Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/160

148 is involved in many of his expressions when Geulincx, one of his earliest followers, formulated the theory of occasional causes. The general approval of the Cartesian school proved that this was a legitimate development of doctrine. Yet it tore away the last veil from the absolute dualifun of the system, which had so far stretched the antagonism of mind and matter that no mediation remained possible, or what is the same thing, remained possible only through an inexplicable will of God. The intrusion of such a Deus ex machina into philosophy only showed that philosophy by its violent abstraction had destroyed the unity of the known and intelligible world, and was, there fore, forced to seek that unity in the region of the unknown and unintelligible. If our light be darkness, then in our darkuess we must seek for light ; if reason be contradictory in itself, truth must be found in unreason. The develop ment of the Cartesian school was soon to show what is the necessary and inevitable end of such worship of the unknown. To the ethical aspect of his philosophy, Des Cartes, unlike his great disciple, only devoted a subordinate atten tion. In a short treatise, however, he discussed the relation of reason to the passions. After we have got over the initial difficulty, that matter should give rise to effects in mind, and mind in matter, and have admitted that in man the unity of mind and body turns what in the animals is mere mechanical reception of stimulus from without and reaction upon it into an action and reaction mediated by sensation, emotion, and passion, another question presents itself. How can the mere natural move ment of passion, the nature of which is fixed by the original constitution of our body, and of the things that act upon it, be altered or modified by pure reason 1 For while it is obvious that morality consists in the determination of reason by itself, it is not easy to conceive how the same being who is determined by passion from without should also be determined by reason from within. How, in other words, can a spiritual being maintain its character as self-deter mined, or at least determined only by the clear and distinct ideas of the reason which are its innate forms, iu the presence of this foreign element of passion that seems to make it the slave of external impressions ] Is reason able to crush this intruder, or to turn it into a servant ? Can the passions be annihilated, or can they be spiritualized 1 Des Cartes could not properly adopt either alternative ; he could not adopt the ethics of asceticism, for the union of body and mind is, in his view, natural; and hence the passions which are the results of that union are in them selves good. They are provisions of nature for the protec tion of the unity of soul and body, and stimulate us to the acts necessary for that purpose. Yet, on the other hand, he could not admit that these passions are capable of being completely spiritualized ; for so long as the unity of body and soul is regarded as merely external and accidental, it is impossible to think that the passions which arise out of this unity can be transformed into the embodiment and expres sion of reason. Des Cartes, indeed, points out that every passion has a lower and a higher form, and while in its lower or primary form it is based on the obscure ideas produced by the motion of the animal spirits, in its higher form it is connected with the clear and distinct judgments of reason regarding good and evil. If, however, the unity of soul and body be a unity of composition, there is an element of obscurity in the judgments of passion which cannot be made clear, an element in desire that cannot be epiritualized. If the mind be external to the passions it can only impose upon them an external rule of moderation. On such a theory no ideal morality is possible to man in his present state ; for, in order to the attainment of such an ideal morality, it would be necessary that the accidental element obtruded into his life as a spiritual being by his connection with the body should be expelled. What can be attained under present conditions is only to abstract so far as is possible from external things, and those relations to external things into which passion brings us. Hence the great importance which Des Cartes attaches to the dis tinction between things in our power, and things not in our power. What is not in our power includes all outward things, and therefore it is our highest wisdom to regard them as determined by an absolute fate, or the eternal decree of God. We cease to wish for the impossible ; and therefore to subdue our passions we only need to convince ourselves that no effort of ours can enable us to secure their objects. On the other hand that which is within our power, and which therefore we cannot desire too earnestly, is virtue. But virtue in this abstraction from all objects of desire is simply the harmony of reason with itself, the arapa^ia of the Stoic under a slight change of aspect. Thus in ethics, as in metaphysics, Des Cartes ends not with a reconciliation of the opposed elements, but with a dualism, or at best, with a unity which is the result of abstraction.

was prepared, by the ascetic training of the cloister and the teaching of Augustine, to bring to clear consciousness and expression many of the tendencies that were latent and undeveloped in the philosophy of Des Cartes. To use a chemical metaphor, the Christian Plato- nism of the church father was a medium in which Car- tesianism could precipitate the product of its elements. Yet the medium was, as we shall see, not a perfect one, and hence the product was not quite pure. Without metaphor, Malebranche, by his previous habits of thought, was well fitted to detect and develop the pantheistic and ascetic elements of his master s philosophy. But he was not well fitted to penetrate through the veil of popular language under which the discordance of that philosophy with orthodox Christianity was hidden. On the contrary, the whole training of the Catholic priest, and especially his practical spirit, with that tendency to compromise which a practical spirit always brings with it, enabled him to conceal from himself as well as from others the logical result of his principles. And we do not wonder even when we find him treating as a &quot; miserable &quot; the philosopher who tore away the veil. Malebranche saw &quot; all tilings in God&quot; In other words, he taught that knowledge is possible only in so far as thought is the expression, not of the nature of the individual sub ject as such, but of a universal life in which he and all other rational beings partake. &quot; No one can feel my individual pain ; every one can see the truth which I con template why is it so? The reason is that my pain is a modification of my substance, but truth is the common good of all spirits.&quot; This idea is ever present to Male branche, and is repeated by him in an endless variety of forms of expression. Thus, like Des Cartes, but with more deci sion, he tells us that the idea of the infinite is prior to the idea of the finite. &quot; We conceive of the infinite being by the very fact that we conceive of being without thinking whether it be finite or no. But in order that we may think of a finite being, we must necessarily cut off or deduct something from the general notion of being, which consequently we must previously possess. Thus the mind does not apprehend anything whatever, except in and through the idea that it has of the infinite ; and so far is it from being the case that this idea is formed by the confused assemblage of all the ideas of particular things as the philo sophers maintain, that, on the contrary, all these particular ideas are only participations in the general idea of the 