Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/162

150 of finite individuality as such is illusory, and that as all bodies are but modes of one infinite extension, so all souls are but modes of one infinite thought. But while he will ingly accepts this result in regard to matter, his religious feelings prevent him from accepting it in relation to mind. He is driven, therefore, to the inconsistency of holding that sense and feeling, through which in his view we apprehend the finite as such, give us true though imperfecl knowledge of the soul, while the knowledge they give us of body is not only imperfect but false. Thus the finite spirit is still allowed to be a substance, distinct from the infinite, though it holds its substantial existence on a precarious tenure. It is left hanging, we may say, on the verge of the infinite, whose attraction must soon prove too strong for it. Ideas are living things, and often remould the minds that admit them in spite of the greatest resistance of dead custom and traditionary belief In the grasp of a logic that overpowers him the more easily that he is unconscious of its tendency, Malebranche is brought within one step of the pantheistic conclusion, and all his Christian feeling and priestly train ing can do, is just to save him from denial of the person ality of man. But even this denial is not the last word of pantheism. When the principle that the finite is known only in relation to the infinite, the individual only in relation to the uni versal, is interpreted as meaning that the infinite and universal is complete in itself without the finite and individual, when the finite and individual is treated as a mere accidental existence due to the &quot; arbitrary will of God,&quot; it ceases to be possible to conceive even God as a spirit. Did Malebranche realize what he was saying when he declared that God was &quot; being in general,&quot; but not any particular being 1 At any rate we can see that the same logic that leads him almost to deny the reality of finite beings, leads him also to seek the divine nature in some thing more abstract and general even than thought. If we must abstract from all relation to the finite in order to know God as he is, is it not necessary for us also to abstract from self-consciousness, for self-consciousness has a nega tive element in it that is something definite and therefore limited ? We do not wonder, therefore, when we find Malebranche saying that reason does not tell us that God is a spirit, but only that He is an infinitely perfect being, and that he must be conceived rather as a spirit than as a body simply because spirit is more perfect than body. &quot; When we call God a spirit, it is not so much to show positively what he is, as to signify that he is not material.&quot; But as we ought not to give him a bodily form like man s, so we ought not to think of his spirit as similar to our own spirits, although we can conceive nothing mo re perfect. &quot; It is necessary rather to believe that as he contains in himself the properties of matter without being material, so he comprehends in himself the perfections of created spirits without being a spirit as we alone can conceive spirits, and that his true name is &quot; He who is,&quot; i.e., Being without restriction, Being infinite and universal.&quot; Thus the essentially self-revealing God of Christianity gives way to pure spirit, and pure spirit in its turn to the eternal and incomprehensible substance of which we can say nothing but that it is. The divine substance contains init, indeed, everything that is in creation, but it contains them eminenter in some incomprehensible form that is reconcilable with its infinitude. But we have no adequate name by which to call it except Being. The curious metaphysic of theology by which, in his later writings, Malebranche tried to make room for the incarnation by supposing that the finite ereation, which as finite is unworthy of God, was made worthy by union with Christ, the divine Word, shows that Malebranche had some indistinct sense of the necessity of reconciling his philosophy with his theology ; but it shows also the necessarily artificial nature of the combination. The result of the union of such incongruous elements was something which the theologians at once recognized as heterodox and the philosophers as illogical. There was another doctrine of Malebranche which brought him into trouble with the theologians, and which was the main subject of his long controversy with Arnauld. This was his denial of particular providence. As Leibnitz maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds, and that its evils are to be explained by the negative nature of the finite, so Malebranche, with a slight change of expression, derived evil from the nature of particular or individual existence. It is not conformable to the nature of God to act by any but universal laws, and these universal laws necessarily involve particular evil consequences, though their ultimate result is the highest possible good. The question why there should be any particular existence, any existence but God, seeing such existence necessarily involves evil, remains insoluble so long as the purely pantheistic view of God is maintained ; and it is this view which is really at the bottom of the assertion that he can have no particular volitions. To the coarse and anthropomorphic conception of particular providence Malebranche may bo right in objecting, but on the other hand, it cannot be doubted that any theory in which the universal is absolutely opposed to the particular, the infinite to the finite, ia unchristian as well as unphilosophical. For under this dualistic presupposition, there seem to be only two possible alternatives open to thought; either the particular and finite must be treated as something independent of the universal and infinite, which involves an obvious contradic tion, or else it must be regarded as absolute nonentity. We find Malebranche doing the one or the other as occasion requires. Thus he vindicates the freedom of man s will on the ground that the universal will of God does not completely determine the particular volitions of man ; and then becoming conscious of the difficulty involved in this conception, he tries, like Des Cartes, to explain the particular will as something merely negative, a defect, and not a positive existence. But to understand fully Malebranche s view of freedom and the ethical system connected with it, we must notice an important alteration which he makes in the Cartesian theory of the relation of will and intelligence. To Des Cartes, as we have seen, the ultimate essence of mind lay in pure abstract self-determination or will, and hence he based even moral and intellectual truth on the arbitrary decrees of God. With Malebranche, on the other hand, abstraction goes a step further; and the absolute is sought not in the subject as opposed to the object, not in pure formal self-determination as opposed to that which is determined, but in a unity that transcends this difference. With him, therefore, will ceases to be regarded as the essence of intelligence, and sinks into a property or separable attribute of it. As we can conceive an extended substance without actual movement, so, he says, we can conceive a thinking substance without actual volition. But &quot; matter or extension without motion would be entirely useless and incapable of that variety of forms for which it is made ; and we cannot, therefore, suppose, that an all- wise Being would create it in this way. In like manner, if a spiritual or thinking substance were without will, it is clear that it would be quite useless, for it would not be attracted towards the objects of its perception, and would not love the good for which it is made. We cannot there fore conceive an intelligent being so to fashion it.&quot; Now God need not be conceived as creating at all, for he is self- 