28. The Paraphrase and Annotations of Hammond on the New Testament,

give a different colour to the Epistles of St. Paul, from that which

they display in the hands of Beza and the other theologians of the

sixteenth century. And the name of Hammond stood so high with the

Anglican clergy, that he naturally turned the tide of interpretation

his own way. The writings of Fowler, Wilkins, and Whichcot are chiefly

intended to exhibit the moral lustre of Christianity, and to

magnify the importance of virtuous life. The first of these ventured

on an express defence of Latitudinarianism; but in general those to

whom their adversaries gave that name declined the invidious

prejudices which they knew to be associated with it. Wilkins left an

unfinished work on the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion.

Twelve chapters only, about half the volume, were ready for the press

at his death; the rest was compiled by Tillotson as well as the

materials left by the author would allow; and the expressions employed

lead us to believe that much was due to the editor. The latter’s

preface strongly presses the separate obligation of natural religion,

upon which both the disciples of Hobbes, and many of the less learned

sectaries, were at issue with him.

|Socinians in England.|

29. We do not find much of importance written on the Trinitarian

controversy before the middle of the seventeenth century, except by

the Socinians themselves. But the case was now very different. Though

the Polish or rather German Unitarians did not produce more

distinguished men than before, they came more forward in the field of

dispute. Finally, expelled from Poland in 1660, they sought refuge in

more learned, as well as more tolerant, regions, and especially in the

genial soil of religious liberty, the United Provinces. Even here,

they enjoyed no avowed toleration; but the press, with a very slight

concealment of place, under the attractive words, Eleutheropolis,

Irenopolis, or Freystadt, was ready to serve them with its natural

impartiality. They began to make a slight progress in England; the

writings of Biddle were such as even Cromwell, though habitually

tolerant, did not overlook; the author underwent an imprisonment both

at that time and after the Restoration. In general, the Unitarian

writers preserved a disguise. Milton’s treatise, not long since

brought to light, goes on the Arian hypothesis, which had probably

been countenanced by some others. It became common, in the reign of

Charles II., for the English divines to attack the Anti-Trinitarians

of each denomination.

|Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicenæ.|

30. An epoch is supposed to have been made in this controversy, by the

famous work of Bull, Defensio Fidei Nicenæ. This was not primarily

directed against the heterodox party. In the Dogmata Theologica of

Petavius, published in 1644, that learned Jesuit, laboriously

compiling passages from the fathers, had come to the conclusion that

most of those before the Nicene council had seemed, by their language,

to run into nearly the same heresy as that which the council had

condemned, and this inference appeared to rest on a long series of

quotations. The Arminian Courcelles, and even the English philosopher,

Cudworth, the latter of whom was as little suspected of a heterodox

leaning, as Petavius himself, had come to the same result; so that a

considerable triumph was given to the Arians, in which the Socinians,

perhaps at that time more numerous, seem to have thought themselves

entitled to partake. Bull had, therefore, to contend with authorities

not to be despised by the learned.

31. The Defensio Fidei Nicenæ was published in 1685. It did not want

answerers in England; but it obtained a great reputation, and an

assembly of the French clergy, through the influence of Bossuet,

returned thanks to the author. It was, indeed, evident that Petavius,

though he had certainly formed his opinion with perfect honesty, was

preparing the way for an inference, that if the primitive fathers

could be heterodox on a point of so great magnitude, we must look for

infallibility, not in them nor in the diffusive church, but in general

councils presided over by the pope, or ultimately in the pope himself.

This, though not unsuitable to the notions of some Jesuits, was

diametrically opposite to the principles of the Gallican church, which

professed to repose on a perpetual and catholic tradition.

|Not satisfactory to all.|

32. Notwithstanding the popularity of this defence of the Nicene

faith, and the learning it displays, the author was far from ending

the controversy, or from satisfying all his readers. It was alledged

that he does not meet the question with which he deals; that the word

ὁμοουσιος [homoousios], being almost new at the time of the council,

and being obscure and metaphysical in itself, required a precise

definition to make the reader see his way before him, or, at least,

one better than Bull has given, which the adversary might probably

adopt without much scruple; that the passages adduced from the fathers

are often insufficient for his purpose; that he confounds the eternal

essence with the eternal personality or distinctness of the Logos,

though well aware, of course, that many of the early writers employed

different names (ενδιαθετος [endiathetos] and προφορικος

[prophorikos]) for these; and that he does not repel some of the

passages which can hardly bear an orthodox interpretation. It was

urged, moreover, that his own hypothesis, taken altogether, is but a

palliated Arianism; that by insisting, for more than one hundred

pages, on the subordination of the Son to the Father, he came close to

what since has borne that name, though it might not be precisely what

had been condemned at Nice, and could not be reconciled with the

Athanasian creed, except by such an interpretation of the latter as is

neither probable, nor has been reputed orthodox.

|Mystics.|

|Fenelon.|

33. Among the theological writers of the Roman church, and in a less

degree among protestants, there has always been a class not

inconsiderable for numbers or for influence, generally denominated

mystics, or, when their language has been more unmeasured, enthusiasts

and fanatics. These may be distinguished into two kinds, though it

must readily be understood that they may often run much into one

another; the first believing that the soul, by immediate communion

with the Deity, receives a peculiar illumination and knowledge of

truths, not cognisable by the understanding; the second less

solicitous about intellectual than moral light, and aiming at such

pure contemplation of the attributes of God, and such an intimate

perception of spiritual life as may end in a sort of absorption into

the divine essence. But I should not probably have alluded to any

writings of this description, if the two most conspicuous luminaries

of the French church, Bossuet and Fenelon, had not clashed with each

other in that famous controversy of Quietism, to which the

enthusiastic writings of Madame Guyon gave birth. The “Maximes des

Saints” of Fenelon I have never seen: the editions of his entire works

as they affect to be, do not include what the church has condemned;

and the original book has probably become scarce. Fenelon appears to

have been treated by his friend, shall we call him? or rival, with

remarkable harshness. Bossuet might have felt some jealousy at the

rapid elevation of the archbishop of Cambray: but we need not have

recourse to this; the rigour of orthodoxy in a temper like his will

account for all. There could be little doubt but that many saints

honoured by the church had uttered things quite as strong as any that

Fenelon’s work contained. Bossuet however succeeded in obtaining its

condemnation at Rome. Fenelon was of the second class above-mentioned

among the mystics, and seems to have been absolutely free from such

pretences to illumination as we find in Behmen or Barclay. The pure

disinterested love of God was the main spring of his religious theory.

The Divine Œconomy of Poiret, 1686, and the writings of a German

quietist, Spener, do not require any particular mention.[741]

[741] Bibl. Universelle, v., 412; xvi., 224.

|Change in the character of theological literature.|

34. This later period of the seventeenth century was marked by an

increasing boldness in religious inquiry; we find more disregard of

authority, more disposition to question received tenets, a more

suspicious criticism, both as to the genuineness and the credibility

of ancient writings, a more ardent love of truth, that is, of

perceiving and understanding what is true, instead of presuming that

we possess it without any understanding at all. Much of this was

associated, no doubt, with the other revolutions in literary opinion;

with the philosophy of Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Bayle, and

Locke, with the spirit which a slightly learned, yet acute generation

of men rather conversant with the world than with libraries, to whom

the appeal in modern languages must be made, was sure to breathe, with

that incessant reference to proof which the physical sciences taught

mankind to demand. Hence, quotations are comparatively rare in the

theological writings of this age; they are better reduced to their due

office of testimony as to fact, sometimes of illustration or better

statement of an argument, but not so much alledged as argument or

authority in themselves. Even those who combated on the side of

established doctrines were compelled to argue more from themselves,

lest the public, their umpire, should reject, with an opposite

prejudice, what had enslaved the prejudices of their fathers.

|Freedom of many writings.|

35. It is well known that a disbelief in Christianity became very

frequent about this time. Several books more or less appear to

indicate this spirit, but the charge has often been made with no

sufficient reason. Of Hobbes, enough has been already said, and

Spinosa’s place as a metaphysician will be in the next chapter. His

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, published anonymously at Amsterdam,

with the false date of Hamburg, in 1670, contains many observations on

the Old Testament, which, though they do not really affect its general

authenticity and truth, clashed with the commonly received opinion of

its absolute inspiration. Some of these remarks were, if not borrowed,

at least repeated in a book of more celebrity, Sentimens de quelques

Theologiens d’Hollande sur l’Histoire Critique du Père Simon. This

work is written by Le Clerc, but it has been doubted whether he is the

author of some acute, but hardy, remarks on the inspiration of

scripture which it contains. These, however, must be presumed to

coincide for the most part with his own opinion; but he has afterwards

declared his dissent from the hypothesis contained in these volumes,

that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. The Archæologia

Philosophica of Thomas Burnet is intended to question the literal

history of the creation and fall. But few will pretend that either Le

Clerc or Burnet were disbelievers in revelation.

|Thoughts of Pascal.|

36. Among those who sustained the truth of Christianity by argument

rather than authority, the first place both in order of time and of

excellence is due to Pascal, though his Thoughts were not published

till 1670, some years after his death, and, in the first edition, not

without suppressions. They have been supposed to be fragments of a

more systematic work that he had planned, or perhaps only reflections

committed to paper, with no design of publication in their actual

form. But, as is generally the case with works of genius we do not

easily persuade ourselves that they could have been improved by any

such alteration as would have destroyed their type. They are at

present bound together by a real coherence through the predominant

character of the reasonings and sentiments, and give us everything

that we could desire in a more regular treatise without the tedious

verbosity which regularity is apt to produce. The style is not so

polished as in the Provincial Letters, and the sentences are sometimes

ill constructed and elliptical. Passages almost transcribed from

Montaigne have been published by careless editors as Pascal’s.

37. But the Thoughts of Pascal are to be ranked, as a monument of his

genius, above the Provincial Letters, though some have asserted the

contrary. They burn with an intense light; condensed in expression,

sublime, energetic, rapid, they hurry away the reader till he is

scarcely able or willing to distinguish the sophisms from the truth

they contain. For that many of them are incapable of bearing a calm

scrutiny is very manifest to those who apply such a test. The notes of

Voltaire, though always intended to detract, are sometimes

unanswerable; but the splendour of Pascal’s eloquence absolutely

annihilates, in effect on the general reader, even this antagonist.

38. Pascal had probably not read very largely, which has given an

ampler sweep to his genius. Except the Bible and the writings of

Augustin, the book that seems most to have attracted him was the

Essays of Montaigne. Yet no men could be more unlike in personal

dispositions and in the cast of their intellect. But Pascal, though

abhorring the religious and moral carelessness of Montaigne, found

much that fell in with his own reflections in the contempt of human

opinions, the perpetual humbling of human reason, which runs through

the bold and original work of his predecessor. He quotes no book so

frequently; and, indeed, except Epictetus, and once or twice

Descartes, he hardly quotes any other at all. Pascal was too acute a

geometer, and too sincere a lover of truth to countenance the sophisms

of mere Pyrrhonism; but, like many theological writers, in exalting

faith he does not always give reason her value, and furnishes weapons

which the sceptic might employ against himself. It has been said that

he denies the validity of the proofs of natural religion. This seems

to be in some measure an error, founded on mistaking the objections he

puts in the mouths of unbelievers for his own. But it must, I think,

be admitted that his arguments for the being of a God are too often

_à tutiori_, that it is the safer side to take.

39. The Thoughts of Pascal on miracles abound in proofs of his

acuteness and originality; an originality much more striking when we

recollect that the subject had not been discussed as it has since, but

with an intermixture of some sophistical and questionable positions.

Several of them have a secret reference to the famous cure of his

niece, Mademoiselle Perier, by the holy thorn. But he is embarrassed

with the difficult question whether miraculous events are sure tests

of the doctrine they support, and is not wholly consistent in his

reasoning, or satisfactory in his distinctions. I am unable to

pronounce whether Pascal’s other observations on the rational proofs

of Christianity are as original as they are frequently ingenious and

powerful.

40. But the leading principle of Pascal’s theology, that from which he

deduces the necessary truth of revelation, is the fallen nature of

mankind; dwelling less upon scriptural proofs, which he takes

for granted, than on the evidence which he supposes man himself to

supply. Nothing, however, can be more dissimilar than his beautiful

visions to the vulgar Calvinism of the pulpit. It is not the sordid,

groveling, degraded, Caliban of that school, but the ruined archangel

that he delights to paint. Man is so great, that his greatness is

manifest, even in his knowledge of his own misery. A tree does not

know itself to be miserable. It is true that to know we are miserable

is misery; but still it is greatness to know it. All his misery proves

his greatness; it is the misery of a great lord, of a king,

dispossessed of their own. Man is the feeblest branch of nature, but

it is a branch that thinks. He requires not the universe to crush him.

He may be killed by a vapour, by a drop of water. But if the whole

universe should crush him, he would be nobler than that which causes

his death, because he knows that he is dying, and the universe would

not know its power over him. This is very evidently sophistical and

declamatory; but it is the sophistry of a fine imagination. It would

be easy, however, to find better passages. The dominant idea recurs in

almost every page of Pascal. His melancholy genius plays in wild and

rapid flashes, like lightning round the scathed oak, about the fallen

greatness of man. He perceives every characteristic quality of his

nature under these conditions. They are the solution of every problem,

the clearing up of every inconsistency that perplexes us. “Man,” he

says very finely, “has a secret instinct that leads him to seek

diversion and employment from without; which springs from the sense of

his continual misery. And he has another secret instinct, remaining

from the greatness of his original nature, which teaches him that

happiness can only exist in repose. And from these two contrary

instincts there arises in him an obscure propensity, concealed in his

soul, which prompts him to seek repose through agitation, and even to

fancy that the contentment he does not enjoy will be found, if by

struggling yet a little longer he can open a door to rest.”[742]

[742] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 121.

41. It can hardly be conceived that any one would think the worse of

human nature or of himself by reading these magnificent lamentations

of Pascal. He adorns and ennobles the degeneracy he exaggerates. The

ruined aqueduct, the broken column, the desolated city, suggest no

ideas but of dignity and reverence. No one is ashamed of a misery

which bears witness to his grandeur. If we should persuade a labourer

that the blood of princes flows in his veins, we might spoil his

contentment with the only lot he has drawn, but scarcely kill in him

the seeds of pride.

42. Pascal, like many others who have dwelt on this alledged

degeneracy of mankind, seems never to have disentangled his mind from

the notion that what we call human nature has not merely an arbitrary

and grammatical, but an intrinsic objective reality. The common and

convenient forms of language, the analogies of sensible things, which

the imagination readily supplies, conspire to delude us into this

fallacy. Each man is born with certain powers and dispositions which

constitute his own nature; and the resemblance of these in all his

fellows produces a general idea, or a collective appellation,

whichever we may prefer to say, called the nature of man; but few

would in this age contend for the existence of this as a substance

capable of qualities, and those qualities variable, or subject to

mutation. The corruption of human nature is therefore a phrase which

may convey an intelligible meaning, if it is acknowledged to be merely

analogical and inexact, but will mislead those who do not keep this in

mind. Man’s nature, as it now is, that which each man and all men

possess, is the immediate workmanship of God, as much as at his

creation; nor is any other hypothesis consistent with theism.

43. This notion of a real universal in human nature, presents to us in

an exaggerated light those anomalies from which writers of Pascal’s

school are apt to infer some vast change in our original constitution.

Exaggerated, I say, for it cannot be denied, that we frequently

perceive a sort of incoherence, as it appears at least to our

defective vision, in the same individual; and, like threads of various

hues shot through one web, the love of vice and of virtue, the

strength and weakness of the heart, are wonderfully blended in

self-contradictory and self-destroying conjunction. But even if we

should fail altogether in solving the very first steps of this

problem, there is no course for a reasonable being, except to

acknowledge the limitations of his own faculties; and it seems rather

unwarrantable, on the credit of this humble confession, that we do not

comprehend the depths of what has been withheld from us, to substitute

something far more incomprehensible and revolting to our moral and

rational capacities in its place. “What,” says Pascal, “can be

more contrary to the rules of our wretched justice, than to damn

eternally an infant incapable of volition, for an offence wherein he

seems to have had no share, and which was committed six thousand years

before he was born? Certainly, nothing shocks us more rudely than this

doctrine; and yet, without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of

all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Man is more inconceivable

without this mystery, than the mystery is inconceivable to man.”

44. It might be wandering from the proper subject of these volumes if

we were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether, while the creation

of a world so full of evil must ever remain the most inscrutable of

mysteries, we might not be led some way in tracing the connection of

moral and physical evil in mankind with his place in that creation;

and especially, whether the law of continuity, which it has not

pleased his Maker to break with respect to his bodily structure, and

which binds that, in the unity of one great type, to the lower forms

of animal life by the common conditions of nourishment, reproduction,

and self-defence, has not rendered necessary both the physical

appetites and the propensities which terminate in self: whether,

again, the superior endowments of his intellectual nature, his

susceptibility of moral emotion, and of those disinterested affections

which, if not exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than any

inferior being; above all, the gifts of conscience, and a capacity to

know God, might not be expected, even beforehand, by their conflict

with the animal passions, to produce some partial inconsistencies,

some anomalies at least, which he could not himself explain, in so

compound a being. Every link in the long chain of creation does not

pass by easy transition into the next. There are necessary chasms,

and, as it were, leaps, from one creature to another, which, though

not exceptions to the law of continuity, are accommodations of it to a

new series of being. If man was made in the image of God, he was also

made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has

weighed the stars, and made the lightning his slave, approaches to

that of a speechless brute, who wanders in the forests of Sumatra.

Thus, standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic

natures, what wonder that he should partake of both! But these are

things which it is difficult to touch; nor would they have been here

introduced, but in order to weaken the force of positions so

confidently asserted by many, and so eloquently by Pascal.

|Vindications of Christianity.|

45. Among the works immediately designed to confirm the truth of

Christianity, a certain reputation was acquired, through the known

erudition of its author, by the Demonstratio Evangelica of Huet,

bishop of Avranches. This is paraded with definitions, axioms, and

propositions, in order to challenge the name it assumes. But the

axioms, upon which so much is to rest, are often questionable or

equivocal; as, for instance: Omnis prophetia est verax, quæ prædixit

res eventu deinde completas--equivocal in the word _verax_. Huet

also confirms his axioms by argument, which shows that they are not

truly such. The whole book is full of learning; but he frequently

loses sight of the points he would prove, and his quotations fall

beside the mark. Yet he has furnished much to others, and possibly no

earlier work on the same subject is so elaborate and comprehensive.

The next place, if not a higher one, might be given to the treatise of

Abbadie, a French refugee, published in 1684. His countrymen bestow on

it the highest eulogies; but it was never so well known in England,

and is now almost forgotten. The oral conferences of Limborch with

Orobio, a Jew of considerable learning and ability, on the prophecies

relating to the Messiah, were reduced into writing and published; they

are still in some request. No book of this period among many that were

written, reached so high a reputation in England as Leslie’s Short

Method with the Deists, published in 1694: in which he has started an

argument, pursued with more critical analysis by others, on the

peculiarly distinctive marks of credibility that pertain to the

scriptural miracles. The authenticity of this little treatise has been

idly questioned on the Continent, for no better reason than that a

translation of it has been published in a posthumous edition (1732) of

the works of Saint Real, who died in 1692. But posthumous editions are

never deemed of sufficient authority to establish a literary title

against possession; and Prosper Marchand informs us, that several

other tracts, in this edition of Saint Real, are erroneously ascribed

to him. The internal evidence that the Short Method was written by a

protestant should be conclusive.[743]

[743] The Biographie Universelle, art. Leslie, says: Cet ouvrage,

qui passe pour ce qu’il a fait de mieux, lui a été contesté. Le

Docteur Gleigh [sic] a fait de grands efforts pour prouver qu’il

appartenait à Leslie, quoiqu’il fût publié parmi les ouvrages de

l’Abbe de Saint Real, mort en 1692. It is melancholy to see this

petty spirit of cavil against an English writer in so respectable

a work as the Biographic Universelle. No _grands efforts_ could

be required from Dr. Gleig or anyone else, to prove that a book

was written by Leslie, which bore his name, which was addressed

to an English peer, and had gone through many editions; when

there is literally no claimant on the other side; for a

posthumous edition, forty years after an author’s death, without

attestation, is no literary evidence at all, even where a book is

published for the first time, much less where it has a known

_status_ as the production of a certain author. This is so

manifest to anyone who has the slightest tincture of critical

judgment, that we need not urge the palpable improbability of

ascribing to Saint Real, a Romish ecclesiastic, an argument which

turns peculiarly on the distinction between the scriptural

miracles and those alledged upon inferior evidence. I have lost,

or never made, the reference to Prosper Marchand; but the passage

will be found in his Dictionnaire Historique, which contains a

full article on Saint Real.

|Progress of tolerant principles.|

46. Every change in public opinion which this period witnessed,

confirmed the principles of religious toleration, that had taken root

in the earlier part of the century; the progress of a larger and more

catholic theology, the weakening of bigotry in the minds of laymen,

and the consequent disregard of ecclesiastical clamour, not only in

England and Holland, but to a considerable extent in France; we might

even add, the violent proceedings of the last government, in the

revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the cruelties which attended

it. Louis XIV., at a time when mankind were beginning to renounce the

very theory of persecution, renewed the ancient enormities of its

practice, and thus unconsciously gave the aid of moral sympathy and

indignation to the adverse argument. The Protestant refugees of

France, scattered among their brethren, brought home to all minds the

great question of free conscience; not with the stupid and impudent

limitation which even protestants had sometimes employed, that truth

indeed might not be restrained, but that error might; a broader

foundation was laid by the great advocates of toleration in this

period, Bayle, Limborch, and Locke, as it had formerly been by Taylor

and Episcopius.[744]

[744] The Dutch clergy, and a French minister in Holland, Jurieu,

of great polemical fame in his day, though now chiefly known by

means of his adversaries, Bayle and Le Clerc, strenuously

resisted both the theory of general toleration, and the moderate

or liberal principles in religion which were connected with it.

Le Clerc passed his life in fighting this battle, and many

articles in the Bibliothèque Universelle relate to it.

|Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary.|

47. Bayle, in 1686, while yet the smart of his banishment was keenly

felt, published his Philosophical Commentary on the text in Scripture,

“Compel them to come in;” a text which some of the advocates of

persecution were accustomed to produce. He gives in the first part

nine reasons against this literal meaning, among which none are

philological. In the second part he replies to various objections.

This work of Bayle does not seem to me as subtle and logical as he was

wont to be, notwithstanding the formal syllogisms with which he

commences each of his chapters. His argument against compulsory

conversions, which the absurd interpretation of the text by his

adversaries required, is indeed irresistible; but this is far from

sufficiently establishing the right of toleration itself. It appears

not very difficult for a skilful sophist, and none was more so than

Bayle himself, to have met some of his reasoning with a specious

reply. The sceptical argument of Taylor, that we can rarely be sure of

knowing the truth ourselves, and consequently of condemning in others

what is error, he touches but slightly; nor does he dwell on the

political advantages which experience has shown a full toleration to

possess. In the third part of the Philosophical Commentary, he refutes

the apology of Augustin for persecution; and a few years afterwards he

published a supplement answering a book of Jurieu, which had appeared

in the mean time.

|Locke’s Letter on Toleration.|

48. Locke published anonymously his Letter on Toleration in 1689. The

season was propitious; a legal tolerance of public worship had first

been granted to the dissenters after the revolution, limited indeed to

such as held most of the doctrines of the church, but preparing the

nation for a more extensive application of its spirit. In the Liberty

of Prophesying, Taylor had chiefly in view to deduce the justice of

tolerating a diversity in religion from the difficulty of knowing the

truth. He is not very consistent as to the political question, and

limits too narrowly the province of tolerable opinions. Locke goes

more expressly to the right of the civil magistrate, not omitting, but

dwelling less forcibly on the latitudinarian scepticism of his

predecessor. His own theory of government came to his aid. The clergy

in general, and perhaps Taylor himself, had derived the magistrate’s

jurisdiction from paternal power. And as they apparently assumed this

power to extend over adult children, it was natural to give those who

succeeded to it in political communities, a large sway over the moral

and religious behaviour of subjects. Locke, adopting the opposite

theory of compact, defines the commonwealth to be a society of men

constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their

own civil interests. He denies altogether that the care of souls

belongs to the civil magistrate, as it has never been committed to

him. “All the power of civil government relates only to men’s civil

interests, is confined to the things of this world, and hath nothing

to do with the world to come.”

49. The admission of this principle would apparently decide the

controversy, so far as it rests on religious grounds. But Locke has

recourse to several other arguments independent of it. He proves, with

no great difficulty, that the civil power cannot justly, or

consistently with any true principle of religion, compel men to

profess what they do not believe. This, however, is what very few

would, at present, be inclined to maintain. The real question was as

to the publicity of opinions deemed heterodox, and especially in

social worship; and this is what those who held the magistrate to

possess an authority patriarchal, universal, and arbitrary, and who

were also rigidly tenacious of the necessity of an orthodox faith, and

perfectly convinced that it was no other than their own, would hardly

be persuaded to admit by any arguments that Locke has alledged. But

the tendency of public opinion had begun to manifest itself against

both these tenets of the high-church party, so that, in the eighteenth

century, the principles of general tolerance became too popular to be

disputed with any chance of attention. Locke was engaged in a

controversy, through his first letter on toleration, which produced a

second and a third; but it does not appear that these, though longer

than the first, have considerably modified its leading positions.[745]

It is to be observed that he pleads for the universal toleration of

all modes of worship not immoral in their nature, or involving

doctrines inimical to good government; placing in the latter category

some tenets of the church of Rome.

[745] Warburton has fancied that Locke’s real sentiments are only

discoverable in his first Letter on Toleration, and that in the

two latter he “combats his intolerant adversary quite through the

controversy with his own principles, well foreseeing, that at

such a time of prejudice arguments built on received opinions

would have greatest weight, and make quickest impression on the

body of the people whom it was his business to gain.” Biogr.

Britannica, art. Locke.

|French Sermons.|

50. It is confessed by Goujet that, even in the middle of the

seventeenth century, France could boast very little of pulpit

eloquence. Frequent quotations from heathen writers and from the

schoolmen, with little solid morality and less good reasoning, make up

the sermons of that age.[746] But the revolution in this style, as in

all others, though perhaps gradual, was complete in the reign of

Louis XIV. A slight sprinkling of passages from the fathers, and still

more frequently from the Scriptures, but always short, and seeming to

rise out of the preacher’s heart, rather than to be sought for in his

memory, replaced that intolerable parade of a theological common place

book, which had been as customary in France as in England. The style

was to be the perfection of French eloquence, the reasoning persuasive

rather than dogmatic, the arrangement more methodical and distributive

than at present, but without the excess we find in our old preachers.

This is the general character of French sermons; but those who most

adorned the pulpit, had of course their individual distinctions.

Without delaying to mention those who are now not greatly remembered,

such as La Rue, Hubert, Mascaron, we must confine ourselves to three

of high reputation, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, and Fléchier.

[746] Bibliothèque Française, vol. ii., p. 283.

|Bourdaloue.|

51. Bourdaloue, a Jesuit, but as little of a Jesuit in the worst

acceptation of the word, as the order has produced, is remarkably

simple, earnest, practical: he convinces rather than commands; and by

convincing he persuades; for his discourses tend always to some duty,

to something that is to be done or avoided. His sentences are short,

interrogative, full of plain and solid reasoning, unambitious in

expression, and wholly without that care in the choice of words and

cadences which we detect in Bossuet and Fléchier. No one would call

Bourdaloue a rhetorician, and though he continually introduces the

fathers, he has not caught their vices of language.[747]

[747] The public did justice to Bourdaloue, as they generally do

to a solid and impressive style of preaching. Je crois, says

Goujet, p. 300, que tout le monde convient qu’aucun autre ne lui

est supérieur. C’est le grand maître pour l’éloquence de la

chaire; c’est le prince des prédicateurs. Le public n’a jamais

été partagé sur son sujet; la ville et la cour l’ont également

estimé et admiré. C’est qu’il avoit réuni en sa personne tous les

grands caractères de la bonne éloquence; la simplicité du

discours Chrétien avec la majesté et la grandeur, le sublime avec

l’intelligible et le populaire, la force avec la douceur, la

véhémence avec l’onction, la liberté avec la justesse, et le plus

vive ardeur avec la plus pure lumière.

|Compared with Bossuet.|

52. Bourdaloue is almost in the same relation to Bossuet, as Patru to

Le Maistre, though the two orators of the pulpit are far above those

of the bar. As the one is short, condensed, plain, reasoning, and

though never feeble, not often what is generally called eloquent, so

the other is animated, figurative, rather diffuse and prodigal of

ornament, addressing the imagination more than the judgment, rich and

copious in cadence, elevating the hearer to the pitch of his own

sublimity. Bossuet is sometimes too declamatory; and Bourdaloue

perhaps sometimes borders on dryness. Much in the sermons of the

former is true poetry; but he has less of satisfactory and persuasive

reasoning than the latter. His tone is also, as in all his writings,

too domineering and dogmatical for those who demand something beyond

the speaker’s authority when they listen.

|Funeral discourses of Bossuet.|

53. The sermons, however, of Bossuet, taken generally, are not

reckoned in the highest class of his numerous writings; perhaps

scarcely justice has been done to them. His genius, on the other hand,

by universal confession, never shone higher than in the six which bear

the name of Oraisons Funèbres. They belong in substance so much more

naturally to the province of eloquence than of theology, that I should

have reserved them for another place, if the separation would not have

seemed rather unexpected to the reader. Few works of genius perhaps in

the French language are better known, or have been more prodigally

extolled. In that style of eloquence which the ancients called

demonstrative, or rather descriptive (επιδεικτικος [epideiktikos]),

the style of panegyric or commemoration, they are doubtless superior

to those justly celebrated productions of Thucydides and Plato that

have descended to us from Greece; nor has Bossuet been equalled by any

later writer. Those on the Queen of England, on her daughter the

Duchess of Orleans, and on the Prince of Condé, outshine the rest; and

if a difference is to be made among these, we might, perhaps, after

some hesitation, confer the palm on the first. The range of topics is

so various, the thoughts so just, the images so noble and poetical,

the whole is in such perfect keeping, the tone of awful contemplation,

is so uniform, that if it has not any passages of such extraordinary

beauty as occur in the other two, its general effect on the mind is

more irresistible.[748]

[748] An English preacher of conspicuous renown for eloquence was

called upon, within no great length of time, to emulate the

funeral discourse of Bossuet on the sudden death of Henrietta of

Orleans. He had before him a subject incomparably more deep in

interest, more fertile in great and touching associations--he had

to describe, not the false sorrow of courtiers, not the shriek of

sudden surprise that echoed by night in the halls of Versailles,

not the apocryphal penitence of one so tainted by the world’s

intercourse, but the manly grief of an entire nation in the

withering of those visions of hope which wait upon the untried

youth of royalty, in its sympathy with grandeur annihilated, with

beauty and innocence precipitated into the tomb. Nor did he sink

beneath this subject, except as compared with Bossuet. The sermon

to which my allusion will be understood, is esteemed by many the

finest effort of this preacher; but if read together with that of

its prototype, it will be laid aside as almost feeble and

unimpressive.

54. In this style, much more of ornament, more of what speaks in the

spirit, and even the very phrase, of poetry, to the imagination and

the heart, is permitted by a rigorous criticism, than in forensic or

in deliberative eloquence. The beauties that rise before the author’s

vision are not renounced; the brilliant colours of his fancy are not

subdued; the periods assume a more rhythmical cadence, and emulate,

like metre itself, the voluptuous harmony of musical intervals; the

whole composition is more evidently formed to delight; but it will

delight to little purpose, or even cease, in any strong sense of the

word, to do so at all, unless it is ennobled by moral wisdom. In this

Bossuet was pre-eminent; his thoughts are never subtle or far-fetched;

they have a sort of breadth, a generality of application, which is

peculiarly required in those who address a mixed assembly, and which

many that aim at what is profound and original are apt to miss. It may

be confessed, that these funeral discourses are not exempt from some

defects, frequently inherent in panegyrical eloquence; they are

sometimes too rhetorical, and do not appear to show so little effort

as some have fancied; the amplifications are sometimes too unmeasured,

the language sometimes borders too nearly on that of the stage; above

all, there is a tone of adulation not quite pleasing to a calm

posterity.

|Fléchier.|

55. Fléchier (the third name of the seventeenth century, for Massillon

belongs only to the next), like Bossuet, has been more celebrated for

his funeral sermons than for any others; but, in this line, it is

unfortunate for him to enter into unavoidable competition with one

whom he cannot rival. The French critics extol Fléchier for the

arrangement and harmony of his periods; yet, even in this, according

to La Harpe, he is not essentially superior to Bossuet; and, to an

English ear, accustomed to the long swell of our own writers, and of

the Ciceronian school in Latin, he will probably not give so much

gratification. He does not want a moral dignity, or a certain

elevation of thought, without which the funeral panegyric must be

contemptible; but he has not the majestic tone of Bossuet; he does

not, like him, raise the heroes and princes of the earth in order to

abase them by paintings of mortality and weakness, or recall the

hearer in every passage to something more awful than human power, and

more magnificent than human grandeur. This religious solemnity, so

characteristic in Bossuet, is hardly felt in the less emphatic

sentences of Fléchier. Even where his exordium is almost worthy of

comparison, as in the funeral discourse on Turenne, we find him

degenerate into a trivial eulogy, and he flatters both more profusely

and with less skill. His style is graceful, but not without

affectation and false taste. La Harpe has not ill compared him to

Isocrates among the orators of Greece, the place of Demosthenes being,

of course, reserved for Bossuet.[749]

[749] The native critics ascribe a reform in the style of

preaching to Paolo Segneri, whom Corniani does not hesitate to

call, with the sanction, he says, of posterity, the father of

Italian eloquence. It is to be remembered, that in no country has

the pulpit been so much degraded by empty declamation, and even

by a stupid buffoonery. “The language of Segneri,” the same

writer observes, “is always full of dignity and harmony. He

inlaid it with splendid and elegant expressions, and has thus

obtained a place among the authors to whom authority has been

given by the Della Crusca dictionary. His periods are flowing,

natural, and intelligible, without the affectation of obsolete

Tuscanisms, which pass for graces of the language with many.”

Tiraboschi, with much commendation of Segneri, admits that we

find in him some vestiges of the false taste he endeavoured to

reform. The very little that I have seen of the sermons of

Segneri, gives no impression of any merit that can be reckoned

more than relative to the miserable tone of his predecessors. The

following specimen is from one of his most admired sermons:--E

Cristo non potrà ottenere da voi che gli rimettiate un torto, un

affronto, un aggravio, una parolina? Che vorreste da Christo?

Vorreste ch’egli vi si gettasse supplichevole a’ piedi a

chiedergli questa grazia? Io son quasi per dire ch’egli il

farebbe; perchè se non dubiti di prostrarsi a’ piedi di un

traditore, qual’era Guida, di lavarglieli, di asciugarglieli, di

baciarglieli, non si vergognerebbe, cred’io, di farsi vedere

ginocchioni a’ piè vostri. Ma vi fa bisogno di tanto per muovervi

a compiacerlo? Ah Cavalieri, Cavalieri, io non vorrei questa

volta farvi arrossire. Nel resto io so di certo, che se

altrettanto fosse a voi domandato da quella donna che chiamate la

vostra dama, da quella, di cui forsennati idolatrate il volto,

indovinate le voglie, ambite le grazie, non vi farete pregar

tanto a concederglielo. E poi vi fate pregar tanto da un Dio per

voi crocefisso? O confusione! O vitupero! O vergogna! Raccolta di

Prose Italiane (in Classici Italiani), vol. ii., p. 345.

This is certainly not the manner of Bossuet, and more like that

of a third-rate Methodist among us.

|English sermons--Barrow.|

56. The style of preaching in England was less ornamental, and spoke

less to the imagination and affections, than these celebrated writers

of the Gallican church; but in some of our chief divines it had its

own excellencies. The sermons of Barrow display a strength of mind, a

comprehensiveness and fertility, which have rarely been equalled. No

better proof can be given than his eight sermons on the government of

the tongue; copious and exhaustive without tautology or superfluous

declamation, they are, in moral preaching, what the best parts of

Aristotle are in ethical philosophy, with more of development and a

more extensive observation. It would be said of these sermons, and

indeed, with a few exceptions, of all those of Barrow, that they are

not what is called evangelical; they indicate the ascendancy of an

Arminian party, dwelling far more than is usual in the pulpit on moral

and rational, or even temporal, inducements, and sometimes hardly

abstaining from what would give a little offence in later times.[750]

His quotations also from ancient philosophers, though not so

numerous as in Taylor, are equally uncongenial to our ears. In his

style, notwithstanding its richness and occasional vivacity, we may

censure a redundancy and excess of apposition; it is not sufficient to

avoid strict tautology; no second phrase (to lay down a general rule

not without exception) should be so like the first, that the reader

would naturally have understood it to be comprised therein. Barrow’s

language is more antiquated and formal than that of his age; and he

abounds too much in uncommon words of Latin derivation, frequently

such as appear to have no authority but his own.

[750] Thus, in his sermon against evil speaking (xvi.), Barrow

treats it as fit “for rustic boors or men of coarsest education

and employment, who, having their minds debased by being

conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions and

bicker about their petty concernments in such strains, who also,

not being capable of a fair reputation, or sensible of disgrace

to themselves, do little value the credit of others, or care for

aspersing it. But such language is unworthy of those persons, and

cannot easily be drawn from them, who are wont to exercise their

thoughts about nobler matters,” &c. No one would venture this now

from the pulpit.

|South.|

57. South’s sermons begin, in order of date, before the Restoration,

and come down to nearly the end of the century. They were much

celebrated at the time, and retain a portion of their renown. This is

by no means surprising. South had great qualifications for that

popularity which attends the pulpit, and his manner was at that time

original. Not diffuse, not learned, not formal in argument like

Barrow, with a more natural structure of sentences, a more pointed,

though by no means a more fair and satisfactory turn of reasoning,

with a style clear and English, free from all pedantry, but abounding

with those colloquial novelties of idiom, which, though now become

vulgar and offensive, the age of Charles II. affected, sparing no

personal or temporary sarcasm, but, if he seems for a moment to tread

on the verge of buffoonery, recovering himself by some stroke of

vigorous sense and language; such was the witty Dr. South, whom the

courtiers delighted to hear. His sermons want all that is called

unction, and sometimes even earnestness, which is owing, in a great

measure, to a perpetual tone of gibing at rebels and fanatics; but

there is a masculine spirit about them, which, combined with their

peculiar characteristics, would naturally fill the churches where he

might be heard. South appears to bend towards the Arminian theology,

without adopting so much of it as some of his contemporaries.

|Tillotson.|

59. The sermons of Tillotson were, for half a century, more read than

any in our language. They are now bought almost as waste paper, and

hardly read at all. Such is the fickleness of religious taste, as

abundantly numerous instances would prove. Tillotson is reckoned

verbose and languid. He has not the former defect in nearly so great a

degree as some of his eminent predecessors; but there is certainly

little vigour or vivacity in his style. Full of the Romish

controversy, he is perpetually recurring to that “world’s debate;” and

he is not much less hostile to all the Calvinistic tenets. What is

most remarkable in the theology of Tillotson is his strong assertion,

in almost all his sermons, of the principles of natural religion and

morality, not only as the basis of all revelation, without a

dependence on which it cannot be believed, but as nearly coincident

with Christianity in its extent, a length to which few at present

would be ready to follow him. Tillotson is always of a tolerant and

catholic spirit, enforcing right actions rather than orthodox

opinions, and obnoxious, for that and other reasons, to all the bigots

of his own age.

|Expository Theology.|

60. It has become necessary to draw towards a conclusion of this

chapter; the materials are far from being exhausted. In expository,

or, as some call it, exegetical theology, the English divines had

already taken a conspicuous station. Andrès, no partial estimator of

Protestant writers, extols them with marked praise.[751] Those who

belonged to the earlier part of the century form a portion of a vast

collection, the Critici Sacri, published by one Bee, a bookseller, in

1660. This was in nine folio volumes; and in 1669, Matthew Pool, a

nonconforming minister, produced his Synopsis Criticorum, in five

volumes, being, in great measure, an abridgment and digest of the

former. Bee complained of the infraction of his copyright, or rather

his equitable interest; but such a dispute hardly pertains to our

history.[752] The work of Pool was evidently a more original labour

than the former. Hammond, Patrick, and other commentators, do honour

to the Anglican church in the latter part of the century.

[751] I soli Inglesi, che ampio spazio non dovrebbono occupare in

questo capo dell’esegetica sacra, se l’istituto della nostr’opera

ci permettesse tener dietro a tutti i più degni della nostra

stima? Vol. xix., p. 253.

[752] Chalmers.

|Pearson on the Creed.|

61. Pearson’s Exposition of the Apostle’s Creed, published in 1659, is

a standard book in English divinity. It expands beyond the literal

purport of the creed itself to most articles of orthodox belief, and

is a valuable summary of arguments and authorities on that side. The

closeness of Pearson, and his judicious selection of proofs,

distinguish him from many, especially the earlier, theologians. Some

might surmise that his undeviating adherence to what he calls the

church is hardly consistent with independence of thinking; but,

considered as an advocate, he is one of much judgment and skill. Such

men as Pearson and Stillingfleet, would have been conspicuous at the

bar, which we could not quite affirm of Jeremy Taylor.

|Simon’s Critical Histories.|

62. Simon, a regular priest of the congregation called The Oratory,

which has been rich in eminent men, owes much of his fame to his

Critical History of the Old Testament. This work, bold in many of its

positions, as it then seemed to both the Catholic and Protestant

orthodox, after being nearly strangled by Bossuet in France, appeared

at Rotterdam in 1685. Bossuet attacked it with extreme vivacity, but

with a real inferiority to Simon, both in learning and candour.[753]

Le Clerc on his side carped more at the Critical History than it seems

to deserve. Many paradoxes, as they then were called, in his famous

work are now received as truth, or at least pass without reproof.

Simon may possibly be too prone to novelty, but a love of truth as

well as great acuteness are visible throughout. His Critical History

of the New Testament was published in 1689, and one or two more works

of a similar description before the close of the century.

[753] Défense de la Tradition des Saints Pères. Œuvres de

Bossuet, vol. v., and Instructions sur la Version du N. T.,

imprimée à Trevoux, Id. vol. iv., 313. Bausset, Vie de Bossuet,

iv., 276.

63. I have, on a former occasion, adverted, in a corresponding

chapter, to publications on witchcraft, and similar superstitions.

Several might be mentioned at this time; the belief in such tales was

assailed by a prevalent scepticism which called out their advocates.

Of these, the most unworthy to have exhibited their great talents in

such a cause were our own philosophers Henry More and Joseph Glanvil.

The Sadducismus Triumphatus, or Treatise on Apparitions, by the

latter, has passed through several editions, while his Scepsis

Scientifica has hardly been seen, perhaps, by six living persons. A

Dutch minister, by name Bekker, raised a great clamour against himself

by a downright denial of all power to the devil, and consequently to

his supposed instruments, the ancient beldams of Holland and other

countries. His Monde Enchanté, originally published in Dutch, is in

four volumes, written in a systematic manner and with tedious

prolixity. There was no ground for imputing infidelity to the author,

except the usual ground of calumniating everyone who quits the beaten

path in theology; but his explanations of scripture in the case of the

demoniacs and the like are, as usual with those who have taken the

same line, rather forced. The fourth volume which contains several

curious stories of imagined possession, and some which resemble what

is now called magnetism, is the only part of Bekker’s once celebrated

book that can be read with any pleasure. Bekker was a Cartesian, and

his theory was built too much on Cartesian assumptions of the

impossibility of spirit _acting_ on body, which are easily

parried by denying his inference from them.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1650 TO 1700.

_Aristotelians--Logicians--Cudworth--Sketch of the Philosophy of

Gassendi--Cartesianism--Port-Royal Logic--Analysis of the Search for

Truth of Malebranche, and of the Ethics of Spinosa--Glanvil--Locke’s

Essay on the Human Understanding._

|Aristotelian metaphysics.|

1. The Aristotelian and scholastic metaphysics, though shaken on every

side, and especially by the rapid progress of the Cartesian theories,

had not lost their hold over the theologians of the Roman church, or

even the protestant universities, at the beginning of this period, and

hardly at its close. Brucker enumerates several writers of that

class in Germany;[754] and we find, as late as 1693, a formal

injunction by the Sorbonne, that none who taught philosophy in the

colleges under its jurisdiction should introduce any novelties, or

swerve from the Aristotelian doctrine.[755] The Jesuits, rather

unfortunately for their credit, distinguished themselves as strenuous

advocates of the old philosophy, and thus lost the advantage they had

obtained in philology as enemies of barbarous prejudice, and

encouragers of a progressive spirit in their disciples. Rapin, one of

their most accomplished men, after speaking with little respect of the

Novum Organum, extols the disputations of the schools as the best

method in the education of young men, who, as he fancies, have too

little experience to delight in physical science.[756]

[754] Vol. iv. See his long and laborious chapter on the

Aristotelian philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries; no one else seems to have done more than copy Brucker.

[755] Cum relatum esset ad Societatem (Sorbonicam) nonnullos

philosophiæ, professores, ex iis etiam aliquando qui ad

Societatem anhelant, novas quasdam doctrinas in philosophicis

sectari, minusque Aristotelicæ doctrinæ studere, quam hactenus

usurpatum fuerit in Academiâ Parisiensi, censuit Societas

injungendum esse illis, imo et iis qui docent philosophiam in

collegiis suo regimini creditis, ne deinceps novitatibus

studeant, aut ab Aristotelica doctrina deffectant. 31 Dec. 1693.

Argentré, Collectio Judiciorum, iii., 150.

[756] Réflexions sur la Poétique, p. 368. He admits, however,

that to introduce more experiment and observation would be an

improvement. Du reste il y a apparence que les loix, qui ne

souffrent point d’innovation dans l’usage des choses

universellement établies, n’autoriseront point d’autre méthode

que celle qui est aujourd’hui en usage dans les universités; afin

de ne pas donner trop de licence à la passion qu’on a

naturellement pour les nouvelles opinions, dont le cours est

d’une dangereuse conséquence dans un état bien réglé; vu

particulièrement que la philosophie est un des organes dont se

sert la religion pour s’expliquer dans ses décisions.

|Their decline. Thomas White.|

2. It is a difficult and dangerous choice, in a new state of public

opinion (and we have to make it at present), between that which may

itself pass away, and that which must efface what has gone before.

Those who clung to the ancient philosophy believed that Bacon and

Descartes were the idols of a transitory fashion, and that the wisdom

of long ages would regain its ascendancy. They were deceived, and

their own reputation has been swept off with the systems to which they

adhered. Thomas White, an English catholic priest, whose Latin

appellation is Albius, endeavoured to maintain the Aristotelian

metaphysics and the scholastic terminology in several works, and

especially in an attack upon Glanvil’s Vanity of Dogmatizing. This

book, entitled Sciri, I know only through Glanvil’s reply in his

second edition, by which White appears to be a mere Aristotelian. He

was a friend of Sir Kenelm Digby, who was himself, though a man of

considerable talents, incapable of disentangling his mind from the

Peripatetic hypotheses. The power of words indeed is so great, the

illusions of what is called realism, or of believing that general

terms have an objective exterior being, are so natural, and especially

so bound up both with our notions of essential, especially

theological, truth, and with our popular language, that no man could

in that age be much censured for not casting off his fetters, even

when he had heard the call to liberty from some modern voices. We find

that even after two centuries of a better method, many are always

ready to fall back into a verbal process of theorising.

|Logic.|

3. Logic was taught in the Aristotelian method, or rather in one

which, with some change for the worse, had been gradually founded upon

it. Burgersdicius, in this and in other sciences, seems to have been

in repute; Smiglecius also is mentioned with praise.[757] These lived

both in the former part of the century. But they were superceded, at

least in England, by Wallis, whose Institutio Logicæ ad Communes Usus

Accommodata was published in 1687. He claims as an improvement upon

the received system, the classifying singular propositions among

universals.[758] Ramus had made a third class of them, and in this he

seems to have been generally followed. Aristotle, though it does not

appear that he is explicit on the subject, does not rank them as

particular. That Wallis is right cannot be doubted by anyone who

reflects at all; but his originality we must not assert. The same had

been perceived by the authors of the Port-Royal Logic; a work to which

he has made no allusion.[759] Wallis claims also as his own the method

of reducing hypothetical to categorical syllogisms, and proves it

elaborately in a separate dissertation. A smaller treatise, still much

used at Oxford, by Aldrich, Compendium Artis Logicæ, 1691, is clear

and concise, but seems to contain nothing very important; and he

alludes to the Art de Penser in a tone of insolence, which must rouse

indignation in those who are acquainted with that excellent work.

Aldrich’s censures are, in many instances, mere cavil and

misrepresentation; I do not know that they are right in any.[760] Of

the Art de Penser itself we shall have something to say in the course

of this chapter.

[757] La Logique de Smiglecius, says Rapin, est un bel ouvrage.

The same writer proceeds to observe that the Spaniards of the

preceding century had corrupted logic by their subtleties. En se

jettant dans des spéculations creuses qui n’avoient rien de réel,

leur philosophes trouvèrent l’art d’avoir de la raison malgré le

bon sens, et de donner de la couleur, et même je ne scai quoi de

specieuse, à ce qui étoit de plus déraisonnable, p. 382. But this

must have been rather the fault of their metaphysics than of what

is strictly called logic.

[758] Atque hoc signanter notatum velim, quia novus forte hic

videar, et præter aliorum loquendi formulam hæc dicere. Nam

plerique logici propositionem quam vocant singularem, hoc est, de

subjecto individuo sive singulari, pro particulari habent, non

universali. Sed perperam hoc faciunt, et præter mentem

Aristotelis (qui, quantum memini, nunquam ejusmodi singularem,

την κατα μερος [tên kata meros] appellat aut pro tali habet) et

præter rei naturam: Non enim hic agitur de particularitate

subjecti (quod ατομον [atomon] vocat Aristotelis, non κατα μερος

[kata meros]) sed de partialitate prædicationis.... Neque ego

interim novator censendus sum qui hæc dixerim, sed illi potius

novatores qui ab Aristotelica doctrina recesserint; eoque multa

introduxerint incommoda de quibus suo loco dicetur, p. 125. He

has afterwards a separate dissertation or thesis to prove this

more at length. It seems that the Ramists held a third class of

propositions, neither universal nor particular, to which they

gave the name of _propria_, equivalent to singular.

[759] Art de Penser, part ii., chap. iii.

[760] One of Aldrich’s charges against the author of the Art de

Penser is, that he brings forward as a great discovery the

equality of the angles of a chiliagon to 1996 right angles; and

another is, that he gives as an example of a regular syllogism

one that has obviously five terms; thus expecting the Oxford

students, for whom he wrote, to believe, that Antony Arnauld

neither knew the first book of Euclid, nor the mere rudiments of

common logic.

|Stanley’s History of Philosophy.|

4. Before we proceed to those whose philosophy may be reckoned

original or at least modern, a very few deserve mention who have

endeavoured to maintain or restore that of antiquity. Stanley’s

History of Philosophy, in 1655, is in great measure confined to

biography, and comprehends no name later than Carneades. Most is

derived from Diogenes Laertius; but an analysis of the Platonic

philosophy is given from Alcinous, and the author has compiled one of

the Peripatetic system from Aristotle himself. The doctrine of the

Stoics is also elaborately deduced from various sources. Stanley on

the whole brought a good deal from an almost untrodden field; but he

is merely a historian, and never a critic of philosophy. He does not

mention Epicurus at all, probably because Gassendi had so well written

that philosopher’s life.

|Gale’s Court of Gentiles.|

5. Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, partly in 1669 and partly in later

years, is incomparably a more learned work, than that of Stanley. Its

aim is to prove that all heathen philosophy, whether barbaric or

Greek, was borrowed from the Scriptures, or at least from the Jews.

The first part is entitled Of Philology, which traces the same leading

principle by means of language; the second, Of Philosophy: the third

treats of the Vanity of Philosophy, and the fourth of Reformed

Philosophy, “wherein Plato’s moral and metaphysic or prime philosophy

is reduced to an useful form and method.” Gale has been reckoned among

Platonic philosophers, and indeed he professes to find a great

resemblance between the philosophy of Plato and his own. But he is a

determined Calvinist in all respects, and scruples not to say,

“Whatever God wills is just, because he wills it;” and again, “God

willeth nothing without himself because it is just, but it is

therefore just because he willeth it. The reasons of good and evil

extrinsic to the divine essence are all dependent on the divine will,

either decernent or legislative.”[761] It is not likely that Plato

would have acknowledged such a disciple.

[761] Part iv., p. 339.

|Cudworth’s Intellectual System.|

6. A much more eminent and enlightened man than Gale, Ralph Cudworth,

by his Intellectual System of the Universe, published in 1678, but

written several years before, placed himself in a middle point between

the declining and rising schools of philosophy; more independent of

authority, and more close, perhaps, in argument than the former, but

more prodigal of learning, more technical in language, and less

conversant with analytical and inductive processes of reasoning than

the latter. Upon the whole, however, he belongs to the school of

antiquity, and probably his wish was to be classed with it. Cudworth

was one of those whom Hobbes had roused by the atheistic and immoral

theories of the Leviathan; nor did any antagonist perhaps of that

philosopher bring a more vigorous understanding to the combat. This

understanding was not so much obstructed in its own exercise by a vast

erudition, as it was sometimes concealed by it from the reader.

Cudworth has passed more for a recorder of ancient philosophy, than

for one who might stand in a respectable class among philosophers; and

his work, though long, being unfinished, as well as full of

digression, its object has not been fully apprehended.

|Its object.|

7. This object was to establish the liberty of human actions against

the fatalists. Of these he lays it down that there are three kinds,

the first atheistic; the second admitting a Deity, but one acting

necessarily and without moral perfections; the third granting the

moral attributes of God, but asserting all human actions to be

governed by necessary laws which he has ordained. The first book of

the Intellectual System, which alone is extant, relates wholly to the

proofs of the existence of a Deity against the atheistic fatalists,

his moral nature being rarely or never touched; so that the greater

and more interesting part of the work, for the sake of which the

author projected it, was never written, unless we take for fragments

of it some writings of the author preserved in the British Museum.

|Sketch of it.|

8. The first chapter contains an account of the ancient corpuscular

philosophy, which, till corrupted by Leucippus and Democritus,

Cudworth takes to have been not only theistic, but more consonant to

theistic principles than any other. These two, however, brought in a

fatalism grounded on their own atomic theory. In the second chapter he

states very fully and fairly all their arguments, or rather all that

have ever been adduced on the atheistic side. In the third he

expatiates on the hylozoic atheism, as he calls it, of Strato, which

accounts the world to be animated in all its parts but without a

single controlling intelligence, and adverts to another hypothesis,

which gives a vegetable but not sentient life to the world.

|His plastic nature.|

9. This leads Cudworth to his own famous theory of a plastic nature, a

device to account for the operations of physical laws without the

continued agency of the Deity. Of this plastic energy he speaks in

rather a confused and indefinite manner giving it in one place a sort

of sentient life, or what he calls “a drowsy unawakened cogitation,”

and always treating it as an entity or real being. This language of

Cudworth, and indeed the whole hypothesis of a plastic nature, was

unable to stand the searching eye of Bayle, who, in an article of his

dictionary, pointed out its unphilosophical and dangerous assumptions.

Le Clerc endeavoured to support Cudworth against Bayle, but with

little success.[762] It has had, however, some partizans, though

rather among physiologists than metaphysicians. Grew adopted it to

explain vegetation; and the plastic nature differs only, as I

conceive, from what Hunter and Abernethy have called life in organised

bodies by its more extensive agency; for if we are to believe that

there is a vital power, not a mere name for the sequence of phenomena,

which marshals the molecules of animal and vegetable substance, we can

see no reason why a similar energy should not determine other

molecules to assume geometrical figures in crystallization. The error

or paradox consists in assigning a real unity of existence, and a real

power of causation, to that which is unintelligent.

[762] Biblothèque Choisie, vol. v.

|His account of old philosophy.|

10. The fourth chapter of the Intellectual System, of vast length, and

occupying half the entire work, launches into a sea of old philosophy,

in order to show the unity of a supreme God to have been a general

belief of antiquity. “In this fourth chapter,” he says “we were

necessitated by the matter itself to run out into philology and

antiquity, as also in the other parts of the book we do often give an

account of the doctrine of the ancients; which, however, some

over-severe philosophers may look upon fastidiously or undervalue and

depreciate, yet as we conceived it often necessary, so possibly may

the variety thereof not be ungrateful to others, and this mixture of

philology throughout the whole sweeten and allay the severity of

philosophy to them; the main thing which the book pretends to, in the

meantime, being the philosophy of religion. But for our part, we

neither call philology, nor yet philosophy, our mistress, but serve

ourselves of either as occasion requireth.”[763]

[763] Preface, p. 37.

11. The whole fourth chapter may be reckoned one great episode, and as

it contains a store of useful knowledge on ancient philosophy, it has

not only been more read than the remaining part of the Intellectual

System, but has been the cause, in more than one respect, that the

work has been erroneously judged. Thus, Cudworth has been reckoned, by

very respectable authorities, in the Platonic school of philosophers,

and even in that of the later Platonists; for which I perceive little

other reason than that he has gone diffusely into a supposed

resemblance between the Platonic and Christian Trinity. Whether we

agree with him in this or no, the subject is insulated, and belongs

only to the history of theological opinion; in Cudworth’s own

philosophy he appears to be an eclectic, not the vassal of Plato,

Plotinus, or Aristotle, though deeply versed in them all.

|His arguments against atheism.|

12. In the fifth and last chapter of the first and only book of the

Intellectual System, Cudworth, reverting to the various atheistical

arguments which he had stated in the second chapter, answers them at

great length, and though not without much erudition, perhaps more than

was requisite, yet depending chiefly on his own stores of reasoning.

And inasmuch as even a second-rate philosopher ranks higher in

literary precedence than the most learned reporter of other men’s

doctrine, it may be unfortunate for Cudworth’s reputation that he

consumed so much time in the preceding chapter upon mere learning,

even though that should be reckoned more useful and valuable than his

own reasonings. These, however, are frequently valuable, and, as I

have intimated above, he is partially tinctured by the philosophy of

his own generation, while he endeavours to tread in the ancient paths.

Yet he seems not aware of the place which Bacon, Descartes, and

Gassendi were to hold; and not only names them sometimes with censure,

hardly with praise, but most inexcusably throws out several

intimations that they had designedly served the cause of atheism. The

disposition of the two former to slight the argument from final

causes, though it might justly be animadverted upon, could not warrant

this most uncandid and untrue aspersion. But justice was even-handed;

Cudworth himself did not escape the slander of bigots; it was idly

said by Dryden, that he had put the arguments against a Deity so well,

that some thought he had not answered them, and if Warburton may be

believed, the remaining part of the Intellectual System was never

published, on account of the world’s malignity in judging of the

first.[764] Probably it was never written.

[764] Warburton’s preface to Divine Legation, vol. ii.

13. Cudworth is too credulous and uncritical about ancient writings,

defending all as genuine, even where his own age had been sceptical.

His terminology is stiff and pedantic, as is the case with all our

older metaphysicians, abounding in words, which the English language

has not recognised. He is full of the ancients, but rarely quotes the

schoolmen. Hobbes is the adversary with whom he most grapples; the

materialism, the resolving all ideas into sensation, the low morality

of that writer, were obnoxious to the animadversion of so strenuous an

advocate of a more elevated philosophy. In some respects, Cudworth

has, as I conceive, much the advantage; in others, he will generally

be thought by our metaphysicians to want precision and logical

reasoning; and, upon the whole, we must rank him, in philosophical

acumen, far below Hobbes, Malebranche, and Locke, but also far above

any mere Aristotelians, or retailers of Scotus and Aquinas.

|More.|

14. Henry More, though by no means less eminent than Cudworth in his

own age, ought not to be placed on the same level. More fell not only

into the mystical notions of the later Platonists, but even of the

Cabbalistic writers. His metaphysical philosophy was borrowed in great

measure from them; and though he was in correspondence with Descartes,

and enchanted with the new views that opened upon him, yet we find

that he was reckoned much less of a Cartesian afterwards, and even

wrote against parts of the theory.[765] The most peculiar tenet of

More was the extension of spirit; acknowledging and even striving for

the souls’ immateriality, he still could not conceive it to be

unextended. Yet it seems evident that if we give extension as well as

figure, which is implied in finite extension, to the single

self-conscious monad, qualities as heterogeneous to thinking as

material impenetrability itself, we shall find it in vain to deny the

possibility at least of the latter. Some, indeed, might question

whether what we call matter is any real being at all, except as

extension under peculiar conditions. But this conjecture need not here

be pressed.

[765] Baillet, Vie de Descartes, liv. vii. It must be observed

that More never wholly agreed with Descartes. Thus they differed

about the omnipresence of the Deity; Descartes thought that he

was partout à raison de sa puissance, et qu’à raison de son

essence il n’a absolument aucune rélation au lieu. More, who may

be called a lover of extension, maintained a strictly local

presence. Œuvres de Descartes, vol. x., p. 239.

|Gassendi.|

|His Logic.|

15. Gassendi himself, by the extensiveness of his erudition,

may be said to have united the two schools of speculative philosophy,

the historical and the experimental, though the character of his mind

determined him far more towards the latter. He belongs in point of

time rather to the earlier period of the century; but his Syntagma

Philosophicum having been published in 1658, we have deferred the

review of it for this volume. This posthumous work, in two volumes

folio, and nearly 1600 pages closely printed in double columns, is

divided into three parts, the Logic, the Physics, and the Ethics; the

second occupying more than five-sixths of the whole. The Logic is

introduced by two proœmial books; one containing a history of the

science from Zeno of Elea, the parent of systematic logic, to Bacon

and Descartes;[766] the other, still more valuable, on the criteria of

truth; shortly criticising also, in a chapter of this book, the

several schemes of logic which he had merely described in the former.

After stating very prolixly, as is usual with him, the arguments of

the sceptics against the evidence of the senses, and those of the

dogmatics, as he calls them, who refer the sole criterion of truth to

the understanding, he propounds a sort of middle course. It is

necessary, he observes, before we can infer truth, that there should

be some sensible sign, αισθητον σημειον [aisthêton sêmeion]; for,

since all the knowledge we possess is derived from the sense, the mind

must first have some sensible image, by which it may be led to a

knowledge of what is latent and not perceived by sense. Hence, we may

distinguish in ourselves a double criterion; one by which we perceive

the sign--namely, the senses; another, by which we understand through

reasoning the latent thing--namely, the intellect or rational

faculty.[767] This he illustrates by the pores of the skin, which we

do not perceive, but infer their existence by observing the permeation

of moisture.

[766] Prætereundum porro non est ob eam, quâ est, celebritatem

Organum, sive logica Francisci Baconis Verulamii. He extols Bacon

highly, but gives an analysis of the Novum Organum without much

criticism. De Logicæ Origine, c. x.

Logica Verulamii, Gassendi says in another place, tota ac per se

ad physicam, atque adeo ad veritatem notitiamve rerum germanam

habendam contendit. Præcipuè autem in eo est, ut bene imaginemur,

quatenus vult esse imprimis exuenda omnia præjudicia ac novas

deinde notiones ideasve ex novis debitèque factis experimentis

inducendas. Logica Cartesii rectè quidem Verulamii imitatione ab

eo exorditur, quod ad bene imaginandum prava prejudicia exuenda,

recta vero induenda vult, &c., p. 90.

[767] P. 81. If this passage be well attended to, it will show

how the philosophy of Gassendi has been misunderstood by those

who confound it with the merely sensual school of metaphysicians.

No one has more clearly, or more at length, distinguished the

αισθητον σημειον [aisthêton sêmeion], the sensible associated

sign, from the unimaginable objects of pure intellect, as we

shall soon see.

|His theory of ideas.|

16. In the first part of the treatise itself on Logic, to which these

two books are introductory, Gassendi lays down again his favourite

principle, that every idea in the mind is ultimately derived from the

senses. But while what the senses transmit are only singular ideas,

the mind has the faculty of making general ideas out of a number of

these singular ones when they resemble each other.[768] In this part

of his Logic he expresses himself clearly and unequivocally a

conceptualist.

[768] P. 93.

17. The Physics were expanded with a prodigality of learning upon

every province of nature. Gassendi is full of quotation, and his

systematic method manifests the comprehensiveness of his researches.

In the third book of the second part of the third section of the

Physics, he treats of the immateriality, and, in the fourteenth, of

the immortality of the soul, and maintains the affirmative of both

propositions. This may not be what those who judge of Gassendi merely

from his objections to the Meditations of Descartes have supposed. But

a clearer insight into his metaphysical theory will be obtained from

the ninth book of the same part of the Physics, entitled, De

Intellectu, on the Human Understanding.

|And of the nature of the soul.|

18. In this book, after much display of erudition on the tenets of

philosophers, he determines the soul to be an incorporeal substance,

created by God, and infused into the body, so that it resides in it as

an informing and not merely a present nature, forma informans, et non

simpliciter assistens.[769] He next distinguishes intellection or

understanding from imagination or perception; which is worthy of

particular notice, because in his controversy with Descartes he had

thrown out doubts as to any distinction between them. We have in

ourselves a kind of faculty which enables us, by means of reasoning,

to understand that which by no endeavours we can imagine or represent

to the mind.[770] Of this the size of the sun, or innumerable

other examples might be given; the mind having no idea suggested by

the imagination of the sun’s magnitude, but knowing it by a peculiar

process of reasoning. And hence we infer that the intellectual soul is

immaterial, because it understands that which no material image

presents to it, as we infer also that the imaginative faculty is

material, because it employs the images supplied by sense. It is true

that the intellect makes use of these sensible images, as steps

towards its reasoning upon things which cannot be imagined; but the

proof of its immateriality is given by this, that it passes beyond all

material images, and attains a true knowledge of that whereof it has

no image.

[769] P. 440.

[770] Itaque est in nobis intellectûs species, qua ratiocinando

eo provehimur, ut aliquid intelligamus, quod imaginari, vel cujus

habere obversantem imaginem, quantumcunque animi vires

contenderimus, non possimus.... After instancing the size of the

sun, possunt consimilia sexcenta afferri.... Verum quidem istud

sufficiat, ut constet quinpiam nos intelligere quod imaginari non

liceat, et intellectum ita esse distinctum a phantasia, ut cum

phantasia habeat materiales species, sub quibus res imaginatur,

non habeat tamen intellectus, sub quibus res intelligat: neque

enim ullam, v. g. habet illius magnitudinis quam in sole

intelligit; sed tantum vi propria, seu ratiocinando, eam esse in

sole magnitudinem comprehendit, ac pari modo cætera. Nempe ex hoc

efficitur, ut rem sine specie materiali intelligens, esse

immaterialis debeat; sicuti phantasia ex eo materialis arguitur,

quod materiali specie utatur. Ac utitur quidem etiam intellectus

speciebus phantasia perceptis, tanquam gradibus, ut ratiocinando

assequatur ea, quæ deinceps sine speciebus phantasmatisve

intelligit: sed hoc ipsum est quod illius immaterialitatem

arguit, quod ultra omnem speciem materialem se provehat,

quidpiamque cujus nullam habeat phantasma revera agnoscat.

19. Buhle observes that in what Gassendi has said on the power of the

mind to understand what it cannot conceive, there is a forgetfulness

of his principle, that nothing is in the understanding which has not

been in the sense. But, unless we impute repeated contradictions to

this philosopher, he must have meant that axiom in a less extended

sense than it has been taken by some who have since employed it. By

that which is “in the understanding,” he could only intend definite

images derived from sense, which must be present before the mind can

exercise any faculty, or proceed to reason up to unimaginable things.

The fallacy of the sensualist school, English and French, was to

conclude that we can have no knowledge of that which is not “in the

understanding;” an inference true in the popular sense of words, but

false in the metaphysical.

|Distinguishes ideas of reflection.|

20. There is, moreover, Gassendi proceeds, a class of reflex

operations, whereby the mind understands itself and its own faculties,

and is conscious that it is exercising such acts. And this faculty is

superior to any that a material substance possesses; for no body can

act reflexly on itself, but must move from one place to another.[771]

Our observation, therefore, of our own imaginings must be by a power

superior to imagination itself; for imagination is employed on the

image, not on the perception of the image, since there is no image of

the act of perception.

[771] Alterum est genus reflexarum actionum, quibus intellectus

seipsum, suasque functioneo intelligit, ac speciatim se

intelligere animadvertit. Videlicet hoc munus est omni facultate

corporea superius; quoniam quicquid corporeum est, ita certo

loco, sive permanenter, sive succedenter alligatum est, ut non

versus se, sed solum versus aliud diversum a se procedere possit.

21. The intellect also not only forms universal ideas, but perceives

the nature of universality. And this seems peculiar to mankind; for

brutes do not show anything more than a power of association by

resemblance. In our own conception of an universal, it may be urged,

there is always some admixture of singularity, as of a particular

form, magnitude, or colour; yet we are able, Gassendi thinks, to strip

the image successively of all these particular adjuncts.[772] He

seems, therefore, as has been remarked above, to have held the

conceptualist theory in the strictest manner, admitting the reality of

universal ideas even as images present to the mind.

[772] Et ne instes in nobis quoque, dum universale concipimus,

admisceri semper aliquid singularitatis, ut certæ magnitudinis,

certæ figuræ, certi coloris, &c., experimur tamen, nisi [sic]

simul, saltem successivè spoliari à nobis naturam qualibet

speciali magnitudine, qualibet speciali figura, quolibet speciali

colore; atque ita de cæteris.

|Also intellect from imagination.|

22. Intellection being the proper operation, of the soul, it is

needless to inquire whether it does this by its own nature, or by a

peculiar faculty called understanding, nor should we trouble ourselves

about the Aristotelian distinction of the active and passive

intellect.[773] We have only to distinguish this intellection from

mere conception derived from the phantasy, which is necessarily

associated with it. We cannot conceive God in this life, except under

some image thus supplied; and it is the same with all other

incorporeal things. Nor do we comprehend infinite quantities, but have

a sort of confused image of indefinite extension. This is surely a

right account of the matter; and if Stewart had paid any attention to

these and several other passages, he could not have so much

misconceived the philosophy of Gassendi.

[773] P. 446.

23. The mind, as long as it dwells in the body, seems to have no

intelligible species, except phantasms derived from sense. These he

takes for impressions on the brain, driven to and fro by the animal

spirits till they reach the _phantasia_, or imaginative faculty,

and cause it to imagine sensible things. The soul, in Gassendi’s

theory, consists of an incorporeal part or intellect, and of a

corporeal part, the phantasy or sensitive soul, which he conceives to

be diffused throughout the body. The intellectual soul instantly

perceives, by its union with the phantasy, the images impressed upon

the latter, not by impulse of these sensible and material species, but

by intuition of their images in the phantasy.[774] Thus, if I rightly

apprehend his meaning, we are to distinguish, first, the species in

the brain, derived from immediate sense or reminiscence; secondly, the

image of these conceived by the phantasy; thirdly, the act of

perception in the mind itself, by which it knows the phantasy to have

imagined these species, and knows also the species themselves to have,

or to have had, their external archetypes. This distinction of the

_animus_, or reasonable, from the _anima_, or sensitive

soul, he took, as he did a great part of his philosophy, from

Epicurus.

[774] Eodem momento intellectus ob intimam sui præsentiam

cohærentiamque cum phantasia rem eandem contuetur, p. 450.

24. The phantasy and intellect proceed together, so that they might

appear at first to be the same faculty. Not only, however, are they

different in their operation even as to objects which fall under the

senses, and are represented to the mind, but the intellect has certain

operations peculiar to itself. Such is the apprehensions of things

which cannot be perceived by sense, as the Deity, whom, though we can

only imagine as corporeal, we apprehend or understand to be

otherwise.[775] He repeats a good deal of what he had before said on

the distinctive province of the understanding, by which we reason on

things incapable of being imagined; drawing several instances from the

geometry of infinites, as in asymptotes, wherein, he says, something

is always inferred by reasoning which we presume to be true, and yet

cannot reach by any effort of imagination.[776]

[775] Hoc est autem præter phantasiæ cancellos, intellectûsque

ipsius proprium, potestque adeo talis apprehensio non jam

imaginatio, sed intelligentia vel intellectio dici. Non quod

intellectus non accipiat ansam ab ipsa phantasia ratiocinandi

esse aliquid ultra id, quod specie imagineve repræsentatur, neque

non simul comitantem talem speciem vel imaginationem habeat; sed

quod apprehendat, intelligatve aliquid, ad quod apprehendendum

sive percipiendum assurgere phantasia non possit, ut quæ omnino

terminetur ad corporum speciem, seu imaginem, ex qua illius

operatio imaginatio appallatur. Ibid.

[776] In quibus semper aliquid argumentando colligitur, quod et

verum esse intelligimus et imaginando non assequimur tamen.

|His philosophy misunderstood by Stewart.|

25. I have given a few extracts from Gassendi, in order to confirm

what has been said, his writings being little read in England, and his

philosophy not having been always represented in the same manner. De

Gérando has claimed, on two occasions, the priority for Gassendi in

that theory of the generation of ideas which has usually been ascribed

to Locke.[777] But Stewart protests against this alledged similarity

in the tenets of the French and English philosophers. “The remark,” he

says, “is certainly just, if restrained to Locke’s doctrine as

interpreted by the greater part of philosophers on the continent; but

it is very wide of the truth, if applied to it as now explained and

modified by the most intelligent of his disciples in this country. The

main scope, indeed, of Gassendi’s argument against Descartes is to

materialise that class of our ideas which the Lockists, as well as the

Cartesians, consider as the exclusive objects of the power of

_reflection_, and to show that these ideas are all ultimately

resolvable into images or conceptions borrowed from things external.

It is not, therefore, what is sound and valuable in this part of

Locke’s system, but the errors grafted on it in the comments of some

of his followers, that can justly be said to have been borrowed from

Gassendi. Nor has Gassendi the merit of originality even in these

errors; for scarcely a remark on the subject occurs in his works, but

what is copied from the accounts transmitted to us of the Epicurean

metaphysics.”[778]

[777] Histoire comparée des Systèmes (1804), vol. i., p. 301, and

Biogr. Universelle, art. Gassendi. Yet in neither of these does

M. de Gérando advert expressly to the peculiar resemblance

between the system of Gassendi and Locke, in the account they

give of ideas of reflection. He refers, however, to a more

particular essay of his own, on the Gassendian philosophy, which

I have not seen. As to Locke’s positive obligations to his

predecessor, I should be, perhaps, inclined to doubt whether he,

who was no great lover of large books, had read so unwieldy a

work as the Syntagma Philosophicum; but the abridgment of Bernier

would have sufficed.

[778] Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia.

26. It will probably appear to those who consider what I have quoted

from Gassendi, that in his latest writings he did not differ so much

from Locke, and lead the way so much to the school of the French

metaphysicians of the eighteenth century as Stewart has supposed. The

resemblance to the Essay on the Human Understanding, in several

points, especially in the important distinction of what Locke has

called ideas of reflection from those of sense, is too evident to be

denied. I am at the same time unable to account in a satisfactory

manner for the apparent discrepancy between the language of Gassendi

in the Syntagma Philosophicum, and that which we find in his

objections to the Meditations of Descartes. No great interval of time

had intervened between the two works; for the correspondence with

Descartes bears date in 1641, and it appears by that with Louis, Count

of Angoulême, in the succeeding year, that he was already employed on

the first part of the Syntagma Philosophicum.[779] Whether he urged

some of his objections against the Cartesian metaphysics with a regard

to victory rather than truth, or, as would be the more candid, and

perhaps more reasonable hypothesis, he was induced by the acuteness of

his great antagonist, to review and reform his own opinions, I must

leave to the philosophical reader.[780]

[779] Gassendi Opera, vol. i., p. 130. These letters are

interesting to those who would study the philosophy of Gassendi.

[780] Baillet, in his Life of Descartes, would lead us to think

that Gassendi was too much influenced by personal motives in

writing against Descartes, who had mentioned the phenomena of

parhelia, without alluding to a dissertation of Gassendi on the

subject. The latter, it seems, owns in a letter to Rivet that he

should not have examined so closely the metaphysics of Descartes,

if he had been treated by him with as much politeness as he had

expected. Vie de Descartes, liv. vi. The retort of Descartes, O

caro! (see chap. xx. of this work, p. 497) offended Gassendi, and

caused a coldness; which, according to Baillet, Sorbière

aggravated acting a treacherous part in exasperating the mind of

Gassendi.

|Bernier’s epitome of Gassendi.|

27. Stewart had evidently little or no knowledge of the Syntagma

Philosophicum. But he had seen an Abridgment of the Philosophy of

Gassendi by Bernier, published at Lyons in 1678, and finding in this

the doctrine of Locke on ideas of reflection, conceived that it did

not faithfully represent its own original. But this was hardly a very

plausible conjecture; Bernier being a man of considerable ability, an

intimate friend of Gassendi, and his epitome being so far from concise

that it extends to eight small volumes. Having not indeed collated the

two books, but read them within a short interval of time, I can say

that Bernier has given a faithful account of the philosophy of

Gassendi, as it is contained in the Syntagma Philosophicum, for he

takes notice of no other work; nor has he here added anything of his

own. But in 1682 he published another little book, entitled, Doutes de

M. Bernier sur quelques uns des principaux Chapitres de son Abrégé de

la Philosophie de Gassendi. One of these doubts relates to the

existence of space; and in another place he denies the reality of

eternity or abstract duration. Bernier observes, as Descartes had

done, that it is vain and even dangerous to attempt a definition of

evident things, such as motion, because we are apt to mistake a

definition of the word for one of the thing; and philosophers seem to

conceive that motion is a real being, when they talk of a

billiard-ball communicating or losing it.[781]

[781] Even Gassendi has defined duration “an incorporeal flowing

extension,” which is a good instance of the success that can

attend such definitions of simple ideas.

|Process of Cartesian philosophy.|

28. The Cartesian philosophy, which its adversaries had expected to

expire with its founder, spread more and more after his death, nor had

it ever depended on any personal favour or popularity of Descartes,

since he did not possess such except with a few friends. The churches

and schools of Holland were full of Cartesians. The old scholastic

philosophy became ridiculous, its distinctions, its maxims were

laughed at, as its adherents complain; and probably a more fatal blow

was given to the Aristotelian system by Descartes than even by Bacon.

The Cartesian theories were obnoxious to the rigid class of

theologians; but two parties of considerable importance in Holland,

the Arminians and the Coccejans, generally espoused the new

philosophy. Many speculations in theology were immediately connected

with it, and it acted on the free and scrutinising spirit which began

to sap the bulwarks of established orthodoxy. The Cartesians were

denounced in ecclesiastical synods, and were hardly admitted to any

office in the church. They were condemned by several universities, and

especially by that of Leyden, in 1678, for the position that the truth

of scripture must be proved by reason.[782] Nor were they less exposed

to persecution in France.[783]

[782] Leyden had condemned the whole Cartesian system as early as

1651, on the ground that it was an innovation on the Aristotelian

philosophy so long received; and ordained, ut in Academia intra

Aristotelicæ philosophiæ limites, quæ hic hactenus recepta fuit,

nos contineamus, utque in posterum nec philosophiæ, neque nominis

Cartesiani in disputationibus lectionibus aut publicis aliis

exercitiis, nec pro nec contra mentio fiat. Utrecht, in 1644, had

gone farther, and her decree is couched in terms which might have

been used by anyone who wished to ridicule university prejudice

by a forgery. Rejicere novam istam philosophiam, primo quia

veteri philosophiæ, quam Academiæ toto orbi terrarum hactenus

optimo consilio docuere, adversatur, ejusque fundamenta

subvertit; deinde quia juventutem a veteri et sana philosophia

avertit, impeditque quo minus ad _culmen eruditionis provehatur_;

eo quod istius præsumptæ philosophiæ adminiculo et _technologemata

in auctorum libris professorumque lectionibus et disputationibus

usitata, percipere, nequit_; postremo quod ex eadem variæ falsæ

et absurdæ opiniones partim consignantur, partim ab improvida

juventute deduci possint pugnantes cum cæteris disciplinis et

facultatibus, atque imprimis cum orthodoxa theologia; censere

igitur et statuere omnes philosophiam in hac academia docentes

imposterum a tali instituto et incepto abstinere debere,

contentos _modica libertate dissentiendi_ in singularibus

nonnullis opinionibus ad aliarum celebrium Academiarum exemplum

hic usitata, ita ut veteris et receptæ philosophiæ fundamenta non

labefactent. Tepel. Hist. Philos. Cartesianæ, p. 75.

[783] An account of the manner in which the Cartesians were

harassed through the Jesuits is given by M. Cousin, in the

Journal des Sçavans, March, 1838.

29. The Cartesian philosophy, in one sense, carried in itself the

seeds of its own decline; it was the Scylla of many dogs; it taught

men to think for themselves, and to think often better than Descartes

had done. A new eclectic philosophy, or rather the genuine spirit of

free inquiry, made Cartesianism cease as a sect, though it left much

that had been introduced by it. We owe thanks to these Cartesians of

the seventeenth century for their strenuous assertion of reason

against prescriptive authority: the latter part of this age was

signalised by the overthrow of a despotism which had fought every inch

in its retreat, and it was manifestly after a struggle, on the

continent, with this new philosophy, that it was ultimately

vanquished.[784]

[784] For the fate of the Cartesian philosophy in the life of its

founder, see the life of Descartes by Baillet, 2 vols., in

quarto, which he afterwards abridged in 12mo. After the death of

Descartes, it may be best traced by means of Brucker. Buhle, as

usual, is a mere copyist of his predecessor. He has, however,

given a fuller account of Regis. A contemporary History of

Cartesian Philosophy by Tepel contains rather a neatly written

summary of the controversies it excited both in the lifetime of

Descartes and for a few years afterwards.

|La Forge. Regis.|

30. The Cartesian writers of France, the Low Countries, and Germany,

were numerous and respectable. La Forge of Saumur first developed the

theory of occasional causes to explain the union of soul and body,

wherein he was followed by Geulinx, Regis, Wittich, and

Malebranche.[785] But this and other innovations displeased the

stricter Cartesians who did not find them in their master. Clauberg in

Germany, Clerselier in France, Le Grand in the Low Countries, should

be mentioned among the leaders of the school. But no one has left so

comprehensive a statement and defence of Cartesianism, as Jean Silvain

Regis, whose système de la Philosophie, in three quarto volumes,

appeared at Paris in 1690. It is divided into four parts, on Logic,

Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. In the three latter, Regis claims

nothing as his own except some explanations, “All that I have said,

being due to M. Descartes, whose method and principles I have

followed, even in explanations that are different from his own.” And

in his Logic he professes to have gone little beyond the author of the

Art de Penser.[786] Notwithstanding this rare modesty, Regis is not a

writer unworthy of being consulted by the studious of philosophy, nor

deficient in clearer and fuller statements than will always be found

in Descartes. It might even be said that he has many things which

would be sought in vain through his master’s writings, though I am

unable to prove that they might not be traced in those of the

intermediate Cartesians. Though our limits will not permit any further

account of Regis, I will give a few passages in a note.[787]

[785] Tennemann (Manuel de la Philosophie, ii., 99.) ascribes

this theory to Geulinx. See also Brucker, v. 704.

[786] It is remarkable that Regis says nothing about figures and

modes of syllogism: Nous ne dirons rien des figures ne des

syllogismes en général; car bien que tout cela puisse servir de

quelque chose pour la spéculation de la logique, il n’est au

moins d’aucun usage pour la pratique, laquelle est l’unique but

que nous nous sommes proposés dans ce traité, p. 37.

[787] Regis, in imitation of his master, and perhaps with more

clearness, observes that our knowledge of our own existence is

not derived from reasoning, mais par une connoissance simple et

intérieure, qui précède toutes les connoissances acquisés, et qui

j’appelle _conscience_. En effet, quand je dis que je connais ou

que je crois connoître, ce _je_ presuppose lui-même mon

existence, étant impossible que je connoisse, ou seulement que je

croye connoître et que je ne sois pas quelque chose d’existant,

p. 68. The Cartesian paradox, as it has been deemed, that

thinking is the essence of the soul, Regis has explained away.

After coming to the conclusion, Je suis donc une pensée, he

immediately corrects himself: Cependant je crains encore de me

définir mal, quand je dis que je suis une pensée, qui a la

propriété de douter et d’avoir de la certitude; car quelle

apparence y a t’il que ma nature, qui doit être une chose fixe et

permanente, consiste dans la pensée, puisque je sais par

expérience que mes pensées sont dans un flux continuel, et que je

ne pense jamais à la même chose deux momens de suite? mais quand

je considère la difficulté de plus près, je conçois aisément

qu’elle vient de ce que le mot de _pensée_ est équivoque, et que

je m’en sers indifféremment pour signifier la pensée qui

constitue ma nature, et pour designer les différentes manières

d’être de cette pensée; ce qui est une erreur extrême, car il y a

cette différence entre la pensée qui constitue ma nature, et les

pensées, qui n’en sont que les manières d’être, que la première

est une pensée fixe et permanente, et que les autres sont des

pensées changeantes et passagères. C’est pourquoi, afin de donner

une idée exacte de ma nature, je dirai que je suis une pensée qui

existe en elle-même, et qui est le sujet de toutes mes manières

de penser. Je dis que je suis une pensée pour marquer ce que la

pensée qui constitute ma nature à de commun avec la pensée en

général qui comprend sous soi toutes les manières particulières

de penser: et j’ajoute, qui existe en elle-même, et qui est le

sujet de différentes manières de penser, pour designer ce que

cette pensée a de particulier que la distingue de la pensée en

général, vu qu’elle n’existe que dans l’entendement de celui qui

la conçoit, ainsi que toutes les autres natures universelles,

p. 70.

Every mode supposes a substance wherein it exists. From this

axiom Regis deduces the objective being of space, because we have

the ideas of length, breadth, and depth, which cannot belong to

ourselves, our souls having none of these properties; nor could

the idea be suggested by a superior being, if space did not

exist, because they would be the representations of non entity,

which is impossible. But this transcendental proof is too subtle

for the world.

It is an axiom of Regis that we only know things without us by

means of ideas, and that things of which we have no ideas, are in

regard to us as if they did not exist at all. Another axiom is

that all ideas, considered in respect to their representative

property, depend on objects as their types, or _causes

exemplaires_. And a third, that the “cause exemplaire” of ideas

must contain all the properties which the ideas represent. These

axioms, according to him, are the bases of all certainty in

physical truth. From the second axiom he deduces the objectivity

or “cause exemplaire” of his idea of a perfect being; and his

proof seems at least more clearly put than by Descartes. Every

idea implies an objective reality; for otherwise there would be

an effect without a cause. In this we have the sophisms and

begging of questions of which we may see many instances in

Spinosa.

In the second part of the first book of his metaphysics, Regis

treats of the union of soul and body, and concludes that the

motions of the body only act on the soul by a special will of

God, who has determined to produce certain thoughts

simultaneously with certain bodily motions, p. 124. God is the

efficient first cause of all effects, his creatures are but

secondarily efficient. But as they act immediately, we may

ascribe all model beings to the efficiency of second causes. And

he prefers this expression to that of occasional causes, usual

among the Cartesians, because he fancies the latter rather

derogatory to the fixed will of God.

|Huet’s Censure of Cartesianism.|

31. Huet, bishop of Avranches, a man of more general erudition than

philosophical acuteness, yet not quite without this, arraigned the

whole theory in his Censura Philosophiæ Cartesianæ. He had been for

many years, as he tells us, a favourer of Cartesianism, but his

retractation is very complete. It cannot be denied that Huet strikes

well at the vulnerable parts of the Cartesian metaphysics, and exposes

their alternate scepticism and dogmatism with some justice. In other

respects he displays an inferior knowledge of the human mind and of

the principles of reasoning to Descartes. He repeats Gassendi’s cavil

that, Cogito, ergo sum, involves the truth of Quod cogitat, est. The

Cartesians, Huet observes, assert the major, or universal, to be

deduced from the minor; which, though true in things known by

induction, is not so in propositions necessarily known, or as the

schools say, à priori, as that the whole is greater than its part. It

is not, however, probable that Descartes would have extended his reply

to Gassendi’s criticism so far as this; some have referred our

knowledge of geometrical axioms to experience, but this seems not

agreeable to the Cartesian theory.

|Port-Royal Logic.|

32. The influence of the Cartesian philosophy was displayed in a

treatise of deserved reputation, L’Art de Penser, often called

the Port-Royal Logic. It was the work of Antony Arnauld, with some

assistance, perhaps, by Nicole. Arnauld was not an entire Cartesian;

he had himself been engaged in controversy with Descartes; but his

understanding was clear and calm, his love of truth sincere, and he

could not avoid recognising the vast superiority of the new philosophy

to that received in the schools. This logic accordingly is perhaps the

first regular treatise on that science that contained a protestation,

though in very moderate language, against the Aristotelian method. The

author tells us that after some doubt he had resolved to insert a few

things rather troublesome and of little value, such as the rules of

conversion and the demonstration of the syllogistic figures, chiefly

as exercises of the understanding, for which difficulties are not

without utility. The method of syllogism itself he deems little

serviceable in the discovery of truth; while many things dwelt upon in

books of logic, such as the ten categories, rather injure than improve

the reasoning faculties, because they accustom men to satisfy

themselves with words, and to mistake a long catalogue of arbitrary

definitions for real knowledge. Of Aristotle he speaks in more

honourable terms than Bacon had done before, or than Malebranche did

afterwards; acknowledging the extraordinary merit of some of his

writings, but pointing out with an independent spirit his failings as

a master in the art of reasoning.

33. The first part of L’Art de Penser is almost entirely metaphysical,

in the usual sense of that word. It considers ideas in their nature

and origin, in the chief differences of the objects they represent, in

their simplicity of composition, in their extent, as universal,

particular, or singular, and lastly in their distinctness or

confusion. The word idea, it is observed, is among those which are so

clear that we cannot explain them by means of others, because none can

be more clear and simple than themselves.[788] But here it may be

doubtful whether the sense in which the word is to be taken, must

strike everyone in the same way. The clearness of a word does not

depend on its association with a distinct conception in our own minds,

but on the generality of this same association in the minds of others.

[788] C. 1.

34. No follower of Descartes has more unambiguously than this author

distinguished between imagination and intellection, though he gives

the name of idea to both. Many suppose, he says, that they cannot

conceive a thing when they cannot imagine it. But we cannot imagine a

figure of 1,000 sides, though we can conceive it and reason upon it.

We may indeed get a confused image of a figure with many sides, but

these are no more 1,000 than they are 999. Thus, also, we have ideas

of thinking, affirming, denying, and the like, though we have no

imagination of these operations. By ideas therefore we mean not images

painted in the fancy, but all that is in our minds when we say that we

conceive anything, in whatever manner we may conceive it. Hence, it is

easy to judge of the falsehood of some opinions held in this age. One

philosopher has advanced that we have no idea of God; another that all

reasoning is but an assemblage of words connected by an affirmation.

He glances here at Gassendi and Hobbes.[789] Far from all our ideas

coming from the senses, as the Aristotelians have said, and as

Gassendi asserts in his Logic, we may say on the contrary that no idea

in our minds is derived from the senses except occasionally (par

occasion); that is, the movements of the brain, which is all the

organs of sense can effect, give occasion to the soul to form

different ideas which it would not otherwise form, though these ideas

have scarce ever any resemblance to what occurs in the organs of sense

and in the brain, and though there are also very many ideas, which,

deriving nothing from any bodily image, cannot without absurdity be

referred to the senses.[790] This is perhaps a clearer statement of an

important truth than will be found in Malebranche or in Descartes

himself.

[789] The reflection on Gassendi is a mere cavil, as will appear

by remarking what he has really said, and which we have quoted a

few pages above. The Cartesians were resolute in using one sense

of the word idea, while Gassendi used another. He had himself

been to blame in his controversy with the father of the new

philosophy, and the disciples (calling the author of L’Art de

Penser such in a general sense) retaliated by equal captiousness.

[790] C. 1.

35. In the second part, Arnauld treats of words and propositions. Much

of it may be reckoned more within the province of grammar than of

logic. But as it is inconvenient to refer the student to works of a

different class, especially if it should be the case that no good

grammars, written with a regard to logical principles, were then to be

found, this cannot justly be made an objection. In the latter chapters

of this second part, he comes to much that is strictly logical, and

taken from ordinary books on that science. The third part relates to

syllogisms, and notwithstanding the author’s low estimation of that

method, in comparison with the general regard for it in the schools,

he has not omitted the common explanations of mood and figure, ending

with a concise but good account of the chief sophisms.

36. The fourth and last part is entitled, On Method, and contains the

principles of connected reasoning, which he justly observes to be more

important than the rules of single syllogisms, wherein few make any

mistake. The laws of demonstration given by Pascal, are here laid down

with some enlargement. Many observations not wholly bearing on merely

logical proof, are found in this part of the treatise.

37. The Port-Royal Logic, though not, perhaps, very much read in

England, has always been reckoned among the best works in that

science, and certainly had a great influence in rendering it more

metaphysical, more ethical (for much is said by Arnauld on the moral

discipline of the mind in order to fit it for the investigation of

truth), more exempt from technical barbarisms and trifling definitions

and divisions. It became more and more acknowledged that the rules of

syllogism go a very little way in rendering the mind able to follow a

course of enquiry without error, much less in assisting it to discover

truth; and that even their vaunted prerogative of securing us from

fallacy is nearly ineffectual in exercise. The substitution of the

French language, in its highest polish, for the uncouth Latinity of

the Aristotelians, was another advantage of which the Cartesian school

legitimately availed themselves.

|Malebranche.|

38. Malebranche, whose Recherche de la Vérité was published in 1674,

was a warm and almost enthusiastic admirer of Descartes, but his mind

was independent, searching, and fond of its own inventions; he

acknowledged no master, and in some points dissents from the Cartesian

school. His natural temperament was sincere and rigid; he judges the

moral and intellectual failings of mankind with a severe scrutiny, and

a contemptuousness not generally unjust in itself, but displaying too

great confidence in his own superiority. This was enhanced by a

religious mysticism, which enters, as an essential element, into his

philosophy of the mind. The fame of Malebranche, and still more the

popularity in modern times of his Search for Truth, has been affected

by that peculiar hypothesis, so mystically expressed, the seeing all

things in God, which has been more remembered than any other part of

that treatise. “The union,” he says, “of the soul to God is the only

means by which we acquire a knowledge of truth. This union has indeed

been rendered so obscure by original sin, that few can understand what

it means; to those who follow blindly the dictates of sense and

passion it appears imaginary. The same cause has so fortified the

connection between the soul and body that we look on them as one

substance, of which the latter is the principal part. And hence, we

may all fear that we do not well discern the confused sounds with

which the senses fill the imagination from that pure voice of truth

which speaks to the soul. The body speaks louder than God himself; and

our pride makes us presumptuous enough to judge without waiting for

those words of truth, without which we cannot truly judge at all. And

the present work,” he adds, “may give evidence of this; for it is not

published as being infallible. But let my readers judge of my opinions

according to the clear and distinct answers they shall receive from

the only Lord of all men after they shall have interrogated him by

paying a serious attention to the subject.” This is a strong evidence

of the enthusiastic confidence in supernatural illumination which

belongs to Malebranche, and which we are almost surprised to find

united with so much cool and acute reasoning as his writings contain.

|His style.|

39. The Recherche de la Vérité is in six books; the first five on the

errors springing from the senses, from the imagination, from the

understanding, from the natural inclinations, and from the passions.

The sixth contains the method of avoiding these, which, however, has

been anticipated in great measure throughout the preceding.

Malebranche has many repetitions, but little, I think, that can be

called digressive, though he takes a large range of illustration, and

dwells rather diffusely on topics of subordinate importance. His style

is admirable; clear, precise, elegant, sparing in metaphors, yet not

wanting them in due place, warm, and sometimes eloquent, a little

redundant, but never passionate or declamatory.

|Sketch of his theory.|

40. Error, according to Malebranche, is the source of all human

misery; man is miserable because he is a sinner, and he would not sin

if he did not consent to err. For the will alone judges and reasons,

the understanding only perceives things and their relations; a

deviation from common language, to say the least, that seems quite

unnecessary.[791] The will is active and free; not that we can avoid

willing our own happiness; but it possesses a power of turning the

understanding towards such objects as please us, and commanding it to

examine everything thoroughly, else we should be perpetually deceived,

and without remedy, by the appearances of truth. And this liberty we

should use on every occasion: it is to become slaves, against the will

of God, when we acquiesce in false appearances; but it is in obedience

to the voice of eternal truth which speaks within us, that we submit

to those secret reproaches of reason, which accompany our refusal to

yield to evidence. There are, therefore, two fundamental rules, one

for science, the other for morals; never to give an entire consent to

any propositions, except those which are so evidently true, that we

cannot refuse to admit them without an internal uneasiness and

reproach of our reason; and, never fully to love anything, which we

can abstain from loving without remorse. We may feel a great

inclination to consent absolutely to a probable opinion; yet, on

reflection, we shall find that we are not compelled to do so by any

tacit self-reproach if we do not. And we ought to consent to such

probable opinions for the time until we have more fully examined the

question.

[791] L. i., c. 2.

41. The sight is the noblest of our senses, and if they had been given

us to discover truth, it is through vision that we should have done

it. But it deceives us in all it represents, in the size of bodies,

their figures and motions, in light and colours. None of these are

such as they appear, as he proves by many obvious instances. Thus, we

measure the velocity of motion by duration of time and extent of

space; but of duration the mind can form no just estimate, and the eye

cannot determine equality of spaces. The diameter of the moon is

greater by measurement when she is high in the heavens; it appears

greater to our eyes in the horizon.[792] On all sides we are beset

with error through our senses. Not that the sensations themselves,

properly speaking, deceive us. We are not deceived in supposing that

we see an orb of light before the sun has risen above the horizon, but

in supposing that what we see is the sun itself. Were we even

delirious, we should see and feel what our senses present to us,

though our judgment as to its reality would be erroneous. And this

judgment we may withhold by assenting to nothing without perfect

certainty.

[792] L. i., c. 9. Malebranche was engaged afterwards in

a controversy with Regis on this particular question of the

horizontal moon.

42. It would have been impossible for a man endowed with such

intrepidity and acuteness as Malebranche to overlook the question, so

naturally raised by this sceptical theory, as to the objective

existence of an external world. There is no necessary connection, he

observes, between the presence of an idea in the soul, and the

existence of the thing which it represents, as dreams and delirium

prove. Yet we may be confident that extension, figure, and movement,

do generally exist without us when we perceive them. These are not

imaginary; we are not deceived in believing their reality, though it

is very difficult to prove it. But it is far otherwise with colours,

smells, or sounds, for these do not exist at all beyond the mind. This

he proceeds to show at considerable length.[793] In one of the

illustrations subsequently written in order to obviate objections, and

subjoined to the Recherche de la Vérité, Malebranche comes again to

this problem of the reality of matter, and concludes by subverting

every argument in its favour, except what he takes to be the assertion

of Scripture. Berkeley, who did not see this in the same light, had

scarcely a step to take in his own famous theory, which we may

consider as having been anticipated by Malebranche, with the important

exception that what was only scepticism and denial of certainty in the

one, became a positive and dogmatic affirmation in the other.

[793] L. i., c. 10.

43. In all our sensations there are four things distinct in

themselves, but which, examined as they arise simultaneously, we are

apt to confound; these are the action of the object, the effect upon

the organ of sense, the mere sensation, and the judgment we form as to

its cause. We fall into errors as to all these, confounding the

sensation with the action of bodies, as when we say there is heat in

the fire, or colour in the rose, or confounding the motion of the

nerves with sensation, as when we refer heat to the hand; but most of

all, in drawing mistaken inferences as to the nature of objects from

our sensations.[794] It may be here remarked that what Malebranche has

properly called the judgment of the mind as to the cause of its

sensations, is precisely what Reid denominates perception; a term less

clear, and which seems to have led some of his school into important

errors. The language of the Scottish philosopher appears to imply that

he considered perception as a distinct and original faculty of the

mind, rather than what it is, a complex operation of the judgment and

memory, applying knowledge already acquired by experience. Neither he,

nor his disciple Stewart, though aware of the mistakes that have

arisen in this province of metaphysics by selecting our instances from

the phenomena of vision instead of the other senses, have avoided the

same source of error. The sense of sight has the prerogative of

enabling us to pronounce instantly on the external cause of our

sensation; and this perception is so intimately blended with the

sensation itself, that it has not to our minds, whatever may be the

case with young children, the least appearance of a judgment. But we

need only make our experiment upon sound or smell, and we shall at

once acknowledge that there is no sort of necessary connection between

the sensation and our knowledge of its corresponding external object.

We hear sounds continually, which we are incapable of referring to any

particular body; nor does anyone, I suppose, deny that it is by

experience alone we learn to pronounce, with more or less of certainty

according to its degree, on the causes from which these sensations

proceed.