MALEBRANCHE, Nicholas, an eminent French metaphysician and philosopher, the son of Nicholas Malebranche, secretary to the French king, and born at Paris on the 6th of August 1638. He was first placed under a domestic tutor, who taught him Greek and Latin; he afterwards went through a course of philosophy in the college of La Marche, and of theology in the Sorbonne; and, lastly, he was admitted into the congregation of the Oratory in 1660. He at first applied himself to the study of languages [7:14:55]and ecclesiastical history; but afterwards meeting with Des Cartes’s Treatise of Man, he read it with great avidity, and afterwards devoted himself entirely to the study of philosophy. In 1699 he was admitted an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Notwithstanding he was originally of a delicate constitution, he enjoyed pretty good health until his death, which happened in October 1715, at the age of seventy-seven. Father Malebranche read little, but thought a great deal. He despised that kind of learning which consists only in knowing the opinions of other men, since a person may know the history of other men’s thoughts without thinking himself. He had no taste for poetry; and though possessed of a strong imagination, he could never read ten verses together without disgust. He meditated with his windows shut, to keep out the light, which he found a disturbance to him. His conversation turned upon the same subjects as his books; but it was mixed with so much modesty and deference to the judgment of others, that his society was universally courted. Few foreigners,' if men of learning, neglected to visit him on their arrival in Paris; and it is said that an English officer who had been taken prisoner, consoled himself with the reflection, that when brought to Paris he would see Malebranche. His works are famous, particularly his Recherche de la Vérité, or Search after Truth, first printed at Paris in 1674, the design of which is to point out the errors into which we are daily led by our senses, imagination, and passions, and to prescribe a method for discovering the truth, which is done by starting the notion that we see all things in God. Hence he is led to think and speak meanly of human knowledge, either as it is found in written books, or in the volume of nature, compared with that light which displays itself from the ideal world, and, by attending to which, with pure and uncontaminated minds, he supposes knowledge to be most easily obtained. These sentiments, recommended by various beauties of style, led many to admire his genius who could not understand or accede to his principles; and he has generally passed for a visionary philosopher. Locke, in his examination of Male-branchc’s opinion that we see all things in God, styles him “an acute and ingenious author,” and tells us that there are “a great many very fine thoughts, judicious reasonings, and uncommon reflections in his Recherche " but in the same piece he nevertheless endeavours to refute the leading principles of his system. He wrote several works besides that which we have mentioned, all tending to confirm the system proposed in the Recherche, and to clear it from the objections which were urged against it, or from the consequences which were deduced from it. These are, 1. Conversations Chrétiennes, 1677, written at the desire of the Duke de Chevreuse; 2. Traité de la Nature et de la Grace, 1680, occasioned by a conference with Arnauld on the subject of divine grace; 3. Méditations Chrétiennes et Métaphysiques, published the same year, and intended as a sort of supplement to the Treatise of Nature and Grace; 4. Traité de Morale, 1782; 5. Entretiens sur la Métaphysique et sur la Religion, 1687, in which he collected all he had written against Arnauld, but divested it of a polemical character; 6. Traité de l’Amour de Dieu, 1697; 7. Entretiens d’un Philosophe Chrétien et d’un Philosophe Chinois sur l’Existence de Dieu, 1708. Malebranche was also a geometrician and natural philosopher, as well as a metaphysician; and on this account he was received as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences in 1699. He justified this choice by his Traité de la Communication du Mouvement, in which he corrected what he had said in the Reeherche de la Vérité, namely, that the same quantity of motion is always preserved in nature; and subjoined some physical observations on the general system of the universe. See First Preliminary Dissertation, p. 74, et seq.