# Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica/Dissertation First/Part 1/Chapter 2/Section 2

Section II.
Progress of Philosophy in France during the Seventeenth Century.
Montaigne—Charron—La Rochefoucauld.
At the head of the French writers who contributed, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, to turn the thoughts of their countrymen to subjects connected with the Philosophy of Mind, Montaigne may, I apprehend, be justly placed. Properly speaking, he belongs to a period somewhat earlier; but his tone of thinking and of writing classes him much more naturally with his successors, than with any French author who had appeared before him.
In assigning to Montaigne so distinguished a rank in the history of modern philosophy, I need scarcely say, that I leave entirely out of the account what constitutes (and justly constitutes) to the generality of readers the principal charm of his Essays; the good nature, humanity, and unaffected sensibility, which so irresistibly attach us to his character,—lending, it must be owned, but too often, a fascination to his talk, when he cannot be recommended as the safest of companions. Nor do I lay much stress on the inviting frankness and vivacity with which he unbosoms himself about all his domestic habits and concerns; and which render his book so expressive a portrait, not only of the author, but of the Gascon country-gentleman, two hundred years ago. I have in view chiefly the minuteness and good faith of his details concerning his own personal qualities, both intellectual and moral. The only study which seems ever to have engaged his attention was that of man; and for this he was singularly fitted, by a rare combination of that talent for observation which belongs to men of the world, with those habits of abstracted reflection, which men of the world have commonly so little disposition to cultivate. “I study myself,” says he, “more than any other subject. This is my metaphysic; this my natural philosophy.” He has accordingly produced a work, unique in its kind; valuable, in an eminent degree, as an authentic record of many interesting facts relative to human nature; but more valuable by far, as holding up a mirror in which every individual, if he does not see his own image, will at least occasionally perceive so many traits of resemblance to it, as can scarcely fail to invite his curiosity to a more careful review of himself. In this respect, Montaigne’s writings may be regarded in the ​light of what painters call studies; in other words, of those slight sketches which were originally designed for the improvement or amusement of the artist; but which, on that account, are the more likely te be useful in developing the germs of similar endowments in others.
Without a union of these two powers (reflection and observation), the study of Man can never be successfully prosecuted. It is only by retiring within ourselves that we can obtain a key to the characters of others; and it is only by observing and comparing the characters of others that we can thoroughly understand and appreciate our own.
After all, however, it may be fairly questioned, notwithstanding the scrupulous fidelity with which Montaigne has endeavoured to delineate his own portrait, if he has been always sufficiently aware of the secret folds and reduplications of the human heart. That he was by no means exempted from the common delusions of self-love and self-deceit, has been fully evinced in a very acute, though somewhat uncharitable, section of the Port-Royal logic; but this consideration, so far from diminishing the value of his Essays, is one of the most instructive lessons they afford to those who, after the example of the author, may undertake the salutary but humiliating task of self-examination.
As Montaigne’s scientific knowledge was, according to his own account, “very vague and imperfect;” and his book-learning rather sententious and gossipping, than comprehensive and systematical, it would be unreasonable to expect, in his philosophical arguments, much either of depth or of solidity. The sentiments he hazards are to be regarded but as the impressions of the moment; consisting chiefly of the more obvious doubts and difficulties which, on all metaphysical and moral questions, are apt to present themselves to a speculative mind, when it first attempts to dig below the surface of common opinions. In reading Montaigne, accordingly, what chiefly strikes us, is not the novelty or the refinement of his ideas, but the liveliness and felicity with which we see embodied in words the previous wanderings of our own imaginations. It is probably owing to this circumstance, rather than to any direct plagiarism, that his Essays appear to contain the germs of so many of the paradoxical theories which, in later times, Helvetius and others have laboured to systematise and to support with the parade of metaphysical discussion. In the mind of Montaigne, the same paradoxes may be easily traced to those deceitful appearances which, in order to sti​mulate our faculties to their best exertions, nature seems purposely to have thrown in our way, as stumbling-blocks in the pursuit of truth; and it is only to be regretted on such occasions, for the sake of his own happiness, that his genius and temper qualified and disposed him more to start the problem than to investigate the solution.
When Montaigne touches on religion, he is, in general, less pleasing than on other subjects. His constitutional temper, it is probable, predisposed him to scepticism; but this original bias could not fail to be mightily strengthened by the disputes, both religious and political, which, during his lifetime, convulsed Europe, and more particularly his own country. On a mind like his it may be safely presumed, that the writings of the reformers, and the instructions of Buchanan, were not altogether without effect; and hence, in all probability, the perpetual struggle, which he is at no pains to conceal, between the creed of his infancy, and the lights of his mature understanding. He speaks, indeed, of “reposing tranquilly on the pillow of doubt;” but this language is neither reconcilable with the general complexion of his works, nor with the most authentic accounts we have received of his dying moments. It is a maxim of his own, that, “in forming a judgment of a man’s life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it;” to which he pathetically adds, “that the chief study of his own life was, that his latter end might be decent, calm, and silent.” The fact is (if we may credit the testimony of his biographers), that, in his declining years, he exchanged his boasted pillow of doubt for the more powerful opiates prescribed by the infallible church; and that he expired in performing what his old preceptor Buchanan would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry.
The scepticism of Montaigne seems to have been of a very peculiar cast, and to have had little in common with that either of Bayle or of Hume. The great aim of the two latter writers evidently was, by exposing the uncertainty of our reasonings whenever we pass the limit of sensible objects, to inspire their readers with a complete distrust of the human faculties on all moral and metaphysical topics. Montaigne, on the other hand, never thinks of forming a sect; but, yielding passively to the current of his reflections and feelings, argues, at different times, according to the varying state of his impressions and temper, on opposite sides of the same question. On all occasions, he preserves an air of the most perfect sincerity; and it was to this, I presume, much more than to the superiority of his reasoning powers, that Montesquieu alluded, when he said, “In the greater part of authors I see the writer; in Montaigne I see nothing but the thinker.” The radical fault of his ​understanding consisted in an incapacity of forming, on disputable points, those decided and fixed opinions which can alone impart either force or consistency to intellectual character. For remedying this weakness, the religious controversies, and the civil wars recently engendered by the Reformation, were but ill calculated. The minds of the most serious men, all over Christendom, must have been then unsettled in an extraordinary degree; and where any predisposition to scepticism existed, every external circumstance must have conspired to cherish and confirm it. Of the extent to which it was carried, about the same period, in England, some judgment may be formed from the following description of a Sceptic by a writer not many years posterior to Montaigne.
“A sceptic in religion is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions; whereof not one but stirs him, and none sways him. A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of everything that he believes nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary, none persuades him to itself. He would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an Atheist; and wholly an Atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect Heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none; indeed, the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy hm. He finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and is always too hard for himself.” If this portrait had been presented to Montaigne, I have little doubt that he would have had the candour to acknowledge, that he recognized in it some of the most prominent and characteristical features of his own mind.
The most elaborate, and seemingly the most serious, of all Montaigne’s essays, is his long and somewhat tedious Apology for Raimond de Sebonde, contained in the twelfth chapter of his second book. This author appears, from Montaigne’s account, to have been a Spaniard, who professed physic at Thoulouse, towards the end of the fourteenth century; and who published a treatise, entitled Theologia Naturalis, which was put into the hands of Montaigne’s father by a friend, as a useful antidote against the innovations with which Luther was then beginning to disturb the ancient faith. That, in this particular instance, the ​book answered the intended purpose, may be presumed from the request of old Montaigne to his son, a few days before his death, to translate it into French from the Spanish original. His request was accordingly complied with; and the translation is referred to by Montaigne in the first edition of his Essays, printed at Bourdeaux in 1580; but the execution of this filial duty seems to have produced on Montaigne’s own mind very different effects from what his father had anticipated.
The principal aim of Sebonde’s book, according to Montaigne, is to show that “Christians are in the wrong to make human reasoning the basis of their belief, since the object of it is only conceived by faith, and by a special inspiration of the divine grace.” To this doctrine Montaigne professes to yield an implicit assent; and, under the shelter of it, contrives to give free vent to all the extravagancies of scepticism. The essential distinction between the reason of man, and the instincts of the lower animals, is at great length, and with no inconsiderable ingenuity, disputed; the powers of the human understanding, in all inquiries, whether physical or moral, are held up to ridicule; an universal Pyrrhonism is recommended; and we are again and again reminded, that “the senses are the beginning and the end of all our knowledge.” Whoever has the patience to peruse this chapter with attention, will be surprised to find in it the rudiments of a great part of the licentious philosophy of the eighteenth century; nor can he fail to remark the address with which the author avails himself of the language afterwards adopted by Bayle, Helvetius, and Hume:—“That, to be a philosophical sceptic, is the first step towards becoming a sound believing Christian.” It is a melancholy fact in ecclesiastical history, that this insidious maxim should have been sanctioned, in our times, by some theologians of no common pretensions to orthodoxy; who, in direct contradiction to the words of Scripture, have ventured to assert, that “he who comes to God must first believe that he is not.” Is it necessary to remind these grave retailers of Bayle’s sly and ironical sophistry, that every argument for Christianity, drawn from its internal evidence, tacitly recognizes the authority of human reason; and assumes, as the ultimate criteria of truth and of falsehood, of right and of wrong, certain fundamental articles of belief, discoverable by the light of Nature?
​Charron is well known as the chosen friend of Montaigne’s latter years, and as the confidential depositary of his philosophical sentiments. Endowed with talents far inferior in force and originality to those of his master, he possessed, nevertheless, a much sounder and more regulated judgment; and as his reputation, notwithstanding the liberality of some of lis peculiar tenets, was high among the most respectable and conscientious divines of his own church, it is far from improbable, that Montaigne committed to him the guardianship of his posthumous fame, from motives similar to those which influenced Pope, in selecting Warburton as his literary executor. The discharge of this trust, however, seems to have done less good to Montaigne than harm to Charron; for, while the unlimited scepticism, and the indecent levities of the former, were viewed by the zealots of those days with a smile of tenderness and indulgence, the slighter heresies of the latter were marked with a severity the more rigorous and unrelenting, that, in points of essential importance, they deviated so very little from the standard of the Catholic faith. It is not easy to guess the motives of this inconsistency; but such we find from the fact to have been the temper of religious bigotry, or, to speak more correctly, of political religionism, in all ages of the world.
As an example of Charron’s solicitude to provide an antidote against the more pernicious ​errors of his friend, I shall only mention his ingenious and philosophical attempt to reconcile, with the moral constitution of human nature, the apparent discordancy in the judgments of different nations concerning right and wrong. His argument on this point is in substance the very same with that so well urged by Beattie, in opposition to Locke’s reasonings against the existence of innate practical principles. It is difficult to say, whether, in this instance, the coincidence between Montaigne and Locke, or that between Charron and Beattie, be the more remarkable.
Although Charron has affected to give to his work a systematical form, by dividing and subdividing it into books and chapters, it is in reality little more than an unconnected series of essays on various topics, more or less distantly related to the science of Ethics. On the powers of the understanding he has touched but slightly; nor has he imitated Montaigne, in anatomizing, for the edification of the world, the peculiarities of his own moral character. It has probably been owing to the desultory and popular style of composition common to both, that so little attention has been paid to either by those who have treated of the history of French philosophy. To Montaigne’s merits, indeed, as a lively and amusing essayist, ample justice has been done; but his influence on the subsequent habits of thinking among his countrymen remains still to be illustrated. He has done more, perhaps, than any other author (I am inclined to think with the most honest intentions), to introduce into mens houses (if I may borrow an expression of Cicero) what is now called the new philosophy,—a philosophy certainly very different from that of Socrates. In the fashionable world, he has, for more than two centuries, maintained his place as the first of moralists; a circumstance easily accounted for, when we attend to the singular combination, exhibited in his writings, of a semblance of erudition, with what Malebranche happily calls his air du monde, and air cavalier. As for the graver and less attractive Charron, his name would probably before now have sunk into oblivion, had it not been so closely associated, by the accidental events of his life, with the more celebrated name of Montaigne.
​The preceding remarks lead me, by a natural connection of ideas (to which I am here much more inclined to attend than to the order of dates), to another writer of the seventeenth century, whose influence over the literary and philosophical taste of France has been far greater than seems to be commonly imagined. I allude to the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, author of the Maxims and Moral Reflections.
Voltaire was, I believe, the first who ventured to assign to La Rochefoucauld the preeminent rank which belongs to him among the French classics. “One of the works,” says he, “which contributed most to form the taste of the nation to a justness and precision of thought and expression, was the small collection of maxims by Francis Duke of La Rochefoucauld. Although there be little more than one idea in the book, that self-love is the spring of all our actions, yet this idea is presented in so great a variety of forms, as to be always amusing. When it first appeared, it was read with avidity; and it contributed, more than any other performance since the revival of letters, to improve the vivacity, correctness, and delicacy of French composition.”
Another very eminent judge of literary merit (the late Dr Johnson) was accustomed to say of La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims, that it was almost the only book written by a man of fashion, of which professed authors had reason to be jealous. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider the unwearied industry of the very accomplished writer, in giving to every part of it the highest and most finished polish which his exquisite taste could bestow. When he had committed a maxim to paper, he was in use to circulate it among his friends, that he might avail himself of their critical animadversions; and, if we may credit Segrais, altered some of them no less than thirty times, before venturing to submit them to the public eye.
That the tendency of these maxims is, upon the whole, unfavourable to morality, and that they always leave a disagreeable impression on the mind, must, I think, be granted. At the same time, it may be fairly questioned, if the motives of the author have in general been well understood, either by his admirers or his opponents. In affirming that self-love is the spring of all our actions, there is no good reason for supposing that he meant to deny the reality of moral distinctions as a philosophical truth;—a supposition quite inconsistent with his own fine and deep remark, that hypocrisy is itself an homage which vice renders to virtue. He states it merely as a fact, which, in the course of his experience as a man of ​the world, he had found very generally verified in the higher classes of society; and which he was induced to announce without any qualification or restriction, in order to give more force and poignancy to his satire. In adopting this mode of writing, he has unconsciously conformed himself, like many other French authors, who have since followed his example, to a suggestion which Aristotle has stated with admirable depth and acuteness in his Rhetoric. “Sentences or apophthegms lend much aid to eloquence. One reason of this is, that they flatter the pride of the hearers, who are delighted when the speaker, making use of general language, touches upon opinions which they had before known to be true in part. Thus, a person who had the misfortune to live in a bad neighbourhood, or to have worthless children, would easily assent to the speaker who should affirm, that nothing is more vexatious than to have any neighbours; nothing more irrational than to bring children into the world.” This observation of Aristotle, while it goes far to account for the imposing and dazzling effect of these rhetorical exaggerations, ought to guard us against the common and popular error of mistaking them for the serious and profound generalizations of science. As for La Rochefoucauld, we know, from the best authorities, that, in private life, he was a conspicuous example of all those moral qualities of which he seemed to deny the existence; and that he exhibited, in this respect, a striking contrast to the Cardinal de Retz, who has presumed to censure him for his want of faith in the reality of virtue.
In reading La Rochefoucauld, it should never be forgotten, that it was within the vortex of a court he enjoyed his chief opportunities of studying the world; and that the narrow and exclusive circle in which he moved was not likely to afford him the most favourable specimens of human nature in general. Of the Court of Lewis XIV. in particular, we are told by a very nice and reflecting observer (Madame de la Fayette), that “ambition and gallantry were the soul, actuating alike both men and women. So many contending interests, so many different cabals were constantly at work, and in all of these, women bore so important a part, that love was always mingled with business, and business with love. Nobody was tranquil or indifferent. Every one studied to advance himself by pleasing, serving, or ruining others. Idleness and languor were unknown, and nothing was thought of but intrigues or pleasures.”
​In the passage already quoted from Voltaire, he takes notice of the effect of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims, in improving the style of French composition. We may add to this remark, that their effect has not been less sensible in vitiating the tone and character of French philosophy, by bringing into vogue those false and degrading representations of human nature and of human life, which have prevailed in that country, more or less, for a century past. Mr Addison, in one of the papers of the Tatler, expresses his indignation at this general bias among the French writers of his age. “It is impossible,” he observes, “to read a passage in Plato or Tully, and a thousand other ancient moralists, without being a greater and better man for it. On the contrary, I could never read any of our modish French authors, or those of our own country, who are the imitators and admirers of that nation, without being, for some time, out of humour with myself, and at everything about me. Their business is to depreciate human nature, and to consider it under the worst appearances; they give mean interpretations, and base motives to the worthiest actions. In short, they endeavour to make no distinction between man and man, or between the species of man and that of the brutes.”
It is very remarkable, that the censure here bestowed by Addison on the fashionable French wits of his time, should be so strictly applicable to Helvetius, and to many other of the most admired authors whom France has produced in our own day. It is still more remarkable to find the same depressing spirit shedding its malignant influence on French literature, as early as the time of La Rochefoucauld, and even of Montaigne; and to observe how very little has been done by the successors of these old writers, but to expand into grave philosophical systems their loose and lively paradoxes;—disguising and fortifying them by the aid of those logical principles, to which the name and authority of Locke have given so wide a circulation in Europe.
In tracing the origin of that false philosophy on which the excesses of the French revolutionists have entailed such merited disgrace, it is usual to remount no higher than to the profligate period of the Regency; but the seeds of its most exceptionable doctrines had been sown in that country at an earlier era, and were indebted for the luxuriancy of their harvest, much more to the political and religious soil where they struck their roots, than to the skill or foresight of the individuals by whose hands they were scattered.
I have united the names of Montaigne and of La Rochefoucauld, because I consider their writings as rather addressed to the world at large, than to the small and select class of spe​culative students. Neither of them can be said to have enriched the stock of human knowledge by the addition of any one important general conclusion; but the maxims of both have operated very extensively and powerfully on the taste and principles of the higher orders all over Europe, and predisposed them to give a welcome reception to the same ideas, when afterwards reproduced with the imposing appendages of logical method, and of a technical phraseology. The foregoing reflections, therefore, are not so foreign as might at first be apprehended, to the subsequent history of ethical and of metaphysical speculation. It is time, however, now to turn our attention to a subject far more intimately connected with the general progress of human reason,—the philosophy of Descartes.
Descartes—Gassendi—Malebranche.
According to a late writer, whose literary decisions (excepting where he touches on religion or politics) are justly entitled to the highest deference, Descartes has a better claim than any other individual, to be regarded as the father of that spirit of free inquiry, which, in modern Europe, has so remarkably displayed itself in all the various departments of knowledge. Of Bacon, he observes, “that though he possessed, in a most eminent degree, the genius of philosophy, he did not unite with it the genius of the sciences; and that the methods proposed by him for the investigation of truth, consisting entirely of precepts which he was unable to exemplify, had little or no effect in accelerating the rate of discovery.” As for Galileo, he remarks, on the other hand, “that his exclusive taste for mathematical and physical researches, disqualified him for communicating to the general mind that impulse of which it stood in need.”
“This honour,” he adds, “was reserved for Descartes, who combined in himself the characteristical endowments of both his predecessors. If, in the physical sciences, his march be less sure than that of Galileo—if his logic be less cautious than that of Bacon—yet the very temerity of his errors was instrumental to the progress of the human race. He gave activity to minds which the circumspection of his rivals could not awake from their lethargy. He called upon men to throw off the yoke of authority, acknowledging no influence but what reason should avow: And his call was obeyed by a multitude of followers, encouraged by the boldness, and fascinated by the enthusiasm of their leader.”
In these observations, the ingenious author has rashly generalized a conclusion deduced from the literary history of his own country. That the works of Bacon were but little read there till after the publication of D’Alembert’s Preliminary Discourse, is, I believe, ​an unquestionable fact; not that it necessarily follows from this, that, even in France, no previous effect had been produced by the labours of Boyle, of Newton, and of the other English experimentalists, trained in Bacon’s school. With respect to England, it is a fact not less certain, that at no period did the philosophy of Descartes produce such an impression on public opinion, either in Physics or in Ethics, as to give the slightest colour to the supposition, that it contributed, in the most distant degree, to the subsequent advances made by our countrymen in these sciences. In Logic and Metaphysics, indeed, the case was different. Here the writings of Descartes did much; and if they had been studied with proper attention, they might have done much more. But of this part of their merits, Condorcet seems to have had no idea. His eulogy, therefore, is rather misplaced than excessive. He has extolled Descartes as the father of Experimental Physics: He would have been nearer the truth, if he had pointed him out as the father of the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind.
In bestowing this title on Descartes, I am far from being inclined to compare him, in the number or importance of the facts which he has remarked concerning our intellectual powers, to various other writers of an earlier date. I allude merely to his clear and precise conception of that operation of the understanding (distinguished afterwards in Locke’s Essay by the name of Reflection), through the medium of which all our knowledge of Mind is exclusively to be obtained. Of the essential subserviency of this power to every satisfactory conclusion that can he formed with respect to the mental phenomena, and of the futility of every theory which would attempt to explain them by metaphors borrowed from the material world, no other philosopher prior to Locke seems to have been fully aware; and from the moment that these truths were recognized as logical principles in the study of mind, a new era commences in the history of that branch of science. It will be necessary, therefore, to allot to the illustration of this part of the Cartesian philosophy a larger space, than the limits of my undertaking will permit me to afford to the researches of some succeeding inquirers, who may, at first sight, appear more worthy of attention in the present times.
It has been repeatedly asserted by the Materialists of the last century, that Descartes was the first Metaphysician by whom the pure immateriality of the human soul was taught; and that the ancient philosophers, as well as the schoolmen, went no farther than to con​sider mind as the result of a material organization, in which the constituent elements approached to evanescence, in point of subtlety. Both of these propositions I conceive to be totally unfounded. That many of the schoolmen, and that the wisest of the ancient philosophers, when they described the mind as a spirit, or as a spark of celestial fire, employed these expressions, not with any intention to materialize its essence, but merely from want of more unexceptionable language, might be shewn with demonstrative evidence, if this were the proper place for entering into the discussion. But what is of more importance to be attended to, on the present occasion, is the effect of Descartes’ writings in disentangling the logical principle above mentioned, from the scholastic question about the nature of mind, as contradistinguished from matter. It were indeed to be wished, that he had perceived still-more clearly and steadily the essential importance of keeping this distinction constantly in view; but he had at least the merit of illustrating, by his own example, in a far greater degree than any of his predecessors, the possibility of studying the mental phenomena, without reference to any facts but those which rest on the evidence of consciousness. The metaphysical question about the nature of mind he seems to have considered as a problem, the solution of which was an easy corollary from these facts, if distinctly apprehended; but still as a problem, whereof it was possible that different views might be taken by those who agreed in opinion, as far as facts alone were concerned. Of this a very remarkable example has since occurred in the case of Mr Locke, who, although he has been at great pains to.shew, that the power of reflection bears the same relation to the study of the mental phenomena, which the power of observation bears to the study of the material world, appears, nevertheless, to have been far less decided than Descartes with respect to the essential distinction between Mind and Matter; and has even gone so far as to hazard the unguarded proposition, that there is no absurdity in supposing the Deity to have superadded to the other qualities of matter the power of thinking. His scepticism, however, on this point, did not prevent his good sense from perceiving, with the most complete conviction, the indispensable necessity of abstracting from the analogy of matter, in studying the laws of our intellectual frame.
The question about the nature or essence of the soul, has been, in all ages, a favourite subject of discussion among Metaphysicians, from its supposed connection with the argument in proof of its immortality. In this light it has plainly been considered by both parties in the dispute; the one conceiving, that if Mind could be shewn to have no quality in common with Matter, its dissolution was physically impossible; the other, that if this assumption could be disproved, it would necessarily follow, that the whole man must perish at death. For the last of these opinions Dr Priestley and many other speculative theologians have of late very zealously contended; flattering themselves, no doubt, with the idea, ​that they were thus preparing a triumph for their own peculiar schemes of Christianity. Neglecting, accordingly, all the presumptions for a future state, afforded by a comparison of the course of human affairs with the moral judgments and moral feelings of the human heart; and overlooking, with the same disdain, the presumptions arising from the narrow sphere of human knowledge, when compared with the indefinite improvement of which our intellectual powers seem to be susceptible; this acute but superficial writer attached himself exclusively to the old and hackneyed pneumatological argument; tacitly assuming as a principle, that the future prospects of man depend entirely on the determination of a physical problem, analogous to that which was then dividing chemists about the existence or non-existence of Phlogiston. In the actual state of science, these speculations might well have been spared. Where is the sober metaphysician to be found, who now speaks of the immortality of the soul as a logical consequence of its immateriality; instead of considering it as depending on the will of that Being by whom it was at first called into existence? And, on the other hand, is it not universally admitted by the best philosophers, that whatever hopes the light of nature encourages beyond the present scene, rest solely (like all our other anticipations of future events) on the general tenor and analogy of the laws by which we perceive the universe to be governed? The proper use of the argument concerning the immateriality of mind, is not to establish any positive conclusion as to its destiny hereafter; but to repel the reasonings alleged by materialists, as proofs that its annihilation must be the obvious and necessary effect of the dissolution of the body.
I thought it proper to state this consideration pretty fully, lest it should be supposed that the logical method recommended by Descartes for studying the phenomena of mind, has any necessary dependence on his metaphysical opinion concerning its being and properties, as a separate substance, Between these two parts of his system, however, there is, if not a ​demonstrative connection, at least a natural and manifest affinity; inasmuch as a steady adherence to his logical method (or, in other words, the habitual exercise of patient reflection), by accustoming us to break asunder the obstinate associations to which materialism is indebted for the early hold it is apt to take of the fancy, gradually and insensibly predisposes us in favour of his metaphysical conclusion. It is to be regretted, that, in stating this conclusion, his commentators should so frequently make use of the word spirituality; for which I do not recollect that his own works afford any authority. The proper expression is immateriality, conveying merely a negative idea; and, of consequence, implying nothing more than a rejection of that hypothesis concerning the nature of Mind, which the scheme of materialism so gratuitously, yet so dogmatically assumes.
The power of Reflection, it is well known, is the last of our intellectual faculties that unfolds itself; and, in by far the greater number of individuals, it never unfolds itself in any considerable degree. It is a fact equally certain, that, long before the period of life when this power begins to exercise its appropriate functions, the understanding is already preoccupied with a chaos of opinions, notions, impressions and associations, bearing on the most important objects of human inquiry; not to mention the innumerable sources of illusion and error connected with the use of a vernacular language, learned in infancy by rote, and identified with the first processes of thought and perception. The consequence is, that when Man begins to reflect, he finds himself (if I may borrow an allusion of M. Turgot’s) lost in a labyrinth, into which he had been led blindfolded. To the same purpose, it was long ago complained of by Bacon, “that no one has yet been found of so constant and severe a mind, as to have determined and tasked himself utterly to abolish theories and common notions, and to apply his intellect, altogether smoothed and even, to particulars anew. Accordingly, that human reason which we have, is a kind of medley and unsorted collection, from much trust and much accident, and the childish notions which we first drank in. Whereas, if one of ripe age and sound senses, and a mind thoroughly cleared, should apply himself freshly to experiment and particulars, of him were better things to be hoped.”
What Bacon has here recommended, Descartes attempted to execute; and so exact is the coincidence of his views on this fundamental point with those of his predecessor, that it is ​with difficulty I can persuade myself that he had never read Bacon’s works. In the prosecution of this undertaking, the first steps of Descartes are peculiarly interesting and instructive; and it is these alone which merit our attention at present. As for the details of his system, they are now curious only as exhibiting an amusing contrast to the extreme rigour of the principle from whence the author sets out; a contrast so very striking, as fully to justify the epigrammatic saying of D’Alembert, that “Descartes began with doubting of everything, and ended in believing that he had left nothing unexplained.”
Among the various articles of common belief which Descartes proposed to subject to a severe scrutiny, he enumerates particularly, the conclusiveness of mathematical demonstration; the existence of God; the existence of the material world; and even the existence of his own body. The only thing that appeared to him certain and incontrovertible, was his own existence; by which he repeatedly reminds us, we are to understand merely the existence of his mind, abstracted from all consideration of the material organs connected with it. About every other proposition, he conceived, that doubts might reasonably be entertained; but to suppose the non-existence of that which thinks, at the very moment it is conscious of thinking, appeared to him a contradiction in terms. From this single postulatum, accordingly, he took his departure; resolved to admit nothing as a philosophical truth, which could not be deduced from it by a chain of logical reasoning.
Having first satisfied himself of his own existence, his next step was to inquire, how far his perceptive and intellectual faculties were entitled to credit. For this purpose, he begins with offering a proof of the existence and attributes of God;—truths which he conceived to be necessarily involved in the idea he was able to form of a perfect, self-existent, and eternal being. His reasonings on this point it would be useless to state. It is sufficient to observe, that they led him to conclude, that God cannot possibly be supposed to deceive his creatures; and therefore, that the intimations of our senses, and the decisions of our reason, are to be trusted to with entire confidence, wherever they afford us clear and distinct ideas of their respective objects.
​As Descartes conceived the existence of God (next to the existence of his own mind) to be the most indisputable of all truths, and rested his confidence in the conclusions of human reason entirely on his faith in the divine veracity, it is not surprising that he should have rejected the argument from final causes, as superfluous and unsatisfactory. To have availed himself of its assistance, would not only have betrayed a want of confidence in what he professed to regard as much more certain than any mathematical theorem; but would obviously have exposed him to the charge of first appealing to the divine attributes in proof of the authority of his faculties; and afterwards, of appealing to these faculties, in proof of the existence of God.
It is wonderful, that it should have escaped the penetration of this most acute thinker, that a vicious circle of the same description is involved in every appeal to the intellectual powers, in proof of their own credibility; and that unless this credibility be assumed as unquestionable, the farther exercise of human reason is altogether nugatory. The evidence for the existence of God seems to have appeared to Descartes too irresistible and overwhelming, to be subjected to those logical canons which apply to all the other conclusions of the understanding.
​Extravagant and hopeless as these preliminary steps must now appear, they had nevertheless an obvious tendency to direct the attention of the author, in a singular degree, to the phenomena of thought; and to train him to those habits of abstraction from external objects, which, to the bulk of mankind, are next to impossible. In this way, he was led to perceive, with the evidence of consciousness, that the attributes of Mind were still more clearly and distinctly knowable than those of Matter; and that, in studying the former, so far from attempting to explain them by analogies borrowed from the latter, our chief aim ought to be, to banish as much as possible from the fancy every analogy, and even every analogical expression, which, by inviting the attention abroad, might divert it from its proper business at home. In one word, that the only right method of philosophising on this subject was comprised in the old stoical precept (understood in a sense somewhat different from that originally annexed to it) nec te quæsiveris extra. A just conception of this rule, and a steady adherence to its spirit, constitutes the ground-work of what is properly called the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind. It is thus that all our facts relating to Mind must be ascertained; and it is only upon facts thus attested by our own consciousness, that any just theory of Mind can be reared.
Agreeably to these views, Descartes, was, I think, the first who clearly saw, that our idea of Mind is not direct but relative;—relative to the various operations of which we are conscious. What am I? he asks, in his second Meditation: A thinking being,—that is, a being doubting, knowing, affirming, denying, consenting, refusing, susceptible of pleasure and of pain. Of all these things I might have had complete experience, without any previous acquaintance with the qualities and laws of matter; and therefore it is impossible that the study of matter can avail me aught in the study of myself. This, accordingly, Descartes laid down as a first principle; that nothing comprehensible by the imagination can be at all subservient to the knowledge of Mind; and that the sensible images involved in all our common forms of speaking concerning its operations, are to be guarded against with the most anxious care, as tending to confound, in our apprehensions, two classes of phenomena, which it is of the last importance to distinguish accurately from each other.
​To those who are familiarly acquainted with the writings of Locke, and of the very few among his successors who have thoroughly entered into the spirit of his philosophy, the foregoing observations may not appear to possess much either of originality or of importance; but when first given to the world, they formed the greatest step ever made in the science of Mind, by a single individual. What a contrast do they exhibit, not only to the discussions of the schoolmen, but to the analogical theories of Hobbes at the very same period! and how often have they been since lost sight of, notwithstanding the clearest speculative conviction of their truth and importance, by Locke himself, and by the greatest part of his professed followers! Had they been duly studied and understood by Mr Horne Tooke, they would have furnished him with a key for solving those etymological riddles, which, although mistaken by many of his contemporaries for profound philosophical discoveries, derive, in fact, the whole of their mystery, from the strong bias of shallow reasoners to relapse into the same scholastic errors, from which Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, have so successfully laboured to emancipate the mind.
If anything can add to our admiration of a train of thought manifesting in its author so unexampled a triumph over the strongest prejudices of sense, it is the extraordinary circumstance of its having first occurred to a young man, who had spent the years commonly ​devoted to academical study, amid the dissipation and tumult of camps. Nothing could make this conceivable, but the very liberal education which he had previously received under the Jesuits, at the college of La Flèche; where, we are told, that while yet a boy, he was so distinguished by habits of deep meditation, that he went among his companions by the name of the Philosopher. Indeed, it is only at that early age, that such habits are to be cultivated with complete success.
The glory, however, of having pointed out to his successors the true method of studying the theory of Mind, is almost all that can be claimed by Descartes in logical and metaphysical science. Many important hints, indeed, may be gleaned from his works; but, on the whole, he has added very little to our knowledge of human nature. Nor will this appear surprising, when it is recollected, that he aspired to accomplish a similar revolution in all the various departments of physical knowledge;—not to mention the time and thought he must have employed in those mathematical researches, which, however lightly esteemed by himself, have been long regarded as the most solid basis of his fame.
Among the principal articles of the Cartesian philosophy, which are now incorporated with our prevailing and most accredited doctrines, the following seem to me to be chiefly entitled to notice!
1. His luminous exposition of the common logical error of attempting to define words ​which express notions too simple to admit of analysis. Mr Locke claims this improvement as entirely his own; but the merit of it unquestionably belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always sufficiently attended to it in his own researches.
2. His observations on the different classes of our prejudices;—particularly on the errors to which we are liable in consequence of a careless use of language as the instrument of thought. The greater part of these observations, if not the whole, had been previously hinted at by Bacon; but they are expressed by Descartes with greater precision and simplicity, and in a style better adapted to the taste of the present age.
3. The paramount and indisputable authority which, in all our reasonings concerning the human mind, he ascribes to the evidence of consciousness. Of this logical principle he has availed himself, with irresistible force, in refuting the scholastic sophisms against the liberty of human actions, drawn from the prescience of the Deity, and other considerations of a theological nature.
4. The most important, however, of all his improvements in metaphysics, is the distinction which he has so clearly and so strongly drawn between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter. This distinction was not unknown to some of the ancient schools of philosophy in Greece; but it was afterwards rejected by Aristotle, and by the schoolmen; and it was reserved for Descartes to place it in such a light, as (with the exception of a very few sceptical or rather paradoxical theorists) to unite the opinions of all succeeding inquirers. For this step, so apparently easy, but so momentous in its consequences, Descartes was not indebted to any long or difficult processes of reasoning; but to those habits of accurate and patient attention to the operations of his own mind, which, from his early years, it was the great business of his life to cultivate. It may be proper to add, that the epithets primary and secondary, now universally employed to mark the distinction in question, were first introduced by Locke; a circumstance which may have contributed to throw into the shade the merits of those inquirers who had previously struck into the same path.
As this last article of the Cartesian system has a close connection with several of the ​most refined conclusions yet formed concerning the intellectual phenomena, I feel it due to the memory of the author, to pause for a few moments, in order to vindicate his claim to some leading ideas, commonly supposed by the present race of metaphysicians to be of much later origin. In doing so, I shall have an opportunity, at the same time, of introducing one or two remarks, which, I trust, will be useful in clearing up the obscurity, which is allowed by some of the ablest followers of Descartes and Locke, still to hang over this curious discussion.
I have elsewhere observed, that Descartes has been very generally charged by the writers of the last century, with a sophistical play upon words in his doctrine concerning the non-existence of secondary qualities; while, in fact, he was the first person by whom the fallacy of this scholastic paralogism was exposed to the world. In proof of this, it might be sufficient to refer to his own statement, in the first part of the Principia; but, for a reason which will immediately appear, I think it more advisable, on this occasion, to borrow the words of one of his earliest and ablest commentators. “It is only (says Father Malebranche) since the time of Descartes, that to those confused and indeterminate questions, whether fire is hot, grass green, and sugar sweet, philosophers are in use to reply, by distinguishing the equivocal meaning of the words expressing sensible qualities. If by heat, cold, and savour, you understand such and such a disposition of parts, or some unknown motion of sensible qualities, then fire is hot, grass green, and sugar sweet. But if by heat and other qualities you understand what I feel by fire, what I see in grass, &c. ​fire is not hot, nor grass green; for the heat I feel, and the colours I see, are only in the soul.” It is surprising how this, and other passages to the same purpose in Malebranche, should have escaped the notice of Dr Reid; for nothing more precise on the ambiguity in the names of secondary qualities is to be found in his own works. It is still more surprising that Buffier, who might be expected to have studied with care the speculations of his illustrious countrymen, should have directly charged, not only Descartes, but Malebranche, with maintaining a paradox, which they were at so much pains to banish from the schools of philosophy.
The important observations of Descartes upon this subject, made their way into England very soon after his death. They are illustrated at considerable length, and with great ingenuity, by Glanville, in his Scepsis Scientifica, published about thirteen years before Malebranche’s Search after Truth. So slow, however, is the progress of good sense, when it has to struggle against the prejudices of the learned, that, as lately as 1713, the paradox so clearly explained and refuted by Descartes, appears to have kept some footing in that university from which, about thirty years before, Mr Locke had been expelled. In a paper of the Guardian, giving an account of a visit paid by Jack Lizard to his mother and sisters, after a year and a half’s residence at Oxford, the following precis is given of his logical attainments. “For the first week (it is said) Jack dealt wholly in paradoxes. It was a common jest with him to pinch one of his sister’s lap-dogs, and afterwards prove he could not feel it. When the girls were sorting a set of knots, he would demonstrate to them that all the ribbons were of the same colour; or rather, says Jack, of no colour at all. My Lady Lizard herself, though she was not a little pleased with her son’s improvements, was one day almost angry with him; for, having accidentally burnt her fingers as she was lighting the lamp for her tea-pot, in the midst of her anguish, Jack laid hold of the opportunity to instruct her, that there was no such thing as heat in the fire.”
This miserable quibble about the non-existence of secondary qualities, never could have ​attracted the notice of so many profound thinkers, had it not been for a peculiar difficulty connected with our notions of colour, of which I do not know any one English philosopher who seems to have been sufficiently aware. That this quality belongs to the same class with sounds, smells, tastes, heat and cold, is equally admitted by the partizans of Descartes and of Locke; and must, indeed, appear an indisputable fact to all who are capable of reflecting accurately on the subject. But still, between colour and the other qualities now mentioned, a very important distinction must be allowed to exist. In the case of smells, tastes, sounds, heat and cold, every person must immediately perceive, that his senses give him only a relative idea of the external quality; in other words, that they only convey to him the knowledge of the existence of certain properties or powers in external objects, which fit them to produce certain sensations in his mind; and accordingly, nobody ever hesitated a moment about the truth of this part of the Cartesian philosophy, in so far as these qualities alone are concerned. But, in the application of the same doctrine to colour, I have conversed with many, with whom I found it quite in vain to argue; and this, not from any defect in their reasoning powers, but from their incapacity to reflect steadily on the subjects of their consciousness; or rather, perhaps, from their incapacity to separate, as objects of the understanding, two things indissolubly combined by early and constant habit, as objects of the imagination. The silence of modern metaphysicians on this head is the more surprising, that D’Alembert long ago invited their attention to it as one of the most wonderful phenomena in the history of the human mind. “The bias we acquire,” I quote his own words, “in consequence of habits contracted in infancy, to refer to a substance material and divisible, what really belongs to a substance spiritual and simple, is a thing well worthy of the attention of metaphysicians. Nothing,” he adds, “is perhaps more extraordinary, in the operations of the mind, than to see it transport its sensations out of itself, and to spread them, as it were, over a substance to which they cannot possibly belong.” It would be difficult to state the fact in question in terms more brief, precise, and perspicuous.
That the illusion, so well described in the above quotation, was not overlooked by Descartes and Malebranche, appears unquestionably, from their extreme solicitude to reconcile it with that implicit faith, which, from religious considerations, they conceived to be due to the testimony of those faculties with which our Maker has endowed us. Malebranche, in particular, is at pains to distinguish between the sensation, and the judgment combined with it. The sensation never deceives us; it differs in no respect from what we conceive it to be. The judgment, too, is natural, or rather (says Malebranche), it is only a ​sort of compounded sensation; but this judgment leads us into no error with respect to philosophical truth. The moment we exercise our reason, we see the fact in its true light, and can account completely for that illusive appearance which it presents to the imagination.”
Not satisfied, however, with this solution of the difficulty, or rather perhaps apprehensive that it might not appear quite satisfactory to some others, he has called in to his assistance the doctrine of original sin; asserting, that all the mistaken judgments which our constitution leads us to form concerning external objects and their qualities, are the consequences of the fall of our first parents; since which adventure (as it is somewhat irreverently called by Dr Beattie), it requires the constant vigilance of reason to guard against the numberless tricks and impostures practised upon us by our external senses. In another passage, Malebranche observes very beautifully (though not very consistently with his theological argument on the same.point), that our senses being given us for the preservation of our bodies, it was requisite for our well-being, that we should judge as we do of sensible qualities. “In the case of the sensations of pain and of heat, it was much more advantageous that we should seem to feel them in those parts of the body which are immediately affected by them, than that we should associate them with the external objects by which they are occasioned; because pain and heat, having the power to injure our members, it was necessary that we should be warned in what place to apply the remedy; whereas colours not being likely, in ordinary cases, to hurt the eye, it would have been superfluous for us to know that they are painted on the retina. On the contrary, as they are only useful to us, from the information they convey with respect to things external, it was essential that we should be so formed as to attach them to the corresponding objects on which they depend.
​The two following remarks, which I shall state with all possible brevity, appear to me to go far towards a solution of the problem proposed by D’Alembert.
1. According to the new theory of vision, commonly (but, as I shall afterwards shew, not altogether justly) ascribed to Dr Berkeley, lineal distance from the eye is not an original perception of sight. In the meantime, from the first moment that the eye opens, the most intimate connection must necessarily be established between the notion of colour and those of visible extension and figure. At first, it is not improbable that all of them may be conceived to be merely modifications of the mind; but; however this may be, the manifest consequence is, that when a comparison between the senses of Sight and of Touch has taught us to refer to a distance the objects of the one, the indissolubly associated sensations of the other must of course accompany them, how far soever that distance may extend.
2. It is well known to be a general law of our constitution, when one thing is destined, either by nature or by convention, to be the sign of another, that the mind has a disposition to pass on, as rapidly as possible, to the thing signified, without dwelling on the sign as an object worthy of its attention. The most remarkable of all examples of this occurs in the acquired perceptions of sight, where our estimates of distance are frequently the result of an intellectual process, comparing a variety of different signs together, without a possibility on our part, the moment afterwards, of recalling one single step of the process to our recollection, Our inattention to the sensations of colour, considered as affections of the Mind, or as modifications of our own being, appears to me to be a fact of precisely the same description; for all these sensations were plainly intended by nature to perform the office of signs, indicating to us the figures and distances of things external. Of their essential importance in this point of view, an idea may be formed, by supposing for a moment the whole face of nature to exhibit only one uniform colour, without the slightest variety even of light and shade. Is it not self-evident that, on this supposition, the organ of sight would be entirely useless, inasmuch as it is by the varieties of colour alone that ​the outlines or visible figures of bodies are so defined, as to be distinguishable one from another? Nor could the eye, in this case, give us any information concerning diversities of distance; for all the various signs of it, enumerated by optical writers, presuppose the antecedent recognition of the bodies around us, as separate objects of perception. It is not therefore surprising, that signs so indispensably subservient to the exercise of our noblest sense, should cease, in early infancy, to attract notice as the subjects of our consciousness; and that afterwards they should present themselves to the imagination rather as qualities of Matter, than as attributes of Mind.
To this reference of the sensation of colour to the external object, I can think of nothing so analogous as the feelings we experience in surveying a library of books. We speak of the volumes piled up on its shelves, as treasures or magazines of the knowledge of past ages; and contemplate them with gratitude and reverence, as inexhaustible sources of instruction and delight to the mind. Even in looking at a page of print or of manuscript, we are apt to say, that the ideas we acquire are received by the sense of sight; and we are scarcely conscious of a metaphor, when we employ this language. On such occasions we seldom recollect, that nothing is perceived by the eye but a multitude of black strokes drawn upon white paper, and that it is our own acquired habits which communicate to these strokes the whole of that significancy whereby they are distinguished from the unmeaning scrawling of an infant or a changeling. The knowledge which we conceive to be preserved in books, like the fragrance of a rose, or the gilding of the clouds, depends, for its existence, on the relation between the object and the percipient mind; and the only difference between the two cases is, that in the one, this relation is the local and temporary effect of conventional habits; in the other, it is the universal and the unchangeable work of nature. The art of printing, it is to be hoped, will in future render the former relation, as well as the latter, coëval with our species; but, in the past history of mankind, it is impossible to say how ​often it may have been dissolved. What vestiges can now be traced of those scientific attainments which, in early times, drew to Egypt, from every part of the civilized world, all those who were anxious to be initiated in the mysteries of philosophy? The symbols which still remain in that celebrated country, inscribed on eternal monuments, have long lost the correspondent minds which reflected upon them their own intellectual attributes. To us they are useless and silent, and serve only to attest the existence of arts, of which it is impossible to unriddle the nature and the objects.
—————— Variis nunc sculpta figuris Marmora, trunca tamen visuntur mutaque nobis; Signa repertorum tuimur, cecidere reperta.
What has now been remarked with respect to written characters, may be extended very nearly to oral language. When we listen to the discourse of a public speaker, eloquence and persuasion seem to issue from his lips; and we are little aware, that we ourselves infuse the soul into every word that he utters. The case is exactly the same when we enjoy the conversation of a friend. We ascribe the charm entirely to his voice and accents; but without our co-operation, its potency would vanish. How very small the comparative proportion is, which, in such cases, the words spoken contribute to the intellectual and moral effect, I have elsewhere endeavoured to show.
I have enlarged on this part of the Cartesian system, not certainly on account of its intrinsic value, as connected with the theory of our external perceptions (although even in this respect of the deepest interest to every philosophical inquirer), but because it affords the most palpable and striking example I know of, to illustrate the indissoluble associations established during the period of infancy, between the intellectual and the material worlds. It was plainly the intention of nature, that our thoughts should be habitually directed to things external; and accordingly, the bulk of mankind are not only indisposed to study the intellectual phenomena, but are incapable of that degree of reflection which is necessary for their examination. Hence it is, that when we begin to analyze our own internal constitution, we find the facts it presents to us so very intimately combined in our conceptions with the qualities of matter, that it is impossible for us to draw distinctly and steadily the line between them; and that, when Mind and Matter are concerned in the same result, the former is either entirely overlooked, or is regarded only as an accessary principle, dependent for its existence on the latter. To the same cause it is owing, that we find it so difficult (if it be at all practicable) to form an idea of any of our intellectual operations, abstracted from the images suggested by their metaphorical names. It was objected to Descartes by some of his contemporaries, that the impossibility of accomplishing the abstractions which he recom​mended, furnished of itself a strong argument against the soundness of his doctrines. The proper answer to this objection does not seem to have occurred to him; nor, so far as I know, to any of his successors;—that the abstractions of the understanding are totally different from the abstractions of the imagination; and that we may reason with most logical correctness about things considered apart, which it is impossible, even in thought, to conceive as separated from each other. His own speculations concerning the indissolubility of the union established in the mind between the sensations of colour and the primary qualities of extension and figure, might have furnished him, on this occasion, with a triumphant reply to his adversaries; not to mention that the variety of metaphors, equally fitted to denote the same intellectual powers and operations, might have been urged as a demonstrative proof, that none of these metaphors have any connection with the general laws to which it is the business of the philosopher to trace the mental phenomena.
When Descartes established it as a general principle, that nothing conceivable by the power of imagination, could throw any light on the operations of thought (a principle which I consider as exclusively his own), he laid the foundation-stone of the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind. That the same truth had been previously perceived more or less distinctly, by Bacon and others, appears probable from the general complexion of their speculations; but which of them has expressed it with equal precision, or laid it down as a fundamental maxim in their logic? It is for this reason, that I am disposed to date the origin of the true Philosophy of Mind from the Principia of Descartes rather than from the Organon of Bacon, or the Essay of Locke; without, however, meaning to compare the French author with our two countrymen, either as a contributor to our stock of facts relating to the intellectual phenomena, or as the author of any important conclusion concerning the general laws to which they may be referred. It is mortifying to reflect on the inconceivably small number of subsequent inquirers by whom the spirit of this cardinal maxim has been fully seized; and that, even in our own times, the old and inveterate prejudice to which it is opposed, should not only have been revived with success, but should have been very generally regarded as.an original and profound discovery in metaphysical science. These circumstances must plead my apology for the space I have assigned to the Cartesian Metaphysics in the crowded historical picture which I am at present attempting to sketch. The fulness of illustration which I have bestowed on the works of the master, will enable me to pass over those of his disciples, and even of his antagonists, with a correspondent brevity.
​After having said so much of the singular merits of Descartes as the father of genuine metaphysics, it is incumbent on me to add, that his errors in this science were on a scale of proportionate magnitude. Of these the most prominent (for I must content myself with barely mentioning a few of essential importance) were his obstinate rejection of all speculations about final causes; his hypothesis concerning the lower animals, which he considered as mere machines; his doctrine of innate ideas, as understood and expounded by himself; his noted paradox of placing the essence of mind in thinking, and of matter in extension; and his new modification of the ideal theory of perception, adopted afterwards, with some very slight changes, by Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. To some of these errors I shall have occasion to refer in the sequel of this Discourse. The foregoing slight enumeration is sufficient for my present purpose.
In what I have hitherto said of Descartes, I have taken no notice of his metaphysico-​physiological theories relative to the connection between soul and body. Of these theories, however, groundless and puerile as they are, it is necessary for me, before I proceed farther, to say a few words, on account of their extensive and lasting influence on the subsequent history of the science of Mind, not only upon the Continent, but in our own Island.
The hypothesis of Descartes, which assigns to the soul for its principal seat the pineal gland or conarion, is known to every one who has perused the Alma of Prior. It is not, perhaps, equally known, that the circumstance which determined him to fix on this particular spot, was the very plausible consideration, that, among the different parts of the brain, this was the only one he could find, which, being single and central, was fitted for the habitation of a being, of which he conceived unity and indivisibility to be essential and obvious attributes. In what manner the animal spirits, by their motions forwards and backwards in the nervous tubes, keep up the communication between this gland and the different parts of the body, so as to produce the phenomena of perception, memory, imagination, and muscular motion, he has attempted particularly to explain; describing the processes by which these various effects are accomplished, with as decisive a tone of authority, as if he had been demonstrating experimentally the circulation of the blood. How curious to meet with such speculations in the works of the same philosopher, who had so clearly perceived the necessity, in studying the laws of Mind, of abstracting entirely from the analogies of Matter; and who, at the outset of his inquiries, had carried his scepticism so far, as to require a proof even of the existence of his own body! To those, however, who reflect with attention on the method adopted by Descartes, this inconsistency will not appear so inexplicable as at first sight may be imagined; inasmuch as the same scepticism which led him to suspend his faith in his intellectual faculties till he had once proved to his satisfaction, from the necessary veracity of God, that these faculties were to be regarded as the divine oracles, prepared him, in all the subsequent steps of his progress, to listen to the suggestions of his own fallible judgment, with more than common credulity and confidence.
The ideas of Descartes, respecting the communication between soul and body, are now so universally rejected, that I should not have alluded to them here, had it not been for their manifest influence in producing, at the distance of a century, the rival hypothesis of Dr Hartley. The first traces of this hypothesis occur in some queries of Sir Isaac Newton, which he was probably induced to propose, less from the conviction of his own mind, than from a wish to turn the attention of philosophers to an examination of the correspondent part of the Cartesian system. Not that I would be understood to deny ​that this great man seems, on more than one occasion, to have been so far misled by the example of his predecessor, as to indulge himself in speculating on questions altogether unsusceptible of solution. In the present instance, however, there cannot, I apprehend, be a doubt, that it was the application made by Descartes of the old theory of animal spirits, to explain the mental phenomena, which led Newton into that train of thinking which served as the ground-work of Hartley’s Theory of Vibrations.
It would be useless to dwell longer on the reveries of a philosopher, much better known to the learned of the present age by the boldness of his exploded errors, than by the profound and important truths contained in his works. At the period when he appeared, it may perhaps be questioned, Whether the truths which he taught, or the errors into which ​he fell, were most instructive to the world. The controversies provoked by the latter had certainly a more immediate and palpable effect in awakening a general spirit of free inquiry. To this consideration may be added an ingenious and not altogether unsound remark of D’Alembert, that “when absurd opinions are become inveterate, it is sometimes necessary to replace them by other errors, if nothing better can be done. Such (he continues) are the uncertainty and the vanity of the human mind, that it has always need of an opinion on which it may lean; it is a child to whom a play-thing must occasionally be presented in order to get out of its hands a mischievous weapon: the play-thing will soon be abandoned, when the light of reason begins to dawn.”
Among the opponents of Descartes, Gassendi was one of the earliest, and by far the most formidable. No two philosophers were ever more strongly contrasted, both in point of talents and of temper; the former as far superior to the latter in originality of genius—in powers of concentrated attention to the phenomena of the internal world—in classical taste—in moral sensibility, and in all the rarer gifts of the mind; as he fell short of him in erudition—in industry as a book-maker—in the justness of his logical views, so far as the phenomena of the material universe are concerned—and, in general, in those literary qualities and attainments, of which the bulk of mankind either are, or think themselves best qualified to form an estimate. The reputation of Gassendi, accordingly, seems to have been at its height in his own lifetime; that of Descartes made but little progress, till a considerable time after his death.
The comparative justness of Gassendi’s views in natural philosophy, may be partly, perhaps chiefly, ascribed to his diligent study of Bacon’s works; which Descartes (if he ever read them), has nowhere alluded to in his writings. This extraordinary circumstance in the character of Descartes, is the more unaccountable, that not only Gassendi, but some of his other correspondents, repeatedly speak of Bacon in terms which one should think could scarcely have failed to induce him to satisfy his own mind whether their encomiums were well or ill founded. One of these, while he contents himself, from very obvious feelings of delicacy, with mentioning the Chancellor of England, as the person who, before the time of Descartes, had entertained the justest notions about the method of prosecuting physical inquiries, takes occasion, in the same letter, to present him, in the form of a friendly admonition from himself, with the following admirable summary of the instauratio magna. “To all this it must be added, that no architect, however skilful, can raise an edifice, unless he ​be provided with proper materials. In like manner, your method, supposing it to be perfect, can never advance you a single step in the explanation of natural causes, unless you are in possession of the facts necessary for determining their effects. They who, without stirring from their libraries, attempt to discourse concerning the works of nature, may indeed tell us what sort of world they would have made, if God had committed that task to their ingenuity; but, without a wisdom truly divine, it is impossible for them to form an idea of the universe, at all approaching to that in the mind of its Creator. And, although your method promises everything that can be expected from human genius, it does not, therefore, lay any claim to the art of divination; but only boasts of deducing from the assumed data, all the truths which follow from them as legitimate consequences; which data, can, in physics, be nothing else but principles previously established by experiment.” In Gassendi’s controversies with Descartes, the name of Bacon seems to be studiously introduced on various occasions, in a manner still better calculated to excite the curiosity of his antagonist; and in his historical review of logical systems, the heroical attempt which gave birth to the Novum Organon is made the subject of a separate chapter, immediately preceding that which relates to the Metaphysical Meditations of Descartes.
The partiality of Gassendi for the Epicurean physics, if not originally imbibed from Bacon, must have been powerfully encouraged by the favourable terms in which he always mentions the Atomic or Corpuscular theory. In its conformity to that luminous simplicity which everywhere characterizes the operations of nature, this theory certainly possesses a decided superiority over all the other conjectures of the ancient philosophers concerning the material universe; and it reflects no small honour on the sagacity both of Bacon and of Gassendi, to have perceived so clearly the strong analogical presumption which this conformity afforded in its favour, prior to the unexpected lustre thrown upon it by the researches of the Newtonian school. With all his admiration, however, of the Epicurean physics, Bacon nowhere shews the slightest leaning towards the metaphysical or ethical doctrines of the same sect; but, on the contrary, considered (and, I apprehend, rightly considered) the atomic theory as incomparably more hostile to atheism, than the hypothesis of four mutable elements, and of one immutable fifth essence. In this last opinion, there is every reason to believe that Gassendi fully concurred; more especially, as he was a zealous advocate for the investigation of final causes, even in inquiries strictly physical. At the same time, it cannot be denied, that, on many questions, both of Meta​physics and of Ethics, this very learned theologian (one of the most orthodox, professedly, of whom the Catholic church has to boast), carried his veneration for the authority of Epicurus to a degree bordering on weakness and servility; and although, on such occasions, he is at the utmost pains to guard his readers against the dangerous conclusions commonly ascribed to his master, he has nevertheless retained more than enough of his system to give a plausible colour to a very general suspicion, that he secretly adopted more of it than he chose to avow.
As Gassendi’s attachment to the physical doctrines of Epicurus, predisposed him to give an easier reception than he might otherwise have done to his opinions in Metaphysics and in Ethics, so his unqualified contempt for the hypothesis of the Vortices, seems to have created in his mind an undue prejudice against the speculations of Descartes on all other subjects. His objections to the argument by which Descartes has so triumphantly estaplished the distinction between Mind and Matter, as separate and heterogeneous objects of human knowledge, must now appear, to every person capable of forming a judgment upon the question, altogether frivolous and puerile; amounting to nothing more than this, that all our knowledge is received by the channel of the external senses,—insomuch, that there is not a single object of the understanding which may not be ultimately analyzed into sensible images; and of consequence, that when Descartes proposed to abstract from these images in studying the mind, he rejected the only materials out of which it is possible for our faculties to rear any superstructure. The sum of the whole matter is (to use his own language), that “there is no real distinction between imagination and intellection;” meaning, by the former of these words, the power which the mind possesses of representing to itself the material objects and qualities it has previously perceived. It is evident, that this conclusion coincides exactly with the tenets inculcated in England at the same period by his friend Hobbes, as well as with those revived at a latter period by Diderot, Horne Tooke, and many other writers, both French and English, who, while they were only repeating the exploded dogmas of Epicurus, fancied they were pursuing, with miraculous success, the new path struck out by the genius of Locke.
It is worthy of remark, that the argument employed by Gassendi against Descartes, is copied almost verbatim from his own version of the account given by Diogenes Laertius ​of the sources of our knowledge, according to the principles of the Epicurean philosophy;—so very little is there of novelty mm the consequences deduced by modern materialists from the scholastic proposition, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu. The same doctrine is very concisely and explicitly stated in a maxim formerly quoted from Montaigne, that “the senses are the beginning and end of all our knowledge;”—a maxim which Montaigne learned from his oracle Raymond de Sebonde;—which, by the present race of French philosophers, is almost universally supposed to be sanctioned by the authority of Locke;—and which, if true, would at once cut up by the roots, not only all metaphysics, but all ethics, and all religion, both natural and revealed. It is accordingly with this very maxim that Madame du Deffand (in a letter which rivals anything that the fancy of Moliere has conceived in his Femmes Savantes) assails Voltaire for his imbecility in attempting a reply to an atheistical book then recently published. In justice to this celebrated lady, I shall transcribe part of it in her own words, as a precious and authentic document of the philosophical tone affected by the higher orders in France, during the reign of Louis XV.
“J’entends parler d’une refutation d’un certain livre, (Systême de la Nature.) Je voudrois l’avoir. Je m’en tiens à connoitre ce livre par vous. Toutes refutations de systême doivent être bonnes, surtout quand c’est vous qui les faites. Mais, mon cher Voltaire, ne vous ennuyez-vous pas de tous les raisonnemens métaphysiques sur les matières inintelligibles. Peut-on donner des idées, ou peut-on en admettre d’autres que celles que nous reçevons par nos sens ?”—If the Senses be the beginning and end of all our knowledge, the inference here pointed at is quite irresistible.
A learned and profound writer has lately complained of the injustice done by the present age to Gassendi; in whose works, he asserts, may be found the whole of the doctrine commonly ascribed to Locke concerning the origin of our knowledge. The re​mark is certainly just, if restricted 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 materialize 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 shew 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.
Unfortunately for Descartes, while he so clearly perceived that the origin of those ideas which are the most interesting to human happiness, could not be traced to our external senses, he had the weakness, instead of stating this fundamental proposition in plain and precise terms, to attempt an explanation of it by the extravagant hypothesis of innate ideas. This hypothesis gave Gassendi great advantages over him, in the management of their controversy; while the subsequent adoption of Gassendi’s reasonings against it by Locke, has led to a very general but ill-founded belief, that the latter, as well as the former, rejected, along with the doctrine of innate ideas, the various important and well-ascertained truths combined with it in the Cartesian system.
The hypothetical language afterwards introduced by Leibnitz concerning the human soul (which he sometimes calls a living mirror of the universe, and sometimes supposes to contain within itself the seeds of that knowledge which is gradually unfolded in the progressive exercise of its faculties), is another impotent attempt to explain a mystery unfathomable by human reason. The same remark may be extended to some of Plato’s reveries on this question, more particularly to his supposition, that those ideas which cannot be traced to any of our external senses, were acquired by the soul in its state of pre-existence. In all of these theories, as well as in that of Descartes, the cardinal truth is assumed as indisputable, that the Senses are not the only sources of human knowledge; nor is anything wanting to render them correctly logical, but the statement of this truth as an ultimate fact (or at least as a fact hitherto unexplained) in our intellectual frame.
It is very justly observed by My Hume, with respect to Sir Isaac Newton, that “while he seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed, at the same time, the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy, and thereby restored her ultimate se​crets to that obscurity in which they ever did, and ever will remain.” When the justness of this remark shall be as universally acknowledged in the science of Mind as it now is in Natural Philosophy, we may reasonably expect that an end will be put to those idle controversies which have so long diverted the attention of metaphysicians from the proper objects of their studies.
The text of Scripture, prefixed by Dr Reid as a motto to his Inquiry, conveys, in a few words, the result of his own modest and truly philosophical speculations on the origin of our knowledge, and expresses this result in terms strictly analogous to those in which Newton speaks of the law of gravitation:—“The inspiration of the Almighty hath given them understanding.” Let our researches concerning the development of the Mind, and the occasions on which its various notions are first formed, be carried back ever so far towards the commencement of its history, in this humble confession of human ignorance they must terminate at last.
I have dwelt thus long on the writings of Gassendi, much less from my own idea of their merits, than out of respect to an author, in whose footsteps Locke has frequently condescended to tread. The epigrammatic encomium bestowed on him by Gibbon, who calls him “le meilleur philosophe des litterateurs, et le meilleur litterateur des philosophes,” appears to me quite extravagant. His learning, indeed, was at once vast and accurate; and, as a philosopher, he is justly entitled to the praise of being one of the first who entered thoroughly into the spirit of the Baconian logic. But his inventive powers, which were probably not of the highest order, seem to have been either dissipated amidst the multiplicity of his literary pursuits, or laid asleep by his indefatigable labours, as a Commentator and a Compiler. From a writer of this class, new lights were not to be expected in the study of the human Mind; and accordingly, here he has done little or nothing, but to revive and to repeat over the doctrines of the old Epicureans. His works amount to six large volumes in folio; but the substance of them might be compressed into a much smaller compass, without any diminution of their value.
In one respect Gassendi had certainly a great advantage over his antagonist—the good humour which never forsook him in the heat of a philosophical argument. The comparative indifference with which he regarded most of the points at issue between them, was perhaps the chief cause of that command of temper so uniformly displayed in all his controver​sies, and so remarkably contrasted with the constitutional irritability of Descartes. Even the faith of Gassendi in his own favourite master, Epicurus, does not seem to have been very strong or dogmatical, if it be true that he was accustomed to allege, as the chief ground of his preferring the Epicurean physics to the theory of the Vortices, “that chimera for chimera, he could not help feeling some partiality for that which was two thousand years older than the other.”
About twenty years after the death of Gassendi (who did not long survive Descartes), Malebranche entered upon his philosophical career. The earlier part of his life had, by the advice of some of his preceptors, been devoted to the study of ecclesiastical history, and of the learned languages; for neither of which pursuits does he seem to have felt that marked predilection which afforded any promise of future eminence. At length, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he accidentally met with Descartes’ Treatise on Man, which opened to him at once a new world, and awakened him to a consciousness of powers, till then unsuspected either by himself or by others. Fontenelle has given a lively picture of the enthusiastic ardour with which Malebranche first read this performance; and describes its effects on his nervous system as sometimes so great, that he was forced to lay aside the book till the palpitation of his heart had subsided.
It was only ten years after this occurrence when he published The Search after Truth; a work which, whatever judgement may now be passed on its philosophical merits, will always form an interesting study to readers of taste, and a useful one to students of human nature. Few books can he mentioned, combining, in so great a degree, the utmost depth and abstraction of thought, with the most pleasing sallies of imagination and eloquence; and none, where they who delight in the observation of intellectual character may find more ample illustrations, both of the strength and weakness of the human understanding. It is a singular feature in the history of Malebranche, that, notwithstanding the poetical colouring which adds so much animation and grace to his style, he never could read, without disgust, a page of the finest verses; and that, although Imagination was manifestly the predominant ingredient in the composition of his own genius, the most elaborate passages in his works are those where he inveighs against this treacherous faculty, as the prolific parent of our most fatal delusions.
​In addition to the errors, more or less incident to all men, from the unresisted sway of imagination during the fancy of reason, Malebranche had, in his own cage, to struggle with all the prejudices connected with the peculiar dogmas of the Roman Catholic faith. Unfortunately, too, he everywhere discovers a strong disposition to blend his theology and his metaphysics together; availing himself of the one as an auxiliary to the other, wherever, in either science, his ingenuity fails him in establishing a favourite conclusion. To this cause is chiefly to be ascribed the little attention now paid to a writer formerly so universally admired, and, in point of fact, the indisputable author of some of the most refined speculations claimed by the theorists of the eighteenth century. As for those mystical controversies about Grace with Anthony Arnauld, on which he wasted so much of his genius, they have long sunk into utter oblivion; nor should I have here revived the recollection of them, were it not for the authentic record they furnish of the passive bondage in which, little more than a hundred years ago, two of the most powerful minds of that memorable period were held by a creed, renounced, at the Reformation, by all the Protestant countries of Europe; and the fruitful source, wherever it has been retained, of other prejudices, not less to be lamented, of an opposite description.
When Malebranche touches on questions not positively decided by the church, he exhibits a remarkable boldness and freedom of inquiry; setting at nought those human authorities which have so much weight with men of unenlightened erudition; and sturdily opposing his own reason to the most inveterate prejudices of his age. His disbelief in the ​reality of sorcery, which, although cautiously expressed, seems to have been complete, affords a decisive proof of the soundness of his judgment, where he conceived himself to have any latitude in exercising it. The following sentences contain more good sense on the subject, than I recollect in any contemporary author. I shall quote them, as well as the other passages I may afterwards extract from his writings, in his own words, to which it is seldom possible to do justice in an English version.
“Les hommes même les plus sages se conduisent plutôt par l’imagination des autres, je veux dire par l’opinion et par la coûtume, que par les regles de la raison. Ainsi dans les lieux où l’on brule les sorciers, on ne voit autre chose, parce que dans les lieux où l’on les condamne au feu, on croit veritablement qu’ils le sont, et cette croyance se fortifie par les discours qu’on en tient. Que l’on cesse de les punir et qu’on les traite comme des fous, et l’on verra qu’avec le tems ils ne seront plus sorciers ; parce que ceux qui ne le sont que par imagination, qui font certainement le plus grand nombre, deviendront comme les autres hommes.
“C’est donc avec raison que plusieurs Parlemens ne punissent point les sorcièrs : ils s’en trouve beaucoup moins dans les terres de leur ressort : Et l’envie, la haine, et la malice des méchans ne peuvent se servir de ce prétexte pour accabler les innocens.”
How strikingly has the sagacity of these anticipations and reflections been verified, by the subsequent history of this popular superstition in our own country, and indeed in every other instance where the experiment recommended by Malebranche has been tried! Of this sagacity much must, no doubt, be ascribed to the native vigour of a mind struggling against and controlling early prejudices; but it must not be forgotten, that, notwithstanding his retired and monastic life, Malebranche had breathed the same air with the associates and friends of Descartes and of Gassendi; and that no philosopher seems ever to have been more deeply impressed with the truth of that golden maxim of Montaigne—“Il est bon de frotter et limer notre cervelle contre celle d’autrui.”
Another feature in the intellectual character of Malebranche, presenting an unexpected contrast to his powers of abstract meditation, is the attentive and discriminating eye with which he appears to have surveyed the habits and manners of the comparatively little circle around him; and the delicate yet expressive touches with which he has marked and defined some of the nicestshades and varieties of genius. To this branch of the Philosophy of Mind, not certainly the least important and interesting, he has contributed a greater num​ber of original remarks than Locke himself;—since whose time, with the single exception of Helvetius, hardly any attention has been paid to it, cither by French or English metaphysicians. The same practical knowledge of the human understanding, modified and diversified, as we everywhere see it, by education and external circumstances, is occasionally discovered by his very able antagonist Arnauld; affording, in both cases, a satisfactory proof, that the narrowest field of experience may disclose to a superior mind these refined and comprehensive results, which common observers are forced to collect from an extensive and varied commerce with the world.
In some of Malebranche’s incidental strictures on men and manners, there is a lightness of style and fineness of tact, which one would scarcely have expected from the mystical divine, who believed that he saw all things in God. Who would suppose that the following paragraph forms part of a profound argument on the influence of the external senses over the human intellect?
“Si par exemple, celui qui parle s’énonce avec facilité, s'il garde une mesure agréable ​dans ses périodes, s’il a l’air d’un honnête homme et d’un homme d’esprit, si c’est une personne de qualité, s’il est suivi d’un grand train, s’il parle avec autorité et avec gravité, si les autres I’écoutent avec respect et en silence, s’il a quelque réputation, et quelque commerce avec les esprits du premier ordre, enfin, s’il est assez heureux pour plaire, ou pour être estimé, il aura raison dans tout ce qu’il avancera ; et il n’y aura pas jusqu’à son collet et à ses manchettes, qui ne prouvent quelque chose.”
In his philosophical capacity, Malebranche is to he considered in two points of view: 1. As a commentator on Descartes; and, 2. As the author of some conclusions from the Cartesian principles, not perceived or not avowed by his predecessors of the same school.
​1. I have already taken notice of Malebranche’s comments on the Cartesian doctrine concerning the sensible, or, as they are now more commonly called, the secondary qualities of matter. The same fulness and happiness of illustration are everywhere else to be found in his elucidations of his master’s system; to the popularity of which he certainly contributed greatly by the liveliness of his fancy, and the charms of his composition. Even in this part of his writings, he always preserves the air of an original thinker; and, while pursuing the same path with Descartes, seems rather to have accidentally struck into it from his own casual choice, than to have selected it out of any deference for the judgment of another. Perhaps it may be doubted, if it is not on such occasions, that the inventive powers of his genius, by being somewhat restrained and guided in their aim, are most vigorously and most usefully displayed.
In confirmation of this last remark, I shall only mention, by way of examples, his comments on the Cartesian theory of Vision,—more especially on that part of it which relates to our experimental estimates of the distances and magnitudes of objects; and his admirable illustration of the errors to which we are liable from the illusions of sense, of imagination, and of the passions. In his physiological reveries on the union of soul and body, he wanders, like his master, in the dark, from the total want of facts as a foundation for his reasonings; but even here his genius has had no inconsiderable influence on the inquiries of later writers. The fundamental principle of Hartley is most explicitly stated in The Search after Truth; as well as a hypothesis concerning the nature of habits, which, rash and unwarranted as it must now appear to every novice in science, was not thought unworthy of adoption in The Essay on Human Understanding.
​2. Among the opinions which chiefly characterize the system of Malebranche, the leading one is, that the causes which it is the aim of philosophy to investigate are only occasional causes; and that the Deity is himself the efficient and the immediate cause of every effect in the universe. From this single principle, the greater part of his distinguishing doctrines may be easily deduced; as obvious corollaries.
That we are completely ignorant of the manner in which physical causes and effects are connected, and that all our knowledge concerning them amounts merely to a perception of constant conjunction, had been before remarked by Hobbes, and more fully shown by Glanville in his Scepsis Scientifica. Malebranche, however, has treated the same argument much more profoundly and ably than any of his predecessors, and has, indeed, anticipated Hume in some of the most ingenious reasonings contained in his Essay on Necessary Connexion. From these data, it was not unnatural for his pious mind to conclude, that what are commonly called second causes have no existence; and that the Divine power, incessantly and universally exerted, is, in truth, the connecting link of all the phenomena of nature. It is obvious, that, in this conclusion, he went farther than his premises warranted; for, although no necessary connections among physical events can be traced by our faculties, it does not therefore follow that such connections are impossible. The only sound inference was, that the laws of nature are to be discovered, not, as the ancients supposed, by a priori reasonings from causes to effects, but by experience and observation. It is but justice to Malebranche to own, that he was one of the first who placed in a just and strong light this fundamental principle of the inductive logic.
On the other hand, the objections to the theory of occasional causes, chiefly insisted on by Malebranche’s opponents, were far from satisfactory. By some it was alleged, that it ascribed every event to a miraculous interposition of the Deity; as if this objection were not directly met by the general and constant laws everywhere manifested to our senses,—in a departure from which laws, the very essence of a miracle consists. Nor was it more to the pur​pose to contend, that the beauty and perfection of the universe were degraded by excluding the idea of mechanism; the whole of this argument turning, as is manifest, upon an application to Omnipotence of ideas borrowed from the limited sphere of human power. As to the study of natural philosophy, it is plainly not at all affected by the hypothesis in question; as the investigation and generalization of the laws of nature, which are its only proper objects, present exactly the same field to our curiosity, whether we suppose these laws to be the immediate effects of the Divine agency, or the effects of second causes, placed beyond the reach of our faculties.
Such, however, were the chief reasonings opposed to Malebranche by Leibnitz, in order to prepare the way for the system of Pre-established Harmony; a system more nearly allied to that of occasional causes than its author seems to have suspected, and encumbered with every solid difficulty connected with the other.
From the theory of occasional causes, it is easy to trace the process which led Malebranche to conclude, that we see all things in God. The same arguments which convinced him, that the Deity carries into execution every volition of the mind, in the movements of the body, could not fail to suggest, as a farther consequence, that every perception of the mind is the immediate effect of the divine illumination. As to the manner in which this illumination is accomplished, the extraordinary hypothesis adopted by Malebranche was forced upon him, by the opinion then universally held, that the immediate objects of our perceptions are not things external, but their ideas or images. The only pos​sible expedient for reconciling these two articles of his creed, was to transfer the seat of our ideas from our own minds to that of the Creator.
In this theory of Malebranche, there is undoubtedly, as Bayle has remarked, an approach to some speculations of the latter Platonists; but there is a much closer coincidence between it and the system of those Hindoo philosophers, who (according to Sir William Jones) “believed that the whole creation was rather an energy than a work; by which the infinite Mind, who is present at all times, and in all places, exhibits to his creatures a set of perceptions, like a wonderful picture, or piece of music, always varied, yet always uniform.”
In some of Malebranche’s reasonings upon this subject, he has struck into the same train of thought which was afterwards pursued by Berkeley (an author to whom he bore a very strong resemblance in some of the most characteristical features of his genius); and, had he not been restrained by religious scruples, he would, in all probability, have asserted, not less confidently than his successor, that the existence of matter was demonstrably inconsistent with the principles then universally admitted by philosophers. But this conclusion Malebranche rejects, as not reconcilable with the words of Scripture, that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” “La foi m’apprend que Dieu a crée le ciel et la terre. Elle m’apprend que l’Ecriture est un livre divin. Et ce livre ou son apparence me dit nettement et positivement, qu’ll y a mille et mille creatures. Donc voilà toutes mes apparences changées en realités. Il y a des corps ; cela est démontré en toute rigueur Ia foy supposée.”
In reflecting on the repeated reproduction of these, and other ancient paradoxes, by modern authors, whom it would be highly unjust to accuse of plagiarism;—still more, in reflecting on the affinity of some of our most refined theories to the popular belief in a remote quarter of the globe, one is almost tempted to suppose, that human invention is li​mited, like a barrel-organ, to a specific number of tunes. But is it not a fairer inference, that the province of pure Imagination, unbounded as it may at first appear, is narrow, when compared with the regions opened by truth and nature to our powers of observation and reasoning? Prior to the time of Bacon, the physical systems of the learned performed their periodical revolutions in orbits as small as the metaphysical hypotheses of their successors; and yet, who would now set any bounds to our curiosity in the study of the material universe? Is it reasonable to think, that the phenomena of the intellectual world are less various, or less marked with the signatures of Divine wisdom?
It forms an interesting circumstance in the history of the two memorable persons who have suggested these remarks, that they had once, and only once, the pleasure of a short interview. “The conversation,” we are told, “turned on the non-existence of matter. Malebranche, who had an inflammation in his lungs, and whom Berkeley found preparing a medicine in his cell, and cooking it in a small pipkin, exerted his voice so violently in the heat of their dispute, that he increased his disorder, which carried him off a few days after.” It is impossible not to regret, that of this interview there is no other record;—or rather, that Berkeley had not made it the ground-work of one of his own dialogues. Fine as his imagination was, it could scarcely have added to the picturesque effect of the real scene.
​Anthony Arnauld, whom I have already mentioned as one of the theological antagonists of Malebranche, is also entitled to a distinguished rank among the French philosophers of this period. In his book on true and false ideas, written in opposition to Malebranche’s scheme of our seeing all things in God, he is acknowledged by Dr Reid to have struck the first mortal blow at the ideal theory; and to have approximated very nearly to his own refutation of this ancient and inveterate prejudice. A step so important would, of itself, be sufficient to establish his claim to a place in literary history; but what chiefly induces me again to bring forward his name, is the reputation he has so justly acquired by his treatise, entitled The Art of Thinking; a treatise written by Arnauld, in conjunction with his friend Nicole, and of which (considering the time when it appeared) it is hardly possible to estimate the merits too highly. No publication certainly, prior to Locke’s Essay, can be named, containing so much good sense, and so little nonsense on the science of Logic; and very few have since appeared on the same subject, which can be justly preferred to it, in point of practical utility. If the author had lived in the present age, or had been less fettered by a prudent regard to existing prejudices, the technical part would probably have been reduced within a still narrower compass; but even there, he has contrived to substitute for the puerile and contemptible examples of common logicians, several interesting illustrations from the physical discoveries of his immediate predecessors; and has indulged himself in some short excursions, which excite a lively regret that he had not, more frequently and freely, given scope to his original reflections. Among these excursions, the most valuable, in my opinion, is the twen​tieth chapter of the third part, which deserves the attention of every logical student, as an important and instructive supplement to the enumeration of sophisms given by Aristotle.
The soundness of judgment, so eminently displayed in the Art of Thinking, forms a curious contrast to that passion for theological controversy, and that zeal for what he conceived to be the purity of the Faith, which seem to have been the ruling passions of the author’s mind. He lived to the age of eighty-three, continuing to write against Malebranche’s opinions concerning Nature and Grace, to his last hour. “He died,” says his biographer, “in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune, and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a Minister of State, and who might himself have been a Cardinal. The pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments, was to him a sufficient recompense.” Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the field, and to enjoy repose. “Repose!” replied Arnauld; “won’t you have the whole of eternity to repose in?”
An anecdote which is told of his infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport, in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose, said the Cardinal?—To write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added, who was then old and infirm, could not conceal his ​joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and, as he was putting the pen into his hand, said, “I give it to you, as the dying shepherd Damœtas bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon.”
The name of Pascal (that prodigy of parts, as Locke calls him) is more familiar to modern ears, than that of any of the other learned and polished anchorites, who have rendered the sanctuary of Port-Royal so illustrious; but his writings furnish few materials for philosophical history. Abstracting from his great merits in mathematics and in physics, his reputation rests chiefly on the Provincial Letters; a work from which Voltaire, notwithstanding his strong prejudices against the author, dates the fixation of the French language; and of which the same excellent judge has said, that “Molière’s best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity.” The enthusiastic admiration of Gibbon for this book, which he was accustomed from his youth to read once a year, is well known; and is sufficient to account for the rapture with which it never fails to be spoken of by the erudite vulgar in this country. I cannot help, however, suspecting, that it is now more praised than read in Great Britain; so completely have those disputes, to which it owed its first celebrity, lost their interest. Many passages in it, indeed, will always be perused with delight; but it may be questioned, if Gibbon himself would have read it so often from beginning to end, had it not been for the strong hold which ecclesiastical controversies, and the Roman Catholic faith, had early taken of his mind.
In one respect, the Provincial Letters are well entitled to the attention of philosophers; inasmuch as they present so faithful and lively a picture of the influence of false religious views in perverting the moral sentiments of mankind. The overwhelming ridicule lavished by Pascal on the whole system of jesuitical casuistry, and the happy effects of his pleasantry in preparing, from a distance, the fall of that formidable order, might be quoted as proofs, that there are at least some truths, in whose defence this weapon may be safely employed;—perhaps with more advantage than the commanding voice of Reason herself. The mischievous absurdities which it was his aim to correct, scarcely admitted of the gravity of logical discussion; requiring only the extirpation or the prevention of those early prejudices which choke the growth of common sense and of conscience: And for this purpose, what so likely to succeed with the open and generous minds of youth, as Ridicule, managed with decency and taste; more especially when seconded, as in the ​Provincial Letters, by acuteness of argument, and by the powerful eloquence of the heart? In this point of view, few practical moralists can boast of having rendered a more important service than Pascal to the general interests of humanity. Were it not, indeed, for his exquisite satire, we should already be tempted to doubt, if, at so recent a date, it were possible for such extravagancies to have maintained a dangerous ascendant over the human understanding.
The unconnected fragment of Pascal, entitled Thoughts on Religion, contains various reflections which are equally just and ingenious; some which are truly sublime; and not a few which are false and puerile: the whole, however, deeply tinctured with that ascetic and morbid melancholy, which seems to have at last produced a partial eclipse of his faculties. Voltaire has animadverted on this fragment with much levity and petulance; mingling, at the same time, with many very exceptionable strictures, several of which it is impossible to dispute the justness. The following reflection is worthy of Addison; and bears a strong resemblance in its spirit to the amiable lessons inculcated in his papers on Cheerfulness: “To consider the world as a dungeon, and the whole human race as so many criminals doomed to execution, is the idea of an enthusiast; to suppose the world to be a seat of delight, where we are to expect nothing but pleasure, is the dream of a Sybarite; but to conclude that the Earth, Man, and the lower Animals, are, all of them, subservient to the purpose of an unerring Providence, is, in my opinion, the system of a wise and good man.”
From the sad history of this great and excellent person (on whose deep superstitious gloom it is the more painful to dwell, that, by an unaccountable, though not singular coincidence, it was occasionally brightened by the inoffensive play of a lively and sportive fancy), the eye turns with pleasure to repose on the mitis sapientia, and the Elysian imagination of Fenelon. The interval between the deaths of these two writers is indeed considerable; but that between their births does not amount to thirty years; and, in point of education, both enjoyed nearly the same advantages.
The reputation of Fenelon as a philosopher would probably have been higher and more universal than it is, if he had not added to the depth, comprehension, and soundness of his judgment, so rich a variety of those more pleasing and attractive qualities, which are commonly regarded rather as the flowers than the fruits of study. The same remark may be extended to the Fenelon of England, whose ingenious and original essays on the Pleasures ​of Imagination would have been much more valued by modern metaphysicians, had they been less beautifully and happily written. The characteristical excellence, however, of the Archbishop of Cambray, is that moral wisdom which (as Shaftesbury has well observed) “comes more from the heart than from the head;” and which seems to depend less on the reach of our reasoning powers, than on the absence of those narrow and malignant passions, which, on all questions of ethics and politics (perhaps I might add of religion also), are the chief source of our speculative errors.
The Adventures of Telemachus, when considered as a production of the seventeenth century, and still more as the work of a Roman Catholic Bishop, is a sort of prodigy; and it may, to this day, be confidently recommended, as the best manual extant, for impressing on the minds of youth the leading truths, both of practical morals and of political economy. Nor ought it to be concluded, because these truths appear to lie so near the surface, and command so immediately the cordial assent of the understanding, that they are therefore obvious or tritical; for the case is the same with all the truths most essential to human happiness. The importance of agriculture and of religious toleration to the prosperity of states; the criminal impolicy of thwarting the kind arrangements of Providence, by restraints upon commerce; and the duty of legislators to study the laws of the moral world as the ground-work and standard of their own, appear, to minds unsophisticated by inveterate prejudices, as approaching nearly to the class of axioms;—yet, how much ingenious and refined discussion has been employed, even in our own times, to combat the prejudices which everywhere continue to struggle against them; and how remote does the period yet seem, when there is any probability that these prejudices shall be completely abandoned!
“But how,” said Telemachus to Narbal, “can such a commerce as this of Tyre be established at Ithaca?” “By the same means,” said Narbal, “that have established it here. Receive all strangers with readiness and hospitality; let them find convenience and liberty in your ports; and be careful never to disgust them by avarice or pride: above all, never restrain the freedom of commerce, by rendering it subservient to your own immediate gain. The pecuniary advantages of commerce should be left wholly to those by whose labour it subsists; lest this labour, for want of a sufficient motive, should cease. There are more than equivalent advantages of another kind, which must necessarily result to the Prince from the wealth which a free commerce will bring into his state; and commerce is a kind of spring, which to divert from its natural channel is to lose.” Had the same question ​been put to Smith or to Franklin in the present age, what sounder advice could they have offered?
In one of Fenelon’s Dialogues of the Dead, the following remarkable words are put into the mouth of Socrates: “It is necessary that a people should have written laws, always the same, and consecrated by the whole nation; that these laws should be paramount to everything else; that those who govern should derive their authority from them alone; possessing an unbounded power to do all the good which the laws prescribe, and restrained from every act of injustice which the laws prohibit.”
But it is chiefly in a work which did not appear till many years after his death, that we have an opportunity of tracing the enlargement of Fenelon’s political views, and the extent of his Christian charity. It is entitled Direction pour la Conscience d’un Roi; and abounds with as liberal and enlightened maxims of government as, under the freest constitutions, have ever been offered by a subject to a sovereign. Where the variety of excellence renders selection so difficult, I must not venture upon any extracts; nor, indeed, would I willingly injure the effect of the whole by quoting detached passages. A few sentences on liberty of conscience (which I will not presume to translate) may suffice to convey an idea of the general spirit with which it is animated. “Sur toute chose, ne forcez jamais vos sujets à changer de religion. Nulle puissance humaine ne peut forcer le retranchement impénétrable de la liberté du cœur. La force ne peut jamais persuader les hommes ; elle ne fait que des hypoсrites. Quand les rois se mêlent de religion, au lieu de la protéger, ils la mettent en servitude. Accordez à tous la tolerance civile, non en approuvant tout comme indifférent, mais en souffrant avec patience tout ce que Dieu souffre, et en tâchant de ramener les hommes par une douce persuasion.”
And so much for the French philosophy of the seventeenth century. The extracts last quoted forewarn us, that we are fast approaching to a new era in the history of the Human Mind. The glow-worm ’gins to pale his ineffectual fire; and we scent the morning air of the coming day. This era I propose to date from the publications of Locke and of Leibnitz; but the remarks which I have to offer on their writings, and on those of their most distinguished successors, I reserve for the Second Part of this Discourse; confining myself, at present, to a very short retrospect of the state of philosophy, during the preceding period, in some other countries of Europe.
* ↑ Montaigne was born in 1533, and died in 1592.
* ↑ Essays, Book iii. chap. xiii.
* ↑ Book i. chap. xxv.
* ↑ Montaigne’s education, however, had not been neglected by his father. On the contrary, he tells us himself, that “George Buchanan, the great poet of Scotland, and Marcus Antonius Muretus, the best orator of his time, were among the number of his domestic preceptors.”—“Buchanan,” he adds, “when I saw him afterwards in the retinue of the late Mareschal de Brissac, told me, that he was about to write a treatise on the education of children, and that he would take the model of it from mine.” Book i, chap. xxv.
* ↑ “Sentant sa fin approcher, il fit dire la messe dans sa chambre. A l’élévation de l’hostie, il se leva sur son lit pour l’adorer ; mais une foiblesse l’enleva dans ce moment même, le 15 Septembre 1592, à 60 ans.” Nouveau Dict. Histor. à Lyon, 1804. Art. Montaigne.
* ↑ Micro-cosmography, ot a Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters. For a short notice of the author of this very curious hook (Bishop Earle), See Letters from the Bodleian Library, Vol. I. p. 141. I understand it has been lately reprinted in London, but have only seen one of the old editions (the seventh), printed in 1638. The chapter from which I have transcribed the above passage is entitled A Sceptic in Religion; and it has plainly suggested to Lord Clarendon same of the ideas, and even expressions, which occur in his account of Chillingworth.
* ↑ “The writings of the best authors among the ancients,” Montaigne tells us on one occasion, “being full and solid, tempt and carry me which way almost they will. He that I am reading seems always to have the most force; and I find that every one in turn has reason, though they contradict one another.” Book ii, chap. xii.
* ↑ The very few particulars known with respect to Sebonde have been collected by Bayle. See his Dictionary, Art. Sebonde.
* ↑ This expression is Mr Hume’s; but the same proposition, in substance, is frequently repeated by the two other writers, and is very fully enlarged upon by Bayle in the Illustration upon the Sceptics, annexed to his Dictionary.
* ↑ “I once asked Adrian Turnebus,” says Montaigne, “what he thought of Sebonde’s treatise? The answer he made to me was, That he believed it to be some extract from Thomas Aquinas, for that none but a genius like his was capable of such ideas.” I must not, however, omit to mention, that a very learned Protestant, Hugo Grotius, has expressed himself to his friend Bignon not unfavourably of Sebonde’s intentions, although the terms in which he speaks of him are somewhat equivocal, and imply but little satisfaction with the execution of his design. “Non ignoras quantum excoluerint istam materiam (argumentum scil. pro Religione Christiana) philosophica subtilitate Raimundus Sebundus, dialogorum varietate Ludovicus Vives, maxima autem tum eruditione tum facundia vestras Philippus Mornæus.” The authors of the Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique (Lyons, 1804) have entered much more completely into the spirit and drift of Sebonde’s reasoning, when they observe, “Ce livre offre des singularités hardies, qui plurent dans le temps aux philosophes de ce siècle, et qui ne déplairoient pas à ceux du notre.” It is proper to add, that I am acquainted with Sebonde only through the medium of Montaigne’s version, which does not lay claim to the merit of strict fidelity; the translator himself having acknowledged, that he had given to the Spanish philosopher “un accoutrement à la Françoise, et qu’il l’a dévêtu de son port farouche et maintien barbaresque, de manière qu’il a mes-hui assez de façon pour se présenter en toute bonne compagnie.”
* ↑ Montaigne, cet auteur charmant, Tour à-tour profond et frivole, Dans son chateau paisiblement, Loin de tout frondeur malévole Doutoit de tout impunément, Et se moquoit très librement Des bavards fourrés de l’école. Mais quand son élève Charron, Plus retenu, plus méthodique, De sagesse donna leçon, Il fut près de périr, dit on, Par la haine théologique. Voltaire, Epitre au Président Hénault.
* ↑ See Beattie’s Essay on Fable and Romance; and Charron de la Sagesse, Liv. ii. c. 8. It may amuse the curious reader also to compare the theoretical reasonings of Charron with a Memoir in the Phil. Trans. for 1773 (by Sir Roger Curtis), containing some particulars with respect to the country of Labradore.
* ↑ “Ah l’aimable homme, qu’il est de bonne compagnie ! C’est mon ancien ami ; mais, à force d’être ancien, il m’est nouveau.” Madame de Sevigné.
* ↑ Montaigne himself seems, from the general strain of his writings, to have had but little expectation of the posthumous fame which he has so long continued to enjoy. One of his reflections on this head is so characteristical of the author as a man; and, at the same time, affords so fine a specimen of the graphical powers of his now antiquated style, that I am tempted to transcribe it in his own words: “J’écris mon livre à peu d’hommes et à peu d’années ; s’il ç’eût été une matière de durée, il l’eût fallu commettre à un langage plus ferme. Selon la variation continuelle qui a suivi le nôtre jusqu’à cette heure, qui peut espérer que sa forme présente soit en usage d’ici à cinquante ans ? il écoule tous les jours de nos mains, et depuis que je vis, s’est altéré de moitié. Nous disons qu’il est à cette heure parfait : Autant en dit du sien chaque siècle. C’est aux bons et utiles écrits de le clouer à eux, et ira sa fortune selon le crédit de notre état.” How completely have both the predictions in the last sentence been verified by the subsequent history of the French language!
* ↑ Εχουσι δε (γνωμαι) εις τους λογους βοηθειαν μεγαλην, μιαν μεν δη δια φορτικοτητα των ακροατων· χαιρουσι γαρ, εαν τις καθολου λεγων, επιτυχη των δοξων, ἁς εκεινοι κατα μερος εχουσιν.—Ἡ μεν γαρ γνωμη, ὡσπερ ειρηται, καθολου αποφανσις εστι· χαιρουσι δε λαθολου λεγομευου, ὁ κατα μερος προϋπολαμβανοντες τυγχανουσιν· ὁιον, ειτις γειτοσι τυχη κεχρημενος, η τεκνοις φαυλοις, αποδεξαιτ· αν του ειποντος, ουδεν γειτονιας χαλεπωτερον· η, ὁτι ουδεν ηλιθιωτερον τεκνοποϊας. Arist. Rhet. Lib. ii. c. xxi. The whole chapter is interesting and instructive, and shews how profoundly Aristotle had meditated the principles of the rhetorical art.
* ↑ Tatler, No. 103. The last paper of the Tatler was published in 1711; and, consequently, the above passage must be understood as referring te the modish tone of French philosophy, prior to the death of Louis XIV.
* ↑ Condorcet.
* ↑ One reason for this is well pointed out by D’Alembert. “Il n’y a que les chefs de secte en tout genre, dont les ouvrages puissent avoir un certain éclat ; Bacon n’a pas été du nombre, et la forme de sa philosophie s’y opposoit : elle étoit trop sage pour étonner personne.” Disc. Prel.
* ↑ “We shall here be content,” says the learned John Smith of Cambridge, “with that sober thesis of Plato, in his Timæus, who attributes the perpetuation of all substances to the benignity and liberality of the Creator; whom he therefore brings in thus speaking, ὑμεις ουκ εστε αθανατοι ουδε αλυτοι, &c. You are not of yourselves immortal nor indissoluble, but would relapse and slide back from that being which I have given you, should I withdraw the influence of my own power from you; but yet you shall hold your immortality by a patent from myself.” (Select Discourses, Cambridge, 1660.) I quote this passage from one of the oldest partizans of Descartes among the English philosophers. Descartes himself is said to have been of a different opinion. “On a été étonné,” says Thomas, “que dans ses Méditations Métaphysiques, Descartes n’ait point parlé de l’immortalité de l’ame. Mais il nous apprend lui-même par une de ses lettres, qu’ayant établi clairement, dans cet ouvrage, la distinction de l’ame et de la matière, il suivoit nécessairement de cette distinction, que l’ame par sa nature ne pouvoit périr avec Ie corps.” Eloge de Descartes. Note 21.
* ↑ I employ the scholastic word substance, in conformity to the phraseology of Descartes, but I am fully aware of the strong objections to which it is liable, not only as a wide deviation from popular use, which has appropriated it to things material and tangible, but as implying a greater degree of positive knowledge concerning the nature of mind, than our faculties are fitted to attain.—For some farther remarks on this point, See Note I.
* ↑ See Note K.
* ↑ “Quand l’homme a voulu se replier sur lui-meme il s’est trouvé dans um labyrinthe où il étoit entré les yeux bandés.” Oeuvres de Turgot, Tom. Il. p. 261.
* ↑ See Note L.
* ↑ “Sic autem rejicientes illa omnia, de quibus aliquo modo possumus dubitare, ac etiam falsa esse fingentes, facile quidem supponimus nullum esse Deum, nullum cœlum, nulla corpora; nosque etiam ipsos, non habere manus, nec pedes, nec denique ullum corpus; non autem ideo nos qui talia cogitamus nihil esse: repugnat enim, ut putemus id quod cogitat, eo ipso tempore quo cogitat, non existere. Ac proinde hæc cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima et certissima, quæ cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurrat.” Princip. Philos. Pars I. § 7.
* ↑ The substance of Descartes’ argument on these fundamental points, is thus briefly recapitulated by himself in the conclusion of his third Meditation:—“Dum in meipsum mentis aciem converto, non modo intelligo me esse rem incompletam, et ab alio dependentem, remque ad majora et meliora indefinite aspirantem, sed simul etiam intelligo illum, à quo pendeo, majora ista omnia non indefinite et potentia tantum, sed reipsa infinite in se habere, atque ita Deum esse; totaque vis argumenti in eo est, quod agnoscam fieri non posse ut existem talis naturæ qualis sum, nempe ideam Dei in me habens, nisi revera Deus etiam existeret, Deus, inquam, ille idem cujus idea in me est, hoc est habens omnes illas perfectiones quas ego non comprehendere sed quocunque modo attingere cogitatione possum, et nullis planè defectibus obnoxius. Ex his satis patet, illum fallacem esse non posse: omnem enim fraudem et deceptionem à defectu aliquo pendere lumine naturali manifestum est.” The above argument for the existence of God (very improperly called by some foreigners an argument a priori), was long considered by the most eminent men in Europe as quite demonstrative. For my own part, although I do not think that it is by any means so level to the apprehension of common inquirers, as the argument from the marks of design everywhere manifested in the universe, I am still less inclined to reject it as altogether unworthy of attention, It is far from being so metaphysically abstruse as the reasonings of Newton and Clarke, founded on our conceptions of space and of time; nor would it appear, perhaps, less logical and conclusive than that celebrated demonstration, if it were properly unfolded, and stated in more simple and popular terms. The two arguments, however, are, in no respect, exclusive of each other; and I have always thought, that, by combining them together, a proof of the point in question might be formed, more impressive and luminous than is to be obtained from either, when stated apart.
* ↑ How painful is it to recollect, that the philosopher who had represented his faith in the veracity of God, as the sole foundation of his confidence in the demonstrations of mathematics, was accused and persecuted by his contemporaries as an atheist; and that, too, in the same country (Holland), where, for more than half a century after his death, his doctrines were to be taught in all the universities with a blind idolatry! A zeal without knowledge, and the influence of those earthly passions, from which even protestant divines are not always exempted, may, it is to be hoped, go far to account for this inconsistency and injustice, without adopting the uncharitable insinuation of D’Alembert: “Malgré toute la sagacité qu’il avoit employée pour prouver l’existence de Dieu, il fut accusé de la nier par des ministres, qui peut-être ne la croyoient pas.”
* ↑ “Non sum compages illa membrorum, quæ corpus humanum appellatur; non sum etiam tenuis aliquis aër istis membris infusus; non ventus, non ignis, non vapor, non halitus—Quid igitur sum? res cogitans; quid est hoc? nempe dubitans, intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens,” &c. Med. Sec.
* ↑ “Itaque cognosco, nihil eorum quæ possum Imaginatione comprehendere, ad hanc quam de me habeo notitiam pertinere; mentemque ab illis diligentissime esse avocandam, ut suam ipsa naturam quàm distinctissime percipiat. Ibid. A few sentences before, Descartes explains with precision in what sense Imagination is here to be understood. “Nihil aliud est imaginari quam rei corporeæ figuram seu imaginem contemplari.” The following extracts from a book published at Cambridge in 1660 (precisely ten years after the death of Descartes), while they furnish a useful comment on some of the above remarks, may serve te shew, how completely the spirit of the Cartesian philosophy of Mind had been seized, even then, by some of the members of that university. “The souls of men exercising themselves first of all κινησει προβατικῆ, as the Greek philosopher expresseth himself, merely by a progressive kind of motion, spending themselves about bodily and material acts, and conversing only with sensible things; they are apt to acquire such deep stamps of material phantasms to themselves, that they cannot imagine their own Being to be any other than material and divisible, though of a fine ethereal nature. It is not possible for us well to know what our souls are, but only by their κινησεις κυκλικαι, their circular or reflex motions, and converse with themselves, which can only steal from them their own secrets.” Smith’s Select Discourses, p. 65, 66. “If we reflect but upon our own souls, how manifestly do the notions of reason, freedom, perception, and the like, offer themselves to us, whereby we may know a thousand times more distinctly what our souls are than what our bodies are. For the former, we know by an immediate converse with ourselves, and a distinct sense of their operations; whereas all our knowledge of the body is little better than merely historical, which we gather up by scraps and piecemeal, from more doubtful and uncertain experiments which we make of them; but the notions which we have of a mind, i. e. something within us that thinks, apprehends, reasons, and discourses, are so clear and distinct from all those notions which we can fasten upon a body, that we can easily conceive that if all body-being in the world were destroyed, yet we might then as well subsist as now we do.” Ibid. p. 98.
* ↑ “Descartes porta les armes, d’abord en Hollande, sous le célèbre Maurice de Nassau ; de-là en Allemagne, sous Maximilien de Bavière, au commencement de la guerre de trente ans. Il passa ensuite au service de l’Empereur Ferdinand Il. pour voir de plus près les troubles de la Hongrie. On croit aussi, qu’au siège de la Rochelle, il combattit, comme volontaire, dans une bataille contre la flotte Angloise.” Thomas, Eloge de Descartes, Note 8. When Descartes quitted the profession of arms, he had arrived at the age of twenty-five.
* ↑ It is a curious coincidence, that it was in the same village of La Flèche that Mr Hume fixed his residence, while composing his Treatise of Human Nature. Is it not probable, that he was partly attracted to it, by associations similar to those which presented themselves to the fancy of Cicero, when he visited the walks of the Academy? In the beginning of Descartes’ dissertation upon Method, he has given a very interesting account of the pursuits which occupied his youth; and of the considerations which suggested to him the bold undertaking of reforming philosophy.
* ↑ Such too is the judgment pronounced by D’Alembert. “Les mathématiques dont Descartes semble avoir fait assez peu de cas, font neanmoins aujourd’hui la partie la plus solide et la moins contestée de sa gloire.” To this he adds a very ingenious reflection on the comparative merits of Descartes, considered as a geometer and as a philosopher. “Comme philosophe, il a peut-être été aussi grand, mais il n’a pas été si heureux. La Géométrie, qui par la nature de son objet doit toujours gagner sans perdre, ne pouvoit manquer, étant maniée par un aussi grand génie, de faire des progrès très-sensibles et apparens pour tout le monde. La philosophie se trouvoit dans un état bien different, tout y étoit à commencer ; et que ne coûtent point les premiers pas en tout genre ! le mérite de les faire dispense de celui d’en faire de grands.” Disc. Prel.
* ↑ “The names of simple ideas are not capable of any definitions; the names of all complex ideas are. It has not, that I know, been yet observed by anybody, what words are, and what are not capable of being defined.” (Locke’s Essay, Book iii. chap. iv. § iv.) Compare this with the Principia of Descartes, I. 10.; and with Lord Stair’s Philologia Nova Experimentalis, pp. 9, and 79, printed at Leyden in 1686.
* ↑ “Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, revived the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. But they made the secondary qualities mere sensations, and the primary ones resemblances of our sensations. They maintained that colour, sound, and heat, are not anything in bodies, but sensations of the mind.———The paradoxes of these philosophers were only an abuse of words. For when they maintain, as an important modern discovery, that there is no heat in the fire, they mean no more than that the fire does not feel heat, which every one knew before.”—Reid’s Inquiry, chap. v. sect. viii.
* ↑ See sections Ixix, Ixx, Ixxi. The whole of these three paragraphs is highly interesting; but I shall only quote two sentences, which are fully sufficient to shew, that, in the above observations, I have done Descartes no more than strict justice. “Patet itaque in re idem esse, cum dicimus nos percipere colores in objectis, ne si diceremus nos percipere aliquid in objectis, quod quidem quid sit ignoramus, sed a quo efficitur in nobis ipsis sensus quidam valde manifestus et perspicuus, qui vocatur sensus colorum.———Cum vero putamus nos percipere colores in objectis, etsi revera nesciamus quidnam sit quod tunc nomine coloris appellamus, nec ullam similitudinem intelligere possimus, inter colorem quem supponimus esse in objectis, et illum quem experimur esse in sensu, quia tamen hoc ipsum non advertimus, et multa alia sunt, ut magnitudo, figura, numerus, &c. quæ clare percipimus non aliter a nobis sentiri vel intelligi, quam ut sunt, aut saltem esse possunt in objectis, facile, in eum errorem delabimur, ut judicemus id, quod in objectis vocamus colorem, esse quid omnino simile colori quem sentimus, atque ita ut id quod nullo modo percipimus, a nobis clare percipi arbitraremur.”
* ↑ Recherche de la Vérité, Livre vi. chap. ii.
* ↑ “J’ai admiré souvent que d’aussi grands hommes que Descartes et Malebranche, avec leurs sectateurs, fissent valoir, comme une rare découverte de leur philosophie, que la chaleur étoit dans nous-mêmes et nullement dans le feu ; au lieu que le commun des hommes trouvoient que la chaleur étoit dans le feu aussi bien que dans nous.———Mais en ce fameux débat, de quoi s’agit il ? Uniquement de l’imperfection du langage, qui causoit une idée confuse par le mot de chaleur, ce mot exprimant egalement deux choses, qui à la vérité ont quelque rapport ou analogie, et pourtant qui sont très differentes ; savoir, 1. le sentiment de chaleur que nous éprouvons en nous ; 2. la disposition qui est dans le feu à produire en nous ce sentiment de chaleur.” Cours de Sciences, par le Père Buffier, p. 819. A Paris, 1732.
* ↑ He would have expressed himself more accurately, if he had said, that the judgment is indissolubly combined with the sensation; but his meaning is sufficiently obvious.
* ↑ “We are informed by Father Malebranche, that the senses were at first as honest faculties as one could desire to be endued with, till after they were debauched by original sin; an adventure from which they contracted such an invincible propensity to cheating, that they are now continually lying in wait to deceive us.” Essay on Truth, p. 241, second edition.
* ↑ Recherche de la Verite, Liv. i. chap. xiii. § 5. In Dr Reid’s strictures on Descartes and Locke there are two remarks which I am at a loss how to reconcile. “Colour,” says he, “differs from other secondary qualities in this, that whereas the name of the quality is sometimes given to the sensation which indicates it, and is occasioned by it, we never, as far as I can judge, give the name of colour to the sensation, but to the quality only.” A few sentences before, he had observed, “That when we think or speak of any particular colour, however simple the notion may seem to be which is presented to the imagination, it is really in some sort compounded. It involves an unknown cause, and a known effect. The name of colour belongs indeed to the cause only, and not to the effect. But as the cause is unknown, we can form no distinct conception of it, but by its relation to the known effect. And, therefore, both go together in the imagination, and are so closely united, that they are mistaken for one simple object of thought.” Inquiry, chap. vi. sect. 4. These two passages, seem quite inconsistent with each other. If in the perception of colour, the sensation and the quality “be so closely united as to be mistaken for one single object of thought,” does it not obviously follow, that it is to this compounded notion the name of colour must, in general, be given? On the other hand, when it is said that the name of colour is never given to the sensation, but to the quality only, does not this imply, that every time the word is pronounced, the quality is separated from the sensation, even in the imaginations of the vulgar?
* ↑ See Note M.
* ↑ In Dr Reid’s Inquiry, he has introduced a discussion concerning the perception of visible figure, which has puzzled me since the first time (more than forty years ago) that I read his work. The discussion relates to this question, Whether “there be any sensation proper to visible figure, by which it is suggested in vision?” The result of the argument is, that “our eye might have been so framed as to suggest the figure of the object, without suggesting colour, or any other quality; and, of consequence, that there seems to be no sensation appropriated to visible figure; this quality being suggested immediately by the material impression upon the organ, of which impression we are not conscious.” (Inquiry, &c, chap. vi. sect. 8.) To my apprehension, nothing can appear more manifest than this, that, if there had been no variety in our sensations of colour, and still more, if we had had no sensation of colour whatsoever, the organ of sight could have given us no information, either with respect to figures or to distances; and, of consequence, would have been as useless to us, as if we had been afflicted, from the moment of our birth, with a gutta serena.
* ↑ See, in particular, Gassendi Opera, Tom. III. pp. 300, 301. Lugduni, 1658.
* ↑ The Cartesian doctrine concerning the secondary qualities of matter, is susceptible of various other important applications. Might it not be employed, at least as an argumentum ad hominem against Mr Hume and others, who, admitting this part of the Cartesian system, seem nevertheless to have a secret leaning to the scheme of materialism? Mr Hume has somewhere spoken of that tittle agitation of the brain we call thought. If it be unphilosophical to confound our sensations of colour, of heat, and of cold, with such qualities of extension, figure, and solidity, is it not, if possible, still more so, to confound with these qualities the phenomena of thought, of volition, and of moral emotion?
* ↑ It is not unworthy of notice, that, in spite of his own logical rules, Descartes sometimes seems insensibly te adopt, on this subject, the common ideas and feelings of mankind. Several instances of this occur in his treatise on the Passions, where he offers various conjectures concerning the uses to which they are subservient. The following sentence is more peculiarly remarkable: “Mihi persuadere nequeo, naturam indedisse hominibus ullum affectum qui semper visiosus sit, nullumgue usum bonum et laudabile habeat.” Art. clxxv.
* ↑ This hypothesis never gained much ground in England; and yet a late writer of distinguished eminence in some branches of science, has plainly intimated that, in his opinion, the balance of probabilities inclined in its favour. “I omit mentioning other animals here,” says Mr Kirwan in his Metaphysical Essays, “as it is at least doubtful whether they are not mere automatons.” Met. Essays, p. 41. Lond. 1809.
* ↑ I have added the clause in Italics, because, in Descartes’ reasonings on this question, there is no inconsiderable portion of most important truth, debased by a large and manifest alloy of error.
* ↑ To this paradox may be traced many of the conclusions of the author, both on physical and on metaphysical subjects. One of the most characteristical features, indeed, of his genius, is the mathematical concatenation of his opinions, even on questions which, at first sight, seem the most remote from each other; a circumstance which, when combined with the extraordinary perspicuity of his style, completely accounts for the strong hold his philosophy took of every mind, thoroughly initiated, at an early period of life, in its principles and doctrines. In consequence of conceiving the essence of matter to consist in extension, he was necessarily obliged to maintain the doctrine of a universal plenum; upon which doctrine the theory of the vortices came to be grafted by a very short and easy process, The same idea forced him, at the very outset of his Metaphysical Meditations, to assert, much more dogmatically than his premises seem to warrant, the non-extension of Mind; and led him on many occasions to blend, very illogically, this comparatively disputable dogma, with the facts he has to state concerning the mental phenomena.
* ↑ See Note N.
* ↑ See in particular, the Treatise de Passionibus, Art. 31, 32. See also Note O.
* ↑ The physiological theory of Descartes, concerning the connection between soul and body, was adopted, together with some of his sounder opinions, by a contemporary English philosopher, Mr Smith of Cambridge, whom I had occasion to mention in a former note; and that, for some time after the beginning of the eighteenth century, it continued to afford one of the chief subjects of controversy between the two English universities, the Alma of Prior affords incontestible evidence. From the same poem it appears, how much the reveries of Descartes about the seat of the soul, contributed to wean the wits of Cambridge from their former attachment to the still more incomprehensible pneumatology of the schoolmen. —————— Here Matthew said, Alma in verse, in prose the mind By Aristotle’s pen defin’d, Throughout the body squat or tall, Is, bona fide, all in all. And yet, slap-dash, is all again In every sinew, nerve, and vein; Runs here and there like Hamlet’s Ghost, While everywhere she rules the roast. This system, Richard, we are told, The men of Oxford firmly hold; The Cambridge wits, you know, deny With ipse dixit to comply. They say (for in good truth they speak With small respect of that old Greek) That, putting all his words together, ’Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder. Alma, they strenuously maintain, Sits cock-horse on her throne the brain, And from that seat of thought dispenses Her sovereign pleasure to the senses, &c, &c. The whole poem, from beginning to end, is one continued piece of ridicule upon the various hypotheses of physiologists concerning the nature of the communication between soul and body. The amusing contrast between the solemn absurdity of these disputes, and the light pleasantry of the excursions to which they lead the fancy of the poet, constitutes the principal charm of this performance; by far the most original and characteristical of all Prior’s Works.
* ↑ See Note P.
* ↑ See the first Epistle to Descartes, prefixed to his Treatise on the Passions. Amstel. 1664.
* ↑ The affection of Gassendi for Hobbes, and his esteem for his writings, are mentioned in very strong terms by Sorbière. “Thomas Hobbius Gassendo charissimus, cujus libellum De Corpore paucis ante obitum mensibus accipiens, osculatus est subjungens, mole quidem parvus est iste liber, verùm totus, ut opinor, medullâ scatet!” (Sorberii Pref.) Gassendi’s admiration of Hobbes’ Treatise De Cive, was equally warm; as we learn from a letter of his to Sorbière, prefixed to that work.
* ↑ Compare Gassendi Opera, Tom. III. p. 300, 301; and Tom. V. p. 12.
* ↑ Notwithstanding the evidence (according to my judgment) of this conclusion, I trust it will not be supposed that I impute the slightest bias in its favour to the generality of those who have adopted the premises. If an author is to be held chargeable with all the consequences logically deducible from his opinions, who can hope to escape censure? And, in the present instance, how few are there among Montaigne’s disciples, who have ever reflected for a moment on the real meaning and import of the proverbial maxim in question!
* ↑ “Gassendi fut le premier auteur de la nouvelle philosophic de l’esprit humain ; car il est tems de lui rendre, à cet égard, une justice qu’il n’a presque jamais obtenue de ses propres compatriotes. Il est très singulier en effet, qu’eu parlant de la nouvelle philosophie de l’esprit humain, nous disions toujours, la philosophie de Locke. D’Alembert et Condillac ont autorisé cette expression, en rapportant l’un et l’autre à Locke exclusivement, la gloire de cette invention,” &c. &c. De Gerando, Hist. Comp. des Systêmes, Tome I. p. 301.
* ↑ History of Great Britain, chap. lxxi.
* ↑ Essai sur l’Etude de la Litterature.
* ↑ See Note Q.
* ↑ Bayle—Fontenelle—D’Alembert.
* ↑ In one of his arguments on this head, Malebranche refers to the remarks previously made on the same subject by an English philosopher, who, like himself, has more than once taken occasion, while warning his readers against the undue influence of imagination over the judgment, to exemplify the boundless fertility and originality of his own. The following allusion of Bacon’s, quoted by Malebranche, is eminently apposite and happy: “Omnes perceptiones tam sensus quam mentis sunt ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia universi: Estque intellectus humanus instar speculi inæqualis ad radios rerum, qui suam naturam naturæ rerum immiscet, camque distorquet et inficit.”
* ↑ Of this disposition to blend theological dogmas with philosophical discussions, Malebranche was so little conscious in himself, that he has seriously warned his readers against it, by quoting an aphorism of Bacon’s, peculiarly applicable to his own writings: “Ex divinorum et humanorum malesana admixtione non solum educitur philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio hæretica. Itaque salutare admodum est si mente sobria fidei tantum dentur quæ fidei sunt.” In transcribing these words, it is amusing to observe, that Malebranche has slily suppressed the name of the author from whom they are borrowed; manifestly from an unwillingness to weaken their effect, by the suspicious authority of a philosopher not in communion with the Church of Rome. Recherche de la Vérité, Liv. ii, chap. ix. Dr Reid, proceeding on the supposition that Malebranche was a Jesuit, has ascribed to the antipathy between this order and the Jansenists, the warmth displayed on both sides, in his disputes with Arnauld {Essays on the Int. Powers, p. 124); but the fact is, that Malebranche belonged to the Congregation of the Oratory; a society much more nearly allied to the Jansenists than to the Jesuists; and honourably distinguished, since its first origin, by the moderation as well as learning of its members.
* ↑ See among other passages, Rech. de la Vérité, Liv. ii, chap. ix.
* ↑ In one of Locke’s most noted remarks of this sort, he has been anticipated by Malebranche, on whose clear yet concise statement, he does not seem to have thrown much new light by his very diffuse and wordy commentary. “If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts; in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be given same reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason. For Wit, lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable visions in the fancy; Judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another.” Essay, &c. B. ii. c. xi. § 2. “Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes. Les uns remarquent aisément les différences des choses, et ce sont les bons esprits. Les autres imaginent et supposent de la ressemblance entr’elles, et ce sont les esprits superficiels.” Rech. de la Vérité. Liv. ii. Seconde Partie, chap. ix. At a still earlier period, Bacon had pointed out the same cardinal distinction in the intellectual characters of individuals. “Maximum et velut radicale discrimen ingeniorum, quoad philosophiam et scientias, illud est; quod alia ingenia sint fortiora et aptiora ad notandas rerum differentias; alia, ad notandas rerum similitudines. Ingenia enim constantia et acuta, figere contemplationes, et morari, et hærere in omni subtilitate differentiarum, possunt. Ingenia autem sublimia, et discursiva, etiam tenuissimas et catholicas rerum similitudines, et cognoscunt, et componunt. Utrumque autem ingenium facile labitur in excessum, prensando aut gradus rerum, aut umbras.” That strain I heard was of a higher mood! It is evident, that Bacon has here seized, in its most general form, the very important truth perceived by his two ingenious successors in particular cases. Wit, which Locke contrasts with judgment, is only one of the various talents connected with what Bacon calls the discursive genius; and indeed, a talent very subordinate in dignity to most of the others.
* ↑ I shall indulge myself only in one other citation from Malebranche, which I select partly on account of the curious extract it contains from an English publication long since forgotten in this country; and partly as a proof that this learned and pious father was not altogether insensible to the ludicrous. “Un illustre entre les Sçavans, qui a fondé des chaires de Géomietrie et d’Astronomie dans l’Université d’Oxford, commence un livre, qu’il s’est avisé de faire sur les huit premières propositions d’Euclide, par ces paroles. Consilium meum est, auditores, si vires et valetudo suffecerint, explicare definitiones, petitiones, communes sententias, et octo priores propositiones primi libri elementorum, cætera post me venientibus relinquere: et il le finit par celles-ci : Exsolvi per Dei gratiam, Domini auditores, promissum, liberavi fidem meam, explicavi pro modulo meo definitiones, petitiones, communes sententias, et octo priores propositiones elementorum Euclidis. Hic annis fessus cyclos artemque repono. Succedent in hoc munus alii fortasse magis vegeto corpore et vivido ingenio. Il ne faut pas une heure à un esprit mediocre, pour apprendre par lui même, ou par le secours du plus petit géometre qu’il y ait, les definitions, demandes, axiomes, et les huit premières propositions d’Euclide : et voici un auteur qui parle de cotte entreprise, comme de quelque chose de fort grand, et de fort difficile. Il a peur que les forces lui manquent ; Si vires ct valetudo suffecerint. Il laisse à ses successeurs à pousser ces choses : cætera post me venientibus relinquere. Il remercie Dieu de ce que, par une grace particulière, il a executé ce qu’il avoit promis : exsolvi per Dei gratiam promissum, liberavi fidem meam, explicavi pro modulo meo. Quoi ? la quadrature du cercle ? la duplication du cube ? Ce grand homme a expliqué pro modulo suo, les definitions, les demandes, les axiomes, et les huit premières propositions du premier livre des Elemens d’Euclide. Peut-être qu’entre ceux qui lui succederont, il s’en trouvera qui auront plus de sauté, et plus de force que lui pour continuer ce bel ouvrage : Succedent in hoc munus alii fortasse magis vegeto corpore, et vivido ingenio. Mais pour lui il est tems qu’il se repose ; hic annis fessus cyclos artemque repono.” After reading the above passage, it is impossible to avoid reflecting, with satisfaction, on the effect which the progress of philosophy has since had, in removing those obstacles to the acquisition of useful knowledge, which were created by the pedantic taste prevalent two centuries ago. What a contrast to a quarto commentary on the definitions, postulates, axioms, and first eight propositions of Euclid’s First Book, is presented by Condorcet’s estimate of the time now sufficient to conduct a student to the highest branches of mathematics! “Dans le siècle dernier, il suffisoit de quelques années d’étude pour savoir tout ce qu’Archimede et Hipparque avoient pu connoitro ; et aujourd’hui deux années de l’enseignement d’un professeur vont au dela de ce que savoient Leibnitz ou Newton.” (Sur l’Instruction Publique.) In this particular science, I am aware that much is to be ascribed to the subsequent invention of new and more general methods; but, I apprehend, not a little also to the improvements gradually suggested by experience, in what Bacon calls the traditive part of logic.
* ↑ Sir Henry Savile. The work here referred to is a 4to volume, entitled, Prelectiones xiii, in Principium Elementorum Euclidis, Oxoniæ habitæ, Anno 1620.
* ↑ “Toutes nos différentes perceptions sont attachées aux différens changemens qui arrivent dans les fibres de la partie principale du cerveau dans laquelle l’ame réside plus particulièrement.” (Rech. de la Vérité, Liv. ii. chap. v.) These changes in the fibres of the brain are commonly called by Malebranche ebranlemens;—a word which is frequently rendered by his old English translator (Taylor) vibrations. “La seconde chose,” says Malebranche, “qui se trouve dans chacune des sensations, est l’ebranlement des fibres de nos nerfs, qui se communique jusqu’au cerveau :” thus translated by Taylor: “The second thing that occurs in every sensation is the vibration of the fibres of our nerves, which is communicated to the brain.” (Liv. 1, chap. xii.) Nor was the theory of association overlooked by Malebranche. See, in particular, the third chapter of his second book, entitled, De la liaison mutuelle des idées de l’esprit, et des traces du cerveau ; et de la liaison mutuelle des traces avec les traces, et des idées avec les idées.
* ↑ “Mais afin de suivre nôtre explication, il faut remarquer que les esprits ne trouvent pas toujours les chemins, par où ils doivent passer, assez ouverts et assez libres ; et que cela fait qui nous avons de la difficulté à remuer, par exemple, les doigts avec la vitesse qui est nécessaire pour jouer des instrumens de musique, ou les muscles qui servent à la prononciation, pour prononcer les mots d’une langue étrangere : Mais que peu-a-peu les esprits animaux par leur cours continuel ouvrent et applanissent ces chemins, en sorte qu’avec le tems ils n’y trouvent plus de resistance. Car c’est dans cette facilité que les esprits animaux ont de passer dans les membres de nôtre corps, que consistent les habitudes.” Rech. de la Vérité, Liv. ii. chap. v. “Habits seem to be but trains of motion in the animal spirits, which, once set a-going, continue in the same steps they have been used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path.” Locke, Book ii. chap. xxxiii. § 6.
* ↑ “Afin qu’on ne puisse plus douter de la fausseté de cette miserable philosophie, il est necessaire de prouver qu’il n’y a qu’un vrai Dieu, parce qu’il n’y a qu’une vraie cause ; que Ia nature ou la force de chaque chose n’est que la volonté de Dieu : que toutes les causes naturelles ne sont point de véritable causes, mais seulement des causes occasionelles.” De la Vérité, Livre vi, 2de Partie, chap. iii.
* ↑ This objection, frivolous as it is, was strongly urged by Mr Boyle (Inquiry into the Vulgar Idea concerning Nature), and has been copied from him by Mr Hume, Lord Kames, and many other writers. Mr Hume’s words are these: “It argues more wisdom to contrive at first the fabric of the world with such perfect foresight, that, of itself, and by its proper operation, it may serve all the purposes of providence, than if the great Creator were obliged every moment to adjust its parts, and animate by his breath all the wheels of that stupendous machine.” (Essay on the Idea of necessary Connexion.) An observation somewhat similar occurs in the Treatise De Mundo, commonly ascribed to Aristotle.
* ↑ In speaking of the theory of occasional causes, Mr Hume has committed a historical mistake, which it may be proper to rectify. “Malebranche,” he observes, “and other Cartesians, made the doctrine of the universal and sole efficacy of the Deity, the foundation of all their philosophy. It had, however, no authority in England. Locke, Clarke, and Cudworth, never so much as take notice of it, but suppose all along that matter has a real, though subordinate and derived power.” Hume’s essays, Vol. II. p. 475. Edit. of 1784. Mr Hume was probably led to connect, in this last sentence, the name of Clarke with those of Locke and Cudworth, by taking for granted that his metaphysical opinions agreed exactly with those commonly ascribed to Sir Isaac Newton. In fact, on the point now in question, his creed was the same with that of Malebranche. The following sentence is very nearly a translation of a passage already quoted from the latter. “The course of nature, truly and properly speaking, is nothing but the will of God producing certain effects in a continued, regular, constant, and uniform manner.” Clarke’s Works, Vol. II. p. 698. Fol. Ed.
* ↑ We are indebted to La Harpe for the preservation of an epigrammatic line (un vers fort plaisant, as he justly calls it) on this celebrated hypothesis: “Lui, qui voit tout en Dieu, n’y voit-il pas qu’il est fou ?—C’etoit au moins,” La Harpe adds, “un fou qui avoit beaucoup d’esprit.”
* ↑ See his Dictionary, article Amelius.
* ↑ Introduction to a Translation of some Hindoo verses.
* ↑ Entretiens sur la Metaphysique, p. 207. The celebrated doubt of Descartes concerning all truths but the existence of his own mind (it cannot be too often repeated), was the real source, not only of the inconsistency of Malebranche on this head, but of the chief metaphysical puzzles afterwards started by Berkeley and Hume. The illogical transition by which he attempted to pass from this first principle to other truths, was early remarked by some of his own followers, who were accordingly led to conclude, that no man can have full assurance of anything but of his own individual existence. If the fundamental doubt of Descartes be admitted as reasonable, the conclusion of these philosophers (who were distinguished by the name of Egoists), is unavoidable.
* ↑ The limited number of fables, of humorous tales, and even of jests, which, it should seem, are in circulation over the face of the globe, might perhaps be alleged as an additional confirmation of this idea.
* ↑ Biog. Brit. Vol. II. p. 251.
* ↑ This interview happened in 1715, when Berkeley was in the thirty-first, and Malebranche in the seventy-seventh year of his age. What a change in the state of the philosophical world (whether for the better or worse is a different question) has taken place in the course of the intervening century! Dr Warburton, who, even when he thinks the most unsoundly, always possesses the rare merit of thinking for himself, is one of the very few English authors who have spoken of Malebranche with the respect due to his extraordinary talents. “All you say of Malebranche,” he observes in a letter to Dr Hurd, “is strictly true; he is an admirable writer. There is something very different in the fortune of Malebranche and Locke. When Malebranche first appeared, it was with a general applause and admiration; when Locke first published his Essay, he had hardly a single approver. Now Locke is universal, and Malebranche sunk into obscurity. All this may be easily accounted for. The intrinsic merit of either was out of the question. But Malebranche supported his first appearance on a philosophy in the highest vogue; that philosophy has been overturned by the Newtonian, and Malebranche has fallen with his master. It was to no purpose to tell the world, that Malebranche could stand without him. The public never examines so narrowly. Not but that there was another cause sufficient to do the business; and that is, his debasing his noble work with his system of seeing all things in God. When this happens to a great author, one half of his readers out of folly, the other out of malice, dwell only on the unsound part, and forget the other, or use all their arts to have it forgotten. “But the sage Locke supported himself by no system on the one hand; nor, on the other, did he dishonour himself by any whimsies. The consequence of which was, that, neither following the fashion, nor striking the imagination, he, at first, had neither followers nor admirers; but being everywhere clear, and everywhere solid, he at length worked his way, and afterwards was subject to no reverses. He was not affected by the new fashions in philosophy, who leaned upon none of the old; nor did he afford ground for the after-attacks of envy and folly by any fanciful hypotheses, which, when grown stale, are the most nauseous of all things.” The foregoing reflections on the opposite fates of these two philosophers, do honour on the whole to Warburton’s penetration; but the unqualified panegyric on Locke will be now very generally allowed to furnish an additional example of “that national spirit, which,” according to Hume, “forms the great happiness of the English, and leads them to bestow on all their eminent writers such praises and acclamations, as may often appear partial and excessive.”
* ↑ The following very concise and accurate summary of Arnauld’s doctrine concerning ideas, is given by Brucker. “Antonius Arnaldus, ut argumenta Malebranchii eo fortius everteret, peculiarem sententiam defendit, asseruitque, ideas carumque perceptiones esse unum idemque, et non nisi relationibus, differre. Ideam scilicet esse, quatenus ad objectum refertur quod mens considerat; perceptionem vero, quatenus ad ipsam mentem quæ percipit; duplicem tamen illam relationem ad unam pertinere mentis modificationem.” Hist. Phil. de Ideis, pp. 247, 248.
* ↑ More commonly known by the name of the Port-Royal Logic.
* ↑ According to Crousaz, The Art of Thinking contributed more than either the Organon of Bacon, or the Method of Descartes, to improve the established modes of academical education on the Continent. (See the Preface to his Logic, printed at Geneva 1724.) Leibnitz himself has mentioned it in the most flattering terms; coupling the name of the author with that of Pascal, a still more illustrious ornament of the Port-Royal Society:—“Ingeniosissimus Pascalius in præclara dissertatione de ingenio Geometrico, cujus fragmentum extat in egregio libro celeberrimi viri Antonii Arnaldi de Arte bene Cogitandi,” &c.; but lest this encomium from so high an authority should excite a curiosity somewhat out of proportion to the real value of the two works here mentioned, I think it right to add, that the praises bestowed by Leibnitz, whether on living or dead authors, are not always to be strictly and literally interpreted. “No one,” says Hume, “is so liable to an excess of admiration as a truly great genius.” Wherever Leibnitz has occasion to refer to any work of solid merit, this remark applies to him with peculiar force; partly, it is probable, from his quick and sympathetic perception of congenial excellence, and partly from a generous anxiety to point it out to the notice of the world. It affords, on the other hand, a remarkable illustration of the force of prejudice, that Buffier, a learned and most able Jesuit, should have been so far influenced by the hatred of his order to the Jansenists, as to distinguish the Port-Royal Logic with the cold approbation of being “a judicious compilation from former works on the same subject;—particularly from a treatise by a Spanish Jesuit, Fonséca.” Cours De Sciences, p. 873. Paris 1732.
* ↑ Eruditum Vulgus. Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. ii.
* ↑ Spectator, No. 381 and 387.
* ↑ Hawkesworth’s Translation.
* ↑ I have classed Télémaque and the Direction pour la Conscience d’un Roi with the philosophy of the seventeenth century, although the publication of the former was not permitted till after the death of Louis XIV., nor that of the latter till 1748. The tardy appearance of both only shows how far the author had shot a-head of the orthodox religion and politics of his times.