the monism which he consciously
follows, and, in part, subserve its interests. An example of this is given
in the relation of mind and idea: Spinoza treats the soul as a sum of
ideas, as consisting in them. An (at least apparently substantial) bond
among ideas, an ego, which possesses them, does not exist for him: the
Cartesian _cogito_ has become an impersonal _cogitatur_ or a _Deus
cogitat_. In order to the unique substantiality of the infinite, the
substantiality of individual spirits must disappear. That which argues for
the latter is their I-ness (_Ichheit_), the unity of self-consciousness;
it is destroyed, if the mind is a congeries of ideas, a composite of them.
Thus in order to relieve itself from the self-dependence of the individual
mind, monism allies itself with a spiritual atomism, the most extreme which
can be conceived. The mind is resolved into a mass of individual ideas.
Mention may be made in passing, also, of a strange conception, which
is somewhat out of harmony with the rest of the system, and of which,
moreover, little use is made. This is the conception of _infinite modes_.
As such are cited, _facies totius mundi, motus et quies, intellectus
absolute infinitus_. Kuno Fischer's interpretation of this difficult
conception may be accepted. It denotes, according to him, the connected sum
of the modes, the itself non-finite sum total of the finite--the universe
meaning the totality of individual things in general (without reference to
their nature as extended or cogitative); rest and motion, the totality of
material being; the absolutely infinite understanding, the totality of
spiritual being or the ideas. Individual spirits together constitute, as
it were, the infinite intellect; our mind is a part of the divine
understanding, yet not in such a sense that the whole consists of the
parts, but that the part exists only through the whole. When we say, the
human mind perceives this or that, it is equivalent to saying that God--not
in so far as he is infinite, but as he expresses himself in this human
mind and constitutes its essence--has this or that idea (II. _prop_. II,
_coroll_).
The discussion of these three fundamental concepts exhausts all the chief
points in Spinoza's doctrine of God. Passing over his doctrine of body (II.
between _prop_. 13 and _prop_. 14) we turn at once to his discussion of
mind and man.
%(b) Anthropology: Cognition and the Passions.%--Each thing is at once mind
and body, representation and that which is represented, idea and ideate
(object). Body and soul are the same being, only considered under different
attributes. The human mind is the idea of the human body; it cognizes
itself in perceiving the affections of its body; it represents all that
takes place in the body, though not all adequately. As man's body is
composed of very many bodies, so his soul is composed of very many ideas.
To judge of the relation of the human mind to the mind of lower beings, we
must consider the superiority of man's body to other bodies; the more
complex a body is, and the greater the variety of the affections of
which it is capable, the better and more adapted for adequate cognition,
the accompanying mind.--A result of the identity of soul and body is
that the acts of our will are not free (_Epist_. 62): they are, in fact,
determinations of our body, only considered under the attribute of thought,
and no more free than this from the constraint of the causal law (III.
_prop_. 2, _schol_.).--Since the mind does nothing without at the same time
knowing that it does it--since, in other words, its activity is a conscious
activity, it is not merely _idea corporis humani_, but also _idea ideae
corporis_ or _idea mentis_.
All adherents of the Eleatic separation of the one pure being from the
manifold and changing world of appearance are compelled to make a
like distinction between two kinds and two organs of _knowledge_. The
representation of the empirical manifold of separately existing individual
things, together with the organ thereof, Spinoza terms _imaginatio_; the
faculty of cognizing the true reality, the one, all-embracing substance, he
calls _intellectus. Imaginatio_ (imagination, sensuous representation)
is the faculty of inadequate, confused ideas, among which are included
abstract conceptions, as well as sensations and memory-images. The objects
of perception are the affections of our body; and our perceptions,
therefore, are not clear and distinct, because we are not completely
acquainted with their causes. In the merely perceptual stage, the mind
gains only a confused and mutilated idea of external objects, of the body,
and of itself; it is unable to separate that in the perception (_e.g._,
heat) which is due to the external body from that which is due to its own
body. An inadequate idea, however, is not in itself an error; it becomes
such only when, unconscious of its defectiveness, we take it for complete
and true. Prominent examples of erroneous ideas are furnished by general
concepts, by the idea of ends, and the idea of the freedom of the will. The
more general and abstract an idea, the more inadequate and indistinct it
becomes; and this shows the lack of value in generic concepts, which are
formed by the omission of differences. All cognition which is carried on by
universals and their symbols, words, yields opinion and imagination merely
instead of truth. Quite as valueless and harmful is the idea of ends, with
its accompaniments. We think that nature has typical forms hovering before
it, which it is seeking to actualize in things; when this intention is
apparently fulfilled we speak of things as perfect and beautiful; when it
fails, of imperfect and ugly things. Such concepts of value belong in the
sphere of fictions. The same is true of the idea of the freedom of the
will, which depends on our ignorance of that which constrains us. Apart
from the consideration that "the will," the general conception of which
comes under the rubric of unreal abstractions, is in fact merely the sum of
the particular volitions, the illusion of freedom, _e.g._, that we will
and act without a cause, arises from the fact that we are conscious of
our action (and also of its proximate motives), but not of its (remoter)
determining causes. Thus the thirsty child believes it desires its milk of
its own free will, and the timid one, that it freely chooses to run away
(_Ethica, III. prop_. 2, _schol_.; I. _app_.) If the falling stone were
conscious, it would, likewise, consider itself free, and its fall the
result of an undetermined decision.
Two degrees are to be distinguished in the true or adequate knowledge
of the intellect: rational knowledge attained through inference, and
intuitive, self-evident knowledge; the latter has principles for its
object, the former that which follows from them. Instead of operating with
abstract concepts the reason uses common notions, _notiones communes_.
Genera do not exist, but, no doubt, something common to all things. All
bodies agree in being extended; all minds and ideas in being modes of
thought; all beings whatever in the fact that they are modes of the divine
substance and its attributes; "that which is common to all things, and
which is equally in the part and in the whole, cannot but be adequately
conceived." The ideas of extension, of thought, and of the eternal and
infinite essence of God are adequate ideas. The adequate idea of each
individual actual object involves the idea of God, since it can neither
exist nor be conceived apart from God, and "all ideas, in so far as
they are referred to God, are true." The ideas of substance and of the
attributes are conceived through themselves, or immediately (intuitively)
cognized; they are underivative, original, self-evident ideas.
There are thus three kinds, degrees, or faculties of cognition--sensuous or
imaginative representation, reason, and immediate intuition. Knowledge of
the second and third degrees is necessarily true, and our only means
of distinguishing the true from the false. As light reveals itself and
darkness, so the truth is the criterion of itself and of error. Every
truth is accompanied by certainty, and is its own witness (II. _prop_. 43,
_schol_.).--Adequate knowledge does not consider things as individuals,
but in their necessary connection and as eternal sequences from the
world-ground. The reason perceives things under the form of eternity: _sub
specie aeternitatis_ (II. _prop_. 44, _cor_. 2).
In his theory of the _emotions_, Spinoza is more dependent on Descartes
than anywhere else; but even here he is guided by a successful endeavor
after greater rigor and simplicity. He holds his predecessor's false
concept of freedom responsible for the failure of his very acute inquiry.
All previous writers on the passions have either derided, or bewailed, or
condemned them, instead of investigating their nature. Spinoza will
neither denounce nor ridicule human actions and appetites, but endeavor
to comprehend them on the basis of natural laws, and to consider them as
though the question concerned lines, surfaces, and bodies. He aims not
to look on hate, anger, and the rest as flaws, but as necessary, though
troublesome, properties of human nature, for which, as really as for heat
and cold, thunder and lightning, a causal explanation is requisite.--As a
determinate, finite being the mind is dependent in its existence and its
activity on other finite things, and is incomprehensible without them;
from its involution in the general course of nature the inadequate ideas
inevitably follow, and from these the passive states or emotions; the
passions thus belong to human nature, as one subject to limitation and
negation.--The destruction of contingent and perishable things is effected
by external causes; no one is destroyed by itself; so far as in it lies
everything strives to persist in its being (III. _prop_. 4 and 6). The
fundamental endeavor after self-preservation constitutes the essence of
each thing (III. _prop_. 7). This endeavor _(conatus)_ is termed will
_(voluntas)_ or desire _(cupiditas)_ when it is referred to the mind alone,
and appetite _(appetitus)_ when referred to the mind and body together;
desire or volition is conscious appetite (III. _prop_. 9, _schol_.). We
call a thing good because we desire it, not desire a thing because we hold
it good (cf. Hobbes, p. 75). To desire two further fundamental forms of the
emotions are added, pleasure and pain. If a thing increases the power of
our body to act, the idea of it increases the power of our soul to think,
and is gladly imagined by it. Pleasure (_laetitia_) is the transition of
a man to a greater, and pain (_tristitia_) his transition to a lesser
perfection.
All other emotions are modifications or combinations of the three original
ones, to which Spinoza reduces the six of Descartes (cf. p. 105). In
the deduction and description of them his procedure is sometimes aridly
systematic, sometimes even forced and artificial, but for the most part
ingenious, appropriate, and psychologically acute. Whatever gives us
pleasure augments our being, and whatever pains us diminishes it; hence we
seek to preserve the causes of pleasurable emotions, and love them, to do
away with the causes of painful ones, and hate them. "Love is pleasure
accompanied by the idea of an external cause; hate is pain accompanied by
the idea of an external cause." Since all that furthers or diminishes the
being of (the cause of our pleasure) the object of our love, exercises
at the same time a like influence on us, we love that which rejoices the
object of our love and hate that which disturbs it; its happiness and
suffering become ours also. The converse is true of the object of our hate:
its good fortune provokes us and its ill fortune pleases us. If we are
filled with no emotion toward things like ourselves, we sympathize in their
sad or joyous feelings by involuntary imitation. Pity, from which we
strive to free ourselves as from every painful affection, inclines us to
benevolence or to assistance in the removal of the cause of the misery of
others. Envy of those who are fortunate, and commiseration of those who are
in trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclined
to envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to
overestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction,
which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate
desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept
within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty
(_modestia_). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and lust have no
contraries, for temperance, sobriety, and chastity are not emotions
(passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former
are moderated, and which is discussed later under the name _fortitudo_.
Self-abasement or humility is a feeling of pain arising from the
consideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite is
self-complacency. Either of these may be accompanied by the (erroneous)
belief that we have done the saddening or gladdening act of our own free
will; in this case the former affection is termed repentance. Hope and fear
are inconstant pleasure and pain, arising from the idea of something past
or to come, concerning whose coming and whose issue we are still in doubt.
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear without hope; for he who
still doubts imagines something which excludes the existence of that which
is expected. If the cause of doubt is removed, hope is transformed into a
feeling of confidence and fear into despair. There are as many kinds of
emotions as there are classes among their objects or causes.
Besides the emotions to be termed "passions" in the strict sense, states
of passivity, Spinoza recognizes others which relate to us as active. Only
those which are of the nature of pleasure or desire belong to this class
of _active_ emotions; the painful affections are entirely excluded, since
without exception they diminish or arrest the mind's power to think. The
totality of these nobler impulses is called _fortitudo_ (fortitude), and
a distinction is made among them between _animositas_ (vigor of soul) and
_generositas_ (magnanimity, noble-mindedness), according as rational
desire is directed to the preservation of our own being or to aiding our
fellow-men. Presence of mind and temperance are examples of the former,
modesty and clemency of the latter. By this bridge, the idea of the active
emotions, we may follow Spinoza into the field of ethics.
%(c) Practical Philosophy.%--Spinoza's theory of ethics is based on the
equation of the three concepts, perfection, reality, activity (V. _prop_.
40, _dem_.). The more active a thing is, the more perfect it is and the
more reality it possesses. It is active, however, when it is the complete
or adequate cause of that which takes place within it or without it;
passive when it is not at all the cause of this, or the cause only in part.
A cause is termed adequate, when its effect can be clearly and distinctly
perceived from it alone. The human mind, as a _modus_ of thought, is active
when it has adequate ideas; all its passion consists in confused ideas,
among which belong the affections produced by external objects. The essence
of the mind is thought; volition is not only dependent on cognition, but at
bottom identical with it.
Descartes had already made the will the power of affirmation and negation.
Spinoza advances a step further: the affirmation cannot be separated from
the idea affirmed, it is impossible to conceive a truth without in the
same act affirming it, the idea involves its own affirmation. "Will and
understanding are one and the same" (II. _prop_. 49, _cor_.). For Spinoza
moral activity is entirely resolved into cognitive activity. To the two
stages of knowing, _imaginatio_ and _intellectus_, correspond two stages
of willing--desire, which is ruled by imagination, and volition, which is
guided by reason. The passive emotions of sensuous desire are directed to
perishable objects, the active, which spring from reason, have an eternal
object--the knowledge of the truth, the intuition of God. For reason there
are no distinctions of persons,--she brings men into concord and gives them
a common end (IV. _prop_. 35-37,40),--and no distinctions of time (IV.
_prop_. 62, 66), and in the active emotions, which are always good, no
excess (IV. _prop_. 61). The passive emotions arise from confused ideas.
They cease to be passions, when the confused ideas of the modifications of
the body are transformed into clear ones; as soon as we have clear ideas,
we become active and cease to be slaves of desire. We master the emotions
by gaining a clear knowledge of them. Now, an idea is clear when we cognize
its object not as an individual thing, but in its connection, as a link in
the causal chain, as necessary, and as a mode of God. The more the mind
conceives things in their necessity, and the emotions in their reference to
God, the less it is passively subject to the emotions, the more power it
attains over them: "Virtue is power" (IV. _def_. 8; _prop_. 20, _dem_.). It
is true, indeed, that one emotion can be conquered only by another stronger
one, a passive emotion only by an active one. The active emotion by which
knowledge gains this victory over the passions is the joyous consciousness
of our power (III. _prop_. 58, 59). Adequate ideas conceive their objects
in union with God; thus the pleasure which proceeds from knowledge of,
and victory over, the passions is accompanied by the idea of God, and,
consequently (according to the definition of love), by _love toward God_
(V. _prop_. 15, 32). The knowledge and love of God, together, "intellectual
love toward God,"[1] is the highest good and the highest virtue (IV.
_prop_. 28). Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
The intellectual love of man toward God, in which the highest peace of the
soul, blessedness, and freedom consist, and in virtue of which (since it,
like its object and cause, true knowledge, is eternal), the soul is not
included in the destruction of the body (V. _prop_. 23, 33), is a part of
the infinite love with which God loves himself, and is one and the same
with the love of God to man. The eternal part of the soul is reason,
through which it is active; the perishable part is imagination or sensuous
representation, through which it is passively affected. We are immortal
only in adequate cognition and in love to God; more of the wise man's soul
is immortal than of the fool's.
[Footnote 1: The conception _amor Dei intellectualis_ in Spinoza is
discussed in a dissertation by C. Lülmann, Jena, 1884.]
Spinoza's ethics is intellectualistic--virtue is based on knowledge.[1] It
is, moreover, naturalistic--morality is a necessary sequence from human
nature; it is a physical product, not a product of freedom; for the acts of
the will are determined by ideas, which in their turn are the effects
of earlier causes. The foundation of virtue is the effort after
self-preservation: How can a man desire to act rightly unless he desires to
be (IV. _prop_. 21, 22)? Since reason never enjoins that which is contrary
to nature, it of necessity requires every man to love himself, to seek
that which is truly useful to him, and to desire all that makes him more
perfect. According to the law of nature all that is useful is allowable.
The useful is that which increases our power, activity, or perfection, or
that which furthers knowledge, for the life of the soul consists in thought
(IV. _prop. 26; app. cap_. 5). That alone is an evil which restrains man
from perfecting the reason and leading a rational life. Virtuous action is
equivalent to following the guidance of the reason in self-preservation
(IV. _prop_. 24).--Nowhere in Spinoza are fallacies more frequent than
in his moral philosophy; nowhere is there a clearer revelation of the
insufficiency of his artificially constructed concepts, which, in their
undeviating abstractness, are at no point congruent with reality. He is
as little true to his purpose to exclude the imperative element, and to
confine himself entirely to the explanation of human actions considered as
facts, as any philosopher who has adopted a similar aim. He relieves the
inconsistency by clothing his injunctions under the ancient ideal of the
free wise man. This, in fact, is not the only thing in Spinoza which
reminds one of the customs of the Greek moralists. He renews the Platonic
idea of a philosophical virtue, and the opinion of Socrates, that right
action will result of itself from true insight. Arguing from himself, from
his own pure and strong desire for knowledge, to mankind in general, he
makes reason the essence of the soul, thought the essence of reason, and
holds the direction of the impulse of self-preservation to the perfection
of knowledge, which is "the better part of us," to be the natural one.
[Footnote 1: That virtue which springs from knowledge is alone genuine.
The painful, hence unactive, emotions of pity and repentance may impel to
actions whose accomplishment is better than their omission. Emotion caused
by sympathy for others and contrition for one's own guilt, both of which
increase present evil by new ones, have only the value of evils of a lesser
kind. They are salutary for the irrational man, in so far as the one spurs
him on to acts of assistance and the other diminishes his pride. They
are harmful to the wise man, or, at least, useless; he is in no need of
irrational motives to rational action. Action from insight is alone true
morality.]
All men endeavor after continuance of existence (III. _prop_. 6); why not
all after virtue? If all endeavor after it, why do so few reach the goal?
Whence the sadly large number of the irrational, the selfish, the vicious?
Whence the evil in the world? Vice is as truly an outcome of "nature" as
virtue. Virtue is power, vice is weakness; the former is knowledge, the
latter ignorance. Whence the powerless natures? Whence defective knowledge?
Whence imperfection in general?
The concept of imperfection expresses nothing positive, nothing actual, but
merely a defect, an absence of reality. It is nothing but an idea in us,
a fiction which arises through the comparison of one thing with another
possessing greater reality, or with an abstract generic concept, a pattern,
which it seems unable to attain. That concepts of value are not properties
of things themselves, but denote only their pleasurable or painful effects
on us, is evident from the fact that one and the same thing may be at the
same time good, bad, and indifferent: the music which is good for the
melancholy man may be bad for the mourner, and neither good nor bad for the
deaf. Knowledge of the bad is an abstract, inadequate idea; in God there is
no idea of evil. If imperfection and error were something real, it would
have to be conceded that God is the author of evil and sin. In reality
everything is that which it can be, hence without defect: everything actual
is, in itself considered, perfect. Even the fool and the sinner cannot be
otherwise than he is; he appears imperfect only when placed beside the wise
and the virtuous. Sin is thus only a lesser reality than virtue, evil a
lesser good; good and bad, activity and passivity, power and weakness
are merely distinctions in degree. But why is not everything absolutely
perfect? Why are there lesser degrees of reality? Two answers are given.
The first is found only between the lines: the imperfections in the
being and action of individual things are grounded in their finitude,
particularly in their involution in the chain of causality, in virtue of
which they are acted on from without, and are determined in their action
not by their own nature only, but also by external causes. Man sins because
he is open to impressions from external things, and only superior natures
are strong enough to preserve their rational self-determination in spite
of this. The other answer is expressly given at the end of the first part
(with an appeal to the sixteenth proposition, that everything which
the divine understanding conceives as creatable has actually come into
existence). "To those who ask why God did not so create all men that they
should be governed only by reason, I reply only: because matter was not
lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest
to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature were so ample
as so suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite
intellect." All possible degrees of perfection have come into being,
including sin and error, which represent the lowest grade. The universe
forms a chain of degrees of perfection, of which none must be wanting:
particular cases of defect are justified by the perfection of the whole,
which would be incomplete without the lowest degree of perfection, vice
and wickedness. Here we see Spinoza following a path which Leibnitz was to
broaden out into a highway in his _Theodicy_. Both favor the quantitative
view of the world, which softens the antitheses, and reduces distinctions
of kind to distinctions of degree. Not till Kant was the qualitative view
of the world, which had been first brought into ethics by Christianity,
restored to its rights. An ethics which denies freedom and evil is nothing
but a physics of morals.
In his _theory of the state_ Spinoza follows Hobbes pretty closely, but
rejects absolutism, and declares democracy, in which each is obedient to
self-imposed law, to be the form of government most in accordance with
reason. (So in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, while in the later
_Tractatus Politicus_ he gives the preference to aristocracy.) In
accordance with the supreme right of nature each man deems good, and seeks
to gain, that which seems to him useful; all things belong to all, each may
destroy the objects of his hate. Conflict and insecurity prevail in the
state of nature as a result of the sensuous desires and emotions (_homines
ex natura hostes_); and they can be done away with only through the
establishment of a society, which by punitive laws compels everyone to do,
and leave undone, that which the general welfare demands. Strife and breach
of faith become sin only in the state; before its formation that alone was
wrong which no one had the desire and power to do. Besides this mission,
however, of protecting selfish interests by the prevention of aggression,
the civil community has a higher one, to subserve the development of
reason; it is only in the state that true morality and true freedom are
possible, and the wise man will prefer to live in the state, because
he finds more freedom there than in isolation. Thus the dislocation of
concepts, which is perceptible in Spinoza's ethics, repeats itself in his
politics. First, virtue is based on the impulse of self-preservation and
the good is equated with that which is useful to the individual; then, with
a transformation of mere utility into "true" utility, the rational moment
is brought in (first as practical prudence, next as the impulse after
knowledge, and then, with a gradual change of meaning, as moral wisdom),
until, finally, in strange contrast to the naturalistic beginning, the
Christian idea of virtue as purity, self-denial, love to our neighbors and
love to God, is reached. In a similar way "Spinoza conceives the starting
point of the state naturalistically, its culmination idealistically."[1]
[Footnote 1: C. Schindler in his dissertation _Ueber den Begriff des
Guten und Nützlichen bei Spinoza_, Jena, 1885, p. 42, a work, however,
which does not penetrate to the full depth of the matter. Cf. Eucken,
_Lebensanschauungen_, p. 406.]
The fundamental ideas of the Spinozistic system, and those which render
it important, are rationalism, pantheism, the essential identity of the
material and spiritual worlds, and the uninterrupted mechanism of becoming.
Besides the twisting of ethical concepts just mentioned, we may briefly
note the most striking of the other difficulties and contradictions which
Spinoza left unexplained. There is a break between his endeavor to exalt
the absolute high above the phenomenal world of individual existence, and,
at the same time, to bring the former into the closest possible conjunction
with the latter, to make it dwell therein--a break between the transcendent
and immanent conceptions of the idea of God. No light is vouchsafed on the
relation between primary and secondary causes, between the immediate divine
causality and the divine causality mediated through finite causes. The
infinity of God is in conflict with his complete cognizability on the
part of man; for how is a finite, transitory spirit able to conceive
the Infinite and Eternal? How does the human intellect rise above modal
limitations to become capable and worthy of the mystical union with God?
Reference has been already made to the twofold nature of the attributes (as
forms of intellectual apprehension and as real properties of substance)
which invites contradictory interpretations.
3. %Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle.%
Returning from Holland to France, we find a combination of Cartesianism
and mysticism similar to that which we have noticed in the former country.
Under Geulincx these two forces had lived peacefully together; in Spinoza
they had entered into the closest alliance; with Blaise Pascal (1623-62),
the first to adopt a religious tendency, they came into a certain
antithesis. Spinoza had taught: through the knowledge of God to the love
of God; in Pascal the watchword becomes, God is not conceived through
the reason, but felt with the heart. After attacking the Jesuits in his
_Provincial Letters_, and unveiling the worthlessness of their casuistical
morality, Pascal, constrained by a genuine piety, undertook to construct a
philosophy of Christianity; but the attempt was ended by the early death of
the author, who had always suffered under a weak constitution. Fragments of
this work were published by his friends, the Jansenists, under the title,
_Thoughts on Religion_, 1669, though not without mediating alterations.
The Port-Royal _Logic (The Art of Thinking_, 1662), edited by Arnauld and
Nicole, was based on a treatise of Pascal. His thought, which was not
distinguished by clearness, but by depth and movement, and which, after
the French fashion, delighted in antitheses, was influenced by Descartes,
Montaigne, and Epictetus. He, too, finds in mathematics the example for
all science, and holds that whatever transcends mathematics transcends the
reason. By the application of mathematics to the study of nature we attain
a mundane science, which is certain, no doubt, and which makes constant
progress,[1] but which does not satisfy, since it reveals nothing of the
infinite, of the whole, without which the parts remain unintelligible.
Hence all natural philosophy together is not worth an hour's toil. Pascal
consoles himself for our ignorance concerning external things by the
stability of ethics.
[Footnote 1: It is this uninterrupted progress which raises the reason
above the operations of nature and the instincts of animals. While the bees
build their cells to-day just as they did a thousand years ago, science is
continually developing. This guarantees to us our immortal destiny.]
The leading principles of his ethics are as follows: In sin the love to God
created in us has left us and self-love has transgressed its limits; pride
has delivered us over to selfishness and misery. Our nature is corrupted,
but not beyond redemption. In his actions worthless and depraved, man is
seen to be exalted and incomprehensible in his ends; in reality he is
worthy of abhorrence, but great in his destination. No philosophy or
religion has so taught us at once to know the greatness and the misery of
man as Christianity: this bids him recognize his low condition, but at the
same time to endeavor to become like God. We must humbly despise the world
and renounce ourselves; in order to love God, we must hate ourselves. Moral
reformation is an act of divine grace, and the merit of human volition
consists only in not resisting this. God transforms the heart by a heavenly
sweetness, grants it to know that spiritual pleasure is greater than bodily
pleasure, and infuses into it a disgust at the allurements of sin. Virtue
is finding one's greatest happiness in God or in the eternal good. As
morality is a matter of feeling, not of thought, so God, so even the first
principles on which the certitude of demonstration depends, are the object,
not of reason, but of the heart. That which certifies to the highest
indemonstrable principles is a feeling, a belief, an instinct of nature:
_les principes se sentent_. As a defender of the needs and rights of the
heart, Pascal is a forerunner of the great Rousseau. His depreciation of
the reason to exalt faith establishes a certain relationship with the
skeptics of his native land, among whom Cousin has unjustly classed him
(_Études sur Pascal_, 5th ed., 1857).[1]
[Footnote 1: Of the works on Pascal we may mention that of H. Reuchlin,
1840: Havet's edition of the _Pensées_, with notes, Paris, 1866; and the
_Étude_ by Ed. Droz, Paris, 1886.]
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a member of the Oratory of Jesus, in
Paris, which was opposed by the Jesuits, completed the development of
Cartesianism in the religious direction adopted by Pascal. His thought
is controlled by the endeavor to combine Cartesian metaphysics and
Augustinian Christianity, those two great forces which constituted the
double citadel of his order. His collected works appeared three years
before his death; and a new edition in four volumes, prepared by
J. Simon, in 1871. His chief work, _On the Search for Truth_ (new edition
by F. Bouillier, 1880), appeared in 1675, and was followed by the
_Treatise on Ethics_ (new edition by H. Joly, 1882) and the _Christian
and Metaphysical Meditations_ in 1684, the _Discussions on Metaphysics and
on Religion_ in 1688, and various polemic treatises. The best known among
the doctrines of Malebranche is the principle that _we see all things in
God (que nous voyons toutes choses en Dieu_.--_Recherche_, iii. 2, 6). What
does this mean, and how is it established? It is intended as an answer to
the question, How is it possible for the mind to cognize the body if, as
Descartes has shown, mind and body are two fundamentally distinct and
reciprocally independent substances?
The seeker after truth must first understand the sources of error. Of these
there are two, or, more exactly, five--as many as there are faculties of
the soul. Error may spring from either the cognitive or the appetitive
faculty; in the first case, either from sense-perception, the imagination,
or the pure understanding, and, in the latter, from the inclinations or the
passions. The inclinations and the passions do not reveal the nature of
things, but only express how they affect us, of what value they are to
us. Further still, the senses and the imagination only reproduce the
impressions which things make on us as feeling subjects, express only what
they are for us, not what they are in themselves. The senses have been
given us simply for the preservation of our body, and so long as we expect
nothing further from them than practical information concerning the
(useful or hurtful) relation of things to our body, there is no reason for
mistrusting them,--here we are not deceived by sensation, but at most by
the overhasty judgment of the will. "Consider the senses as false witnesses
in regard to the truth, but as trustworthy counselors in relation to the
interests of life!"--Sensation and imagination belong to the soul in virtue
of its union with the body; apart from this it is pure spirit. The essence
of the soul is thought, for this function is the only one which cannot be
abstracted from it without destroying it. Hence there can be no moment in
the life of the soul when it ceases to think; it thinks always (_l'âme
pense toujours_), only it does not always remember the fact.
The kinds of knowledge differ with the classes of things cognized. God is
known immediately and intuitively. He is necessary and unlimited being,
the universal, infinite being, being absolutely; he only is known through
himself. The concept of the infinite is the presupposition of the concept
of the finite, and the former is earlier in us; we gain the conception of
a particular thing only when we omit something from the idea of "being in
general," or limit it. God is cogitative, like spirits, and extended, like
bodies, but in an entirely different manner from created things. We know
our own soul through consciousness or inner perception. We know its
existence more certainly than that of bodies, but understand its nature
less perfectly than theirs. To know that it is capable of sensations of
pain, of heat, of light, we must have experienced them. For knowledge
of the minds of others we are dependent upon conjecture, on analogical
inferences from ourselves.
But how is the unextended soul capable of cognizing extended body? Only
through the medium of _ideas_. The ideas occupy an intermediate position
between objects, whose archetypes they are, and representations in the
soul, whose causes they are. The ideas, after the pattern of which God
has created things, and the relations among them (necessary truths), are
eternal, hence uncaused; they constitute the wisdom of God and are not
dependent on his will. Things are in God in archetypal form, and are
cognized through these their archetypes in God. Ideas are not produced by
bodies, by the emission of sensuous images,[1] nor are they originated by
the soul, or possessed by it as an innate possession. But God is the cause
of knowledge, although he neither imparts ideas to the soul in creation nor
produces them in it on every separate occasion. The ideas or perfections of
things are in God and are beheld by spirits, who likewise dwell in God as
the universal reason. As space is the place of bodies, so God is the
place of spirits. As bodies are modes of extension, so their ideas are
modifications of the idea of extension or of "intelligible extension." The
principle stated at the beginning, that things are perceived in God, is,
therefore, supported in the following way: we perceive bodies (through
ideas, which ideas, and we ourselves, are) in God.
[Footnote 1: Malebranche's refutation of the emanation hypothesis of the
Peripatetics is acute and still worthy of attention. If bodies transmitted
to the sense-organs forms like themselves, these copies, which would
evidently be corporeal, must, by their departure, diminish the mass of the
body from which they came away, and also, because of their impenetrability,
obstruct and interfere with one another, thus destroying the possibility of
clear impressions. A further point against the image theory is furnished by
the increase in the size of an object, when approached. And, above all, it
can never be made conceivable how motion can be transformed into sensations
or ideas.]
As the knowledge of truth has been found to consist in seeing things as God
sees them, so morality consists in man's loving things as God loves them,
or, what amounts to the same thing, in loving them to that degree which
is their due in view of their greater or less perfection. If, in the last
analysis, all cognition is knowledge of God, so all volition is loving God;
there is implanted in every creature a direction toward the Creator. God is
not only the primordial, unlimited being, he is also the highest good,
the final end of all striving. As the ideas of things are imperfect
participations in, or determinations of universal being, the absolute
perfection of God, so the particular desires, directed toward individual
objects, are limitations of the universal will toward the good. How does
it happen that the human will, so variously mistaking its fundamental
direction toward God, attaches itself to perishable goods, and prefers
worthless objects to those which have value, and earthly to heavenly
pleasure? The soul is, on the one hand, united to God, on the other, united
to the body. The possibility of error and sin rests on its union with the
body, since with the ideas (as representations of the pure understanding)
are associated sensuous images, which mingle with and becloud them, and
passions with the inclinations (or the will of the soul, in so far as it is
pure spirit). This gives, however, merely the possibility of the immoral,
sensuous, God-estranged disposition, which becomes actual only through
man's free act, when he fails to stand the test. For sin does not consist
in having passions, but in consenting to them. The passion is not caused by
the corporeal movement of which it is the sequel, but only occasioned by
it; and the same is true of the movement of the limbs and the decision
of the will. The one true cause of all that happens is God. It is he who
produces affections in the soul, and motion in the material world. For the
body possesses only the capacity of being moved; and the soul cannot be the
cause of the movement, since it would then have to know how it produces
the latter. In fact those who lack a medical training have no idea of the
muscular and nervous processes involved. Without God we cannot even move
the tongue. It is he who raises our arm, even when we use it contrary to
his law.
Anxious to guard his pantheism from being identified with that of Spinoza,
Malebranche points out that, according to his views, the universe is in
God, not, as with Spinoza, that God is in the universe; that he teaches
creation, which Spinoza denies; that he distinguishes, which Spinoza had
not done, between the world in God (the ideas of things) and the world of
created things, and between intelligible and corporeal extension. It may
be added that he maintains the freedom of God and of man, which Spinoza
rejects, and that he conceives God, who brings everything to pass, not as
nature, but as omnipotent will. Nevertheless, as Kuno Fischer has shown,
he approaches the naturalism of Spinoza more nearly than he is himself
conscious, when he explains finite things as limitations (hence as modes)
of the divine existence, posits the will of God in dependence on his wisdom
(the uncreated world of ideas), thus limiting it in its omnipotence, and,
which is decisive, makes God the sole author of motion, _i.e._, a natural
cause. His attempt at a Christian pantheism was consequently unsuccessful.
But its failure has not shattered the well-grounded fame of its thoughtful
author as the second greatest metaphysician of France.
Pierre Poiret[1] (1646-1719; for some years a preacher in Hamburg; lived
later in Rhynsburg near Leyden) was rendered hostile to Cartesianism
through the influence of mystical writings (among others those of
Antoinette Bourignon, which he published), and through the perception of
the results to which it had led in Spinoza. All cognition is taking up the
form of the object. The perfection of man is based more on his passive
capacities than on his active reason, which is concerned with mere ideas,
unreal shadows; the mathematical spirit leads to fatalism, to the denial of
freedom. The passive faculties, on the contrary, are in direct intercourse
with reality, the senses with external material objects, and the arcanum of
the mind, the basis of the soul, the intellect, with spiritual truths
and with God, whose existence is more certain than our own. Man is not
unconcerned in the development of the highest power of the mind, he must
offer himself to God in sincere humility. In subordination to the passive
intellect, the external faculty, the active reason, is also to be
cultivated; it deserves care, like the skin. Evil consists in the absurdity
that the creature, who apart from God is nothing, ascribes to himself an
independent existence.
[Footnote 1: Poiret: _Cogitationes Rationates de Deo, Anima, et Malo_,
1677, the later editions including a vehement attack on the atheism of
Spinoza: _L'Économie Divine_, 1682; _De Eruditione Solida, Superficiaria,
et Falsa_, 1692; _Fides et Ratio Collatae_, against Locke, 1707.]
Le Vayer and Huet, who have been already mentioned (pp. 50-51),
mediate between the founders of skepticism and Bayle, its most gifted
representative. The latter of these two wrote a _Criticism of the Cartesian
Philosophy_, 1689, besides a _Treatise on the Impotence of the Human Mind_,
which did not appear until after his death. He opposes, among other things,
the criterion of truth based on evidence, since there is an evidence of
the false not to be distinguished from that of the true, as well as the
position that God becomes a deceiver in the bestowal of a weak and blind
reason--for he gives us, at the same time, the power to know its deceptive
character.
As the last among those influenced by Descartes but who advanced beyond
him, may be mentioned the acute Pierre Bayle (1647-1706; professor in Sedan
and Rotterdam; _Works_, 1725-31[1]), who greatly excited the world of
letters by his occasional and polemic treatises, and still more by the
journal, _Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_ from 1684, and his
_Historical and Critical Dictionary_, in two volumes, 1695 and 1697.
Nowhere do the most opposite antitheses dwell in such close proximity as
in the mind of Bayle. Along with an ever watchful doubt he harbors a most
active zeal for knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has been
wrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Pünjer) a demoniacal pleasure in
bringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absolute
confidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic view
of human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work in
the latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution of
those differing in faith) being directed chiefly against optimism and the
deistic religion of reason, which holds the Christian dogmas capable of
proof, or, at least, faith and knowledge capable of reconciliation. The
doctrines of faith are not only above reason, incomprehensible, but
contrary to reason; and it is just on this that our merit in accepting
them depends. The mysteries of the Gospel do not seek success before the
judgment seat of thought, they demand the blind submission of the reason;
nay, if they were objects of knowledge they would cease to be mysteries.
Thus we must choose between religion and philosophy, for they cannot be
combined. For one who is convinced of the untrustworthiness of the reason
and her lack of competence in things supernatural, it is in no wise
contradictory or impossible to receive as true things which she declares
to be false; he will thank God for the gift of a faith which is entirely
independent of the clearness of its objects and of its agreement with the
axioms of philosophy. Even, when in purely scientific questions he calls
attention to difficulties and shows contradictions on every hand, Bayle by
no means intends to hold up principles with contradictory implications as
false, but only as uncertain.[2] The reason, he says, generalizing from his
own case, is capable only of destruction, not of construction; of
discovering error, not of finding truth; of finding reasons and
counter-reasons, of exciting doubt and controversy, not of vouchsafing
certitude. So long as it contents itself with controverting that which is
false, it is potent and salutary; but when, despising divine assistance, it
advances beyond this, it becomes dangerous, like a caustic drug which
attacks the healthy flesh after it has consumed that which was diseased.
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Bayle, L. Feuerbach. 1838, 2d ed., 1844; Eucken in the
_Allgemeine Zeitung_, supplement to Nos. 251, 252, October 27, 28, 1891.]
[Footnote 2: Thus, in regard to the problem of freedom, he finds it hard
to comprehend how the creatures, who are not the authors of their own
existence, can be the authors of their own actions, but, at the same time,
inadmissible to think of God as the cause of evil. He seeks only to show
the indemonstrability and incomprehensibility of freedom, not to reject it.
For he sees in it the condition of morality, and calls attention to
the fact that the difficulties in which those who deny freedom involve
themselves are far greater than those of their opponents. He shows himself
entirely averse to the determinism and pantheism of Spinoza.]
He who seeks to refute skepticism must produce a criterion of truth. If
such exists, it is certainly that advanced by Descartes, the evidence, the
evident clearness of a principle. Well, then, the following principles pass
for evident: That one, who does not exist, can have no responsibility for
an evil action; that two things, which are identical with the same thing,
are identical with each other; that I am the same man to-day that I was
yesterday. Now, the revealed doctrines of original sin and of the Trinity
show that the first and second of these axioms are false, and the Church
doctrine of the preservation of the world as a continuous creation, that
the last principle is uncertain. Thus if not even self-evidence furnishes
us a criterion of truth, we must conclude that none whatever exists.
Further, in regard to the origin of the world from a single principle, its
creation by God, we find this supported, no doubt, both by the conclusions
of the pure reason and by the consideration of nature, but controvened by
the fact of evil, by the misery and wickedness of man. Is it conceivable
that a holy and benevolent God has created so unhappy and wicked a being?
Bayle's motives in defending faith against reason were, on the one hand,
his personal piety, on the other, his conviction of the unassailable purity
of Christian ethics. All the sects agree in regard to moral principles, and
it is this which assures us of the divinity of the Christian revelation.
Nevertheless, he does not conceal from himself the fact that possession of
the theoretical side of religion is far from being a guarantee of practice
in conformity with her precepts. It is neither true that faith alone leads
to morality nor that unbelief is the cause of immorality. A state composed
of atheists would be not at all impossible, if only strict punishments and
strict notions of honor were insisted upon.
The judgments of the natural reason in moral questions are as certain
and free from error as its capacity is shown to be weak and limited in
theoretical science. The idea of morality never deceives anyone; the moral
law is innate in every man. Although Christianity has given the best
development of our duties, yet the moral law can be understood and followed
by all men, even by heathen and atheists. We do not need to be Christians
in order to act virtuously; the knowledge given by conscience is not
dependent upon revelation. From the knowledge of the good to the practice
of it is, it is true, a long step; we may be convinced of moral truth
without loving it, and God's grace alone is able to strengthen us against
the power of the passions, by adding to the illumination of the mind an
inclination of the heart toward the good. Temperament, custom, self-love
move the soul more strongly than general truths. As in life pleasure is far
outbalanced by pain and vexation, so far more evil acts are done than good
ones: history is a collection of misdeeds, with scarcely one virtuous act
for a thousand crimes. It is not the external action that constitutes the
ethical character of a deed, but the motive or disposition; almsgiving from
motives of pride is a vice, and only when practiced out of love to one's
neighbors, a virtue. God looks only at the act of the will; our highest
duty, and one which admits of no exceptions, is never to act contrary to
conscience.