Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/137

 OCCASIONALISM : GEULINCX. "S Geulincx names subject (the empty concept of an existent, ens or quod est) and predicate {modus entis), and derives them from two fundamental activities of the mind, a com- bining function {simulsumtio, totatio) and an abstracting function (one which removes the nota subjecii). Sub- stance and accident, substantive and adjective, are expres- sions for subjective processes of thought and hence do not hold of things in themselves. With reference to the impor- tance, nay, to the indispensability, of linguistic signs in the use of the understanding, the science of the forms of thought is briefly termed grammar. The principle ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis, forms the con- nection between the occasionalistic metaphysics and ethics, the latter deducing the practical consequences of the for- mer. Where thou canst do nothing, there will nothing. Since we can effect nothing in the material world, to which we are related merely as spectators, we ought also not to seek in it the motives and objects of our actions. God, does not require works, but dispositions only, for the result of our volition is beyond our power. Our moral vocation, then, consists in renunciation of the world and retirement into our- selves, and in patient faithfulness at the post assigned to us. Virtue is amor dei ac rationis, self-renouncing, active, obedient love to God and to the reason as the image and law of God in us. The cardinal virtues are diligentia, sedu- lous listening for the commands of the reason ; obedientia, the execution of these justitia, the conforming of the whole life to what is perceived to be right ; finally, humilitas, the recognition o/ our impotency and self-renunciation {inspectio and despectio, or derelictio, neglectus, contemptus, incuria sui). The highest of these is humility, pious submission to the divine order of things ; its condition, the self-knowledge commended in the title of the Ethics ; the primal evil, self- love {Philautia — ipsissimum peccatuni). Man is unhappy be- cause he seeks happiness. Happiness is like our shadows ; it shuns us when we pursue it, it follows us when we f!ee from it. The joys which spring from virtue are an adornment of it, not an enticement to it ; they are its result, not its aim. The ethics of Geulincx, which we cannot further trace out here, surprises one by its approximation to the views of