GEULINCX AND MALEBRANCHE.
1. Mind and matter, consciousness and existence, Descartes had fixed in
the farthest separation from each other. Both, with him, are substances,
independent powers, reciprocally excluding oppositions. Mind (_i. e._ in
his view the simple self, the Ego) he regarded as essentially the
abstraction from the sensuous, the distinguishing itself from matter and
the separating of matter from itself; matter was essentially the
complete opposition to thought. If the relation of these two powers be
as has been given, then the question arises, how can there ever be a
filiation (_Rapport_) between them? How, on the one hand, can the
affections of the body work upon the soul, and on the other hand, how
can the volition of the soul direct the body, if the two are absolutely
distinct and opposed to each other? At this point, _Arnold Geulincx_ (a
disciple of Descartes, born at Antwerp 1625, and died as professor of
philosophy at Leyden 1669) took up the Cartesian system, and endeavored
to give it a greater logical perfection. According to Geulincx neither
the soul works immediately upon the body, nor the body immediately upon
the soul. Certainly not the former: for though _I_ can determine and
move my body in many respects arbitrarily, yet _I_ am not the cause of
this movement; for I know not how it happens, I know not in what manner
motion is communicated from my brain to the different parts of my body,
and it is impossible that I should do that in respect of which I cannot
see how it is done. But if I cannot produce motion in my body, much less
can I do this outside of my body. I am therefore simply a contemplator
of the world; the only act which is peculiarly mine is contemplation.
But even this contemplation arises in a singular manner. For if we ask
how we obtain our observations of the external world, we find it
impossible that the external world should directly give them to us. For
however much we may say that, _e. g._ in the act of seeing, the external
objects produce an image in my eye or an impression in my brain as in
wax, yet this impression or picture is after all only something
corporeal or material, and cannot therefore come into my mind, which is
absolutely distinct from every thing material. There remains, therefore,
only that we seek the mediation of the two sides in God. It is God alone
who can unite the outer with the inner, and the inner with the outer;
who can make the outer phenomena to become inner representations or
notions of the mind; who can thus bring the world within the mind’s
observation, and the inner determinations of the will outward into deed.
Hence every working, every act which unites the outer and inner, which
brings the mind and the world into connection, is neither a working of
the mind nor of the world, but only an immediate working of God. The
movement of my limbs does not follow from my will, but only because it
is the will of God that these movements should follow when I will. My
will is an _occasion_ by which God moves my body—an affection of my body
is an _occasion_ by which God brings within me a representation of the
external world: the one is only the occasional cause of the other (hence
the name occasionalism). My will, however, does not move God to move my
limbs, but he who has imparted motion to matter and given it its laws,
created also my will, and has so connected together the most diverse
things, the movement of matter and the arbitrium of my will, that when
my will puts forth a volition, such a motion follows as it wills, and
the motion follows the volition without any interaction or physical
influence exerted by the one upon the other. But just as it is with two
clocks which go exactly alike, the one striking precisely as the other,
their harmony is not the result of any reciprocal interacting, but
follows because both have been fashioned and directed alike,—so is it
with the movements of the body and the will, they harmonize only through
that exalted artist who has in this ineffable way connected them
together. We see from this that Geulincx has carried to its limit the
dualistic basis of Descartes. While Descartes called the union of mind
and matter a conjunction through power, Geulincx named it a miracle.
There is consequently in this view no immanent, but only a transcendent
mediation possible.
2. Closely connected with this view of Geulincx, and at the same time a
real consequence and a wider development of the Cartesian
philosophizing, is the philosophic standpoint of _Nicolas Malebranche_.
He was born at Paris in 1638, chosen a member of the “_Congrégation de
l’oratoire_” in his twenty-second year, won over to philosophy through
the writings of Descartes, and died, after numerous feuds with
theological opposers, in 1715.
Malebranche started with the Cartesian view of the relation between mind
and matter. Both are strictly distinct from each other, and in their
essence opposed. How now does the mind, (_i. e._ the Ego) gain a
knowledge of the external world and have ideas of corporeal things? For
it comes to know things only by means of ideas,—not through itself, not
immediately. Now the mind can neither gain these ideas from itself, nor
from the things themselves. Not from itself, for it is absolutely
opposed to the bodily world, and hence has no capacity to idealize, to
spiritualize material things, though they must become spiritualized
before they can be introduced to the mind; in a word, the mind, which in
relation to the material world is only an opposition, has no power to
destroy this opposition. Just as little has the mind derived these ideas
from things: for matter is not visible through itself, but rather as
antithetic to mind is it that which is absolutely unintelligible, and
which cannot be idealized, that which is absolutely without light and
clearness.—It only remains, therefore, that the mind beholds things in a
third that stands above the opposition of the two, viz., God. God, as
the absolute substance, is the absolute ideality, the infinite power to
spiritualize all things. Material things have no real opposition for
God, to him they are no impenetrable darkness, but an ideal existence;
all things are in him spiritually and ideally; the whole world, as
intellectual or ideal, is God. God is, therefore, the higher mean
between the Ego and the external world. In him we behold ideas, we being
so strictly united with him, that he may properly be called the place of
minds.
The philosophy of Malebranche, whose simple thought is this, that we
know and see all things in God,—shows itself, like the occasionalism of
Geulincx, to be a peculiar attempt to stand upon the basis of the
Cartesian philosophy, and with its fundamental thought to overcome its
dualism.
3. Two defects or inner contradictions have manifested themselves in the
philosophy of Descartes. He had considered mind and matter as
substances, each one of which excluded the other from itself, and had
sought a mediation of the two. But with such conditions no mediation
other than an external one is possible. If thought and existence are
each one substance, then can they only negate and exclude each other.
Unnatural theories, like those which have been mentioned, are the
inevitable result of this. The simplest way out of the difficulty is to
give up the principle first assumed, to strip off their independence
from the two opposites, and instead of regarding them as substances,
view them as accidents of one substance. This way of escape is moreover
indicated by a particular circumstance. According to Descartes, God is
the infinite substance, the peculiar substance in the proper sense of
the word. Mind and matter are indeed substances, but only in relation to
each other; in relation to God they are dependent, and not substances.
This is, strictly taken, a contradiction. The true consequence were
rather to say that neither the Ego (_i. e._ the individual thinking) nor
the material things are independent, but that this can be predicated
only of the one substance, God; this substance alone has a real being,
and all the being which belongs to individual essences these latter
possess not as a substantial being, but only as accidents of the one
only true and real substance. Malebranche approached this consequence.
With him the bodily world is ideally at least resolved and made to sink
in God, in whom are the eternal archetypes of all things. But _Spinoza_
has most decidedly and logically adopted this consequence, and affirmed
the accidence of all individual being and the exclusive substantiality
of God alone. His system is the perfection and the truth of the
Cartesian.